Sandra got up and turned on the light. The bedding was reasonably displaced and her clothes were piled up next to the door. This had to be the WEIRDEST first date she had ever been on. She had engaged in sex, which was unusual for her first time out with someone. Her date was a very intelligent, very attractive woman with some very peculiar habits, huge self-image problems and a tendency to panic blindly when asked direct questions.
“Maybe I should just cut my losses and run?” she asked of herself, staring towards the bathroom door. “But the sex was fun, and she seems sweet enough.” She noticed that Shannon had left her plain cotton underwear in the bedroom. She picked it up and saw that it had the woman’s name and the day of the week written in the back. “You’ve GOT to be kidding?!?” She heard the water stop running, followed by some fumbling. During that time, Shannon’s pager started beeping like mad. A still wet, but fully dressed, Shannon rushed out into the main room. She picked up the electronic device while sending an apologetic look at Sandra.
“Shuh-… shit,” she muttered. “Emuh-… emergency. Can I buh-… borrow your phone?” Sandra nodded and Shannon made a call. After less than a minute, Shannon hung up the call and then called a cab. “Suh-… sorry. Duh-… double homicide, and everyone else is out luh-… looking at a buh-… bus crash or on suh-… something else.” She could barely meet Sandra’s gaze at that point. “Thuh-… thank you fuh-… for a guh-… great evening.”
Sandra, still nude, leaned against the bedroom door as Shannon tried to make her getaway. “I take it you won’t be back tonight?” Shannon shook her head. “Why don’t I give you a call tomorrow? You’re off work, right? Assuming they don’t call you in again?”
Shannon nodded. “Yuh-… you duh-… don’t huh-… have to if yuh-… you duh-… don’t want to.” She was completely perplexed. She knew what a psycho-basket-case she had been. Why would anyone want to talk to her after all that? She was also having problems concentrating to the extreme proximity of Sandra’s very inviting, very nude body.
“I guess that means I must want to,” the woman whispered, giving Shannon a kiss on the cheek, then on the lips. “I’ll talk to you later,” she repeated after a retreating Shannon.
——————- —————-
The next afternoon . . .
——————- —————-
“I don’t get it,” Sandra was complaining. Jasmine had dropped by her office for lunch. She was filling out forms before her two o’clock conference call with some addle-brained pop star on the East Coast and her representatives. “Things would be going great for a while and she’d be really opening up, then poof . . . she would completely freak out about something. Do you have an extra hot sauce?” Jasmine tossed a packet of the stuff over the desk. Neither woman normally partook so heavily in junk food, but the idea had just struck Sandra as being a good one. Of course, her parents would freak if they knew she was eating Taco Bell. They might even disown her.
“Well, you gave it a shot,” Jasmine said. Her feet were kicked up on another chair as she sucked down what constituted a gordita at their restaurant of choice. Sandra was amazed how the woman could go from such an elegant escort to such a casual couch potato in just a few weeks. The two were becoming fairly comfortable as friends. “So are you thinking of cutting anchor?”
“I don’t know. She IS smart and she’s actually kind of funny when you least expect it. She’s got an interesting job and she’s had an interesting life . . .”
“Then call her again tonight.”
“But she’s insane!”
“Then . . . when did you turn into sixteen-year-old girl again?” Jasmine was actually having more fun than she was letting on. Normally her clients expected her to have answers to all their problems. Here, she just got to egg Sandra on.
“Am not,” Sandra pouted, pounding her feet petulantly on the office floor.
“Well then make up your mind, because you’re giving me a headache.”
—————- ——-
That evening . . .
—————- ——-
Sandra had worked late. Her conference call had carried on longer than anticipated, one of her aging singers wanted to rework their contract so they would get more money for doing less work, there were problems finding land for the company’s new recording studio and she had wound up in an emergency meeting with their public relations people about how to handle another artist’s “chemical indiscretions” at an awards banquet. And she had gotten the okay to move back into her house, so she decided that was what she was going to do that evening. She would call Shannon and tell her what was up; hoping the woman wouldn’t take it personally. She was nervous about moving back. She hadn’t even been there since . . .
She got to the condo and walked in the lobby. That was when she noticed Shannon sitting on a bench next to the guard station. She was apparently discussing the finer points of his sidearm when she strolled up. Then Shannon noticed her.
“Huh-… hey.”
“Hi,” Sandra responded, a little surprised. “I was going to call, but I worked late and now I was going to move back into the house.”
“I nuh-… know. I huh-… heard when I guh-… got off thuh-… this afternoon.”
“You worked until this afternoon? When was the last time you slept?”
“Abuh-… about twenty-fuh-… four hours. I thuh-… thought you muh-… might like suh-… some help.”
“Thanks. I’ve only got a couple of bags, but I’ll take any help I can get,” she said. Actually, she didn’t need help carrying anything. She just didn’t want to be alone when she went back there. And it was particularly comforting that she’d be there with a cop. They went up to the condo, and packed up all her stuff.
Shannon was nervous and didn’t know what to say. She realized she had probably freaked Sandra out yesterday. Normally, she would have just given up and wrote it off as another social failure on her part. But she had realized that afternoon that she didn’t want to. She and Bobby had both worked an obscene number of hours recently, including the case last night. She had been stressed and had gone over to his office to talk about their day. The two of them had been picking body parts out of shag carpeting for hours. His wife had shown up and was ready to drive him home since he was exhausted. She had been hugging him and cradling his head. Somewhere in the last several years, Detective Bobby Jones had turned into a really decent person. She had watched him and his wife for a moment. She realized she would never have anything like that. Then she corrected herself. She would never have anything like that if she kept giving up as soon as something appeared to be going wrong.
They were tossing Sandra’s bags into her car when Shannon looked over. “I had fuh-… fun yesterday. I’m suh-… sorry about the wuh-… way I was acting. I duh-… don’t duh-… date often. I wuh-… wasn’t sure if it even wuh-… was a date.”
Sandra actually started laughing. “Thank God! I thought I was the only one confused about that! At first I was just wanted to thank you, and then it turned into ‘having drinks’ and then there was the confusion about where to go . . .” An idea came to mind. “Do you want to try again? Let’s just go do something and we drop this stuff off later. Dinner?”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “If yuh-… you’d seen suh-… some of the stuff I’d suh-… seen today, you woo-… wouldn’t want to eat either. Buh-… but I don’t muh-… mind watching whuh-… while you eat.”
“I’ll just grab something on the way to the house then.” Just then, something caught her eye.
A few minutes later, the two women were playing miniature golf. Sandra grabbed a hotdog at the vending table and Shannon was sucking down diet-soda in a crazy-straw cup. They played golf, rode on go-carts and even played skee-ball. They did very badly at that last game. It was a first for a couple of fifteen-year-olds who had bloomed a little bit late.
Afterward, they sat outside on the bench and watched other people play.
“Suh-… so, why did you guh-… get into music?”
Sandra sighed. “First of all, it was big business and I was good at business. I’d been watching my parent’s business grow for a long time, and I saw how a well-run business made life better for everyone who worked there. The music industry was exciting, and I thought I meant I would get to hob-knob with all the celebrities and the big-shots. Then I became a big-shot and realized that hob-knobbing was really annoying. But I love it still. Especially w hen you find someone who’s actually good and loves the music. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but I recently found a band of girls that’s gonna change the world someday. And I get to help them get there. The rest . . . the meetings, the public relations . . . it’s all bullshit. It’s all about seeing the next big thing when he or she or they break out.” She stopped. “You know, I asked you the same question . . . I mean, how did you decide to do what you do?”