Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe (15 page)

On the way out, we rolled past a dozen overflowing trash cans, where a bony, collarless dog rooted through the bags. A skanky girl smoking a cigarette on a sagging porch gave us the finger. Duncan shook his head but said nothing.

Talking always helped me to relieve stress and make sense of the world. I talked to Grams, to my brothers, to Mom and Dad when they weren’t working, and to Merce and Brie. I didn’t need to be a psychologist to know Duncan didn’t do much talking. To anyone. If there was anyone who looked like he needed a heavy dose of talk, it was Duncan. And contrary to what Clementine said, I knew how to listen.

“You said you were visiting a friend?”

“Yeah.” His fingers dug holes into his scarf.

“Everything okay?”

His jaw ticked. “No.”

“I’m sorry.” I shot him a sideways glance. “Want me to sic Clementine on him?”

A groaning laugh rolled from Duncan’s throat. “I’m not sure
if I’m ready to unleash that beast on anyone.” Duncan stopped stabbing his scarf and looped it around his neck.

On the drive into town, he refused to talk, so I filled the silence with chatter about the afternoon at the station, about my fan mail, and about dipping into the Question Bag for next week’s show topic. I said nothing about Clementine calling me an outsider, because she was wrong. I belonged at KDRS. I wasn’t an outsider. Proof positive: Duncan called me when he got stranded and needed help.

Once in Tierra del Rey, Duncan directed me to a single-story duplex on the south side of town. Both sides of the house had flaking stucco and faded plastic roses in sagging window planters.

Duncan’s hand hesitated over the car door handle. “Are you sure I can’t pay you? I got my paycheck yesterday.”

“Consider it a favor from a friend.” Would he call me a friend? Did he have tingly thumbs and earlobes? Did he know I wanted more?

He squinted out the front windshield at the setting sun. “How about dinner, then? Nothing fancy, but I’m pretty good with a frying pan and eggs.”

I was out of my car and at Duncan’s front door in half a second.

Duncan’s duplex was small but homey. A worn plaid sofa and a single tweed recliner huddled in a tiny living room next to an even tinier kitchen with a plastic dining set and toasters. I blinked and counted. Fourteen toasters?

“It’s not much, but it’s only Mom and me,” Duncan said.

“It’s cozy, everything close by.” I thought of Grams’s beloved
Tuna Can. “It’s not about the space but how you fill it.” I pointed to the toasters. “So what’s up with you and toast?”

A sheepish grin tugged at his mouth as he opened the refrigerator. “The toasters are thrift store rejects. No one would buy them, and I couldn’t stand to see them thrown away.”

“So you fixed, prettified, and gave them a loving home?”

His grin fell away, and he shrugged. “Something like that. Now, how about scrambled eggs and cheese on toast?”

A perfect comfort food, and this evening Mr. Serious needed comfort. “Sounds great.”

Duncan mixed six eggs with milk and poured the mixture into a frying pan sizzling with melted butter. He handed me a loaf of bread and pointed to the toasters. “Take your pick.”

Most were chrome. One was robin’s-egg blue, another candy-apple red. Some had two slots, others four or six. One looked like a bird cage. “They all work?” I asked.

Duncan raised both eyebrows.

Of course they all worked. Because Duncan fixed things. I grinned and took out four slices of bread. As I slid them into the candy-apple red toaster, the windowpane over the sink shook. I jumped. A wide, lined face pressed against the glass. “Phooooone,” an older woman yelled through the cracked glass. “Get your ass over here.”

Duncan looked like he wanted to crawl under a heavy piece of equipment. He took the towel from his waistband. “That’s Hetta. She lives next door. She lets Mom and me use her phone.” His fingers dug into the dish towel. “Can you keep an eye on the eggs? I probably should take this call.”

The vertical line creased the center of his forehead as he hurried out the back door. The woman at the window moved to the open doorway of Duncan’s kitchen, her fleshy hands on her wide hips. She smelled like cabbage. “What are you doing here?” Hetta glared at me like I was a cockroach that had crawled through the kitchen drain.

“I’m having eggs with Duncan.”

The doughy face glowered. “Why?”

“Uh . . . we’re friends.”

She huffed and walked toward me. “Duncan don’t have no time for friends.” She raised a thick finger and wagged it at me. “Now, what are you really doing here? You’re looking for him, aren’t you? You’re one of Stu’s friends.”

I backed away, feeling the heat of her words. “No, I . . . I don’t know anyone named Stu.” And if I did, I wouldn’t admit it to this woman, who clearly despised Stu.

“Well, you better not cause no trouble around here. I don’t stand for trouble.” She spun away on a puff of cabbage-scented air.

With Hetta and her horrendous scowl gone, I looked around the kitchen and small living area. No phone. Duncan had been uncomfortable when I first gave him my phone number. Was this why he never called?

As I studied his house, I also noticed no television, no CD player, and no computer, only a small box on a scarred end table next to the sofa. I grinned. A radio. One of Duncan’s nubby scarves, this one the color of the beach, shades of brown and
white and coral, rested on the sofa. Like all his other scarves, this one had a little heart knitted onto one end.

I wondered who stitched her heart into scarves for loner Duncan Moore.

I checked the eggs, which were starting to set. Opening a kitchen drawer, I looked for a spatula but found various hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers. I giggled. Duncan lived here. The next drawer held a stack of mail. On top was a bill from the utility company. I wasn’t being nosy, but it was hard to miss the words
Past Due
in bright red.

“The eggs need to be stirred.” Duncan was so close his words brushed the back of my neck.

I slammed the drawer. “I . . .”

“I can get it.” Without meeting my gaze, he nudged me aside and pulled a spatula from the bottom drawer and stirred the eggs.

I searched his face. Was he upset over the phone call? Embarrassed about the bill? Even this close, I couldn’t tell. Duncan had a way of distancing himself that I still didn’t understand. When I was upset, I wanted to share my pain, to pour it in a sandbox and invite all my friends to come over and dig around in it with shovels.

“Okay, do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

He poked at the eggs. “Say something funny or sweet to make me forget we’re about to lose power.”

“Do you want me to?”

His eyelids dipped closed as if the lids were too heavy. He nodded.

I settled my hip on the counter. “Okay, if it gets too dark and cold here, I have a Tuna Can you can move into. Rent free. Must like soggy furniture and grinning ceramic squirrels.”

Like air and water, we needed laughter, and I’d never seen a person who needed to laugh as much as Duncan Moore. He didn’t burst out in a guffaw, but the heaviness lifted from his eyes as a chuckle rumbled. “Tuna can?”

“One bedroom, one bath, six-hundred-square-foot mobile home in a lovely shade of tuna can silver.”

“Soggy?”

My face grew serious. “Slight mechanical malfunction.”

His eyes sparked, and I laughed out loud. Dunc loved a good mechanical malfunction. He also needed a distraction from the Happy Trails Trailer Park and the past-due notice in the drawer. Enter Grams and her hammer. I kept the story lighthearted, not mentioning the war and shaky truce between Grams and Mom or Grams’s vow to leave Minnie’s Place when the Tuna Can was made inhabitable. By the time I reached the part about Grams setting up Brad Pitt Movie Mania night at Minnie’s Place, Dunc was laughing out loud and scooping eggs onto two slices of toast, which he topped with cheese. I set the plates on the table while he held out a chair. “Has anyone ever told you you’re wonderful?” Dunc said.

“Yes, but feel free to continue with that and other similar adjectives.”

The table was so small, my toes brushed against his, and a hot spark ignited. I swear, even my toes reacted to Dune’s touch.

“Exactly where is this sorry, soggy piece of real estate you call the Tuna Can?”

“Fifty yards from the beach,” I told Duncan. “Grams loves the ocean.”

Grams and I had spent most of our summers on the shores of the Pacific Ocean building sand castles, boogie-boarding in the cold waters, and collecting shells.

“Look at this beauty, Poppy,” Grams had announced one summer as she unearthed a shiny, spiraling conch. It was bigger than my sand bucket, the swirling inside as bright and shiny as a new copper penny. It smelled of salt and sea. I still remember the glorious swooshing sound it made as Grams held the conch to my ear. “Listen, do you hear it? Do you hear the heartbeat of the ocean?”

“You love it, too,” Duncan said, pulling me back to the tiny kitchen and comforting smell of steamy eggs on golden toast.

“Love what?”

“The ocean.”

“How do you know?”

He reached over and slid a single finger along my upper arm. “You wear your heart on your sleeve.” He pressed his finger against my skin. “Right here for all to see. Everyone knows when you’re happy or sad, fighting mad, or ready to take on dragons.”

I stared at my arm and his finger creating a firestorm along my skin. “And that’s wrong?”

“No. I think it’s good not to let things bottle up inside.” He reached for his sandwich. “It’s healthier that way.”

As far as I could tell, Duncan didn’t open his heart to anyone. He kept everything close to his chest, which by his account made him unhealthy.

At school he was a loner. I hadn’t seen his mother, nor did he tell me where she was. If she was anything like Duncan, she probably worked two or three jobs. He never talked of a father or brothers or sisters. Duncan was all alone, except for Hetta, the grumpy neighbor who smelled like cooked cabbage.

“Everything okay next door with the phone call?” I asked. Now that he was more relaxed, maybe he’d download some of the heavy stuff he carried on those broad shoulders.

Duncan paused, then shook his head, but he didn’t frown, nor did that line crease his forehead. Instead, he lifted his sandwich. “But that’s okay. Tonight I have eggs and cheese on toast and”—he tipped the sandwich toward me—“a pretty girl with a big heart on her sleeve.”

That big heart did a big jump. With a laugh I lifted my right foot and waggled it to the side. “And great shoes. You can’t forget the great shoes.”

Duncan slipped his fingers around my ankle and critically eyed my styling cork wedge. “Yeah, a girl with great shoes,” he proclaimed as a crazy tingle raced across my ankle.

Ankle: Check. Another wonky erogenous body part.

SUBJ: I <3 Jester Clem

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

Hey Clementine,

Thanks for being the voice of reason in an insane universe.

Your #1 fan!

Sam Littlefield

---

The life which is unexamined is not worth living
—Socrates

FRIDAY NIGHT, THE ON AIR SIGN BRIGHTENED AT EXACTLY EIGHT.

“Welcome, minions, this is Chloe, your queen. Glad to have you in the realm for another program of royally rousing talk radio. Tonight we’ll talk, we’ll laugh, and talk some more. Back by popular demand is
Jester
Clem.” I smiled at Clementine, who once again was sitting in the production studio. Her nostrils flared, and she looked ready to singe the curls off my head.

I pointed to Duncan, who was sitting next to me in the control room. He cued a hand-to-head-slap stinger.

“Oops, I forgot,” I went on with a wink at Clementine. “Clementine said she’d have me overthrown if I continued to call her Jester. Can you believe that? She got her little sparkly jester tights all in a wad over a nickname, which, by the way, is our first topic of discussion tonight.”
Wham!
A perfect segue into tonight’s show. I bowed to Clem, who shook her head, but I saw the small dragon smile.

Earlier in the week Clementine had agreed to be part of the show, and not because I bribed her with beets. Her fans demanded it. Yes, Dragon Clementine had fans. She received a half-dozen e-mails hailing “Jester Clem.” I think the adoration shocked Clementine more than anyone else, and perhaps it was in that stunned state she agreed to join my
Chloe, Queen of the Universe
show. Our format would be similar to the first week. Hour two Clementine would pop in, but hour one was all about me and nicknames.

“Most nicknames are usually terms of endearment, given to us by our loved ones,” I said into the mic. “You can call me Queenie, but my family nicknamed me Poppy. Yep, minions, you heard right, Poppy, as in floppy, orange flowers.” Duncan cued a mass groan. “I know. I, too, wondered if my family had been taking opium hits when they came up with it.”