Fools Paradise

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  Bobbyjay jerked his arm away and stood up to cross the room. “Does this TV get cable?”

  “I mean, why did you go to college if you were just going to come home and work the street?”

  He turned to her with a hunted look. “My mom wanted me to to. And my grandfather paid for it.”

  “And you had nothing to say about it.”

  “I don’t borrow trouble.” He caught her stare and he added, “It...was fun.”

  “Fun? All that studying?”

  He sat down beside her again, resting his elbows on his knees, keeping his eyes on the TV. “Yeah. I knew I had a job when I got out. I could just...learn whatever I wanted. Be whoever I wanted to be.”

  “Free,” Daisy said softly, imagining it.

  “Actually it was fuckin’ expensive. Pop—Bobby Senior—paid for it.” Bobbyjay’s face changed, and the nort’wes’side came out in his voice. “Collitch don’t pay no bills. But it was fun while it lasted.”

  “You don’t have to fake it with me,” she said.

  He swallowed.

  “I’m totally impressed you went to college. You’re really intelligent. I guess you know I—I sort of let high school slip away on me. That’s why Goomba says I can’t get a job. He doesn’t want me working out there in some menial position, getting hassled all the time.”

  Bobbyjay looked at her oddly. “Not like how you work here.”

  “Yeah, but they’re my family,” she said, keeping her voice relaxed.

  The patio door slid open and somebody clashed into the venetian blinds. Daisy jumped. Bobbyjay turned toward her and the next moment she was in his arms, squirming.

  Wesley burst into the rumpus room. “Daze, are you bringing out the tiramisu?” His eyes bugged out. “Because Gug-grampa is getting h-hungry.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bobbyjay walked out of the Ditorelli basement straight into a talking-to from his father.

  “Smooth move, collitch boy. Messin’ with Marty Dit’s girl right in front of him! I’m for it, only Bobby Senior says you ain’t supposed to piss him off in his own back yard. That’s my job,” Bobby Junior said, staking claim on his jurisdiction.

  “Uh,” Bobbyjay said. He wasn’t sure what he was being accused of.

  “Dummy!” Bobby Junior rapped him on the forehead.

  “Uh, Dad, we’re engaged.”

  “So you play tonsil hockey in a car, not in front of people. Ya don’t do the bitch in public.”

  “She’s not a bitch, she’s my fiancée,” Bobbyjay said, with an edge in his voice. He looked over his shoulder. Daisy was getting a big hug from her grandfather. “C’mon, Dad, this is our engagement party.”

  The author of his being sent him a narrow look. “You ain’t forgettin’ what family you’re in, are you? ‘Cause Marty Dit was sayin’ you’re gonna belong to his family now that you’re marrying Ditsy Daisy.” Dad glowered. “I know that ain’t so.”

  Bobbyjay took a deep breath. He knew a straight line when he was handed one. He was supposed to say, No, Dad, I’m always a Morton, and I’ll hate our enemies with my dying breath.

  “Dad, I think we’re all going to have to be nicer to the Ditorellis from now on. I don’t want Daisy upset by—by friction.”

  Bobby Junior waved that away. “Friction’s your department, smartypants. What I’m sayin’, you belong to us, not them.”

  “I’m going to belong to her, Dad.” What a weird feeling he got, saying that. With her kisses still tingling on his lips, Bobbyjay felt light and strong. Maybe he could get everyone to simmer down after all. “That’s what you do when you get married.”

  “You makin’ a comment about your mother?” Dad held up a finger. “I’m warnin’ you, boy. Marty Dit’s gettin’ uppity and it’s because of you.” The finger jabbed Bobbyjay’s chest. “If you don’t take him down a peg, somebody else will.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Dad.”

  Dad glowered. “These cocky motherfuckers are gettin’ on my nerves. You may be a dummy, kid, but you’re our dummy.”

  “There you are, Bobbyjay!” Fran Ditorelli said brightly, putting an arm around him. “I wanted to ask you while I’ve got all you boys here, who do you want for your groomsmen? Daisy will probably have eight or nine maids of honor, so you needn’t hold back.” Fran squeezed Bobbyjay’s shoulder and looked up at him as if he’d invented the idea of weddings. “This is going to be the most beautiful ceremony,” she said with misty eyes. “Thank you, Bobbyjay.” She turned the smile on his Dad. “So, Bobby Junior, are you going to stand up for your son?”

  Bobby Junior chewed for a moment, glaring at her. “I don’t have a tux.”

  “Of course not. I expect you sold it when Sarah left. You can just rent one,” Fran said, and Bobbyjay remembered how his mother had teamed up with this woman so that Bobbyjay and Daisy and Mikey Ray could go to the same school without bloodshed on the playground. She was playing with fire, though, baiting Bobby Junior. His father had zero self control. It was what made Bobbyjay’s life so interesting. She added brightly, “And if it’s too much money, well, I’m sure Marty will kick in for your tux. He won’t want to see Daisy go down the aisle with anything less than the best, bless his heart.”

  Ouch. The only thing worse than taunting a stagehand about his divorce was to imply that he was broke.

  Bobbyjay eyed her with awe and some anxiety. “I’m sure it’ll be a beautiful wedding.”

  “Yeah, well....” Dad glowered even darker at this innocent remark.

  Fran patted Bobby Junior on the arm. Bobbyjay felt his eyes roll in his head like a nervous horse’s. She burbled, “You’d be gorgeous in a tux. All you boys clean up so nicely! Oh, look, there’s Robert, I’ll ask him, too.” She fluttered away.

  Dad looked ready to explode.

  Bobbyjay raised both hands. “I got no control over her. I can’t even keep Bobbert out of trouble! She’s Marty Dit’s daughter-in-law. How can I handle her?”

  Dad seemed to see the justice of this. He rolled away, chewing nothing.

  Bobbyjay watched warily from a distance while his future mother-in-law canvassed the entire Morton population for their views on tux colors, flowers, invitation styles, party favors, and the advantages of having a nice prime rib versus a suckling pig. “Going whole hog!” Fran said every time, and giggled.

  “Your Mom’s giggle makes me nervous,” Bobbyjay confided to his betrothed when they had resumed work at the fish fryers.

  Up to her elbows in beer batter, Daisy nodded. “Fakey.”

  “It’s the eyes,” he said thoughtfully. “Scary.”

  “She has to stare down lawyers all day.”

  Bobbyjay slid the wire scooper under a batch of golden-fried smelt and carefully lifted them out.

  “I think it’s going pretty well, don’t you?” he said.

  At this point, across the lawn, Tony Ditorelli hit Bobbyjay’s cousin Bobbert the mouth.

  “Hey!” yelled a Morton.

  Bobbyjay leaped over the condiments table, knocking ketchup bottles to the ground, just as his father reached out and smacked Tony across the face. Bobbyjay barreled across the lawn feeling like a lineman who can’t decide which guy has the ball.

  Thank God, Bobby Senior got hold of Bobby Junior and was dragging him off. Bobbyjay didn’t want to think how his father would react to being tackled by his own son at a Ditorelli fish fry.

  He swerved and slid up to the fight.

  “Take it back, you little shit!” Tony Dit yelled.

  Bobbert shoved him. “Fuck you, asshole! She’s a tart!”

  Bobbyjay grabbed his cousin from behind like he was a role of cable and tossed him over his shoulder.

  Behind him, he heard Daisy say in a razor-sharp voice, “Tony, how long has it been since I kicked you in the nuts?”

  “Boys, boys, what’s the noise, what’s the fuss, what’s the bother? This a day of rejoicing. Let’s all have a beer.” That was Marty Dit, coming in late on the action
and spreading his smart mouth around.

  Bobbyjay had his hands full of Bobbert. “Knock it off.” He gave his cousin a shake.

  “I hate that stupid wop,” Bobbert said. He dabbed his mouth. “You Marty Dit’s little enforcer now?”

  “C’mon, this is my engagement party,” Bobbyjay said, feeling like an idiot every time he said it. “Don’t mess it up for Daisy.”

  “Your Dad said it, too,” Bobbert said defiantly. “She’s a tart and she’s using you.”

  Bobbyjay breathed deeply, praying for self control. “Did Marty Dit hear him?”

  “Guess not. He’s such a slimeball,” Bobbert said over the sound of Marty Dit’s oily, fake-soothing, sarcastic voice in the background.

  “Dad shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Well, Bobby Senior said it last night, so Nyah. You weren’t there. You were steamin’ up the car windows with the tart.”

  Bobbyjay rolled his eyes. “You always repeat everything Bobby Senior says?”

  “Hey, a spade’s a spade and a tart’s a tart.”

  Bobbyjay wouldn’t normally resort to physical intimidation. For one thing, he didn’t know how. Plus Bobbert would gang up on him with Raybob next time they played football. But a few bruises in the future meant nothing when he thought of Daisy hearing this kind of talk.

  “Dude,” he said, leaning over Bobbert and putting a hand on his shoulder. His thumb crossed his cousin’s windpipe. “Don’t talk. Listen.”

  “What?” Bobbert retorted.

  Bobbyjay squeezed. Bobbert turned red. “Just listen. Pay attention to other people’s feelings.”

  “Eeghl.”

  “It’ll make you more popular.”

  “Argh.”

  Bobbyjay released him and bounded across the lawn to where Daisy was faced off with Bobby Junior.

  “Shouldn’t you be attending to them?” Daisy said over her shoulder to Bobbyjay, jerking her head toward the patio. Bobbyjay looked. His grandfather and hers were standing quietly, talking, watching the party mill around like a beehive about to blow.

  “They’ll keep.” He looked from his father to Daisy. “What’s up?”

  His Dad glared into Bobbyjay’s eyes. “I was just sayin’ how Bobbert’s more of a son to me than you are.”

  “And I was noticing how true that is,” Daisy said brightly. “Did you see how Bobby Junior said something rude when it was safe, and then Bobbert said it to someone who would hit back?”

  Bobbyjay felt the blood drain out of his face.

  “It’s kind of like Bobby Senior and your Dad,” Daisy went on, sounding calm and conversational, while her fiancé had a silent heart attack. “Bobby Senior never says a mean word to anybody, you ever notice? That’s ’cause he’s got a loyal son to say it for him.”

  Bobby Junior glared from his son to his son’s fiancé. “Right.”

  “Guk,” Bobbyjay said.

  She still addressed Bobby Junior. “Bobby Senior winds you up like a tin soldier, and you do something obnoxious—say, just as a hypothetical example, fill my grandfather’s car full of fish—and Bobbyjay here bats cleanup. And then Bobbyjay gets the praise. Doesn’t it make you sick, the way Bobbyjay gets to be the hero all the time?”

  Bobby Junior looked at his son in puzzlement. “Yeah.”

  Bobbyjay opened his mouth and then shut it helplessly. She’s a bigger menace than her mother.

  “So if you just didn’t let your father sucker you into being his bad cop, Bobbyjay here wouldn’t hav—get to upstage you.” She cocked her head like a sparrow. “Cool idea, huh?”

  Bobby Junior raised a hand with a stiffened forefinger. Bobbyjay grabbed for it. The hand went down.

  “Listen you,” Bobby Junior said, and looked over his shoulder. The patriarchs were still in a private confab, tucking their heads together like bosom buddies. Air seethed through Bobby Junior’s nostrils. “You want to know what the old men are sayin’?”

  Both Daisy and Bobbyjay looked at him.

  “They’re sayin’ how Marty Dit is gonna run against Bobby Senior for the Executive Board. Again. That’s how smooth and greasy he is. Smile and throw a party and everything and now he’s stabbin’ Bobby Senior in the back, runnin’ for the Board for the hunnerth time.”

  Bobbyjay’s Dad jabbed a forefinger on Daisy’s shoulder and Bobbyjay restrained himself from breaking it off and stuffing it down his father’s throat.

  “Well, you can tell your smartass grandfather from me that he’s never won yet and he ain’t gonna. Not this year, not ever. You hear me?”

  Daisy leaned forward and jabbed Bobby Junior’s stomach with her own forefinger. “You’re a patsy. And you always try to roll it downhill on Bobbyjay to make him the patsy. And he still comes up smelling better than you do.” Her finger went into Bobby Junior’s stomach to the second knuckle. “Two wrongs,” she said, poking forcefully, “do not make a right.”

  Bobbyjay tugged at her sleeve. “Let’s go. We got smelt to fry.” He dragged her off while his father’s face turned purple.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It said a lot about the betrothal fish fry that Daisy was grateful to go back to work on Tuesday. She wore her tan Oshkosh overalls and her new steel-toed sneakers and she carried a clear plastic water bottle in her her new toolbox. Bobbyjay grinned when he saw the overalls.

  “Now you’re gettin’ there. Lose the makeup and you’ll look like a stagehand.”

  “I’m not a dyke and I won’t look like one.”

  “Nobody,” he said, looking at her tee-shirt where it pushed up out of the top of the overalls, “will ever take you for a dyke.”

  “So I’m setting a new fashion for girl stagehands. What is it with men and makeup? I get more grief over that than anything else.”

  “Badger, right.”

  Man, Bobbyjay never forgot anything. “Aw, he’s just a lecher.”

  “He’s that, but I think he was right.” With obvious reluctance Bobbyjay added, “He was looking out for you.”

  “He was right to mash me?” She tried to sound bitter, but it was hard. With Bobbyjay’s kisses still hot in her memory, she felt very female today. But he had a nerve reminding her of Badger’s kiss.

  Then she remembered that Weasel might or might not try for her butt again at the Opera House. That was queasy-making. Good thing Weasel had been warned off...by Badger. She rubbed her palms on the thighs of her tight tan overalls.

  I’m just meat to these guys. Badger knows it. Bobbyjay knows it. I’m meat to them, too, only really they both see me as Goomba’s meat.

  Yuck.

  But Goomba doesn’t guard me from Tony. Or those jerks in the train station bar or the Opera House cafeteria. Goomba feels like he has to remind me that I’m his meat.

  She wanted to throw up.

  Bobbyjay broke into her thoughts. “I’ll mention how you kicked Badger in the balls to Dydee Grant.”

  “Gee, thanks. Is Dydee liable to put a move on me?”

  “He’s a major gossip.”

  So Bobbyjay wanted to spread the word that she was off limits. “Why do you call him Dydee?”

  “Ate too much for dinner and crapped his pants at work one day.”

  “Omigod.” Daisy looked down at her McDonald’s pancakes with dismay. “How long ago was that?”

  “I dunno, twelve years.”

  “And he puts up with it?”

  “Could be worse.”

  “And we want him gossiping about me kicking Badger.” She snorted. “I guess at least then they might stop calling me Ditsy Daisy.”

  Bobbyjay turned away from the windshield to grin at her and her heart lightened. “What do you want ’em to call you?”

  “So you can spread it around?” She considered this. “Boy. It hadn’t occurred to me they would hang a new nickname on me.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I’ll have to think one up,” she said.

  The light changed and he drove on. “Think quick. This week is
pretty much your best shot at making it happen.”

  She thought of her makeup, which seemed to freak everybody. “Vampira.”

  “Taken.”

  “What? There’s a lady stagehand named Vampira? Who?”

  “Well, they call her Elvira. She won’t want you poaching. Stud-lip collitch chick, came into town couple-ten years ago, very goth. She don’t dress that way any more but she answers to the name.”

  That sobered Daisy. Even if she never wore the crop top again, she might be thought of throughout the entire Local as a slut. “This is serious.”

  “Yup.” Bobbyjay squealed the Jeep into the ramp. “Think about it.”

  “I think I’ll stick with Ditsy Daisy.”

  “That’s why guys take what nickname they’re given and be grateful. Devil you know.”

  She took a deep breath. “Lead me to him.”

  Bobbyjay was pleased when Daisy took lunch with the rest of the crew at Herm’s across the river. The crew gathered in the scarred booths, eating double dogs with everything and shooting the shit.

  She swaggered to his booth. That’s my girl, he thought proudly. Far as these guys know anyway.

  Weasel stood up. “Uh, I’ll move.” He shoved into the other side of the booth, next to Dydee Grant.

  Bobbyjay scooted over. “What’d you get, Killer?”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Double dog.”

  Dydee rose to the bait. “Killer? Term of endearment?”

  Bobbyjay just smiled. Daisy smiled back at him. Clever girl.

  “She kicked Badger in the nuts last week,” Weasel said, doing the rest of Bobbyjay’s work for him.

  Dydee’s big trap fell open. “No! What’d you do that for?”

  Daisy raised her eyebrows over her dog. “Oh,” she said around a huge mouthful, “I thought I would.”

  “Shit!” Dydee shook his head. “Wally Clemson tried that in nineteen-ninety-six. He hadda leave town.”

  “Isn’t that my cousin Wesley’s father?” she said.

  Bobbyjay wanted to suggest that she keep her mouth shut for a while longer—it was still her first month on the job. But he couldn’t think how to say it without annoying her. It was bad enough Weasel and Dydee were pandering to her, acting all impressed because she threw her weight around. She mustn’t get the idea that it was okay as a general rule.