All Your Pretty Dreams (31 page)

“
I told them we’d bring
her back to Red Vine tomorrow,” Artie said in the kitchen.
“Apparently she’s missed three days of school, or practice or
something.”

Sonya volunteered to drive
her back. Her own school didn’t start until Thursday. She also
wanted, she confessed, to give Wendy a piece of her mind. “How did
she get to the airport? Did she fly in from somewhere?”

Jonny poured sugar into his
coffee. “That’s the usual method.”

“
From where?”

No one knew. Wendy finally
joined them in a pair of Sonya’s track pants and a t-shirt. She
glanced at them and opened the refrigerator. “Have you got any
apples? I’d kill for some fresh fruit.”

“
No fresh produce where
you’ve been?” Sonya asked.

“
Not a single cherry
tomato.”

Wendy put together a salad
with walnuts and cheese and a side of sliced apple. She poured
herself a glass of milk and sat down.

“
I bet I lost five pounds.
The castaway diet, that’s what I’m calling it when I write my
book,” she said, smiling slyly. “A bestseller.”

“
Pretty romantic then, on
the road?” Artie said, glaring at her with hard blue eyes. “All
swashbuckling and high adventure?”

“
A few giggles,” she said.
She shoved lettuce into her mouth. Jonny got up and switched the
coffee for a beer.

Artie slammed down his mug.
“Jesus Christ, Wendy. Your mother has the sheriff looking for you.
We’ve all been worried stiff. You never even called to say you were
okay. Jonny went all the way down to the middle of Illinois looking
for you, thinking you’d stowed away on a college bus.”

“
He did?” Wendy looked up
at Jonny, now leaning against the fridge. “What made you think
that?”

Isabel’s idea. “Seemed like
a good idea at the time.”

“
Where
were
you?” Sonya demanded. “What
have you been doing?”

“
Here and there. This and
that. Nowhere special, nowhere dangerous.” Wendy stretched both
arms into the air and yawned before attacking her salad again.
“Does it matter? I’m back now and my life will be so massively dull
I’ll probably die of boredom before Christmas.”

Jonny put his hands on her
shoulders. “Not if we strangle you first. Punk.”

She twisted away,
mock-stabbing him with her fork. “Squeeze-boxer.”

“
In Red Vine that’s not an
insult, you know.”

Wendy gave a groan. “Red
Vine! Argh. Do I really have to go back?”

Artie and Jonny were both
late for work the next morning. The reunion stretched late into the
night with more phone calls to and from Red Vine, Margaret crying
on the line, Ozzie hollering, Wendy being Wendy, Miss No-Regrets.
Sonya tried to play umpire and mostly glowered. Artie tried to
reason with his little sister, explaining things no teenager wanted
to hear, about the future, about patience and empathy, and taking
time to grow up. About freedom coming with a price, getting a good
education, and other nuggets of wisdom. Even Jonny got bored. Wendy
just got angry and stomped up and down the living room, waving her
arms.

At dawn they dragged
themselves back to the coffeepot. Wendy declared that her mother
said she could spend two-hundred dollars on school clothes and that
Sonya would take her to the mall before they headed back to Red
Vine. News to Sonya apparently. Artie rubbed his face and retreated
to the bedroom.

“
And where is this
two-hundred dollars coming from?” Sonya asked, sitting at the
table. Her hair went in six directions. By contrast Wendy looked
fresh and rested.

“
Mom will pay you back.
Don’t worry your crazy little head. She’s good for it, Sonya,”
Wendy said.

“
Nice prize for running
away,” Jonny said.

Wendy shot him a look. “You
should understand, above everybody.”

“
I never ran away from
home and aged my parents years in a week.”

“
I mean— oh, forget it.”
Wendy hunched over her coffee, pouring in more cream. “You aren’t
worth it anyway.”

Jonny frowned. “I’m not
worth an explanation?”

“
No, you’re not. You can’t
even—” Wendy sighed. “You’re all a bunch of morons.”

Sonya rolled her eyes at
Jonny. There was no talking to the child. Spoiled, willful,
undisciplined, rude: he hadn’t heard his sister be quite so
insulting before. This week had changed her, for the
worse.

“
I hope you’re better
mannered when you talk to Mom and Dad. And apologize for all you’ve
made them go through,” he said. She stuck out her tongue at
him.

As Jonny headed out the
door to work, Sonya caught his arm. She pulled a boarding pass out
of her pocket. “I found this in her backpack. She did fly into the
airport, from Chicago. Where did she get money for
that?”

“
Did she have Mom’s credit
card?”

“
I’ll ask her, you can
count on that. She’s wild, Jonny. Artie has thrown up his hands.
Your parents better put the clamps on that girl or she’s going to
be lost, I’m telling you. If it’s not too late already.” Sonya
rubbed her eyes. “Do you think she stole their card?”

“
Ask her. And Mom.” He
touched her shoulder. “Relax, Sonya. She’s home. It could have been
worse. Much worse.”

As soon as he reached his
desk and threw his jacket on a chair Sven informed Jonny that Gary
Johnson, senior partner, had been looking for him. Something about
blowing off Jill Martel’s project. Sven said he’d tried to explain
about the family emergency but Gary seemed really pissed, like
there was some intentional slight because his boss was
female.

The day went downhill from
there. Jill Martel was distinctly cool. Odd after all her concern
of Friday. The Hefflin project morphed into a movie theater
complex. Gary railed on the telephone: every partner, junior,
senior, black, white, male, female, was
equal.
At the end of the day, Jill
came by his cubicle one last time. No coffee cup, all
business.

She rolled out the
preliminary drawings she’d been working on all weekend, or so she
said. She explained the importance of street value, parking
availability, landscaping, snow removal. Nothing he hadn’t heard
before.

As she secured her
rolled-up plans under her arm to leave, he said, “My sister came
home. I thought you’d like to know.”

“
Your sister?” She
frowned.

“
The runaway? The family
emergency?”

Her face transformed. She
really had forgotten or was a great actress. “Oh my God. I totally
forgot. Is she all right?”

He waited a beat, turned in
his chair to face her. “She’s okay.”

Jill sat down suddenly,
smashing his jacket. “Is every week like this? Am I going to go
insane?” She leaned toward him. “Do you work weekends
normally?”

“
It happens.”

“
Next weekend— no work.
Okay?” She smiled at him, possibly the first time she’d smiled all
day. “You and I should do something, what do you think? A drink, a
walk around the lake, a movie? We should start planning it today or
we’ll end up working all weekend again.”

He hadn’t worked all
weekend. Maybe that was her point. She was smart and attractive. He
didn’t click with her but he wasn’t going to be a monk, not at his
age. On the other hand she was his boss, which made things sticky.
He said, “We can talk about it, sure.”

She stood up. “I’m so glad
about your sister, Jon. Really.”

September was a blur of
late nights and weekends at work or in Red Vine working on the
grain bin. Jonny moved into a studio apartment, the kind of place
favored by out-of-town executives and penniless divorcees. The
Hefflin project turned into a boondoggle, an unformed idea that
died a little every Friday then was reborn each week. Jill agonized
openly, requiring metaphorical handholding and the occasional
cocktail. She had few friends in the Twin Cities. He wasn’t really
her type, or vice versa. They both knew it. They never got past a
quick hug and a peck on the cheek. So it came as a surprise when
she asked him to attend a wedding with her the second week of
October.

“
I hadn’t planned on
going,” she said in the lunchroom one Tuesday. “My ex.” She made a
face. “Then I thought, Christ. If he has the balls to invite me I
can sure as hell go.”

“
You’re divorced?” She’d
never mentioned it. But a quick marriage wasn’t unheard of, even
among the over-educated. Look at him and Cuppie. Or Isabel and her
slimy Alec. They popped into his head often at night, lying on his
Murphy bed, staring at the red neon sign of the department store
across the street. That kiss on the lawn. What might have happened.
His divorce had moved into the final stages. Cuppie wasn’t fighting
it.

Jill shrugged. “We were
only engaged a few months. He snored something awful. And his feet!
You never really know somebody until you see their naked feet. I
can’t go alone. Please, Jon?”

The wedding was in Chicago,
on a Saturday. Jill’s ex was a partner at the architecture firm
where she’d worked previously, a large, multinational group in a
tall, shiny building. Her life had been on the upswing there. Now
it had sunk to the lows of Minnesota office parks. They were in a
cab, on the way to the reception in a downtown hotel. They’d
decided to skip the service itself. What was the point of that
torture.

Jill was ready for battle
in a bright yellow dress that showed off her curves. She’d ditched
her square glasses for contacts and twisted her hair up off her
neck. Jonny slouched beside her in the taxi. Why was he here? She
was his boss. That was the answer. Her face was stiff with fear as
she powdered her nose for the tenth time.

“
Why are you putting
yourself through this?” he’d asked as they flew down. She’d
insisted on paying for everything, including his airline
ticket.

“
To show him that there
are no hard feelings, of course.”

Now in the cab he asked,
“What’s his name?”

“
Roger, sweetie.” She
called him ‘sweetie’ like he was her son, or lapdog.

“
And who is he
marrying?”

“
Some bitch from interior
design. Charlotte. A little schemer in thigh highs.”

“
But you don’t
care.”

“
Of course not. Here we
are,” she called to the driver. “How do I look?”

Jonny helped her out of the
cab. She was wearing very high heels and wobbled a bit. Still, they
made her legs look great. “He’ll be sorry.”

The reception was well
underway. Dancing to an elderly swing band, loud talk, tuxedos.
They found their place cards at a round table on the back wall,
empty but for a shawl and a purple tie. Jill pulled him to the bar
where she threw back a glass of champagne and smiled, grabbing
another.

“
Easy, girl,” he muttered.
She walked in the crowd. He ordered a beer from the bartender and
kept his place, one elbow on the bar. The bride and groom were
surrounded by guests. Roger shopped at Big & Tall and sported a
receding hairline, his indescribable feet in patent leather. The
little schemer resembled a very large cake ornament.

Jill found her old friends
and was hugging and giggling. She turned and pointed him out,
waving. The girls waved too, and he raised his bottle to them. They
turned their backs and laughed. No point in actually meeting her
friends.

Jonny ordered another beer.
When he turned back to the crowd he found a woman staring at him.
Pretty and small with honey blonde hair piled up on her head, she
wore a gauzy green dress. Holding her champagne flute she tilted
her head and frowned at him.

He nodded politely. She
didn’t move, fixated on him. He looked away, feeling uncomfortable.
High society version of a smackdown?

The song ended, a new one
started. The mystery woman arrived at his side, holding out her
glass triumphantly. “I got it! Polka boy!” She pounced forward,
palming him on the shoulder. “How ya doin’, bro?”

Jonny lurched, spilling a
little beer on his jacket. “Okay.”

Whoever-she-was laughed
loudly. “You don’t know who I am, do you? It’s Daria! Isabel’s
sister, silly.”

She looked so— different.
Although bright as a parrot she was elegant— and taller— with her
hair swept up and high heels. Weird to see somebody who knew him
from Red Vine in a place like this, with crystal chandeliers and
bubbly. That mansion on Lake Michigan, bossing around the servants,
that was Daria’s territory. He looked at his mismatched pants and
sports jacket and felt, not for the last time,
inadequate.

“
Jesus, Daria. Good to see
you.” A couple stepped up to the bar and spoke to her. He hoped she
wouldn’t bring up the accordion.

“
So, Polka Boy, where’s
the squeeze box?” He slumped against the bar. She swatted him
again. “Relax, I’m just kidding. What are you doing
here?”

“
I’m here with one of the
architects at my firm. She worked with the groom apparently.” He
nodded toward the pod of women. “Jill Martel. Yellow
dress.”