by Nancy Martin
Thank heaven the cell phone ruled every teenager's life. Rawlins answered his automatically. "Uh, yeah?"
"Rawlins," I said sternly, "you're going to get arrested for that kind of behavior."
"Huh?"
"I'm on the corner at the pay phone."
He looked around, hastily disengaging Clover's hand from his pants. At the sight of me glaring at him, he nearly ripped the parking meter out of the pavement. "Uhm . . ."
"I'm coming over."
"Oh—okay."
By the time I had hung up the receiver and marched over to them, Rawlins had his libido sufficiently under control to pretend surprise. "Uh—uh, Aunt Nora!"
Clover took her arm away from his shoulder, tossed her head back and used her long fingers to rake her hair as if she were auditioning for a Pantene commercial. She took one look at me with my box of cupcakes and sighed with loathing.
My nephew swiped the back of his hand across his ear. "Aunt Nora, this—this is Clover."
"Hello, Clover," I said. "How nice to meet you."
She shrugged. "Yeah, whatever."
"We were just—you know, talking about stuff," Rawlins said. "Stuff about—you know, just stuff."
"How scintillating."
As if I were invisible, Clover went back to eyeing Rawlins. "You're so hot," she breathed. "I don't remember you being this hot."
Rawlins turned an alarming shade of primrose. "Uhm . . ."
"I'm having a party." She used her forefinger to trace an imaginary heart on his chest. "Friday night. It's supposed to be like my birthday, only it's not. Everybody cool is coming."
"Oh," said Rawlins. "Sounds great."
"It's in a club. Chastize, do you know it? The owners are comping the space because I bring in, you know, business."
"You do?" I couldn't imagine what business Clover might attract.
Clover ignored me and tossed her hair again. "Yeah, everybody cool wants to be with me. I'm gonna get written about in the newspapers and stuff."
"Really?" Rawlins asked. "Aunt Nora writes a column for a newspaper."
Clover gave me a longer scrutiny, but shook her head. "Not dressed like that, she doesn't. Anyway, I just got this new purse. Nice, huh? And these earrings. I kinda liked them when a boy gave them to me, but now I think they're gross. Do you think they're gross?"
"They look nice," said Rawlins, except he wasn't looking at the earrings.
Clover toyed with the bangles on her wrist. "But these bracelets are so last week, right? I'm going to throw them away. Or maybe get some new ones for the party. So, you know, you should come, Raw."
Rawlins was too mesmerized to understand her ploy. "What?"
"To my party."
"Yeah, sure, great," he said. "I'll be there."
"I just wish I had some decent jewelry to wear."
"Rawlins," I said, "isn't Friday the night of the Spring Fling?"
"The what?"
"The school dance," I said even louder. "You know, the tuxedo, the car?"
"Oh, right!" He was nodding. "Yeah, the Spring Fling."
Clover's lip curled in teenage disgust. "You're not going to some loser fest, are you? How lame is that?"
"Well—"
"My party is way more cool than some school snooze. So you'll be there, right? I mean, you can use my name at the door and they'll let you in, even without ID."
"Well." Rawlins avoided my eye. "I'll try."
"You're too hot for high school kids." In full wheedle mode, Clover angled her body closer until her enormous breasts were directly beneath my nephew's nose. "Come about midnight. That's when things really start to rock."
From the street, brakes squealed. Then a black Jeep pulled to the curb, and someone dressed in a khaki vest and baseball cap cranked down the window far enough to stick a camera out, aimed at Clover.
Another hair toss and eye roll. "Will you look at those guys? Are they ever going to leave me alone?"
"Who?" Rawlins was oblivious. "What?"
"The paparazzi," she said. "They chase me everywhere. I can't escape. I gotta go, Raw. See you Friday, right? Ciao, baby."
She gave him a deep, lingering kiss on the mouth in full view of the photographer, then squeezed my nephew's behind. I thought I heard Rawlins squeak, but she released him and strutted away, swinging her hips. The eye of the clicking camera followed her up the sidewalk to a fire hydrant where she'd left a gleaming BMW parked with one tire up on the curb. She struck a quick pose for the benefit of the photographer, then climbed into the car, and made a bad business of threading it out of its illegal parking spot before finally roaring up the street. She blew her horn just in case the photographer failed to notice her departure.
We watched the Jeep make a U-turn and follow, and I saw that the driver was the same photographer I'd seen snapping the girl's picture at Cupcakes the night before, the same girl I'd met in the bathroom.
"Is that Jane?"
"Who?"
"That girl with the camera."
"I don't know. I wasn't looking at her."
"Do we actually have paparazzi in Philadelphia?" I asked.
"Huh?" Rawlins wiped Clover's lip gloss from his mouth.
"And why Clover of all people? It's not like she's an actress."
"She's hot."
"Hot? Is that the only quality worth having anymore?" I rounded on Rawlins. "And exactly what do you think you were doing with her, young man?"
He hugged himself and turned as pink as a kid who'd just been nabbed for shoplifting Trojans. "I'm really sorry, Aunt Nora."
He summoned a believably hangdog expression.
"It's not your fault," I soothed, then caught myself. "No, wait a minute. It's completely your fault!"
"What am I supposed to do?" he cried. "She's a piranha!"
"You could have told her about Shawna, for one thing!"
"I know, I know. I hate lying. Look, I'm not going to her party, that's for sure."
"Good," I snapped. Then, softening, I said, "Hungry?"
"I guess."
I offered him the box of cupcakes, but when he peeked into the cupcake box, Rawlins looked a little nauseated. "I'm not into sweets much. What about a pizza?"
To finance his snack, I handed over the nine dollars and change Rawlins had given me earlier. He drove me to the offices of the Philadelphia Intelligencer in the Pendergast Building and promised he'd be back in a couple of hours.
"Where will you go?" I asked. "Looking for Clover?"
"No." He blushed again. "Maybe I'll pick out some flowers for Shawna."
"Good idea."
I kissed him good-bye, and went into the lobby, through the security checkpoint and up the elevators to the floor I shared with the rest of the writers from the Features department.
I had inherited the social column when Kitty Keough died after twenty-five years of high-society gossip. Since then, I'd struggled to keep up her schedule and her readership. Although I knew the city's social set better than most local football fans understood the Eagles' playbook, I found I didn't have Kitty's poisoned pen when it came to tattling tales. I was struggling to keep her readers flipping to the back page every day. My editor had already begun to wonder if the society page was a dinosaur that had wandered into the tar pit.
But the other writers in the department welcomed me—never more so than when I came bearing a box from Verbena's Bakeshop.
Skip Malone, the sportswriter, lifted a cupcake out of the box the instant I stepped off the elevator. "Hey, Nora, how's the rubber-chicken circuit?"
Mary Jude Yashurick, the food writer and the occupant of the desk closest to mine, savored her first bite with a swoon that spun her swivel chair in a complete circle. "You're a lifesaver!" She sucked frosting from her fingers, then tried to keep the crumbs off her bright yellow sweater by cupping her other hand beneath her chin as she ate the rest. "I need a sugar rush."
"I was hoping to mooch some lunch from you."
Mary Jude blinked at me.
"Not in the mood for cupcakes?"
"Not exactly."
"Upset stomach?"
"Nothing serious. I'm hoping for something bland."
"I probably have something." She hooked the handle of her desk drawer with the toe of her shoe and tugged it open to reveal her stash of goodies—samples sent by various food manufacturers. Under a mound of cake mixes, a freeze-dried lasagna and a lone can of macadamia nuts, she found a sleeve of organic wheat crackers. She tossed it to me. "Here you go. If it's organic, it's probably tasteless enough for you."
I hefted the crackers in my hand. "Thanks."
She unpeeled the rest of the wrapper from her cupcake. "You've been kinda scarce lately, Nora."
I heard the polite suspicion in her tone. "A touch of the flu got me down, but I'm bouncing back."
"Going out every night to cover the party scene?"
"Almost every night, yes."
"Because if I didn't know better . . ."
I pretended to read the label on the crackers and didn't dare glance at my friend.
When I didn't respond, she scooted her chair closer to my desk. "You know, Nora," she said in a lower voice, "I may look like a girl who fell off a turnip truck, but I didn't land on my head."
Mary Jude had a top-notch Ivy League education, but now a single mom, she worked hard to earn the meager salary the Intelligencer paid so she could have the flexible hours needed to take care of her mentally challenged son, Trevor.
She said, "If you've got a problem, you can ask me anything. I know my way around all the resources, and I'm not judgmental. I can help, no matter what you decide to do."
"Is it getting obvious?"
"That you popped up a bra size? Turn green at the thought of food? Yeah, to an observant expert in girl trouble like me, it's starting to look like you're thinking about a trip to the clinic."
I felt a rush of emotion. Afraid to speak of my pregnancy, I had missed out on the kind of support a good friend could offer. I shook my head. "I don't think I can do that, Mary Jude."
She polished off the cupcake, folded up the wrapper and tossed it into the trash can. "Me, neither. But I know your personal life is messy at the moment."
"A little."
"The mob boss is out of the picture, though, right?"
"Yes."
"And you're seeing a hunk from the Inquirer now?"
"Maybe I'm better off solo," I said, still not ready to tell anyone who had contributed his DNA to my science project. "You managed on your own."
"Yeah." She licked a final dab of frosting from her thumb. "The minute Trevor's father heard things weren't all hunky-dory with my pregnancy, he took off for Miami and never looked back, not even a Christmas card. So what? The asshole doesn't know what he's missing. But we're doing fine. Trevor makes me see the world like a kid all the time, and that's a gift. It wouldn't have been my first choice, though."
"Things may not work out for me in the life-partner subject, either."
"I'm sorry to hear that. But you can make it on your own if you have to."
"I'm so broke," I said with a sigh.
"So shop at the Salvation Army instead of Saks."
"It's not that. I'm getting used to poverty. But is it fair to a child to have only one parent?" Slowly, I opened the crackers. "I'm not even sure I can be a good mother. My own family definitely belongs in the remedial class when it comes to parental skills."
"Yeah, I met your sister Libby when she tried to sell me a pink vibrator."
"Sorry about that. But, M. J., what if something goes wrong? Or I have to cope with—"
"A child who's not perfect?" Mary Jude brushed cupcake crumbs from her desk. "I won't kid you—it can be tough. There are days when I can't stand leaving Trevor at home. And other days when I can't face going back to him."
"You're so strong. And lately I've been a basket case."
She nodded sympathetically. "You've been through a lot. And now you're pregnant and feeling alone, so it's scary as hell. Listen, you want to talk to somebody about adoption? I know a lawyer who specializes in the private kind."
"Thanks," I said. "But that doesn't feel right, either. This is something I really want. And yet. . ."
Mary Jude's phone began to ring, so she rolled back to her own desk. "I know, I know. Your brain feels like a pinball machine right now. Part of that problem is hormones. The best thing you can do is take care of yourself. And ask for help if you need it." She grinned.
I went to my desk, oddly elated.
Nibbling on a cracker, I reached for the phone and dialed Delilah's number.
"Hey," I said when she answered. "Long time no hear. How are you doing?"
"Nora, hey." Delilah's voice was subdued. "I can't talk right now. I'm—the police are here."
I dropped my cracker. "What can I do to help?"
"I'm okay," she said, but sounded far from it.
"Do you have a lawyer with you?"
"I don't need one," she said. "We're just talking."
"If you have any doubts, call a lawyer," I said. "Do you want me to come? I can hold your hand, if you like."
"I can handle it," she said. "But I gotta go. I'll call you later."
She disconnected before I could say more.
Slowly, I hung up my phone. Maybe the cops were simply asking Delilah standard questions.
Or were the police hedging their bets?
I extracted another cracker and took a bite. It tasted like cardboard with sawdust added for flavor. I opened a bottle of water to wash it down.
Fortunately, it all stayed in my stomach. So, nibbling crackers and sipping water, I went through the heap of my mail, comfortably glad to have Mary Jude working steadily beside me.
I received dozens of invitations every day, but because we were still in the slow weeks of the social season, I stopped into the office only three times a week to sort the envelopes. In a month, my workload would double. Soon, invitations for spring events would come flooding in. To stay ahead of the game, I made phone calls and wrote e-mails like mad, glad to focus on work and block out everything else for a while.
I took my work seriously, and my party-hopping had a purpose. Hundreds of philanthropic groups relied on newspaper coverage to promote their causes and help raise funds. It was my job to show up and report on clothes, decor, food and people, but also how much money was raised. Patting donors on the back resulted in more donations later.
I felt I could do my part for good causes by attending as many functions as I could squeeze into my calendar. During the height of the social season, I sometimes made appearances at two or three events each night.
Across the room, someone dropped a coffee cup and cursed. The rest of us looked up from our desks. Will Wesley, the paper's political columnist, popped up from his chair to avoid getting his trousers wet. As always, he wore a stiff striped shirt, a crisp bow tie and red suspenders to keep his pants from falling off his fat-cat potbelly.
Muttering, Will grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on another desk and began to mop up the mess.
As everyone else went back to their work, I pulled a roll of paper towels from Mary Jude's stash and went over.
"Thanks," Will said with uncustomary civility. As I dabbed coffee off the newspaper he had splayed open on his desk, he said, "I was reading Maureen Dowd and the cup slipped out of my hand."
"Well, at least you weren't throwing the cup." I was pretty sure Will didn't see eye to eye with Maureen.
"I haven't finished her column yet," Will said darkly.
Although our politics clashed, Will suffered my presence after he discovered one of my ancestors had sat next to his at the Continental Congress in 1774. The rest of the Intelligencer staff remained beneath his contempt for their mongrel pedigrees and unenlightened views.
I picked up a stack of well-thumbed copies of National Review to keep it dry, but Will snatched it from my grasp. Not before I glimpsed a single copy of Maxim among the political digests.
> I said, "I thought I might have seen you at the Lajeune party last week, Will. Aren't you friends with Jerome?"
"I have a standing Wednesday night dinner date with my mother."
"Oh. You weren't the only one who couldn't make it. Boykin Fitch didn't show, either. Do you know Boy?"
"Of course I do. A very promising young man."
I decided not to point out that Boy and Will were probably the same age. Will seemed determined to be an old fogey before his time. "Is it true?" I asked. "That Boy plans to run for Senate next year?"
Will busily rearranged his desk. "He hasn't made an official announcement yet, but I know he's fund-raising. Why? Are you a supporter?"
I hated to dash Will's hopes that I might have converted. "We're friends."
"I see," Will said frostily, straightening to meet my eye. "Then you won't be asking who he's slept with like the left-wing gossips in this town?"
"Of course not," I replied, although that question was precisely the one I'd hoped to pose.
I heard my phone ringing, so I hurried back to my own desk.
"It's me!" Libby said when I picked up. "You're a journalist, right? So you know how to do research?"
"Well—"
"I just heard there's something called the Chocolate-Cake Diet! Where could I look that up?"
There was no sense trying to reason with her. I said, "Try Ask Jeeves."
"Thanks!"
She hung up.
Shaking my head, I collected the paperwork I wanted to take home. Then I put on my coat to conceal my figure from anyone who might be as observant as Mary Jude, and I stuck my head into my editor's office.
In his ancient desk chair, Stan Rosenstatz was stirring a cup of coffee with the eraser end of a number two pencil.
"Stan?"
He waved me into his office, but I saw the momentary flick of dismay in his face. He wasn't as glad to see me as he had been in the past.
But he put on a good front, tapping the wet pencil on the rim of his cup. "You're not going to ask me for travel expenses, are you? Mary Jude wants to go to a Scandinavian-food festival in Wisconsin, and George says the automotive column won't recover if he can't get to Detroit to see the concept cars next month. Do these writers think I'm made of money?"
