“Hmm.” Fraser was noncommittal on that point. “Did you ever go out with guys your own age?”

“Of course.”

“But…?”

“Nothing. It was fine. I never fell in love until Noah. Noah was…”

“Handsome, rich, cultured, and your boss.”

I stared at him. “It wasn’t like that,” I said shortly.

“Why wouldn’t it be? That’s not criticism. I can see why you fell for him. He sounds perfect. Too perfect, if you want my opinion. I can see you don’t. So, what went wrong with this idyllic life you worked so hard to build?”

The waiter brought my drink, and I had a couple of sips thinking over that telling comment. Worked so hard to build. Not that all relationships didn’t take work, but should they take so much work? So much work that other people commented on it.

I explained how Lionel and a few other instructors in our department felt that I was up for tenure because of my relationship with Noah, and I explained why I had made the trip to visit the princess a priority, and then, haltingly, I told him about calling Noah and finding out he was having dinner with Lionel and my probably—I could see that now—sort of extreme reaction.

“What a shit!” Fraser interrupted. “You’re out of town working and he’s having a quiet, intimate dinner with his ex? The same jealous prick who’s stabbing you in the back? Dump his sorry ass.”

I have to admit his instant and fierce bias on my behalf was heartwarming.

“You don’t think I overreacted?”

“I think you’ve been underreacting for two years. I think you’ve been brainwashed. You’re smothering your personality to try and adapt yourself to this old geezer.”

“Fifty-five isn’t exactly—”

“I’m not talking earth years. I’m talking stick-up-your-butt years. He’s, like, seventy-five in stick-up-your-butt years. My God. Next you’ll tell me he drags you to the opera or flower shows or some shit like that. How many times a month does he make you visit his mother?”

I started to laugh. As a matter of fact, we visited Mirabelle every other weekend. Fraser’s gaze was still indignant but sympathetic too.

“If he wasn’t your boss and you didn’t live together, you’d have been out of there a long time ago. But it’s complicated, so you’ve put it off until tonight when you couldn’t take it anymore.”

I absorbed that silently. As much as I instinctively rejected the brutality of his assessment, I couldn’t deny there was truth to it. Breaking up with Noah was liable to have far-reaching consequences in every aspect of my life.

To my relief, our dinners arrived. I’d forgotten how much I loved steak. Noah was pretty much off red meat, and I tried to respect that by not indulging in front of him. This was quality beef perfectly cooked. The first bite seemed to melt in my mouth.

“Good?” Fraser inquired, grinning.

“Oh my God.”

He laughed and unabashedly shoveled in a forkful.

I began to feel quite cheerful. Part of it had to be the drink. I knew that. I was more than half smashed, delicately balanced at the point where everything was bright and funny and things were moving fast but not so fast that I couldn’t keep up. We talked and we ate and we ate some more and we talked some more. We avoided the subject of Noah.

Instead Fraser talked about himself. He’d grown up in San Diego, attended San Diego State, majoring in TV production and broadcast journalism.

“How did you get interested in…?”

“In?”

“Reality TV.”

“We’re not exactly reality TV. That is to say, we’re a hybrid. Part documentary, part reality TV.”

“Okay. How did you get interested in that?”

“Ack.” He pounded his fist against his forehead.

“Ack?”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“What am I going to say?”

“I grew up watching The X-Files.”

“Why would I say that?”

“No. I grew up watching The X-Files.”

“Oh. So?”

“So…the truth is out there. I want to know what it is.”

“You mean you love scary stories and scary movies and wanted to be Van Helsing when you grew up.”

“Hell yeah!”

That struck me as one of the funniest things I’d ever heard. When I stopped giggling, Fraser said, “Hey, I’m not college professor, but I’m not the dumb schmuck you pegged me for the minute you laid eyes on me, either.”

“I didn’t peg you for a dumb schmuck.”

He chuckled good-naturedly. “Yeah, you did. You looked at me like a snail had just crawled out of your escargot.”

I was momentarily distracted. “Snail is escargot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Arugula? Endive? Endigia?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You kind of put my back up,” I conceded.

“I tend to come on too strong when I’m…” He lost track of that thought in his apparent interest in capturing the last crumb of onion loaf.

“Too what?”

“Hmm?”

“You come on too strong when you’re too what?”

Fraser looked blank.

I realized belatedly that maybe I didn’t want to know. We finished our meal more quietly than we’d begun it, although we did relax again over the hot fudge brownie desserts.

When the bill arrived we argued briefly.

“I invited you,” Fraser insisted.

“Yeah, but this feels kind of one-sided.”

“I invited you.” He was scowling.

“Okay, okay. My turn next time.”

“Deal.” His eyes gleamed, and I played back what I’d just said. Next time? Was there going to be a next time?

Fraser paid the bill, and we pulled on our jackets and went outside.

The sidewalk sparkled with frost. A Volkswagen Beetle sped past, demons and goblins yelling out the window.

“What now?” Fraser’s breath was warm in the cold night air.

Our gazes tangled. I knew what I wanted to do, but sex seemed more complicated now that I knew Fraser and, well, liked him.

Fraser stared right back as though he could read my mind. “Well,” he said casually, “we could always see a movie.”

Chapter Six

Believe it or not, when I finished laughing, we went to the movies.

We arrived in time to catch the second feature, which was the 1932 version of The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. I bought a giant tub of buttered popcorn which Fraser and I shared as we watched the film.

“Did you know this was filmed in Mojave?” Fraser whispered.

I shook my head.

He snickered over Ardeth Bey’s “Excuse me… I dislike being touched,” and downright guffawed over “Maybe he got too gay with the vestal virgins in the temple.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye and smiled. I liked that he shared my same loony sense of humor. I liked his lack of self-consciousness. And I really liked how much he was enjoying himself. I tried to remember the last time I’d had such an uncomplicated good time.

I didn’t let myself think about my article. I didn’t let myself think about Noah. I watched Ardeth Bey try to reclaim his reincarnated true love and concentrated on nothing but the warmth of Fraser’s shoulder pressing against mine, the occasional brush of our hands in the popcorn barrel.

It could have been any first date. But that was also something I didn’t let myself think about.

When the movie was over we walked back to the hotel along quiet and by then mostly deserted streets. The scent of wood smoke drifted in the sparkling night air. Every so often someone in costume appeared in the distant peripheral of our vision, as though at the far end of a telescope. Kids. Teenagers. Milking the last few minutes of the spookiest night of the year.

“What time is it?” I asked as we walked past a house where a jack-o’-lantern sat on the porch steps, eyes glowing eerily, yellow mouth laughing silently.

Fraser checked his wristwatch. “A quarter to midnight.”

“The witching hour.”

“Yep.”

After that we seemed to be out of things to talk about. I was coming down from the booze, and I felt tired and depressed when I remembered the fight with Noah. Which was every couple of minutes.