Younger by Pamela Redmond Satran Page B

if you’re really hooking up with him.”
    I hesitated, partly because I realized I wasn’t really sure what hooking up meant. Dating? Having sex? Pledging eternal conjoinment? Whatever, I decided, if it meant getting out of a blind date with a friend of Thad’s.
    â€œAll right,” I said finally. “But I have to call him on my phone.”
    â€œWhy do you have to call him on your phone?”
    Because I don’t know his phone number. Because, under the circumstances, it’s lucky I remember that at least he programmed his number into my phone, which I retrieved from my bag, trying to think.
    â€œHe won’t answer if he doesn’t know the incoming number,” I told Lindsay, finding Josh in my phone book, holding my breath as I pushed Send. Lindsay stood above me, still naked, her arms crossed over her high little breasts. I listened to the phone ring, and prayed for voice mail.
    Instead I heard Josh’s voice. “Okay, I understand,” he said.
    â€œThis is Alice,” I said. It sounded as if he’d been expecting someone else.
    â€œI know,” he said. “I’m telling you I understand why you blew me off the other night.”
    â€œI couldn’t—,” I began.
    â€œI know,” he said.
    â€œI thought about it,” I said truthfully. There was something about him that made me want to tell the truth.
    â€œFavorably?”
    I laughed. “At times.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” he said. On the phone, his voice sounded as warm as his eyes had looked on New Year’s Eve. “You’re here now.”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I’m here.”
    I sat there with the phone pressed to my ear, staring at the orange metal locker, thinking of him, until Lindsay, whom I’d nearly forgotten was standing above me, cleared her throat.
    â€œMy new friend Lindsay from work wants me to invite you to a dinner party on Saturday night,” I said.
    â€œYou got a job,” he said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhere?”
    Lindsay began drumming her fingers against her creamy thigh.
    â€œI’ll tell you on Saturday,” I said. “If you want. If you’re free. Which you’re probably not.”
    â€œI’m not,” he said.
    â€œOh, good,” I said, though I found to my surprise that I was disappointed.
    â€œGood? So you don’t really want me to come?”
    â€œI do,” I said. “I thought it might not be your thing.”
    Lindsay nudged me in the shin with a pedicured toe, and I turned all the way away from her.
    Did people still call something they liked their “thing”? In exactly how many ways was I making an idiot of myself?
    â€œSeeing you is my thing,” he said. “If we could leave the dinner party a little early, I could get to this other place a little late. Do you like rock music?”
    I knew the right answer was yes. But I gave him the true answer: “No.”
    He laughed. “A friend of mine is in a band that’s playing at a club downtown, and I told him I’d go see him. So how about if I go to the dinner party with you, and then you come to the club with me.”
    â€œAll right,” I said.
    Then I hung up and sat there, so lost in thought I really did lose sight of Lindsay and everything else around me. I had my first date in nearly a quarter of a century.

Chapter 8
    I t was when I was getting dressed for Lindsay’s dinner party that Diana called. Maggie was reclining on the chaise—trying to “baby,” as she put it, the embryo she hoped had taken hold inside her—flipping through a Japanese style magazine and passing judgment on everything I tried on. Negative judgment. She thought I should wear the old jeans of Diana’s I’d grabbed when I left home, but I was afraid Thad would consider them too casual. I couldn’t stand Thad, but I still wanted him to think well of me.
    â€œWhatever you