Crazy in Love (21 page)

He’s early, I thought, glancing at my watch. Then Jenny’s
voice came through my closed bedroom door: “Sallie, it’s
Saul.”

Saul! What was he doing here?

A dumb question, I reminded myself. He was looking for
a friendly face, of course, perhaps even a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. But Nick was due in a few minutes. Oh,
dear, I thought, what was the ethical thing to do? I didn’t
want to ruin my date, but Saul obviously needed me for
moral support. I rushed into the living room, uncertain of
what I would do.

“Hi, Sallie.” Saul greeted me without much enthusiasm.
“I guess you heard the news.”

“Yeah, I heard. And I’m terribly sorry.” We sat down on
the couch together. I cast a dirty look at Jenny, and she
disappeared without any hesitation. I thought to myself, Sometimes it seems that my little sister is actually growing
up.

“Well, I don’t want to bore you with all the gory details. And it really isn’t your problem. I just thought maybe you
and I could take in a movie, or go have a pizza...
.”

“Oh, Saul, I’m sorry. I have a date with Nick tonight.
Remember? The guy you and I met at the WROX
competition?”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot about him.” Saul looked so sad at that point that for a split second, I was willing to cancel my date entirely, or bring him along. I couldn’t just abandon
him, not when he looked so desperate.

But then a funny thing happened. Jenny walked into the
room, looking as if she were about to start crying.

“Jenny! What happened?” I asked.

“It’s my cassette player. I think it just died. And I’ve
invited a bunch of kids over tomorrow to listen to some of
my brand-new tapes. I just bought them!”

“Maybe you could get it fixed first thing tomorrow
morning,” I suggested, feeling completely helpless. “Or
you could always borrow my record player....”

“It’s not the same thing,” she insisted. “You can’t play
tapes on a record player.”

“Maybe I could take a look at it,” Saul suggested. “I’m
pretty good at fixing things.”

“Oh, Saul,
would
you? I’d appreciate it so much!”
Jenny’s face lit up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller
Center. She grabbed his arm and led him away. “It’s right in
my bedroom, on the desk. Oh, I’ll be there in a second. Let
me just tell Sallie something first....”

She came running back to me and whispered, “Sallie, is
that okay, what I just did?”

“What do you mean?” I looked at her, genuinely
puzzled.

“Well, Saul sounded as if he was in pretty bad
shape...
.”

“You were eavesdropping!”

“Of course.” She scowled. “Remember, you’re talking to an honor student at the Little Sister Academy. Anyway, it
seemed to me that Saul needed to be needed tonight.”

“I’m still not sure I understand.”

Jenny proudly held up a tiny screw and a little piece of
wire.

“You lied!” I gasped.

“I didn’t lie,” she answered matter-of-factly. “My
cassette player really
is
broken. At least, now it is. The only
part I lied about is that business about my friends coming
over tomorrow. I haven’t bought a new tape since last
August, either.”

“You little devil!” I started laughing. Then I gave her a
hug.

“What’s that for?”

“For being so perceptive about people. And so sensitive
to their needs. Now you’d better scoot. Saul is going to
need a screwdriver, if you want him to fix that thing!”

A few minutes later, when Saul was up to his elbows in
wires and screws and Jenny was enjoying her role as a
helpless
femme fatale,
Nick showed up, and we quickly
ducked out.

“You certainly look pretty this evening,” he commented
as we started toward movie theater row, up on 86
th
Street.

I glanced at him, surprised, then said thank-you. I could
see already that he was a far cry from Dan Meyer and that whole breed known as “average teenage boys.” Perhaps his maturity had something to do with his interest in science or
the fact that he worked part-time. At any rate, I liked it.

“This has been quite an evening.” I sighed, glad to be out with Nick, relaxing and just having a good time.
“Actually, this has been quite a week.”

“Don’t tell me. It has to be either too much schoolwork,
hassles from your parents, or”—his eyes twinkled in the
neon lights of 86
th
Street—”maybe an argument
with one of your boyfriends?”

“If you’re trying to find out about my social life,” I
teased, “let me tell you that I’m not about to divulge any secrets. I plan to keep an air of mystery about me for as
long as I can.”

“With those freckles?” he returned. “Hah! I bet that all
I’d have to do would be tickle you to get you to tell me
anything I want to know. You look as if you’re too impish to
keep any secrets.”

“Actually, you don’t even have to tickle me,” I
admitted. “Usually all people have to do is ask me some
thing, and I end up talking their ears off for hours.”

“Okay, then. What is it that’s been troubling you this week?”

I found it very easy to talk to Nick. Maybe it was because he was such a good listener. I really hadn’t intended to tell him the whole Rachel-and-Saul story, but somehow it all came pouring out. He listened sympathetically.

“Hmm,” he said when I’d finished, bringing him up to that same evening, when Saul had appeared on my doorstep.

“It sounds to me as if there really is nothing you can do about this. And, after all, it does have nothing to do with
you.”

“I know. But Rachel is my best friend! And Saul is probably my
second
best friend. And they’re perfect for
each other. Even
they
know it. Just because she happens to
be Jewish, and he happens to be Puerto Rican ...”

“Look,” Nick said calmly, taking my hand, “I think it’s
great that you’re so concerned about your friends. It shows that you care about them a lot. But you just have to accept
the fact that things have a way of working themselves out,
and more often than not, they work out for the best. Now
why don’t you start worrying about more relevant issues?”

“Like?”

“Like whether a redheaded girl from Manhattan who
writes songs can find true love and happiness with a brown-
haired boy from Staten Island whose idea of a good time is
spending hours in a lab with a Bunsen burner and a box
of test tubes.”

“Oh, no!” I groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re a chemistry
freak!”

“Is that bad? I know I told you I go to the Bronx High
School of Science....”

“No, it’s not bad. It’s just ... ironic. Chemistry
happens to be a particular non-favorite of mine, that’s all. It
also happens to be where I first met ... oh, never mind.”

We were in the theater lobby by then, and as I looked around at all the other couples, laughing and holding hands
and buying popcorn, I realized that Nick was right. I was
there to have a good time with him, and instead I was
talking away a mile a minute about people that he didn’t
even know.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said flirtatiously. “I’ll make a deal
with you.”

“Go on.”

“I promise not to mention Saul or Rachel one more time
this entire evening if you buy me some popcorn.”

“Ho, ho, I see you can be bought. All right, it’s a deal.”

“After all, isn’t that why you and I are going out
tonight?”

“What do you mean?” Nick looked confused.

“Well, the night that you and I met, we made a deal. You said you’d take me to the movies if I taught you how to play the guitar. So isn’t our entire relationship based on a deal we
made?”

“Oh, yeah, that.” He colored slightly. “I guess I have a
confession to make.”

“Yeah?”

“I happen to be tone-deaf.”

We both laughed, and I kissed Nick on the cheek. This evening was turning out to be just what the doctor ordered.

The night before the finals for the WROX songwriting
contest, when kids from all over the city would be
competing for the grand prize of having their song recorded
by one of the country’s top rock groups, two major things
happened. One of them was very good. I received one perfect red rose from a male admirer for the first time in my
entire life—and the admirer was Nick. “Break a leg!” said the card. It was signed, “With love and devotion from your
greatest fan.” Now how could you not love the guy?

The second thing was not at all good. In fact, it was
terrible. Saul called me up to tell me he had decided not to
enter the competition after all.

“What do you mean?!” I screeched into the telephone,
my voice reaching hysterical proportions. “We’re a team!
You can’t let me down now!” Fantasies of such violent nature that I scared even myself began running through my mind.

“I know,” he replied in a morose voice. “But I really don’t feel much like singing. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel like doing much of anything. I know that I wouldn’t be
able to do a good job, and we’d never win.”

“Saul! Please! Don’t do this to me!” I was near tears.

“Can’t you find someone else? How about Nick?”

“Nick is completely tone-deaf.”

“Maybe you could do it alone.”

“The song is entered in both our names. Besides, the
harmony is the best part. Please, Saul, I’ll do anything.
Anything at all!”

“Can you get Rachel to change her mind?”

I sighed, totally exasperated. Why me? I was thinking.

“Saul, listen to me. If you back out now, I’ll die. I’ll just
die. You know how important this is to me. I’ll never ask
you for another favor for as long as I live. Ple-e-ase!”

There was a pause that seemed to last an eternity. I could
feel the gray hairs sprouting all over my head.

“Well,” he drawled, sounding so low that he could have
been making the phone call from the bottom of a twenty-
foot pit, “I guess I can do it.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” My heart started beating
again. “You’ll be fine. You’ll see. Once you’re out there on the stage—the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the
crowd, or the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the
crowd
...”

My attempt at humor went totally unnoticed and unappreciated.

“Yeah, well, I’ll meet you there at eight, then.”

“Seven-thirty, Saul. Seven-thirty. And do you have the
address?”

“Yeah. I’ve got it written down somewhere. See you
tomorrow then, Sallie.”
Click.

That was all I needed to transform my mood from mild butterflies in the stomach to hysterical bats throughout my entire body. During the next twenty-four hours, not only did
I have to worry about the actual contest, I had to worry
about whether the other half of the famed Spooner-and-
Rodriguez team would even show up. Even the sight of that
beautiful red rose smiling down at me from the dresser
where it stood up straight in a cut glass vase couldn’t turn
me back into my usual happy-go-lucky self. What price
fame? I found myself asking over and over again as I
counted down the hours until the contest.

Still, things tend to be easier the second time around.
Every action seemed familiar as I got ready that Saturday
night, and there was great comfort in the realization that I’d
already managed to get myself through a similar ordeal
once before. As I stood before my full-length mirror, examining myself one more time before heading out the
front door, I said aloud, “You’ve done it before, Spooner,
and you can do it again.”

This time I insisted upon doing it alone. Jenny would be coming later on with my parents. As I walked over to the
subway station, I discovered that a tremendous calm was
falling over me. I really didn’t know where all that sudden
self-confidence was coming from, but I wasn’t about to
argue. I even started looking forward to the competition. I
told myself that I was on my way to becoming a true pro.

The contest was being held in the huge auditorium of one of the high schools in mid-Manhattan. I didn’t know exactly where it was, so I made sure I left myself plenty of time to get lost. But as it turned out, I found the school with
no trouble at all, and there were signs and arrows all over
the place directing us strangers to the Choral Room. It was still so early that there were very few people around. There
was one familiar face, however, and I snuck over and put
my hands over the eyes of its owner.

“Guess who!” I cried, masking my voice. I sounded
rather like a frog.

“Don’t tell me. It’s got to be The Spoon herself!” Nick
whirled around and grinned at me.