Perfect Strangers

35

This is France, after all. In America the national pastime is baseball; here it’s having a mistress or two.

James sighs heavily and closes his eyes. “You’ve got that look again like you think I’m a serial killer.”

“Okay, lover boy, I’m going to ask you a question. And you have to tell me the truth.”

He opens his eyes and stares at me, his expression wary.

“I promise this will be the last personal question I’ll ever ask. I swear on the baby Jesus and all the saints and every single angel and cherub in heaven.”

His brows draw together. “Are you very religious?”

I wave a hand dismissively in the air. “No, I’m just big on hyperbole. It’s a bad habit. My editor is always yelling at me to tone it down. Anyway, here’s my question. And you better look me right in the eye when you answer. Okay?”

Another heavy sigh. I could smack him.

I pronounce each word slowly and carefully. “Are you married?”

His eyes drill straight down into the blackest bottom of my soul. “No,” he says, just as slowly and carefully. “I’m. Not. Married.”

Folding my arms over my chest, I inspect his face. He appears to be telling the truth, but this is the same guy who pulled a credible Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde impression when the waiter first arrived at our table.

An alarm sounds. James grabs me and kisses me. Hard.

When I turn my head and break the kiss, he commands gruffly, “Stay at the apartment until I come back.”

Damn, he’s bossy. I say sourly, “If you think you’re the boss of me, pal, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Think.”

I give him a side-eye. “Excuse me?”

“The correct phrase is, ‘You’ve got another think coming,’ not thing.”

“No. That makes no sense.”

“I’m telling you, that’s what it is.”

“Who’s the writer here? Me or you? It’s thing.”

The elevator alarm sounds again, but this time it doesn’t stop, it just keeps on blaring. Looking all sorts of frustrated and sexy and hot, James mutters an oath and turns to the panel of buttons, jabbing a finger against one of them. The elevator jerks into motion again, and we’re headed down.

When the doors open moments later, he takes me by the arm and leads me out to the street, where he whistles for a cab. One immediately screeches to a stop at the curb, because even taxis are obliged to obey him.

“Why we don’t just take the Metro, I’ll never know,” I grumble under my breath.

James swings open the door of the cab, quickly inserts me into the back seat, and leans in to glare at me. “Because you’re safer in a cab, that’s why.”

That makes me blink. “Safer from what?”

He slams the door shut in my face.

Then he leans in the open front window to give the driver the address, tosses a handful of money at him, and turns and stalks away.

As the cab pulls away from the curb, I twist around in my seat and stare out the back window, watching the receding figure of James striding off into the warm Paris evening until he’s swallowed by the crowd and disappears.

13

T

he first thing

I do when I get back into the apartment is head straight over to the computer in Estelle’s library and fire it up.

Into Google’s search bar, I type “You’ve got another thing coming.”

Google helpfully provides me with 798,000,000 results.

The first one is a video for the heavy metal band Judas Priest’s song of the same name, which fills me with smugness. If a famous rock band recorded it as “thing” instead of “think,” I’m obviously right.

My brief bout of smugness lasts until I scroll farther down the page and find an article in Merriam-Webster regarding usage of the phrase. When I click the link, I’m dismayed to learn that a debate still rages to this day about the correctness of word choice. Apparently “think” is the older usage, originating in nineteenth-century British English, and “thing” is more current—and more common—but frequently criticized by language purists as an incorrect bastardization.

In other words, James and I are both right…except he’s more right than I am.

Hello, dented ego, my old friend.

Because I’m in need of a morale boost, I dig my cell phone out from my handbag on the desk and send Estelle a text.

Question for your superior literary brain: Which would you say is correct? “You’ve got another THING coming” or “You’ve got another THINK coming?”

While I wait for an answer, I wander into the kitchen. I kick off my heels, open the fridge, and stare into it for a while until I realize I’m not hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, but between the orgasm at the book store, James’s sudden impersonation of Houdini at dinner, and the memory of how far up my lip curled when I told him he was wrong about think vs. thing, what I’m really craving is a drink to settle my nerves.

I pour myself a bourbon and am just about to tuck into it when my cell phone chimes. Estelle has answered.

DOES THIS MEAN YOU’RE WRITING AGAIN??

Not even five seconds later, my phone rings. I smile and hit the Answer button. “Hi, Estelle.”

“Doll!” she shouts gleefully. “Tell me you have good news!”

I can’t resist teasing her a little. “Gee, no pressure or anything. Couldn’t I just be asking your opinion?”

She scoffs. “Puh. The only time you’ve ever asked my opinion on anything is when I took you to lunch at Le Bernardin for your thirtieth birthday and you couldn’t decide between the sashimi and the caviar.”