Free Yarrow by Charles DeLint

she said.

7

    Tuesday Night

    Lisa Henderson hurried south along Bank Street, turned left on Sunnyside then right on Willard. She glanced at her watch: 9:45. Her mother was going to kill her. She'd promised to phone her before nine to make arrangements for her birthday dinner on the weekend. "Now are you sure that's what you want for dinner, dear? Roast chicken, broccoli, and scalloped potatoes? It seems rather plain. And I do think you should bring a friend— like that nice young man with the mustache. No? Well, call me on Tuesday, before nine, just to be sure. Now you won't forget?"
    Except she had forgotten, because after work she'd gone for a coffee with Brad Windsor— who didn't have a mustache like Jon Fisher, whom she'd stopped seeing a month ago, though her mother didn't know that yet— and ended up having dinner with him and spending the better part of three hours just talking. Brad was nice. He listened to what she had to say, didn't peel away her clothes with his eyes, and… well, so far as she could see, he just didn't have any bad habits.
    Lisa worked at Rhapsody Rag Market— a clothing store close to the corner of Bank and Cooper that sold the kind of clothes she wore, uptempo folksy in natural fibers. She was twenty-three— twenty-four on Saturday— and a graduate of Carleton University, where she'd acquired a B.A. in English that didn't do much for her except make her mother happy.
    As she reached the half-double that housed her second-floor apartment and was digging about in her purse for her keys, she glanced at the darkened windows of the adjoining double, wondering, not for the first time, just exactly what the fellow who lived in there was like. He was such a dreamboat. If only he wasn't so standoffish. Everytime she'd tried to strike up a conversation with him, it went absolutely nowhere.
    She gave a mental shrug as she ran up the steps to her own house. What she should be doing was getting an excuse ready for her mother, not mooning over the man next door. Her mother— Ottawa's expert in emotional blackmail, but still the only mother she had. Now let's see. We had to do inventory— no, she'd used that one last month. Then… She smiled wickedly as she fit her key into the lock of her apartment door.
    She should just tell her mother the truth. Something like: you see, Mom, I've been seeing a lot of different guys, sleeping with some of them too, but I haven't met anyone I feel really serious about yet. Her mother, she knew, would have a cardiac arrest on the spot. And if she survived the heart attack, Lisa would never hear the end of it. "Bad enough you live on your own, unmarried as you are, but to throw yourself around like some common prostitute…"
    Lisa sighed. Some parents changed with the times while others— like her own— never lifted their eyes from their own narrow view of the world. The best thing to do was to say that she ate out and forgot the time, then listen to her mother sigh and moan and wonder aloud how she could have raised such a thoughtless daughter, and leave it at that. Anything else and she was just asking for trouble.
    The phone started to ring as soon as she got her door open. There was no need to guess who that would be.
    Debbie had the evening to herself for a change and was enjoying the quiet. After a light dinner of a spinach and feta-cheese salad, washed down with a glass of white wine, she took a long leisurely bath, then watched Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Three's Company while her hair was drying. She passed up 9 to 5— she'd liked the movie better anyway— to try on her new dress.
    It was low-cut, gathered tight at the waist, the skirt falling loosely to her knees— a little slinkier than she'd originally planned on, but she hadn't been able to resist the way it accentuated her figure when she'd tried it on in the store. She studied herself in the mirror, with her blonde hair pulled up in a loose bun and wearing a pair of spiky high heels— the