The Cutting Room

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Quasi-religious bumper stickers covered the back of the beat-up mini-van in front of Daria. She was tailgating to read them all.

Jesus is coming. Look busy.

WTFWJD?

I plan, God laughs.

The last one got her thinking. Wasn’t that the truth? For the past however many years she’d been dating, searching for her Mr Right, or at least her Mr Okay, I Can Probably Fix You — and nothing. Internet dating, real-life dating, social clubs, nightclubs, bars, coffee shops, friend fix-ups, work hook-ups. Weekend after weekend, happy hour after happy hour, blind date after blind date, she’d put herself out there only to be continuously disappointed. Ever since college it was as if a drought had hit the dating pool. With each passing year the water level continued to fall. The good fish had long been caught and tagged. The only thing she was catching lately were the throwbacks — the bottom feeders and slimy eels nobody wanted to begin with. The computer tech with the wandering eye who still lived with his mother. The former ballplayer with not one but two ‘crazy’ baby mamas. The swim coach who consistently forgot his wallet when they went out to dinner. She could only hope that down there, somewhere in the blackness, were left one or two good catches. Maybe even a throwback who didn’t measure up for someone else’s dinner plate, but would work out fine on hers. That romantic sort of nonsensical thinking was what kept her casting her rod. But at almost thirty it’d gotten to the point that the only relationship Daria wanted to be in was the one she had with work. If she had to choose between staying late on a Friday and happy hour, she always picked the office. Because with that relationship she knew that, if she put the time in, it would eventually pay off.

Daria didn’t think she was being difficult in her demands for a soul mate. In fact, she always thought she knew exactly what she wanted in a guy and what would make her happy — down to what he would do for a living, what he’d look like, and what he’d sound like. Mr Right was made easier to envision when she checked off the boxes on her eHarmony application. As she got older, more self-assured, and less patient, she’d narrowed her tastes down further, not wanting to waste precious time on someone who was obviously — even without all the bullshit that people put on their online descriptions — not her type. She wasn’t being picky; she was being honest. She deserved someone who could make her happy. And she, of all people, knew what made her happy and what didn’t.

It turned out maybe being alone all this time was her own stupid fault. That perhaps she’d gotten it wrong. That her list was flawed because she’d checked off all the wrong boxes. Blond? Yes. European? Yes. Financier? Yes. Doctor? Yes. Cop? Never. Snorer? No way! Divorced? Next, please. Manny Alvarez would never have made it on her list — even his zip code didn’t fit. He was too tall, too bald, too hairy, too loud, too funny, too old, too ethnic. Not only did he work in law enforcement — a general no-no with limited exceptions — he was a homicide detective, a notoriously dark and twisted breed, complete with a warped sense of humor and a distorted perception of reality. He’d been married several times before, which meant he was a throwback who other women found difficult to deal with, and he was always late. If it hadn’t been for a bottle of Patron and a great Irish rock band, this relationship she found herself in would never have come to be.

But weeks later, that was what they were still in — a relationship. Neither had declared it. Neither had denied it. It just was. They no longer bothered to preface the first few minutes of their conversations with work-speak. They had dinner together most nights — pizza, burgers, Thai. Steak and lobster. She knew about his crazy Cuban family; he knew about her whacked, abusive mother, overprotective brothers and sick dad. She called him and he, on occasion, texted back. She was surprised that they never ran out of things to say. And the sex … well, that was mind-blowing. Daria had been with men before who were younger, better-looking. Sculpted, confident, well-endowed guys who had to fight off the women. Forget that dating someone with those kind of looks could make even the most self-assured woman insecure and jealous — the raw truth was, none of them compared with her Cuban teddy bear in the sack. How crazy was that?

Daria knew she was falling for him, which bothered her. A lot. One of the things she should be able to control in this world was having romantic feelings for someone who, on paper at least, she should be completely incompatible with. Yet here she was, heading home after a crazy day at the office, disappointed he hadn’t called before she left, anxious to know the reason why, wondering like a teenager when she was going to see him again. It was completely bizarre. Her workaholic self didn’t want to work so late at night anymore, or on the weekends. She was betraying that relationship. Weaning herself off it to be with him.

So here she was, sitting in traffic behind a mini-van owned by a religious nut with a sense of humor playing junior psychiatrist and trying to analyze herself.

Maybe it was the taboo of dating Manny that excited her — dating against type, a clandestine work relationship that no one could know about. Oooh … that was the plot of many a bad bodice-ripper she’d read over the years. Maybe she was craving some drama herself, a pre-middle age crisis. A say-goodbye-to-my-free-loving-twenties-’cause-oh-shit-now-I’m-thirty-and-everything-matters-and-my-mother-keeps-reminding-me-my-clock-is-ticking crisis. So far she’d successfully managed to keep their affair under wraps. She’d sworn Manny to secrecy, and even Lizette — who was first to know everything in the office — hadn’t quizzed her about why she was spending so much time with her lead. Maybe it was clandestine because no one would ever suspect her and Manny as a couple. Of course one day, if it kept up, people would eventually find out. That was equally troubling. What then? Would the drama be gone? She liked to think she didn’t give a shit about what people thought, but what would people think? Would their incompatibility be as glaringly obvious to others as their height difference? And why did that possibly bother her? Would she be proud to be with him? Or was her anxiety an omen?

She pulled a hand through her hair and blew out a measured breath. And of course there was Talbot Lunders to consider. While relationships between prosecutors and cops weren’t forbidden by office policy or even necessarily by ethical constraints — theirs would certainly raise eyebrows. It would appear improper. The irony wasn’t lost on her that she herself had questioned the relationship between C.J. Townsend and Dominick Falconetti, C.J.’s lead detective on the Cupid case. It was even more ironic that it had been that very same night that she’d ended up in bed with Manny.

She looked at the cute guy in the convertible next to her, smoking a cigarette and chatting on his cell. He smiled at her. She looked away.

On the seat beside her, her purse buzzed to life. Al Pacino, a.k.a. Tony Montana, started yelling Scarface lines at her in a thick Cuban accent.

‘Where you at?’ he asked when she picked up. ‘I’m downstairs looking for your car, and you’re nowhere to be found. What do ya think, you work for the government, you can just go home at, what? Seven at night? Jesus, is it really seven?’

She smiled. ‘Stalker. I’m on I95 heading home. When you didn’t pick up I figured you were working or something.’ Or something. She wasn’t about to get into all the ‘or somethings’ her mind had wondered he was doing. The prickle of anxiety she’d felt thinking about them had made her mad at herself. The BS dating rules and mind games were now in full force. The switch had been flipped. The control freak in her was to the fore. Think three steps ahead. Don’t you dare let him think you’re jealous. Or that you care. This is a stupid, dumb fling, that’s all this is, right? It makes no sense. You’re acting out, Daria, that’s all.

‘I was. Damn dead bodies,’ Manny said. ‘They have no respect for anyone’s schedule. I got called out at four this morning. Gangbang in Liberty City. It’s been a day, I’ll tell ya,’ he finished with a yawn.

‘You called before?’ he asked. ‘I never got it. I was locked in a warehouse. A/C wasn’t working, neither. Damn, they stunk.’

‘It was a triple. No matter. Each of ’em had a record the length of my arm. Nobody but their mommas will be missing none of ’em tonight. Maybe not even their mommas. So you called?’

‘Only to tell you Lunders is on for report tomorrow afternoon. No big deal,’ she repeated. Remain aloof. Detached. Don’t let him in.

‘No, it’s nothing but a status conference to see if he’s bluffing about wanting a trial in the fall.’

‘I got a fresh shirt in the trunk. And some Vicks, if you need it,’ he said with a laugh. Vicks VapoRub was an old cop trick. Rub a little under your nose and you couldn’t smell decomposing flesh. Homicide detectives and MEs used it all the time at smelly crime scenes and autopsies.

‘I can take you for steak and lobster, if you want. That’s always fun. The cleaning lady came today, so my house is respectable. And Rufus misses you. He says he’s sorry about that flashy red pair of Stuart Weitzman’s. They were delicious. I’ll have to take you shoe shopping and make it up to you.’

‘I want to see you, Counselor,’ he said quietly. ‘I do. I need to. Turn the car around.’

She shook her head at that last thought. You miss him today. A lot. You miss him every day. There’s no reason why. There’s no planning around it. There’s no getting out of it, Daria. It is what it is.

Although she was already at Hollywood Boulevard, a few miles from her own exit, she got off and turned around.

29