Crushed (9 page)

Chapter 25

A Single Droplet

“You kissed in the backseat of a taxi?”

Audrey was caught between feeling excited and embarrassed. “A little,” she said.

It was Saturday morning, and Audrey, C.C., and Lea were sitting in a window booth at Bing's. Outside, the sky was Indian-summer blue, and for November it was strangely warm—people passed in short sleeves, and newspaper headlines talked of global warming.

Lea, in her quiet voice, said, “What does ‘a little' mean?”

Audrey just smiled and stirred Sweet'n Low into her tea.

C.C. leaned forward and said, “Does ‘a little' mean a little too much?”

A light, surprised laugh escaped Audrey. “I don't think so, no.”

The girls all took bites of their bagels.

“Okay,” C.C. said carefully. “How did it make you feel?”

Audrey smiled and blinked slowly. She'd awoken this morning thinking of a legend they'd learned at the Tate School, the one in which the young, brave, and handsome Tristan is sent to Ireland to escort the beautiful Iseult to Britain so that she can join her intended husband, the vengeful and ignoble King Mark, who is also Tristan's uncle. Tristan is sent with a magic potion for Iseult to drink so that she might fall eternally in love with the elderly uncle, but on the way Tristan and Iseult mistakenly drink the potion and fall eternally in love with each other instead.

Audrey said, “I felt as if for the first time in my life I could imagine what Tristan and Iseult felt after they'd drunk the love potion.” This seemed to go too far, so she added, “Except I didn't feel like I'd drunk the whole potion or anything. It was more like a single droplet.”

Lea and C.C. had stopped chewing while she talked.

Now, after a long moment, they resumed.

Audrey said, “Almost the weirdest thing happened after I came home.” She was about to describe the money talk with her father when she noticed someone entering the restaurant, and stopped short.

“Uh-oh,” she said in a small voice.

It was Theo Driggs with about five of his enormous, slouching friends. They sauntered down the next aisle.

Audrey wanted to avert her eyes, but couldn't—a mistake, it turned out. When Theo noticed her, he silently, exaggeratedly mouthed two words, and Audrey could read his plump lips loud and clear.

Do list.

Audrey looked away.
Mucker,
she thought.
Mucker, mucker,
mucker. She glanced at C.C. and Lea. “Vacate, vacate, vacate,” she said, and they all got up.

Outside, in the warm sunshine, C.C. suggested tennis.

“In November?” Audrey said.

C.C. spread her arms and gestured at the blue sky. “Audrey, honey, everything I see says June.”

So they agreed on tennis at C.C.'s, but not until after lunch, because Audrey said she needed to run an errand for her father.

“What kind of errand?” C.C. said.

“The boring kind,” Audrey said, to deflect any interest in their tagging along. “See you guys after lunch.”

Chapter 26

The Return of the Spaghetti-Strap Dress

“Reason for return?”

Audrey was returning the spaghetti-strap dress, along with the shoes and sweater. “The fit wasn't—” Audrey began, but stopped. She didn't want to lie; she didn't know what to say; she'd never done this before.

The clerk, a thin, fortyish woman with a clamped-tight face, lowered her chin and peered over her reading glasses. “You didn't try them on before you bought them?” It was more an accusation than a question.

“I did, but—” She glanced away, searching the aisles and hoping nobody she knew was in the store.

“Was there something wrong with the garments?”

Audrey turned. “No. It's just that . . . my father didn't like them.”

The clerk brought the dress close to her face and sniffed it. “I think it's been worn,” she said, and again peered down at Audrey. “Has it been worn?”

Audrey lowered her eyes and nodded. Outside, it was the most beautiful, sunny November day ever, and here she was, standing inside a shop, doing this. She wanted to say,
It's
okay, I'll just go ahead and keep it,
but her father had looked so worried that she said nothing and waited.

The thin clerk, reading from the receipt, typed some words into the computer and stared silently at the screen. It was too excruciating. Audrey turned and found herself looking at a long, slinky beaded dress that C.C., she knew, would have called fabulous. Audrey stepped close to feel the material, then turned over the price tag: $394.

From behind her, in a weary voice, the thin clerk said, “Okay, you're a good customer. I'm going to go ahead and credit your account.”

“Thank you,” Audrey said. She wondered how she could feel so grateful to so cold a woman, but she did. She quickly signed the return slip.

It was barely noon, which meant Audrey had a full hour before heading over to C.C.'s for tennis. She walked down the block, bought a smoothie, and was sitting at a sunny table when her cell phone chimed. The caller's number appeared with his name, which all by itself made her feel better.

“Wickham,” she said.

“Audrey,” he said. “I have an idea.”

“You do?”

“Mmm. Let's do something we've never done before.”

“Okay.”

A low laugh came from his end of the line. “Aren't you going to ask what it is we're going to do that we've never done before?”

“Okay. What're we going to do that we've never done before?”

Wickham Hill's tone turned sportive. “Maybe I should know what it is you wouldn't do that you've never done before.”

An easy laugh slipped from Audrey, but she also felt a warning flare of danger. “There are one or two things,” she said, knowing there were many. “Skydiving is one I'm willing to talk about. Did you want to go skydiving?”

“No. Tea-dancing.”

At first she heard this as “T-dancing” and wondered if it was some sexual activity she'd never heard about. She tried to sound casual. “What's T-dancing?”

“According to the paper, it's what they did at teatime during World War One, only now they do it at night.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing and relieved. “
Tea
as in
teapot.
When?”

“Tonight.”

“Okay. What should I wear?”

Wickham Hill said it sounded semiformal. “Something along the lines of last night,” he suggested, “only maybe a little more so.”

An image of the long beaded dress in Veni, Vidi, Emi popped into Audrey's mind. “Okay,” she said. Then: “Am I saying
okay
too much?”

He laughed. “No.” He made his low voice even lower. “I like hearing you say
okay.
”

After hanging up, Audrey sat at her table, staring into the distance, trying not to think of the $394 dress.
Something
along the lines of last night, only more so.
But she didn't have anything like last night, only more so. At home, the only formal things she had were a suit dress, which was dowdy, and a black velvet skirt, which looked like Sunday school.

Her car was parked in front of Veni, Vidi, Emi. As she walked toward it, she decided to base her decision on luck: if the same horrible salesclerk was at the counter, she wouldn't buy the dress; but if the clerk was gone, she would.

At Veni, Vidi, Emi, Audrey stopped as if to look at some open-toe shoes in the window display, but let her eyes rise to the central desk, where the thin, awful salesclerk stood staring silently back at her.

Audrey turned at once and walked to her car, trying not to feel what she truly felt, which was disappointment.

Chapter 27

Sifting

In the living room of his apartment, Clyde stood at an ironing board, nosing the hot point of the iron around the buttons of his white dress shirt, which he never wore anywhere except to work.

It was Saturday afternoon, and he was working that night at the Jemison Country Club. It was where he worked every Saturday night, busing tables, setting silverware, and serving what he thought of as “pre-food”—baskets with three kinds of bread and ice water with lemon wedges. When he'd interviewed for the job, he'd looked at his hands and said, “I can do anything except talk to people,” but he'd said it in such a low mumble that the interviewer, a smiling older woman, had to ask him to repeat himself.

Today Clyde's mother was watching a football game, Michigan-Wisconsin, though she had no affiliation with either school. Watching sports, like watching cooking shows, was just another of the weird by-products of her condition, and though she watched the game impassively, her eyes seemed even more than usually sunken.

Clyde's father sat down at the desk, turned on the computer, and pulled a file of job applications from his briefcase. A moment later, he leaned back from the computer with a startled look on his face.

“What's this?” he said, turning to Clyde. “You been using the company's background-check program?”

Clyde wished there were some way he could say no, but he couldn't think of one. “I was just looking up a couple of addresses,” he said.

His father was staring at the screen. “That's what the phone book is for. And Google. I see three names at least. Wickham Hill. Theo Driggs. Audrey Reed.” He turned. “Who are they?”

“People from school.”

His father took this in. “And why did you need their addresses?”

Clyde shrugged. “Just wondered where they lived, is all.”

“But you found a lot more than addresses, didn't you?”

Clyde didn't answer. His father took a deep breath. “Look, Clyde, these are the personal lives of real people. People like you and me and your mother. Who shouldn't have to think about strangers peeping through the keyhole.”

His father was staring at Clyde, and from the side, Clyde could feel his mother's eyes on him, too. He felt embarrassed, then defensive. He pointed to his father's file of job applications. “What about what you do with all those?”

In a restrained voice, his father said, “Those are people who have,
in writing,
given the company the right to look into their backgrounds. I doubt that”—he turned to the computer screen—“Wickham Hill, Audrey Reed, and Theo Driggs gave you written permission to go sifting through their private lives.”

“I didn't go sifting,” Clyde said. Then, more softly: “I didn't understand it was such a big deal.”

“Okay, then,” his father said.

And so, on that warm Saturday afternoon in November, Clyde's father nodded and resumed his work, his mother stared blankly at a televised football game, and Clyde, feeling even smaller than normal, went back to his ironing.

Chapter 28

Audrey, Courtside

Thwock. Thwock. Thwock.

Eyes closed, Audrey lay on the chaise on the sideline of C.C.'s tennis court, listening to the slow, rhythmic sounds of one of C.C. and Lea's long baseline rallies. Audrey was feeling good. She'd told C.C. about the tea dance, and about how she didn't really have anything to wear and didn't want to waste the afternoon buying something new, and C.C., remembering that her mother and Audrey were the same size, had gone to her mother's closet and found five formal dresses, which she'd laid out on her bed. Audrey had loved them all but chose the filmy, high-necked red one, which fit perfectly. So now she had nothing to do but sit in the strange, warm November sun, letting the pleasant afternoon sun warm her long legs and bare arms.

The thwocking sounds stopped, and C.C. muttered, “Oh, that was clever.”

Audrey smiled without opening her eyes.

“Deuce,” Lea called, barely audible. Then, following the serve, the sounds began again:
Thwock. Thwock. Thwock.

C.C. and Lea played the same baseline game, doggedly retrieving side to side and, with looping strokes, sending top-spin forehands and two-handed backhands to alternating sides of the opposite backcourt. Audrey, taller and more aggressive, preferred a serve-and-volley game. She made more spectacular shots, but, in the end, the baseline retrievers usually won, especially on clay. Which was fine by Audrey. It meant more time lounging in the sun and thinking about Wickham Hill.

She peeled down the straps of her top to let the sun touch a bit more of her skin.

“No bare ta-tas allowed courtside here, honey,” C.C. called between thwocks, and Audrey smiled and turned her top down another half inch.

C.C. said, “I guarantee you”—thwock—“my creepy little brother's upstairs with his binoculars on you right now.”

Audrey didn't care. A breeze moving through the fallen leaves made a soft shushing sound, and Audrey thought her drowsy hothouse thoughts of Wickham Hill even while her friends' genteel world went on without her,
thwock thwock
thwock.

At the court change, C.C. and Lea sat down nearby, toweling sweat and sipping lemonade. Audrey said, “Who's winning?”

“Lea,” C.C. said, and added, “We always think of Lea as gentle and sweet, but in fact she be sneaky and cruel.”

Audrey, who'd closed her eyes again, heard Lea's soft laugh. C.C. said, “What did I tell you? The cretin's up there, watching us.” Then, yelling: “We see you, you little deviant!” Slumping down in her chair and tilting her face to the sun, she said, “You know, if this is global warming, I'm not sure I'm against it.”

“Where's your mom?” Lea asked.

“The gym. She wanted me to go and take a yoga class with her. I declined and respectfully suggested she take Brian instead. She said she didn't think so. She probably knew he'd pass gas and play dumb.”

Audrey laughed without opening her eyes. The truth was, Audrey idolized Mrs. Mudd. She was an attorney, but she never really seemed like one. When they were all twelve or thirteen and began having sleepovers at C.C.'s house, Mrs. Mudd would help them fall asleep by dimming the lights and having them all stretch out on their sleeping bags. She would teach them a few yoga poses: the sphinx pose; the cobra pose; the cat, rabbit, and warrior poses. Then she would tell them to relax in the corpse pose, which made them giggle. After they stopped giggling, Audrey really imagined herself as a corpse—as her mother, lying in the sunken garden, dead but not dead, awake but not conscious. Then Mrs. Mudd would go from girl to girl, lifting up their legs, pulling them gently, and setting them down again, as if their hips needed a slight adjustment. She'd do the same with their arms. Then she would briefly rub Audrey's neck and shoulders, and before drawing away, she would touch the center of Audrey's forehead with the tip of her finger, as if she were turning off some kind of light.

“This morning, I went into my mother's room,” C.C. said, “and she was on her yoga mat, doing the most bizarre move. She was on all fours, and all of a sudden she lunged forward, popped her eyes out, and stuck her tongue way, way out. She actually made an animal sound. I'm not supposed to talk to her when she's doing yoga, but I said, ‘Would that be the madmanin-the-attic pose?' ‘Lion pose,' she said calmly, and did it again.”

As Lea and C.C. walked back onto the court, Audrey listened to the shushy scuffle of their shoes on the sandy surface of the clay. Somewhere nearby, a squirrel chattered. C.C. said, “Don't fall asleep, Aud, you're playing the winner.” Audrey, without opening her eyes, raised a hand in acknowledgment. Beneath her eyelids, orangy arcs rose and receded in a pleasant pattern, and soon she was again listening to the lazy and reassuring sounds of baseline rallies and thinking of Wickham Hill, with whom she'd soon be dancing.

In the late afternoon, it began to cool sharply. C.C. zipped on a sweatshirt and said, “November returns.” They hurried into the house, arms folded against the cold, and Audrey went upstairs to get C.C.'s mother's red dress. Brian's door was open, so she glanced in. He had his back to her, leaning close to his computer in intent concentration. The plump bearded dragon was draped over the back of his neck, asleep.

Brian was searching for something, apparently, because he was scanning down a list of what looked like Web sites. He was so lost in concentration that she was able to creep forward, lean to within an inch of his ear, and say, “Gotcha.”

Brian jerked up so suddenly that the lizard half slid and half fell to the ground. “C.C., you . . . !” he sputtered, but then, seeing Audrey, he turned calm.

He bent to pick up the bearded dragon, and Audrey helped check the lizard's body for signs of damage. By the time she was sure she hadn't killed the thing, Brian's screen saver was peacefully showing slides of outer space.

“I shouldn't've sneaked up on you. I just thought you were, you know, looking for naked ladies or something.”

“Maybe I wasn't,” he said. “And maybe I was.” He ran his index finger over the little spikes on the dragon's head. “Speaking of ladies,” he added, nodding toward the binoculars that were sitting on his windowsill. “Seeing you down by the tennis courts—sunning the rarely seen territories—that was what I would call extremely stellar.”

Audrey grimaced and shook her head. “I've got to go now,” she said, and Brian, nodding his head, staring at Audrey, and stroking the lizard in his lap, said, “You don't, but you will.”