He chuckles at me.  I envision myself jamming a pen into his trachea. Blood. There would be lots of blood to clean up. I better not.

“If you ever want to excel in this field, sweetheart, you let me know. I can instruct you all the way to the top.” He smiles at me, winks, and my slime-ball radar goes off. I hate being sugar lipped, especially by a bleating goat in pinstripes.

“Instruct?” I ask with false enthusiasm. Mr. Gould picks at his teeth, flashing me a view of his wedding band, which he liked to forget symbolized fidelity.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?”

“No,” I sigh boringly, “but you’ll have to spell it out for human resources when I tell them that you’re sexually harassing me.” I pull a nail file from my drawer o’crap and begin sawing at my thumb. When I look up, his face has gone from its usual tomato red to an ugly shade of scared shitless.

“I’m sorry you see my concern for your future as sexual harassment,” he says, quickly removing himself from my desk.

I size him up, all the way from his bony shoulders, which are poking out of his Armani suit like two tennis balls, down to his regrettably small feet.

“How about we stick to work-only conversations and you save your concern for your wife—Mary was her name wasn‘t it?” He turns away, his shoulders rigid. I hate men….well, most of them.

My intercom crackles.

“Olivia, can you come in here for a sec?” It’s Bernie.

Bernadette Vespa Singer is my boss and she loves me. At five feet even she has cankles, perpetually smudged peach lipstick, and wiry black hair that looks like poodle fur. She is a genius in her own right and a damn good lawyer. With a ninety-five percent prosecution rate and a stride to match any man, Bernie is my idol.

“Mr. Gould offered to help advance my career,” I say coolly, walking into her office.

“Bastard!” she slaps her palm so hard on her desk her bobble heads jump to action.

“Do you want to press charges, Olivia? Damn that cock-a-wiener bastard. I think he’s sleeping with Judge Walters.”

I shake my head “no” and sit down in a chair facing her desk.

“You’re my kind of assistant kid, tough as nails and ambitious as hell.”

I smile. That was what she said when she hired me. I’d taken the job knowing she was a little crazy but not caring since she won cases.

“What’s happening with that fellow you were telling me about?” she asks. She scratches her nose with the tip of her pen and it leaves a scribble on her face.

I blush so fiercely it is an immediate emission of guilt.

“You know he’s going to find out eventually,” she says, narrowing her already beady eyes at me. “Don’t do anything stupid, you could have one hellavah lawsuit on your hands.”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

I don’t know why I told her. I regret it now as she stares at me with her probing eyes.

“I know,” I mumble, pretending to fumble with the buttons on my blouse. “Can we just not talk about it right now?”

“What is it with this guy?” she says ignoring me. “Is he well endowed? I can never understand why pretty girls like you go chasing after men. You should get a vibrator. You’ll never go back. Here, let me write down the name of a good one for you,” she scribbled something down on a yellow post it note and hands it to me.

“Thanks.” I looked at the wall above her head and take the paper.

“Not a probby. See you later, kid.” She waved me out of her office with her chubby, ink-stained fingers.

I invited Caleb over for dinner. Same dog, same tricks. Our coffee rendezvous ended abruptly when the pimply kid behind the counter flipped the closed sign in the window and turned the lights off in the cafe. We had lifted ourselves regretfully from the table and wandered outside.

“Can I see you again?” He was standing directly in front of a street lamp and it cast an ethereal glow around his shoulders.

“What would you do if I said no?”

“Don’t say no.”

It was another one of those moments where I flirt with my conscience and pretend for once that I am going to do the right thing.

“Come over for dinner,” I blurt. “I’m not much of a cook, but hey…”

He looked surprised at first and then grinned.

“I’d love to.”

And that’s how it happened.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

Before I leave work, I make a quick call to the number at the bottom of Dobson Orchard’s wanted poster. The detective I speak to takes my name and number and thanks me for the information. He promises to call if anything comes up. Then I call my favorite Thai restaurant and order a large tray of red vegetable curry—To Go.

Pickles is waiting for me by the door when I get home. I place my packages on the counter and grab a coke from the fridge.

“You’re pathetic, Pickles,” I say, hooking the leash to her collar. “You know I don’t have time for this today.”

Our quickie turns into twenty minutes as Pickles willfully disobeys me and refuses to pee on command. By the time we get home, I have thirty minutes before Caleb is due to arrive. I place the curry I bought into a casserole dish and stick it in the oven to keep it warm. I polish two wine glasses and then polish off a glass of wine. Then I take out all of the ingredients to make a salad and line them up in alphabetical order on my counter.

Caleb arrives five minutes early.

“For you,” he says, handing me a bottle of wine and a small potted Gardenia bush. It is sprouting a single white flower and I pause to smell it.

“This is my favorite flower,” I say in half surprise.

“Really? Lucky guess.”

I grunt. If only he knew.

I distract myself by trying to calm Pickles down as she hysterically throws herself at Caleb’s leg. When he bends down to pat her on the head, she yelps and runs away.

“It’s a ‘she can touch you, but you can’t touch her’ kind of thing,” I explain.

“She’s a tease then, just like her owner.”

“You don’t know her owner well enough to make that assertion,” I smile.

“I suppose not.”

He looks around my living room, and I suddenly feel embarrassed. My home is small and there is a lot of purple. He’s been here before, of course, but he doesn’t remember that. I am about to explain why I don’t have nicer things, when his eyes light up.

“You used to have long hair,” he says sauntering over to a collage of pictures on my wall. I reach up and finger a choppy strand of what’s left of it.

“Yes, in college. I needed a change, so I took off twelve inches.” I clear my throat and duck into the kitchen.

“I kinda got a late start on dinner,” I say, picking up a knife, pausing to watch him. He is walking from knick knack, to kick knack, inspecting everything. I watch him pick up a ceramic owl from my bookshelf. He turns it over and inspects the bottom then gently places it back. He bought me that owl.

“I’d give you a tour of the apartment,” I say to him, “but you can see the entire place from where you’re standing.”

“It’s cute,” he smiles. “Girly. But definitely you.”

I cock my eyebrow. I don’t know what he means. He doesn’t know me….he did, but he doesn’t now. I am getting confused. I viciously chop the onions.

Four years ago, Caleb helped me move in. We painted together; my living room tan and my bedroom lilac. Knowing my penchant for perfection, he dabbed his roller on the ceiling above my bed to annoy me. He left a purple stain, I was furious.

“There, now you’ll think of me every night before you close your eyes,” he had said, laughing at my mortified face. I hated imperfections, hated them. A stain on the carpet, a chip in a teacup, anything that marred the way things were supposed to be. I wouldn’t even eat broken chips. After we broke up, I was grateful for that blob of paint. It was the last thing I saw before I went to sleep and the first thing I saw when I woke up. I would stare at that purple scar like Caleb’s face was hidden somewhere in it. Caleb had been my imperfection, with his slightly Americanized British accent, and the way he could play any sport and quote any philosopher. He was such a mix of class and jock, romance and jerk, it made me crazy.