Jennifer Hillier: Creep

Ethan pretended to think it over. “Sure. Okay. I’d be glad to help.”

Morris rewarded him with a huge grin and clapped him on the shoulder. He finally took a step back and Ethan stifled a sigh of relief.

“Wonderful. That’s wonderful. There’s a great steakhouse on Olive Way, just two blocks from here. Why don’t we meet there at six? And we can also talk strategy about how to get you into this place. You would love working here, Tom, you really would.”

Tom might, but Ethan definitely wouldn’t.

Pleasantly stuffed after an expensive dinner of porterhouse and sourdough bread (no wine for the recovering alcoholic Morris), Ethan sat alone in front of the TV at home, mindlessly watching a rerun of Friends. Abby was at work, the midnight shift at Safeway. It was a crummy job, but it paid more than being a teaching assistant.

He rolled the platinum cuff link between his fingers, looking at it in the soft glow of the TV light. The initials MG were engraved into the square face in italics. Had this been a present from Sheila? Ethan had pretended to stumble on the sidewalk after dinner, and he’d slipped it off Morris after reflexively grabbing the man’s arm. No special reason for taking it, other than the pleasing thought of Morris looking for it later and realizing he’d lost it.

The dinner with Sheila’s fiancé had been enlightening, though Ethan’s blond wig had itched the entire time. He’d had to excuse himself several times to go to the restroom to scratch his head. Damn cheap wig.

It was clear Morris had liked “Tom.” They’d spent the first half of dinner discussing the elusive Randall, and Ethan had pretended to know exactly why the younger Gardener still held a grudge against his old man after all this time. As a psych major, it wasn’t rocket science to guess what most of Randall’s issues might be. Neglect, guilt, blame, feelings of helplessness watching his father on a downward spiral, anger at the family being torn apart. Blah blah blah, all very textbook and mundane. No doubt Morris had discussed it all with Sheila already.

As the evening progressed, Ethan had been able to steer the conversation toward Morris’s impending marriage, and therein lay the real reason Ethan had agreed to dinner. He wanted to know who Sheila was through Morris’s eyes. Thanks to the camaraderie that the charming and sensitive Tom had been able to build with Sheila’s fiancé, the older man hadn’t hesitated to drop a bomb.

Morris had been dating Sheila for an entire year and they had never once had sex.

It had taken all of Ethan’s willpower to contain himself, though he continued to listen with polite interest. Sheila had never slept with the man she was engaged to marry, but she’d been fucking Ethan regularly for the past three months. That meant something, right? It made him superior somehow, right?

A porterhouse had never tasted so good.

“Are you sure you should be telling me all this, Morris?” Ethan had said to the older man, then chewing his steak and feeling like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “It’s been my experience that women don’t like it when you talk about your sex life. Or in this case, lack thereof.”

Morris chuckled. “You’re probably right, Tom, but it’s no secret. She was pretty up-front with me when we first met. She wanted to wait till marriage. I actually really liked that about her. It made me want to get to know her.”

“So she’s old-fashioned.”

Morris speared a sautéed mushroom. “That’s the thing. She’s not. She’s a very modern woman in most ways. But we had an instant connection. We met in a Starbucks, you know. She’s the one who convinced me to go to AA.”

Ethan put down his fork. “Really.” His stomach churned. He hadn’t known they’d met in a Starbucks. What else had Sheila kept from him?

“Yeah.” Morris squeezed more lemon into his sparkling water and looked ruefully at Ethan’s beer. “It took me a year to get up the guts to ask her out on a real date. Look at me. I’m a buffoon. Everything about me’s oversized. Sheila’s beautiful. Everybody who’s met her thinks so. What would she want with me?”

Ethan almost agreed with him but remembered he wasn’t supposed to know Sheila. “I thought they discouraged dating in AA,” he said instead.

“They do. That’s why I waited a year. And it was clearly worth it, because I’m sober and getting married.” Morris grinned.

Ethan thought about that now. Married? Not if he could help it.

The episode of Friends he was watching ended and a rerun of Seinfeld came on. He switched off the TV and sat in the quiet room.

Fuck if he was going to sit back and let them live happily ever after.

Morris’s cuff link was warm in his palm and Ethan held it up to the light once again, wondering.

If they autopsied this out of Sheila’s stomach, would they arrest Morris for the murder?

C alvin Klein shirt, Gucci tie, and Armani suit, tailored to perfection. But going by Morris’s crestfallen expression in the full-length mirror at Romano’s Formal Wear, it still wasn’t perfect enough.

“I look like a jumbo-sized jelly bean.”

“Shush.” Sheila smoothed the lapels of Morris’s jacket and smiled up at him. Her neck muscles were strong. He was thirteen inches taller and she’d had lots of practice looking up at him over the past two years. “It looks great.”

Morris stared at his reflection, the space between his thick eyebrows creasing. He clearly didn’t agree.

Sheila sighed. “You look so handsome. I wish you could see yourself as I see you.”

The small Italian tailor who was fitting Morris’s jacket watched them intently, thin lips pursed. “You don’t like it?” Pietro’s eyes were microscopic behind his thick glasses. “Tell me what you don’t like and I fix.”

“We like it.” Sheila gave her fiancé a look, but Morris said nothing. She smiled warmly at the anxious tailor. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”

Pietro disappeared into the next room.

Sheila faced the mirror beside Morris, linking her arm through his. “Come on, babe. What’s the problem? It fits you perfectly.”

“I look nine months pregnant.”

“You’ve lost forty pounds! Why can’t you be proud of that?” Sheila couldn’t keep the dismay out of her voice. “You’ve been working so hard.”

“Yeah, well, I need to lose forty more.” Morris unbuttoned the suit jacket, exposing the crisp white tuxedo shirt underneath. “Be honest. Would I look thinner with a vest or a cummerbund?”

He was joking, but it wasn’t funny. Sheila touched his hand and his fingers closed reflexively around her palm. Big, capable man though he was, he still struggled with his body image. He might be a bulldog walking into a boardroom filled with millionaire investors, but inside, he was a giant marshmallow.

She loved him for this paradox. It made him real. Human.

Cupping her chin, he tilted her face upward and kissed her.

“Hey, ever done it in a change room?” he stage-whispered.

A zingy reply was on the tip of her tongue, but a discreet cough interrupted her thoughts. They pulled apart to see Pietro standing in the corner of the change area looking completely uncomfortable. Morris’s face flushed a deep red, and Sheila put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you beautiful couple, but my shift end in five minute. You want I fix something or is everything okay?” The tailor fidgeted, tape measure in hand, ready to act quickly at the slightest indication of dissatisfaction.

Sheila glanced at Morris. He was still flushed. “The tuxedo is wonderful, Pietro. Perfect the way it is.”

The little man beamed. “Excellent. That make me very happy. You need handkerchief? Cuff links? You want I fit you for cummerbund?”