The Mistakes We Make

Chapter 1

It was my secret guilty pleasure, I said to the man in front of me.

That was how we met, at McDonald's. I was always embarrassed to be seen going in there, but that time I ended up in line behind a broad-shouldered man who smelled of soap and something spicy. It didn’t seem to fit him—and as I later discovered it didn’t, but he had just investigated a robbery in a Punjabi restaurant and felt he needed something utterly plain to settle his stomach. However, the contradiction intrigued me.

Now, usually when I speak to people in line they just ignore me, but he turned around and answered back.

“Your secret guilty pleasure?” he said in a low and quiet voice. “So what’s your not-so-secret guilty pleasure?”

Taken in as I was by his powerful baritone voice, I responded before thinking: “Why don’t we go have a coffee and maybe you’ll find out.”

He countered, “Why don’t we just grab a real meal somewhere? I mean, we’re adults, why stay here when we can eat where the grown-ups eat?”

I felt pulled to him, even at that early juncture, so I decided to take him up on his offer. If I had known then what grief this chance meeting would bring, I would have stopped it. But there was nothing about that moment that didn’t seem completely right.

So we walked across the street to a small Italian restaurant, one of those family deals that neither of us had been to before. Along the way he introduced himself as Jim, originally from New Jersey.

“Why did you come to Las Vegas?” I asked.

“Why does anyone ever come here? To start something new. Get away from the old. But you probably know about that. What brings you here?”

I told him it wasn’t the Vegas that most people thought about, with the neon and glamour, but the real Vegas, with the arid beauty and quiet suburbs that appealed to me. He turned his head and thought for a moment, and I think he understood the things I see in the land. In any case, while most wouldn’t consider him traditionally handsome, I didn’t mind taking that opportunity to steal a few glances as we walked.

When we reached the restaurant, we ordered and then talked about the weather and local politics, which disappointed me, because our first words were so charged. But I got another glimpse of his fire as soon as the food arrived.

“I can’t believe they serve this crap!” Jim said after his first bite.

I was a little taken aback, but his words didn’t seem all that angry, and they weren’t directed at me, so I waited for his explanation.

“Back in Jersey, they’d never dream of serving cannelloni like this. The filling would be entirely homemade. This is from frozen. No competition—it makes them lazy out here.”

I reached across with my fork and took a piece. Tasting it, I said, “Tastes fine to me, but then again, I think there are seventeen different ways to serve mac and cheese.”

“Oh, where’d you go to school?” he asked.

I was shocked by how very perceptive he was, especially since he didn’t even appear to be paying all that much attention.

“Davis,” I replied. “English lit. You?”

“Seton Hall, history.”

I was impressed. I had once considered becoming a history major, but I thought my job prospects would be pretty dismal afterwards. But from the light wool of his suit and the excellent quality of his shoes, he seemed to be doing all right.

“Well, try my lasagna,” I said.

“No, forget it,” he admonished.

“No seriously,” I fought back, “just try it. You never know, you might like it.”

He shook his head at my not-so-subtle message. Then he cocked his head to the side and suddenly slipped my plate out from under my descending fork.

“Thanks,” he said as he began eating my meal. “Much better than mine.”

All I could do was laugh.

Unfortunately, our meal ended too soon. We had a small disagreement over payment, with my preference being to go Dutch, but I soon learned that trying to win an argument with Jim was like trying to talk a cop out of giving you a ticket.

When I went to pull out my wallet, he put a hand on my arm to stop me. I stalled a moment, enjoying the thrill of his touch on my bare skin, before saying, “We just met. You shouldn’t have to pay for someone you don’t even know.”

“Well, I’d like to think I know you, at least a bit,” he said, looking at me, then looking away. I acquiesced.

So we walked back to our cars and stood there a moment in awkward silence as the traffic sped by.

“Well, I had a nice time—” he said, before I interrupted.

“Don’t think me too forward, but I’d like it if you came over later tonight to catch a movie or something.”

“What do you mean? Go out or stay in?”

“Um, I hadn’t really decided. Probably out, if there’s anything good playing,” I said, thinking it was obvious I didn’t do this often.

“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea,” he said. I must have looked crestfallen, because he quickly finished with, “Because I work nights. This was my lunch break.” He quickly glanced at his watch. “I’ve already been away too long.”

“Well, with my job I keep my own hours. You could be off at three a.m. and I wouldn’t mind.”

“It might come to that. Besides, I can’t think of anyplace around here that shows movies that late.”

I was growing frustrated, because it seemed he was either indecisive or trying to find a way to blow me off. Or maybe he was just nervous.

“Oh, you’re just being difficult. Give me your number and I’ll call you after midnight. You’ll have a better idea then, right?”

“Yeah. I’m out of cards again, so I’ll write it on the receipt. It’s my cell, so I’ll be on it until about six. Uh, if you don’t feel like calling me tonight, you can reach me . . .”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said as I grabbed the paper out of his hands and walked away, shaking my head, but smiling. I hesitated for a moment, then turned to look back. Jim was still standing there, watching me go.

I knew the rule was I wasn’t supposed to call the same night. I know I was supposed to play it cool, but I’ve never been that sort of person. I called him that night, at a quarter past one.

“Hi, Jim?” I asked.

“Yeah. Who . . . is this Elizabeth? I didn’t think you’d call.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about Vegas girls,” I deadpanned. “No, I just had a great time today and was wondering if you were up for anything after work.”

He paused for a moment too long and I was certain he was going to make some excuse or flat-out say no, when he said, “Yeah, sure. What do you want to do, catch breakfast or something?”

“I have a better idea. You come to my place, bring the movie and the beer and I’ll make you a real supper.”

“A movie? But it’ll be morning.”

“No, it will be your night. Oh, and make it something historical.”

So that morning, at three a.m., Jim knocked on my apartment door. As I opened it, he held out a video and a six-pack in offering. I gestured him in.

Inside, I watched him as he quickly analyzed my home. He looked as though he wanted to make some comment, though I’m not sure on what.

Interrupting his scrutiny, I said, “Come on back to the kitchen, I’ve made chili.”

“Oh no,” he said, stopping. “I hate kidney beans.”

“No, you won’t find a single one. It’s my mother’s recipe. Like my father’s only none of those awful kidney beans.”

He laughed. “You’re not serious. You hate kidney beans, too? Okay, I’ll give it a try—never know, I might like it.”

He ate largely in silence, allowing me a chance to talk to my heart’s content about all the strange people who lived in my building. The woman with the broken hip and the herd of cats. The old German man who recounts fondly his days in the Hitler Youth. The annoying alcoholic next door . . .

He stiffened at that comment. I quickly moved on to say that my favourite was the man with schizophrenia two doors down. I mentioned that this made me wonder if there was something wrong with me.

“No,” he said. “My best friend—some days I wonder if he’s brilliant, or just crazy.”

I laughed at this and the awkwardness between us passed quickly. I asked what he rented and he said, “Amistad. It was historical . . . and it was pretty much all that was left at the movie store that late.”

“Well, you grab a couple cans out of the fridge and I’ll pop the movie in,” I said.

So we sat on the couch, but neither of us seemed particularly interested in starting up the movie. Instead, I started my beer and asked him about Jersey. At first, it was just the standard when you were a kid stuff, but after the third can for each of us, he started talking about the riots.

“I was in high school when they happened,” he said, “but I’d never seen anything like it. So much anger and violence, and at the time I couldn’t figure out why. Really, I still don’t have a good reason for you, because considering how many people died and how much of that neighbourhood was destroyed, I don’t know what the hell anyone was thinking. I guess they just weren’t, mob mentality all that. But it really did change me. I wanted to see justice done. I was a lot more idealistic in those days.”

“Weren’t we all?” I said.

“Yeah. You know, I was married once.”

“Oh no, this sounds like a scotch story.”

“It certainly is,” he said, “and you don’t even know the half of it.”

I poured him one and he continued.

“I have a daughter, Ellie. Well, she is my daughter, but she isn’t. I mean, I’m her father, but my wife wasn’t the most faithful person, if you get my meaning.”

“Yeah, she’s your daughter by the milkman. Gotcha.”

“But for all the trouble, you’d think I was the bad guy. She barely knows me from the guy next door and she’s headed down a bad path.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “If it helps, I was into some pretty troublesome stuff when I was younger, but I used a lot of what I learned to get through college. I don’t see it as a complete waste.”

“Yeah, maybe that’ll happen.”

At that point, Jim stopped talking and just stared into his glass. I hadn’t meant to dredge up the past, but I just couldn’t help myself. Finally, he closed his eyes and leaned back into the couch.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, just a little buzzed,” he said.

I didn’t believe him. I mean, at that point I was worried I’d started to slur my words, but by the ease with which he swallowed neat scotch, I thought he could handle a drink or two. But instead of making him a coffee like I should have, I did something rash. I mean, there was just something about him that I saw as he laid back with his eyes closed. The sort of thing I wouldn’t mind waking up next to.

I leaned over against him and rested my head on his chest, tucking my arms against his side. His warmth seeped into me as I listened to his heart’s steady rhythm and enjoyed the faint scent of his cologne. Still, I didn’t dare make more contact with his body, because I knew I was taking too many liberties as it was. I couldn’t gauge his reaction; I don’t know what expression he got on his face, or even if he opened his eyes, because I never looked up. I just curled up into a ball and eventually fell asleep.

When I awoke, he was gone. There was a note on the coffee table:

I just got paged, have to run into work. Call me later.

—Jim

Brief, to the point, not overtly emotional. Very Jim, as I would learn. Only problem was, I could have used some emotion from him at that point. I mean, I thought we had some sort of connection the previous night. I still found it hard to read him.

It was late, and I had to get to work. Life as a freelance journalist was precarious at best. That fascist little editor at the daily I was hoping to join had finally given me an assignment—cover a funeral of a local academic poet—and I wanted to expand my notes and look up some more details while the event was fresh in my mind. I was so engrossed that I almost didn’t hear the phone ringing.

“What?” I tersely said.

“Whoa, don’t bite my head off. I guess you got up on the wrong side of the . . . couch.”

It was Jim, but I wasn’t in as playful a mood as he was.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Well . . . you just looked so peaceful lying there, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

That comment robbed me of all the anger I’d built up over the day.

“Thanks,” was all I said.

“Anyway, I’ll be really busy tonight and tomorrow, have to get my beauty sleep you know . . .”

I tried not to snort, but it just heightened the effect.

“Oh, just because you don’t have to work at it doesn’t mean you can’t have some pity on those of us who do. Anyway, do you want to actually go see a movie Thursday night?”

I was certain there was a compliment buried in there somewhere, so my answer was of course a quick yes.

Two days I worked long hours to finish my article and the time sped by until it was Thursday. I allowed myself to lounge about in bed until rather late, thoughts filled with this strange and brusque man I met only a few days earlier. His roughness aroused me and his intelligence and education—as much as he tried to hide them—intrigued me.

I should have spent the day shopping for a new outfit. My closet was filled with clothes suitable for business meetings or chasing down leads, but not for a date. The dresser was even less help, until I found a simple black skirt rolled up in a corner. I brushed off the dust, matched it with a blouse, and hurried to the kitchen.

Before he arrived, I had planned to search through the newspapers for movies and showtimes. This idea was abandoned when I realized I hadn’t swept aside the assorted empty liquor bottles from my counter for well over two weeks. I had a feeling Jim would be sensitive to that sort of detail. Just as I finished, the doorbell rang.

Jim stood leaning against the doorframe, smiling. “Keeping out of trouble today?”

I smiled back. “Kind of busy—how about you?”

“Finished off something from a few months back. Came out the way I thought it would, too.”

He ushered me out to his car, holding open the door for me. His car interior was cleaner than that of the last man I dated, almost as if someone had gone over it with a fine-toothed comb.

“So, Liz, what do you want to see?”

“I was thinking we could pop by the Regent and see what’s playing. It’s not too far away and there’s always something interesting on.”

Jim drove with confidence and a little fast, but with great skill. I watched out the window as we slipped away from the tightly bunched condos of my neighbourhood. Their stucco and fenced-in stone patios were replaced with the barren-bordered flatness of a main drag. I spent the time between admiring the city as we sped through it. I wished I had something to say to break the silence, but neither of us seemed willing to take that step.

Finally we pulled into the lot of the Regent and hurried through the oppressive heat to the doors. He guided me through first with a hand on the small of my back. I turned to smile at him, but noticed that his face had turned dour as he looked at the list of movies.

“Well, at least we came at the right time,” he said.

Even I had to admit the choices that week were somewhat limited. I listed them off.

“It looks like we have three choices. The first one is another of those 'good cop struggling against corruption and loses everyth...'”

He cut in: “No way. I exercise my veto on that one.”

“And I refuse to waste time on a movie about New York City dog walkers. Anything that describes itself as 'uproariously funny', generally isn't.”

“That only leaves something called 'Uno Ben Armato',” he said.

“We may as well broaden our minds and see the Italian one,” I said, with a shrug. “Besides, it's probably dubbed.”

We soon sat at the back of the nearly-empty theatre and waited for the show to begin.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” he said as he shifted in his seat.

“No, but if I change my mind, I’ll steal some of your popcorn.”

I didn’t know what he was really feeling, but he was certainly acting suspicious. Or at least like a schoolboy on a first date, but both of us were far too old for that sort of behaviour. I asked him about it.

“Is anything wrong?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

His eyes widened slightly and I think his cheeks might have reddened, but he shook his head in a vigorous ‘no’. To add to this, he said, “Of course not.”

“Thou doth protest too much,” I countered.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “tell me you’re not one of those Shakespeare nuts. Do you know just how much that man bent the truth to suit his needs?”

“Certainly, from a historian’s viewpoint that’s valid, but from a literary stance, it’s perfectly acceptable,” I defended, probably a little too aggressively. Then I did something I rarely do: backed off the slightest amount. Gave the other person breathing room.

“Of course,” I said, “in terms of literary theory, most of his writings are no longer useful to study, except from a historical angle. We’ve moved beyond Elizabethan-era techniques.”

“One would certainly hope,” he teased, with a downright Shakespearian double meaning.

Just then, the lights dimmed and the movie began with a minimal of previews, as is common in the less commercial venues.

Jim whispered in my ear, “Oh come on, subtitled promos? Why did we have to come see an art-house flick, anyway? There are plenty of normal movies playing in this town. Maybe something with explosions?”

I elbowed him in the ribs and his light-hearted complaining quickly changed to chuckling.

In any case, my mind probably wasn’t as focused on the movie as it should have been. Throughout the movie, I kept stealing glances at him, hopefully subtly. But Jim’s a perceptive man, so he most likely knew.

Well, I could steal as many glances as I liked; I mean, there was nothing acknowledged between us then. Besides, there’s only so much that can go wrong in the space of a two-hour movie. Even a very bad one, as this was turning out to be.

By the time I realized it was a dud, the young Italian protagonist was trying to win back the affections of his wife—and his mistress. Apparently, this was best done by chasing his wife around his apartment in the buff. Something must have been lost in the translation, but at least the visuals weren’t half-bad. And there’s certainly something to be said for love scenes that aren’t encumbered by intelligible dialogue.

As the scene continued on, I peeked across at Jim, who was by now engrossed in the movie. I didn’t blame him, it was certainly a heated scene. But he actually appeared interested, which differed from his normal façade of bland indifference. The one beneath which something was hidden, though I wasn’t certain what.

After a time, the scene was wearing on my defenses and I was beginning to feel thankful that I possessed a female anatomy, as I could keep my growing embarrassment hidden. Anyhow, it had become overly hot in the theatre for me and I reached to steal some of Jim’s drink. Only, I was so involved in the movie, I had not seen that his hand was already on it.

My fingers touched the rough backs of his—strange, it seemed, for someone who didn’t strike me as a manual labourer—but they were warm and he didn’t flinch or pull away when I touched them. Instead, he looked at me and saw my embarrassment at the mistake. Giving a small smile, opened his hand to let his fingers slip between mine and away, leaving my hand alone on the cold drink. It certainly was getting hot in there.

On the ride home, we joked about how horrendous the movie was.

“Why was the wife so willing to forgive the mistress?” he said. “In her place, I would have been furious.”

I looked at him and saw there wasn’t much humour in his face at that moment. I tried to change the subject.

“Maybe the two of them were having a fling on the side as revenge,” I said.

“Oh yeah, like that would bother a man.”

“I don’t think they would be doing it for the man. Because of the man. In spite of the man, sure, but who says a woman needs a man to have fun?”

At that moment, he scrunched up his face, like he had smelled something foul. I thought it was rather cute and I began to giggle. Then he started chuckling, from somewhere deep in his belly, and soon the car was filled with laughter.

It was just the perfect moment. I stretched out my arm and made contact. My fingertips caressed the back of his head, meandering through his hair, and occasionally wandering out to his ears.

He interrupted me: “Liz, you have to stop.”

I was shocked, and froze in mid-movement. “What? Why?”

“I’m going to crash the car if you keep that up. Although I’m prepared to risk it . . .”

“Okay, okay,” I cut in.

Instead of pulling back, however, I let my arm rest across his shoulders. He didn’t seem to mind.

All too soon we were back at my apartment building. I told him he didn’t need to walk me all the way up; he nodded in mock solemnity, and escorted me anyway. At the top of the stairs, he held the door open for me. I didn’t expect this sort of behaviour from Jim, but I was certainly flattered by it.

Finally, by the door, I told him I had a wonderful time and that I wished I didn’t have a meeting first thing in the morning.

“Yeah,” he replied, “me too. I really enjoyed our talk the other night. I got a lot off my chest that had been sitting there for a long time.”

I reached up and fingered his lapels, feeling the texture of the fine wool, before looking up hopefully.

Without a word, he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to mine. I reached my hands into his jacket and rested them on the curve in his back, pulling him to me.

He groaned into my mouth, which was the opportunity I needed to snake my tongue out to caress his lips. Soon, things were progressing from warm to hot, very quickly.

A loud thump resounded though the hall as I pushed him against the door. Breathing heavily, he cupped a hand under my bottom and held me to him. All sense of decorum was thrown aside, until I happened to look over his shoulder.

My ancient, white-haired neighbour was leaning out her door and staring at us in our compromised position.

I managed to rasp a warning to Jim, before the woman began her tirade.

“You know, in my day, we had a few words for people like you,” she screeched in her dry voice. “Get a room!”

She slammed her door shut leaving Jim and I smiling at each other in embarrassment.

“Someone should handcuff that woman to her rocking chair,” Jim said. “I’d volunteer, but I kind of need mine.”

“Your what?” I asked.

“Handcuffs.”

I was shocked, though not in an entirely unpleasant way.

Mind racing through the possibilities, I asked, “Not that I’m complaining, but why do you own handcuffs?”

He shook his head at me.

“You’re really something, you know that?” he said. Then, the fog seemed to lift from his eyes, which quickly darted from side to side. “Oh yeah, you have to work in the morning.”

“Um, yeah, work. How about after your shift tomorrow?” I asked.

“Sounds good,” he said, grinning.

Before we could get into any more trouble, I ducked inside my apartment. I knew that within hours, everyone in my building would have heard about the incident. I sighed. It was still worth it.

In the next chapter: Plot. Real plot. With crimes and blood and stuff.