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Susan felt her eyes crossing. She was in for eight weeks of this? Danforth was clearly one of those guys who stroked his chin a lot and looked pensive, as if his brain was constantly at work on some esoteric Theory of Great Importance even as he was forced to muck around with individuals who didn’t share his stunning intellect.
Danforth consulted his notebook. “Which one of you is Tonya Rutherford?”
The woman to Susan’s right raised her hand, her metallic gold nails glinting in the fluorescent light. She had short, spiky hair in an unnatural shade of red-orange that was probably very fashionable, but it looked to Susan as if she’d dyed her hair with Mercurochrome. Her knit top and denim skirt showed way too much cleavage and way too much leg for a woman her age, which had to be close to forty. Then again, if Susan had been blessed with that woman’s generous C cup, instead of her own paltry A, and if her legs weren’t crawling with spider veins, maybe she’d consider baring a little more skin, too.
“What do you do for a living, Ms. Rutherford?”
“I own a hair salon.”
“Please share with the class why you’re here.”
“Uh…a judge sent me here?” Tonya replied.
“What was the nature of your offense?”
“Oh, that. My husband had me arrested for assaulting him.”
Okay, now, Susan thought. Maybe this class will be interesting after all.
“Specifically, Ms. Rutherford. What was the situation that culminated in your arrest?”
“Hmm. Let’s see…oh, yeah. I found out my husband cheated on me. I sent a few pieces of stoneware across the room in the general vicinity of his head. He called the cops and pressed charges. I ended up with a bastard of a judge who loves creative sentencing, so here I am.”
“I’d like to remind you, Ms. Rutherford, that had you not lost your temper and taken the unfortunate action you did, a judge wouldn’t have had the opportunity to exercise creative sentencing.”
The edge of Tonya’s mouth lifted in a screw you smirk. “Well, then,” she said, with extra emphasis on her healthy Texas twang, “I certainly apologize for my inappropriate observations about the inappropriate action the judge took as a result of my inappropriate anger.”
Somewhere in the middle of all that there was an inappropriate comment, but Danforth let it go. Either that or he wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it bit him on the nose.
“Monica Saltzman?”
The woman to Susan’s left came to attention. Actually, she already was at attention, one of those women born with excellent posture who didn’t know the meaning of the word slouch. Dressed in a silk blouse and tweed pants with coordinating handbag and shoes, she was the picture of polished professionalism. As a nurse, Susan was good at spotting women who’d had work done, and this woman hadn’t. Still, at least at first glance, she could pass for thirty-five, even though early forties was more likely.
Susan, on the other hand, knew she looked every day of her forty-five years. Sitting there now between Miss Brass and Miss Class, wearing puke green scrubs and sensible sneakers, she felt like a frumpy nobody.
“What is your occupation?” Danforth asked.
Monica tucked a strand of her sleek, dark hair behind her ear with one perfectly polished nail and raised her chin, pausing a moment before speaking, as if she were one of those women who expected everyone to stop whatever they were doing and hang on her every word.
“I’m an executive assistant,” Monica said, then paused. “Was.”
“The nature of your offense?”
“My boss shared some rather disconcerting news with me,” she said. “I was quite justifiably angry, and I let him know how I felt about it.”
“In what manner did you express those feelings?” Danforth asked.
She stared at him evenly. “His Hummer may never be the same again.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tonya said, leaning in, her eyes wide with anticipation. “What exactly did you do to it?”
Monica’s chin rose another notch. “I put a flowerpot through the windshield.”
“That’s it?” Tonya slumped with disappointment. “So why did you get arrested for assault when it wasn’t a human being you beat up? I mean, it’s a crime to destroy personal property, but—”
“He was in the driver’s seat at the time.”
Tonya sat back, her grin returning. “Oh. Well. Now you’re talking.”
“And what was the disconcerting news that sent you on this rampage?” Danforth asked.
Susan drew back. Rampage? As if she were Godzilla ravaging Tokyo?
“I don’t see the need to go into the details,” Monica said.
“Part of the therapy is recognizing what triggers your anger, and unless I know your threshold—”
“Fine,” Monica said. “If you must know, he promised me a job, then turned around and gave it to somebody else. So you see, what I did was perfectly understandable.”
“No, Ms. Saltzman. What you did was criminal.”
Monica opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it again, a slightly more refined version of Tonya’s screw you smirk edging across her face.
Danforth scribbled something in his notebook, then turned his gaze to Susan. “You must be Susan Roth. Your occupation?”
“I’m an E.R. nurse.”
“Please share with the class the act of violence that caused you to be here today.”
Good Lord. This was beginning to feel like third grade show-and-tell and the Jerry Springer show all rolled into one.
Susan told her story, emphasizing just how much of an intrusive little geek Dennis was before she revealed what led to her handprint on his throat. She thought she’d been pretty comprehensive, only to have Danforth bug her for more details.
“I just threatened him,” Susan said. “That’s all.”
“Verbal threats frequently precipitate physical violence. Once spoken into being, they have a way of manifesting themselves into reality. It’s the continuum of violence. What did you threaten to do?”
Susan looked at the other women, who were suddenly paying close attention, then back to Danforth.
“If you must know, I threatened to rip off his balls and toss them into the hospital cafeteria’s soup of the day.”
Danforth’s already pale complexion turned as white as Elmer’s glue. Gradually he moved behind the lectern, as if he felt the need to have something substantial between Susan and his privates.
“I see,” he said. “We’ll…uh…be doing some cognitive restructuring exercises aimed at preventing that kind of behavior.”
Tonya turned to Danforth. “So you actually think if she doesn’t have all her cognitive whatever restructured, someday she’s actually going to tear the guy’s balls off?”
Danforth cleared his throat. “I’m merely saying that if one can control one’s verbiage, one can frequently control one’s behavior.”
“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” Susan said. “Really. I swear it wasn’t.”
“So you have no remorse for the act,” Danforth said. “You’re merely sorry you were arrested for it?”
“Well, no, I didn’t mean—”
“We’ll be working on that.”
Susan glanced at Monica, then Tonya. They matched her subtle eye roll with ones of their own, bringing them into conspiracy together with a single common thought: No matter what this idiot says, sometimes when people get out of line, you just gotta let ’em have it.
Danforth launched into a lecture about the difference between assertion and aggression, and, for the next hour and a half, Tonya interrupted him every few minutes to ask him to define the terms he was using, such as cognitive distortion and neuroanatomy of anger. Susan got the feeling Tonya didn’t give a damn about the definitions, but she sure liked messing with Danforth. Monica spent most of the class wearing a distinctly bored expression as if all of this was so not worth her time.
Susan occupied herself by going over her mental to-do list, which she had to kick into action when she got home: check to make sure Lani had done her homework; do a load of laundry so she’d have something to wear to work tomorrow; pay the overdue electric bill; call Don and remind him about Lani’s basketball game. Then take a shower, climb into bed and dream of a world where money was plentiful, conflict was scarce and she had at least a few hours a day when she wasn’t somebody’s mother, somebody’s nurse, somebody’s ex-wife, or, in Dennis’s case, somebody’s worst nightmare.
Finally, at ten till nine, Tonya asked Danforth if he thought there was any difference between being angry, being livid and being pissed off. He looked at her dumbly for a moment. Then he took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose and dismissed class.
Susan left the classroom and headed for the bathroom. Tonya and Monica followed. They each went into a stall, and a few minutes later they were standing at the sink.
“Could you believe that guy?” Tonya said, swiping on enough lipstick to send Maybelline stock soaring. “I’ve never seen such a self-important little creep in my life.”
“He’s definitely on my top-ten list,” Monica said, touching up her makeup with the precision of a micro-surgeon. The compact she held looked unfamiliar to Susan, which meant it had come from somewhere besides Walgreens.
“Cognitive restructuring,” Tonya muttered. “Please.” She held up a middle finger. “Wonder how he’d like to restructure this?”
Monica raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a particularly subtle person, are you, Tonya?”
“As if you are? I noticed you made a pretty obvious statement with that flowerpot.”
“Yes. Well.”
“Not that I don’t admire you for it. A boss who promises you a job and then gives it to somebody else had better expect a faceful of broken glass.” Tonya leaned into the mirror to wipe a stray bit of lipstick from the corner of her mouth, which made her too-short denim skirt hike even farther up her thighs. “And the little geek you went off on deserved it, too,” she said to Susan. “So what if you threatened to castrate him? You were in a hospital, weren’t you? They’re doing wonders these days with all kinds of reattachment surgeries.”
Susan smiled. After her ex-husband, her daughter, her coworkers and a certain Dallas County judge had acted as if she were criminally insane, she liked having somebody’s stamp of approval, even if that somebody was just as criminally insane as she was.
“And if your husband cheats,” Susan said, “I think he should expect a few flying dishes.”
“I agree,” Monica said.
So they’d reached a consensus. They’d all been railroaded. Susan suddenly felt a weird kind of camaraderie she hadn’t expected, as if it were the three of them against Dr. Pompous.
She said goodbye to the other women and left the bathroom, thinking about the hundred other ways she could productively spend this one evening a week. Then again, the women’s magazines always said that a working mother needed a hobby or activity away from her family and coworkers that was uniquely her own. Courtesy of the criminal justice system of Dallas County, it looked as if Susan had found one.
CHAPTER 3
Later that night, Tonya pulled her Ford Fiesta to the curb in front of her house, half expecting to see Kendra Willis’s car in the driveway getting cozy with Dale’s 4 x 4, while Kendra was in the house getting cozy with Dale. But the only other car she saw was Cliff’s old Buick with the bad transmission, which was undoubtedly leaking fluid all over the driveway.
The living room blinds were open. The two men sat sprawled on the sofa with their feet on the coffee table, which meant they were probably watching Monday night football, and that irritated the hell out of Tonya. Her husband was in there drinking beer and watching the game with one of his firefighter buddies, while she sat out there with her hands clenching the steering wheel and her heart tied up in knots.
Two weeks ago, after the court proceedings, she’d given him the cold shoulder—no talk, no sex, no nothing—just so he’d never forget how pissed she was. When he hadn’t seemed to care about that, she’d gotten progressively more frustrated, until one day she lost it a little and gave him an ultimatum. She told him that if he didn’t apologize for everything he’d done and swear he’d never look at another woman again, she was going to leave. He told her he wasn’t apologizing for anything. Then he went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer and a sack of pretzels and headed for the living room, where he sat down on the sofa and flipped on a NASCAR race.
It stunned her so much that she said fine, packed some clothes, her toothbrush and her makeup and told him she’d be in the apartment over her hair salon whenever he came to his senses.
A week later, she was still there.
Go, she told herself. Drive away. Go back to your apartment and stay there until you get that apology you’ve got coming.
But deep inside she had the most horrible feeling that the week she’d already waited would turn into two weeks, then three, and then Dale would realize he didn’t need her after all and she’d go to the mailbox one day and the divorce papers would be there.
Tonya lit a cigarette and took a hard drag, forcing herself to think. Finally she decided that the house was hers, too, so of course she had a right to walk in anytime she wanted to. And she looked just hot enough tonight that she was sure to get Dale’s attention. He’d always told her he didn’t like her wearing this particular skirt around other men because they couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Maybe if she strutted through the living room, Cliff’s gaze would wander a little, and then Dale’s possessive streak would take over and he’d want her to come home. Men weren’t like women. Sometimes you had to get right in their faces to remind them of what was important.
She took a last drag on her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray, before popping a few Tic Tacs. After checking her makeup and putting on more lipstick, she took a deep breath and got out of the car. On the way to the door, she made up a reason why she’d dropped by just in case Dale didn’t jump right up and beg her to stay. But she hoped he would, if for no other reason than that he hadn’t had sex in a week.
Unless he’d gone back for another round with Kendra Willis.
Shoving that horrible thought aside, Tonya stuck her key in the lock and opened the door. Dale came to attention right away, and when their eyes met, she smiled. Just a little. And when he sat back on the sofa, his face stoic, her heart crumbled.
“Now, don’t you boys get up on my account,” Tonya said, with just the right amount of offhanded sarcasm, as if she really didn’t give a damn about any of this. “I just came by for a few things.”
She went into their bedroom, where she found the bed neatly made. That didn’t surprise her. Whenever she told other women that Dale actually did housework, they always said, All those good looks, and he helps out, too? It had always made her feel so good to be able to give them a superior little smile that said, you bet he does, and he’s all mine.
But that wasn’t true. He wasn’t all hers. Not anymore.
She pulled back the bedspread a little and gave the pillowcases a sniff, relieved to find no evidence of Kendra’s god-awful perfume. They just smelled like Dale. She leaned in closer and inhaled again.
“Tonya?”
She spun around to see Dale leaning against the door frame, his arms folded, those big, beautiful biceps bulging.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I told you, honey,” she said, dropping the bedspread and heading for the closet. “I came to pick up a few things.”
She opened the door and blindly pulled a few sweaters off hangers, then grabbed a pair of shoes.
“Those are sandals,” he said. “It’s forty degrees out.”
“Fashion before comfort, you know?”
“Did you go to your first class tonight?”
“Of course I did. Legally speaking, I didn’t have a choice, now did I?”
“Because we’re not going to work this out until you learn to control your temper.”
“We’re not going to work this out,” she said, “until you stop screwing other women.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could yank them back. Making him mad wasn’t going to help things. A little shaky, she turned to grab another sweater.
“Why are you really here?” Dale asked.
“To get some things, like I told you. Oh, yeah. And I was thinking maybe you’d want to give me that apology I’ve been waiting for.”
“It’s the other way around. You assaulted me.”
“Yeah, and you cheated on me.”
“I’ve denied that all I’m going to.”
“And you called the police on me, too. That was really low.”
“It wasn’t the first time you’d thrown a few dishes around. Enough was enough.”
“But calling the cops?” She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t the boys down at the station house think that was a little wussy?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“They’ve all met you.”
The insult hurt more than she would have imagined. “You’re six-three, two-twenty! Like I could actually hurt you?”
“Size doesn’t matter.”
Tonya snorted. “Is that what Kendra Willis told you?”
He turned away. “Take the clothes and go.”
As Dale disappeared down the hall, Tonya felt her eyes tear up. No. Don’t you dare cry.
She sniffed a little and blinked a lot until she finally got herself under control. Then she strode out of the room with her sweaters over her arm and that stupid pair of sandals dangling from her fingers.
Damn it, damn it! How had everything gotten all turned around? She hadn’t wanted to fight with him. She’d wanted to make up with him and enjoy all the perks that went along with that. She missed his big, strong body wrapped around hers at night, his warm breath against her ear, the slow, steady beating of his heart. Just the idea of him holding another woman like that was more than she could bear.
She went back into the living room, where Dale and Cliff were whooping up a storm over a Cowboys touchdown. At the sound of her footsteps, Cliff turned around. His smile evaporated, and he gave her a look that said he hoped she wasn’t thinking about grabbing a few cups and saucers to use as projectiles.
Dale didn’t bother to look at her at all.
Tonya left the house, resisting the urge to slam the door behind her. She got into her car and reached down to start the engine, only to have her eyes fill with tears again.
Men cheat.
She’d heard her mother say that since Tonya was old enough to remember. With three cheating husbands, her mother probably knew what she was talking about. The minute you give a man an inch, she always said, he’ll take a mile.
And her mother had never given an inch. Not one.
Tonya still remembered cowering in the hall when she was seven years old, listening to her mother screaming accusations at her father. When he left for work the next day, her mother had dumped his stuff on the front lawn and changed the locks on the doors, telling Tonya that her father was gone and to quit crying because they were better off without him.
Two stepfathers came next, and the story was the same. Through it all, Tonya grew more and more suspicious of men and their motives. At the same time she would lie awake at night and imagine a forever kind of love with a man who would want her and only her. It was nothing but a fairy tale, of course, but that didn’t keep her from wanting it.
Then, when she was twenty-three, Jared had come into her life, a charming motorcycle mechanic with a line of bull a mile long. Six months into a marriage that seemed to be going along just fine, she saw his car parked at a no-tell motel on the east side of town. When she confronted him about it later, he spun some story about stopping by to see a buddy from out of town who was staying there.
Relieved, she had told the other stylists at work what had really been going on. To her surprise, they had laughed out loud. Tonya had shouted at them to shut up, telling them that Jared loved her and would never cheat on her. A week later she had dropped by his shop unexpectedly and found him and a slutty little blonde going at it on the ugly vinyl sofa in his office, and she wondered how many other times it had happened that she’d never known about. That was the moment she had come to believe wholeheartedly that her mother was right.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
Eventually she’d had to tell the girls what had happened and face the humiliation. They’d acted sympathetic, but she could see that look in their eyes. You’re such a sap. Didn’t we tell you he was a cheating fool?
Tonya had walked away from that experience wondering if, like red hair or brown eyes, attracting cheating men ran in families, and for the next twelve years she believed that her dream of a forever kind of love was well and truly gone.
Then she met Dale.
She turned and looked back at the house, at Dale lounging on the sofa. No matter how big a fool it made her, she still wanted him so much she could barely breathe. She thought she’d been in love with Jared, but she knew now that she couldn’t possibly have been because he had never made her feel the hot, breathless, swooping sensation that came over her every time she looked at Dale.
But now everything was a big, fat mess. Was she supposed to listen to his lame excuses the way she’d listened to Jared’s? Defend him? Tell everyone that even though it looked bad, of course he’d never cheat on her?
If she did, she had the most terrible feeling that the joke was going to be on her again.
She wiped away her tears and started the car, intending to go to her apartment and stay there until hell froze over if she had to. She refused to be a silly little fool who went back to a cheating man as if she had no self-respect at all. Unless he apologized and promised never to do it again, Dale wasn’t going to have a chance of getting her back.
At nine o’clock the next morning, Monica sat in the lobby of Cargill & Associates, a cramped office inside a low-rent building filled with plastic ferns, walnut-veneer furniture and dollar-store art. Behind the reception desk sat a young redhead with a ring on every finger and probably a few on her toes, sipping a cup of Starbucks. On Monica’s arrival, the woman had her fill out the obligatory application. She said Mr. Cargill was tied up right now, but he’d be with her in a minute, then turned her attention back to a dog-eared copy of Cosmopolitan, moving her lips as she read about the seven ways to drive her boyfriend wild in bed.
Monica closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm her churning stomach. How in the hell had it come to this?
Thirty-two résumés, eleven job applications, four interviews and four no-thank-yous. That was how.
No. She had to stop thinking about how she’d failed so far and focus instead on how she could succeed. She knew how lightweight her résumé was, so she was going to have to compensate for her lack of skills in other ways.
She unfastened another button of her blouse and spread the neck apart, calling attention to the one asset of hers that men had never been able to ignore. She turned in her chair to allow the slit of her skirt to inch open farther. Then she pulled her shoulders back, lifted her nose a notch and assumed an air of total indifference, because the only people who got jobs were those who acted as if they didn’t need them, even though she needed this one badly. Once Cargill came out to the lobby and she had his attention, she’d slink into his office like a lioness and go in for the kill.
She heard a door open. “Ms. Saltzman?”
Count to three, she told herself. Don’t act too eager.
With a studied grace that came from all her beauty pageant years, Monica slowly turned her head for her first look at her future boss. And for another count of three, she gritted her teeth and tried not to cry.
She was used to bosses who wore raw silk and Italian leather. This guy was double-knit polyester and leatherette. He was pushing sixty, with a shiny scalp showing through an embarrassing comb-over and a hefty set of jowls tumbling over his shirt collar. If the guy happened to smile, which at the moment didn’t seem likely, she was sure he’d have tobacco-stained teeth.