Her talk to him about Miranda would consist of two words. "Aim higher."
"I am."
She laughed. At last a man who understood his worth. "Okay, you got me there. Still, I’m keeping my eye on you and my eyes open for someone more suitable."
"Gwennie? Suitable?" Ellen shook her head. "You don’t want to settle down with some tool. I saw a very nice looking janitor as we came into the cafeteria. A very fit sixty-ish, probably pulling retirement from another job too. Get yourself a double-dipper. They have more spending money."
Wow, could the morning get better? She was supposed to trawl the waters of retired men with second jobs. Dare she dream of hooking up with a chain store greeter? After twenty years of marriage gone in a puff of smoke, she planned to remain single for the time it took the universe to recover from the big bang. "Mom, I’m not looking for anything."
"Exactly. This time in your life is just about sex."
Guy laughed with his chin in the air, all white teeth and abandon.
Everyone turned to him, but he finished and went back to his cereal.
Gwen shook her head. "Nah."
"It was just the s word." Bryan lifted his hands. "In every language we’re tools."
Gwen quickly tallied her own success in the Jeopardy category of Interpersonal Relationships. She’d scored less than nothing, scars even, in the Max answer and less than nothing again in the Steve answer. What was the Jeopardy question? Who should not be in a relationship? Gwen whatever-her-last-name-is. "Bryan, in every language we’re all tools."
Chapter Six
Finish sweet with a kiss of chocolate.
Max felt like the teacher-voice in the Peanuts cartoon. The sleepy-eyed kid in his office wasn’t tracking anything, and he was saying, wah, wah, wahwah, wah. When had he become the boring adult? "Dalton, show me your last batch." He motioned to the beat-up back pack. The kid had something going for him. He wasn’t cruising campus with some fancy mall messenger bag.
He spotted his own messenger bag across the office. It was fancy leather, he supposed, but beat-up. And he’d bought it in Riyadh. Saudi shopping didn’t mean he was in danger of settling down. He’d tried that, hadn’t he?
The kid pulled out a handful of black and white photos, edges battered and bent from riding loose in the bag. Max let out a breath. Pick your battles. He took the mess and flicked through them. Red’s Bar and Grill. Old men playing poker was classic, but the kid was all over the place. "You need to be patient. Sometimes you’ll get into a rhythm, but mostly you’ve gotta watch and wait and then just get it."
He felt his own finger press down, a motion that caught, sometimes, a world. Watch and wait. Maybe he needed to take his own advice. He was beginning to see that avoiding Gwen wasn’t helping him, maybe it never had. He should just click, see what was going on with her, and move on.
He thumbed through a couple more photos, then, ah, there was a good one. He set the photo of a sharp-featured man, younger than the rest, on the desk. "Nice work with the shadows on his face, but anybody could have done that."
Dalton appeared to not listen at all, and Max fought a smile. Tough guy. He pointed to the subject’s eyes, waved his finger between them. "Sad."
Dalton’s head came up.
"Sharp face, sharp mind, but sad eyes. He’s wastin’ time playing cards and knows he’s living an old man’s life already."
Leaning forward, Dalton motioned to the grainy waitress behind the man. "I tried to get her in there clearer. The guy tried to get her to talk to him, but she ignored him just like she did the old dudes."
Max jabbed a finger at Dalton’s camera."You gotta lower the ISO. Really important in black and white. The lowest you can manage. You’re getting too much noise. Get the shot good and sharp. You can add grain later, but, man, it’s damn hard to take out."
"I tried, really tried on this one. I couldn’t get it. Man, ISO. Got it."
Max handed him the prints, sat back in his chair. "Get out there."
Dalton gathered the photos and started to shove them in his bag. He seemed to register Max’s sigh and instead dug around, found a Mylar envelope, and slid them in before heading to the door.