Fools Paradise (25 page)

“Running followspot from forty feet up. Coward.” She poked him in the side just so he would flinch away and grab her hand. She faked a grin, feeling depressed. He hated the prewedding stuff. “You'll—you would be a gorgeous groom. Besides, that's the easy job. You just have to stand around looking hunky in a tux. You don't even have to make a speech. That's your best man. The bride gets the fat role.”

“Who says you're fat?” he said, sitting up and looking around with a mock-scowl. “I'll fight 'em all!”

“Yeah, right,” she said drily. Catch Bobbyjay fighting anybody. He still had a big bruise on his cheekbone where his Dad, so her cousin Vince said, had clocked him for sticking up for her.

Although that probably took guts, too.

Remorsefully, she said, “You're not a coward, Bobbyjay. You're really good and brave and smart and—” To her surprise her throat tightened.

He looked hopeful. “You think I'm smart?”

“Sure. You're way smarter than anybody in your family. Or mine,” she added darkly, thinking of her cousins.

“Marty Dit is really smart,” he said.

“I dunno. Sometimes I think he's dumber than any of them. What are they fighting for, anyway? Why does he have to run against Bobby Senior every single election year? Why does he hate your grandfather?”

“Story is, it was some girl. Bobby Senior don't talk about it.”

“Mom told me to ask Goomba. Like it'll be a lesson to him to have to tell me.”

“Your mom's a menace,” he said with feeling.

Daisy had to agree. “It's a good thing Mom works eighty hours a week. Whenever she has a day off, she starts fixing things. Then, look out!” Daisy looked at Bobbyjay's mild, manly face and felt her eyes getting bigger. “Bobbyjay?”

“Yuh?” His hopeful eyes met hers and she swallowed hard.

“Do you—is it really a pain being engaged to me?”

She hadn't meant for it to come out all me-me-me, but how could it not? Engagement was so personal. It had never occurred to her that people might pick their spouses with some care. Her mom hadn't. Goomba had been divorced for decades. None of her uncles or cousins could stay married.

She said, “If this was for real, I mean, you probably wouldn't have picked me.” God she sounded lame.

“Oh, I don't know,” Bobbyjay said, sticking a verbal fork into her heart. He looked guarded all of a sudden. So much for his cow eyes and kisses. Free sex and a crush was way different from the real thing.

She rushed out, “It's just, I mean, like, we have to be thinking pretty soon about how we're gonna break up. When we get our families straightened out, I mean.” The lump in her throat got bigger. She smiled a wavery smile. “How do people break up, anyway? Should we, like, yell and scream at each other in a public place?” She thought of Tony's many ex-girlfriends.

He went pale. “Uh, no, I think that would be a bad idea. I don't want to yell at you.”

Her heart flooded with heat. “Me either. You're the best, Bobbyjay.”

“You too, Daze,” he said, looking cow-eyed, and she thought
Now I'm happy.

“We could tell them we're incompatible,” she offered.

His big pink face got that look of studied facetiousness and she knew he was going to make a joke. “We could convert to Buddhism and go off to India to be monks.”

She smiled. “We could join two different circuses so we're always on the road in opposite directions.”

“We could decide to run for the Executive Board against each other. That'd throw 'em for a loop,” Bobbyjay said, and they both laughed. “Serve them right. They wouldn't blame either one of us for breaking it off then.”

He was getting into this too much. She said thoughtfully, “What we should do is figure out why they're fighting, I mean right down at the bottom.”

He nodded. “Go after it from that angle. Good idea. You're pretty smart yourself, Daze.”

She flushed. That hot wind in her chest kicked up. “Mean, yes. Smart, no.”

He leaned closer and she remembered suddenly they were naked. “You're not mean.” With a smile, he pecked her on the lips. She sighed with happiness. “You haven't kicked anybody in the nuts in days.” He pecked her again. “You've never nutted me,” he murmured against her mouth.

“Like I would. You're my hero, Bobbyjay,” she blurted, and then plunged into his mouth so she wouldn't say anything stupider.

Marty was glum in the car out to the Cineplex. Fine thing, letting Fran roust him from his own house. She didn't cuss him out in front of Wesley, thank God, but she had the nerve to take the car keys from him when they got to theatre, and then she got in line for one of those Thelma Ballbuster chick flicks.

Wesley whined, “Aw, I want to see
The Mutilator!
They won't let me in alone if I'm under eighteen.”

“Okay, kid, I'll take you to your movie,” Marty said, too embarrassed to frown at his ex-daughter-in-law.

Fran took it well. “I'll see you boys back here in about four hours.” When Marty looked at her in surprise she added, “You can make it a double feature.”

Marty pressed his lips shut. Four hours and more that Morton was to have alone with his
angelina.
He could kill him for that.

Only he wouldn't. Whenever he tried to think of his granddaughter, Marty felt weak, as if parts of his body were passing out on him.
Angelina.

Don't think about it.

“Do you think she really likes him?” Wesley said mournfully as they stood in line for popcorn.

Poor little pup.
“'Fraid so, kid.”

The kid was silent while Marty paid twenty-one dollars for popcorn and Cokes. Then he changed the subject. “I don't think you should have told that Bobby Morton about your office.”

“His name's Bobbyjay. There's only one Bobby Morton.”

Wesley accepted his bucket of popcorn and his vat of Coke. “Why's that? What did that guy do, anyway?”

“Do? Let's see. He burned up one of my cars. He filled another one full of fish. About thirty years ago he and that punk kid of his got into it with Badger and my son David and another guy in the Hole In The Wall, broke the other guy's patella with a ballbat and put that mark on Badger's face, by his eye, like you see today.”

“But what did he do first? I mean, you guys have hated each other forever.”

“Better you don't know.” Marty put a hand on Wesley's shoulder. “It was quiet for a long time, thanks to ballbusters like your Aunt Fran. Don't tell her I said that,” he added. Fran wasn't normally sensitive, but she was acting awfully crazy lately. Maybe it was the change of life.

If you can't fuck or fight you might as well be dead,
Badger used to say.

“I'm too old to start it up again,” Marty said, wondering if that was true.

“They started it up again, Grandpa.”

Marty thought again of the shock, the horror, the realization that twenty years of behaving himself had been utterly wasted, when he saw his ravished Targa and his granddaughter in the arms of the enemy, soaking wet, weeping, bedraggled.

She was with the enemy now. Alone.

Marty's chest felt tight.

“What if he tells his family about your office?” Wesley persisted over the unbelievable racket of the opening movie credits. “I don't trust any of 'em.”

“Me either, kid.”

“At least let me rig some basic security.”

Marty thought of Wesley's talented little wires and bugs and boxes. The kid's heart was in the right place. The office was way out there on Caldwell Avenue, across the street from a forest preserve, isolated. He thought of the stupidity of the Mortons.

The light bulb went on.

I'm thinking about this backwards.
“What's the weak link in the picture?” he said to himself.

“Daisy?”

Marty scowled. “In the Morton line.” Daisy's loyalty was skewed by hormones, but not much.

“The dumbbell Bobbyjay,” Wesley said positively.

“I only wish. But we have an edge because we know who it really is. I've been waiting to use it against Bobby Morton for twenty years. And now I can.”

“How, Grandpa?”

“Goomba, for God's sake,” Marty said automatically. He tapped his lips, staring blindly up at the screen while some musclebound dope in black leather busted heads.

“The weak link. The dumbest puppy in the basket. Bobby Morton Junior.” He turned to Wesley. “Here's what I want you to do.”

Next morning, Mom took Goomba and Wesley back to Chicago. Daisy and Bobbyjay were able to spend almost twenty-four straight hours in bed, hoping Tuesday would never come.

Nothing good lasts forever.
Wonder why that is,
Daisy thought.
Doesn't seem fair.

Because when she got home Monday night there were fifteen loads of laundry, by actual count, which Wesley could help with but of course he wouldn't because she was in his personal doghouse. Tony and Vince had disappeared into a twenty-four-hour rock show put-in, leaving the TV room a disaster area, and mountains of dirty dishes in the kitchen. Payback for Goomba making Tony do dishes Friday. Plus her stores of frozen lasagne, manicotti, and homemade pasta were running dangerously low.

Good thing I have the day off.
She wished with all her heart that she had a real engagement and a real fiancé. They could think of better things to do with her day of rest.

Her life was back with a vengeance.

She stifled a hot sigh.

To cap it off, Badger was visiting Goomba, apparently for the purpose of sitting on the basement sofa and watching her do laundry. They didn't even have the game on. Instead they put their heads together and whispered.

While she sorted socks, her throat hot and tight, she wondered if Goomba was telling Badger how she'd screamed for Bobbyjay to suck her toes. She almost burst into tears then and there.

Tony had outdone himself on the laundry. He must have emptied whole ashtrays into the dirty clothes. She found an actual slice of pizza wrapped up in a tee shirt. When she stuck her hand into a pocket of his jeans she found a big gob of something wet and squishy.

“Eeeew.” Cautiously, she pulled it out.

Condoms.

Used condoms.

A whole fistful of wet, squishy, drippy, used condoms.

If she hadn't spent the weekend horizontal with Bobbyjay Morton, she might never have known from the smell that the drippy stuff was authentic.

Cursewords flew out of her before she remembered where she was. “God dammit! Shit! Oh,
God! Eughgh!”

Goomba and Badger looked over at her in the same moment.

Goomba said, “Daisy!” in a shocked voice.

“'Samatter, Daisy-Daisy?” Badger got up and ambled over with a glint in his eye and a crooked, arrogant smile. Overcome with disgust, Daisy noted without a trace of softer emotion that his eyes were still large and beautiful, buried now in crinkles, no less twinkly or fascinating than they had been a month ago.

She wanted to smush this sticky handful in his face.

“What's that?” He reached for it.

Shaking with anger, she dropped the mess and turned away from him.

“Present from Tony,” she snapped. Hot with fury, she turned her back, plunging her trembling hands in the sudsy pre-wash bucket.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Badger said in his sexiest voice.
Oh God, Badger, this is not the time to turn on the charm.
He slid his arm around her waist and took her hand in his. She trembled all over with humiliation and rage. “We'll get you all cleaned up.”

You think I wouldn't kick you in the nuts with Goomba here?
While she held rigid in his embrace he walked her to the sink and ran warm water over both their hands.

“Daisy-Daisy-Daisy, you do get bent out of shape, don't you?” His voice was a caress. He dried her hand slowly with the tail of his flannel shirt. “There, all better.”

When she tried to pull her hand out of his grasp, he took hold of her finger. “This Bobbyjay's ring?”

Icily, she said, “Yes.”

His grip loosened. She saw his surprise. She didn't have to kick Badger in the nuts. He got the message.

“You got a problem with that?” she said coldly.

Badger blinked rapidly for a moment. “Nice rock.” He released her.

“Thank you.” Daisy swallowed. She turned back to sorting laundry. Goomba cleared his throat behind her and she cringed.

“You could be more polite to your old friend,” Goomba said hoarsely.

She straightened. She would have to be very clear, or else there would be yet more payback, and she didn't think she could cope. So she turned carefully, her hands folded in front of her, and looked at Goomba.

He wasn't even looking at her. He sat, elbows on his knees, staring at Badger, who had walked away to look out the patio door.