Bad Girls in Love (9 page)

Equally luckily, he had to go to work. There was a project due to be completed by midweek and he'd promised to meet one of the members of his group at the office, if that was all right with Mikey?

That was fine with Mikey. She'd have the house to herself for a couple of hours. She'd have the phone to herself.

“Maybe we'll order pizza for dinner. How does that sound to you?”

It sounded fine to Mikey. She'd have full use of the kitchen, too.

Then, “Everything go OK for you in the city?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure. I'll tell you about it later.”

“Because I think she's up to something,” he said.

“She is. Do you want to hear about it now?” she asked, hoping he'd say no. He didn't disappoint her.

By the time the door finally closed behind her father, Mikey had used up her scant supply of patience. Then she had to wait until she got calmed down about calling Shawn up: It would be just the two of them talking—almost the same as being alone with him. She felt jittery, the way she did before a tennis match, excited. She knew that pre-match jitters upped her adrenaline level, which gave her more energy
and better focus, but for a telephone call, who needed them?

Although, these jitters were more fun than the tennis ones. They had
Maybe-maybe
promises and
what-ifs
. Maybe today was the day Shawn Macavity would start to like her back. What if he asked if he could come over? Should she ask him to stay for dinner? What were they having for dinner? Not pizza, if Shawn was coming. If Shawn was coming for dinner she wanted to cook something really good. If the way to a man's heart was through his stomach.

But first she was going to have to call him up.
Get
to call him up.

There was no question whether or not Mikey remembered the number. The second she knew which Macavity it was, that number was memorized. So she sat down at the desk in their living room and took a diaphragm-deep breath, letting the air out slowly as she counted to twelve. Then she picked up the phone and punched in Shawn's number.

It rang once, twice, three—

“Hello?” he said.

Mikey swallowed and couldn't find any words in her head. She couldn't reach any words to pull up out of her throat.
Sewage!
she thought.

“Hello? . . . Hello?”

Mikey held the phone up against her ear and did not say one word. She wet her lips, trying to speak.
What's wrong with you?
she demanded.

“Who
is
this?”

When she didn't answer, he hung up.

Mikey listened to the dial tone, then held the phone out in front of her and glared at it. “Sewage and garbage,” she muttered.
Now
she could speak. “S! and G!” Furious, she tried again.

She chose not to punch redial, because she liked touching the digits of his telephone number, one after the other, like saying the letters of his name.

“Hello!” he said, the voice of someone expecting trouble.

“Shawn?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You might have a brother.”

“So what if I do? What do you want?”

She thought fast. “Are you taking seminar?”

“No. Why?”

“Just because. I just—just because—I just wondered if you were,” she said. She knew how dumb she sounded, but she was so busy hearing his voice—talking just to her, just the two of them—that she couldn't remember to say what she'd called him about.

“Well, now you know,” he said. “Who
is
this?”

She hung up.

Mikey got up from the desk and went out to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. She closed the refrigerator door. She took down a jar of peanut butter and a box of Ritz crackers but then didn't want those, either, so she put them back into the cupboard. Then she
slammed her hand down—
hard
—slamming the palm flat against the countertop, and went back to the desk.

This time she did punch redial. Enough fooling around.

“Hello,” he announced, the voice of someone who really wished his phone hadn't rung.

“I meant to say, before, I've been thinking about what you said.”

“Hunh?”

“About how stupid it is to get into fights.”

“Is this Mikey?”

“And I think you're right. Except in self-defense, of course—but in general, I've decided I'm not going to fight. I wanted to tell you that.”

“Oh. Well. OK. Good-bye.”

He hung up.

Before she had to think anything about that conversation, Mikey punched speed dial 1. She had a sudden urge to talk to Margalo. Of course it was answered by Esther, Margalo's younger stepsister.

“Hello?” Esther said.

“I want to talk to Margalo,” Mikey said.

“Hi, Mikey. How was your mother?” Esther asked.

“Is she there?” Mikey asked.

“Ladybug is going to have kittens. Did Margalo tell you?”

“Are you going to get Margalo, or what?”

“Then we're going to have her spayed. Because the shelter will do it for just five dollars, so we're going to have them all spayed.”

“MARGALO!” Mikey yelled, yelling right into the phone as if she could yell loud enough for her voice to go in one of Esther's ears and out the other to where Margalo would hear it, and come out of her room or wherever she was in that crowded little house, and Mikey could tell her about the phone call to Shawn.

“Or neutered,” Esther continued.

Mikey took a big breath. “That's good,” she said. She smiled, as if Esther was in front of her and could see her face with its
This-is-your-last-chance-before-I-blow-up
smile and respond appropriately by running for the hills, or—much better—running for Margalo. “That's nice,” Mikey said, smiling, “and I'm glad we had this little chat, Esther, but now GET MARGALO OR THE NEXT TIME I SEE YOU YOU'LL BE SORRY!”

“Are you coming over today?” Esther's voice rang with hope.

“No. Not today. Today I'm calling. On the telephone. TO TALK TO MARGALO!”

“Well, OK. OK. O-kay.” Esther's voice turned away from the phone and Mikey heard her yell, “Margalo? It's for you. Hurry up, it's Mikey.”

“I'm busy,” was Margalo's greeting.

Mikey heard the clatter as Margalo took the phone off its place on a little table in the upstairs hall and carried it into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her for privacy.

“Mr. Schramm loaned me a book on gemstones,” Margalo
said, “to understand how opals are formed.” Ordinarily, Mikey would have insisted on being told about this, but today there were more important things than keeping ahead in science.

“I just called him,” she said.

“Mr. Schramm?” Margalo sounded shocked.

“Shawn.”

“Shawn? Why?”

“I got him a present.” And she'd forgotten that entirely. That was something else she could have told him.

“Why would you do
that
, Mikey?”

“Mom's going to get married. She has a ring.”

Margalo's voice was settling down for a conversation, as if she had gotten herself seated on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the door, ready to talk. “Of course she has a ring. I bet it's a diamond. Is it?”

“About twenty carats.”

“Can't be. She wouldn't be able to lift twenty carats. She'd look like some monkey, dragging her hand along the floor—”

They were both laughing then.

“What
did
you call him about?” Margalo asked.

“Nothing special. Not really.”

“Then why call?”

“To say I thought he was right about how fighting is stupid. And I do.”

“I thought we were going to take martial arts in high school.”

“That's not fighting. That's self-defense, against muggers and rapists.”

“And bad dates,” Margalo added. “And bad husbands. But are you expecting to
ever
go on a date? I mean, before high school.”

“Do we
want
to?” Mikey answered her own question silently. No, not on a date; but if Shawn Macavity were to ask her to the movies? She'd go like a shot. Or to the dance. “Do you?”

“That's not exactly a pressing problem,” Margalo said, then asked, “So after that what did you talk about?”

Mikey tried to think of something to say where she wouldn't look like as much of a numbchuck as she was afraid she'd been. “What?”

“You didn't have any plan, did you? You couldn't think of anything to say, could you?”

“So what? And she took me shopping.”

Margalo always knew who Mikey was talking about, which was something Mikey really liked about her. “You let her take you shopping?”

“She gets a lot of boyfriends, if you notice.”

“You go shopping for
things
, not boyfriends,” Margalo pointed out.

“We went shopping for clothes, as it happens.”

There was a silence. Then Margalo repeated what Mikey had said, only in a deliberately expressionless voice. “You went shopping for clothes. With Ms. Barcley.”

Mikey let up on her friend. “Mostly clothes for her. For her trousseau. They think they'll live in Dallas.”

“What about her job?”

“The bank has offices everywhere. All she has to do is transfer.”

“Did you like him?”

“His children are grown up. One just had a baby, so he's a grandfather.”

“It's not as if you have to live with them.”

“He asked me how I'd like to spend Christmas in the Bahamas.”

“Wow.”

“I know.” Mikey waited, then, “But still,” she said.

“Maybe your mom always wanted to be someone's trophy wife,” Margalo suggested.

“She said I should tell Dad her news.”

There was another silence.

Mikey broke it to ask, “What kind of a plan would I have had? If I'd had one.”

“What?”

“When I called Shawn. You accused me of not having a plan. As if you would have.”

Margalo had her answer all ready. She was so ready to tell it that Mikey almost cut her off, but she decided not to. What if Margalo had some good advice?

“What you do for a telephone op is, you make a list—so you won't not have anything to talk to him about. A list of questions, because when you're talking to someone you like, you lose track of what you're thinking.”

“How do you know that?” Mikey demanded. “Have you been talking to Aurora about me and Shawn?”

“You didn't tell me not to. I didn't think it was such a secret.”

“Why would I want it to be a secret?” Mikey asked. “What kind of a chicken do you think I am?” Having settled that subject, she went on. “I'm going to make some cookies—do you want to hear my idea for a new recipe?”

“No,” Margalo said.

Now
what was wrong with Margalo?

“Then, good-bye,” Mikey said. She didn't have time to waste trying to sweet-talk Margalo into a better mood.

She was creaming a cup of sugar into half a pound of butter when the phone rang.
Margalo
, she predicted, betting with the odds, although she knew better than to predict an apology. She had to go out to the living room to answer the phone. Although there were two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, their ranch-style house had only one television set, and phone. (In order to live within his after-the-divorce income, Mikey's father had moved them into a smaller house in a much less upscale neighborhood, which suited both of them.) She still would have liked to have a second phone, in the kitchen. In fact, what she really would have liked was a phone of her own again, in her bedroom, her own private line, but she'd settle for a kitchen phone.

She ran to get the phone before the answering machine
kicked in. It had to be Margalo, to finish telling Mikey what Aurora had said about Shawn.

“Did she have any ideas?” Mikey asked without even saying hello.

But it wasn't Margalo. A male voice asked, “Is this Mikey?”

Not her father, either. This voice wasn't as deep as her father's, and besides, her dad always started off, Hi honey, it's me.

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh, good,” he said. “Well, Mikey,” he said. “So . . . how are you?”

“Who is this?” she demanded. “I'm busy making—Shawn?” she asked, although she didn't think so. It didn't sound like Shawn. This voice was richer, or heavier, than Shawn's; it sounded older.

“Not Shawn,” he said. “Sorry.” He didn't sound sorry, though. He sounded smiley.

“I
am
busy,” she told him.

“Making cookies?” he said. She didn't answer, so after some empty airtime he asked, “Do you cook other things? Or do you only bake?”

He didn't sound like any boy she knew. He didn't sound grown up, but he also didn't sound like an eighth-grade boy. No eighth-grade boy, for example, would be interested in cooking. “What do you want?” she asked.

“What?” he asked, apparently surprised; at least, his voice gave way a little at the edges, like a stiff gate just starting to
open. “I called so we can talk,” he said then, his voice back to normal. If that
was
normal.

“Who are you?”

“You don't know me,” he answered quickly. He'd been expecting that question.

“Then how do you know
me?
Do you play tennis?”

“No, but I've seen
you
play.”

“Creepy,” she said. “Why would you do that?”

“Why do you think?”

Definitely creepy, unless—Was he flirting with her? He was flirting with her! Who would flirt with
her?
“You said I don't know you, so how can I know why you do something dumb like watch me play tennis? Or call me up.” A thought struck her. “Is this Louis?”