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  “Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” muttered Dickie, nudging me in the ribs. I let out a resigned sigh; I had already asked Carlotta to stop coming in when I was working, but she insisted on it, probably because she wanted to make sure I wasn’t flirting with anyone but her.

  “You need somethin’?” I asked her as she strode up to the counter.

  Carlotta glared at Dickie from behind her glasses as though wishing he wasn’t there. “Yeah, I need somethin’. I need to know why you hung up on me this morning and haven’t been returning my calls.”

  “Maybe because I didn’t want to.”

  I don’t think Carlotta had been expecting this level of honesty; she paled for a moment as though she had just gotten the breath knocked out of her. “Look, if you don’t want to be in this relationship, you can just say so—”

  “Ain’t sayin’ that,” I replied. “I just wasn’t in the mood to be shrieked at first thing when I got up this morning. Give me a few hours, and maybe I’ll feel better about it, but if you come chasing me down at work, you’re not doing yourself any favors.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just have conversations like a normal adult,” said Carlotta, looking visibly frustrated.

  “Maybe because you insist on treating me like a child. My mom used to call and lecture me about how I was spending my money. I never much liked it when she did it, and I damn sure don’t like it when you do it.”

  “Then maybe you ought to grow up. It never seems to have occurred to you that the reason we keep lecturing you is because you refuse to take responsibility. You behave like a teenager who has no concept of money. When someone tries to help you, you hang up on them, talk down to them, make fun of them. You’re almost twenty-two years old, Darren. Quit acting like a teenager.”

  She turned and slunk out of the shop without giving me a chance to respond.

  Dickie, who had been standing behind me smirking through the whole conversation, shook his head and grinned. “You know, she’s got a point.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got a fist,” I said with a laugh. “So you’d best watch it.”

  “If you ever get tired of her,” said Dickie, still polishing his hubcap, “feel free to let her know I’m still single.”

  “Honestly, Dickie, you could do a lot better than her.”

  He shrugged as if to say it was worth a shot.

  Chapter Four

  Penny

  Once Darren left, Nic came walking out of the back office.

  “Do you have to scare away all our hottest customers?” She was carrying a bottle of glass cleaner and a damp washrag, which she set down on the counter. “Now he’ll probably never come back.”

  “Did he look scared?”

  “He looked confused,” said Nicole, stealing a sip of my tea. “I think sometimes you confuse normal guys when they first meet you because they’re not used to meeting girls who like turtles and moths or whatever.”

  “I like other animals, too,” I said in a defensive tone. I thought the conversation had gone well, but now Nic was making me over-analyze every word that came out of my mouth. “Besides, he didn’t seem annoyed or angry. He was laughing!”

  “Penny, you have to learn the difference between when someone is laughing with you and when they’re laughing at you. You were doing so well at the party the other night because you let the boy do most of the talking. The more you talk, the more you confuse boys.”

  “I was quiet that night because I didn’t really want to be at the party,” I replied. “I wanted to be home in my jammies drinking a glass of milk.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Nic, beginning to wipe down the counter, “I hope that’s not the last we see of Darren. He doesn’t have much of a brain, but he more than makes up for it in other ways. I wish I could just hang him up on my wall and stare at him for a few minutes every night before I go to sleep.”

  “Maybe you should take a picture of him.”

  “That wouldn’t help,” Nic said sadly. “I’d want to bring him home with me. I might ask him out if he ever comes back… if he’s not too scared to come back.”

  “I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it really was. We had a really great conversation.”

  “Sure. I liked the part where you told him a turtle could outrun a racecar.”

  “Well, it’s a very serious issue!” I said with a laugh. “Racecar drivers need to know what they’re up against. Also, what is the difference between a street car and a race car? I feel like I should know this.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Nic in a tone of concern. She came over and kissed me on the forehead; because she was so much taller than me, she almost had to stoop to do it. Rubbing my temples with her thumbs, she added, “How did you ever get this job?”

  “Nepotism, I guess,” I answered, which Nic thought was so funny, I could still hear her laughing about it after she disappeared back into the back room.

  After work that night, we went out for dinner and drinks at The Woolworth. It was one of those old-fashioned bars with wood-paneled walls and hand-crafted mahogany tables. A small flat-screen near the back of the room was broadcasting the latest news out of North Korea; the bartender froze in the middle of pouring out our chips and watched for a moment with a worried look.

  “Do you think we’re all going to die?” asked Nic as she reached for the salt shaker.

  “Maybe eventually,” I said with a shrug. “We’re all going to die someday.”

  “Okay, but have you been following the news? They’re saying this could get really bad.”

  “They were talking about it earlier on the radio. It made me nervous, so I turned it off. My worrying about it probably doesn’t change the situation much.”

  “I wish we all had that attitude,” said Cindy, the bartender. “There was a woman in here panicking earlier, just in tears because she doesn’t think she’ll get to see her son grow up. And I met a guy who’s building a bomb shelter in his backyard.”

  “People need to calm down,” said Nic with a shake of her head. “Except for you,” she added, motioning to me. “You need to be more worried.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you don’t worry enough about things. You find ways of ignoring the things that scare you. It’s unhealthy.”

  “It helps keep me calm,” I replied. “If we’re all about to die anyway, I would rather go out having a dance party than cowering in a bunker.”

  “See!” said Cindy proudly. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude we should all have.”

  I beamed in appreciation, but Nic rolled her eyes.

  I ended up ordering a “black and blue salad” with gorgonzola, heirloom tomatoes, asparagus, dried cherries, and chili-crusted steak while Nic got a southern-fried chicken smothered in red-eye gravy and calamari fries with sweet-and-spicy chili sauce. I was so hungry by the time our orders were finally ready that I ate about half my salad before Nic had even taken a bite of her steak.

  “Did you not eat lunch?” she asked as I scarfed down my salad. “You poor thing, you must be so hungry.”

  “Starving,” I said through a mouthful of cherries.

  While we were eating, boys kept wandering up to the bar and offering to buy us drinks. Mostly they were interested in Nic; they hovered around her like a group of old friends around a piano, repeatedly playing the same old songs. One wanted to know where she worked; the other said he had seen her at a party the week before making out with a guy and proceeded to rate her performance. One bought her a ruby fizz; another bought her a Kentucky blue. By the end of the meal, she couldn’t even set her elbows down on the bar because there were so many drinks there.

  But if the boys had expected her to keep them around, they were disappointed.

  “So, do you work out?” asked a boy named Josh. He had just ordered her a mango cooler, which she sat sipping with a look of annoyance. “I’m pretty sure I saw you at the gym the other day. You were on the treadmill watching Netflix.”
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br />   “Does it look like I’m interested in talking?” asked Nic.

  “But I just bought you a drink!” he cried in a hurt tone.

  “Yeah, and now I’m trying to enjoy it.” She shooed him away with her hands. “Go on. Get!”

  Josh grabbed his ID off the table and slunk away, muttering to himself. Nic went on drinking her cooler with a pleased look.

  “How did you get so good at that?” I asked her.

  Nic shrugged. “I’ve just had a lot of practice.”

  A red-headed young man with a bulky frame and a scruffy beard who had been sitting in a back booth watching us for some time came and sat down next to her. “You seem to be popular tonight,” he said quietly.

  “I wish they would just leave me alone for once. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

  It was so rare for Nic not to be in the mood that I stared at her for a moment in surprise. The stranger must have been thinking the same thing, for he added, “Maybe they’d have had better luck on another night.”

  “Not all of them, surely. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Adam.”

  “Adam,” Nic repeated. “What brings you over here?”

  Adam shrugged. “I guess I saw the look of defeat on those men’s faces and thought maybe I could do better. How am I doing so far?”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Nic, leaning back and twining her hair around one finger. “You know what’s frustrating?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The fact that they all flock to me instead of my roommate.” She motioned to me, and I waved shyly. “Penny is a much better person than I’ll ever be. She’s also a decent cook and a fabulous dancer.”

  “I think ‘decent cook’ is pushing it a bit,” I pointed out. “The one time I tried to make pancakes, I accidentally made biscuits.”

  “I’m trying to help you out here, Pen. If you’re looking for a fun time, I can’t think of anyone who’s more fun to be around than Penny.”

  “Depending on your definition of ‘fun.’ I’m not sure Adam wants to spend the rest of his evening zentangling or watching me dance around a kitchen while I make macaroni.”

  “There are some boys who wouldn’t mind that,” said Adam. He had a rich, throaty voice like a man who had been smoking for the last forty years, but he couldn’t have been any older than twenty-five. “What kind of dances do you do?”

  “Just flailing, mostly.”

  “Hey.” He raised his glass in my direction. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

  “Sometimes you just have to be the boss of flailing.”

  Adam studied me for a long moment over the rim of his glass as though trying to rate my attractiveness. I had to resist the urge not to hide behind Nic. “Do you go out much?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been on a date in my life.” Nic shot me a warning look, but I ignored it. “I made out with a boy once, and it was gross, but we had also just finished playing volleyball, and he had a loose tooth.”

  “At least it didn’t fall out into your mouth.”

  “I’m grateful for the little things,” I replied.

  “But she’d make a great wife!” said Nic. I punched her hard on the arm to make her stop, but she ignored me. “She loves babies more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. And she’s very affectionate, so if you marry her, you will never want for attention.”

  “What if I don’t want to get married?” Adam asked Nic as though I wasn’t there. “What if I just want to go out?”

  Nic turned and smirked at me thoughtfully. “In that case, I can just about guarantee you will have a spontaneous and unexpected adventure.”

  “I go on dates with Nic,” I said. “One time we got lost in a veteran’s hospital. Another time we got lost in the woods and tried to build a fire, but the logs were too wet.”

  “So if I went out with you we would probably get lost somewhere,” said Adam.

  I shrugged. “Hey, but who else would you rather be lost with? I’m just sayin’.”

  Adam reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of red paper. He unfolded it to reveal a flyer with a car and a couple of checkered flags at the top. “If you want to experience some real excitement,” he said as he slid it across the bar toward me, “come to the race on Saturday.”

  Nic snatched up the flyer and read it over carefully. “This is an underground street race,” she said in surprise.

  Adam smiled a proud smile. “Yep, and if you show up before 3:00pm, you might be able to see a certain handsome redhead competing. Then maybe once it’s over, we can go out for drinks and pretzels. There’s a place in Fort Worth that sells pretzels the size of that plate, dripping in oil and smothered in salts. It just opened, and I’ve been wanting to go, but I’ve been busy getting prepped for the big race.”

  “Okay, number one,” said Nic, sounding tired, “I can’t stand pretzels. Number two, you should know that Penny and I are undercover cops.”

  I didn’t think Adam would believe her, but a frown creased his face for a moment. “Seriously?”

  “Don’t make me prove it,” said Nic in a stern voice. I nodded, my eyes twinkling.

  “Wow, okay.” Adam raised his hands in surrender and rose from his stool. “Well, listen, forget I said anything. And if I ever see you in here again, I’ll buy you both drinks.”

  He turned to leave but paused as he passed and clapped me on the back. “And, for the record, I wasn’t the handsome redhead I was referring to.”

  “Didn’t think you were,” I replied.

  “Alright.”

  The moment he was gone, Nic doubled over in laughter.

  “Did you see the look on his face?! Dude’s gonna be watching his back for the rest of the night, if not week!”

  “I didn’t know you were such a good liar.” I raised my lemonade in salute. “It makes me a little scared to be living with you.”

  “As long as you never try to hit on me in a bar, you should be good.” Nic took a sip of her beer. “I’ve lied to a lot of guys, though.”

  We paid for our meal and returned home. It had been raining, and the light from the street lamps glistened on the damp roads. Dad had texted me a couple times while we were eating, so after I changed into my night clothes, I went and checked on him.

  He was lying in bed wearing a pair of flannel pajamas, and he smiled at me weakly as I came through the door.

  “You doing okay?” I asked him. “What did you eat for dinner?”

  “Quinoa salad,” he said with a look of disgust, “and a vegetable shake. Sometimes I think the diet is worse than the cancer. What did you eat?”

  “You wouldn’t like me if I told you. Nic and I went out and met a couple guys.”

  “Are you engaged yet?”

  “No, they annoyed us. If I ever meet a guy who doesn’t irritate me, I’ll let you know.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Dad said in his best John Wayne impression. “Even in school, you would always run away when the boys tried to kiss you. I remember you telling me boys were gross, and you never wanted to get married. I told you, you would change your mind someday, but even the wisest of parents are wrong sometimes.”

  “Well, it’s not that I hate boys,” I said. “I’m not asexual or whatever. I just think most boys are obnoxious.”

  “You just haven’t met any good ones yet. You might have to get out of this town before you do.”

  “That’s very true. I met several boys I liked at BU, but I had no idea how to approach them.”

  “I blame myself for that,” Dad said in an apologetic tone. “Maybe I should have made you go out with boys when you were growing up.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good. Plus, I had fun dancing in my room and going to prom with my girlfriends.” Reaching over and straightening his pillow, I added, “Anyway, I’m sick of talking about boys. I want you to tell me one good thing about your day before I go to bed.”

  Dad frowned in concentration; he seeme
d to be having trouble even thinking of one thing. “Oh, this morning they showed the episode of Columbo where the murderer is a preacher played by Johnny Cash.”

  “That one was always my favorite,” I said with a smile. There were some things about Dad that never changed; his love of Columbo was one of them. “I’m glad Johnny Cash decided to become a musician instead of a murderer.”

  There was a framed picture of my mom on the nightstand beside his bed. Dad turned and looked toward it. Sometimes he disappeared for a moment, and I could tell he was back with her.

  “You’ve really been missing her lately, haven’t you?” I asked quietly.

  “More than ever before. They say you’re supposed to move on eventually, but I never have.”

  “Your brothers all said you would remarry, but you never did.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, I never did.”

  On the night I was born, Mom had insisted on hiring a midwife rather than going to the hospital. But the midwife who came to the house was new and inexperienced, and it soon became clear she had no idea what she was doing. She managed to deliver me, but Mom didn’t make it. Dad had once told me that as long as he lived, he would never forget the sight of the bathtub soaked in blood. He had had a visceral distrust of doctors and nurses ever since.

  He reached out a hand and caressed my cheek with the back of his index finger. “The only thing that gets me through the day lately is knowing that soon I’ll be with her again.”

  “Don’t say that, Dad. We’re going to get through this. You’re going to fight it.”

  Dad just shook his head.

  I kissed him once on the cheek and returned to my room. Sometimes, I felt bad going out at night dancing and meeting boys when he was so sick he couldn’t get out of bed without help. I wanted to stay in and help him and be at his side always, but he wouldn’t allow it. “You’ve gotta live your own life,” he had told me. “Don’t let the troubles of old men take away from your youth.” I wanted to argue with him, wanted to remind him that his life wasn’t over yet and he wasn’t allowed to give up. But the truth was, I realized as I flung myself down on the bed and let my pillow muffle the noise of my sobs, he had given up a long time ago.