Free Sleepless Nights by Sarah Bilston Page B

drafts and deals and rookies and the new season. Tom’s face lit up immediately. “I’m so glad to see you!” he said happily, and the two of them went out onto the deck.
    I fetched a bag of tortilla chips the size of a pillow case for them, then took myself off to bed with Samuel. As I lay in the darkness, I could hear their laughter echoing around the silent, watchful ranks of moonlit pines. All too soon, my son’s wails joined in.
    12
    Jeanie
    O f course, I made it quite clear to Paul that his Harvard-University-GQ-spread charms wouldn’t work on me.
    I heard him with Tom outside the first night, the night of his arrival. He was talking about dining with some Supreme Court judge, about going to Washington to meet with White House lawyer-types, about being asked by Bill Gates to advise on some charitable committee (“I said, Bill, sorry, just don’t think I have the time…”). Tom was clearly impressed. It sounded like humbug to me.
    He came inside to fetch some ice just as I was about to go to bed; I was standing by the kitchen sink, filling a glass with water. I stiffened as I caught sight of him. “Hey, Jeanie,” he said softly, coming up behind me and standing a little too close (I felt his breath in the hairs of my neck, just beneath my ponytail). “I’m sorry about earlier. Really. I was a bit—um—surprised when I walked in.”
    I moved away, and stared him down. “You behaved despicably,” I told him. (Actually I stumbled a bit, added a syllable, and came out with “despicabibly,” but I think he got the point; note to self: avoid polysyllabic words in moments of high drama.) “We have to live in the same house for the next few days, I realize,” I went on, reaching for the tones of an English grande dame, Peggy Ashcroft perhaps, or Maggie Smith as an E. M. Forster Edwardian; “but I can assure you I shall avoid you as much as I possibly can.” We looked at each other for a moment, then I turned on my heel and left the room with the fuck-you poise of one dressed in rustling silks. (It’s unfortunate that I was wearing my bunny slippers at the time, but I’m fairly sure my cool demeanor overcame the effect of the pink floppy ears.)
    Frankly I felt he had an ulterior motive. He clearly imagined a few polite words and a cocked half-smile would be enough to win me over, most likely into his bed. He was about to learn that English girls were more discerning.
    Americans seemed to think the British were uptight, but I’d yet to meet an English lad half as uptight as these American city types. Work was what defined them. I couldn’t quite tell what they did for kicks, or if they even liked having fun. While other Americans were busy pursuing happiness, to these men it seemed almost incidental. They were so busy working they’d forgotten how to enjoy life.
    Take Paul, for example, I mused, as I brushed my teeth. Oh, he had muscles—but not the muscles of a man who spent his life in the hot oily place under a car. Paul had the small, tight, well-defined, perfectly proportioned biceps of a man who attended a sleek white gym in Manhattan. Who’d sweat discreetly while sliding polished shiny dumbbells up and down a polished shiny rack. I can see him now, I thought irritably, sliding into the sofa-bed; I can see him,wiping three drops of rogue perspiration off his forehead with a fluffy white towel slung casually around his neck. Because he won’t want to get his high-thread-count organic cotton T-shirt dirty, will he? Certainly not! He’s got a certain standard of personal grooming to maintain. He finishes his circuit then pops into the sauna to open his pores, and before he heads back to the office he slips a comb of citrus gel through his hair.
    Paul wasn’t the kind of man who’d pull a sickie to take you to the zoo. He obviously spent eighteen hours a day at work, got home at midnight, gave his slumbering wife a chaste kiss, then leaped out of bed at five a.m. to face another exciting day of