"What's going on?" Yvette's voice called from behind James. "I was just going to show you—"
Could life get any worse?
There she was, standing next to my guy all tidy in a tight tank top, miniskirt, and four-inch heels, holding out a sheaf of typed paper with loopy purple markings all over it. Of all the nerve. A tidy bug with a purple pen had invaded my date! And to cap it off, her chin was purple-ink-stain free.
Bitch.
"Rhonda?" she said. "What are you doing here?"
Normally, I'd have returned the question, but my life hadn't been normal for eighteen hours. I stuttered. Then I spied her purse on the floor of my car and bent sideways, one leg hanging outside the car, still trying to keep eye contact with James while feeling around the car floor, finding everything and tucking it back inside the little bag. The hardest part was zipping it up with one hand. Not working.
"You need help in there?" James asked.
"Wait just a sec." Twisting almost flat onto the seat, I yelled inanities over my shoulder while I finished zipping it up. Finally, I sat up and held the little purse out to Yvette like a bargain basement gift. "Look what I found in the hospital room. Unopened.”
Open mouth, insert foot.
But as I sat up, triumphant, my left foot, still trailing the pavement, kicked something small toward James. He retrieved it.
"Hey, that's Pregnant Plum Lip Smear," Yvette said. "Just like mine."
James smiled at my contortions. "Are you okay?"
Yvette took it. "My purse? With a …tail?" Oops. It had somehow escaped again.
My flushed face went redder.
Sweet James laughed and covered for me. "Rhonda, how's your mother? Can I visit today? I'm nearly done here."
Hah! My mother trumped Yvette's free consult.
"No, she's in surgery. I was just going back up Newport when I saw your car here."
Yvette said, "His car's not here. We came in mine. Parked in back. You know, this lipstick …"
They'd come together? During my date time? How dare Yvette try to steal my rocket man when he'd just returned to the writing group and I'd lined him up for kitchen island sex? This woman was the living symbol of my life falling down around me. Since I'd met her the evening before, she'd had a hand in every catastrophe my life had served up, from casually trying to steal James to almost letting me suffocate to consorting with Jackson. I opened my mouth to ask about him, but a wave of anger flamed from the pit of my stomach to render me speechless.
Yvette held out the lipstick with a mean grin. "Rhonda, are you telling me you stood in line and paid a mint for this rare, expensive shade?"
A Pregnant Plum pause followed.
James grinned at her. "Rhonda's switched to plum lipstick? Imagine that." He looked way too happy with Yvette, and now he was laughing with her at me! I wanted to strangle both of them. How had I ended up deserting my mother for these two clowns?
James said, "Rhonda. You look upset. Are you okay?"
I closed the car door, started the engine, and backed out fast. Then in the middle of the parking lot, on a rather steep bit of asphalt, I braked like a freeway lookie loo to watch James escort Yvette back into the restaurant: my life crashing and burning. The rage in my chest rose up and had me pounding my steering wheel and screaming while my inner know-it-all, Rhondina, sang, Get real. The ocean was never your goal. You sold out your parents for a pair of unavailable blue eyes.
A honking chorus of cars lined up behind mine as I pounded the steering wheel over and over, steeped in the pungent aroma of old fast food bags littering my car seats. All my dreams were just like them: empty and greasy.
A tap came at my passenger window.
I jumped a foot.
Then James hopped in and pulled me into his arms, which smelled like tandoori, and I started bawling like a calf with hiccups. He held me and stroked my hair. We sat there, cars honking and angrily edging past us, me leaking and hiccupping, his shirt soaking it all up.
He pointed at my ketchup stains. "Carl's Jr. or McDonald's?"
"Burger King," I mumbled into his shirt.
He nodded toward the restaurant. "I never thought you'd come with your emergency and all, so I invited her. Sorry."
We were still in parking limbo on the slope. I looked around for a parking space. None.
"She'll be okay," James said.
"She could drown in the ocean," for all I care. Damned Yvette. I grimaced and hiccupped again.
"Rhonda. Stop worrying. Women her age have surgery all the time.”
Oh. Mom. "But it's not just her," I sniveled, changing conversational gears fast. "It's everything. Dad …" No, I couldn't go there. "Mom. My book. My house. My income. My life. My passion." Hiccup. My anxious hand fiddled with the gearshift. "Do you think Yvette might know Reynard Jackson?"
In one swift move, James pulled me close and smothered my lips with a warm, passionate, lemon-iced-tea-flavored kiss straight from the gods, and I forgot Yvette’s name.
CHAPTER 8
My troubles melted as I responded with all the sweet feelings I'd saved up for James over the past year, feelings which had filled up and now overflowed a whole storage compartment in my heart. Well, maybe not my heart. I actually felt this a little lower. The kiss seemed to last forever, but it was only about ten seconds before I hiccupped again so violently that folks could hear me in L.A. My foot left the brake, and the car rolled straight toward the car behind us.
Like lightning, James grabbed the emergency brake and we stopped just in time.
After a shocked pause, we both laughed and he hugged me again.
"Can I get a ride with you back to the medical center? I'm subbing there today," he said into my hair. "And you know, I suddenly want a burger instead of tandoori."
And I forgave him for everything.
* * *
"So you just relax. I'll check on your mom every day this week," he said, as we drove into the medical center parking lot after lunch and a nice chat having nothing to do with books or parents. "And stop worrying about money. Just say the word. I'll lend you some."
I smiled. "You're not rich either. And now you've saved my life, twice. My hero."
"One and a half times, I think. But didn’t you say your computer's acting funny? This local hero’s at your service there, too." Under that lock of hair, the baby blues gleamed. "My pleasure.”
"No, it's fine, but …" Oh, man. Had I been that oblivious? Had all his offers for computer fixing really been code for: I'm into you, baby? "On the other hand, maybe it is a little sick."
He picked up his purple-graffitied manuscript pages and scowled. "Need some scratch paper? I swear that Yvette makes me feel like I'm back in third grade. Your comments are so much better." He grinned, and the sun came out to shine. "Hey, wanna go to a movie with me Saturday? There's this new action-adventure tale out, Romancing the Sherpa. Sounds perfect for a first date, doesn't it?"
Ah. The little cockroach hadn't quite landed him after all.
* * *
Coming off the hospital elevator, James and I heard a boom box playing a polka, too loud for a hospital ward. I turned the corner to find Dad standing by the nurse's station, twirling a rosy-clad nurse under each arm. Patients and orderlies gawked and snickered. Nurses at the station yelled, "Stop, stop! Mr. Hamilton!"
A guard ran up and tried to pull a nurse away, but Dad's grip was too strong. Then someone saw me and shouts pelted my way.
"Are you his daughter?"
"He's been doing this for—"
"Is he crazy?"
"Get him to stop!"
"I'll get backup." James ran back down the hall.
I bellowed, "Dad!"
He looked up, still twirling dizzy ladies in glee.
"Dad, let go this minute or I'll tell Mom!" I spouted.
Looking about seven years old, he dropped the nurses' hands. "Hey, I just wanted to dance! Just for fun.”
<
br /> I ran into the danger zone under his arm and switched off the boom box.
One of the nurses, whose name tag read Martha Johnson, was looking daggers at Dad and rubbing a wrist with a carpal tunnel brace on it.
I saw lawsuits and dollar signs and backed away. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Johnson. Is there anything I can …"
She pointed at the elevator.
* * *
I pulled out of the hospital parking lot, hoping James would understand our quick escape. Dad reached down to get a fallen French fry between the driver's seat and the emergency brake and brought up two more of Yvette's business cards. He handed them to me, and with a quick glance, I stuffed them in my purse and drove home, still luxuriating in the afterglow of James and the Magic Kiss.
In the afternoon, I opened more nasty agent email from Laurie Swanson, Frederica Penny and Bernie Sills, telling me my book was not publishable at this time, or ever, and to go take a long stroll in Death Valley. In the summer. Who was behind all this? I called Jackie, asking her what she knew about Yvette and who had brought her to the meeting.
"Oh, I don't know her," Jackie said. "Dinah referred her to us. Said Yvette had visited their writers' group once and wanted to meet with other groups in the area. We hadn't had a speaker in a long time, so I invited her."
"And her writing credentials? Did she bring references?"
"She said she'd been an assistant editor in New York and quit to freelance. Why else would she come to us? She certainly has a grasp of the current fiction market. Oh, sorry, Rhonda."
"I checked her out on Publisher's Marketplace," I said. "She's not there.”
"Really?" Jackie said.
"Are we hiring her?" I asked.
"We'd need a unanimous vote."
I relaxed. "Great. Do me a favor. Ask her to the next meeting. I need to know more about her.”
"Ooh. Cat fight," she said, and hung up.
* * *
Morose, I got up to go buy a copy of Memory Wars, but was waylaid by Music Man pestering me about visiting Mom. Finally, when he broke down in tears, I gave up my bookstore plan and got Arlene to come over and play hearts with us. Dad won three games to my one, actually shooting the moon once because my attention was back on the marvelous kiss at Darya Delhi. It kept taking over my mind screen, gaining more color and swelling with louder symphonic music every time I replayed it, like a Bollywood musical. I felt light and giddy, imagining our next kiss longer and deeper and more secluded … But somehow, my Bollywood visions always ended not with hearts and flowers swirling around me and James, but with Dad twirling a dozen sari-clad ladies under his many arms in the village square.
* * *
That evening, Mom looked post-op pale. Her hair was all mashed on one side. When I approached, uncertain, she said, "Honey, couldn't you wear something a little nicer to the hospital?"
Okay. She was normal.
Dad snatched Mom's dinner pudding cup. "Ethel, you know what the doctor told the woman to get when she got run down?"
The room smelled like lilies and antiseptic. Mom rolled her eyes as we awaited the inevitable punch line.
"The license number, Madam, the license number!" He grinned.
Mom laughed at the Foreign Legion-style hat I'd put on Dad to get him past the hospital guards. But when Arlene came and whisked dad off to the cafeteria, I told Mom the real story about Ralston House and the scene regarding the dishes in the sink.
"Mom. Why didn't you tell me he was getting strange?"
Mom, who'd been dozing in and out, slurred, "He's just worried and had a bad dream, honey. You know he sleep walks. Like the time at Aunt Margaret's when he ran into the laundry on the line? The whole neighborhood was convinced they'd seen a ghost for years after." She dozed off again.
I picked up her crossword puzzle and filled in letters and stewed.
When she woke, I said, "Mom, about Dad—"
She patted my hand. "You know how Harold gets when I have a simple cold. Well, for me to break a bone right after Monica and her kids just left … It just threw him more than we figured on. That's all."
I hadn't thought of that. "But he hadn't packed anything but sweets and toilet paper in his bag. And his pants were all wet … They said he's demented and they won't take him back. I made him an appointment at a gerontologist's tomorrow, but don't tell him, please. I'll need the element of surprise to get him there."
Mom smiled and waved me off. "That scamp. Packing all that stuff that I normally ration like a quartermaster. Wonder how he found the candy bars? And those are his favorite pants. He hand washes them a couple times a week to get the spots out. He probably just spilled beer on them."
I was shocked. "But he—"
"I know, I know. I made him stop drinking a long time ago. But he sometimes tipples a little while I'm gone just to thumb his nose at me. Then I find the bottle and throw it out. It's a game we play. No reason to take him to the doctor."
"But he hit a guy and stole his keys and was bashing peoples' …"
She had dozed off again.
A while later, a short, wide nurse with fake half-circle eyebrows whose nametag actually read Bertha, came in and woke Mom up. The nurse huffed and tutted while Mom delivered a list of aches and pains around the thermometer.
Music Man then came back with Arlene, booming, "Ethel, their macaroni and cheese is great here."
Mom slurred, "Harold, what did I tell you about double dinners?"
Her hand at Mom's pulse, Bertha narrowed dark beady eyes at Dad. "He's gotta go, ma'am. Miss Johnson will fire me if she sees him."
Mom caught Dad's hand with her free one. "Harold, did you pinch some bottoms?"
His eyes got big. "No, honest. I just beat Rhonda and Arlene at hearts. Shot the moon, too. Am I allowed to do that?" They exchanged a chuckle while Bertha pumped up the blood pressure cuff to bursting.
"Ow!" Mom yipped. "Listen, Harold, you be good for Rhonda tomorrow. She needs to get back to her job soon. In fact, Rhonda, just go back to work tomorrow. Arlene offered to look in on Dad."
Arlene nodded.
Mom said, "Harold, she'll leave your medicines on the table in the morning and your lunch in the fridge." Then she confided in Arlene and me, "But I worry. He fell three times last week. And he needs help—"
"Ethel!" Dad said. "I do not need help!"
"You hear well when you want to, don't you, you old coot?" Mom said. "Well, you tried to take a double dose of your heart medicine last week."
Bertha pushed a cup full of pills under Mom's nose.
Mom waved the meds away, stage whispering to me, "At least check the water heater closet for Bacardi. And clean the bathroom. It must be a wreck by now.”
Bertha popped a pill in Mom's mouth on her last word and clapped her on the back to make it go down.
But Mom kept center stage. "Gosh, that new girl doesn't clean the house like Manuela did. I think she hides stuff. I should really be there. You know, I could go home tomorrow. I'm sure I could easily do my physical therapy from home just as well, and then Harold wouldn't need anyone to come in. If I can't go to Sydney, I could at least be comfy at home.”
Wow. A GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card within my reach. "Sure, if you feel up to it …"
Arlene said, "Yes, Ethel. You'll feel much better at home.”
But thick layers of steam were now rising off Nurse Bertha, who put hands on hips and glowered at us. "Are you kiddin' me?"
I reluctantly revised, "No, Mom. (A) You need your physical therapy monitored here to heal right. And (B), who'll take care of you at home now? Dad with his cane? Not me. I just took a month off work. They're this close to canning me.”
"We could use our vacation allowance to hire someone to help me at home," Mom said, perking up.
Bertha's eyes looked like Clint Eastwood’s in Dirty Harry, and we all shrank back from her. Mom sniffed. Dad sniffed. Arlene frowned at me, the traitor. Footsteps approached from th
e nurse's station.
Mom squeezed Dad's hand. "Okay. Rhonda, find him a companion while I finish out my sentence here. But he's fine. He doesn't really need to see the doc—"
"Doctor's medical supply store," I said quickly, waving a paper at Dad. "You need new cane tips there tomorrow. Let's go."
CHAPTER 9
After I got Dad two Hungry Man dinners at home, I called a bunch of ladies with housekeeping ads in the paper. None of the affordable ones spoke English, and the others either needed transportation or said no when I mentioned how big my father was.
So I called ten or twelve senior living places, none of which had vacancies. Ralston House must have gotten to them first. Then I searched the house and found a nearly empty bottle of Seagram's in the linen closet, along with quite a selection of tools, underwear and socks which hadn't been there last month. Too tired to reorganize, I left it all except the booze.
Finally, I called several local critique groups to ask about Yvette, but only one or two had ever heard of her. She'd visited these briefly as a guest writer, not an editor. They had loved her sweet, polite manner. But when I asked about book theft in their groups, they got defensive. No, what kind of group did I think they were? Though no such thing had ever happened, they could take no responsibility for the safety of their writers' chapters, and if I was that worried about it, I shouldn't join their group or any other critique group.
At nine o’clock, I was heading to bed with a book when Harley showed up at the door, saying, "Let's go, Rhonda.”
She was even taller than me, and five pounds heavier, which she only owned up to so I wouldn't beat her up. Her long brassy hair had hints of wild red, and her big brown eyes were always looking for some angle, some prank, some adventure. Her nose was long and Patrician compared to my peasant wide one and her jaw brooked no opposition. I'd been led into many a crazy situation by that jaw and had often needed my improbable sense of fiction to get us out. Now she wore a black T-shirt, black jeans and army boots.
"Lookin’ good," I said.
"No time for flattery," she said impatiently. "We’re out of here.
Roll with the Punches Page 7
