Just Like a Man (32 page)

"Actually, Deedee," Selby said, her voice the very picture of dignity, "it was 'Most Likely to Appear Floating in the Sky over the Super Bowl.' If memory serves, you were the one who nominated me."

Deedee laughed again, and Pax cringed. Though his reaction wasn't just because the sound put his teeth on edge. It was also because he remembered that sort of laughter coming from someone else. Several someone elses, in fact. A gaggle of girls standing on a street corner, right before they started hurling names at him.

"That's right! It
was
me!" Deedee exclaimed, sounding quite proud of herself. "But it was really Steve Saunderson's idea. He put me up to it. I wanted to nominate you 'Most Likely to Cause Damage to an Ice Cream Truck on Two-for-One Day.' But the blimp one was better. Omigod, it was so funny."

"Mm," Selby said.

"Boy, those were fun times, weren't they?" Deedee asked.

"Mm," Selby repeated.

"Don't you wish we could go back?"

"Mm," Selby said again. Then she hurried on, "Excuse me, Deedee, I have to get back to work. Great seeing you again." And amazingly—at least, it was amazing to Pax—she managed not to choke on the words as she said them.

Braving a small glance over his shoulder, Pax watched Selby hustle off, and when she was completely out of eyeshot, he turned around on his stool to face the front of the bar. Ellen had halted her monologue to answer another call on her cell phone, so Pax stole a surreptitious glance at Shrill Deedee, and saw that she was a lovely-looking creature the same age as Selby, blond-haired, blue-eyed, beautifully formed, dressed in a creamy white sweater set that was almost certainly cashmere. A former cheerleader, Pax sur-mised. Because he knew the look of them well. She was seated with another cheerleader-type, which wasn't surprising, since the breed usually traveled in numbers. Pack mentality, after all, made it much more fun to disparage others. Deedee watched Selby's departure, too, then began speaking to her companion again, and Pax, being Pax, eavesdropped quite shamelessly.

"We used to have so much fun with her in high school," Deedee told her friend. "There was this one day when we threw her in the showers after gym class. She was dressed by then and she was kicking and screaming like a banshee, and, omigod, it was
so
funny. Then she had to go to Spanish class all soaking wet, and the look on her face was just priceless. We laughed so hard. Omigod, it was
so
funny."

Funny,
Pax echoed to himself. Gee, he'd be willing to bet from Selby's point of view it had been something else entirely.

Deedee's friend laughed obligingly, but Deedee was obviously just warming up, because she continued, "And once, a bunch of us told her that Buck Reeser, on the wrestling team, had this huge crush on her. She didn't believe us at first, but we really worked on her and finally convinced her it was true. Told her he admired her intelligence, and she bought it. Can you believe that?" She enjoyed a moment of chuckling, then went on, "We told her Buck wanted to meet her after school at the arcade, but was just too shy to ask her. So she showed up, and Buck was there, but he was totally clueless. We never told him what we'd done, and he was so embarrassed. Told her he'd never go out with a fatty like her. Omigod, it was
so
funny."

Oh, yeah. Pax would just bet it was.

"She was
such
a geek," Deedee continued, sipping her cosmopolitan.
"Such
a dork. Just a real freak, you know?"

By now Pax had turned on his stool again, until he was completely facing the odious Deedee. She was so out of it, though—or, more probably, so self-absorbed—that she didn't notice his scrutiny. Nor did her friend, who seemed to be equally intoxicated. And equally narcissistic.

"Yeah," Deedee went on after enjoying another sip of her cosmopolitan, "I figured she'd be living in that double-wide trailer with her loser family for the rest of her life. What guy would want her, you know? And hell, someone had to take care of her father, the boozer. He couldn't keep a job for more than two weeks at a time." She smirked. "I never imagined she'd climb all the way up to the high-falutin' waitress life. Woo-wee. But that's what her mom was, too. At some cheesy diner. I guess serving people just runs in the Hudson blood."

Pax put aside, for now, his discovery that everything he'd assumed to be true about Selby was, in fact, completely false. He'd think about that later. And he told himself that any mature, well-adjusted adult who'd just overheard what he had just overheard would pretend he'd heard nothing and move on with his life accordingly. A slightly less mature, slightly less well-adjusted adult would politely tap the woman on the shoulder and courteously point out to her that other people had feelings, too, and maybe, in the future, she might think about that.

But Pax wasn't well-adjusted. And he sure as hell wasn't mature. So he caught the bartender's attention, and when the young man leaned over the bar, he asked, "Bernie, what's the nastiest, stickiest, most stain-inducing drink you know how to make?"

To his credit, Bernie didn't bat an eye. "That would be my own invention," he said. "I call it a Dark Cloud over Chernobyl. I created it at a frat party I worked a while back. Political science majors. Dark rum, blackberry vodka, Chambord, dark creme de cacao, pineapple juice, splash of grenadine, Cherry Coke for the fizz, a little—"

Pax smiled. "Make one for me, will you?" he asked before Bernie even finished the recipe. He already knew it was
exactly
what he was in the mood for.

The bartender shrugged. "Sure."

"And Bernie?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Could you set it on fire?"

Bernie shook his head ruefully. "Not this one, Mr. Brown."

Pax's disappointment was acute. "Then make it a double."

"Yes, sir."

He watched as Bernie mixed up the concoction and poured it into the blender with crushed ice—oh, good, it would be nice and cold, too—then poured it into a really
big
glass. It was indeed a nasty, sticky-looking prospect, the consistency of slush and the color of something the cat hacked up. As Bernie placed it on the bar, Pax asked him for the bill, then signed it with a flourish, adding a five hundred percent tip.

Then he looked at Ellen. "Would you object to going somewhere else for dinner? I promise next time you're in town, we'll come back to Trino's."

"That's fine, Pax," she said. "As long as you tell me what's going on."

He nodded. "Any of sign of the waitress?" he asked her.

She looked past him, surveying the restaurant. "None."

"Good. Let's go, then."

And as he turned, he—accidentally, honest—smacked the freshly prepared, and still teeming full, Dark Cloud over Chernobyl right off the bar, and onto the unsuspecting Deedee, who kicked and screamed like a banshee as it splashed onto her face and neck and all the way down the front of her creamy white cashmere sweater set.

Omigod, it was
so
funny.

"Holy shit," Pax said when he realized the magnitude—the gigantic, immense, enormous, colossal, stupendous, glo-rious magnitude—of the damage. Bernie was going to have to change the name of the drink to Dark Cloud over Kashmir. Or maybe Dark Cloud over Deedee. Yeah, that's the ticket. Because she was a sputtering, gasping mess from head to toe. Quite literally, since bits of the slushy drink clung to her eyelashes and dripped from her lovely blond coif and also trickled over what Pax would wager were Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Wow. He'd had no idea he'd do that much damage. He really should be ashamed of himself.

So he leaned down close to her ear, and he said, "If I were you, Deedee, I'd get that up to the cleaner right away. I bet dark rum is a real
bitch
to get out of cashmere."

Then he straightened and crooked his arm for Ellen, who looped her own arm through it and let him guide her away from the bar. He knew she'd ask what that had been about once they were outside, and Pax would explain then. And he knew Ellen would understand completely.

After all, she'd been a geek in high school, too.

It had been a long time since Michael had been called to the principal's office for something he had done. And although he was pretty sure Hannah's reason for summoning him now wouldn't leave a dark blot on his permanent record—like those
really
existed—he still felt as edgy and uncertain as he had all those times in school when he'd found himself in a similar situation.

Because she'd joined the OPUS operation, he had left the bugs in her home and office, including the wiretaps on her phones, and he had continued to surveille her. Now, though, it was with her knowledge. She'd also kept him apprised of what was going on with Adrian elsewhere, in case he said anything of significance during his conversations with her. Most of the things Adrian had said to Hannah on the phone had been significant only in that they made Michael want to vomit, on account of Adrian's terms of endearment consisted largely of food metaphors so sickly sweet they'd put a diabetic into a coma. In the meantime, Michael had tried to take care of some of his real work—the legitimate work he normally performed to earn his living—because that was what he would be returning to eventually, and it would be oh-so-helpful if he had at least a few clients left when he did.

So when Hannah called him and told him to come to the principal's office right away, he reacted with reluctance and dread. All she said was that he needed to come right away, because of something very important that was an emergency. His first thought, of course, had been Alex, but before he even had a chance to ask about his son, Hannah was assuring him Alex was fine, this had nothing to do with Alex, but could he still come to Emerson right away for an emergency of utmost importance because she really needed to tell him something important and it was an emergency and could he please hurry because it was an important emergency?

Such an important emergency, evidently, that she was waiting for him in the outer office when he arrived, and the minute he came through the door, she told her secretary to hold all her calls and visitors and, without so much as a hello, she ushered Michael into her office proper.

And then she immediately closed the door behind them and said, "Did I mention this is important?"

He nodded. "I do believe that word came up a time or two"—
or twenty
—"during your call, yes."

"And did I mention it's an emergency?"

He nodded again. "Yeah, I think you did."

"Then what took you so long?" she demanded.

He eyed her warily. She was dressed, as always, in one of her conservative suits, this one the color of tobacco with a cream-colored blouse underneath. It was a nice outfit, but it did nothing to complement the expression of wild-eyed anticipation she wore with it.

"Well, I wasn't able to bend time or transcend dimensions the way I usually do and just beam myself over," he told her, "so I had to drive. From the other side of town," he added meaningfully. "During the beginning of the lunch rush."

She expelled an exasperated breath. "Well, thanks to you, we now have a half hour less to do this," she said.