Mean Woman Blues

Christian family— and believe me, they never let her forget it.”
    “So what does a rent-a-wife do?”
    “Errands, mostly. She picks up your dry cleaning, does your weekly shopping, takes your elderly mom to the doctor. Her clients are mostly married women who work.”
    “Wow. What a great idea. I’ll bet I could do that. I could combine it with cooking.”
    “The only trouble is, the work’s a little sporadic, so she never really knows where her next nickel’s coming from.”
    “Poor baby, I know that one. Well, I can see what you mean about her values. She sounds like a very plucky person.”
    “She’s a
good
person. She really is.”
    “An admirable quality in a girlfriend.”
    They’d had the talk right after dinner. Then, while Lovelace packed, they talked about their own crazy family, and then Terri arrived and came to the obvious but erroneous conclusion. He’d had a great time with Lovelace, but Isaac missed Terri. He’d thought about her last night in bed, realizing they hadn’t been apart on a Saturday night for a while, and for the first time he began to wonder if this was what people called a “serious” relationship. Whatever that meant. Maybe it just meant missing someone when you weren’t with her.
    Lovelace said, “I’d better clean this mess up,” and left to get paper towels and sponges.
    Isaac watched her, not offering to help and not even thinking about it, just feeling a little dazed. What had happened here? He couldn’t let Terri run out of his life, just like that, on a misunderstanding.
    “Maybe,” said Lovelace, “we should go find her.”
    “What?” He wasn’t moving ahead; instead of trying to think what to do next, he was still trying to comprehend what had gone on.
    “Look. If we both turn up, it’ll be abundantly obvious I’m no threat to her.
Nobody
would go over to their boyfriend’s girlfriend’s house and claim to be his niece. Think about it.”
    Isaac smiled, as he saw the truth of it. “Let’s do it.”
    “Let me put on some lipstick and change my T-shirt.”
    Isaac waited impatiently, wondering why it took any woman on Earth at least ten minutes to perform any act of grooming, no matter how small.
    He drove so fast and was so obviously preoccupied that Lovelace remarked upon it, in that all too straightforward way she’d developed lately. “Hey, Uncle. You seem like a man in love.”
    He ignored her, which was probably the worst thing he could have done.
    “Methinks,” she said, “thou doth protest too much.”
    “I didn’t protest at all. I didn’t say anything.”
    “It’s like the curious incident of the dog in the night, in the Sherlock Holmes story. ‘The dog did nothing in the night; that was the curious incident.’”
    “Maybe,” he said. “You should give up this cooking thing. You could be a great lawyer.”
    “Well, I notice you’re not saying you’re not in love with her.”
    He couldn’t have said if he was or he wasn’t; he hadn’t even thought about it. But the sight of Terri’s house ablaze with light cheered him immensely.
    Each got out of the car, and they fell into formation, one beside the other, Lovelace a little taller, dressed in jeans and white T-shirt, still a little awkward from adolescence. Lovelace was a beautiful girl, but surely Tori would see that she was a child, young enough to be someone’s niece, though technically only a year or two behind Terri herself.
    He pushed the bell and they waited. Terri usually came springing down the hall, but this time he didn’t hear her. Anxiously, he looked around for her car and didn’t see it, either. “Her car’s not here.”
    Lovelace peered up and down the street. “You sure?”
    “Pretty sure.”
    “Maybe she went out for a minute. For cigarettes or something.”
    “She doesn’t smoke.”
    “Why don’t we wait around a few minutes, just in case?”
    They sat down on the steps, but Isaac couldn’t handle it. He was getting more and more depressed with each passing minute. Finally, he said, “I don’t think she’s coming,” and Lovelace nodded. He hated looking at her, knowing her sad face reflected his.

CHAPTER THREE
    It was freezing cold in the lockup. Terri couldn’t help thinking what an incredible waste it was of the taxpayers’ money— and then thinking,
What a weird thing to think in jail.
    Jail. How could this be? But she’d be out soon, at least there was that, and at least they’d taken off the handcuffs. There were