Pencil Him In

“Who the hell are you?” Anna asked. “The laundry room police?”

“No, I’m a guy with no clean clothes,” he snapped back.

“Look, I didn’t think anybody else would be doing their laundry at—” she looked at the clock which was right by the sign she hadn’t read “—8:00 a.m.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize I needed to run my laundry schedule past you.”

Anna and Prince Charming had a little silent showdown. She guessed he expected her to apologize and haul a bunch of wet clothes out of a machine so he could wash some of his big, tall clothes. And perhaps she might have done that, if the man—a complete stranger—hadn’t laughed at her. Really, you don’t laugh at strangers. It doesn’t make you any friends.

His eyes were boring into hers and, tired of him, she raised her eyebrows, well aware that there were few better standoff enders than a properly raised eyebrow.

“Fine,” he said, moving to the door. “But you could be a little more considerate.”

“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.

“Bitch,” he muttered back and she had heard it enough times that it barely even hurt.

IT TOOK ANNA four hours to do all of her laundry. Well, an hour of laundry and then three hours of folding and trying to figure out where to put all her clothes. She was able to avoid seeing Prince Charming again, which she was pretty happy about. Having cooled down, she realized she had acted childishly and didn’t look forward to having to see him.

Anna was comfortably wearing clean underwear, freshly laundered jeans and a U.S.C. sweatshirt she thought she had thrown out. At the grocery store—the second item on her agenda today—she toyed with the idea of actually buying food to cook. Then she remembered who she was and bought some staples and a lot of microwave dinners.

She was unloading groceries back at her place when the phone rang.

She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear while she opened the refrigerator door.

“Hello,” she said, picking up the three bags of oranges she bought and dumping them onto one of the shelves.

“Anna?”

Anna stilled, the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it.

“Hello, Camilla,” she said smoothly.

“How is your first day of unemployment?” her boss asked brightly.

“Fabulous,” Anna answered snidely. “I should have quit years ago.”

Camilla only laughed at Anna’s little dig.

“What do you want, Camilla?” Anna grabbed up the bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups she had bought and fired them into a cupboard.

“I’m just making sure that you are going to be at the barbecue on Monday.”

“I can’t,” Anna said quickly. “I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know that,” Anna snapped.

“Of course I do. Your sabbatical just started yesterday.”

Anna put a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread in the fridge.

“I already told Meg you were going to be there. Marie will be there.”

“That’s a seriously low blow, Camilla.” Anna blindly shoved a quart of milk into the cupboard.

“Well, sometimes low blows are the only ones that get things done,” Camilla chuckled. “It’s a barbecue with people who love you. It’s not the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Fine,” Anna breathed. “I’ll be there.”

“Oh, Anna, I am giving you fair warning so that you don’t freak out at the picnic…”

Just those words sent a chill to Anna’s heart, those were words with trouble all over them.

“I’ve invited someone I would like you—”

“No, you didn’t,” Anna interrupted, knowing that this someone was a single man who Camilla was dying to fix her up with. “You did not do that, Camilla.”

“Well, yes, I did. He’s very nice. A doctor.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care who he is. You have meddled enough with my life.”

“It’s not like I’ve set you up on a blind date. I just invited a nice single doctor—” Camilla put a little emphasis on the doctor part “—to my granddaughter’s birthday party. There is nothing more to it than that.”

But Anna knew better. With Camilla there was always something more. She was a Pandora’s Box of more.

AFTER PUTTING all her food back in the right spots Anna was at a loss. What did unemployed people do all day? She collapsed onto her couch. She was wide-awake so taking a nap would be fruitless. She checked her watch and thought longingly of the meeting she would be attending if she were at Arsenal.

But she wasn’t at Arsenal and thinking about it would just depress her. She dug the remote control out from under her butt and decided she would discover the joys of daytime television.

A half hour later she threw the remote back on the couch and decided there was no joy to daytime television.

People, she thought, shouldn’t sleep with amnesia victims who might be relatives. It’s gross.

Anna stood up and decided to clean her apartment. She had cleaned plenty of apartments. She had picked up after her messy sister and mother, so she was no stranger to the mop and broom.

But this. This was very much beyond her. She quickly realized that what had become of her home was something best left to a professional. The basics, sweeping and mopping she could handle. It was the advanced cleaning, the things involving mildew and harsh chemicals, that were destroying her apartment. She’d already accidentally bleached part of her carpet and the paint was bubbling up from the wall in her kitchen where she had sprayed the wrong kind of cleaner.

She quickly called a cleaning service and scheduled someone to come deal with the disaster. But in the mean time, the bathroom with its sturdy tile proved to be less destructible so she tried to tidy that up.

She was on her hands and knees in the tub working at the brown stuff around the drain when the solution to her problem—no, not the brown stuff problem. The other, bigger problem. The getting a life problem—hit her. Like a lightning bolt.

What better way to thwart Camilla and this doctor than to show up with a date of her own?

She sat straight up, the toothbrush in her hand dripped onto her jeans.

She needed a date, but not just any date. She needed a man who would expect no romantic entanglements. A man she wouldn’t have to exchange small talk with or any other uncomfortable platitudes.