Unfinished Business (2 page)

He starts talking again, this time about the horrors of new rappers and how they’re all sellouts. Lil Wayne for example. “Take that
Lollipop
song. Stupidest damn song on the whole fuckin’ radio. He should’ve been long gone after that shit. But he’s not. He’s still here. Gettin’ paid.”

I do not need to degrade myself with this sort of stupidity, talking about rappers as though them getting paid has anything to do with me. Inside my head I hear myself whining. Not about the guy’s behavior—predictable. But about my own—pointless. My subconscious is complaining about the sad state of my affairs and the way I spend too much time hanging out in the sort of places that seem like going there is a good idea but once there, after looking around, it’s obvious being there isn’t so hot after all. Do I leave these places? No. I draw on my inner self, that practical rural Midwestern part of me that I’m always trying to hide, and I make do.

Hayley, I say to myself, there has to be more to life than this. Deep inside I accept that there has to be a way for me to get my shit together. No, I’ve never had my shit together before but it could happen. Right? Grasping for a sense of purpose, I push away from the classics and say “See ya” to the guy.

“Sweetness,” the guy pulls out a Gap Band promo twelve-inch doesn’t notice that I’m leaving. How flattering.

I head to the vending machine for a little something but spot a mob milling around it so I detour to the ladies’ room that the bowling alley and record store share with the bar. There are a couple of couches in there, separate from the stalls so it’s pretty common to find people randomly hanging. I go to the mirror. The girl staring back at me looks pretty much like she did an hour ago. I coat my lips with more gloss anyway.

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Of course you can wear plaids that don’t match.”

That from Scotty, the notorious hairdresser to the stars—stars being the local news anchors and those girls at the auto show who strut around Cobo Hall and stretch across the new model cars. He pats the redhead next to him and adds, “It’s just a matter of attitude. It’s all in how you do it.”

The bowling alley regulars are getting used to finding Scotty perched on the counter in front of the mirror. Actually, I think they’re a bit excited about the whole thing and are starting to appreciate the alternative flair that having a guy hanging out in the ladies’ room gives The Woodward Lanes. The girl next to him is an exception—she isn’t sold yet. But she will be. What she doesn’t know is that in the end, Scotty somehow always manages to be right.

“I have four guys signed up already, Hayley. Are you sure you don’t want to get in on this with me?” My friend Josie has appeared and is sitting on the sink, chomping on a Twizzlers. She’s one of those beautiful, sexy girls that pretty much always look awesome.

I slip my lip gloss into my purse. “I’m positive,” I say.

Josie recently cooked up what she calls a perfect business opportunity. Perfectly ridiculous, I said a couple of nights ago when she’d cornered me.

“Let me explain it to you first, before you say no,” she insisted.

I reluctantly agreed to listen to her plan when she unscrewed the cap of a pleasantly large bottle of our fine friend Carlo Rossi. From what I remember, it’s this deal where she videos guys talking about themselves and saying what kind of girl they want to go out with. Then she offers the recordings to girls. The point—to hook them up with guys without the total overexposure of the Internet sites.

All this for a price, of course.

The details are kind of fuzzy because it took the whole bottle of wine for her to explain everything. The more she talked, the more sure I became. I was not cut out for the digital dating business world. All this explains why I shake my head when she asks, again, if I am totally sure I do not want in. Even if it means missing out on all the money.

“I don’t care about making money.” That is a bit of a lie but it sounds good.

Josie grabs my arm and pulls me over to the lumpy couch vacated by two giggling girls who’d obviously been helping their parents with those pitchers of Coors. After we watch them totter out, she turns back to me. “True or false—it is impossible to find a decent guy to date.”

I look around the bathroom. Unrelenting, Scotty is still trying to get the resistant girl to come over to the risky side of dressing without boundaries. I hear the drone of that Goodwill dude. The answer pops out, “True.”

Josie swallows the last of her Twizzlers then pushes her blonde curls out of her face. “True or false—guys love to talk about themselves.”

I don’t even have to think that one over. “True.”

Her face is triumphant as she springs the last one on me. “True or false—girls are willing to try almost anything to meet the elusive Mr. Right.”

Like hang out in a record store that’s so bootleg it’s in the back of a bowling alley?

Like sit in the same crappy donut shop every morning for a month, waiting and wishing, that just once her life could be like a movie—or at least a commercial?

I fight against these truths but can’t come up with anything. So I offer an opinion. “Not everyone is looking for a boyfriend.”

“Of course not, some girls already have one.” Josie frowns and looks at me, as though seeing the truth for the first time. The truth that I don’t have a boyfriend.

There are other truths she doesn’t see but those are definitely staying hidden from her and everyone else in the city of Detroit.

Chapter Two

Jobs and Money: Got to Get Paid

If my so-called boss, Caroline, has a last name, I don’t know what it is. Everyone at North Pointe Farms Apartments simply calls her Caroline, as if that says it all. I could think of a couple of words to add to her name but what would be the point? I know I can’t stand her, she knows I can’t stand her—she must?—and neither of us cares. So every time the phone rings, and it’s a call for her, I only write Caroline across the top of the message. If the call is for Bob Hastings, the old dude who takes care of security, I write Mr. Hastings. If it’s for Tony, the macho guy who fixes stuff, I write Tony Cattalioni.

What does this have to do with anything? Not much, except it gives me something to think about while I’m sitting at the desk that’s been my home away from home since I gave up on college. Friday afternoon around three I’m sitting there, thinking about how much I despise Caroline, when my phone hums.

It’s Josie. “It’s a good thing you didn’t want to be a partner because I just finished recording this one guy.” She moans obnoxiously. “You’ve got to see
this
. Tonight.”

I don’t like the way she put emphasis on
this
. And I don’t like the way she’s in such a hurry. What’s the rush?

She doesn’t give me a chance to say anything.

“Want me to come by at eight or nine?”

Behind her voice is the high-pitched chatter of women getting their hair done. Being a hook-up queen is not Josie’s real thing, she’s actually a hairstylist—that’s how we know Scotty but that’s a whole story in itself.

“Ummm,” I stall. I need an escape route. Something to keep me from the clutches of the self-proclaimed dating guru. “What about Riana? Maybe she’s got to see that.”

“Riana?”

I feel powerful and creative and maybe a bit bad for throwing my friend into the net but because she’s been saving my ass for a while now, I come back with, “Yeah. Riana.”

A sigh comes out of the telephone. “I don’t think Peter would appreciate your attitude. Besides, this guy is not for her.”

With that settled, I let curiosity have its way with me. “What does he look like?”

“Oh, no. I’m not telling you a thing. Eight or nine?”

Not willing to let Josie call all the shots, I negotiate. “Eight-thirty—and I’m calling Riana—as back up.”

“Oh please. What about Nick? You going to call him too?”

If I invite him, Josie will give me a hard time about lying to myself about us just being friends and me using him as my crutch. Whatever that means. “No, I’m not going to call him.”

“Riana isn’t going to bring Peter, is she?”

Argh. The stupid boyfriend. Really, I love Riana. But that vain, hypercompetitive guy, he could suck the fun out of…well, anything. “If she says she’s going to bring him I’ll make up some reason why he can’t come.”

“Good. It’ll just be us girls.”

We shake on the deal by saying okay and goodbye.

“Are there any messages for me?”

I look up to see Caroline marching toward my desk. Why can’t she stay in her office—which has a door—and leave me alone in my ‘office’, which is actually a desk sitting in the middle of the clubhouse that doubles as the rental office?

“Here you are.” I hand her a mini-stack of messages carefully printed on pink sheets of paper.

“Anything for Bob or Tony?”

“Four for Mr. Hastings, one for Tony.”

Her face puckers. “Four?”

“Three from Mrs. Klonski. She says Snickers was barking for two hours last night. She’s convinced someone is stalking her dog. She’s worried someone is trying to steal her precious pooch.”

“We’d never get that lucky,” Caroline snarls. “I wish that stupid dog would die already.”

I’m not shocked by her nasty attitude. I’ve been listening to her say the same sort of thing for the last six weeks.

The big scandal around North Pointe Farms—one of them anyway—is that Mrs. Klonski is allowed to have Snickers because she is the only tenant left from the dark days—the time before the careful landscaping, the time before Bob Hastings’ charming security booth. The time when North Pointe Farms was Motown Manor.

There is nothing to say about Caroline’s death wish for poor, little Snickers. So I say nothing. Instead, I watch the way her lip curls as she reads communications meant for other people.

After she reads Mr. Hastings’ four messages and Tony’s one message, she hands them back to me and scans my desk as if she has some sort of extraordinary vision that can detect the evidence of wasted time. Finding nothing to let on that I’ve spent most of the day studying reviews of self-improvement books—who knew so much information was so easy to get? And that self-help books had such great covers?—she tucks her messages into her pocket and creeps back to her private office.

Sometimes I wonder if Caroline rides a bicycle to work. One with a brown wicker basket strapped to the back. I wonder if some day she’ll nab Snickers and stuff him into the basket then pedal off.

If that does happen, and a tornado spouts up and inhales her, I want to see it.

But first I need to see whatever, I mean
whomever
, has Josie so worked up.

Chapter Three

Book Smarts

Josie is never late and she is never early. Riana is usually early, so at eight o’clock when there’s a knock at my door, I yell, “Come in, Riana.”

She finds me at the sink scrubbing a pot with burned chili at the bottom. Her brown hair is pulled back and her body is wrapped in sweats.

She shrugs and says, “I was too tired to take a shower so I dumped a bunch of powder down my shirt.”

I glance down at what I have on—bike shorts and a vintage—aka nasty old—Insane Clown Posse T-shirt my brother gave me about five years ago. For Christmas no less.

Riana is one of those annoying people who actually does the dumb things she writes down on New Year’s Eve—so she’s training for a bike thing, one of those two-day deals that raises money for something. “Is your butt going to make it three more months?”

“Very funny,” she says right away. Then more quietly, “I sure hope so.”

The bottom of the pot finally begins to show through the black sludge. “You don’t have to do it, you know. It’s not like you’ve got anything to prove.” I scrub harder, knowing the end is near.

“Yes, I do. Juvenile diabetes research is underfunded, and besides, I want to.” After a couple of long seconds she adds softly, “Even though Peter says it’s stupid, I’m going to do it.”

I want to say what I think of Peter, that he doesn’t deserve her, that he’s boring and a jerk, but I don’t. Last time I tried that she was not happy with me.

I turn my full attention back to the matter at hand, or rather in hand, and continue scrubbing off the last of the crusty stuff. Riana digs through the stack of magazines and unopened mail that lives on my kitchen table. She shoves aside the bank statements from the account back home and pulls out the book I’d buried in the pile.

“
Sex and the Single Girl
by Helen Gurley Brown?”

I ignore her chuckling. “Don’t diss Helen. She’s cool.”

“Um. Okay. But the book is—”

“Old. I know. So what?”

I hear the rustle of pages and try to keep my mouth shut but I can’t, because knowing Riana, she’ll have the whole thing read within fifteen minutes and realize I’m trying to figure out how to be a cool urban girl, so I spin around and blurt, “Read the end. I already blew it.”

“What? Does it tell you not to watch videos of lonely guys?”

“Ha. Ha.”

“Oh.” I turn back to the sink while Riana keeps talking. “‘A girl may surrender two hours after meeting a guy?’ They thought that back then too?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Mmmmm…” She closes the book and looks at the retro cover. “Sure. Sometimes a woman might just want sex. You know, like guys.”

“Exactly.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her slip the book back under the stack of magazines. The window of the oddly shaped, small space I pretend is my living room slides open and Josie stumbles through, a brown grocery bag in her arms, while a big fat jug of our fine friend Carlo tangles dangerously from the index finger of her right hand.

She collapses across the couch with a huff. The bag flops onto the floor and after three gleaming silver discs spin out, a bag of cheese popcorn rolls across them. “Why do you have to live at the top of a fire escape?”

“You didn’t have to come up that way,” I say, pushing the window shut. “You could’ve come up the front like a normal person.”