Not Exactly a Love Story (18 page)

I almost skipped the call. To be frank, I didn’t like Patsy quite so
much tonight. And we’d had enough face-to-face conversations at this point that I had begun to worry she’d know my voice.

Only I had to call that night. To cover myself.

And then I’d see.

“Orlando!”

“Good name.”

“And?”

“That’s all. Just not bad as names go.”

“I thought I had you today.”

“Had me where?”

“Don’t be like that. I thought
you
fought for my honor.”

“I heard about it. That’s about as close as I got to your honor.”

“It was a guy who lives next door to me. When I asked him why he got into a fight, I said it was my boyfriend that hit him.”

“You called Biff your boyfriend?” I made my voice incredulous, not hard to do. “Don’t you think you’re being awfully forgiving here?”

“That’s not his name, but you see what I mean? This guy next door didn’t bat an eyelash at the word ‘boyfriend.’ That’s when I figured out he wasn’t you.”

I still didn’t know why she got into his car this morning, but I was pretty sure he must have been singing a different song than in the locker room. I decided to let it go.

“Disappointed?” I asked her.

“In what way?”

“That the other guy wasn’t me? Maybe I was part of the audience Biff was sounding off for,” I said. “I may have been standing there with the other half a dozen guys—”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

I had gotten a little carried away. Actually, I’d discovered it wasn’t so much that I didn’t like her. I was angry with her. It had to do with the things Biff said, sure, but I didn’t blame her for that.

I blamed her for getting into his car again.

I blamed her for giving the guy a second chance. Even though our calls were happening only because she gave me one.

I waited for her to hang up.

What I liked, she ignored the whole outburst. She went
on as if I’d swallowed something the wrong way and she’d been interrupted to pat me on the back. You had to admire her style.

“So it’s true. He was talking about me.” Annoyed now. “And you do see me in school. You’re close to me every day, I think I knew that. Sometimes you’re mad at me before you call. Sometimes,” she said, “you sound like you don’t like me very much.”

“I like you,” I said, knowing I sounded like a drowning man who chooses between the call for help or a lungful of air before he sinks again. “I do.” Nothing from her. “Sometimes I say things, I don’t always know why. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I caught myself there, groveling.

“We could be friends,” she said. “You could meet me at the dance.”

“We could be
better
friends if you’d decide these calls are enough for you.”

“I don’t know that we could,” she said, and hung up.

The truth was, I hadn’t handled the whole conversation very well. I got angry, and then I gave myself away. A little detective work and she could narrow down her list of suspects to maybe a dozen guys. Including me.

I thought about calling back to apologize. After all, what was she asking for? To get to know me in person. That’s what this was all about at the beginning. Right? Okay, it would be a little awkward at first. Vinnie Gold, acting like he’s so cool.

She might even be angry with me for the deception. I didn’t believe that would last. I’d admitted to being someone she would recognize. Vinnie Gold, fool for love.

It was my impression that she stood behind what she said. She could accept the worst. Vinnie Gold, remember that clown?

I didn’t feel up to dialing.

If you want to know the truth, I was beginning to feel a kind of battle fatigue. Even when I was winning, it felt like losing.

I couldn’t get up the next morning. I kept pushing the snooze button on my alarm clock. It tried to get me up every nine minutes. I didn’t get up until ten minutes before the bus was due.

“Vinnie. I thought you’d gone.”

“I’m going. Bye, Mom.”

“Vin—”

Maybe I ran on nervous energy, I don’t know, but I moved at a dead sprint. The only good thing was, it was really nippy this morning. Every time I felt dizzy, I sucked in a strong, deep breath of frozen air, and when I reached the bus stop, I had the idea I didn’t look half bad. I got there just as kids were boarding, my chest heaving, ears threatening to explode with the pressure in my head.

I headed for a seat in the back, acting as if I’d never seen Patsy. And Biff? He got on the bus at the next stop. The seat next to Patsy was already taken, and he had to sit two rows
behind her. Which meant nothing, really. Yesterday morning she got into his car.

What I would have liked to see, him taking the seat next to her and Patsy finding someplace else to sit.

I went into the school through the door the teams used after morning warm-ups. I’d never used it before, and I wanted to feel more familiar with this part of the building. It led down a short strip of hallway with double doors to the locker rooms and ended at the gym. I stopped in the boys’ locker room to wait for the bell, which rang moments later.

The teams came in like a herd of thundering buffalo, capable of mowing down anything standing in their way. Me, for instance. But it was a cheerful herd, and as the guys passed the showers, they broke almost immediately into a not-quite-orderly division into the locker rows, sparing my life.

I sat down on the bench in front of my locker. I was light-headed, probably from lack of food. My injuries weren’t particularly impressive—even the black eye looked like a practical joke. Thanks to the puffiness that appeared around my jawline overnight, I looked petulant rather than battered.

A few guys looked at me as if they’d never seen me before, more of them grinned to let me know they’d decided I was okay.

Biff came in from the other set of double doors, signaling he’d come through the front of the school. This was clearly
a demotion. Why he’d come here was anybody’s guess, probably it just felt strange that his first whiff of school was of straight floor wax without the buffer of sweaty socks.

Anyone on a team was there in the locker room, of course. Guys said hello to Biff, but no one encouraged him to brag more. They acted like all they had on their minds was a speedy shower, dragging on their clothing, and combing wet hair.

I gathered Mr. B had given them quite the lecture about disrespecting girls, and then a hefty after-school cleaning assignment to underline his disappointment in them. So it was understandable Biff wasn’t being met with a friendly razzing.

Biff strode right to his locker without speaking to anyone. He didn’t look in my direction, and he didn’t look like he anticipated a good day. That worked for me. I left before the start-of-day bell rang.

In the hallways, it seemed to me several girls offered me shy
glances and sweet smiles. Chivalry was not dead.

There was a sharper sort of appraisal in the teachers’ eyes, even though it seemed unlikely that a locker room fracas could merit a prime-time airing in the teachers’ lounge.

Brown Bunny came up to me between classes late in the afternoon. “You’re something of a hero,” she said. She used a tone I couldn’t read.

She’d already struck me as one of those playground bullies, the one that threw sand in your eyes when nobody’s mother was looking. I never could figure out how that kid timed things so perfectly, again and again. I said nothing.

“You’ve got potential,” she said to me.

“As what?”

“I’m not dating anyone currently.”

“Really? I thought you were.” He was kind of a hoody type, but he was able to cross the line between the hoody kids and the popular kids without any problem that I could see. I didn’t know if Brown Bunny was his hall pass or if he was, in some weird alternative universe, hers.

She let this exchange just hang there between us. Was she telling me she’d be more interested in dating me?

She was terrifying.

“I’m not dating anyone either,” I said, grateful to hear the bell ring. I turned to go into my next classroom, hearing the musical theme from
Jaws
retreat as I put some distance between us.

I headed out to the track after school. I hadn’t made any announcement that I had an interest in the team or anything, but I was out there with them. I warmed up and started around the track.

Biff was out there too. He couldn’t work out with the football team until he was off suspension, but Mr. B made sure he could use the track. I could see why Mr. B had been so adamant. It wasn’t just punishment. Biff didn’t run, he lumbered. Oh, not that he was hopeless, but I was caught up in the poetry of it.

He tried not to notice me as I came up behind him. He tried to stay even. He was blowing like an old horse as I passed him. Not that I was going to win an award. We weren’t alone on the track, and there were runners passing both of us. There were runners passing those runners.

Once I was past him, he was not on my radar. I was too busy noticing that while I wasn’t especially fast, I also wasn’t straining, which surprised me. I was actually enjoying myself.

11:59. I’d been thinking over my relationship with Patsy. I wondered if it wasn’t so much guarded as it was phobic.

I had to think about this from another angle. Had I developed a genuine split personality? I mean, by day I was the boy next door, kinda funny, kinda smart, but not stopping traffic in the halls between classes. I cringed at the idea of Patsy rejecting me. For a few minutes every night, Vincenzo extracted a price for that. He made her pay, if only in uncertainty.

That’s what I was thinking as I dialed.

She opened with a formal tone. “You remember there’s a Valentine’s Day dance coming up at school, Paolo.” Like we hadn’t touched on this subject before.

Playing along, I said, “I’ve seen the posters.”

There had to be twenty of them up in the halls. The dance committee had gone wild with hearts and lace and scarlet eye masks.

“Are you going?”

“I don’t dance,” I lied.

“Everyone dances. It’s not like you have to remember any steps,” she said, dismissing that argument.

“Not me.”

“We could meet at the dance, you know,” she said.

“I guess I’ll be the wallflower who spends all his time in the line for soda. Yellow mask, don’t you think?”

“You have to take risks, Patrizio,” she said in this terribly crisp tone of voice. “To be a survivor, you have to take risks and”—she paused—“and survive.”

“This is the advice you’re offering an obscene caller?”

“What if I guessed who you are? What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” There were warning bells going off all through my nervous system. I didn’t have time to analyze the reaction, but I sat there with it just long enough for her to sense my resistance.

“Tell me
something
,” she said, very definite. She’d found some inequity in the rules. “Something that won’t give you away, Pietro. Something personal?”

“I told you about my dad.”

“You know my mom is having an affair. You know much more about me all around.”

“That’s your theory.” I was catching a wave. “What if I’ve only been making good guesses? What if I don’t actually know who you are?”

“Will you ever tell me who you are? Am I ever going to be someone you care that much about? Because I think I know you. I think I probably talk to you every day.”

“You’ve got a lot of questions for a girl who doesn’t notice somebody she talks to every day,” I said, just as if my insides hadn’t started quivering like a bowstring. I sounded strong.

“What if I gave you a question in return?”

“You wouldn’t like my questions. You wouldn’t answer my questions.”

“Maybe I won’t even answer the phone,” she said.

I didn’t respond, hoping she’d hang up.

“I think you’re going to be at the dance.” Patsy the terrier. “Couples have to go as romantic couples, you know. From movies or literature.”

“Are you going as a couple?” I asked.

“I’m going by myself.”

“A single woman. So will it be a glamour choice?” I asked her, adopting a flirty tone. “Princess Leia. Or forbidden romance. The little schoolmarm in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
.”

“I don’t know who I think is romantic,” she said wearily, signaling defeat. “I’ll just wear a mask.”

“A girl’s mask. Something sequined and feline. Your hair hidden under a Marie Antoinette wig.”

“Do you like my hair?”

It killed me the way she asked it. She could’ve been simpering or teasing, very sure of herself. But she wasn’t. She had a little-girl voice that only wanted to know if this guy who wouldn’t meet her at the dance at least liked her hair. I never expected that from her.

“Yes,” I croaked. Her frog prince. “I like your hair.”

“Are Italians drawn to blondes, do you think, because they’re so dark?” She could bounce right back, Patsy could.

“Northern Italians aren’t necessarily dark.”

“So I’ll see you at the dance, Peppino?” she asked.