What Are Friends For?

by Patricia McLinn

  “She’s fine. Still in the house and her life hasn’t changed much. That’s all beside the point. You said this festival is a waste of time, but it’s not. It promotes Drago, and it’s a chance for girls to show what they’ve accomplished and to consider how they present themselves to adults.”

  Okay, he wasn’t all that attuned to people, but it seemed like she’d dragged the subject away from her family with both hands. But who was he to go digging into something she didn’t want to talk about when he’d led her away from an area he didn’t want dug up?

  But damn, he wanted to know what was going on inside that head of hers. Or maybe it was what was going on in her heart.

  His gaze dropped to the vicinity of that organ.

  Her name was spelled out on a brass bar that rested where her breast curved the shirt. Her breasts had been so smooth, so soft. The first sensation against his fingers had nearly pushed him over the edge.

  “Zeke?”

  “What?” He jerked his gaze up from her breasts.

  “Have you heard a single word I said?”

  “Hearing it doesn’t mean I agree.” Quince had given him that line, and it had rescued Zeke more times than he could count.

  “You don’t agree that the Lilac Festival scholarships help these girls?”

  He shook his head. “There are better ways.”

  “It’s a tradition and it helps the town and the girls—”

  “Get wound up and crazy.”

  Now that she’d reminded him of it, he remembered Darcie’s nerves before the court was announced and then again when the queen was named. Even though she’d said over and over that she wasn’t nervous, because everybody knew Jennifer would be voted queen.

  Darcie hadn’t believed in herself much back then. At first, he’d taken her self-evaluation at face value, but after a month of chem lab junior year he’d realized she was a lot smarter than she said she was. Eventually he’d realized she was a lot smarter than she believed she was.

  What she’d lacked was confidence. He wondered if she remembered that she’d finally applied to Penn State after he’d heckled her into it.

  At least she’d lacked confidence in some areas. When it came to badgering him to talk, she’d had all the confidence in the world.

  Now, he shook his head again, partly in futility. “All over some small-town title.”

  “When you live in a small town, that’s all you know.”

  She’d snapped the words, but he took them at face value. “My point, exactly. They’d be better off getting out of here than worrying about what passes for important in Drago.”

  “How do you suggest the adolescents of Drago do that? Not everyone is a genius, Zeke. And what would happen to the town if everyone walked away—the way you did? No, don’t answer that. I know what you’ll say. But take it from me, other people do care what happens to Drago. And some kids are never going to leave because they don’t want to leave, so what about them?”

  “Do I get to answer this one?”

  She made a face at him. “Be my guest.”

  “They outgrow it.”

  “I just told you—”

  “Not the town, though that, too. But I meant they outgrow worrying about who was Lilac Queen. Five years down the road, who’ll remember?”

  “Who was Lilac Queen our senior year?”

  “Jennifer.”

  She made that told-you-so face that used to irritate him so much. It still did, but for some reason it also made him want to laugh.

  “Okay,” he conceded. “Jennifer was everything that year, but that was an unusual circumstance. It won’t be like that with these girls. They’ll all forget. It’s a fleeting thing, like whether you get a parking spot you want.”

  Darcie stood quickly. “You are so not a girl.”

  She started past him, up the stairs where he still sat.

  “Thank you,” he twisted to call after her, then added, “I think.”

  His words lost energy because his attention was devoted to something else entirely. Darcie’s rear end as she climbed the steps.

  The uniform pants were far from formfitting. But from his angle, he could see the motion as her rounded hips shifted under the fabric in a rhythm that had him trying to remember how to breathe. Whether she’d meant it as a slam or not, he was so glad he was male right down to his atoms, so he could enjoy a sight like that.

  Then his gut dropped about a foot as a voice fluted, “Oh, Zeke.”

  “I’m busy.” He snapped off the end of his sentence when he couldn’t remember any more of the contestant’s name than Cris-something.

  Jennifer’s daughter was right behind her, giving him dagger looks for some reason. Cris-something trilled a laugh.

  “Of course you are, Zeke. Oh, I hope you don’t mind that I call you Zeke. I feel I must—truly I must, since we have so much in common.”

  Zeke had his mouth open to refute that, when a new arrival crossed his peripheral vision. Jennifer. Frowning and looking tired, she still was beautiful.

  “Cristina, you know it’s inappropriate for a princess to contact the head judge outside of the formal situations until the queen is selected.”

  “Oh, if Ashley hadn’t wanted to talk to him so desperately, I never would have approached Zeke,” said Cristina, eyes wide and innocent. “She was too shy to come on her own and she begged and she begged.”

  Jennifer looked at her daughter a long time before saying to both girls, “This is against the rules. Go back with the others now.”

  Cristina’s smile tightened, but she turned away with grace. Ashley glowered and followed.

  Jennifer gave Zeke an apologetic look. “I keep hoping there’ll be time for us to talk, to really catch up, but…” She tipped her head toward her daughter. “Later?”

  “Sure, later.”

  “Brenda,” Zeke said into his cell phone, “I want you to come out here to help me with some things.”

  There was a pause, then, “What things?”

  “Uh, you know, things with projects I’m working on.”

  “You’re not supposed to be working on projects, you’re supposed to be relaxing. If you’re working on projects, Quince is going to quit, and Vanessa might be right behind him. Besides, I never help you with projects.”

  “All this stuff with the Lilac Festival, then. If you organize that, it would free me up for other work—you know, like normal assistants.”

  He knew the gibe was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. How come he never knew it before they left his mouth?

  “If you had a normal assistant, you’d be curled up in a corner of a closet gibbering. Normal assistant? You can’t take a normal assistant.”

  She sounded like Jack Nicholson delivering his “You can’t handle the truth” line from A Few Good Men. The scary thing was Zeke didn’t know if she meant to imitate the actor or if it was all Brenda.

  “For one thing, a normal assistant would have told you right off that she was on vacation. That’s vacation as in not working. Hell, a normal assistant wouldn’t have arranged her vacation for your convenience. A normal assistant wouldn’t have left her cell phone on when she was on vacation.”

  “You’re on vacation. I forgot.”

  She snorted. “Of course you did. As for the festival, your schedule should be all set. Mrs. Barrett made sure everything was well organized.”

  The Barrett name caught his attention. “You mean Darcie.”

  “I mean her mother, Martha Barrett. She’s handling the festival from the country club’s angle, and she has everything organized.”

  That didn’t sound like the mother Darcie had talked about. On the other hand, if Brenda placed her “organized” stamp of approval on someone, there was no chance in hell she was wrong.

  “…so,” Brenda was saying when he tuned back in. “I can only assume this has nothing to do with work projects or the festival, What’s up, Zeke?”

  “I told you. It’s work. And this festi
val.”

  “It’s a woman. Got to be. I remember this tone from when that Lane Vawlet was crawling all over you.”

  Of course, that’s who Cristina reminded him of. Right down to the teeth-baring smile.

  Brenda blew out a breath. “You can handle any Lane Vawlet clone, Zeke. But now that you’re back among people who have always known you don’t let your automatic defenses block them out. Listen, I gotta go. Tomorrow we’re going to the mountains, so you won’t be able to get me.” She muttered, “At least I hope not,” before hanging up.

  For once, Brenda had failed him. He was on his own.

  “Well?”

  Darcie finished pouring coffee but skipped a chocolate doughnut because it was such a cop cliché, before facing Jennifer. “Well, what?”

  “Softening up Zeke. How’s it going?”

  “Not well. He hates everything to do with the Lilac Queen, the Lilac Festival and Drago.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “You could say that.” Oh, the hell with avoiding clichés, Darcie picked up the biggest chocolate-covered doughnut and bit into it. “On top of that, he’s not real fond of me.”

  “Oh, now there I know you’re wrong. Unless… Darcie, you weren’t, you know, untactful?”

  “I was totally tactful. He was being a jerk about the Lilac Queen and Drago. Like nobody with half a brain would stick around in this town.”

  Darcie took a quick, hard bite from the doughnut that left crisp teeth marks in the chocolate that would provide a perfect impression if she happened to take a bite out of a certain someone and they had to match the bite marks to pin it on her.

  “Darcie.” Jennifer closed her eyes for a second. “You have to hide your irritation. I know it’s hard. Lord, do I know.”

  Darcie remembered then that Jennifer had spent the morning showing Mildred Magnus a house she wasn’t going to buy, and felt a little guilty for not being more patient. “Sorry.”

  She shook her head, as if to say the apology wasn’t necessary between them. “We’ve got to win him over.”

  “I know. That’s why you should be leading the way with this. Who could possibly resist you?”

  Jennifer’s smile twisted, and Darcie wanted to kick herself, because Eric Stenner had resisted, in the form of leaving her after a series of affairs.

  Before she could apologize again, Jennifer was shaking her head and saying, “I know you’ll get through to him, Darcie. I’ll help, of course, but you two were always so close. You were the one he was always talking to.”

  Darcie pretended great interest in her coffee cup.

  Yeah, but you were the one he was dreaming about, even as he made love to me.

  Darcie ordered herself not to laugh. Even though she really deserved this laugh as reward for spending the day shepherding the Lilac Festival’s Guest of Honor, Head Judge and parade Grand Marshal.

  Right now, Zeke looked like Gulliver with the Lilliputians crawling all over him. And Gulliver wasn’t happy.

  He deserved it.

  Dismiss the importance of the Lilac Festival and lo, the Lilac Festival gods inflicted their wrath.

  Zeke had barely tolerated listening to logistics for Friday’s presentation of the Lilac Festival court—at Lilac Commons Park if the weather was good, here if it wasn’t. Darcie had watched, idly wondering how soon his tank of patience would hit empty.

  Especially since Warren, who was operating the light board, kept putting the spotlight on Ashley, prompting looks from the senior candidates that ranged from amusement— Mandy—to confusion—Traci—to concern—Nancy Lynn—to interest—Becky—to irritation—Cristina—not to mention making Ashley blush so furiously that Darcie feared the kid would faint from lack of blood anywhere but in her cheeks. The director kept stopping the action on stage to correct Warren, which slowed the process to a pace a snail would disown.

  Then Cristina started a campaign of don’t-you-think-it-would-be-better-ifs and if-Zeke-stands-here-by-mes, with each suggestion involving her putting her hand on his arm or moving close to look soulfully into his eyes.

  Mothers of two other contestants surged onto the stage to protest. Then Ashley defended Cristina, which drew Jennifer in to keep her daughter out of the other mothers’ paths. The pageant director had tufts of hair standing straight up from grabbing hair in his fists then explosively spreading his fingers in agonized supplication. “How? How can this be?”

  At the center of all the arm-tugging, hand-waving and shrill voices, Zeke grew stiff and more distant.

  “Uh-oh,” Darcie muttered under her breath when she saw him wrap one hand around Cristina’s wrist and detach her hand from his sleeve.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the pageant director. “I’m done.”

  “Oh, but, Ze-eeke,” Cristina started in a wheedling tone, cocking her head and moving as if to rub her check against his sleeve.

  “Don’t.” He didn’t shout it, he wasn’t sharp, but he meant it. The shock of anyone talking that way to Cristina silenced everyone.

  Zeke walked off stage into the wings.

  Cristina was the first to speak. “Poor man. Some people aren’t cut out for the tension and pace of pageants.”

  She was either brilliant or deluded. Darcie was betting on the latter.

  For a beat, it seemed that would be the end of it. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, Ashley burst into tears and ran off the stage to the left. In a chain reaction, tears erupted across the stage, sometimes mothers, sometimes contestants and even the director.

  Jennifer made eye contact with Darcie, who tipped her head toward Zeke’s exit. Someone should go after him. If he tried to leave from that side of backstage, he’d set off the fire alarm. Besides, this seemed an ideal time for Jennifer to start softening him up.

  Jennifer shook her head and pointed to Darcie.

  Darcie shook her head and pointed back. Jennifer made a small gesture toward where Ashley had disappeared and touched her chest, then pointed again at Darcie and tipped her head toward the exit Zeke had taken.

  Darcie sighed and stood.

  What could she do when Jennifer played the motherhood card?

  She made a face at Jennifer, then climbed the stairs and crossed the corner of the stage, walking between two rows of curtains, on the hunt for Zeke. It would have been more challenging if she hadn’t heard him swearing.

  “Zeke?”

  He swore again. She followed the sound around a trio of plywood trees to find the genius of technology rattling his handheld like a martini shaker.

  “What’s the problem, Zeke?”

  “Damn this town. It’s like a black hole. My laptop’s acting up, my cell isn’t working right and now this.”

  She knew a misdirection vent when she heard one. Oh, sure, he was frustrated with whatever glitch he’d encountered with his gizmo, but it hadn’t been technology that drove him here.

  “The problem that made you leave the stage?” she specified.

  “I felt like a hunk of meat in a tiger’s cage.”

  “I have a feeling you’ve encountered that before, Mr. Zeekowsky.” He didn’t respond, so she tried again. “What’s the real problem, Zeke?”

  He swore again, but this one lacked steam. He eased his hips against a railing, and sighed. “This whole damned thing. What am I doing here?”

  “Being honored by your hometown for your accomplishments.”

  He said something under his breath.

  “What?”

  “I said it boils down to them sucking up because I’ve got money.”

  Guilt and fear simultaneously cramped Darcie’s insides—guilt because she definitely wanted something from him and fear that she wouldn’t get it for Drago. “Has anyone asked you for money?”

  He shrugged. “Not yet. They will.”

  “You’ve become cynical, Zeke,” she said. Accusing him was a lot more comfortable than acknowledging her own guilt, which lingered even as the fear ebbed. “That chip on your shoulder about this town i
s stupid.”

  “It’s not a chip. It’s reality. Why in hell my parents settled here, I’ll never know. They could have found a community where they’d be accepted. New York, Chicago. San Francisco. Instead of in the middle of cornfields, where we were outsiders. Always will be.”

  “Your mother is not an outsider. Neither was your father. If you are, it’s because you never let anybody inside. Don’t you know that your mother is loved, and so was your father? Do you remember your father’s funeral?”

  Pain flickered in his eyes, and she suspected that what he remembered of the days after Mischar Zeekowsky collapsed in his shop early in their senior year in high school was a haze of pain without detail.

  “Everyone was there, Zeke,” she said gently. “Everyone pitched in, helped your mom with arrangements, brought food, made sure the insurance came through and your college fund was set. There wasn’t a seat left in the church—don’t you remember? Because everyone loved your dad.”

  “The funny shoemaker with the comical accent?”

  “No! They weren’t making fun of him, and I won’t let you think that. People loved your dad because he was always nice, always smiling. He’d ask people how they were, and he cared about the answer.”

  She was on a roll. “Don’t sell your mother short, either. She is well-regarded in Drago. Just because you’ve made a pot of money and been on magazine covers doesn’t mean you can neglect her and people won’t notice.”

  “I do not neglect—”

  “It’s not all money, you know. It’s not buying her VCRs and DVD players and computers and other gadgets. You can’t deal with your guilt that way. You’re not even looking at her as a person. You’re—”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know I’ve given my mother those things?”

  For half a second she froze—how was she going to explain her comment about the gadgets?—then Eureka! She smiled blindingly. “Getting forgetful, Zeke? You were demanding an accounting from her this morning.”

  “I was not demanding an accounting.” His handheld gizmo interrupted with a rude beep. He banged it with the side of his hand.

  “This is the best a tech genius can do? Thump it? Is that something Zeke-Tech makes?”