Crazy 4U

by Cach, Lisa

  “Does that mean you’re ready to settle down?”

  The question hit him like a sucker punch. “Hell no!” He’d always known he couldn’t live like Mike and Lucy, in a comfortable neighborhood full of backyard swimming pools and gossipy conversations about the local schools and kids’ sports. He was happy to stay with Mike and his family for a few weeks while he was in town, and was grateful Mike had space to store his little truck, but living their anchored, home-owning, PTA-going life full-time would be death to a guy like him.

  Mike nodded. “Didn’t think so. Do the girl a favor, then. Before you sweep her off her feet, let her know it’s a limited time offer. You’ll be leaving town soon.”

  Tom had nodded, even as the voice deep inside him had grumbled in bitter protest. He wanted to throw Angelica over his shoulder and drag her off with him, like a pirate with his booty. Any wish of hers to stay put would be inconsequential to a pirate. Arrrr!

  Unfortunately, there were laws against kidnapping. Brute strength wasn’t going to win him fair maiden, more’s the pity. And winning fair maiden would be next to impossible if she knew his home was thousands of miles away, and he had no intention of staying in L.A.

  He found Angelica’s apartment door and took another steadying breath. His heart was pounding with a mix of nerves and excitement he couldn’t remember feeling since he was a teenager. He raised his hand to knock, but then panic hit him at a sudden thought: What if she stood him up? She might not be home. She might have fled earlier in the morning.

  He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Be the jellyfish. And don’t say anything stupid.

  He knocked.

  * * *

  “I’m not going!” Angelica protested as Karen languidly dug a bathing suit out of a drawer and dropped it on the bed where she’d already deposited a sarong and beach towel.

  “Oh hush,” Karen said, shoving her Tootsie Pop into her cheek so she could talk. “Yes, you are. You know you are. Look at you, you already have your makeup on. Since when do you wear makeup on a Saturday morning? Since when are you even awake on a Saturday morning?”

  Angelica stuck out her jaw and crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t sleep well. I was up all night trying to figure out how to tell Tom that I’m not going out with him.”

  “It’s too late now, isn’t it? He’s probably made all sorts of elaborate plans. It would be cruel to disappoint him after all that effort.”

  Angelica chewed her lower lip. She’d been fretting about that very issue, hating as she did to hurt anyone’s feelings. What if he was really looking forward to today? What if he’d made reservations for a fancy meal somewhere, and told all his friends he had a date? He’d be embarrassed and humiliated if she cancelled on him at this late hour. She should have called him back right after he phoned her and told him no. Once she was off the phone, though, doing nothing was easier than calling and rejecting him, especially since he was obviously one of those men who couldn’t catch a hint. He wouldn’t perceive “no” until it was shouted in plain English, followed by a swat on the nose for reinforcement. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  Angelica sighed in defeat and gathered her beach things into a big straw tote. How bad could one date be? At least she’d have a story to tell at the end of it; and when she said good-bye to him when he dropped her off, she’d make very clear that they wouldn’t be seeing each other again. An idiot surfer dude was not her idea of long-term relationship material, and she’d never had interest in casual flings…no matter how well built the man, or how rumbling and deep his voice. A tingle ran over her skin as she remembered Tom standing close behind her in the doctor’s waiting room.

  A knock sounded at the door. “Hoo hoo!” Karen cried, and crunched into the center of her Tootsie Pop.

  Angelica slapped her hands to her face, all her nervousness blossoming in her cheeks. She might have no serious interest in Tom Haggerty, but he was still a big, good-looking guy who was taking her out for the day. Her last date had been eight months ago, with a cheap little yahoo from the studio’s IT department. He’d made her pay for her own dinner. Even though her body ached for the touch of a man, she hadn’t let him put a finger on her.

  “Want me to get the door?” Karen asked eagerly.

  It was disconcerting to hear such enthusiasm in her roommate’s voice while her face remained placid. Was Angelica imagining it, or had the Phi-Tox moved from Karen’s brow down to her cheeks? Even Karen’s shoulders and neck seemed a little less mobile than usual.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Angelica said. It would postpone the inevitable for a moment, at least. “I have to get my sunscreen and stuff.”

  Karen sauntered from the room, and Angelica slipped into her bathroom to get the sunscreen, which even someone with her dark olive complexion needed if they were going to be near the water. Beside it in her vanity drawer was a strip of condoms. She stared at the blue packages. There was no way she was going to need them. Was there?

  An image flashed to mind of Tom, naked, standing at the edge of a bed with her tan legs around his waist. The flush of sensation in her loins made her grab the packages and check the expiration date. They had a month left.

  Out in the foyer, she heard the high chirping of Karen’s voice, and the answering deep murmurs of Tom’s. Without letting herself think about it, Angelica shoved the strip of condoms into her toiletries bag and stuffed the bag into her straw tote.

  She gave herself one last look in the mirror: her hair was held back with an emerald green silk scarf twisted like a headband, the tails of the scarf falling over her bare shoulder along with her heavy hair. She wore a white cotton sundress with a full-tiered skirt and spaghetti straps that crisscrossed in back. Her breasts were small enough that she could get away without wearing a bra, at least as long as they weren’t doing any jogging. Golden Greek goddess sandals adorned her feet, and on one wrist several thin brass bangles chimed in accompaniment of her every gesture.

  The outfit would do for everything from the beach to a restaurant, and she was pleased to have an excuse to wear the dress. She’d ordered it online two years earlier and never worn it, always reaching instead for clothes that wouldn’t show dirt or stains, and with which she could wear a bra. She wasn’t sure why she’d finally put it on for Tom, of all people. Maybe she wanted him to goggle over her and regret being so rude at Dr. Velazquez’s office.

  Okay, so maybe there wasn’t a big chance of that given her “half-cuppers,” big butt, or Inca nose, but a girl did what she could. Flaws notwithstanding, she looked pretty good today. She smacked an air kiss at herself in the mirror, slung her tote over her shoulder and went to face the Visigoth.

  She found him declining an offer of a treat from Karen’s jumbo box of Mike & Ike candy. “Are you sure?” Karen said, shaking the box, candies rattling around inside.

  “Yeah,” he said, grimacing, but his face lit up when he saw Angelica. His white smile was fluorescent in his tan face. “Hi!” he said. He was wearing a ragged old T-shirt with the faded image of a turtle on its front and some indecipherable writing; loose orange swim trunks, and black flip-flops. Worse yet, the ends of two plastic tubes protruded from his swollen nose, and sickly yellow bruises, visible even under his tan, surrounded his electric blue eyes. The color combination made him look like the undead.

  Angelica shrank in embarrassment. She was overdressed. He’d obviously meant this date as a casual thing—if he even meant it as a date! “Hi,” she said miserably.

  “Wow. You look great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I thought maybe you wouldn’t be here. Do you usually accept invitations from idiots who call you up and don’t give you a chance to say no?”

  If her brows could still move, they would have raised in incredulity. “Are you implying that I’m a pushover with low standards?”

  He winced and slapped his hand to his temple. “No! Sorry! Don’t pay attention to anything I say. Just…come out with me.” He gave her an
imploring look, his face ridiculously vulnerable with pleading blue eyes above the swollen, tube-filled nose.

  She softened, her vanity appeased. “Yeah, okay. Where are we going, anyway?”

  “I’m not telling; it’s a surprise.”

  Angelica gave Karen a sharp look.

  “Don’t worry,” Karen said. She had enough stranger-dating experience to correctly interpret Angelica’s look. “I have all his contact info, and his credit card number. If you disappear like those women on the local news, the police will know who their number one ‘person of interest’ will be.”

  Tom’s jaw dropped, and he gaped in horror at them both.

  Angelica suppressed a smile. Tom suddenly seemed ridiculously large and harmless in the small space of their foyer. The poor man was an innocent, in the most naïve sense of the word. He was, she was beginning to suspect, a bit of a simpleton. He probably lived in his parents’ basement. And ate Pop Tarts for breakfast. Probably hadn’t ever had a real girlfriend.

  Angelica felt her confidence returning. The day was going to be a lark, a frivolous outing about which to laugh with Karen, when she came home. “C’mon,” she said to Tom, hooking her arm into his. “Let’s go see this surprise destination.”

  They said their good-byes to Karen and headed out. Angelica dropped his arm as soon as they were past the door, and let Tom lead the way towards his car. She guessed it would be an old VW Vanagon, complete with surf rack on the roof and calico curtains in the windows.

  “So, what happened to your nose?” she asked.

  He touched it gingerly. “I was hit by a tank.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tank. Wham! Right in the face.”

  “A tank? As in, armored vehicle?”

  He laughed, the sound a deep rumble in his chest. “No, an air tank. As in scuba diving. It broke my nose, which I didn’t care about until I realized it had healed crookedly and I couldn’t breathe.”

  Ah. That explained the mouth-breathing. “Are you happy with Dr. Velazquez’s work?”

  “Can’t tell yet. I was told he was one of the best, but he gives me the willies.” He mock-shuddered.

  “I thought he was charming.”

  Tom snorted. “I’ll bet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A handsome, unmarried plastic surgeon has got to be the wet dream of every woman in L.A.”

  Angelica sucked in an offended breath.

  “Don’t let him get his hands on you,” Tom continued. “I’ve known a few plastic surgeons, and they’re all obsessed with sex. Sex, sex, sex, that’s all they talk about. And they tell the filthiest jokes you’ll ever hear.”

  “That wasn’t the impression I got from Dr. Velazquez,” she said stiffly.

  “Of course it wasn’t; you’re female. He charmed you, just as any womanizer would, even if he doesn’t want you. It’s an ego thing.”

  “Well, thank you very much for that information, Dr. Phil,” she snapped, miffed. He was making it clear that someone like Dr. Velazquez would never be interested in someone like her.

  “Who’s Dr. Phil?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Womanizers seem like they love women,” he went on, “but they’ll never truly love a woman.”

  “I got your point!”

  Tom subsided into silence.

  They reached the visitors parking area, and Tom’s car. Angelica stopped in her tracks when it became clear which vehicle was his.

  “Meet Mr. Toad,” Tom said proudly, his open hand pointing at an ancient, small, faded green Toyota Hilux pickup truck with a hand-fabricated rack over the bed.

  “Mr. Toad, as in ‘Mr. Toad’s wild ride’?”

  His smile once again lit his face. “The Wind in the Willows was my favorite book as a kid. It made me want to talk to animals.”

  Her heart softened a little; wanting to talk to animals was kind of sweet. “Did you? Talk to them, I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Really?” she asked, surprised.

  He gave her a mischievous look. “Can’t say they answered, though.”

  She smothered a laugh. The little brat!

  Tom went to the passenger door and started to open it.

  “Wait,” she said, seeing an image painted on the door. She pointed at it. “What’s that?”

  “Not ‘what.’ ‘Who,’” he said fondly. “That’s my angel on the half shell.”

  She remembered the name that had come up on her cell phone. “Half shell?”

  “You know, like that painting by Botticelli, of the birth of Venus? Where she’s naked, standing on half a scallop shell?”

  “Yes, of course I know the painting.” She inched closer to get a better look, intrigued. The Venus in this case was a brown-skinned, dark-haired girl wearing nothing but a scuba mask pushed up above her brow. She held a pair of flippers in one hand, strategically hiding her private parts, and with the other hand she held dark locks of hair up to partially cover her breasts. She looked a lot like Angelica, herself. “Is there a meaning behind her?” she asked, feeling a flutter of uneasiness in her stomach. Was he obsessed with someone from his past and looking for a replacement?

  “One of my diving buddies back when I got the truck was a graphic designer. He thought Mr. Toad needed dressing up, and that a pinup girl like airmen painted on their bombers in WWII would do the trick. He asked me to describe my idea of the perfect woman, and Angel there was the result.”

  “Is she based on someone you knew?”

  “Nah. She’s just a fantasy.” He opened the passenger door for her.

  His unconcern relieved her of her worries, but they were immediately replaced by others when she saw the inside of the truck. Angelica stared with dismay at the dusty vinyl bench seat and thought about her pristine white dress. Would it be rude to take out her sarong and spread it on the seat?

  Yes, it would.

  With an internal sigh of resignation, she slid into the bare-bones cab of Mr. Toad. Sand on the floor gritted beneath the soles of her sandals. The seat was no more than four feet across, and if she tilted her head back her skull touched the glass of the rear window. There was no headrest. The dash was green painted metal and black cracked vinyl, and the cab smelled of a curious mix of spilled coffee, seashells, and coconut oil.

  “How old is this truck?” she asked as he climbed into the driver’s seat, his big frame barely fitting.

  “1970. It was all I could afford when I was an undergrad.” He pulled out the choke and turned the key in the ignition mounted on the dash. The engine made sad whining noises as it tried to start. After six or seven tries it finally caught, chugging to life.

  Jeez, were they even going to make it out of the parking lot? “You never thought of replacing the truck with something, er…more reliable?”

  “Replace Mr. Toad?!” he cried. He patted the dash soothingly and addressed the steering wheel. “Don’t worry, she didn’t mean it.” He cast her a sidelong look and spoke out the side of his mouth. “You can’t let an old vehicle hear you talk like that. It upsets them, and next thing you know you’re blowing out a clutch.”

  Oh Lord, the man was crazy. Angelica hesitated before buckling the seatbelt, realizing this was her last chance to flee.

  “But don’t worry, the toad gets you where you want to go. Usually.” He frowned, jerking the gearshift around until he could wedge it into reverse. “If your destination’s not too far away.” He suddenly turned to her and grinned, his face boyish and delighted, and rapped the horn twice: Beep beep! “This is gonna be a great day, isn’t it?”

  Angelica couldn’t say no to that face. “Yup!” She clicked the buckle closed and sat back, abandoning herself to his enthusiasm.

  Mr. Toad bounced and chugged down the driveway to the main street, Via Marina, and they pulled out, Angelica silently praying that Tom wasn’t going to take them on the freeway in this thing. Rattling down the boulevard with the windows down, wind whipping he
r hair around her face, the motor growling and whining as Tom took it up through its gears, it felt like Tom was driving at a recklessly high speed, at least fifty; but when she glanced over at the speedometer it read a measly twenty-five. She laughed.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “It really is a wild ride, isn’t it?” she said, holding flying hair down with one hand.

  He nodded, clearly loving it. She realized with surprise that she was enjoying it, too. It had the same jouncing appeal of an amusement park ride.

  “So you scuba dive?” she asked over the noise of car and road.

  “Yeah.”

  “Around here?”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. It’s not that great for recreational diving, although I spent a lot of time off the coast while I was getting my Ph.D.”

  She did a double-take. “Your Ph.D.? Are you serious?”

  He gave her an ‘of course’ look. “Yeah. Marine biology. Scripps.”

  He meant Scripps Oceanographic Institute, down in La Jolla; it was one of, if not the top ocean sciences research institutes in the world. She gaped at him, flabbergasted. “You’re a scientist?”

  “Nah. I liked the diving way more than the nuts and bolts of science. After I got my degree I started operating live-aboard dive trips, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Some of my clients are scientists, and a couple times a year I organize excursions especially for them, based on their areas of interest.”

  “What was your dissertation on?”

  He flashed a smile, and turned onto Admiralty Way, the road that continued around the north side of the marina. “Scallops. More specifically, The early pelagic larval life history of three eastern pacific scallops.”

  Angelica grimaced. “Gack.”

  “I know. A topic only a devoted scientist could love. I blame my angel on the half-shell for that choice; she made me think I was fascinated by scallops. Maybe I thought I’d find her in one.” He gave her a wry, self-deprecating smile. “It took a while, but I eventually discovered that most women live on land.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “Very perceptive of you. Do you regret all that work you did for your degree?”