Part 9 (1/2)

'No, we'll have it for our lunch today. It's more nutritious fresh.'

Ben was busy in his office, working on his novel. He'd been up since six o'clock that morning, Tess informed me, so he'd be in a frenzy of creation now, and he wouldn't want to be disturbed.

Then she left, most probably heading for the MoA. Did they put something in the air conditioning there, I asked myself. Something that made people need a daily fix of it, and sent them crazy if they didn't get it?

But this gave me time and s.p.a.ce to catch up on some work-related reading okay, to page through Tess's magazines to do some market research for when I got back to London and of course to think of Patrick Riley.

This was just absurd, ridiculous. I longed and longed to see him. I wanted more than anything to hear his voice again. I told myself to get a grip, stop being so pathetic. He was a married man, at least for now, a father, an American, a scientist, someone who'd despise my frock-fixated, trend-obsessed, shoe-and-designer-bag-mad life.

How could he possibly be right for me?

How could he not?

When I had bashed my foot, he could have told me it was all my fault. I should have looked where I was going. He could have let me hobble to the parking lot. But he had carried me.

He'd smelled of warm, sweet spices. His skin was smooth and tanned by summer sun. His straight dark hair lay like a soft black pelt against his head, and it- It was just a case of female hormones working overtime.

I made some notes on possible locations for my office, sent some emails off to various letting agents, spent some time on Facebook and on Twitter. Then I googled JQA. Only out of idle curiosity, of course, just to see where Pat and Ben did well, whatever stuff they did all day.

I let my fingers wander, watched to see what they would do. My clever, clever fingers, they soon found Pat's department. Then they found his photograph, right-clicked on it and saved it to my alb.u.m.

I read his bio goodness, what a lot of letters and abbreviations, Professor Patrick Riley PhD. What a lot of publications, fellows.h.i.+ps, awards. All that was missing was the n.o.bel Prize.

There were all his contact details, tempting, mocking me. What should I do? Well, nothing really, seriously stupid obviously. I considered ringing him. Okay, what would I say? I didn't know.

But then a pa.s.sing fairy must have checked my balance wish-wise, saw I was in credit and allowed him to ring me.

No, that's a lie. He didn't ring to talk to me. He rang to speak to Ben, of course. I just picked up the phone. But when he realised it was me, not Tess, he asked how I was doing and how was my foot? He hoped it was okay?

'It it's fine,' I said, or rather rasped, because my mouth had suddenly gone as dry as the Sahara in a record-breaking heatwave. 'It hurt a bit on Sunday, but it's almost back to normal now.'

'That's good to hear,' he said and then he paused for half a heartbeat. 'I was kind of worried when you cried.'

'It was the shock.'

'I guess.'

'Do want to speak to Ben?'

Why did I say that? I wanted him to talk to me!

'Yeah, if he's home, if he could take a break from the celestial dictation? I tried him on his cell, but seems like it's turned off.'

'I'll fetch him for you.' But then I took a chance, dived headlong into shallow water full of rocks and boulders and I dare say sharks. 'Patrick, I ...'

But then I paused. What was I going to say? Drop what you're doing and come round to this apartment and baiser me to glory, could you? Tie me up and tie me down and then do anything you want with me?

'... I'm sorry I made such a fuss on Sat.u.r.day.' What a brilliant conversationalist. Dorothy Parker would have been in fits of jealousy. 'I don't often cry.'

'Oh, most anybody would have cried.' Patrick Riley's voice was warm as caramel, a perfect mocha latte on a freezing winter day. 'If I'd run into that old rock, I would have cried myself. You're one brave girl, you know. You did all right.'

I felt myself flush pink with pleasure. Multicoloured b.u.t.terflies did aerial gymnastics in my stomach. I almost felt myself begin to glow, like I'd been plugged into the mains.

But what had I told myself? All this had to stop and stop right now. 'Thank you,' I said primly, like some Victorian lady saying thank you to a rude mechanical who'd swept the highway free of horse manure so she could cross the road. 'I'll go and get Ben.'

He wasn't in his office after all. I found him in the den, his headphones on and watching baseball on his ma.s.sive television screen. The den was an Aladdin's cave reinterpreted by some ridiculously nerdish teenage boy. There were gadgets everywhere, wires trailing, stuff on charge, lights flas.h.i.+ng, blinking- 'What are you grinning at?' he asked me when I tapped him on the shoulder to distract him from Joe Mauer and the Minnesota Twins.

'I thought you were working?'

'It's research,' he said.

PATRICK.

Okay, I told myself, you don't go visit Ben. You don't go anywhere with him on weekends. You don't give yourself a chance to see that over-privileged British girl whose ancestors most likely starved and persecuted your own Irish forebears so they had no choice but to set sail for the New World in rotting hulks.

All I had to do was concentrate on work and sorting out the personal stuff and spend time with my kids.

I saw my own attorney and he wrote my wife's. The kid stuff was arranged to more or less my satisfaction. I'd see Joe and Polly early evenings and have them all day Sunday. There was no room for Rosie in my life. I told her so.

But Rosie paid no mind to me. She walked into my head while I was shaving, showering, fixing breakfast, driving, talking, seeing students, and she never rang the bell or knocked the door, she just came right on in, sat down and made herself at home like she belonged there. When I said she couldn't stay, she smiled and asked who was I kidding, then?

She knew I didn't want her to go.

'What's eating you, Professor Riley?' Ben demanded when I saw him in college on Wednesday afternoon. Why was he in college on a Wednesday afternoon? He didn't teach on Wednesday afternoons. So did he have a meeting with a member of the faculty?

Yeah, I guessed he must, no doubt with that cute and curvy blonde from Idaho who's into Robert Frost on whom Ben is an expert and probably into Ben as well.

'What should be eating me?' I asked.

'You look like you bet a thousand dollars on a game of tic-tac-toe and lost. There is a skill to it, you know. You start off in-'

'I'm running late. I'll catch you Friday.'

As I drove out of the parking lot, I played tic-tac-toe and other games with Rosie Denham in my head, and she always beat me, even though I wrote some near-perfect winning algorithms for them all while I was still a high school student and until I played these games with Rosie no one ever beat me, even a computer.

But I figured even Joe or Polly could beat me nowadays.

There were times when I was out of it, had to ask a student to repeat a question, found myself on highways or at intersections without knowing how I came there. This could not go on.

Once a month, I did some outreach work on one of the reservations north of Minneapolis, teaching basic IT skills to disadvantaged kids on a pro bono basis.

Some of those kids were pretty smart and I saw no reason why they should not go to college, be engineers, attorneys, scientists. There were grants and scholars.h.i.+ps. You just had to track them down and I could help with that, like my high school teachers once helped me.

I was driving home late Thursday evening when I got a flat. I pulled into a buggy lane I guessed there'd be no Amish on the blacktop at this time of night and then got out.

It was getting cold and I was tired. I'd had a very long and busy day and I was looking forward to being home again, even in my empty, dark apartment with my takeout pizza, coleslaw, shake.

It didn't take me long to fix the flat. But as I stowed the jack back in the trunk then cleaned my dirty hands with Polly's wipes, something made me look up at the sky.

Outside of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the night sky is awesome. The hard, white constellations s.h.i.+ne so bright. Where was the Bear tonight and where was Ca.s.siopeia? Where were the Northern Lights, the Death Dance of the Spirits?