Sleeping Tigers Read Online Free PDF Page B

from Karin, angled into my neck. I might as well have worn a straight jacket and fish hooks.
    I gazed into the mug when Ed put it in front of me. The tea bag puffed and floated like a jellyfish, yellow gradually seeping into the steaming water and sending the aroma of spring grass into the room. What was I doing here? I didn’t know this man. And I hated herbal tea. What was the point of a hot beverage without caffeine?
    “So talk to me,” Ed said. His broad shoulders dwarfed the chair.
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Do you want to go back to Karin’s?”
    “I’m not sure.” I sighed. “I don’t even know what I’m doing in San Francisco, much less here in your apartment.” Ed was watching me closely, his eyes kind. Now that I saw him in good light, he looked older, closing in on forty. “I thought you were interested in Anna,” I confessed.
    “I am interested in Anna.”
    “So why didn’t you dance with her?”
    “Because I’m not interested in Anna the way I’m interested in you.”
    “She’s prettier.”
    “Debatable.”
    “Skinnier!”
    “True. But skinny isn’t necessarily a good thing. Anna strikes me as someone who would be very high maintenance. Anyway, why are you trying to get me interested in Anna, when you’re the one sitting in my apartment?” Ed took my hands in his. My hands felt small, safely enveloped, warm. “Are you hoping I’ll ask you to leave? Let you off the hook, so you won’t have to hurt my feelings? Sorry. That’s not going to happen.”
    I started to cry. A steady stream of tears rolled down my cheeks, as salty as the San Francisco fog. I sniffed, wiped my nose on a paper napkin and crumpled it. I tossed the ball into the trash basket near the window, banking it off the wall.
    “Good shot,” Ed observed.
    “Hours of playground basketball.”
    “I bet you’re a great teacher.”
    “You don’t know anything about me,” I sniffed.
    Ed’s gaze was steady. “Oh, but I do. You love to dance. You’re a terrific listener. You’re a good friend to Karin, who’s one of the dearest people in the world to me. Your left blue eye has a very interesting spot of brown. And you’ve got a luscious body.”
    I blew my nose on another napkin and tossed that one, too. The shot went in again. “You’re right. I’m a good teacher. My fourth graders love me. The parents love me. Even the principal thinks I walk on water. But get me out of a classroom, out of those four walls where I can plan every minute on paper, and my life is a wreck. Karin told you, I guess, that I’m just out of a relationship? That I was engaged, but broke it off?”
    Ed nodded. “I think what Karin said was, `Thank God she’s out of that one.’ But listen, Jordan, most people almost get married. A lot of us even go through with it. And then a lot of us get unmarried.”
    “Have you ever?”
    “Yep. You can’t get to my age and not be married at some point in your life.”
    “Why, how old are you?”
    “Forty-two.”
    Pretty old to be a poet and a model, I thought, never mind scampering around on carpenter’s scaffolding like a monkey. In my circle of friends back home, the fortysomethings were lining their ducks in a row to put children through college.
    “You don’t look that old,” I said.
    “I don’t feel that old. But I’m that experienced.”
    “Where’s your wife now?”
    Ed ran a finger around the edge of his mug. “She found herself a house and a man to keep her in it, so she left me. We don’t talk any more.”
    “How long ago did you get divorced?”
    “Eight years.”
    “What was she like?”
    He smiled, playing some private reel in his head. “The tough kind of woman you never realize is soft and hurting until it’s too late.”
    “Have you been in love with anyone since then?”
    Ed laughed. “You ask the worst questions. You must be a relentless elementary school teacher. Yes, of course I have.” He cocked his head at me. “You know, just because