“Do you think he will?” asked Karla.
“He will,” Maddie answered, and she had no doubt about it.
She passed much of that afternoon watching Clover crouching on the floor directly in front of the television in the den. The girl sat on her haunches, like a man in the jungle, and to her side was a pile of movies from the drawer beneath the television. They were open, the cases scattered this way and that, and Clover had a remote control clutched in each hand. Maddie sat down in the black chair and watched Four Weddings and A Funeral for a while, even though she couldn’t see well because Clover was so incredibly close to the screen that she blocked a good part of it.
Nick finally called around 4:00 in the afternoon. His friendly voice got right to the point and said, “What are you doing now? I’m on your side of town and I’d love to come hang out with you for a little while.”
“Sure, come over,” Maddie answered, trying to sound nonchalant but failing. “What have you been doing all day?” she asked, hopping up from the chair and jogging to her bedroom where Clover and Karla wouldn’t hear her talking. Clover’s movie binge had finished, and the two of them were now busy twiddling around in the kitchen with flowerpots and potting soil.
“I didn’t do much today, really. I went back to my dad’s place, spent a little time with him. Look,” he said, with a little bit of hesitancy and apprehension in his voice, “last night was really great.”
“Yeah, I thought so too,” Maddie said, and she was glad he couldn’t see her face flushing.
“But, because of it, I have a problem now,” he said, and the lack of humor in his voice set the hairs on the back of Maddie’s neck on end.
“Why?” Maddie asked. She wanted to crack a joke to try to relieve the tension, but she couldn’t think of anything witty to say.
“The problem is that I’m afraid I botched up our new relationship,” Nick continued, “I don’t want you to think that I’m only interested in you because we messed around so much last night. That’s not the case. I knew we should have waited longer before we did that, but I just—”
“—didn’t want to,” Maddie said, finishing the sentence for him, feeling a rush of adrenaline whooshing through her chest. “I didn’t want to wait either. And it’s not like we went all the way or anything. It was nothing.” She took a deep breath and attempted to analyze what was happening.
After a moment, Nick said, “Well, it wasn’t nothing.”
“I want you to like me,” Maddie stammered, stupidly. “I know you like me, for real. And, I guess last night makes it seem like I’m a wild child, but I’m not.” She paused, gulping stickily. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. You’re making me nervous. I’m only wild now and then, when the time is right.”
Nick laughed. “That’s good, Maddie,” he said. “If you were a wild child all the time, it would get predictable and it wouldn’t be wild anymore.”
After they hung up, Maddie meandered across the living room to the kitchen. Clover and Karla were finishing their flowerpots. “It’s a kitchen herb garden,” explained Karla. “I’ve always wanted one but never gotten around to making one.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with it,” Maddie answered. “We’re terrible cooks.”
“When you have great stuff like this growing right next to you, smiling down at you from the window, you get inspired,” little hippie Clover answered. “You’ll smell the basil and you’ll be into it, man,” she said, her head-shake melting into a nod as she dusted her hands off in the sink.
Karla reached past Clover and turned the water on, with a meaningful look on her face. A moment later, Clover ran her hands under the faucet and Karla squirted some soap over them.
“Anyway,” Maddie said, rolling her back along the doorjamb to scratch her spine, “Nick is coming over. He said we’d order a bunch of pizzas and maybe watch movies since Clover is so into movies.”
“I hadn’t seen any in so long, until today,” Clover said.
“He’s coming over?” Karla squealed. “Oh, yay! We get to see love in bloom. Did Maddie tell you about her hot and passionate night with him last night?” she asked Clover. Maddie’s face turned red with embarrassment. “Don’t worry, girl, I’ll fill you in on the details,” Karla whispered in a faux-confidential voice.
Maddie groaned, and the phone began ringing in her pocket as she left the kitchen and started down the hallway back to her room. “Hurry up and answer it,” yelled Karla. “It’s probably him again.”
But it wasn’t Nick. It was Lauren.
“Maddie, baby, there’s no time to talk,” she stated, her usually lilting hippie voice clipping along at a quick pace. “Raffie’s on his way to your place and he’s wasted. He’s coming to win you back, and he’s completely wasted. I just wanted to warn you. There’s no time. Get ready,” she said. Maddie barely had time to sputter out a demand for clarification before Lauren said again, “No time, baby,” and hung up.
She stood looking down at the phone in her hand for a few seconds, precisely the way they do in soap operas. After a moment, she put it down and gazed blankly at the hallway wall.
She listened to the sounds of her home: Clover and Karla were laughing and cooing in the kitchen; Feral scratched in the den, the bells tied around his neck clinking merrily. The stereo hummed a happy song, and the air conditioner murmured.
Uh-oh, she thought.
Uh-oh, oh no, oh no, oh no! she thought, as her feet began to move and she threw herself down the hallway toward the kitchen; but it lengthened, it lengthened and stretched like a nightmare, before she finally burst into the kitchen and yelled, “Guys! Emergency!”
It took Maddie only a moment to relay what was happening, but by then the event was upon them: there was an urgent knock at the door, accompanied by the sound of a voice calling out Maddie’s name.
“It’s been a few days since I’ve seen him,” she said.
“It’s been four days,” said Clover. “I know, ‘cause I’ve been counting how many days I stay in this city.”
“And he’s trashed?” asked Karla.
“Yeah,” Maddie puffed, as she dashed across the den to look through the spyhole. He stood on the other side of the door, his dark hair swishing around his shoulders, his chin dropped a little toward his chest as he stared at his shuffling feet.
His fist again rapped the door and he called out, “Maddie! Maddie, I have to talk to you! Maddie!”
“What do I do?” she squeaked as she dropped into a crouch and spun on her heel to look back at her two friends. “If he keeps yelling like this, someone will call the cops,” she said, panicking.
“Just let him in, Maddie,” hummed Clover. “You can’t just leave him hanging like that; you’ve got to let him in.”
“Maddie! We have to talk!” he bellowed from the other side of the old wooden door. She stood and looked through the spyhole at him again; this time he wasn’t swaying around looking at his feet. This time, he was peering into his side of the spyhole.
“I see you! Hey! I see you!” he hollered.
“Oh, lord. I’ll handle this,” asserted Karla as she pushed Maddie away from the door. She opened it, and said, “Raffie, what’s up? Have you come to return Maddie’s ring? Because that’s all she’s interested in talking about: her ring.”
“What?” said Raffie, squinting his eyes against the apparently blinding light that was emanating from within the den. He staggered backward a step. “Why are you here?” he asked, accusatorily.
“I live here, you drunken nitwit,” answered Karla, as Raffie caught a glimpse of Maddie inside. He pushed past her into the room.
The giant salt-and-pepper dog who laying almost out of sight around the side of the sofa did not like Raffie, and he was bothered by Raffie pushing one of his new mistresses. He lay flat on his side, like usual, but after a moment’s deliberation, he got to his feet without jingling the bells tied around his neck. An expression of great concentration spread across his
face as he advanced across the hardwood floor. Not a single nail on any of his feet made a click on the floor. Not a single clang was heard from the pendants around his neck.
“Maddie,” said Raffie grandly, spreading his arms like a messiah. “We have to talk.” He came toward her. Maddie began to retreat backward, repelled by his bare feet. She wasn’t too crazy about his naked chest and long purple hippie-skirt, either. The man had clearly gone off the deep end.
“I don’t want to talk, Raffie,” she said. “I only want my ring back. It’s sentimental to me.” She continued to retreat, and her calves bumped into the seat of the black chair. The impact resulted in her plopping down into the chair, and Raff immediately fell to his knees in front of her.
The wolf dog had reached his limit. He felt something had to be done about this man who had abandoned his dog-momma days ago, and who now seemed to be physically pushing around the new mistresses. He tightened his haunches and sprang through the air, snapping his thick gray muzzle in the space beside Raffie’s ear. He snarled and woofed and spun so that he was eye to eye with Raff. He flexed his lips. He twitched his whiskers a little. He felt good about it. It was nice to protect the mistresses.
“What tha—” Raffie yelled, scrambling away from Maddie. The room exploded into sound as Feral began barking. Maddie shrieked. Feral snapped his jaws open and shut, and then decided he’d go ahead and pin Raffie down, since the guy kept trying to scoot away. He slammed the man to the floor with his big paws and barked into his face.
All of the mistresses were standing on furniture screaming and yelling. Feral thought the whole event was going quite nicely. A glass picture-frame shook from the bookshelf and shattered on the ground. Raffie was screeching and blubbering.
Nick burst through the unlocked front door like a superhero. He had evidently decided that the sounds of shrieking and barking and slamming meant that he should skip knocking on the door and instead just burst in. He pulled Feral off of Raffie. Feral didn’t thrash or fight. He knew his job was done but he didn’t want to look like a quitter. He hung in Nick’s arms, his weight making it nearly impossible to move him.
Raffie scuttled across the room on his back like a crab.
“Are you crazy?” Nick yelled at him. “The worst thing you can do when a dog is attacking you is thrash!”
Raffie gibbered at Nick in defensive confusion. Clover buried her face in Feral’s soft, furry neck and cried. Karla retreated to the kitchen doorway and stood there, stunned.
“What the hell is that monster even doing here?” Raff yelled, waving his arm in Feral’s direction. “That thing is a wolf. That thing is a messed-up psychotic wild animal, just like…just like Clover’s dog!” he bleated accusatorily, climbing to his feet as his eyes found Clover’s huddled figure. His bare chest was unscathed. The dog had taken great care not to injure him.
“What are you doing here?” he screeched. Clover held tighter to Feral and sobbed deeply,
“Look pal, you need to take it easy,” Nick said, extending one arm toward Raffie as if to restrain him from crossing to the side of the room where Clover and the other girls were. “You need to have a seat, and I think maybe you might need to sober up.”
Raff and Feral stared at each other for a long moment. Feral looked positively serene. Clover crumpled down to the floor and her thin, unshorn legs splayed out in front of her. She gathered her hippie skirt—which looked pretty cute on her, seeing as she was a girl—into a pile in her lap and began tugging on the seams. Feral lay down next to her, flat on his side, and pretended to ignore the goings on.
Finally Raffie looked away and clambered to his feet. “What are you doing here, Nick? I haven’t seen you in a couple years,” he managed. He straightened his long purple skirt and had a seat on the pink couch.
“I’m more interested in what you’re doing here, frankly,” Nick said as he shot a glance over his shoulder at the girls. Clover’s face was red and streaky, and Maddie hopped down from the black chair. Karla had vanished entirely, but Maddie could hear kitchen drawers opening and closing.
“Getting ambushed, I guess,” Raffie answered as he leaned back on the sofa and spread his arms out along the back of it. Maddie’s stomach shimmied when she registered his dirty armpits against the fabric.
“We didn’t ambush you,” Maddie said as she sat down on the black chair, shaking her head. “You’re the one that showed up uninvited.” She felt drained. The electricity that had fired through the room moments before had given way to a feeling of simple exhaustion.
“I came here for you, baby,” Raffie said in his most earnest voice. “I can’t go day after day without seeing you, without being near my love.” He lifted his arms from the back of the couch and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes turned to full shine. He barely even slurred. Perhaps the sensation of dog claws on his bare skin had rendered him soberish. “It’s draining the life right out of me.” He looked over at Nick and spread his hands apologetically. “There ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.”
“Is that Al Greene?” Nick asked.
“Bill Withers,” Clover muttered quietly.
“It’s my heart,” Raff pleaded. “And I don’t even know what she’s doing here,” he said petulantly, extending his arm and pointing at Clover. “I didn’t see her van. Why would you even let her in?” he asked, a little anger in his voice. “A few days ago, you didn’t want anything to do with her.”
Maddie shook her hair back from her shoulders and stuck her chin out at Raffie. “Things change,” she said defiantly. “Sometimes I reconsider things. And her van’s in the shop, not that it’s any of your business.”
Karla slipped through the room, quietly leaving a tray full of wheat crackers and thinly sliced apples on the coffee table. She momentarily vanished again, the reappeared with a kitchen chair for Nick to sit in.
“It’s time to reconsider what you’re doing to me, Maddie. It’s time to end this game,” he said, looking into her face with an expression meant to convey a sense of command. “I gave you four days to punish me, four days to have your temper tantrum. But it’s time for it to end now.” He rubbed his knee with his hand, back and forth.
“What are you talking about?” Maddie said, her reluctance to speak with him melting away. In its place a nice, sturdy sense of disinterest began to solidify. “What temper tantrum? Frankly, I haven’t thought about you at all for days now.”
He shook his head pityingly. “It’s okay, love. I understand how angry you were about Clover. I get it. That’s why I’ve let you have so long to get over it. But it’s all about you; it’s always been about you. You’re my one,” he said, his golden eyes gleaming like the foil on a fancy chocolate candy. He smiled a little and the dimples in his slim face emerged.
“Raffie, it’s over,” she said, as kindly as she could.
He sat still for a moment, probing her eyes with his, and then he said in a low, accusatory voice, “Nick!”
Nick was leaning against the doorjamb to the kitchen with his arms folded across his chest, having politely rejected the kitchen chair. “Don’t go there,” he said, sternly.
“Nick is why you don’t want to date me anymore!” Raffie proclaimed. “You fell in love with Nick while I was out of town!” he crowed, looking back and forth between the two of them, awed.
“Hey, hey now,” Maddie said, springing forward on the black chair. Her face flushed, hot embarrassed blood rushing through the capillaries. “I am not in love with Nick,” she said. She flung a look over her shoulder at Nick, who hadn’t moved. She couldn’t tell what emotion was on his face; he had his features neatly arranged into an expression that revealed only interest in hearing what she was about to say. She stopped herself from saying, “We’re just friends,” realizing even as her mouth tried to utter the words that they would upset Nick.
And besides, that wasn’t quite the truth.
Her eyes stayed on Nick’s for a moment.
“I’m not in love wit
h him,” she finally said, pulling her eyes from his and turning back to Raffie. “But, I’m really into him,” she finished lamely.
“You didn’t give me much of a chance,” Raffie blamed, as he stood up and let his arms fall to his sides in a gesture of limp disappointment. “At least I know the truth,” he said. “I’m not going to try to fight you away from another man. You either want me or you don’t,” he concluded, and the petulance rang out in his voice.
“Nick,” he said, nodding in his direction. Nick nodded back, and Raffie stalked out of the building into the fading sunlight.
Chapter 17
Clover was clearly dejected when she came home from the interview at Larry’s Diner. She spent a while outside before she would even come in the building, throwing a ball for Feral and glumly drawing in the dirt by the parking lot with a long stick. When she did come in, she rushed through the den to the bathroom, where she took a long shower. Both Maddie and Karla were always tickled when Clover showered; she liked showering very much. She was in that way the antithesis of the stereotype of the dirty hippie.
When she emerged again, she mooned around in the den until Karla gently asked her what had happened at the interview. The story was brief; Clover had spoken with Larry and he had been pleased to offer her a job. She had been elated, throwing her arms around him and thanking him from the bottom of her heart. But then, Clover said, Larry had told her something devastating.
“What?” Karla asked in disbelief. Karla knew Larry personally—he was a friend of her mother’s—and she’d gone to the diner and asked him face-to-face to hire Clover, explaining that she only needed two weeks’ worth of wages to have the money to go home to Denver. Larry had assured Karla he would do it. She and Maddie had considered the hiring a done deal.
Clover sat in a tight little ball on the pink couch. “He said I couldn’t work there,” she whimpered, shaking her head gently from side to side as she pondered her bare knees, poking out from the holes in the jeans she wore. “He said I couldn’t work there unless I had shoes on.” Her voice was quiet and ashamed, pregnant with unshed tears.
Peace of Her Heart Page 14