Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy by Sally Mason

the agency.
    “Toby who?” Jonas says, then makes a kissy sound and rings off.
    Jane can’t resist a fist punch and blushes as crimson as the Fall leaves when she sees Gordon watching her from the doorway.
    “Jonas Blunt is a happy man?”
    “Yes, he is.”
    “Well, we’re all happy, aren’t we?” he says stepping aside for her to walk back into the house.
    She whispers in his ear, “I know what you’re doing, Gordon. I just hope that you do.”

13
     
     
     
     
    As soon as Jane Cooper takes her briefcase containing the signed contract and leaves the house, Gordon dashes for the bathroom, fearing that the stress of the last day has made him physically ill.
    But once he splashes his face at the sink, he feels somewhat restored.
    He looks at his reflection in the mirror (he has to duck, the looking-glass is positioned for his much shorter sister) and is astonished to see that none of the distress is visible on his face.
    In fact, Gordon looks better than he has in months and can’t contain a feeling of elation at what he has pulled off.
    Not only has he accessed even more money for his unacknowledged bastard child, Ivy , but (more significantly) is now assured of seeing Too Long the Night in print.
    “ Nicely done, Gordo, I always knew you had it in you.”
    He turns and sees Suzie Baldwin blowing him a kiss as she disappears through the closed door.
    Gordon dries his face, combs his hair and straightens his collar.
    Opening the bathroom door, he says, “Bitsy, what do you say to a little celebratory dinner down at Grace’s?”
    There is no reply.
    “Bitsy?”
    His sister is not in the living room or kitchen.
    He sticks a head into her bedroom and sees she’s not there either.
    Crossing to the living room window, Gordon pulls back the drapes and looks out into the night. The streetlight shines on empty road where the Volvo was parked.
    His sister, very uncharacteristically, has left without saying a word.

14
     
     
     
     
    Bitsy Rushworth, foot flat to the floor of her Volvo as she s peeds through the night, feels—quite literally—not herself.
    Which is not to say that she feels bad , exactly.
    This feeling of dislocation, of watching some new, braver, Bitsy from a slight distance is not altogether unpleasant and her usual reticence and nervousness seem to have drained away and been replaced with a sense of purpose.
    A sense that, at last, she has found a way to give her life meaning.
    To be truly useful.
    Is this the evolution that Daniel Quant ha d spoken of?
    The evolution he assured her would come if she followed the path of mindfulness and self-awareness?
    “By far the most creative thing you’ll ever do is create your new self,” he’d said to her during a one-on-one session on a hot afternoon last summer, the buttery sunlight washing the room, making him glow as he stood over her, tanned and lithe in his white T-shirt and linen pants, his feet bare.
    She couldn’t help but notice that his toes were shapely and neatly clipped.
    Somehow she found this reassuring.
    Not to mention attractive.
    She’d been about to speak when he held up one of his broad, workman’s hands, and said, “Do I hear a when ?”
    “Yes,” she said, blushing. “Am I being impatient?”
    “An all-too-human quirk, Bitsy. Just believe that transformation will come and let it happen.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she swore she could feel that an electrical charge course through her. “Don't try to steer the river.”
    Driving her Volvo over the cattle grid and past the Quant Foundation sign, she feels like she has flung herself into a surging river, letting it take her where it will.
    Bitsy stops the car outside Daniel Quant’s house, a beacon of light in the darkness, and feels a flash of her old uncertainty.
    Then she pushes this away and stands up out of the car, walking toward the house.
    A dog barks somewhere far away and she hears a lilting piano melody wafting through the night.
    As she nears the