"Except Yvette. You should have heard her. I told her I was Reynard Jackson just to see her reaction. She said I was playing a dangerous game.”
"Which proves what?"
"Well, it seemed like she believed me. So maybe she doesn't know him."
"Or she's a good actress. But isn't she new to the area? How could she—?"
"So? She may not be Jackson, but more than ever I get the feeling she's in on it, somehow, and I'm gonna find out who with.”
"You mean whom with?” Harley chuckled. “And James?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. They're all nuts. I thought they all loved me.”
"Well, they do. Some in more interesting places than others.”
CHAPTER 24
I hung up and went back over the evening, cringing at the rushed, goofy near-sex and the agony of closetus interruptus. How could such a hot guy be so off base? He was hot, wasn’t he? Yeah, but Dal was a lot more fun, in several ways. And dibsed. And James was helping me find my nemesis, and trying to protect me and my computer so I could take my real place in the writing world. Except he’d taken Yvette away before I could grill her about Reynard. Probably to save us all from a big scene. Surely he’d tell her he preferred me to her. The rose tattoo had meant that, right? That he wanted me, not her, to grab him by that lock of hair and hold on tight? But did I really want to, after this confusing, smelly evening?
I'd barely put down the phone from Harley's call when it rang again and Dal's voice caressed me like a kid-leather glove. "Rhonda, he wants you. Could you come over?"
My toes curled.
I schlepped back to Anaheim, very confused. I mean, Mr. Delicious Peachy James with his hands all over me hadn't done half as much as those two sentences from Dal to turn my motor on. But Delicious Peachy James was now finally mine, after a lot of hard work and planning. Yeah. Mine in mothballs.
"I'm missing Boston Legal. Turn it on," I yelled as I entered the ancestral house. In the family room, Music Man was snoring on the sofa, his big feet dangling a good fifteen inches off the end, big holes in both socks.
I heard banging in the garage and went to the door. Dal was out there in a tank top and a welder's mask, torch blazing, working on two long pieces of scrap metal. A few other pieces had already been soldered in shapes that looked like—well, if you squinched your eyes and framed the picture with your hands—maybe Matisse's wild women cutouts. Big triangular pieces for breasts, rounded pieces for buns, long squiggly stuff for hair and legs. And tiny heads. Or else they were poodles. Either way, seeing the raw artistic passion in the man made me tingle. God, were those legs long and well-muscled in those cut-offs, and the tank top revealed a sweaty bronze chest.
He saw me, took off the mask, and came toward me, eyes locked on mine.
Gulp.
"Hi," he said in a soft tone reminiscent of the night before. He approached with his torch blazing and I backed away. He cracked a crooked smile, turned off the flame, and dropped it.
"Rhonda." The word was hot and velvety, as was the hand which cupped my cheek and brought me close for a quick kiss. Zing! Fireworks shot to my toes.
"What's so urgent with Dad?" Remembering Harley, I backed up. "He's flaked out."
"He said he was dizzy and he wanted to see you." He followed me. "Then he fell asleep a few minutes ago." His other hand snaked toward my waist and his steely eyes searched my face for something indefinable. "Is that a new perfume?"
"Yeah. Mothballs. What are you doing?" I ignored his hand on my waist and pointed at the metal.
"Making a mobile. I've always wanted to be the next Alexander Calder.”
Funny, I could have sworn from the look in his eyes that he wanted something else. My heart sort of hopped around like a bunny. Had James ever made my heart jump? I couldn't remember.
"Are they supposed to be women in crazy positions with big boobs and butts and tiny heads? Like Picasso or Matisse pieces?" I asked.
His eyes flew open, and light blue flashed in the steel. He looked really happy for once and hugged me. "Wow, Rhonda. You got it. You think the heads are too small?"
Good thing I hadn't mentioned poodles. "Uh, I hate to comment on another artist's work. It might invite comments about my vampire character—that his—um," I touched Dal's firm, glistening shoulder, "shoulders are too wide or his fangs are too long or something."
He pulled me close, a hand on my butt. "If you ever want to measure the parts of a vampire, I'm completely at your disposal, night or day."
Harley. My friend. Dibs. DAMN!
I pulled away and walked over to study the metal shapes. Red, blue, green, orange. Some were huge, some smaller. There were different shapes in a corner. "What about them?"
He put his arms around me from behind. "They're old hat. The idea for these women just came while I wasn't sleeping last night. After—" He nipped my earlobe and caressed my stomach.
"Are those women all me?" My eyes widened.
"Mmm," he breathed.
I needed to fan myself. "But isn't it all a little heavy for a mobile?"
"Not if you balance it just right." His hands wandered over my bodyscape. He'd have made a great blind man, with such detail-oriented fingers.
I went all gooey inside.
Harley. Shit. "Well, Dad's fine. I gotta go." I turned in his arms, but he didn’t let me go. I lifted an eyebrow. "You didn't ask me over here for Music Man."
He kissed my neck and nuzzled my shoulder. "No. I wanted to see your new hairdo.”
My hand went to the new cowlick on my head. "Your nose is growing.”
"How can you tell?" He aimed his mouth at mine.
I let him. After all, Jackie'd told me to get more kissing data on both guys. His mouth explored mine and his hands were slow and appreciative on my backside, not rushed like James's. Symphonic music swelled in my head, and Olympic scoreboards danced. In the Love-Making Olympics, Dal rated a 9.97 out of ten and James, sadly, barely hit a meager 3.8.
"He really did want to see you," Dal said huskily in my ear when he broke the kiss, "and so did I."
"Yeah," I said breathlessly.
The phone rang and I ran inside to get it. Dal followed and grabbed me from behind again.
"Rhonda?" Harley said, "Why are you there? I just talked to you at home. Is your dad okay?"
"Yeah," I said, trying not to pant as Dal's hands wandered up inside my shirt. There was a decided bulge pushing into my butt.
"I want to talk to the Indian. Is he there?"
"Uh. Yeah. I'll try to find him." Hand over the receiver, I counted to ten, enjoying the moment. His hands persisted, brushing my nipples through my bra, giving me the female equivalent of an erection.
Reluctantly, I handed him the phone. "It's Wonder Woman. She’s got dibs, remember? She's gonna ask you out. She'll kill me if you say no, and I'll kill you if you say yes."
The wonderful hands left my body, and I missed them. He frowned at the phone, but then his face lit up as he spoke to Harley. He turned away to talk for a minute and agreed to something, then hung up.
I could have wrung his neck. "What?" I asked.
He grinned, teeth flashing. "You were right. She wants to go out with me tomorrow night, so I won't be able to watch your dad." He waved and headed back to the garage, whistling.
I left the house ready to hit something. James the Delicious Peach thought I was sexy. So did Dal. They'd both been all over me this evening, and yet I was going home alone.
CHAPTER 25
Wednesday was Halloween. The agency sent two twenty-year-old girls, Jenny and Blendy, to deal with Music Man. I went over to Acorn Street before work to give them the drill. Plump Jenny seemed a little dim, but Blendy's spiky pink hair made Music Man laugh no end.
He said, "You girls'll like this. There was this real nice cocktail party, and a lady guest asked the hostess where the pretty maid with the pink hair who was serving the drinks had gone. The hostess ask
ed if the lady guest wanted a drink. She said no. Guess what she wanted."
The girls studied their fingernails.
"The host! Funny, huh?" He chuckled.
I left him telling more blonde jokes converted to pink hair jokes and went off to work my four-hour shift in a library. Cheerful cutouts of reading spiders and happy witches, carrying books on their broomsticks, hung from the ceiling. Halloween. My chopped hair got a lot of weird looks. I claimed it was my costume.
After work, I went home, made tuna salad, and ate it on bread in a local park. I needed a dose of fiction writing, so I figured out a code for my two fictional evil spy characters to use to get messages to each other involving partly eaten sandwiches in different shapes left on park benches. However, my spies were so dumb that they didn't realize birds, squirrels, and winos were messing with their code.
Then I braved the local hair salon, where I was mid-haircut when James called me. "Rhonda. Found definite symptoms of hacking on your laptop. Good thing I've got it. Reynard looks like a hacking expert. Wanna do dinner Friday night?"
"I guess." I wasn't sure anymore. “You bombed out on our Tuesday night dinner plans. Are you really coming?”
“Of course. I miss you.” He hung up.
Five minutes later, the agency called. Dad had thrown fits when the girls had tried to clean or move or even touch the smallest item in the house. He had thrown his cane at one of them. Then he had required the girls to drive him to four stores and the hospital, which they had thought an excessive use of their driving skills. After lunch, during his nap, they had gone to our well-hedged back yard to gossip and sunbathe in their bras and chat on cell phones. Music Man had awoken, found their shirts in the kitchen and hidden them. Then he had left in the car. Could I please come and find their shirts? Oh, and find Dad as well? The agency was so sorry he had been misplaced, but the girls were considering a sexual harassment charge.
I went and confronted the irate girls, who seemed less worried about Dad's whereabouts than their own sunburns. I found their shirts tucked behind a new pile of Dal's scrap metal under the back bathroom vanity. Along with a second draft of Memory Serves, with Dad's handwriting in the margins, and a stash of Chevy car keys.
Jackpot!
The agency promised to send someone else the following day.
It was 4:15. I put off sounding the police alarm on Music Man for five minutes while I sat on the plaid sofa and leafed through the manuscript. It was quite an old draft, but he'd actually written in "Ha ha," in a few places. Wow. Dad liked my book.
On cue, there was a knock at the door. A police cruiser sat out front.
Ushering Dad up the walk, a uniform said, "Ma'am, your father ran out of gas on the 57 freeway and started walking in the slow lane. A motorist reported him to us. Sign here.”
Wow. Free delivery.
The other cop said, "Watch him better, lady, especially on Halloween."
"By the way, his license is expired." Cop #1 wrote out a ticket. "And we've impounded the car."
Oh. Not so free.
I said, "Dad, give me your keys. Now."
Music Man turned, "Hey, Officers. I got another cop joke. See, there's this policeman named Floyd Flatfoot, and his partner, Delbert Dick. Or was it Fred Fuzz and Peter Pig? Anyway, one of 'em said, 'We need to keep Jimmy the Mooch Mercato under surveillance.' And the other guy, he said …" Dad was laughing and could hardly talk. "You're gonna love this, Officer. He said, 'Yeah, and we have to watch him, too.'" Dad slapped his knee in glee.
The cops turned stiffly and left. Then Cop #1 started back toward me and I froze. Were bad cop jokes illegal?
"Ma'am, he left this in his car. It's out of date. You need a new one." He held out the damned blue handicapped parking card. Just the thing I needed. I led Dad inside for a lecture, but he wouldn't stop laughing.
There was another knock. The FBI? The DMV? Nope. It was a florist truck with a huge, autumnal arrangement from James and a cheerful, glittery note. I gloated for ten whole minutes until Dal came in from his class and went straight to his room without a word. I heard the shower.
Then the trick-or-treaters started coming and Music Man fought me for the candy bowl and the privilege of loading up kids' bags between eating fistfuls of Mars bars, himself. I was just closing the door on three pink princesses when Dal sailed down the hall all in black: dress pants, shirt, and sports jacket, and some yummy cologne.
Oh, yeah.
It's not like I really cared how he looked or anything. I mean, I was on Halloween candy duty, a very serious job in our household. But wowza. He'd let his ponytail loose for the evening, and it glistened and flowed past his shoulders in black waves. His earring had never looked sexier. The steely blues were set off perfectly by all that black, and the nose looked absolutely regal. Without a word, he went to the fridge, took a swig of juice straight from the carton, and headed for the door and his date with Harley.
As the screen door banged, I yelled, "Hey, don't just come in here and drink out of the juice carton with your mononucleosis germs!"
Much later, after serving sixty princesses, fifty pirates, forty wizards, and thirty ninjas, I turned out our light and picked up three smashed jack-'o-lanterns from our sidewalk. Then Music Man and I put on shiny, metallic wigs and went to see Mom. We played hearts for an hour.
Dad was stretching his legs in the hospital hall when Mom said, "What did Ed wear tonight? Did he go to a party?"
Shuffling, I bent the cards so hard they flipped all over the floor. "Yeah.”
Mom laughed. "Rhonda, fifty-two pick-up at our age? Hey, how's the agency caregiver doing? Did she find the ironing board? Does Harold like her meat loaf?"
"Uh, sure." I had accidentally on purpose forgotten to tell Mom our caregiver problems. Her heart might not take it well.
"Because James came by here again. That nice boy bought a bundle of Tupperware from me and brought me a picture. Did you know he can paint?" She pointed at a watercolor landscape leaning against the wall. "He also gave me a referral for your Dad, to a Dr. Matlin or Dr. Madman, maybe. Takes Medicare."
"You hate doctors, Mom."
"But I like James." Her eyes twinkled. "Don't you?"
* * *
At 2:33 a.m., Dal opened the front door and tiptoed past me as I dozed on Dad's plaid couch with B-movies blazing on cable across the family room. "Nighty-night, Rhonda." He waved, looking way too happy, and loped off to his room.
There was drool on my cushion. I hit it hard and made feathers fly.
At 3:28, Bing woke me from a tortured sleep with a damp nose on mine. The front door was closed. Music Man was snoring loudly. But Bing stood by the door.
"You went out already," I groaned.
He insisted. So I let him out and stood in the front yard, shivering and stargazing, while he checked his peemail around the yard.
Turning to go back in, I noticed a new car in the shadowy driveway—not Dal's Toyota, but a vintage flower power Volkswagen van from the 1960s, painted in bright rainbow-hued cartoons from nose to tail. Even the back windows were painted over. Shivering in my T-shirt, I went to investigate. Had Harley bought this monstrosity and brought Dal home in it? But that would mean she'd still be here. In his room. With him. And I'd have to strangle her.
The van wasn't locked, so I opened the driver's door and peered inside. The upholstery and dash were cherry red, and the walls and ceiling of the rear end were covered in quilted cherry satin. A plush cherry quilt and pillows covered the large futon spread out where the back seats had once been. A TV/DVD player perched over the bed. It all screamed pimp-mobile.
A touch on my right hip made me jump and hit my head on the roof. "Shit!" I said, heart racing. "What the …?" I whirled around and came face to face with some traitorous sweatpants, a ponytail and some mocking blue eyes.
"Why are you up, Lover Boy?" I tried to sound blasé. "Don't you have guests?"
"No. I couldn't sleep. Ne
ver can after a big date. Like my new car?"
I climbed out and rubbed my arms to get warm. "It's not a car. It's Aphrodite's Mobile Service Unit."
"Leave all your detailing to us." Dal grinned. "Yeah. Harley really liked that bed in the back.”
I punched him, hard.
He doubled over and I stalked back to the house, whistling for Bing. Except Bing had already gone in, like a smart dog. And Music Man had been up locking doors. And my keys were in my purse. In the house. Again.
I looked back at Dal, who was still doubled over, half laughing, half in pain.
"Locked out again?" he gloated. "Aren't you glad I got a car with a bed?" He opened the back door of the van, and made a chivalrous, sweeping motion toward it like a seedy chauffeur. But the grin was too sure of itself.
I smiled, started to climb in, then stole his red quilt and ran off to spend a chilly night on a lawn chair in the back yard. Which was why I got fired the next day.
CHAPTER 26
I'd probably slept a total of three pillowless hours, my head banging on the hard aluminum frame of the sagging lawn chair, when Music Man came out and woke me up with: "Rhonda! You'll catch your death of chill. Get inside!"
By then it was time to get ready for work. In my rush to get to the condo for fresh clothes, I had no time to orient the new caregiver, who I later learned was a burly idiot named Delmar.
The problem with Delmar, I found out at 4:00 p.m., was that he tried to force Music Man to do things at exactly the time on the written schedule we had posted, things like getting dressed and taking medicine. Music Man rebelled and got angry and Delmar got angry back. Music Man dug in his heels and refused to do anything the guy said, including eat. He pushed Delmar out of the way when Delmar tried to do the dishes. Delmar pushed back, and Dad hit him with his cane. Scared, Delmar attacked, knocking Dad down and giving him a cut on the head. Dal arrived soon after and sent Delmar packing.
The agency had run out of people who were willing to take Dad on. They'd send me a bill for four days plus the price of some missing personal items and the urgent care visit for Delmar. A lawsuit was pending.
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