Short Order

attention as becoming as I was finding his passion.
As he began to wind down, he was staring at me like I was a puzzle he had to solve.
“Mind if I ask you a couple of personal questions?” He’d stopped staring and was busy examining the table top.
“No. What do you want to know?” I thought I was pretty much an open book, so I couldn’t imagine what he was wondering about.
“Why green?”
“What? Excuse me?” What was green? Were we talking in code now?
He leaned toward me, lifted his hand, and gently gestured across the top of my stand-up haircut to the green tips.
“Oh, that.”
His hand jumped back to his nearly empty glass, and he retreated into his chair.
“Uh, I did it when I was a freshman, my first year of college. I didn’t want to be known as the ‘short guy’ like I had been during high school. I got the tattoo first and thought maybe people would pick up on it. But it was too subtle, I think. I could feel people starting to talk about me as the short guy and had to do something else.” I took a sip of beer and looked at him. “You get it, right?”
He nodded.
“My mom suggested a new hairstyle when I told her.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I have this girlfriend—you know, friend who is a girl—whose hair had gone from deep brick-red through royal purple, bouncing on each wedge of the color circle during our senior year in high school. When I told her what I was thinking, she pounced. She said green was the calming and relaxing color, the color that told strangers I was a friend and never a foe. She said green would keep me safe. She also knew I was a plant nerd and was studying botany.”
John was grinning at me by the time I finished my explanation.
“So you’re a—”
“If you say leprechaun, I’ll slug you.”
He sat back in his chair like I had hit him, a look of horror on his face. Yeah, I got it. As a short guy like me, he’d obviously heard one too many leprechaun jokes in his life.
“No. I’d never call you that.” His usually soothing baritone sounded strained, like he was recovering from a fist to the chest.
“It’s okay. I’ve been called worse,” I assured him.
We sat for a few minutes finishing up our beers. So much for our first date. The short-guy name-calling had obviously upset him a lot more when he was growing up than it had me. And it had pissed me off no end. The green hadn’t done its job this time. I’d just managed to remind him of something painful instead of being a relaxing and calming drinking companion. Damn.
I put on my coat and watched as John walked to the bar and settled up with Stone. He seemed calmer now, like he’d decided to ignore whatever had been bothering him.
Before we got to the outside door, he stopped and looked over at me. He squinted and shook his head.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking me in the eye. “I don’t know why I…”
Yeah, well, I didn’t know why he did either. But I nodded. “No problem.”
He kinda grinned, more a grimace, but I got the idea and accepted his apology.
I was so exhausted when we got back to Blue Cottage, I could barely drag up a smile when John stopped me before I went in.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I had fun. We should do it again.”
He might even have been serious. Who knows?
* * * *
A couple of days later as I left to go to work, a portly, older guy was knocking at John’s door. The guy turned as I rounded the corner of the porch on my way to my truck.
“Hey! You know if a guy named John Barton lives here?” His voice reeked of too much booze and smoker’s throat. He wore a rumpled but tailored wool suit like only those born with money can. I’d seen enough of them in grad school, being dragged to the labs and greenhouses as the deans pitched for research money. Immediately I disliked his attitude and his leering, predatory gaze.
I ignored him and kept heading toward the front walk to get to my truck. Snow or no snow, I should have jumped over the porch railing to avoid him.
“Hey, you there!” The guy moved into my path. “I’m Leonard Waterson.” He stopped and waited like I should know his name. I didn’t. “Call me Leo. Who’re you?”
He looked down at me with lurid interest. As if I wanted to know someone at least twenty years older than I was, if not more, and who looked like a wealthy sleaze. His gaze swept me, and he licked his lips. His erection ruined the cut of his tailored pants. Yeah, no thanks. What I wanted to do was cover myself and run for the hills.
“I gotta get to work.” I started to walk around him.
Behind us the front door opened, and John stepped out.
“Leo, let him go. I’m here.” Instead of his butterscotch and honey voice, he sounded resigned and cold.
The man turned. “Babe, I been looking all over for you. Why’d you leave town? We coulda worked something out. You didn’t need to abandon me.” Unlike John’s, Leo’s voice grated like fingernails on a chalkboard.
I looked at John, whose sad, angry glance shouted for me to leave. With a shake of my head, I did.
I puzzled about John and Leo while I was working, and I worried that I might lose the great rental, the perfect place, and my handsome landlord if he hooked up with Leo and returned to wherever they’d been together.
In the middle of the night, their voices reverberated off my walls.
“Why’d you leave me, babe? We coulda just negotiated. I know I lowballed you, but all you had to do was talk to me. I’ve been broken without you. I even hired a private dick