My standard line flew to my lips, something about tabloids functioning as a source of entertainment, not news, quirky pieces of fiction that people could read and chuckle over before facing the horrors of the daily paper. I choked it back and forced myself to smile up at him.
“I did a Hell Spawn feature once,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. “That’s True News’s version of Bat Boy. I covered his graduation from kindergarten. He was so cute with a little mortarboard perched on his horns…”
I crossed my fingers under my cocktail napkin and prayed for “the look,” the curl of the lip, the widening of the eyes as they frantically searched for an escape. Escape would be so easy—a crowded museum gala, everyone in evening wear—come on, Douglas, just excuse yourself to use the bathroom and conveniently forget where you left me…
He threw back his head and laughed. “Hell Spawn’s kindergarten graduation? Now that’s a fun job. You know what the highlight of my workweek is? Nine holes of golf with the other AVPs.”
See, now that was the problem with guys like Douglas—they weren’t evil. Boring, boorish and borderline obnoxious, but not so awful that you could justify abandoning them. So you were stuck hoping they’d be the ones to declare the date a dud, and beg off early.
Dinner had been a mistake. I should have insisted we meet here, at the party, so if things didn’t go well, we’d have only been sentenced to a couple hours of each other’s company. But he invited me to dinner first, and even as I’d been thinking No! my mouth had done the right thing, the polite thing, and said, “Sure, dinner would be great.”
I’d spent forty-five minutes at the table by myself, fending off sympathetic “you’ve been stood up” looks from the servers and watching my salad wither on the plate. Then Douglas had arrived…and I’d spent the next hour listening to him complain about the cause of his lateness, some corporate calamity too complex for my layperson’s brain to comprehend. It wasn’t until we were here at the opening of the museum’s new wing that he’d even gotten around to asking what I did for a living.
“So what’s the weirdest story you’ve ever covered?” he asked.
I laughed. “Oh, there would be plenty of contenders for that one. Just last week I had this UFO—”
“What about celebrities?” he cut in. “Tabloids cover that, right? Celebrity gossip? What’s the best one of those stories you’ve done?”
“Ummm, none. True News includes some celebrity stories, but I’m strictly the ‘weird tales’ girl, mainly paranormal, although—”
“Paranormal? Like ghosts?” Again, he didn’t wait for me to answer. “Our frat house was supposed to be haunted. Frederick and I—your brother-in-law and I were frat brothers, but I guess your mother told you that. Anyway, one night…”
My poor mother. Reduced to canvassing my sister’s husband’s college buddies for potential mates for her youngest child. She’d long since gone through every eligible bachelor she knew personally.
“I don’t need you to find me dates, Mom,” I said the last time, as I’d said the hundred times before. “I’m not so bad at it myself.”
“Dates, yes. Relationships, no. I swear, Hope, you go out of your way to find men you wouldn’t want to know for more than a weekend. Yes, I know, you’re only twenty-six, hardly an old maid, and I’m not saying you need to settle down, but you could really use some stability in your life, dear. I know you’ve had a rough go of it…”
What do you expect? I wanted to say sometimes. You gave me a demon for a dad. Of course, that wasn’t fair. Mom didn’t know what my father was. I’d been born nine months after my parents separated, and grown up assuming, like everyone else, that I was my father’s “parting shot” before he’d run off with his nurse.
Only at eighteen had I begun to suspect otherwise, when I’d realized that my feelings of being “different” were more than adolescent alienation.
Douglas finished his haunted frat house story, then asked, “So what kind of education does a tabloid writer need? Obviously you don’t go to journalism school for that.”
“Actually, I did.”
He had the grace to flush. “Oh, uh…but you wouldn’t need to, right? I mean, it’s not real reporting or anything.”
I searched his face for some sign of condescension. None. He was a jerk, but not a malicious one. Damn. Another excuse lost. I had a half-dozen girlfriends who wouldn’t need a justification for ending this date early, who’d just cut and run. So why couldn’t I? I was half-demon, for God’s sake. I could be as nasty as I wanted.