Zipped

by Laura McNeal

  When Mick went upstairs and flipped on the computer, Foolish wedged into the knee well of the desk and curled across Mick’s feet. Mick had meant to spend a little time trying to get into Nora’s e-mail, but was stopped short when he found e-mail of his own.

  I’m in my dorm room. If you get this by 7:00 P.M., call me. 555- 5768. Myra.

  Mick wondered if this was some kind of hoax Reece had dreamed up, but he called the number anyway. A girl answered.

  “Myra?”

  “Who?” the girl said. She was almost yelling. There was loud music in the background.

  “Myra!” Mick yelled. “I’m calling for Myra!”

  He heard the receiver bang down on a hard surface. The bass of the music kept thumping away, and there were girls yelling and laughing. Someone close to the receiver said, “You are so ballsy, Winifred.” At least that’s what Mick thought the voice said. He looked at the clock. Two minutes had passed. He’d just decided to give it one more minute when a voice said, “Hello?”

  “Myra?”

  “Yep, this is Myra.”

  “It’s me, Mick.”

  “Nick?”

  “Mick. Em. As in mittens.”

  “Oh! Hello, Mick as in mittens. I was hoping you’d call. Are you doing anything?”

  Mick said he wasn’t.

  “Well, the commons doesn’t serve on Saturdays and I’m starving. Want to get something to eat?”

  It took a long moment for the question to penetrate, and another long moment to make himself say, “Sure.”

  “How soon can you get to Bing’s?”

  Mick made a rough computation. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Okay, then,” she said, “twenty minutes at Bing’s.”

  Myra Vidal was in a window booth with what looked like a college guy. She looked bored, but her face brightened when she spotted Mick. She waved him over and by the time he got to the booth the other guy was simultaneously sliding out and giving Mick a sidelong inspection.

  “Thanks,” Myra said to Mick as he sat down. “Frat Boy was making me crazy.” She grinned. “I told him you were my study date.”

  “I guess he might’ve wondered where my books were,” Mick said.

  She smiled and looked at him with friendly eyes. After a second or so she said, “You know what’s nice? You’re even cuter than I remembered.”

  Mick felt color rising in his cheeks and she laughed. “But just as embarrassable.” Another second passed, and already Mick felt himself settling into a comfort zone. “You hungry?” she said. “Do you like cheeseburgers? I love cheeseburgers, but can’t eat them. But I’d like to watch you eat one.”

  “Why can’t you eat them?”

  “Twelve thousand fat grams,” Myra said.

  A waitress materialized, and when Mick glanced up, he had to look again. “Mrs. MacKenzie?”

  The woman stared at him.

  “I’m Mick Nichols. From Cub Scouts. You were my den mother.”

  Mrs. MacKenzie grinned. “Mick Nichols. You’re a whole new you! Good thing you told me who you are.” Then she whispered behind a cupped hand, “Former Cubs get extra fries.”

  After she went away with their order, Myra said, “I’ll bet you were the cubbiest little Cub Scout.”

  Mick grinned and said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Myra sipped from her coffee. “It was nice of you to show up on such short notice.”

  Mick waited.

  “It’s just that the dorm’s crazy on Saturday nights, and Pam thinks it’s her social responsibility to party on Saturday night.” Myra’s face clouded—it was as if she’d just had some kind of unpleasant thought—and then she gave her head a little shake. “Anyhow, I just wanted to stay out of trouble with somebody, and I thought of you.”

  Mick said, “Okay, is this a dis or not?”

  “Not.” She smiled.

  “Good,” Mick said, and it was good. Everything about this was good. He was warm and dry and sitting across the table from the kind of girl your average guy would kill for.

  The waitress slid their food onto the table—a Caesar salad, no croutons, for Myra, and a cheeseburger for Mick. After a couple of bites, she said, “I’ve got a boyfriend, is why the whole partying thing doesn’t really work for me. Boyfriend’s in Berkeley.”

  Myra took another bite of salad and opened her wallet to a photograph of one of those rugged and casually handsome guys you hardly ever see except in suit ads. His name, she told Mick, was Ethan. Ethan wanted to be an environmental engineer. He’d gotten a full scholarship to Berkeley, is why he went so far off.

  Mick nodded and flipped to the next picture—another guy, this one in cap and gown. “That’s my brother,” Myra said between bites. There were two other photographs, one of Pam and Myra laughing with their arms draped over each other’s shoulder, the other of just Pam looking up from a book.

  “Nice shot of Pam, no?”

  Mick nodded.

  “She’s photogenic cubed. You will never see a bad picture of Pam Crozier.”

  Mick pushed the wallet back across the table and Myra took another look at the last photograph of Pam before folding the wallet up. “She knows about Ethan, and she knows that’s why I don’t like to party, but, you know, a guy calls, and she’s off like a shot.”

  Mick said, “I guess a guy called tonight, huh?”

  “Yeah. We were going to go to the library and a movie, keep ourselves out of trouble.”

  Mick had never understood the weird little snarls between girlfriends, and he didn’t understand this one. They ate a few minutes in silence, and then Mick turned his head in surprise.

  “You just see a ghost, or what?” Myra said.

  Mick pried his eyes away. The two people who’d just walked into the diner were Maurice Gritz and Janice Bledsoe. Mick discreetly pointed, and Myra glanced back. “I kind of know those two,” Mick said. “The guy’s my supervisor at work and the girl’s a friend of a friend.”

  Myra’s eyes were wide with merriment. “You work for Maurice Gritz? Sonny, you’ve got my sympathy.”

  “You know him?”

  “More than I care to. He escorted me to homecoming a few years ago.” She smiled. “I had no choice. He was king and I was queen.”

  “And?”

  “Let’s just say I hope your friend of a friend is really, really good on defense.” She grinned at Mick. “Is she?”

  Mick made a little shrug. “I don’t really know her, and the friend is really just kind of a friend.” He looked down at his French fries. “In fact, today was the first time I ever talked to her.”

  Myra broke out a friendly laugh. “My smoke detector’s picking up something here.” He blushed, and Myra said, “I knew it!” Then, “I don’t know what I’m doing in comp lit. I should be a psych major.” She smiled at Mick. “So what’s the new friend’s name?”

  “Lisa. Lisa Doyle.”

  “And she was friendly to you today?”

  Mick lowered his eyes. “Kind of, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  Mick told her about the day, and how he was going to ask her to do something after work, but her friend, Janice Bledsoe, had mentioned tall, dark, and Mormon and that had kind of let the air out of the balloon.

  Myra waved her hand dismissively. “I wouldn’t read too much into it. Besides, what Janice was doing was a classic girl move. She sees you’re getting friendly and she plays dumb and throws a wrench into the works.”

  “You think? I mean, why would a girl care if her girlfriend was talking to a guy?”

  A light laugh from Myra. “Trust me on this. The female persuasion is unmatched for complicatedness.”

  Mick was chasing behind that thought when Myra said, “Describe Lisa Doyle.”

  He did, as best he could, and Myra, smiling, said, “My my my.”

  “What?”

  “You seem to have all the details down pat.”

  Mrs. MacKenzie stopped to pour Myra another cup of c
offee. When she departed, Myra said, “I guess you’d like it if I changed the subject from Lisa Doyle.”

  Mick nodded, and as Myra reached across the table to steal one of his French fries, her top loosened at the collar. Mick glimpsed swelling cleavage above a lace-trimmed bra and below the table his important part jumped to attention. Mick sat staring blandly at Myra and tried to think deflating thoughts—a squashed potato bug, his grandmother passing broccoli gas, a dog hit on the highway—but none of it worked, probably because he was still staring at someone as dazzling as Myra Vidal.

  Myra licked a smudge of ketchup from a finger and said, “So did you tell that guy I don’t know him from Adam?”

  Mick didn’t understand. “What guy?”

  “Alexander somebody.”

  Color rose again in Mick’s cheeks. “Oh, him. No, I haven’t seen him.” Myra’s question had done what a squashed potato bug could not—his important part was again laying low.

  Myra was both nodding and chewing. “Well, when you do see him, tell him . . . tell him he should be ashamed of himself.”

  Mick thought about it. “I will,” he said.

  He touched his inside pocket, where the green floppy disk was hidden, then he turned and looked out the window.

  It was raining again in Jemison.

  Myra offered to drive Mick home on her way to the library. She drove an ancient Honda Civic, rusty at the wheel wells and piled with books, but it had a pleasant smell to it, not the damp musty smell Mick had learned to expect from most old cars in Jemison. As she drove, Myra fumbled through a canvas sack of tapes at her feet, glanced at one, then handed it to Mick. “What does that say?”

  It said Najma Akhtar, which Mick tried a syllable at a time. “Nadge-mah Ak-tar.”

  “Close enough,” Myra said, and shoved it into the deck. Almost at once a quick rhythmic mix of drum, sitar, and female singing filled the car. “Wow,” Mick said.

  “Yeah. It knocked me out the very first time I heard it. Pam likes it, too, but only after smoking the demon weed.” Myra smiled. “Whereas I don’t need any alteration whatsoever to get lost in it.” She shot Mick a glance. “It’s Pakistani,” she said, of the music.

  Mick nodded. He’d never heard Pakistani music before.

  “Try putting the seat all the way back and closing your eyes.”

  Mick did, and the pulsing music seemed to wrap around him and lift him up.

  “Whattaya see?”

  The truth was, he saw dancing women wearing not many clothes. “Dancing women,” he said.

  Myra laughed. “Yeah, sometimes I see them, too.”

  Mick kept his eyes closed, listening to the music, until Myra lowered the volume and said, “Okay, which way now?”

  Mick popped his seat upright and got his bearings. They’d overshot his street and had to turn around, which Myra didn’t seem to mind.

  “There,” he said as they approached his house. “Just past the old Chevy.”

  When they pulled up, Myra stared at the house. “Looks dark,” she said.

  “Yeah, my dad and stepmom got snowed in at Tug Hill, so it’s just the dog and me. Except that’s a predicate nominative so it should be ‘the dog and I.’ ” He laughed and Myra laughed, too.

  It was dark in the car except for the greenish illumination of the dashboard. The Pakistani music was still playing, but low. The windshield wipers went thip thip thip. Myra stared straight ahead, as if she were ready to get going. Mick reached for the door latch. “Well, thanks,” he said.

  “I could study here,” she said, still staring forward, but then she turned toward Mick. In the faint greenish dashboard light she seemed to be smiling. “I mean, if you didn’t mind.”

  While Mick turned on lights in the living room, Myra gave scratches to Foolish, then gravitated to the photographs on the fireplace mantel. She picked up one of Mick in his blue Scout uniform. “You were the cubbiest little Cub Scout,” she said, and then scanned the other pictures. “Who’s the dish?” she said.

  Mick turned to see which picture she was referring to. It was Nora-in-swimsuit. “My stepmom. On their honeymoon in Mexico.”

  “She nice?”

  Mick almost said, “I used to think so.” Instead he said, “She’s okay, I guess.”

  Myra turned. “Any particular reason she does no better than okay?”

  “Not really.” There was a sudden stillness Mick didn’t like. “Anyhow,” he said, “isn’t that the deal? Aren’t kids supposed to hate the stepparent?”

  “You hate her?”

  “No,” Mick said quickly, and then, slower, “No. In fact, I like her.” Then, “I just don’t like everything she does.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Just things.”

  “Just things like what?”

  “I don’t know!” He turned away.

  He could feel Myra coming close to him, and then she had her hands on his shoulders, slowly massaging them. It felt wonderful. In a gentle voice she said, “You can tell me if I’m shooting in the dark here, but I have the feeling that something about your stepmom has kind of stuck in your craw and one of these days you’re going to have to cough it up.”

  She kept kneading his shoulders. He tried to make a sentence to begin, but couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  A half minute passed and Myra said, “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’d be happy to listen.” She stopped massaging his shoulders and wrapped her arms around him so that Mick felt her breasts press against his back. She brought her lips close to his ear and said in a whisper, “Know what I like about this house? It looks like the kind of place that would have popcorn in it.” She gave him a friendly kiss on the neck before breaking away.

  Mick microwaved popcorn, which Myra absently ate one piece at a time while reading stretched out on the sofa. Mick laid a fire, but kept sneaking sidelong glances at Myra as she read. When he got out his geometry book, he found he had to sit with his back to her in order to concentrate. He was memorizing postulates when the phone rang. Myra didn’t even look up as he passed by to the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is this Mick?”

  It was a girl’s voice. “Yep, it is.”

  “This is Lisa Doyle.”

  Without thinking Mick said, “It is?”

  Lisa’s laugh was nervous. “Yeah. Anyhow, I know it’s kind of late, but I just wanted to tell you that Maurice didn’t fire me.” A pause. “And also how much better you made an otherwise horrible day.”

  Mick felt himself melting into the phone. “Yeah, you made it better for me, too.”

  Lisa made a soft murmuring laugh. “So are you going to go back next Saturday?”

  “I guess so, yeah. Are you?”

  “Yeah. My theory is Maurice was just trying to scare us off and I don’t like the idea of being scared off.”

  Mick said he hadn’t thought of it that way, but it sounded as good as anything else to explain Maurice’s weirdness.

  Lisa laughed. She told him how Traylor got his brownie points, and how Maurice claimed he was going to treat Lizette Uribe better, but that she’d believe it when she saw it.

  “And that was it?”

  “Yeah.” Another pause, as if she was deciding whether to say something else. What she said was, “Except he had a nice cozy fire going while we were out getting soaked.”

  There was silence then and Mick felt desperate to say something, but he didn’t know what. He said, “Where do you live anyhow?”

  “On Nottingham Road, 1331. My father says it’s a numerical palindrome because it’s the same backward and forward. Where do you live?”

  He told her: 2469 State Street.

  “Too bad it isn’t two-four-six-eight State Street,” Lisa said. “Then it would be a house with its own cheer.”

  Mick said, “Maybe I should talk to my dad about moving.” He hoped she would laugh, and she did, so he said, “I’ll tell him this house is cheerless,” and she laughed aga
in. Talking to Lisa Doyle was quite a bit of fun. Also, to his surprise, easy.

  “So why’d you ask about my address?” she asked in a playful voice.

  Mick to his surprise said, “I looked up ‘Doyle’ in the phone book. There are eighteen of you.”

  “There are?” she said, and then, “Why were you looking up Doyles in the phone book?”

  He figured she knew the answer—it was because he was interested in her—but what was he going to say, that every time he saw her at school he started to drool? He said, “Just killing time, I guess.”

  She laughed. “I’ll save you some trouble. Want my phone number?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  He had just written it down when she said, “Oh, flip.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody’s at the door. Can I call you back in a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  After they hung up, Mick walked back into the living room. He didn’t think Myra was paying any attention, but as he was trying to find his place in his geometry book, she said, “Lisa Doyle.”

  “What?”

  “Lisa Doyle just called.”

  Mick shook his head and said, “You’re actually kind of scary.”

  Myra smiled. “Heard you say Doyle. That helped.” She kept smiling. “So what did Doyle have to say?”

  “She said she liked talking to me at work today.”

  “Ha! Soldier, you’re on a roll. What else did she say? Gimme gimme.”

  “Nothing. Or not much. Someone came to her door.”

  “Still,” Myra said, thinking it over. “This is good. This is very good.”

  For the next thirty minutes Mick stared blankly at his geometry book and waited for the phone to ring again. It didn’t. Finally he went into the kitchen to make sure the line wasn’t dead. It wasn’t. When he came back to the living room, Myra said, “Something wrong?”

  Mick told her that Lisa had said she would call right back.

  “And for some perfectly good reason she wasn’t able to,” Myra said. “The fact is she called you. The fact is she was thinking about you and picked up the phone and called you. Things are definitely in motion.”

  Mick munched a handful of popcorn and began to feel better. He liked the idea of things being in motion. He went back to staring at his geometry. About a half hour later he turned to glance at Myra and was surprised to find she was no longer reading her textbook, but looking into the fire. “You built a spectacular fire,” she said. “You learn that in Cub Scouts?”