Back at my regular mall branch, the entire Wednesday morning became a blur. I felt angry at Ryan and furious at myself for having had any expectations. We'd shared some enjoyable moments — mainly Saturday afternoon, our pizza that evening, and Sunday until the accident. He'd been so loopy afterwards that I couldn't tell much of anything. Then all the abruptness and tension of Monday morning. Afterwards, no call or contact.
Tuesday, seeing him with Vanessa again, just confirmed my initial view: that handsome charmer was bad news and ought to be avoided. If Ryan hadn't served his court service in that same facility with me, I surely could have kept him completely out of my mind and my life. Except for his smile — difficult to forget. But I planned to try really hard.
I'd just left my shift for lunch and hadn't even ordered chicken nuggets yet, when I checked my phone for missed calls.
Hazzard called! When? Mid-morning, over two hours before. Crud! If not for the domineering Miss Z and her medieval workplace rules, I could have spoken with Ryan. Maybe he'd called to explain everything. Maybe he wanted to ask me out. Or, more probably, it was something really stupid like he lost his ball-point pen and wanted me to check between my couch cushions. I stood in front of the chicken place and played his message.
Kris… Ryan. It's uh, Wednesday morning… nearly ten. Again, I'm sorry about Sunday night. I'm, uh… well, I wanted to talk with you, about… stuff. You know, what I wanted to explain in the note. I hope you got my note yesterday. It took me fifteen minutes to find your car. Good thing there's only one other little British car in town and it's a different color. But anyhow, I don't really care for these voicemails, you know. Uh, plus, I'm out of town actually anyway. So, I hope we can …
"Can what? What happened to the rest of my message?" I shook the phone like the remainder of Ryan's spiel might tumble out. A nearby diner looked at me strangely and scooted her chair around to face the other way. Then she hurried to finish her salad. I left the area of the chicken place and found a more secluded spot near an empty kiosk.
I played his message again.
Again with the "sorry". What on earth was Ryan sorry about?
Why was he out of town? Where did he go? When would he come back?
Would I ever see him again?
Tears invariably killed my appetite. I hurried to the restroom and tried to repair my face enough to meet the banking public with a tortured smile.
Later, my hunger returned.
****
I was a zombie for my afternoon shift. Fortunately the bank traffic was light and Aynette discreetly redirected our few customers over to her window.
At one point, Aynette whispered, "I got three words for you, Kris: Zee's watching."
Miss Z was indeed in full recon mode, but thankfully didn't lean on me. I figured she was saving up for my dismissal, which surely was forthcoming. She'd probably wait until Christmas Eve.
****
Before I drove home, I sat in the mall lot and brooded for a few minutes. Wanted to call Ellen but I knew she'd try to fill my head with baloney about looking on the bright side, suggesting Ryan might have a legitimate reason — unrelated to me — for being out of town. Blah, blah, blah. But I knew the real story. Ryan ducked out of town because he couldn't face me after caving in to his lust for the artificial D.A. slut… and whatever. I couldn't even finish listing the bad news which I knew was behind his message-that-was-no-message. What was it about men that they couldn't just get to the point? And they say women can't be succinct. I could play this message for any jury of women and convict Mister Hazzard on premeditated blathering.
No, I didn't have the stomach for Ellen's Pollyanna gibberish. I needed to talk to a real expert on males. I'd call Eric!
But I'd have to wait until he got off work.
I reached home a little after five, so there were nearly two hours to kill before Eric got away from the parts store in East Nashville and drove home to Marrowbone.
I checked e-mail. Nothing from Ryan, of course. I piddled with posts and updates, but my heart wasn't in it. I even thought about planting some crops on Farm-Planet and watching them die without harvest, but couldn't rouse sufficient inertia for that either.
While I waited on Eric to get home, I got to thinking about my baby brother. Besides women, Eric's hobbies were beer and mowing, which he sometimes mixed unwisely. When he got his first zero-turn-radius mower — in a fantastic trade involving someone who assumed he was a future brother-in-law — Eric thought he'd died and gone to Heaven.
Eric was definitely the go-to guy for insight on men.
****
It was about seven o'clock when I finally reached Eric.
"Hey, Sis. This is a surprise. Don't hear from you much. You're not mad about something are ya?"
"No. Why? What did you do?"
Eric thought for a moment. "Uh, nothing… don't think. I mean, you had a few extra and it saved me stopping on the way home."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Your beer. Isn't that what you called for?"
I hadn't inventoried my beverages lately. "No, Eric, that's not why I called. If you took a bottle, that's just fine and dandy…"
"Uh, what if it was more than one?"
"Well, how many stinkin' bottles did you steal, you cheap bum?" Eric could do this to me. I didn't even call about beer, but suddenly we were fighting about it.
"Good grief, Sis. It was just a six-pack and I left out one for ya."
How generous. I wondered when his theft had occurred, but didn't even want to go there. "Look, Eric. Forget the beer. That's not why I called." I took a deep breath. "I need a man's advice about something."
"You need me to whip somebody's butt?" Eric sounded too eager.
Actually I hadn't thought about siccing Eric on the money order creep. But that would certainly get him out of my hair. In case Miss Z's intercession was not ultimately effective, that is. "Uh, no, Eric. No need to accost anybody. Not yet anyway."
"Well, you just say the word. I got some buddies who'll mess up anybody for a case of beer."
"Eric, will you focus? I don't want a contract with any of your belligerent pals. I called for some advice."
A long silence from Marrowbone. "Advice?" There was background noise including a loud television. "From me, Sis?"
I was already aware that my atypical call had zapped us both into an alternate universe. No wonder Eric was surprised; I couldn't recall any previous instance when I'd sought advice from my younger sibling. What had made me think he could help? "Well, I'm confused about this guy and I thought if I bounced it off you, maybe I could understand things better."
"Is this a joke, Sis?" Eric started chuckling in advance.
I didn't reply.
"Well, slap my keester on a hot grill! This must be a doozy."
It was a doozy and I still didn't believe I was asking Eric. "Okay. This guy who rubbed me the wrong way from the git-go…"
"You still on that pirate fella?"
"Yeah, Ryan Hazzard. Well, we ended up working the whole weekend together at the animal shelter." I explained everything and Eric listened as carefully as he could, considering Velma interrupted twice to ask questions about his dining preferences. I learned that Eric thought dirty rice was rice which had fallen on the ground because there was a hole in the bag. I also picked up a tasty new dish idea: stewed squirrel over dirty rice.
Eventually I maneuvered him back to the point of my call. "So, why wouldn't Ryan thank me for letting him sleep on my couch? And what did he mean, he was sorry?"
Eric took a long sip of something, probably one of my purloined beers. "Well, I'm stuck on that first one, too. Either he appreciates what you did, or he doesn't. And ya can't change it either way." He paused, probably to rehearse the next part through his brain quickly. "But I think I've got the other one. Guys usually throw the apology out like a ref tosses a penalty flag."
"Not another sports analogy!" Why do guys always do this?
"You know how those zebras will spot something on a play and yank that yeller flag and send it flyin'. About the time it finally hits the ground, they've made up two or three possible fouls. Then they huddle together with a couple other officials, usually including the head ref, so they can guess which foul will stick the best."
"Eric, I'm asking you why Ryan apologized and you're playing highlights from the Monday night game."
"Did you see the Titans Monday? That wasn't even them. Some other team showed up…"
"Eric!"
"Oh, yeah. I was gettin' to it. Just like the refs toss a flag and then figure out what the foul really was — that's what your pirate guy did. He just figured he'd screwed up somehow, so he threw the apology flag. Now he needs a few days to figure out what he's s'posed to be sorry about."
It was just idiotic enough to be plausible. "You mean it might have been a generic apology rather than Ryan being sorry for anything in particular?"
"Well, I think the ref version works better, but yeah. That's about it. Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Unless he's kinda like me." Eric chuckled softly.
Almost afraid to ask, I did anyway.
"Well, I just mean, if I'd spent the night at a pretty girl's house and nothing, ya know, happened… well, I guess I'd be a little sorry too."
"Eric! Why on earth did I call you for advice?"
He probably wondered the same thing. "Well, sorry."
The word caught me flat-footed.
"Ya see what I mean? Guys usually need to toss the sorry flag even when we don't think we did anything wrong. Or if we did, we're not sure what it even was." He took another sip of stolen brew. "Ya understand now?"
Strangely, I thought perhaps I did.