Evvie Drake Starts Over(60)

“You know, speaking of that, I have to tell you something,” Evvie said. “I googled your girlfriends.”

“Ah,” he said. “You have questions.”

“They were all very pretty.”

“That’s not a question.”

“No, it’s an observation.”

“So,” he said. “You saw Melanie Kopps, she’s the redhead. An actress. My mom mentioned her. She was a very nice girl.”

“Woman.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Very nice woman. That was my most recent relationship. I dated her for about two years, and we broke up right at the end of my career. Bad breakup, unfortunately.”

Evvie frowned. “Because of the career stuff?”

Dean shook his head. “Not directly. It wasn’t the best time in the world to be spending a lot of time with me. I was doing all these treatments, I was a grump all the time. Plus people blamed her, and I couldn’t do anything about it. But I liked her very much. Who else do you want to ask me about?”

“You dated a surfer.”

“Lindsay,” he said. “That was a while ago. She was an athlete, so she got some of the weird stuff about me that women sometimes didn’t. Liked her a lot, too. That one had a very normal ending, right when I went to the Yankees. She was religious; it was a huge thing with her. And I grew up, you know, as a Christmas and Easter Presbyterian, and we couldn’t pull it together. It was only going to get worse if we got more serious.”

“And you dated Bev Bo.”

“That was about a year, year and a half, but on and off. That was before Melanie. Bev was just getting established. She was touring a lot—not high-end touring back then, but more like back-of-a-van touring. We’d meet up for these very hot weekends, but then we’d go off in different directions. That relationship got me through my first year in New York. She might be the smartest woman I ever dated. She majored in music theory in college.”

   “Did you learn anything?”

“About music theory, no. But come to think of it, I did learn that dirty texting is too fuckin’ embarrassing for me. I know everybody does it now, but I swear, the most boring things you do during sex sound totally deviant if you type them out. You’ve done something all your adult life and when you write it down, it’s like, ‘Who would do that?’ I remember trying to describe how I would kiss her shoulder—her fuckin’ shoulder!—and I felt like a farmer talking about how to knock up a horse. I might just be bad at it, though. Describing, not kissing.” He paused. “Are you blushing?”

“No,” she said. “I’m paying close attention.”

“Very wise, very wise,” he said. “Have you ever transcribed dirty talk?”

“I don’t know what you consider ‘dirty,’?” she said. “I transcribed an interview with a guy who was studying the female orgasm, but he had a way of making it sound like a…like a red wine.”

“Hm. Tell me more.”

“I’m not sure he was exactly a scientist. He had all these descriptive words for, you know, orgasms. He called different ones ‘hearty’ and ‘vibrant’ or ‘light’ and ‘superficial.’?”

“With oaky undertones,” he said.

“Right? It was very odd to me. But I wrote it all down. Weirdos are gonna weirdo. They’re part of the job.”

“I bet you read a lot when you were a kid,” Dean said, tilting his head a bit and, she was sure, picturing her as a funny little nerd, which she had, after all, been.

“I did,” she said. “But to be honest, my other big thing was the radio. My dad was out fishing six days a week for a lot of the year. He’d be gone from maybe five in the morning until dinner. Including all summer when I wasn’t in school. And once my mom left, that meant I was by myself a lot. We didn’t have cable, and we didn’t get very good reception, so I didn’t watch a lot of TV. I loved the radio, though. I didn’t even listen to things that were that good. I’d listen to this medical advice show, and people would call in and ask about things I didn’t know anything about, like bunions or goiters. I remember asking my dad what tennis elbow was when I was maybe ten, and he didn’t know either. I just listened, even if I didn’t really understand. Which is why, by the way, when I was in sixth grade, I wrote a story about a girl named Chlamydia. None of it meant anything to me, but every time there was a new person on the radio talking, it was like they could say anything. Anything could happen. There was a psychologist who would talk about grieving or divorce, which I thought was totally interesting but didn’t get. And I listened to a lot of news. All this public affairs stuff, local news. I liked hearing people talk.”

   “And you still do,” he said.

“I never thought about it that way, but yes, I guess so. And I learn a lot. When…well, when I lived in California, I transcribed exam review sessions for this guy who was studying aging skin. I practically bathed in sunscreen for the next five years.”

“Well, your skin looks good to me.”

She squirmed, and then she frowned. “I’m normal, you know. I hope you’re not expecting that I’m secretly an actress or a surfer under here.”