Jack paused, looking at me. Then turned to the woman next to him for the first time. “Jennie, can you make some calls?”
“Yes, Mr. Lawrence,” she said.
That was all it took. I left the bank and went shopping.
I bought food for the house. I got a haircut and a shave. I bought clothes, deciding I needed to look less like a recently released inmate and more like a normal person. Now I was wearing dark gray pants with a dress shirt of soft blue tucked into them, the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. I traded in my work boots for nicer shoes and added a belt, but I couldn’t buy a tie. I just couldn’t do it. In my mind, ties were for funerals and court appearances, not dates.
I made myself look back at Olivia, who was coming toward me through the restaurant lobby. Her dress, I realized when she came closer, was the wraparound kind, which meant there was a tie just over her left hip that would open up the whole dress. I realized too late that dress pants were a bad idea when you’ve been in prison for two years and you’re meeting a woman who makes your dick hard.
“Hey,” she said, coming closer. She looked me up and down. “You look nice.”
I smiled. My rolled-up sleeves showed the tattoo on my left arm, I knew. There was only so much nice I had in me. “This is as much as I clean up,” I warned her.
“Yeah, well.” She glanced down at herself. “This is as much as I clean up.”
She wasn’t wearing much makeup—it didn’t seem to be her thing—and no jewelry except a couple of small silver rings. But that dress. And that hair—that fucking hair. Curling down over her neck and shoulders, some of the wayward curls brushing against her skin. I’d looked down at it as she was on her knees for me in her kitchen, run my hands through it as she took me in her mouth.
On impulse, I took her hand and kissed her palm. “You look beautiful,” I said. I owed her for this. She should have told me to get the fuck out of her life the minute she saw me in her office. But she hadn’t, and now she was here.
I felt her shiver, and I let her go.
We walked into the restaurant and got seated at a table. It was a nice place, specializing in Italian and seafood, with big windows overlooking the streets and the water beyond. I ordered a beer and Olivia ordered a glass of wine, and when the waiter left, I said, “Okay, since you’re going to be wondering about it, I’ll tell you up front. While I was in prison, my grandfather died.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
It took me a second to figure that out. Was she sorry I’d inherited money? No, she was sorry my grandfather was dead. “Listen, don’t worry about that,” I said. “It’s fine. I didn’t know him. My point is that he left me some money.”
“Oh, I see.” She smiled. “Well, that’s nice, right? Getting a little money when you get out of prison. It means you don’t have to rush to find work.”
“It’s more than a little,” I said, “and there’s a house, too, which is why I said I have somewhere to stay. But I’ll get into that later. I just wanted you to know so you understand this.” I indicated the restaurant around us, the date. “Okay?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging. Our waiter came with our drinks and she raised her glass. “To good luck,” she said when I touched my glass to hers.
God, she was sweet. So sweet. I was going to take her to bed later and make her so happy she’d beg me to stop. But I smiled and toasted with her. “Have you always lived here?” I asked. That was what people asked on dates, right? I needed to try and be civilized instead of my usual dirty fucking self.
She shrugged, sipping her wine again. “No. I grew up in LA.”
“Your mother is an actress,” I said. “From that show. Avery’s Place.”
Olivia looked surprised. “Yes, she is. I thought you didn’t know it.”
“I’ve seen a few episodes.” In fact, when she’d told me her last name two years ago, I’d had no idea. But there was a TV in the prison common room, and the inmates liked to watch it. Avery’s Place was in constant reruns. I’d sat there bored out of my mind, and then I’d realized the actress playing Avery looked like Olivia, even though she was blond. Then I’d seen the name, and it clicked.
But she didn’t need to know that I’d only seen her mother’s show in prison.
“The show was a big hit at the time,” Olivia said. “Actually, during season two, she was pregnant with me. The screenwriters covered it by making the season about Avery’s trip to a fat farm.”
I’d seen that, too, on TV in prison. “So you were technically on TV before you were born,” I said.
“I was.” She smiled. “My one and only TV appearance. I don’t have the acting talent, but my sister Gwen does. She’s a natural.”
“She’s an actress?”
“No, she’s a strip-o-gram girl.” Olivia sighed, and her cheeks reddened. “We’ve tried to talk her out of it, Mom and me. She insists she likes it and the money is good.”
I drank my beer. “I didn’t know anyone still ordered strip-o-grams,” I said.
“They do. Birthdays, bachelor parties, retirements, that kind of thing. Gwen shows up, does a routine, strips, and leaves.”
I thought about that. I knew a few strippers, and none of them would say they liked their job, especially if they had other options. The sister was lying about that. I filed that away for later. “You don’t seem like an LA kind of woman,” I said.
She gave me a wry look. “I guess you would know.”
“Since I was born there, too, yeah, I’ve met a few.”
“I’ll admit I like it here better,” she said. “Especially the art galleries. This city has incredible art. Have you ever been to SFMOMA?”
I stared at her. I vaguely knew what that was—the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—but going there had crossed my mind about as often as going to Venus. “No.”
“I go all the time,” she said. “You can’t see everything in just one visit. That’s what makes it so great. I practically live there on my days off.”
Jesus. I was out of my league with this woman. “I know who your mom is, but where is your dad?” I asked.
“He died right after Gwen was born. Car accident. He was an actor, too, but he never made it as big as Mom did. He was trying to break into movies, but he’d only ever gotten bit roles. He never had his chance.”
“Jesus, that’s shitty,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Olivia looked at the tattoo on my left hand. “That makes me think of him a little,” she said, indicating my ink. “My father never got enough time.” She looked at me, then sipped her wine again. “I think you understand that. Like you know someone who didn’t have enough time.”
She had no fucking idea how right she was. I’d promised her once, I remembered, that I would tell her what the tattoo meant. But I found that right now, in the moment, I couldn’t say it. It was too hard. It wasn’t personal to Olivia, either. I never talked about the real origin of my tattoo with anyone. Ever.
While I was figuring out what to say, the waiter came, and we gave our orders. When we were finished, I had some words ready. “This is a lesson I learned early,” I said, brushing my fingers over the back of my hand. “I grew up in LA too, but on the streets. I saw a lot of people die young. My father split, and my mother died when I was sixteen. My brother ran away after she died. I’ve always felt like life is an hourglass that is running out. I got this to remind myself not to waste time, to be ready.”