The Theory of Attraction Read online

  Although I wondered if she’d be quite so willing with the information if she knew what I had in mind for her delicate, maladjusted baby. I had a very active imagination and was working on a dry spell of over two years. I’d thought up things I didn’t even know the names for.

  She’d called me that morning, and I was able to report that Ivan had eaten at least one meal that I knew of (lasagna) and even vegetables (green salad, hold the tomatoes), within the previous twenty-four hours.

  The first thing I did when I walked into the lab was disclose that conversation to Ivan. I might be willing to pass along information about the man’s eating habits, but no way would I go behind his back to do it.

  Ivan, however, never seemed bothered by his mother’s behavior. I would have been incensed if my mother called my friends to check up on me. Ivan seemed to take it as a normal part of her parenting style. “She just remembers the time I had to be hospitalized for dehydration and malnourishment during the run-up to a state science fair. Ever since then she gets worried if she thinks I’m working too hard.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Twenty-one years.”

  “Wait…you were eight? And she’s still checking up on you because of this?”

  He’d nodded and gone back to staring into his computer monitor like it held the secret to the universe.

  It was pretty evident the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. However, that knowledge was now completely supplanted by the vision of Ivan running down the street all sweaty and shirtless. These things overrode my concerns about his genetic stability and turned me into a veritable nurturing machine.

  So I brought him lunch (which he had indeed skipped that day) and stayed while he ate. He kept working as he munched, and I didn’t even know if he tasted the food. I didn’t even know if he knew I was alive.

  Well, obviously he knew I was alive, in a literal sense. He could see that I was a human being on the planet, he knew all about my physiology, he even knew that I lived in the townhouse next to his. In fact he frequently pointed that out, because he felt my footsteps when I was upstairs were unaccountably loud given my relatively small size for a fully grown human.

  He actually stated it that way, “fully grown human.” I sometimes wondered if he thought of himself as something other than human. Lord knows I occasionally thought he might well be some sort of alien.

  Some sort of weirdly hot, incredibly brilliant alien.

  Hopefully not a gay alien, though. Or an alien who was too jaded by porn to be interested in real girls. He had such nice hands. And something about the way he typed, so fast and automatic, struck me as deeply sexy. Or maybe that was the way he had rolled his shirt sleeves up, exposing the lean forearms that I now knew led to surprisingly firm biceps, toned shoulders, and beyond. In the summer I was so used to seeing him in shorts and scruffy T-shirts. The button-down made him look like a grownup. A grownup with hands that looked as though they knew their way around more than a keyboard…

  “I thought we could try Mark’s on Westheimer for dinner.”

  “Hmm?”

  Dragging my eyes from his hands back to his profile, I thought I saw the tail end of a little smirk. But he hadn’t been looking my way, so he couldn’t have noticed my ogling, could he?

  “Mark’s. Over near the Montrose?”

  “Oh! Um, okay. Isn’t that expensive, though?”

  “It’ll be on me. The least I can do is feed you, especially after last night and considering you also brought me lunch. And I feel pretty safe in thinking that nobody we know will be eating there on a Monday night.”

  Nobody we knew would be eating there on any night, as far as I knew. Maybe Dinesh and Julia on a major anniversary or something, but that was about it.

  “Great. Well, I should be going.” To figure out what the hell to wear.

  “I’ll pick you up at six. The reservation is for six-thirty.” He still hadn’t looked away from his monitor. I was kind of grateful for that. He didn’t see me standing there gaping like an idiot. Nor did he appear to notice as I left. Totally engrossed in work again, all that intense energy directed straight into the theoretical world where his brain spent most of its time.

  * * *

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to go on dates. In fact, I would have been thrilled to do so. But before I’d lived at the duplex, I’d spent four years living with my last boyfriend. I’d moved out when we split up—because I found out his “business trips” to Dallas were really booty calls, the asshole—and unfortunately he’d gotten most of our friends in the separation of assets. I had come away with most of the books, so I figured I’d really gotten the better end of the deal.

  Which probably explained a lot about why, two years later, I was down to scheming to try and get the nearest guy into bed. Literally the nearest. I really didn’t know that many people. I’d grown up near Houston, but it was a big town and a lot of my college friends had moved away. It was down to Athena after I moved, and I was lucky to find a new home that came with a ready-made cadre of Star Trek and role-playing game enthusiasts, or I’d have been all on my own.

  But Ivan was the only one of the bunch I found remotely interesting in a physical way, and I had to wonder if it was primarily because my standards had shifted from so much time out of play. After all, I hadn’t even noticed him at first. Except to find him irritating, and rigid, and difficult to converse with. Funny, I could recall feeling that way, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d found him hard to talk to. Though I definitely still found him irritating and rigid at times.

  “When did that change?” I mused aloud.

  “When did what change?” Athena mumbled from the depths of my closet.

  “Have you found anything yet?”

  It was five, and Athena was dressing me. She’d insisted, coming straight from work to do so despite my reassurance that I’d been dressing myself for years.

  “Maybe. When did what change?”

  “Nothing. It’s dumb. I was thinking about how I used to find it really hard to talk to Ivan. Because he’s, you know—”

  “Borderline autistic?”

  “—not good with people.”

  She emerged, flourishing a piece of midnight-blue silkiness on a hanger. “Aha! And maybe that changed when he offered to take you out to one of the most expensive restaurants in town?”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “Pfft. For him, maybe. It’s obviously like that for you. Although he’s the one who asked, so maybe I really have just been reading him wrong all this time.”

  “It’s not a date,” I reminded her. “He only wanted to make sure we weren’t interrupted again. This is important to him.”

  “Yeah. Why haven’t I seen this on you before? This is actually pretty nice.” She was holding the dress up against herself, checking her angles in the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door. It was something I’d bought a few years ago on sale but never quite had the nerve or the right lingerie to wear. Still had the tags on and everything.

  “I don’t have a bra for it.” It had a halter back and was low-cut enough in front to actually show a little cleavage. I didn’t really do cleavage. What very little I had of it was usually well hidden.

  “Put it on.”

  After fifteen years of friendship I knew better than to argue. I started taking off my clothes.

  A few minutes later, standing in front of the mirror, I had to agree with Athena. The dress was perfect. It made my dishwater-blond hair look lighter, my dark gray eyes look almost blue, and didn’t even wash out the little bit of tan I still had from my last trip to Galveston. She’d made me put on some strappy silver sandals left over from being a bridesmaid at my cousin Linda’s wedding earlier in the year, and now she was staring critically at my toes.

  “We don’t have time to get you a pedi. Unfortunately.”

  “Ivan isn’t going to care what my feet look like.”

  “We haven’t established
that. You yourself said he might be a foot fetishist. But I’m afraid that a quick coat of polish will have to do. And none of that sparkle crap.”

  “But what about the bra?” I wasn’t wearing one. And I might not have much on top, but I still wasn’t going out in public without a bra on. I did have standards.

  “Really? The way the fabric is gathered in the front, it’s not like you’ll have a nipple problem.”

  “My sternum is showing.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “Do you want to get laid or not?”

  I did want to get laid. I wanted that very much.

  And so after I had showered and shaved and lotioned and deodorized, I let Athena mess with my hair until it was almost straight but a tiny bit messy in a fashionable way. Then she painted my toenails a deep red, assuring me I would not, in fact, look like a slutty American flag in the dark blue dress with the silver sandals. I even allowed makeup, which I never wear because I always forget to take it off, so I wake up the next morning looking like a hungover raccoon clown.

  “You’re sure I don’t look like a hooker?”

  It was nearly six. And Ivan was usually prompt, so I expected his knock at any moment. We were running down to the wire.

  “If so, you’re a really expensive one. That’s a good thing,” she insisted. “It’s a nice place. You wouldn’t want to go on a date there looking like a cheap hooker.”

  “I don’t want to look like any kind of hooker. And it’s not a date,” I reminded her, wondering why I thought I could kid Athena when I could no longer even kid myself. “It’s a social anthropology lesson.”

  Chapter Three

  “What was the moral of the story supposed to be last night?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He’d done it again, waylaid me with a non sequitur after several minutes of stifling silence in the car. Why had I thought conversations with Ivan were easier now?

  “Young Frankenstein. You were planning to talk about something to do with social interaction, and that was meant to illustrate your first lesson, I believe.”

  “Yes. I was going to talk about context and expectations. How certain behaviors, even certain types of language, are perfectly okay in one setting but not in another.”

  “Am I the monster in this analogy?”

  Was that a little smile I saw? Surely not.

  “Anyway…during the musical number, when the doctor is trying to prove the monster is sophisticated, what do you think makes it funny?”

  He pondered for a moment. “Not the monster singing and dancing. That’s funny, but really the joke is that for the doctor, the problem isn’t this monster who’s scared of fire. It’s that the monster is screwing up the number.”

  The boy was quick as hell, I had to give him that. “So if you’re the monster in this analogy, what’s your take-away?”

  Definitely a smile.

  “That Doctor Frankenstein is a douchebag?”

  I laughed. “Well, yeah. But no, it’s that you don’t have to be a great singer or dancer. The performance can suck, actually. You only have to conquer your irrational fear of fire for a short time. If he’d managed to do that, if he’d been forewarned and forearmed, he’d have been applauded by all and sundry and the audience would have been amazed.”

  We pulled up to the restaurant then, and the valet ushered me out of the car, so it was a few minutes before we were able to pick up the thread of the conversation. By that time we’d been seated, and were looking at menus, so my mind was on gourmet cuisine and wine pairings when Ivan spoke again.

  “So my social skills can be the bare minimum, as long as I don’t freak out because somebody whips out a lighter, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Remind me to get to lesson two tonight.” I peered over the menu, but he was looking studiously at his own and didn’t meet my eyes. “I’m saying the fire is a metaphor for the party itself. Or at least I suspect that’s the case.”

  He frowned again, almost a pout. “I’m not good at metaphors either.”

  “You do know I wasn’t talking about being scared of fire, right?”

  “Yes, because I’m not an idiot. It’s not that I don’t understand the metaphors. But why don’t you just say what you’re talking about?” It was obviously not the first time he’d been frustrated over this. I had to wonder how he’d ever managed his college English courses.

  “In this case I’m saying that the whole idea of the party itself is what scares you. Talking to strangers, pretending to be interested in what they’re saying, trying to get them to like you. It’s the thing you’re worst at. Although I do have some thoughts about how to work around it. But part of the thing you have to get over is getting snippy when people don’t say exactly what they mean.”

  “I wasn’t getting snippy. I was merely attempting to point out that it’s foolish and inefficient to say things you don’t mean all the time. It doesn’t accomplish the goal of communication.”

  The waiter arrived, taking our orders with an ease that spoke of years of practice. Smooth, like the atmosphere. I could see the framework of the original architecture, the vaulted ceiling of the chapel and the elegant Gothic windows. Swathed in warm red and gold, the whole interior looked candlelit and romantic. It was the type of place I would love to go on a date some day. If only this were that day.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He seemed contrite, though the frown line was still there. I sipped at my cabernet and tried to think how best to respond.

  “I’m at a nice restaurant with a beautiful woman,” he went on. “The minimum expectation is that I not get snippy. And use good table manners.”

  I nearly spit my wine out, I laughed so hard. After I’d swallowed and stifled my snort in my napkin, I nodded. “That’s a bare minimum, I’d say. Although throwing in the ‘beautiful’ was a nice touch. I didn’t plan to get flattery out of you for another week or so at least.”

  “It’s not flattery.” He looked, if anything, a little confused. And like he might be heading toward snippy again. “I’m describing the context.”

  “Never mind,” I said quickly. “That was sweet of you to say. Thank you. Apology accepted.”

  “I was being sweet?” He raised one eyebrow and gave me that intense look again, resting on his elbows so he could lean closer over the intimate little table. His eyes had gone dark, his mouth curved in that little smile again. I suddenly felt some sympathy with his computer monitor, for having to bear up under that kind of scrutiny all day. It was an improvement. Usually I was a little jealous of his computer monitor for getting all his attention. But now I felt like the problem he was bent on solving.

  “You know you were.” My palms were sweaty, and I rubbed them across my thighs, hoping the dress wouldn’t suffer from the treatment. “There was another part of the movie I meant to use as—”

  “What else would I need to do, to be sweet? I’ve never been accused of that before, now you’ve got me curious. Maybe I’ve been doing it accidentally and never realized.”

  I wanted to believe he was flirting with me. But despite the romantic setting, I couldn’t quite bring myself to think it would be that easy. He was doing it accidentally, like he’d said. Trying to follow up on it would probably only confuse and frighten him.

  “That’s the perfect segue to lesson three, which is about not interrupting people in the middle of their sentences. That’s often perceived as very hostile. If you interrupt people,” I clarified, “they will not want to give you their money.”

  “Should I apologize again?”

  “Yes.” No sense beating around the bush, since that seemed to get me nowhere with Ivan. Literal and straightforward, clearly those should be my watchwords. Maybe I should come right out with it. I tried to think how I would phrase that. Hey, I don’t know why exactly, because you can be a jerk sometimes, but I think your heart is in the right place and your jerkiness seems to arouse me. Let’s have sex.

  Nope. That was definitely not goin
g to be said by me any time soon.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting you.” He leaned back and pulled his wineglass with him, the lanky lines of his body granting him all the natural elegance of an old movie star. Or maybe that was just the setting, and my imagination running wild. “You skipped lesson two.”

  He sipped at his wine, his eyes never leaving mine, and I grabbed my own glass to gulp a bit of the fortifying liquid before I pressed on. “You have a tendency to break a long silence by jumping into the middle of a subject. It’s startling. It takes people a second to figure out what you’re talking about, so it’s sort of awkward.”

  The elegant movie-star jaw clenched again, and his fingers tightened dangerously on his wineglass for a moment. I wished I could think of a nicer way to say it, but he didn’t seem to get it when I tried.

  Literal and straightforward.

  “Maybe you need a strategy. Like, something you can memorize, and say to sort of ease back into the conversation.”

  “A script?”

  The idea made me laugh. “That’s not the kind of script I write, usually. But yeah, I guess so. Not for life, maybe, but at least for the party. A few stock phrases. Like…I don’t know, you could clear your throat and then say, ‘Hey, remember earlier when we were talking about whatever?’ Or maybe ‘So I’ve been thinking…’ You know, to give people a chance to catch up.”

  “This is stuff my mother used to tell me all the time.”

  This was so not a date.

  “Well, she’s a smart lady. Maybe you should have listened.”