Not Exactly a Love Story (11 page)

“Let’s say that it is. You like the idea I’m looking at you whether or not you know which observer I am. And you like to play this little power game on the phone. The one you’re playing now.”

“If I’m so terrible, why don’t you call somebody else?”

“You know it’s me calling. Why are you picking up?”

Silence.

Still silent.

“You can tell me anything,” I said when she didn’t hang up. “You can open your most secret self to me. Fearlessly.”

There was another short silence. “You do get a little weird now and then.”

I grinned. It wasn’t like she was meeting me in a dark alley or anything, but she showed a kind of courage I liked. I was her obscene caller, and she had some mouth on her.

She added, “I can quit picking up the phone anytime.”

“You won’t do that. You like foreplay.” “Foreplay” is a word I would never have used face to face with Patsy.

“I pick up because we’re not faking it with each other,” she said. “I don’t have to be perfect for you. If I’m screwed
up it’s okay, because we both are. I don’t have that with anyone else.”

“That’s your definition of being real? That you don’t have to be perfect?” Who was she kidding? I get the imperfect Patsy and Biff gets the girl. I couldn’t help laughing—a harsh noise, really.

“Laughter is like a fingerprint,” she said. “I could recognize you from your laughter.”

“If we were ever in a room together and I laughed,” I said. “I’m not worried.”

“I checked with the operator last night. This is a local call.”

“It took you long enough to think of that,” I said. My voice was steady, but my heart skipped a beat.

“I’ve been giving you a lot of thought,” she said. “I know quite a bit about you.”

I didn’t like the turn this call had taken. “For openers?”

“Oh, don’t try to sound so tough,” she said with a delicate sneer in her voice. “You’re much nicer than you want me to think.”

“Just your local neighborhood pervert.”

She answered, “You apologized for that, remember? You never say anything really devastating, even when you’re being nasty.”

“It’s nice to hear you think so,” I said on a sudden surge of emotion, but it didn’t come out sounding all that nice. “You’re not as self-centered as I thought, either.”

She didn’t react. At least, she didn’t hang up.

“That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? To get to know me.”

I wanted to answer that with a resounding “maybe,” but nothing came out. Originally I’d wanted to ask her out, but now she talked as if nothing was going on in her life but these calls. And I knew different.

She said, “It’s hard for me to accept that I can be so terrifying, you have to resort to this. I don’t have pointy teeth or long fingernails—”

“You think I’m scared of you? Is this your latest theory? Let me tell you, you do not lack for amazing ideas—” Okay, so I was getting a little out of hand.

“You trust me more than you know.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I told you I spoke to the operator and you didn’t hang up,” she said, all blithe spirit. “You trusted me not to have this call traced.”

She hung up. Quietly.

I had the feeling I’d lost this round.

I wasn’t sure I trusted her, either.

Melanie and I had been at the bus stop for about five minutes. We said hi, and then nothing. Brown Bunny and Patsy came from opposite ends of the street at the same time. Patsy didn’t appear to have lost any sleep over my phone call.

“So how was dinner with the uncle?” Melanie asked when Patsy got to the bus stop. “What’s his mom like? And his dad?”

“His parents weren’t there.”

She and her friends talked about the most personal stuff in a normal voice. This made sense in New York City, where everyone was used to talking over the sound of traffic, but these neighborhoods were quiet. Everyone standing within twenty feet of these girls knew their business. Although Brown Bunny could not have looked less interested.

“Sort of boring,” Patsy said. “He asked all the standard questions—what classes do I like, what are my plans for college, that kind of thing.”

“Cool.”

“No, just boring. He wanted to know if I mainly dated guys who were on a team. That bothered me, if you want to know the truth, and I got a little rude.”

Brown Bunny came to life. “What did you say?”

“I said I had just started dating, I hadn’t had time to become a groupie.” This got a laugh, but I could see Patsy hadn’t really been looking for that. “His wife kind of took over from there and talked about movies. It really wasn’t an occasion, just a meal. I helped with the dishes.”

“Did you get the feeling you were being checked out?” This was Melanie. “Like, are you good enough for him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, I got a call on Sunday,” Patsy said, clearly finished with the dinner conversation.

“What kind of call?”

“An obscene phone call.”

“You’re kidding.”

Patsy’s expression squelched any doubts Melanie might
have had concerning the seriousness of her statement. “I’ve gotten a few of them. They started after that party I went to in Bayside. It could be one of those boys.” She didn’t add any pertinent details, like
And we’re having conversations
.

Brown Bunny said, “Obscene callers are cowardly. Probably impotent except when they’re on the phone.”

“Not so loud,” Melanie said. “It could be someone we know.”

“I doubt it,” Patsy said.

She didn’t feel absolutely certain I went to school with her? I mean, she kept hammering away at making me admit to it. But maybe she wasn’t as sure of herself as she seemed.

Patsy said, “Here comes the bus,” and Brown Bunny said, “Hey, you didn’t say. Did he ask you out for a real date?”

“Saturday.”

Brown Bunny sat down with a guy who was already on the bus. Melanie and Patsy each took possession of two seats, setting their books on the empty one. A girl got on the bus at the next stop, carrying a couple of posters with pink frills. Talk turned to the Valentine’s Day dance.

I sat at the back of the bus. I didn’t let what Brown Bunny had to say about obscene callers touch me. It had nothing to do with me. She would understand that if she got to know me any better.

Which didn’t seem very likely.

Mom called to say she was getting home late, so I made dinner.

Buttered pumpernickel bread, some kind of soft lettuce that I found in the crisper, canned sardines with red onion and lemon. More of the lettuce as a salad.

Beer for Mr. B, a Coke for me.

Mr. B came to the table with a kind of quiet mood on him. He made some approving sounds as he chewed and then asked me, “So what’s your thinking on basketball? You’re tall, agile. You like basketball?”

Putting me on the spot.

I was not especially interested in dropping balls into baskets, not that it seemed a good idea to be that blunt.

Track.

Dad had an idea there. Nonviolent, big plus. At least I only had to worry about what I was doing, instead of a whole
team. Also, I’d have the rest of the winter to get fit for spring meets. Longer if I couldn’t qualify until next year. “I’m thinking track sounds like a possibility,” I said, hoping to ease past making an actual commitment again.

I remembered then that Mr. B didn’t actually coach the swim or track teams. The dean did.

“Are you fast?”

Who knew? I angled away with a question of my own. “What would I have to do to sign up?”

Mr. B said, “Consider yourself signed up.”

It was almost a relief to be calling Patsy. Vincenzo might fail with Patsy, but his would not be a public embarrassment. Like failing at track. I’d spent most of the evening picturing the various ways in which I could humiliate myself on the track team.

She answered, saying, “Guess what?”

“I don’t dare.”

“Carlito!” she warned.

“Just tell me. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I’m on the Valentine’s Day dance committee. It’s going to be a masked ball.”

I sensed something in the air, the way wild animals smell a trap. “Little eye masks?”

“Whole costumes. Romantic ones. Literary figures or theater characters, that’s what they used to do. The drama teacher said we could do movie couples because it’s, like, modern times.”

“I guess that’s cool.”

“You could ask me to dance. Anonymously, of course.”

“I don’t dance.”

“Unless you really are afraid of me.” Terse. All business now.

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?” she wanted to know. She’d begun using this demanding tone. “Well?”

“Maybe I don’t want to see disappointment on your face.”

“You’re very pessimistic tonight.”

“That’s one word for it.” She was right. Since committing to track, my mood had been low. I was contemplating taking up skiing after all, in hopes of breaking a leg.

“You’re assuming a lot of not very nice things about me,” she said. “That I wouldn’t like you because you’re … because you need to work, or because you’re not very popular—oh, I don’t know, whatever you are that you think I don’t like.”

“That’s a deep thought, Patsy.”

She sighed. “I know that sounds, um—”

“Have you ever dated someone your crowd wouldn’t approve of?”

“How can I know that you’re a person I wouldn’t date if I don’t meet you?”

“Then you admit to discriminatory practices?”

“I won’t deny I’d say no to some people, Caesaro. Everyone has someone they’d say no to.”

She’d had plenty of chances to look interested in me and
she never had. “You’ll have to take my word for it. I’m the one.”

“I don’t have to take your word for anything. You’re an anonymous caller.”

“I’m an obscene caller.”

“Why do you keep talking through that handkerchief?”

“It’s how this sort of thing is done.”

“What sort of thing? We’re talking, that’s all.”

“That’s what you’re doing.”

Sharp intake of breath.

I waited a couple of beats. “What do you think obscene callers do wh—”

Click.

I hung up, my chest aching hollowly for—Patsy? I sighed. If this was love …

The next morning, I made a simulated run.

My eventual goal would be to run all the way to school and then run around the track a few times. I’d have to work up to it over two or three days. But I wanted to get the feel for it, run partway—three, four blocks. Then jog back and take the bus like any other morning. By next week, I’d be ready to do the run and start to work on speed.

I set my clock for an hour earlier, for five-thirty. There is no way to simulate a five-thirty rising in winter. It’s still dark at five-thirty, and it is
cold
.

It took me half an hour to do the warm-ups, but I reasoned that when I ran all the way to school, that would count toward the overall run.

Right from the start, my jeans kept making this sound like a nail file. Half a block on, the bottoms of my pants felt
like they got caught on my ankles or wrapped around them. I had to walk part of the next block to catch my breath anyway. I started to run again, but this time I couldn’t go as far before I had to walk. I was wheezing.

On the third block, I developed a stitch in my right side.

It was a good thing I called this a simulated run. I turned around to go home, walking. I managed to avoid a face-to-face with Mr. B without actually hiding from him, which was a relief to me. I lay down for ten minutes, then took a hot shower and practiced breathing. It hurt.

Mr. B had gone by the time I got downstairs, and Mom was on her way out. She was dressed for the office, wearing those stubby running shoes. She carried her chunky heels in a shopping bag. “Headed for work?” I asked her in a chatty way.

“Of course. I’m still bringing in a paycheck,” she said. “Even if I’m not the only one.”

Something had wound up her clock. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to find out. We left together. Mom went one way, heading for the train. I went the other.

The day had a bright side. I got an A plus on my book report. Also, that was the last of the makeup homework having to do with changing schools in November.