Eric stared at her. He figured he ought to know her, but he couldn’t for the life of him think who the hell she was.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The best laid plans of mice and men
She remembered him, though. “Eric Stewart, right?”
And suddenly it clicked.
“Mrs. McBride, how are you?” God above, it was Tessa’s mother, looking as if she’d taken up with the Hell’s Angels. He remembered her now, she’d had on an apron and a blue housedress last time he’d seen her, and her hair had been up in rollers under a chiffon scarf. She’d given him this same disapproving look, as if he had snot stuck to his nose.
Her gaze went to the boys, cowering behind him, and she smiled.
“Are these fine fellows your sons, Eric?”
“No, no, they’re my nephews. Ian, Simon, this is Mrs. McBride, what do you say?”
Ian stared up at her. “Are you a witch?”
Eric quickly said, “Is Tessa ready to go?”
“She’s in the bathroom, she’ll be right out.”
The buzzer rang, and Maria pushed the appropriate button. When the door opened Tessa’s father, Walter, came in. He smiled and stuck out his hand, and Eric took it.
“Hey, great to see you again, Eric, how’s it going?”
Eric liked Walter McBride. Before he and Maria divorced, the older man had always taken time to talk. Walter, too, was wearing leathers, and he must have had them custom made because the waistband fit neatly around his sizable potbelly. His hair, mostly white and thinning on top, was pulled back into a skinny ponytail tied with a leather thong. He jerked a thumb at the door.
“Did you happen to see my mean machine out in the street? I was just out checking on her, you can’t be too careful nowadays.”
Eric hadn’t noticed, but it seemed polite not to say so. “That bike yours? She’s a real beauty.”
“She is, isn’t she?” Walter beamed. “Maria and I were out for a spin, thought we’d drop in and say hi to Tess.”
As if her father had paged her, Tessa came out of the bathroom.
Eric tried to make eye contact. He gave her what he thought was a reassuring smile.
She scowled at him. “You’re late, Eric. Hey, guys, how’s it going?”
Simon took that literally. “It’s going pretty bad, Tessa. We peed on Aunt Sophie’s neighbors, and they all got really mad. Uncle Eric did, too, he said he’s gonna take all our toys away if we do it again. And we can’t fart.”
“Some people have no sense of humor.”
“You look great, Tess. Ready to go?” She had on soft gray pants and a hot pink, silky jacket thing. Under it was something tight and black and low cut, so the tops of her breasts just about showed. And now he knew exactly what they looked like, which didn’t do much for his blood pressure. He was still trying to figure out what the protocol was with her parents when she said, “We’re off, Mom, and I have to lock the office.”
“Time we were on the road anyhow. Don’t want to be out on the open road if that rainstorm hits,” Walter said.
“Rain?” The sun had been shining all day, and Eric had more or less forgotten about possible showers. He felt a twinge of foreboding. “It’s not gonna rain, it can’t. We’re going to the fairgrounds, there’s a carnival on.”
For some reason, Tessa shot daggers at him for revealing that.
“Supposed to have showers later on this evening. But maybe we’ll be lucky and it’ll pass right over,” Walter said. “Carnival, huh? That’s a thought, haven’t been to one in years myself. Wanna go to the carnival, Maria?”
“Not if it’s gonna rain,” she said. “Tessa, you should be wearing something more than that flimsy jacket. ”
Tessa ignored her. She was already in the elevator, the boy’s hands in hers. When they reached the ground floor, she whizzed them through the door and down the street. She said over her shoulder, “Are you coming, Eric?”
He said a fast good-bye to her parents and caught up with her beside the van. She was stowing the kids in the back.
“Hurry up, Eric. Let’s just get out of here before they decide to come with us.”
He hurried, and when they were a couple blocks away and there was no sign of a motorcycle behind them, she slumped back against the seat and let out a huge sigh.
“Can you believe that scene? Did you see my mother’s hair? And those pants, she really shouldn’t wear those pants. If that’s what menopause does to you, I’m having a sex change before it happens.”
Simon said, “What’s a sex change?”
Tessa shot Eric a horrified look.
He gave his head a reassuring shake and said to Simon, “It’s just an operation people sometimes have.”
“Because they’re sick?”
“No, it’s called elective surgery, which means they decide to have it.”
“Are you gonna get one?”
“Nope.”
“Can I have one when I’m big?”
“Only if you really, really want to,” Eric said. “Now, you guys be quiet for a while so Tessa and I can talk.”
Silence, back and front.
“Your folks look happy, Tess.” He didn’t know what else to say; they were sort of beyond description.
“Happy? Happy? They’re senile. They ride around on that death machine, they hold hands all the time. They seem to have moved in together, having totally forgotten how really well that worked the first time they tried it. I’ve spent years of my life listening to them rant and rave about each other, and now this.”
“Maybe it’ll wear off when winter comes, snow and ice, and they can’t ride the bike anymore. Maybe the novelty will wear off.” It had with him, countless times. He wondered how long it was going to take with Tessa.
“Yeah, maybe. But that’s a long ways off, and in the meantime, I keep worrying that Mom’s going to get preg—” She stopped abruptly.
“Uncle Eric, we’re not farting,” Simon announced in a righteous tone.
“My daddy died,” Ian commented.
“I heard,” Tessa said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Auntie Sophie told Auntie Anna it was a blessing in disguise. I know blessing from church, but what’s disguise, Uncle Eric?”
“It’s the opposite of dose guys. Now how about counting red cars for me? Ten cents for every red car you spot.”
They got into it, and Eric started to relax, but it only lasted until they approached the fair grounds. Parking was obviously going to be a problem. Eric circled block after block in widening circles. Even the kids selling space in their backyards had nothing left.
“I’m going to drop you and the kids at the gates, Tessa. I’ll be along as soon as I find parking.” He handed Simon twenty dollars. “You be the gentleman and pay at the gate for me, okay, sport? I’ll meet you by the hot dog stand just inside.”
“Okay.”
Eric dropped them, and finally located a parking space eleven blocks away. He locked the van, and he’d trotted six blocks when it started to spit rain and he remembered the brand-new umbrella he’d left in the back of the van. He sprinted the last few blocks, hoping his deodorant was as good as the ads claimed. It was only sprinkling when he reached the entrance gates.
“Good night for the fair,” the ticket vendor said. “Not too crowded, I guess people are scared it’s gonna rain.”
“It’s not,” Eric declared, handing over the money for the ticket. “It’s stopped, it was just a shower.”
“Hope you’re right.”
He saw them from a ways off. Simon was talking as fast as his mouth could work, and Tessa was laughing, so maybe the kid wasn’t saying anything really horrendous for once. The boys already had balloons. Ian was twirling around with his.
Eric’s chest expanded and he thought, Damn, I’m happy, and then he thought, this is what it would feel like to have a family of my own. It lasted a moment until he came to his senses.
Get a grip, Stewart. Take
an aspirin and lie down till the idea goes away.
“I love the smell of popcorn,” Tessa said when he reached them. “The taste, too.” Her eyes were shining, and her curls sparkled with raindrops.
“We’ll have to get some, then.” Eric bought it, and they wandered from one concession to the next, munching. He won a teddy bear and a beach ball throwing rings, and he felt like a hero because Tessa applauded.
The boys lost handfuls of quarters on the nickel toss and the digger machine. They went on Mad Mouse’s Wild Ride and the Corkscrew. Eric bought foot-long hot dogs, and when Tessa got mustard on her chin, he waited until the boys weren’t looking and then leaned over and licked it off. She didn’t pull away, so he figured she didn’t mind.
“You’ve got a sexy chin,” he whispered. “I noticed that Saturday.” He really needed to know how she felt about that.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the women you do on that desk.”
He should have had a snappy comeback to that, but instead he felt his face get hot. She couldn’t have talked to Gladys, could she?
They rode the tilt-a-whirl, and the octopus, but Tessa took Simon with her and Eric took Ian, so there was no chance to hold her close when she got scared and screamed. Simon was doing that for him. Who’d have thought he’d end up jealous of his five-year-old nephew?
Simon said, “Can we go on the roller coaster next?”
“I want the Ferris wheel,” Ian argued. “I’m scared of the roller coaster.”
Eric was secretly grateful. He wasn’t exactly scared of the thing. He just didn’t like being that far out of control.
“I get to sit by Tessa,” Ian declared as they lined up, and Eric felt like arguing the point, but decided against it. He’d get his chance at Tessa’s attention when the boys were safely home with Sophie.
Strapped in beside Eric, Simon talked nonstop all the way to the top. Tessa and Ian were in the next car, and after admiring the view for a while, it dawned on Eric that they’d been sitting up there looking at it for quite a long time.
He wasn’t the only one who thought so. People behind and ahead of them started to holler at the attendants on the ground, and soon it was pretty obvious that something was stuck.
Simon yelled out, “It’s broke, Ian, we’re gonna fall down.”
Ian let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“No, we’re not,” Eric said, although at that moment he wasn’t too sure himself. “Be quiet, Simon. Don’t scare your brother that way.”
It was too late. Ian was howling, and Tessa was leaning over him.
There was a breeze and the seats rocked. It was cold so high up, and as if that wasn’t enough, it started to rain again, not just a little. A lot. A cloudburst.
“What an adventure,” Tessa called to them, but her voice wobbled.
Some guy on the ground with a bullhorn apologized and said that there was nothing to be concerned about, just a slight problem with the gears, mechanics were working on it. Two teenage girls three chairs away started to scream, and a woman with a good pair of lungs hollered that she had to get down, she was afraid of heights, which made Eric wonder what the hell she was doing on the Ferris wheel in the first place.
The rain accelerated into a deluge. The seat rocked more and more as the wind increased. The rain became a torrent. Simon and Ian were wearing waterproof hoodies, and Eric’s jacket kept the rain off, but Tessa was getting drenched. Her hair was smashed flat to her head, and her face was soaked when she turned around to look up at him. She tried to smile, but her eyes were scared.
“We’re gonna die, I know we’re gonna die,” a man was shouting, and now Simon started wailing in earnest.
Somebody else hollered, “Shut up, you’re scarin’ my kid.”
Eric felt like maybe he was going to freeze to death or drown, whichever came first.
Tessa called in a small, scared voice, “Eric, do you think these things are hooked on tight?”
“Absolutely. They have to comply with safety regulations. They check them everyday.” She’d never know he was lying. At least they’d die together, the four of them. He was glad that Tessa was the last woman he’d ever have sex with. For the first time, he really understood what closure meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Good, cheap and fast—pick two
When everyone was too miserable to cry or scream or even talk, the seats jerked alarmingly and then ever so slowly started to move downward. A cheer went up from the ground, and after a week or so, they were at the bottom.
Eric’s legs felt rubbery, and he had to lift Simon bodily out of the seat.
Tessa was shivering, holding Ian against her. Water dripped off her nose, her hair was flat, and her pants had huge wet patches down the front. Her silk jacket was sopping.
There was only one thing to do. “We need to take these guys home,” Eric sighed. “They need a hot bath.”
“So do I,” Tessa said, shivering.
“We’ll get you under cover, and then I’ll run and get the car.”
Eric wondered if he could find a cab to drive him to the car.
“I’ll be back for you in twenty minutes, max.” He took off his jacket and draped it around her, and then hurried them over to a covered concession and ordered hot chocolate and burgers and fries and fudge sundaes and everything else he could think of to keep the kids occupied until he got back. It was still pouring.
“Take your jacket,” Tessa said.
“You keep it.”
There weren’t any cabs handy, so he ran. He was panting by the time he reached the street where the van was parked, but at least he was as wet as it was possible to get, so that was one problem out of the way. The other problem was, the van didn’t seem to be parked there anymore.
Maybe he had the wrong street. He jogged around the block, and then around two blocks, but by then it was beginning to dawn on him that he could circumnavigate the whole of east Vancouver and still not find his beloved van, because either it had been towed, which wasn’t likely—there were no signs forbidding parking on this street—or some rotten, discerning bastard with excellent taste in vehicles had stolen his pride and joy.
“Damn.” He thought up a string of even more creative curses when he remembered that he’d also left his cell phone on the seat, which meant he was going to have to hammer on someone’s door and convince them he wasn’t a mass murderer just so they’d let him use their phone and report the theft to the cops.
Except that was going to take time. He glanced at his watch. He was already ten minutes past the twenty minutes he’d promised Tessa he’d be, and the boys weren’t famous for their patience.
The hell with the cops. It hurt him deeply to abandon the Volkswagen this way, but for the time being, there was no choice. He’d grab a cab, rescue Tessa, get the boys home, and then deal with cops.
Where were all the cabs when he needed one? He was almost all the way back to the fair by the time he snagged a Black Top. He asked the driver to wait while he got Tessa and the kids.
“Ten minutes,” the sullen driver informed him. “Lots of fares, can’t waste time.”
“So leave the meter running.”
“How do I know you will ever come back?”
Eric forked over ten dollars as holding money and then loped over to the gate.
“I already paid,” he told the ticket vendor. “I’m just picking up my family. See, that taxi is waiting.”
“Where’s your ticket stub?” This wasn’t the friendly weather person who’d been there a few hours ago. This bald guy looked like a Friday night wrestler moonlighting. Eric went through his pockets and then remembered that it was in the pocket of the jacket Tessa was now wearing. He explained this politely, but the guy just shook his head.
“No stub, you pay”
Eric had learned his lesson about punching people in the nose. He paid again.
Tessa was sitting where he’d left her, bedraggled and very out of sorts. “You took your lousy
sweet time,” she snapped. “These poor kids are freezing, and Ian got sick.”
Eric saw the pool of vomit on the ground.
“I barfed on Tessa,” Ian said proudly “We cleaned it with water, but she still stinks and so do I.”
What could he say?
“Tess, I’m sorry. I’ll explain why it took me so long, but right now there’s a cab waiting, and he isn’t a patient or trusting man.”
“A cab? But where’s the van?”
“Vaporized. Stolen. Towed. One of the above.” Dragging the kids between them, he hustled them towards the gate. Thank god the cab was still there. Eric handed Tessa and Ian and Simon into the back and got in the front with the driver. He gave him Sophie’s address, and the driver took off like a plane heading for the end of the runway.
“Hey, buddy, slow down, we got kids in the back.”
The driver no longer spoke English. Eric glanced at the nametag on the visor and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Either slow down, Rashneesh, or stop right here and let us out.”
Rashneesh rolled his eyes to heaven but he did slow. By now they were in heavy traffic, so speeding was impossible anyway. Instead he tailgated and muttered under his breath at other drivers until a sleek black Mercedes ahead of them stopped suddenly.
Rashneesh swore in Hindi and ground down on his brakes, but velocity won. They hit the other car’s rear end with a resounding crash, and Simon and Ian and Tessa all started screaming.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the full. . .
(Shakespeare)
It wasn’t much of a jolt, but Rashneesh fell apart. “Oh, goodness gracious me. Oh, I am very, very, very sorry, is everyone hurt? Oh, goodness gracious, this is terribly awful.”
Eric determined that no one was hurt, but both kids were howling and between them and Rashneesh the noise level was deafening. Then the driver of the car who’d been hit bustled up to the driver’s window, a small, thin elderly woman with gray hair pinned up in a bun.
MAKE ME A MATCH (Running Wild) Page 17
