Fools Paradise (3 page)

“Maybe it won't run,” she said hopefully.

“Maybe not. Don't know if you don't try.”

She looked at Bobbyjay, who widened his eyes at her, like,
What can we do?

“C'mon,” he said huskily. “I'll give you a leg up.”

Glaring at him, she let him hoist her up onto the passenger door of the car. Gingerly she put one sandal-toe into the water. “Eeek! It's freezing, Goomba!”

Goomba just beamed at her.

She gritted her teeth. Sitting down was horrible. Water and fish spilled over the bottom of the windows. The water around her body was icy and black and she couldn't see her own lap past the bazillion fish swarming around on the surface and they moved against her. She shivered and shivered.

“Don't sit on my fish,” Goomba said. “We have a lot of Mortons to feed.”

She lifted up a bit, brushing under herself with one hand, feeling slippery slimy fish slither over her fingers and between her thighs. “Ugh!”

Goomba just chuckled. “It'll warm up once you're in it a while.”

Bobbyjay handed her the end of her seat belt. Silently she groped at her waist and shoved the tab home with a watery click.

“Well? Aren't you getting in too?” she snapped.

He rounded the car and clambered in through the driver's window. More water and fish poured out through the open windows. Goomba tsked over every fallen smelt. Bobbyjay stuck the key into the ignition and turned the switch.

The car started beautifully, darnit.

Marty Dit made a satisfied sound. “German engineering,” he said happily.

Daisy wrapped her cold, wet arms around her shoulders.

Bobbyjay pulled the car slowly around in a circle and aimed for the street. He looked miserable. Maybe this would cure him of having a crush on her.

Her insides shuddered against each other with cold.

Goomba saluted casually. “Welcome to the family, son.” He was having fun torturing them.

Daisy's eyes filled. She jerked her head away so he wouldn't see the tears begin to fall.

“I hate him,” Daisy sobbed next to Bobbyjay, once they were out on Lake Shore Drive.

His heart went out to her. “Your grandpop's had a couple of bad shocks,” Bobbyjay said.

“Why is he doing this to me? He hates me! I can't stand it!”

Poor kid. Marty Dit's little princess. She'd probably never known what a sonofabitch he could be. Bobbyjay wouldn't have to tell her now.

“How can you be so calm!” she yelled, jerking toward him with a slop of smelt.

“I look at it this way,” Bobbyjay said, waving to the car behind him to pass. “If he works off most of his mad on us tonight, maybe he'll feel like he's had enough revenge. It'll still cost a bundle to fix the car. But we'll get by without bloodshed,” he said, not very hopefully.

“It's awful. I hate it.”

Bobbyjay could believe her. It had to be worse for her, with that skimpy little dress on. At least he was wearing jeans. Her teeth chattered.

“We'll be home before you know it,” he said to soothe her.

She threw a handful of water and fish in his right ear.

“Hey! I'm driving!”

“You just take this whole thing in stride, don't you!” she raged. “You do that all the time. Your crazy family does something crazy and you come right over and climb right into the fish, don't you?”

“I never said that.” He was feeling a lot less warm and squishy about her. What a shrew! Now all it took was for her to call him stupid. “I happened to be driving through the park—”

“Oh, give it a rest. You're so dumb, you filled Pop's car full of fish.”

Bobbyjay forgot his chivalry. “I did not! You're so dumb, you told him about the car before you had your own ass covered!”

“You're so dumb, you can't stop your family from trashing other people's cars!”

“You're so dumb, you told him we were engaged!”

That set her off. “You're so dumb,
you went along with it!”
she screamed.

“You're so dumb, you got us blamed,” he said. It might be a lame comeback, but his heart was in it. “You're so dumb, you let him make us drive in this car full of fish.”

“I made him? You're so dumb, you promised to fix an unfixable car!”

Bobbyjay set his jaw. The memory of his grandfather's voice saying,
Don't just stand there, kid. Do somethin',
rang in his ears. At this moment, sitting up to his chest in smelt and icy lakewater, he didn't feel in the least bit grateful that Bobby Senior depended on him. He didn't appreciate the opportunity to justify his place in the family. He felt positively hostile to the entire Morton clan. They were making him look stupid in front of the Local, getting him tormented by that evil motherfucker Marty Ditorelli, and, worst of all, they had got him into a situation where Daisy saw him sitting in fish.

He felt dumb, goddammit.

They turned off Lake Shore Drive and into the Near North neighborhood where Marty Dit and his daughter-in-law had their two-flat. Bobbyjay glanced over at Daisy. Her face was blotchy with crying and her hair dripped water down her face. Poor kid.

“Well, at least nobody's gonna kill each other,” he said.

The anger died out of her eyes. “That's right.”

“Yup.” Bobbyjay pulled the Porsche to a stop in front of the two-flat. “So I figure we're doin' good so far.”

A snort blurted out of her, and then a chuckle. She lifted cupped hands. Silver smelt flashed in the streetlight and spilled, splashing, into the water between them. Bobbyjay laughed.

Her face lit up with glee. “If you laugh at me,” she said, grinning, “I'll stick one of these in your ear.”

All of a sudden she was cute again. She clambered out of her seat and wriggled through the window in her dripping little dress and Bobbyjay whanged up a sudden boner at the sight of her slippery white thighs sliding out the window. He didn't wonder that Marty Dit wanted to keep her home. The kid was a walking candy store.

She stuck her head in the window. “C'mon, get out of there. I'll find us a couple of buckets.”

He actually had fun helping Daisy bale smelt out of the car and rinsing them for freezing while she told him her troubles.

“Right in front of my stupid cousins, he tells me I'm not smart enough to work outside the house. In front of
Vince.”
She tossed a handful of limp smelt into the bucket Bobbyjay was holding out.

“Vince Ditorelli? Jeez, Daisy, that's low. Vince is the guy who once dated a Croat for two weeks before he found out she was a he.” He swished the fish around in cold water.

“Not only that, not only am I too stupid, I'm too innocent.”

Bobbyjay could buy that. She looked at him and rolled her slanty doe-eyes in scorn.

“What?” he protested. “What did I say?”

“Not only that,” she said, ignoring the question, “I'm too untrustworthy. Goomba doesn't want me leaving the house except to go to the grocery.”

“Oh, come on. What kind of trouble can you get into?”

She sent him a dark look. “Lots.”

“You? Maybe they call you Ditsy Daisy—” Bobbyjay broke off at the incredulous glare she shot him. “Other guys. My dumb cousins, maybe. But,” he hurried on, “I mean, you are kind of innocent. You never got in trouble in school. Not like me and King Dave and Mikey Ray and the guys.”

“That's because I'm not dumb enough to get in trouble,” she said primly. “When I was a senior in high school, I cut classes to hit the karaoke bars in Wrigleyville, right in the middle of the school day. I got away with it for six months.”

“Wow. I never heard about this.”

“That's because I'm a good liar.” She took over swishing fish in the bucket so he could fill the freezer bags. “I told Goomba and Mom and my guidance counselor that I had a girlfriend in another school who was crippled and couldn't get out. I told them I visited her every day to help her study. And they believed me. I had a permanent pass to leave class whenever I wanted. I would never have got caught if it weren't for big-mouth Badger Kenack spotting me at the Rock Bottom Brewery on karaoke night and blabbing to Goomba,” she said, savagely hurling fishy water onto the lawn.

Bobbyjay's mouth hung open. “Wow.”

“Go ahead, laugh,” she snapped. “If I hadn't almost pulled that one off, Goomba would never have believed we're engaged, and he'd have shot you tonight. Well, he might have clubbed you with the gun.”

“You're too much, girl.”

“Shut up,” she said, but in a nicer voice. “What I really want is a J.O.B. A real job, that pays real money, so I don't have to beg Goomba for pocket money or squeeze an allowance out of Mom. For pete's sake, I'm twenty-one! Girls my age have been through college! They're getting married and having kids and they all have jobs.” A wheedle came into her voice. “Bobbyjay, it's not too much to ask, is it?”

Throwing the bucket down, she clasped his arm with both hands and begged. “Everybody else is in the Local. Poor little Wesley, my cousin who's such a geek, eventually even he'll get in, once he's eighteen and can make apprentice. Bobbyjay, there are girls in the Local! Why can't I be one of them?”

Bobbyjay looked down into those pleading brown eyes and his heart clutched up. “Daisy, I can't get you a stagehand gig.”

“Sure you can. You've got pull. Your grandfather's on the Executive Board.”

He took a moment to imagine this girl working one of the jobs he worked—say, hoisting boxes or running cable at a rock show. Bending over to run duct tape over the carpet, say, with guys like his uncle Rob the Snob and Scooby Duhrmeister watching. Pleading up at him, with her creamy breasts pushing up out of that sopping wet flimsy dress and her lips pouting, she looked like the first twelve seconds of a porn flick about the girl next door and a gang bang.

Bobbyjay shut his eyes. “I can't.”

With steel in her voice she said, “You can. You're engaged to me now.”

“You'd be asking for a lot of trouble. I don't want to be responsible for—for you getting hurt.”

“I'm tougher than I look, Bobbyjay. It's not like I'm wrapped in cotton at home. My own cousin squeezes my tits.”

“Holy shit. Does your grandfather know?”

She rolled her eyes. “He lets me defend myself. So will you at least try?”

Bobbyjay didn't know where to look. Luckily, just then Daisy's Mom came out of the house in a bathrobe to ask what the noise was about. Daisy explained, kind of.

“I don't understand,” Mom Ditorelli said, pulling her robe tighter, looking at the freezer bags full of still-squrming fish.

Daisy took a deep breath and Bobbyjay crossed his fingers, knowing what was coming. “The point is, Mom, I'm engaged to Bobbyjay here.”

Mom Ditorelli looked at him blankly. “This Bobbyjay?”

“Yes, Mom. Not to one of my six-fingered cousins or a drug pusher or anything. So you can relax about my reputation now.”

Mom Ditorelli's face changed slowly.

Oh, lord.
Bobbyjay tried to stand tall in his squishing-wet sneakers. “I hope this is okay with you, Mrs. Ditorelli.”

“Call me Fran,” Mom Ditorelli said with a catch in her voice. She gulped. “Oh! Oh, Daisy.” She held out her arms to her daughter. “Oh, baby.” She looked at Bobbyjay with tears in her eyes. Terrific. She was crying at the very thought of Daisy marrying a Morton.

Daisy moved into her mother's arms, reluctantly, he thought.
This can't be good.

Then Mom Ditorelli smiled at him over Daisy's shoulder. “How wonderful, Bobbyjay. I'm so happy.”

That threw him. He stood a little straighter.

“Now those awful old men can't fight any more.”

Bobbyjay slumped.

“Are you okay with it?” Daisy said.

“Oh, baby, I'm delighted.” Her mom took a deep breath. “And you'll have a beautiful wedding. The best wedding any girl ever had.”

Daisy shot Bobbyjay an ‘uh-oh' look.

“Which your grandfather will pay for,” Mom Ditorelli added with vicious satisfaction in her voice. “Are you finished? Have Bobbyjay bring in those freezer bags. We can start some lists.”

“Mom, it's almost midnight.”

Her mom dragged her toward the house. “So what. My daughter doesn't get engaged every day. Anyway, tomorrow I'm interviewing paralegal applicants for the senior partners. Come in, Bobbyjay, and I'll make you some hot cocoa.”

Bobbyjay carried the empty buckets into the kitchen. “Uh, thanks, Mrs. D—uh, Fran, but I have to get back to the Opera House. Um, bye, Daisy. I'll call you.”

“You better,” Daisy said, sending him a warning look.

At six-thirty next morning, with dread in her heart, Daisy went downstairs to Goomba's apartment and made breakfast. He wouldn't kill her. No, if he was going to overreact he would have done that last night. Goomba was at his most dangerous when he had had time to think.