by Vicki Grant
The sun had almost disappeared by the time we got there. The sky was navy blue and dark pink and this wild, intense orange. “Funny,” I said. “Those colours are beautiful here but would be really tacky on a shirt or a chair.”
“I agree—though I don’t know if Dolores would. I’m pretty sure she has a shirt just like that.”
I laughed.
“Dolores and the sky can wear those colours. The rest of us can’t,” he said.
“Why do you think that is?” “We’re too small.”
I laughed again. We stood and watched until the sky went dark. Neither of us said anything, although I did a lot of thinking.
“Well, should we go?” Murdoch said.
“No.” My voice squeaked.
I took his hand. After a couple seconds, when I thought I could bear it, I looked up at him. “No,” he said.
It actually hurt. Nick flashed in my brain. Had I gone and made a fool of myself again?
But Murdoch didn’t let go of my hand. He led me over to a park bench. “You’ll hurt your neck,” he said. “Sit down.”
The bench was soaked. “On my lap,” he said.
I sat down and put one arm around his shoulder. We seemed almost the same size like this. I took off his glasses but didn’t know what to do with them.
“In my pocket.” He nodded at his chest.
I looked at his eyes. I knew they were blue but I couldn’t see that in this light.
He reached over and brushed some hair off my face.
“Ready?” he said.
Chapter 37
“Oh god,” Dolores said. “I can’t even stand being in the same room with you.” I put down the Windex and leaned against the wall.
“What? What did I do?”
“Oh, please. I feel like an extra in a Harlequin movie-of-the-week.”
I turned to the window so she couldn’t see me laugh. “As usual, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Dolores put on an accent that sounded more or less British. “Betsy turned to the window. The memory of his hot lips thrusting, longing, aching for hers …”
“Okay, okay.” I’d been busted. “You’re exaggerating.”
I went back to cleaning the window. I stretched to get the top. Murdoch could reach this, easy, I thought, which made me think of how tall he was which made me think of sitting on his lap which made me think of …
I tried to control my face.
“I clearly am not exaggerating,” Dolores said. She was sitting with her feet on the coffee table I’d just polished. “But that’s neither here nor there. You’re both consenting adolescents and, frankly, I don’t care what type of mischief you get up to in your free time.”
She reached into her plastic bag. “I do, however, want to talk to you about this week. We got five new clients. I managed to squeeze them all in around our regulars but we’re going to have to be really organized. I printed out this schedule for you.”
She wagged a piece of paper at me. The Queen wasn’t moving. “Shall we go through it?” She rattled it at me again.
I walked over and took it.
“Nice handwriting,” I said. When Dolores said printed, I’d expected computer type but this was done in turquoise calligraphy.
“I’d do your wedding invitations for you too, but I’m afraid I’m busy this week.”
“Ha-ha.” I read the list. “Whoa. We’re all over town.”
“Yeah. And some of it’s quite time-sensitive. The Gairs—Tuesday?—want us to help them get ready for a garden party. Then, let’s see … the Huzaks need us exactly between two and four Wednesday. They’re working around meetings or something.”
I checked the addresses. “How are we going to do that?”
“I tried calling your boyfriend to see if he’d drive us but he wasn’t picking up his cell. Perhaps you could tempt him.”
I undid my top two buttons. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s the spirit. Now I’m going to clean the second floor where your passionate sighs won’t distract me from my work.”
I buttoned my shirt. “I’ll try to keep it down.”
“Finished with the vacuum?” Dolores didn’t wait for an answer. She snapped out the cord and dragged it upstairs.
This was our first time at the Mosers. I preferred new clients to old. It was like the difference between running on a treadmill and running on a road you’d never been down before. You still did the same thing, but at least you got to see something new along the way.
I stuffed the newspaper I’d used to clean the windows into a recycling bag and looked around the living room. I wondered what the Mosers were like.
Tidy.
I grabbed my cleaning supplies and headed into the TV room.
Late forties, early fifties.
The pictures in the hall were watercolour prints of boats on the water.
Conventional. Maybe they had a son. Someone for Dolores. I knew she had a crush on Jack but I also knew the guy personally and just couldn’t see it happening.
But what did I know? That was another thing I’d learned this summer. That I didn’t know anything about anybody. Which made me think of Murdoch. I was glad Dolores wasn’t there to see the look on my face.
The Mosers’ big-screen TV was sitting in the centre of a large bookcase full of photo albums, knick-knacks and even the odd book. It was going to take me ages to dust.
First things first.
Even though I knew no one was around, I looked over my shoulder before I pulled a photo album off the shelf and leafed through it. Someone’s wedding. Not the dress I would have chosen, but passable. I slipped the album back where I’d found it, then pulled out another one. Baby pictures. Kids’ birthdays. Someone else’s wedding. The usual. I went to put it away but noticed something shiny in the back.
I got that shimmery feeling. I checked to make sure Dolores wasn’t around, then reached behind the albums and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
Someone—one of the nice tidy conventional people who lived here—was sneaking smokes. I tucked the cigarettes back behind the albums and started dusting.
I had to laugh. I’d yet to find a house that didn’t have its secrets.
I’d dust a desk and see the overdue bills or bad report cards. I’d sweep the kitchen floor and find the toenail clippings. I’d rifle through the medicine cabinets of perfectly decent people and discover a treasure trove of remedies for fungus and jock itch and boils and ringworm and lice and constipation and bad breath and warts and every other hideous human infliction imaginable.
It had been an education, that’s for sure. Nothing surprised me any more —and only a few things comforted me the way Amy’s Prozac had.
I dusted around some figurines and realized I didn’t need to be comforted any more.
I heard “The Wheels on the Bus” start playing. I leaned out the door and called, “Dolores! Your phone!” but the vacuum was going. She’d never hear me. I dropped my cloth and followed the music to the living room. I found her plastic bag and grabbed her cell.
“Lapins de Poussière …. Oh, hi … Yeah, sure … Un-huh … Oh, no! Really? …”
My skin knew it before I saw her. I turned around and there was Dolores, standing in the door staring at me. I mouthed, It’s Amy.
Dolores started coming toward me. I said, “We’ll do that. Thanks for calling. Bye,” and hung up.
“Amy lost a pair of diamond earrings and was just asking us to keep an eye out for them tomorrow. They were her mother’s, I guess, and really valuable.”
“Next time my phone rings, would you mind just calling me? I don’t need a receptionist.” She was so mad her lips were white.
“I tried. You didn’t hear me. I didn’t want to miss it.”
“Well, miss it. I have call-answer.” She rolled her eyes and grabbed the phone from me. “Some of us, you know, have let ourselves be swept up into the technological revolution … Mon sac à main, s’il vous plait.”
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br /> I handed her the plastic bag. She said, “Merci,” and flounced back upstairs.
What was the big deal? Was she getting calls from someone I didn’t know about? Or did she not like me rummaging through her stuff? People can be funny about things like that.
It dawned on me again that Dolores might have secrets too.
I went back to the TV room to finish the bookcase. All these little doodads were going to take forever to dust. I considered just doing the bottom shelves. No one was going to see the top anyway.
I was starting to think like Dolores.
Maybe not knowing how to swim was the only secret she was willing to tell us. Now that I thought about it, I realized she did a lot of talking but somehow never really told us much about herself. It was like she expected Murdoch and me to “share” but somehow the subject always changed before it was her turn.
I picked up an Inuit sculpture of a seal with an ivory tusk going through its brain and dusted it.
So? Why should Dolores tell me everything?
Not like I’d been 100 percent up-front. My big secret was supposedly that I’d wet my bed until I was ten but I’d even fudged that a bit. I didn’t tell them about making myself throw up after eating an entire s’mores cheesecake. I didn’t tell them about stalking Nick. I didn’t tell them about holding myself under water.
Murdoch had told me about his dad, about dropping out of engineering school, about wanting to be a rock star when he died. What was he not telling me? He had secrets too.
That didn’t scare me. It didn’t even give me that shimmery feeling. It made my stomach flip the same way it did when I thought about kissing him. I wanted to know what his secrets were and I wanted to be brave enough to tell him mine. It would be fun. It would be more than that.
Chapter 38
“Dolores is acting weird.”
Murdoch didn’t look up from his drawing but I could see that made him smile. “What’s so funny?” I said.
He looked at me now but only, apparently, to get my nose right. He erased something and said, “I don’t know.
That’s sort of like saying I’m tall.”
He tilted his head, held up his pencil. “Or saying you’re beautiful. Weird is just kind of the way she is—part of her charm.”
The Rebel’s armrest was digging into my back.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“Sorry. But that’s not what I meant. I mean, weird even by her standards. Want to know what she did today?”
“Only if you can tell me without moving those amazing lips.”
I was having a hard time concentrating on Dolores. “I think her feelings are hurt.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause of us. She told me she wasn’t interested in you.” “Now I’m hurt.”
“In fact, she told me to go after you. She told me she liked Jack Connolly.” “Who’s he?”
“Just this guy. Doesn’t matter. But now she’s being weird.” “How?” I shrugged. “Don’t move.”
“Sorry. I don’t know. I can’t really put my finger on it. She got all cranky when I answered her phone today.”
“You don’t think she was just trying to be funny? I mean, that’s kind of her schtick.”
“Yeah. I guess. Could be. She was fine a second later. But then when we were walking over to Mrs. Burton’s after that, I ran into these girls I knew. I introduced her and they were all excited and complimentary and everything because they’d seen us on TV but she just kind of shrugged them off. It was embarrassing. They asked if we wanted to go to Mexicali’s tonight for tacos and she was like no, not my style and Betsy’s probably busy, meaning, I guess, with you. It just seemed unnecessarily rude to me.”
Murdoch put his pencil on the dashboard and blew something off the picture. “Yeah. Unnecessarily rude but not untypically Dolores. She likes making people uncomfortable. I got a question: Did these girls happen to be pretty? You know, pretty, stylish, slim—that type?”
I thought of Kuan-Yin and Deedee and Paulina. “Yeah. So what?”
“What do you think? That would bug her.”
I said, “Yeah,” but I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t think Dolores would care about stuff like that.
The thing with Murdoch and me, though—that was different. It’s always hard when a friend gets a new boyfriend. You feel kind of awkward and deserted. I know I did when I thought the situation was reversed.
“Let’s call her,” I said. “We could all go out and do something.”
“Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t have a cell. Can I use yours?”
“I don’t know where it is. I lost it.”
“Where did you look?”
“Everywhere. Oh, hold on. I just thought of one place it might be.”
He put the drawing pad in the back seat. He leaned over me and opened the glove compartment. “Not there,” he said. His face was almost touching mine.
“I wonder if it’s here.” He put his other arm around behind me and rooted through the pocket on the side of the door.
“Not there either. Do you know where it might be?” I shook my head.
“Do you still want to call Dolores?” I shook my head again. I could always talk to her tomorrow.
Chapter 39
The next day, I was standing outside the house thinking about Murdoch—and the picture he’d drawn of me and the picture I’d tried to draw of him and the way he’d laughed when I told him about the dock spider idea and his corresponding threat to write a huge bestselling series of Betsy the Beastly Bed Bug books with matching pyjamas, lunch boxes, and insecticide spray—so it took me a while to realize that Dolores was late. I checked the address on the schedule. I was in the right place. I checked the new watch she’d insisted I buy last time we were in Giant Tiger. 9:48. This wasn’t like Dolores.
Or at least I didn’t think it was. It occured to me again that I didn’t know her very well. How long ago had we met? Six weeks? Seven? Long enough to think you knew somebody but probably not long enough that they couldn’t still surprise you. Especially someone like Dolores. I thought of her thing for Jack and laughed. I realized it was the one truly personal thing she’d ever told me. Maybe that’s her secret. Her shameful crush.
My legs were getting tired. I’d stayed up way too late the night before. I sat on the front steps and hoped that was just cool I felt seeping into my shorts, not wet. I checked my watch again. It was almost ten. I wished we’d tried calling Dolores again. We hadn’t got to a phone until eleven-thirty and by then there was no answer. I wondered if Dolores went to bed early. She’d stayed up really late with us other nights, but maybe that wasn’t like her either.
I looked at the schedule. We had three houses today and I wanted to get them done as soon as possible. Murdoch had invited me to his place to meet his mother. Like, really meet his mother. I needed to get home, cleaned up and back to his house by six. I couldn’t wait around forever.
Why was I even waiting? I decided to get started on my own.
This was a new client. Kathryn Rockwell. Dolores hadn’t written anything about where to find the key. I tried the front door and the back. Both were locked. I thought about slipping a note in the mailbox saying, Sorry, there was a mix-up, we’ll come next week. Then I thought, the mailbox. The mat. Or under the flowerpot.
I found the key under the mat and didn’t feel quite so annoyed at Dolores.
Mrs. Rockwell had left a long list of stuff to do, too much for one person. I had to be at Frank’s by noon and I couldn’t change it. Dolores had said he was “teed-off” about us messing with his schedule. (He liked to get his cribbage game in early, while he was still “compos mentis,” whatever that meant.)
I found a phone in the kitchen and tried to reach Dolores. It rang and rang. So much for call-answer. I slammed down the receiver and got to work.
I managed to get the kitchen, both bathrooms and a little bit of dusting done but I didn’t have time for the
vacuuming or windows. I took half the money and left a note explaining that my partner was off sick. I’d call back later to arrange a follow-up visit.
I was proud of myself for that last part. It’s something Dolores would have thought to do. She was always talking about how important it was to keep the clients happy.
I locked the door, put the key under the mat and ran to Frank’s.
I was starting to get seriously worried about Dolores. Frank wasn’t very happy, either, when he found out the Leprechaun wouldn’t be there that day. He couldn’t care less about having a clean house. He wanted the company.
I asked if I could use his phone to call Dolores. He said yes, as long as I told her to get off her sorry rump and hustle down here.
No answer again.
I couldn’t call Murdoch. He was working. I called home. Hank whined about it but eventually checked the messages for me. Deedee and Paige had both called but there was nothing from Dolores. I phoned Mom at work. She was in a meeting. I even called Dad at the hospital. He asked if I was kidding. How would he know where Dolores was?
I did my best to clean the place while keeping up a running — or rather screaming — conversation with Frank in the other room. He was driving me crazy but I tried to be nice. I remembered what it was like to be lonely.
I cleaned. I talked. But mostly I just worried. I knew there’d been something wrong with Dolores the night before. I’d only let myself believe Dolores was okay because I hadn’t wanted to deal with her right then. I’d had other things on my mind.
I played one very bad, very fast game of cribbage with Frank, then said I had to go. I promised—I didn’t know how we were going to squeeze this in, but I promised—that we’d come by sometime that week just to play cards. He seemed a bit happier, but his eyes were still sad. He looked like an eighty-two-year-old little boy who didn’t get asked to a birthday party.
I said, “See you soon!” in my cheeriest voice and left.
I ran as fast as I could. I reek, I thought. For a few moments, I let myself worry more about stinking up Amy’s perfect house than about Dolores. I got the key from under the flowerpot, but when I tried it, the door was already open.