Playing By The Rules. Beverly Bird

it is that we expect to have happen to them while we’re not actually looking at them. It’s just a compulsion, and maybe it’s a selfish one at that. Because in the back of your mind, you know that the only way you can really settle down and get some rest yourself—or write lists, as the case might be—is if your child is genuinely zonked for the duration of the night.

      Since Chloe appeared to be sincerely zonked, I went to my briefcase, found a legal pad and a pen, and carried them back to my own bed with me. Impulsively I took the last of the wine and the shrimp, too. Two hours later I was surprised by how hard it was for me to come up with the ground rules Sam wanted.

      Who needed guidelines? I thought. I figured we’d just pretty much stay the way we were, except we’d…do the sex thing. I’d get to touch him with impunity. I’d finally get to drive my fingers into that great, dark hair of his, touch it when it fell down over his forehead the way it did. I’d get him—and Grace’s theories—out of my system.

      Still, I figured I needed to come up with my own bill of rights if only to keep in the spirit of things, so I spent much of the rest of the night on my list. I still wasn’t satisfied with it when I tucked my car into the municipal parking lot at twelve-thirty the following afternoon.

      Sam was already standing on the corner beside the hotdog vendor. The spider monkey—or chimpanzee, or whatever it was—was perched on his shoulder. Sam should have looked ridiculous. Instead, something airy filled my legs at the sight of him.

      I got out of my car and rooted in my trunk for my briefcase, wondering if this wobbly-leg business was going to be a new phenomenon while our arrangement was in place. I could only hope that it would go away as things wore on.

      His back was to me and he didn’t see me approach. I was able to step up behind him before I spoke. “Boo.”

      He turned. The monkey began chattering. It swiped an eerily human hand in my direction and I jumped back. I did not like the beast. However, like so many females, she was crazy about Sam.

      “She has a crush on you,” I said.

      It was an opinion I’d shared before, but this time Sam wiggled his brows at me. “Jealous?”

      “I am beside myself with anguish. Where’s my hot dog?”

      “Anguish obviously doesn’t affect your appetite.”

      “Not a bit.” The vendor held a hot dog in my direction, gooey with melted cheese and fried onions, just the way I like it. The monkey made a grab for it. “Back off,” I warned. “Mine.”

      “See?” Sam said to Julio, the vendor. “She’s jealous.”

      I took a bite. “I was referring to my meal. He’s paying this time,” I said to Julio. The poor guy’s gaze was whipping back and forth between us now. He seemed confused and wary.

      “We have an arrangement,” Sam told him, then he looked at me again. “By the way, it’s started now, right?”

      Things danced inside me. I managed to nod. “But if you call me something like doll, I’ll clock you.” It was one of the few rules I’d been able to come up with last night. No saccharine endearments. I’d included this mostly because I’d overheard a good many of Sam’s over the last six months, and they all tended to be nauseating.

      He shook his head seriously. “Doll? I don’t think that particular term has ever passed my lips.” He bit down into his own hot dog. The monkey did not try to take his.

      “Yes, it did,” I said. “With that redhead.”

      “What redhead?”

      “A couple of months ago. The one in the rust-colored spandex. We arrived home at the same time—me and Frank and you and her. And when you opened the door for her, I distinctly remember hearing you call her doll.”

      “Oh, that redhead. Of course I did. That was her name.”

      I laughed. “Doll?”

      “Eee. Doll-y.” He grinned that crooked grin. “So do we have a marriage or what?”

      The last bite of my hot dog jammed in my throat. I swallowed hard to push it down. Last night he’d been calling this thing an arrangement, and now he was talking about marriage? I felt like I’d fallen asleep in the theater and woken up at the end of the movie. “Come again?”

      “The Woodsens,” Sam explained. Then he lifted the little monkey from his shoulder. “There now, darling,” he cooed to her, giving her back to the vendor. “I’ll be back before you know it.” He picked up his briefcase from the sidewalk and headed toward the courthouse steps.

      The Woodsens, I thought. He was talking about the Woodsens. Of course he was. I paid the vendor without even thinking about it—because Sam hadn’t—and I went after him.

      “Did you talk to Lisa?” he asked when I caught up.

      “Yes. She’s says she’ll attempt a reconciliation rather than lose her kids.” We were back in lawyer mode. There was a great deal of comfort to be found there. Not that I didn’t want to proceed with our arrangement. I did. But I was finding that it was a little like walking a tightrope, and every once in a while it just seemed best to step down and plant my feet on solid ground again.

      “It’s never going to work if that’s her attitude,” Sam said.

      “He dumped her and filed for divorce over a simple medical problem!” I protested.

      “Simple medical problem?” Sam laughed as we trotted up the steps. “Is that politically correct for running around the house naked?”

      “Only when your partner perceives it as an invasion from Pluto.”

      We stopped in front of the big oak doors. “Lyle’s going to need more of an enthusiastic response than that,” Sam insisted. “That’s all I’m saying.”

      “And he’ll get it. Eventually. She’s just going to make him jump through a few hoops first.”

      “See all the games and garbage we can avoid with our arrangement? Doll?”

      I laughed, but I think it came out a little hoarsely. “What else are we avoiding?” I asked him. “Did you decide on your ground rules yet?”

      “Sure. They didn’t take much thought.”

      For a brief moment, I hated him. “Great,” I said. “So you go first.”

      “All right. No sleepovers. Also no sharing of toothbrushes. Those two sort of go hand in hand.”

      I frowned. They fell into my “companionship” category, but I had been getting by without that sort of thing for a while now and I figured I could keep on doing it. “Okay.” But then my curiosity got the better of me. “Why not?”

      “It’s just part of keeping it uncomplicated,” he said. “It will be neater if we just keep all that cuddly stuff out of it. You know, that’s always where I get into trouble.”

      “With cuddly stuff?”

      “Yeah. That’s the point of this, right? We’re friends. We don’t have to cuddle. We don’t hold hands. We’re talking sex and companionship here. Period.”

      He didn’t seem awkward with it today. He really had it down. “My turn,” I said, and I latched on to the rule I’d mentioned earlier—in part because for a moment I couldn’t remember any of the others. “None of those endearments of yours. Absolutely no…you know…darlings and dolls and snookums and babycakes.”

      “Honestly, Mandy, you’re not the babycakes type.”

      I wasn’t sure if I was insulted or pleased. I decided not to try to figure it out.

      “No complaining or handing out guilt trips,” he said, ticking off another rule on the fingers of his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding his briefcase.

      Now