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The phone buzzing jolted Angie Holton out of a deep, comfortable sleep. In her stupor, she was convinced that the man she was dreaming about had come to life. “Who are you?” she called, groping in the darkness that only existed because of her blackout curtains. “Where...?”
With a grunt, she jammed her left foot into the corner of one of her many bookshelves and fell forward. She stuck out a hand, vaulted off it, swore loudly, and bounced back to her feet. Not a half-second later, Angie hit her head on her bedroom door, tottered backward and fell again. That time, she managed to get her balance by wheeling her feet, and had just caught herself when she clapped a knee against her mattress. She flopped forward, thankfully onto her bed, and had almost fallen back asleep when she remembered the phone was why she’d gotten up in the first place.
It buzzed again. This time she had a slightly less violent reaction. Rolling lazily onto one side, she cursed her bad eyes, snatched her glasses and blinked until she could see clearly enough to answer.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” The voice coming through the phone was familiar, but only vaguely. “You seem kind of outta breath.”
“Oh, uh,” she giggled softly, “no, the phone just surprised me. I was having a hell of a dream though. This is Eve, right?”
“Angie Holton,” Eve announced, “I think I’ve found someone for you to meet.”
“I remember you being a lot chattier,” Angie said rubbing her eyes. Even though her vision was just this side of blindness, she was still a fox, and so her light sensitivity was through the roof. Even the bare strips of sunlight coming through the crack between her curtains was enough to send a hot streak of pain through her brain.
“Sorry,” Eve said. “It’s been a real day. I’m sure you know how that goes.”
And so she did. As a night shift dispatcher for the White Creek Police Department, “real days” were pretty much all Angie had. It suited her though. She had a preternatural ability to keep calm in the most stressful of situations, and then a bad habit of falling apart directly after the stress passed. She also had a habit of, apparently, bouncing around her room like an unhinged idiot when she was sleepy and collecting all sorts of bumps, bruises and scrapes she couldn’t remember getting.
“I hear that, last night we had about seventy calls. At least half of them were actually emergencies that didn’t involve non-shifting cats and trees. So, you found someone? Really? Is it some sort of whiny rhino?”
Eve repeated that phrase – whiny rhino – several times, laughing under her breath. “That really sounds funny, huh?” Eve asked. “Whiny rhino, whiny rhino, uh... sorry. My head is in about fourteen thousand different places today. I’ll tell you this though, he’s no whiny rhino. Not a rhino at all. A bear. A bar bear,” she giggled again and then sighed at herself.
“Are you okay?” Angie asked. “You seem like you’ve got some gas leaking into the office.”
“It’s a long story. A real long one,” Eve said. “You ever hear of Tenner’s Bar?”
Angie nodded her head before remembering she was on the phone. “Sure, it’s one of four bars in town and I’m a dispatcher. Fights aren’t exactly rare. I can’t do the late nights anymore. Well I mean, I can but I don’t get out of work until most people are just showing up at their offices. I have to do my drinking at one of the places near the hospital where all the graveyard shift nurses and cops whet their whistles. But I like pancakes better anyway.”
Falling silent for a moment, Angie thought of syrup, whipped cream, a short-stack of buttermilk pancakes and some kind of fruit topping. Strawberries, maybe? “God I love pancakes,” she said without realizing she was speaking out loud. “Er, sorry, so who is this guy?”
Eve clicked her teeth together, and flipped audibly through papers. “Dawson Lex. He’s a bear, a very nice one, and he also sings like an angel. Just don’t ask him about Billy Joel. He’s the piano bear at Tenner’s Bar, and is slightly reclusive.”
“Well he’s a bear,” Angie said, her voice getting a little bit higher and just a touch more excited. “They don’t tend to be the most social. I’ve never even thought of dating a bear. I’m kinda... well I won’t say small, because of the pancake thing partly, but I’m not anywhere near as big as a bear.”
“Oh don’t worry, honey,” Eve said with a tinge of mischief in her voice. “We might all be different shapes and sizes, but that’s what makes life interesting. And I do mean interesting. If you catch—”
“Uh yeah I think I get it,” Angie laughed under her breath. “But... I don’t know. I mean, is he sure he can handle my baggage?”
“He’s got his own,” Eve said. “Look, I’ve got to get back to nursing this headache, but I promise this is going to be good. He’s got a smile that could kill a snail,” she paused, but decided not to pursue that train of thought. “Beautiful eyes, and a big, round laugh. And he’s got a hell of a good heart. But, like I said, he’s got his own baggage, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”
For a moment, the two sat silently, wondering who was going to say something first. “Well,” Angie finally said, “I’m so tired of sitting around by myself that I’ll give it a shot, even if I’m not convinced he’s going to have any interest in me at all. He sounds like a dream, to be honest,” she trailed off, remembering the dream she’d been having before her ill-fated and plenty painful jaunt around her room. Her toes throbbed, but that didn’t stop her imagination from flying high and wide.
The guy in her dream had been tall, slightly muscular, but not like a freak show bodybuilder. He had these burning green eyes and some shaggy, dark blond hair. He also had these ears that stuck out just a little more than they would to be perfect, but somehow that little imperfection made him even more beautiful to her. It was sort of like him having some trait that made him look more real than a calendar model made him... well, real. She could imagine him actually existing, actually having anything to do with her.
“I’m still not sure though,” Angie said. “I mean, I’m not exactly the ideal prize.”
“I know you better than you know yourself,” Eve said. “You remember the questionnaire? The interview? That thing where you admitted everything you’d ever done and all the good and bad things about you?”
Angie nodded and then blinked. “Yeah?”
“Then trust me,” Eve said. “Listen. I don’t take my job lightly. I know that what I’m doing can make people’s lives a hundred times better, but it can also send them crashing to the floor if things don’t work out. I know I have a responsibility to this town and these shifters to find mates for those who can’t do it themselves. Do you think I take you lightly?”
She shook her head. “Er, no, I guess not.”
“Listen to me,” Eve said, her voice growing very serious. “You’ve got this way about you, this easy humor that I’ve only ever found in nurses and cops and dispatchers. You people have this way of dealing with horrors that no one else sees except on voyeuristic documentaries and CSI. You need to quit selling yourself short and get out there and bag this bear.”
“Oh, wow,” Angie said with a chuff of laughter. “I don’t think I’ve had a pep talk like that since I was on the boys’ team for sixth grade football. You should be a middle school coach.”
“No thanks, I’m good. I don’t look good in those weird shorts, although I wouldn’t mind wearing a whistle all the time.”
The two of them were silent for a time. “You really think this will work?” Angie finally asked. “I don’t think I can handle any more disappointment.”
“Listen. When’s the last time you heard about me steering someone wrong?”
“Well, never I guess.”
“Right. And there’s a reason I have so few clients, and why it takes so damn long for me to find matches. I don’t do anything unless I’m sure. I’m not a gambler, Angie, I’m a matchmaker. If I were going fishing, I would call it catching. Not fishing. Because I’m not in it to sit around with my line in the water all day, I’m in it to gut a salmon. You know what? That went on way too long and I’m not sure it makes any sense anyway.”
“No,” Angie said with a grin. “No, it really does. Somehow, it really does. All right,” she let out a breath. “Where am I meeting him?”
*
As she pulled to a stop in front of a dusky looking little building not too far from the outskirts of White Creek, Angie began having very serious second thoughts. Not because she was afraid of going inside the bar that looked hauntingly like Cheers, and not because she had any fear of the bear she was to meet, but rather it felt like she’d just stepped into a time skip.
Looking at herself in the rearview, she poked at the gloss that had collected in the corner of her mouth. She scraped off a little ball of it, and flicked it with her tongue, feeling at once slightly embarrassed at her trait of tasting the weird grape flavor of the stuff, and also not particularly caring. After all, she was who she was, right? Eve told her just to do what she did, and not worry about a damn thing.
There was a smell of something enticing, but she couldn’t tell if it was frying chicken, or hamburgers grilling. Could’ve been both. Either way, it did something to her stomach that was halfway between pleasant and horrifying. Regardless, she felt a rumble deep down and knew immediately that if she didn’t have one of whatever was making that smell, she’d go just about nuts.
Vaguely she remembered Eve telling her that not only did this bear play the piano, he also cooked. Angie sighed. Memories of her mother and brother begrudgingly accompanying her on one of the many, many symphony trips they’d taken flashed through her mind. Okay, gotta calm down with that sort of thing. This guy plays piano in a bar. I can’t make myself believe he’s some kind of virtuoso genius. Piano in a bar full of old guys, Ange. Come on, make with the sanity.
She swallowed hard, forcing both the lump in her throat and the rumble of her hunger down into a more submissive position. Still though, Angie couldn’t manage to keep from letting herself tingle up and down in anticipation of whatever she was about to see. Hell, she didn’t even know what she was about to see. She wished that she’d had a picture, or something past a description and a fantasy mind-picture of the guy.
But, that’s not how Eve worked. She didn’t believe in building people up on looks. It was all very scientific, but it was more than that – it was a beautiful art that she couldn’t quite grasp, but she didn’t need to, she knew, she just needed to go along for the ride. With another deep breath, she steadied her shaking hands by gripping the wheel and squeezing her fingers in between the grip nubs.
“Okay, all right, just calm down. You spend every night except Saturday sitting behind a bank of computer monitors and making life and death decisions. A blind date is a hell of a lot less frightening than that.”
But then, through the small bank of windows all decorated with painted scenes of reverie, she caught a glimpse of the giant with the blazing green eyes and the massive shoulders who sat down at the piano and started to twiddle around. Immediately, the wall-muffled music hit her in the chest. This was no garden variety bar pianist. He was playing the adagio from Beethoven’s 8th Symphony. That’s not what she expected from a guy playing an old baby grand next to a bar manned by an ancient, and impressively mustached, walrus. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the music swell around her. Sometimes, having fox ears wasn’t so good, like when she got a real clear picture of her neighbor’s sex life. Other times? Nothing was better.
The big guy and the walrus were talking, and the bear took a slug of whiskey. He smiled and as soon as he did, the palpitations set in. He had these big, blazing green eyes, and cheekbones that looked like something out of a catalog. Immediately her thoughts turned to his underwear, and her cheeks turned to crimson. It can’t be, she thought. All that dream psychic stuff is a load of crap. Maybe he’s just... what I’ve always wanted? And my brain just made me see him somehow?
“Embarrassed, feeling dirty and loving it? What better time to waltz into a bar and get myself a bear?” Angie told her empty car. One more deep breath and then she was outside of her late model Camry with one mismatched door, and pedaling her feet toward the door. She glanced down at her phone and saw it was half past four. “Well, if this guy turns out to be a drooling idiot, at least I’ve got to work at seven.” She exhaled the rest of her breath and blinked hard.
Pushing open the door of Tenner’s, she heard an old timey jingle and peered around the dark wood paneled bar. “It’s like this place fell out of 1920,” she said, surprised at the sound of her own voice.
“Hiya little lady,” the walrus, who must be Tenner, announced. He was wearing suspenders, a garter on his arm, and his incredibly manicured mustache also was straight out of time. “What can I do for ya?”
The big bear was still just tickling the keys. An almost sexually-charged sound filled her ears, filled her soul, but she saw he was absolutely lost in his own world. “I, uh,” she stammered. “I smelled some food. And...”
“Damn!” The bear she knew was Dawson Lex, stood up, knocking the bench over backwards. “I forgot the chicken!”
He dashed back to the kitchen, almost falling over himself as he half-leapt and half-fell, through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
“I think I’m here for him,” she said with a completely abashed grin.
“I figured,” Tenner said. “Nice to meet ya, Angie, I’m Tenner. And, uh, that’s Dawson. He hasn’t shut up for the last three hours. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“I hope I’m not messing things up for you. I don’t want to be a prob—”
“Oh, little lady,” Tenner said in his friendly, tired way, “if you can make him happy, there isn’t anything you could do that would bother me. But right now, I think he might need some help back there. He gets a little panicked when you’re dealing with grease fires.”
Angie took a drink of her Coke. “Wait, really? Are you serious?”
“No,” Tenner said, “but I’m sure he’d like some help anyway. You have no idea how long this bear has needed someone in his life, and if Eve thinks you’re right for him, well what the hell, she don’t tell me how to pour drinks, so I’ll trust her.”
Angie shrugged. “If you say so,” she said in a consciously uninterested monotone. She hated the idea of giving too much away, or even really admitting to herself how much she was looking forward to all this. She didn’t even know what this was, except that it probably wouldn’t be as horrifically comical as her last date. Anything was going to be a step up from that circus adventure.
Then again, as she started thinking about how she really had no clue in the world what she was stepping into, she got a little of that percolating anxiety that reacted like most people get acid reflux. It kind of bubbled up in her throat, and gave her prickly, strange sensations from the top of her head all the way down to her fingertips.
“Go on,” Tenner said. “No one is expecting anything from you, just go talk to him, he’s a good guy.”
The old walrus went right back to cleaning glasses and when he was done with that, to idly wiping his bar cloth along the top of the massive, oak bar. He found a small splotch that bothered him, and worked at it for a few moments.
She found her feet moving toward the big, back and forth swinging saloon style door that led to the kitchen. “God that smells good,” Angie said as she pushed open the door and watched her mystery bear plucking pieces of chicken out of a giant vat of oil. “Did you make it?”
“Mhm,” Dawson said, carefully sprinkling salt over the steaming, golden-brown pieces. He chased the kosher salt with some paprika, some chili powder, and a squeeze of lime. “My grandma did it this way,” he said as he held out a drumstick wrapped in a cloth napkin. “Try it? Might want to hold on to it for a minute before you—”
She couldn’t. There was some kind of cosmic force that made Angie bite into that chicken leg without any regard for decency, safety, or dignity. The batter crunched like a bunch of incredibly crispy, extremely flavorful cornflakes. Her teeth sunk in, straight through the perfectly juicy chicken, and she heard herself let out a long, low groan of pleasure. “How did you... this is...”
“Grandma Lex would be proud,” he said with a smile. “Although she always made it better. Back in those days you could use lard and not have anyone frown at you and silently judge.”
Before she knew it, Angie had managed to lick the chicken bone clean. “How did you do that? It was so crispy and—”
“Don’t over beat the batter. That makes it all thick and weird. By the way, I’m Dawson Lex.” He went to shake her hand, but then put a hand on her shoulder instead when he noticed the slick of what grandma Lex called ‘flavor’ on her hand. “Nice to meet you. Hope this isn’t too much excitement. The bar and all.”
He had burning green eyes. He had a growly voice that reminded her of jagged stones in a river, washed smooth but still gravely. His cheekbones stood out beautifully against the slightly tanned skin of his face, and then... “Holy shit,” Angie gulped.
“What’s up? Or did you not mean to say that out loud?” The dark blue shirt he wore was open at the first two buttons. Not in a disco-time leisure suit way, but just a comfortable, cool look. The barest hint of chest hair was close cropped against his obviously muscular torso, but was still visible.
“Yeah, that might be one of my more unappealing traits,” Angie said. “It’s nothing, I just have these dreams and I can’t ever forget them. Anyway, I... you know what? Nah, don’t worry about it.”
She decided to keep from acting outwardly bonkers by informing this man she just met that she’d been dreaming about him off and on for months. She couldn’t admit it to him, and more than that she couldn’t admit it to herself. Hell, it made her feel crazy to think about. Angie smoothed down her jeans like they were a skirt. They left a greasy streak, but she wasn’t worried about that just then. “Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing,” she said again, more to herself than to him.
Deep down, Angie thought she was going from zero to completely nuts faster than a Mercedes hits sixty. This is too much. Psychic dreams? Throwing myself on some guy in a kitchen? What in the hell is wrong with me?
She made a move to back away, but stopped after a half step. Dawson saw her confusion and tilted his head just a little to one side.
“You’re all right,” he said, wiping his business hand and clapping her softly on the arms with those huge hands. “I’m pretty out of practice with all this stuff too. No reason to be nervous.”
Somehow his soothing voice, and the slow gentle motion of his hands against her upper arms calmed the anxiety that almost always haunted Angie. In a way it was unbelievable that he’d managed to calm her nerves with just a touch but in another, it made perfect sense. She’d known this guy a lot longer than she’d known him.
“There,” he said. “Now it’s my turn to freak out,” he said with a smile. “But seriously, it’s been approximately forever since I’ve dated, so yeah nothing at all to be nervous about.”
“Thanks,” she said, eyeing the plate of chicken. “You gonna eat all that?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “But I’ll share.” He took a breast, she took a thigh, and they hit their chicken together like they were toasting drinks before taking bites. “So, Eve told me you were a police dispatcher? That must be a hell of a job.”
She chewed while considering her response. “Yeah,” she said. “Although I’m sure it’s a lot crazier in some big city. Here I mostly deal with people losing their pets or complaining about neighborhood cubs of one sort or another throwing eggs at a house or shoe-polishing some dirty words or dick pictures onto someone’s windshield.”
Dawson snorted a laugh, and for a second, she thought he’d sucked a hunk of chicken into his lungs from the color he turned. When he started wheezing, Angie slapped him on the back. “I killed you, didn’t I?”
Dawson rolled his eyes back and let his head hang limply on his neck before sticking out his tongue in a universal gesture of being dead.
“I have no idea why I’m going to do this, but I’m going to tickle you,” Angie said. I mean, of all the idiotic things to do, I’ve already started down a laundry list of them. Tickling this guy would just about top the list. If he was going to realize how crazy I am and just bolt, this would certainly do it.
“Brrr?” the fake corpse mewled, and scrunched his eyebrows. “Hunh?”
For some reason that she will never for the rest of her life be able to understand, Angie wiggled her fingertips and stuck them straight into Dawson’s ribs. He erupted in laughter. He sounded like a bunch of firecrackers exploding one after the other. As he laughed, he started actually choking on air, sucking it in so hard he couldn’t get much back out. The giant bear fell over backwards, first into a rolling office chair and then when that fell out from under him, he bellowed a roar and fell flat on his ass.
Without really meaning to, Angie fell with him. It was only when she was on the ground and in his lap that she realized his hand was locked on her wrist.
“You pulled me down!” she said with pinpoint accusation. “You made me fall down!”
“You tickled me!” Dawson laughed again. “Nothing that happens is a person’s fault if they’re being tickled. That’s just how it is!”
The two of them laughed until they were howling. Out front, Tenner just smiled. When Wally walked through the front door and ordered a beer, the two of them listened to the joy.
“There was a time when I acted like that,” Tenner said. “Although it’s been so long I can’t particularly remember what it felt like.”
Wally Hartman, one of Tenner’s oldest friends, smiled broadly. “I do,” he said. “It feels good. Real good. So good that I imagine if I felt like that again, I’d keel over dead and start foaming at the mouth. At least that’s what my mate says.”
Where before there were two laughing, suddenly there were four. Tenner and his friend, Angie and Dawson, all of them laughing for different reasons, but all of them laughing true. For those few moments, her anxiety and his reclusiveness didn’t matter. They didn’t exist.
*
As the time rolled by, and she listened to a few of his best songs, Angie was slightly surprised when she happened to look down at her watch and notice that somehow, time had ticked away with such rapid procession that she thought it was half past six, but it was quarter of seven. “Shit!” she yelled, over the slight din of noise that filled Tenner’s. “I gotta get to work. I can’t believe time flew like this.”
Dawson turned his beautiful face to her and unconsciously played a scale as he smiled. “I hope I’m going to see you again,” he said. “I don’t think I’d like it much if I didn’t.”
She caught herself staring at him, and before she could go anywhere, one of his hands grasped hers. With the other, he kept playing the scale. “Call me when you get off tomorrow morning?”
“You can’t be serious,” Angie said. No matter what she said, her heart thumped heavily in her chest as she imagined that he might, in fact, be serious.
“I work nights too,” he said, kissing the back of her hand. She felt her knees go wobbly, like they were made out of Jell-O. “And I like being up anyway. I never liked sleeping much, I always feel like I’m missing life. And now that I’ve met you? I really, really don’t want to miss any more life than I have to.”
“Oh,” she said with a smile. “That’s quite a line you have there. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you got it out of a book.” She remembered poor, helpless Jake and his horrible sunglasses and completely misguided method for getting her attention. There wasn’t a shred of that in Dawson, though. This guy was so alpha that he didn’t need to bother acting like it. You just knew he was in charge. “You didn’t, did you?”
His response was just a smile that remained on his lips even as he dropped her hand and went back to playing, a jazzier tune this time; peppier and livelier than the scale. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t even know what section you’d look at to find one of those. I gotta admit though, you made it easy for me to feel comfortable. I’m never like this.” He took a drink from his beer, and set it back down on the coaster. “Laughing with you, acting stupid, playing around, I haven’t done anything like that in—I have no idea how long. I don’t know if I ever have. You made me feel... at ease. That’s not something I can say for many people.”
She didn’t know how to react to that, so she did the only thing she could – stared at his face and smiled. Angie felt her eyes beginning to moisten. “You too,” she said. “I’m not exactly the most socially dynamic fox in town. So thanks, you made this really easy.”
“Play me a song, piano bear!” Tenner’s friend Wally, who was slowly getting stoned, shouted. “Make it a good one, I’m feeling all right and need to sing!”
Dawson shrugged and Angie laughed. Once again, he took her hand, but this time, pulled her down and kissed her cheek. “Call me when you get off?”
As she wandered toward the door, she waved again. “See you soon.”
By the time the door shut behind her, a rousing rendition of the Cheers theme song was filling Tenner’s Bar. She didn’t think it was ironic, and for once she had nothing cynical to say. For once, Angie felt like things may well just be going her way.