“I live by the Ridgewood Golf Course. It’s given me a fear of balls,” I said.
Waller laughed politely. I felt myself blush. Why was I telling my hot-dude jokes about balls?
“I guess that would,” he said. We were all silent for a moment.
“Golf balls,” I muttered to myself. “A fear of golf balls?”
After a while, Waller said, “I love Chicago. I think I could live there forever.”
“What do you like most about it?” I asked.
“Good question.” Waller stopped to scratch his ankle, and I waited beside him. But Brenda kept walking. Waller and I didn’t rush after her.
“Great skyline,” he continued, as we resumed strolling behind the group. “Nice waterfront. Good art scene. Fantastic restaurants. Sports. The city has everything.”
“Sounds like it,” I said. “So what’s your major?”
“Neurobiology,” he said.
“Wow.”
“I’m kidding. I’m an English major.”
“Do you have a minor?”
He shook his head. “I’m dabbling in history, philosophy, political science, French, and religion.”
I couldn’t think of another question, but I needed one. Things were going so well. “You must take a lot of classes,” I said.
“I’m in school, but I’m also an autodidact. I devour information.”
I had never heard of autodidacts. I hoped it wasn’t a mental disorder. If things were going to progress much further with Waller, I apparently needed to buy a good dictionary.
“Do you want some water?” Waller asked, pointing to a drink stand shaded by a large blue umbrella.
My clothes clung to me, and my skin felt sticky with sweat. Water sounded necessary.
“I don’t have crowns yet,” I told him.
“My treat,” he said.
I watched Waller jog toward the stand. He jogged nearly exactly like Hamilton. Three happy bounces followed by an almost skip.
“They have ice cream!” he yelled. “This quarter of Prague is known for its ice cream.”
“Great!” I said. My mind raced through several licking strategies. Based on Veronica’s advice, I now had a chance to gain considerable ground with my brand-new crush.
Waller returned with two chocolate ice creams, a cone in each hand, and two bottles of water, one shoved in each of his armpits.
I reached out to grab one of the cones, but he handed it to me at the same time. The chocolate scoop dislodged from its nest of cone and rolled down my shirtfront. Then it splattered on my sandals.
“Shit! I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“It doesn’t look bad,” he said, which was a stupid thing to say because it implied that spilled ice cream on your shirt could somehow look good. “You can have my cone,” he added.
“No,” I said. “You keep it. All I want is water.”
I furiously rubbed a napkin over my shirt until the paper started to disintegrate into shreds. Luckily the stainage had occurred mostly in my valley, not atop my boobs. This seemed less conspicuous.
“Maybe you could use some water and try to rinse it off,” he said.
“I’m wearing a white shirt.”
“Then maybe not,” he said. He licked his cone and then held it out for me. He wanted me to lick the unlicked side. The situation suddenly felt like a test. I lowered my mouth to the chocolate ball of ice cream and nibbled. Waller pulled it back to his mouth and took another lick. “Mmm. Mmm.” The sound escaped from his mouth in a deep seductive hum. It traveled through the air and struck my body like electricity. After a couple more licks, he asked, “Hey, where’s the group?”
Once we caught up to the tour I uncapped my water and took a long drink. In three blocks I’d finished the bottle.
“Are you enjoying this?” Waller asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Except I’m looking at the back of a lot of heads.”
Waller laughed. “Look. We’re here,” he said.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the tour had an ultimate destination.
“It’s amazing,” Waller said.
He was right. I’d never seen anything like it before. Right in front on me, on a hill, sat a castle. The tall spires reached high into the sky, piercing the low, thin clouds. The castle was dark, almost like it had been burned; it didn’t resemble any of the castles I’d seen in Disney films. It was the sort of place that somebody mysterious and deranged might have once called home.
“The president of the Czech Republic has his office here.”
“That so does not look like an office building,” I said.
“The first incarnation of it was constructed in the ninth century. But it’s been rebuilt a lot since then. It houses the crown jewels,” Waller said.
“No way! I want to see those.”
“We’d have to go on a tour, then.”
An enormous dark river flowed at the base of the hill. Ferries and paddleboats glided under its many stone bridges. We followed Jiri until we were nearly at the river’s edge. “That’s the Vltava River,” Waller said. He pronounced it vul-TAH-vah. “And that’s the Charles Bridge, the one made with egg yolks. It’s a cultural landmark.”
He pointed across the street to a bridge that was crowded with people and street vendors. Large statues rose up all along the bridge’s sides. They were saints, I knew from my guidebooks. They looked like protectors the way they hovered over the flocks of tourists.
“Do you study numerology?” Waller asked.
I did not think I could bluff my way through pretending I’d studied numerology. “No,” I admitted.
“This is really fascinating. The foundation stone for the bridge was laid in 1357 on the ninth day of the seventh month at 5:31 a.m., so the date and time make a palindrome: 135797531.”
“Cool,” I said.
“It was done for luck. The court numerologists figured out this was the luckiest day, because that sort of palindrome won’t occur again until 2468.”
“Is Jiri even mentioning these things?” I asked.
“I think he’s talking about Emperor Charles the Fourth,” Waller said.
I didn’t bother telling Waller that I’d never heard of this emperor, or that my knowledge of emperors in general was pretty scant.
“There’s so much to see in Prague. Wenceslas Square. Powder Tower. Saint George. T´yn Church. Saint Vitus’s Cathedral,” Waller said.
“You’re better than a guide book.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Guide books have pictures.”
“Touché,” I said.
Waller reached up and shaded the sun with his hand. “I feel like I’m being baked,” he said. “Like I’m a pot roast.”
The image made me laugh. “I know,” I said. “I’m sweating.” Since I knew I wasn’t stinking, I figured it was okay to admit that I was sweating. We leaned against a stone wall, squinting in the afternoon sun. The rest of our group had disbanded. I watched Jiri cross the street toward the bridge and disappear in the crowd.
“Did you like the tour?” Waller asked.
“Yours or Jiri’s?”
He laughed again and was about to say something else when Veronica, Frank, Kite, and Roger showed up.
“We’re going to grab goulash. Do you want to come?” Kite asked.
Hearing this, I realized how much I wanted goulash. Urgently. Even though I didn’t know what was in goulash. Fish fins? Horse intestines? Tiger genitals? I didn’t care. I couldn’t imagine anything better than sitting across the table from Waller. I looked at Veronica to see what we should do. But then I looked behind Veronica because I saw Mrs. Knox approaching.
“Hi, girls,” Mrs. Knox said. “I got us a taxi so we can do our grocery shopping.”
“Actually, we’ve been talking about grabbing some goulash,” Veronica said.
Mrs. Knox looked surprised. “What about your snacks?”
I knew that inside, Veronica was
probably horrified to hear her mother championing snacks, but she didn’t show it in front of the guys. “Let’s shop later,” she said.
Mrs. Knox frowned. Then things got worse. Brenda materialized out of nowhere. “Did I hear someone say goulash?” she said.
I watched her smile a very beautiful smile. She had fantastic lips and teeth. Then I heard Waller invite her to join us for lunch.
“I’m glad everyone enjoyed their tours,” Mrs. Knox said. “But the taxi is charging me. Girls, we need to go.”
“Wait! I want a picture. Come here!” Veronica said.
She stepped in front of Brenda, tugged on Frank, and let Roger and Waller move out of the way. Veronica tucked her chin down, smiled mischievously, and flipped her hair so that it tumbled over her shoulders. By the look on her face, I knew that these would be the pictures that she’d e-mail to Boz. She beamed as Mrs. Knox clicked the camera three times.
“Okay,” Mrs. Knox said. “Beep, beep, let’s go!” She slid the camera into her purse.
“Can’t we get goulash too?” Veronica begged.
“Goulash sounds great,” I piped in.
“Yeah!” Veronica said. “It’s what Czech people eat. And it would be culturally insensitive of us not to experience it.”
“Groceries first. Goulash later. That’s practical.”
I watched the guys and Brenda drift down the street. They hadn’t even said good-bye.
“See you tomorrow in workshop!” Veronica yelled.
“You don’t have to shout,” Mrs. Knox said. “That was right in my ear.”
I watched Waller turn around. He saw me watching him, and he waved. I thought about waving back, but I didn’t. Because maybe he wasn’t waving entirely at me. He could have been waving at Mrs. Knox. And Veronica. Like a big group wave. Or maybe he was saying good-bye to the street performer behind me. Okay. I was overthinking. I’d just spent an hour with him. Of course Waller was waving at me.
But what did it mean? That I wasn’t too young for him? Was it fine by him that I didn’t know about numerology? Did he have a universal attraction to blondes slathered in chocolate ice cream? He finally lowered his hand. But that didn’t stop my analysis of this complicated gesture. Waving. Veronica read my mind.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Wave.”
So I did.
Chapter Eight
I woke up the next morning feeling nervous for a variety of reasons. First, I wanted to impress Waller and make him topple over in mad, disorienting, bone-burning love for me. Second, I didn’t know how to do that. Third, I really wanted to hone my writing skills, and I feared that my preoccupation with worry number one and worry number two might impede that.
When I got back from my shower, Veronica had attached three new hot-dudes to her man-wall.
“Where did you meet them?” I asked. It was a little shocking to see them multiplying at this speed. Though she was doing a nice job of keeping their heads and legs in scale with their arms.
“The first hot-dude, I met in line at the grocery store. I accidentally touched his butt. His name is Mike. I’ve got his number here in town. He’s from England. He’s not that interesting.”
“How come you drew stars on his shins?” I asked.
“Oh.” Veronica tapped the paper cutout’s legs. “His shins are awesome. Perfect amount of hair and bone protrusion.”
I sighed. “Did you meet the other guys at the grocery store too?” I didn’t exactly understand how she could meet guys in the checkout line. I mean, I had been right there with her, and I didn’t remember her touching some British guy’s butt or getting his phone number.
“I met the second hot-dude in the lobby last night. You’d gone to bed. I felt like roaming. His name is Chad. He’s from New Jersey. He goes to a community college and has triple-pierced ears. He thinks he’s a playwright, and basically his life seems pretty hopeless. But he’s staying in the same hall as Frank and the guys, so he might be useful to me.”
I sighed more heavily. “So between late last night and right now, how did you meet a third hot-dude?” I asked.
She pointed to the most recent hot-dude on the wall. “Peter? I met him a few minutes ago while I was randomly riding the elevator. You were in the shower. He’s not part of the writing program. He’s here with a group of watercolor painters from Michigan.”
“You’re out of control, Veronica.”
“Seven hot-dudes on my man-wall isn’t even close to being out of control,” Veronica said. “Get ready. Let’s head to the university. We’ve got a lot of living to do.”
I put on a T-shirt and jeans.
“You’re going to be so overheated that your crotch will sweat,” Veronica told me.
I changed into shorts while Veronica primped in the bathroom.
I was surprised by how little we’d seen of our suitemates. I’d heard Brenda return last night, long after we’d come back from grocery shopping. In the middle of the night, seized by hunger and curiosity, I’d inspected the minifridge and found her leftover goulash stinking it up.
“Their crap is everywhere,” Veronica announced on her way back from the bathroom. “Brenda keeps her natural toothpaste on the side of the sink. Annie Earl hangs a bathrobe on the only bathroom hook. And look at the table! There’s a dirty spoon on it.”
“Didn’t you leave that there after you ate your yogurt last night?”
“Oh, yeah.” Veronica slung her bag over her shoulder. “Are you stressing about Brenda? Don’t stress about Brenda.”
“But I think she likes Waller.”
“That chatty Mainer is a big yawn,” Veronica said as we walked to the dorm lobby. “Actually, so is Annie Earl. But Corky seems at least mildly appealing.”
“Why?” I asked.
“That whole business about looking for Prague’s counterculture. I mean, culture usually bores me. But counterculture might be worth investigating.”
“Yesterday you acted like you had no desire to meet Corky. You insulted her. I mean, pick an opinion and stick with it. You’re totally jumping around.”
Veronica commenced jumping. Down the hallway. Around the corner. Onto the stairs. She had so much energy pouring out of her that when I tried to imagine her seated for our three-hour workshop, I couldn’t. And this frightened me.
When Mrs. Knox opened her door, she was still in her pajamas. “The workshop isn’t for another hour,” she said.
“I’m trying to be hyper-responsible,” Veronica said.
“You have no idea where the university is,” said Mrs. Knox. “You’re not going alone. You need to cool your jets.”
“I do know where Charles University is,” Veronica said. “We went past it on the tour. The building is enormo.”
“And I have a map!” I said, lifting up my bag. “Dejvicka to Staromeˇstská. We don’t get off the green line.”
Mrs. Knox shook her head.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Veronica asked.
“Death and dismemberment,” Mrs. Knox said.
This wasn’t going well at all.
“Dad let me take the metro in Rome by myself all the time,” Veronica said. “And the bus.”
Mrs. Knox smoothed her bed-head with one hand.
“We’ll be fine,” Veronica said. “There’s daylight every- where.”
Mrs. Knox appeared unconvinced.
“Seriously, Mom. I found the Coliseum and the Vatican all by myself.”
I was surprised that Veronica had visited the Vatican. It was the first I’d heard of it.
“Fine. I’ll see you in an hour,” Mrs. Knox said, then shut the door.
“To the metro!” Veronica cheered.
We walked outside into the muggy air.
“It feels like the world has been wrapped in a hot towel,” Veronica said.
“At least the sky is blue,” I said.
“Oh no.”
“What?” I immediately began surveying the scene for Brenda and pickpockets
.
“I forgot to bring snacks.”
Since going back wasn’t an option, we stopped at a small market along the way. The store had only three aisles, and on the counter next to the cash register was a big stack of pornographic magazines. Veronica saw them and smiled. Then she bought crackers, apples, and two candy bars, and dashed out to the street.
“Why are you running?” I asked, jogging behind her.
She glanced back over her shoulder and laughed. “We can’t leave anything to chance. We’ve got to scope the room.”
I hurried after Veronica, hoping she’d stop running when she reached the stairs that led to the metro escalator, but she didn’t.
“You’re getting too far ahead,” I called down to her. I raced down the stairs, made a left, and got on the escalator. Riding down, I could see the machine where you purchase your tickets, in the middle of the platform. I edged past a large man and a woman with shopping bags. When I got off the escalator, I ran to the machine. But I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. It had about twenty buttons, and everything was a different color.
“What do I press?” Nobody answered me. “We’re taking the green line, so do I press the green button? Why does it have a sticker of a dog on it?” I was officially panicked. Did this thing even take debit cards? How had Veronica already managed to purchase a ticket? I felt completely abandoned.
The train was coming. At the other end of the platform, Veronica positioned herself next to the yellow line. That’s when I remembered my travel pass. I grabbed my wallet and ran for the approaching train. “I can’t believe that you were going to leave me!”
“Nobody left anybody,” Veronica said as she stepped onto the train ahead of me.
The car was crowded, and neither Veronica nor I could find an open seat.
“Commuters,” Veronica said. “And tragically, no hot-dudes among them.”
I scanned the car twice, and she was right. “We can’t be lucky every day of our lives,” I said.
She frowned at me. “Sure we can.”
We both hung on to a bright orange pole near the door. The orange seats held people reading newspapers and magazines. Even the standing people were reading. And the few women who had purses were clutching them tightly in their laps, fearing pickpockets, I guessed. Following their example, I unslung my backpack and set it at my feet, where I could keep a vigilant eye on it.
A Field Guide for Heartbreakers Page 8