4 - Waiting Game

“Make that two orders of Schezuan chicken,” the take-out clerk called to the cook in the kitchen of the Red Egg Restaurant.  They sold so many orders of the popular dish that  the similarity in his back-to-back orders was as unremarkable as the SoHo and Tribeca addresses to which they would be delivered. 

“Feng.  Li,” the same clerk called only moments later, both orders ready to leave the restaurant.    The two delivery boys came in from the back alley, where they’d been taking a quick break.  “Penthouse at 158 Mercer,” was the instruction given with the first brown bag.  The second identical order was dispatched with a gruff, “80 Leonard Street.  5B.”

Both boys hurried out with their orders, knowing that quick service meant a larger tip.

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“Thanks, man.” Jon passed the delivery boy a ten dollar bill.  If the restaurant could get his food to him in under half an hour, he usually threw in a little extra for the kid who ran his ass off to make it happen.  On the off chance they got it there in less than twenty minutes, he threw in a lot extra.  Tonight, it was just a little.

The front door closed and, phone tucked into his shoulder, he took his dinner to the kitchen and put it on the counter. 

“Yeah, Mom, I know, but Christmas is still almost three weeks away.”

“You have tours planned in your head for two years from now,” she countered with a dry humor.  “Excuse me if I want to make sure I have all my children and grandchildren together for the holiday.”

Pulling a stoneware plate from the cabinet with a muffled clank against its cabinet-mates, Jon frowned briefly.  A big family get-together wasn’t foremost in his mind right now.  He was more interested in an intimate tete-a-tete. 

Sheridan hadn’t called today.  He got delivery confirmation of the honor bar at about two o’clock this afternoon.  It was now eight and not a damn word. 

“Would I disappoint you?  You’ll have me and all my babies.  I can’t vouch for Matt and Tony.”

“Four o’clock Christmas day.  We’re having dinner at five on the dot.  Promise me.”

Jon loved his mother as much as any other grown man did.  Probably more, but she was in an unfortunate position.  When the phone rang, it had been her instead of a certain tropical memory.

“For cryin’ out loud, I said we’d be there.  Goddammit!”  Jon hissed after pulling the aluminum-bottomed food container from the bag.  It dropped to the countertop with a metallic ‘plop’.  He had no fucking idea how the Chinese restaurants got the food so hot that the damn container still burned the ever-living shit out of you half an hour later.  Did they have a communal nuclear reactor?

“John Francis, you don’t talk to your mother that way.”  She was blasé about her chastisement, well-acclimated to the colorful language of her sons and husband.  At most, it could be called a bland lesson in manners.

“I wasn’t cussing at you.  I burned my hand.”

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“Goddammit!”  Sheridan dropped the take-out container as quickly as she’d plucked it out of the bag.  The Schezuan chicken landed on the marble countertop with a muffled ‘plop’. 

“Sheridan Nicole, I know it’s a huge inconvenience for you to come home and actually see your family for a change, but I don’t think you need to resort to swearing at me.”

“I’m not swearing at you.  I burned my hand.”  Using her wrist, she flipped up the handle that would start cold water running in the kitchen sink.  Plunging her wounded hand under the soothing flow, she caustically remarked, “I think they use nuclear radiation to heat Chinese takeout.”

“Don’t you ever cook?  I can’t believe you don’t weigh three hundred pounds with all the takeout you eat.”

Defending her eating habits to her mother was at the bottom of her list of entertainment activities right now.  Drowning her common sense in the honor bar was currently ranked number one the list.  She had resisted temptation and talked herself out of calling Jon at least half a dozen times in the last six hours, but it was getting harder as the evening progressed.   When her common sense dissolved into ‘what if’ fantasies, food became her new diversionary tactic.

Sheridan sighed, shutting the faucet off and blotting at her hand with a kitchen towel.  It looked like she would live.

“Neither can I, Mom.  It’s one of the great anomalies of the world.  Black holes, the Bermuda Triangle and my lack of obesity.”

“I can see you’re in one of your moods, so I’m going to hang up now, but I will be calling you tomorrow.  And if you ignore my phone calls, I’ll simply enlist the help of your siblings.  I want you home for Christmas, Sheridan.”

It wouldn’t do any good to explain to her mother that she had planned on coming all along.  If she told her that, then she would have to tell her why she wasn’t trying to dodge familial obligation this time around.  Pam Norris had spent the last fifteen Decembers using all of her persuasive powers to goad her youngest child into coming home for Christmas.  Sheridan felt, at this point, it was one of their holiday traditions.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?  My dinner is going to get cold.” 

Probably not until morning, but whatever.

Having successfully deterred her mother for another day, Sheridan fixed her plate and took it the few necessary steps to the dining table, which she had already set with a placemat, napkin and silverware. 

The domestic touches had started coming out not long after she moved in.  She’d always bypassed the formalities due to time constraints, but now that time wasn’t an issue, it was kind of nice to indulge a little.

That’s not all I want to indulge in.

Sheridan looked at the little refrigerator that had been pushed against the wall, biting her lip with indecision.  She hadn’t called him, and had no intention of doing so.  Nothing could top their time together in Jamaica.  Reality simply couldn’t compete with that one surreal night, and drinking his alcohol now meant…

It meant she would be allowing herself to entertain a pleasant memory with dinner.   Nothing more.

There were half a dozen varieties of adult beverage in teeny little bottles – whiskey, rum, gin, tequila, wine of all different sorts.

If you’re going to have the memory you might as well make it accurate.

Sheridan selected the Pinot Grigio – make that two – to fill her glass.  It might not be the exactly same wine that she shared with Jon, but it was close enough.

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The white wine, his favorite bastard Pinot Grigio, splashed in the bowl of his glass like a pastel tidal wave, and he inhaled its subtle aroma with pleasure.  Pinot Grigio was the red-headed stepchild of the wine world, but Jon had never cared much about public appearance.   Screw ‘em.  He liked what he liked.

Glass overfilled to an improper level, he set the bottle next to it on the kitchen table.  It wasn’t often he ate home alone, and when he did it was generally a salad or pizza in front of CNN – or whatever ballgame happened to be playing.  Tonight though, he was in the mood for something a little different.  So he turned on the sound system, picking one of satellite radio’s classic rock stations, and sat at the table to eat his dinner for the first time in forever.

Damn chicken is still scalding.

He chased the bite of hot food with a healthy swallow of his wine.  Leaving the food to cool a bit longer, he planted his elbows on the table and dangled the wineglass from his fingertips. 

As it had repeatedly in the last twenty-four hours, his mind took a trip to Jamaica and the beautiful woman who knocked on his door to ‘borrow a cup of electricity’.

Looks were good.  Hell, looks were great, but Sheridan’s willingness to forgo any games had the lit fuse on the explosive powder keg of their coupling.  For him anyway.  That, and her desire to dive right in and go at it without the long, drawn out foreplay that most women wanted.  It called to his inner caveman, who was ready for another bite of that tantalizing shoulder of hers.

He wielded the chopsticks and poked another bite of chicken into his mouth to satisfy his oral craving. 

You’re getting your foreplay now, aren’t you, ya smug bastard?  She still hasn’t called.

Which brought up another, looming problem. 

What was he going to do if she didn’t call?

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I’m not going to call.

She was in bed with the elegant comforter tucked around her legs, while she leaned against the dark walnut headboard.  After consuming four instances of ‘honor’ from Jon’s gift bar, bed was the best place for her to be. 

Not necessarily because she was feeling sleepy, but because she was feeling… flushed.  Attributing it to the alcohol alone would make her a bold faced liar, so she didn’t even go there.  When those small doses of booze infiltrated her bloodstream and mixed with the heady cocktail of a certain perfect storm, Sheridan’s body had overridden her mind.  She was aroused, and the lack of sexual partners since August only compounded the problem.

Call him.

She couldn’t.  Wouldn’t. 

In their short time together, Sheridan had been rocked and made to see enough stars to fill the Milky Way.  That qualified Jon Bon Jovi as the biggest rock star in her world.  Trying for the encore with a pre-orchestrated, pre-meditated, potentially awkward date was sure to bust him down to mere mortal status. 

There were enough mere mortals in the world.  She preferred to remember him as a rock star. 

With a sigh, she snuggled beneath the comforter, rolling onto her right hip.  The bottom nightstand drawer slid open easily, as it had a thousand times.  Her fingers automatically sought the most effective weapon in her arsenal of ‘toys’, grateful that she’d had the foresight to recently put in fresh batteries. 

Sheridan might not call him, but she certainly couldn’t be faulted for calling out his name.

Next update: Monday, October 1