Beauty And The Brain

Willis gritted his teeth. “You don’t use a compass for measuring triangles,” he told her. “They’re for drawing accurate circles.”

Rosemary felt her face flame, though whether in embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t have said. “So what?” she bit out defensively.

He shook his head in annoyance. “So that...that...that bully you call a sweet little kitty-cat has been after Isosceles ever since I brought him inside the house.”

“Well, duh,” Rosemary said. “Of course she has. This is Ska’s turf. She’s not going to just sit back and let some interloper overrun the place.” Unlike her gutless mistress, she thought further to herself.

“Well, just tell her to back off and give Isosceles a chance, all right?”

Rosemary gazed down at Ska, who looked back at her with a contented little smile. “Good girl,” she told the cat. “Don’t let that invading, know-it-all tomcat take over the ground you worked so hard to gain. Now go out there and make me proud.”

With a quick kiss to the cat’s muzzle, she settled her back on the floor and returned her attention to Willis. “There. That ought to take care of it,” she said as Ska trotted happily toward the dining room, tail held high.

Willis glowered at her, then held Isosceles aloft, meeting the white cat’s blue-eyed gaze levelly. “You do whatever you have to do to make her come around and treat you like the good guy you are,” he coached the animal emphatically. “You’re a guest here, not to mention smarter than the average cat. Don’t let her treat you like dirt.” He ruffled the cat’s ears affectionately before settling him, too, on the floor, and immediately, Isosceles skittered off in the same direction as Ska.

A moment of silence descended where Rosemary and Willis eyed each other warily, both of them clearly aware that there had been a lot more to those little feline pep talks than either had let on. Then a crash, followed by the angry whining and hissing of two cats, caused them both to race toward the kitchen.

Ska had Isosceles treed on top of the refrigerator, and both animals were batting wildly at each other with claws unsheathed despite the distance that separated them.

“He just better stay away from her kibble,” Rosemary muttered. “You mess with Ska’s kibble, you pay. Big-time.”

“Believe me,” Willis countered, “he wants nothing to do with her plebeian kibble. He’s on the Science Diet.”

She rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”

Knowing Ska would be fine on her own, Rosemary pushed herself off the kitchen doorjamb and made her way toward the stairs. More than anything, she wanted to slip out of her work uniform and into something comfortable. Then she reminded herself that as long as Willis Random was living under her roof, she wasn’t likely to find comfort in much of anything.

“Rosemary,” he called out just as her foot touched the bottom step.

She turned around to find him standing framed by the arch separating dining room from living room. Boy, he had great legs, she thought, letting her gaze travel from his boot-clad ankles to the muscular thighs extending from the brief khaki shorts.

“Hmmm...?” she asked distractedly.

“She won’t...hurt him. Will she?”

Rosemary tried to smile with some reassurance, but she only felt oddly melancholy. “Ska wouldn’t hurt anybody,” she promised. “She might mess with his head a little—just to keep things level—but she won’t hurt him.”

Willis nodded, but still didn’t seem quite convinced.

“How about Isosceles?” she asked.

He seemed stumped by the question. “What about him?”

“He won’t hurt Ska, will he?”

The expression Willis gave her was incredulous. “Are you serious? Do you honestly think he has it in him to do harm to her?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I do. He’s a lot bigger than she is. And you said yourself that he’s smarter than the average cat.”

“He may be smart, but he’s not mean,” Willis assured her. “He won’t hurt Ska. Don’t give it another thought.”

She nodded, but still felt unsettled for some reason. “Will you be around for dinner?” she asked.

His expression indicated he was genuinely surprised by her question—maybe as surprised as she was to hear herself making the offer. “I...I guess so,” he replied. “I mean, if you want me to be.”

“Oh, no,” she countered quickly, wanting to dissuade him of that idea as quickly as possible. Even if it was true, she realized morosely. “It’s not that. Just... if you’re going to be here... I mean...”

Well, just what did she mean? she asked herself. She inhaled a deep breath and tried again. “I don’t know what you and my mom worked out with meals and all, but... What I mean is... I don’t usually go to a lot of trouble, but if you want to join me for dinner while you’re staying here, I...I guess I won’t mind.”

“Thanks,” he said, his expression revealing nothing of what he might actually be thinking. “I honestly hadn’t thought too much about where I’d be eating. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to take advantage of your invitation, but I appreciate it your extending it”

“It wasn’t an invitation,” she felt it necessary to clarify, feeling both stung that he hadn’t leaped on the opportunity and puzzled as to why she should care. “It just doesn’t make sense for you to drive all the way into town to eat, when there’s a perfectly good kitchen right here.”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s not an invitation. I still appreciate the offer.”

“It wasn’t an offer, either.”

He expelled an exasperated sound. “Well, whatever it was, thank you, all right?”

She nibbled her lip a little anxiously. “You’re welcome. Just let me know when you’ll be home.”

His lips curled into something of a smile, however stiff. “I think I can probably make it tonight.”

She nodded, her stomach clutching nervously for some reason. “Okay. I usually eat about six. If you’re here, fine. If you’re not here, that’s fine, too.”

“Fine.”

Silence hovered between them until it began to grow awkward. Then another loud thump from the kitchen, followed by an even louder feline wail, sliced through the room. Willis bolted toward it, while Rosemary stood at the foot of the stairs in bemusement, watching him go. She didn’t understand why she’d asked Willis to join her for dinner while he was staying with her. But there was one thing she did understand—too well.

It was going to be a long few weeks.

Three

At 6:30 that evening, a quickly cooling casserole was sitting on the stove, Rosemary was seated at the head of her recently dusted dining-room table, Ska was supping noisily from her bowl in the kitchen, Isosceles was still atop the refrigerator—and Willis was nowhere to be found. He’d left shortly after Rosemary had arrived home, without even telling her goodbye, and she had no idea where he was now. Obviously, someplace infinitely more important than where she was herself, she thought. But then, was that really such a surprise?

She stood and snuffed out the candles she felt foolish now for ever having retrieved from the china cabinet, and replaced them where they always sat, unused. She cleared the table of the colorful pottery dinner plates and crackled cranberry glassware she normally saved for special occasions, returning them, too, to their generally neglected kitchen cupboard. Then she swept the recently ironed tablecloth from the dining-room table and stuffed it back into the drawer where it had lain unused since the last time Rosemary had invited someone over for dinner—Kirby and Angie, four months earlier.

She sighed as she set the kitchen table—for one—with her usual plain white dishes and discount-store glassware on a plastic place mat. She wondered who she thought she’d been kidding, thinking dinner with Willis would be a special occasion. He hadn’t even considered it a big enough deal to call her and tell her he wouldn’t be there when he’d changed his mind.

And she’d actually prepared something. Something that hadn’t come out of a cardboard box or a plastic bag. Something with ingredients, for God’s sake Ingredients she’d had to drive to the grocery store to buy, because who in her right mind actually kept things like garlic and onions and cream of mushroom soup on hand?

Well, come to think of it, probably a lot of people, she realized. People who cooked their food instead of microwaving it, people who cared about the flavor of what they ate, people who spent more than four to six minutes boiling something for dinner. People who didn’t live alone.

She plopped a generous helping of the casserole messily onto her plate, slapped some greens into her salad bowl and splashed some iced tea into her glass. Except for Ska’s crunching, the house was unnervingly quiet, so Rosemary switched on the radio before she sat down. Mellow jazz music filled the kitchen, and a soft breeze rattled the loosely hooked screen door. But it was still too quiet. Funny, she’d never noticed that about her house before.

She’d stashed the leftovers, washed her dishes and placed bowls of food and water on top of the refrigerator for Isosceles—leaving the Little Friskies box up there with the cat, because doubtless he liked to read the nutrition information while he was eating—when she heard the rumble of Willis’s big truck thing outside. Tamping down the irritation that flared, she forced herself to remain cool and collected.

Indifferent. That’s what she wanted him to think she was. That’s what she wished she could actually feel. Totally and completely unaffected by his return to her life. Hey, what did she care whether or not he ate his dinner with her? What difference did it make if he had found something better to do than spend time with her? What did it matter if he thought so little of her that he hadn’t even called her to let her know he wouldn’t be there?