Page 41 of College Town

Tommy’s fiancée stands over them, tall, slender, lovely. She’s got her hair pulled back in the front with a narrow, glittering headband, and her forest green dress winks and shimmers as she shifts her weight from one high-heeled foot to the other. She wears lots of makeup, but it’s too tastefully done to look garish or out of place. She holds an elegant clutch bag at her waist, the massive rock on her left hand scattering a glitter ball’s array of reflections across the table.

“What?” Dana asks.

The fiancée says, “You’re Lawson Granger, yes?” She has an accent. If he’s not mistaken, it’s a Russian accent, and doesn’t that just make this whole disaster even trippier?

“No,” he says, tongue wooden in his mouth. It’s “no” or “why the fuck won’t you people leave me alone,” and the former seems like the politer option.

“No?” She narrows her kohl-ringed eyes at him, not believing him for a second. Blue eyes. A very brilliant, icy blue, two shades paler than his own.

Maybe Tommy likes blue eyes, he thinks, like a man who enjoys torturing himself.He found a pair in a much, much prettier package.

“Law,” Dana says. “Who is this?”

Before Lawson can formulate an answer, the woman shuffles her bag around and offers her right hand to Dana. “I’m Natalia Plotnikov. I am engaged to be married to Tom Cattaneo.”

Lawson abhors the way she says his name.Tom. The lilt of her accent onCattaneo. The way she sounds so sure, the way sheissure, because she’s wearing his ring, and she’s going to marry him.

He wants to climb beneath the table. Or jump through the window.

Dana gets big-eyed. Her lips work soundlessly a moment. Then she pulls herself together and shakes the offered hand. “Hi. Dana Newbury. And,” she adds, because she’s a terrible friend, “yes, that’s Lawson.”

Sorry, she mouths, when Lawson shoots her a desperate look.

The fiancée – Natalia – turns back to him. “Tom was very upset by what you said to him at your meeting. He came home angry and drank too much whiskey.”

Jesus Christ, Lawson thinks.

“Jesus Christ,” he says aloud.

“He is a good man,” Natalia continues, “but not so good at saying the right things, sometimes. He was yelling and…” She gestures sharply, the way Tommy did as a pre-teen and teen, the sharp swipes and the shaking fists that spoke of feelings too big to be contained by his small, seemingly-delicate body.

(He’s not delicate, he never was, and Lawson knows that, intimately. But others always discounted him, and it made him furious.)

“I told him, ‘Tom, you have to tell the man things the right way. You have to help him understand. Otherwise, he’ll make you upset again.’”

Dana’s gaze pings between the two of them, more shocked and disbelieving by the second.

Lawson’s brain is groaning, beeping, and whirring like an old dial-up AOL connection. Is hesurehe isn’t having a nightmare? This seems like prime nightmare material.

“I hope,” Natalia is still talking, “that you will talk to him again, and that he’ll get it right this time. And that he won’t say hurtful things to you.”

“Okay.” Lawson makes atime outT with both hands. “You’re engaged to him.”

“Yes.”

“And youwantme to talk to him.”

“Yes.”

“Fucking…why?”

She blinks, and tilts her head to a birdlike angle. Or perhaps he’s the bird in this scenario, and she’s a naturalist trying to understand his bizarre bird dance. “Weren’t you his lover?”

Dana gasps. Loudly and dramatically.

The two soccer moms at the next table whip around to see what the commotion’s about.

Lawson gapes at her a moment, trying to…thinking that…wondering…

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