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As Mick was clipping the leash on Foolish at the edge of the park, Reece said, “Okay, you definitely get the five bucks.” He considered it. “But not the twenty. I mean, you came close, but you didn't get a phone number.” They walked another block and he said, “I mean, giving them our e-mails isn't the same as them giving us their phone numbers.” A half block farther he said, “Tell you what, I'll give you ten. Ten okay?”

“Ten's good,” Mick said.

“But you'll have to wait till I have it.”

They crossed to the shady side of the street, and when they got to Walnut and Sixth, where he would go left toward home or right toward Reece's, Mick went right. “Okay if Foolish comes?” he said.

“Sure,” Reece said. “Mr. and Mrs. Reece have no issues with canines.” They walked half a block, and Reece said, “If you want to call Nora and let her know, you can use my phone.”

“It's okay,” Mick said. “Nora's not there.” This felt to Mick as much truth as lie. Nora was there, of course, but it wasn't the Nora he knew. It was somebody else, somebody who sneaked off with some other guy on a Saturday while his father was working and then came home and pretended she'd been at the mall shopping.

On Reece's street, while they were waiting for Foolish to pee in the bushes, Reece said, “So who's Alexander Selkirk anyway?”

The question buzzed through Mick's body like a faint electric shock. “What?”

“Who's Alexander Selkirk? The guy who said he knew Myra Vidal.”

“Oh. Him. Nobody. I just made him up.”

“You made him up?” Reece tipped his head away, nodding. “He made him up.” He kept nodding. “You are such a stud, Mickster. I mean it. You should have corporate sponsorship. You should have a shoe contract.” He gave Mick a mock shoulder punch. “Okay. For making up Alexander Selkirk, I'm gonna go to twelve-fifty. Is that fair?”

“More than fair,” Mick said. “Instead of waiting forever to not get ten dollars, I'll be waiting forever to not get twelve-fifty.”

“Exactly.”

When they turned up the walkway to Reece's house, he said, “Sure you don't want to call and leave Nora a message?”

“Yeah,” Mick said. “I'm sure.”

Automatically his hand felt inside his jacket. The pocket was zipped and within it he could feel the outlines of the green floppy disk.

CHAPTER SIX

The Wooden Lady's
Walnut Tidbits

Late Saturday night Lisa Doyle was at Janice Bledsoe's apartment, sitting at the kitchen table eating Chef Boyardee pizza and talking about boys, or more particularly the boys on the Village Greens crew to which Janice had been assigned. All of them were sevens or eights, according to Janice, except the group leader, whose name was Ned. Ned was a nine. “He was checking me out,” Janice said. “Nothing blatant, but there was some definite visual perusal.”

Footsteps, and then Mrs. Bledsoe was at the kitchen door with a long folded fax in her hand. She was wearing her glasses low on her nose. She lay down the fax, broke off a piece of pizza, and said, “So who did you say was checking you out, sweetness?”

Janice turned to Lisa. “The momster's got the big ears.”

“It's evolutionary,” Mrs. Bledsoe said. “You'll develop them, too, when you have a teenage daughter.” She smiled at Janice. “Now who was checking you out?”

“Ned,” Janice said. “An impeccably moral, college-bound Ned who works at Village Greens.”

Mrs. Bledsoe peered over her bifocals. “So the pastures really are greener at Village Greens.”

“Not necessarily,” Lisa said. She was thinking of Maurice Gritz leering at her and saying, “The hats are like me. One size fits all.” Calling Lizette “Gomez.” Giving the girls too-small T-shirts.

“We're on separate crews,” Janice explained. “I got a bunch of cool guys, but Lisa thinks she got mostly creeps and dinks.”

“Well,” Mrs. Bledsoe said, turning her smile on Lisa, “creeps and dinks is what the male persuasion mostly is. You might as well get used to it.” After the second divorce Genevieve Bledsoe had needlepointed a sampler that said NEVER AGAIN, BETSY. It hung over the fake fireplace of their third-floor apartment.

Now Mrs. Bledsoe ate her piece of pizza standing up and washed it down with mineral water before picking up her fax and scrolling through it. “Okay, gals, tell me what you think of this. ‘Coronary care patients who receive prayers without their knowledge' ”—here she peered up meaningfully—“ ‘fare better than those not receiving prayers.' ” She looked over her glasses at Lisa and Janice. “That can't be possible. Can that be possible? That somebody can get better faster because, unbeknownst to him, a stranger is praying for him?”

Lisa wanted to say yes, but she didn't know what she could say after that that wouldn't sound like Sister Watts, who got up in fast and testimony meeting every single month and said, “I want to share with you, brothers and sisters, that the Lord hears and answers prayers.”

Mrs. Bledsoe shook her head a final time and went back to her office.

“She's doing this long article on health and spirituality,” Janice explained. “Which makes absolutely no sense because she's like a practicing atheist or something. Once when she was asked to do the blessing at my aunt's house, she said, ‘Hubba hubba, thanks for the grubba.' ”

Lisa chuckled.

Janice said, “You laugh, but my aunt didn't. It was pretty awful.”

From Mrs. Bledsoe's office came the muted sounds of choral music, which Lisa recognized as Handel's
Messiah.
Without thinking, Lisa said, “I like your mom.”

“But then you don't have to live with her,” Janice said, laughing, and Lisa laughed, too, but sometimes she wondered if Janice's mom wasn't one reason she and Janice were still friends. They'd been friends forever, since grade school, when they liked exactly the same things: blue Otter Pops, Quick Curl Barbie, and a day-camp counselor named Booth Spinelli. Now it seemed like Janice wanted to try all the things Lisa wasn't even supposed to think about. She was probably becoming what the church would call a bad influence. But she was still Janice, and Mrs. Bledsoe felt almost like an aunt—an exotic, friendly, world-wise aunt. A few weeks ago, when her father had for the umpteenth time asked Lisa what she might want to do with her life, Lisa had surprised herself by saying, “I was thinking about freelance writing.” Her father had considered it (approvingly, it seemed to Lisa) and said, “Like Janice's mom,” and Lisa had nodded and said, “Yeah, like Janice's mom.”

“Okay, check this out,” Janice said now, and she slipped out a book hidden under the stack of newspapers on the table.
The
Nancy Drew Cookbook.
On the cover was a ham steak topped with a pineapple slice topped with a maraschino cherry.

Janice grinned and said, “The cover's just the tip of the iceberg. There's more grossness within.” She skimmed the recipes. “Double Jinx Salad. Invisible Intruder's Coconut Custard. And I urge you to consider The Wooden Lady's Walnut Tidbits.”

“Let's burn it,” Lisa said. “For our country. It's the right thing to do.”

Janice laughed. “Can't. It's an artifact from my mother's past. My grandma says little Genevieve loved this book. She even had a rating system for how each recipe turned out.” She flipped a few more pages. “For example, the Mysterious Mannequin Casserole got only two stars.”

“Two stars too many,” Lisa said.

But Janice had become interested in something. “Wow, the glossary's really something.” She read silently for a few seconds, then said, “Okay, automatic response. Who would you like to bake beat blend boil broil and chop?”

“Coach Kapsiak.”

Janice laughed. “Excellent! Now who would you like to core cube dice fold fry and garnish?”

“The Nancester.” Nancy Forster, her ice-queen geometry teacher.

Janice said, “Okay, those were the easy ones. Here's the biggie. Who would you like to”—she slid her voice into a sultry register—“peel simmer and stir?”

Color rose in Lisa's face. She pictured Elder Keesler in his black missionary suit. “Nobody,” she said quietly.

“Oh, that's a little fib,” Janice said grinning.

“No, it's not. There's nobody I'd want to . . . do those things to.”

Janice kept grinning. “Someday, girlfriend, you'll cast aside your weighted chains.”

Lisa, who was looking out the back window, suddenly stood up. Was she seeing what she thought she was seeing?

Two guys in white shirts, ties, and dark parkas were wheeling bicycles up the walk of the building behind Janice's. It was Elder Keesler, for sure, and his smaller companion, Elder P-something.

“It's the missionaries,” Lisa said. “They just got transferred to Jemison, and I got my mother to invite them to dinner next Sunday. Isn't Elder Keesler gorgio? He's from Boston.”

“If you mean the tall one, he seems potentially peelable.” She was still staring down at them. “Aren't they kind of young for elders? I mean, shouldn't they be
youngers
?”

Lisa laughed. “No. They're deacons when they're twelve, teachers at fourteen, priests at sixteen, elders at nineteen, and, as my dad's always saying, set in their ways by twenty-one.”

“But, God, Leeze, those haircuts—they look like they could be buying at the commissary.”

“Yeah, well, they have to knock on people's doors all day and say, ‘I have a message about Jesus Christ.' Who's gonna open the door for a Hell's Angel who says that?”

“I might,” Janice said, laughing.

Elder Keesler pulled out a key, and Lisa made note of the apartment they disappeared into.

“I bet people think they're gay,” Janice said.

Lisa whacked her on the shoulder. “Why?”

“Well, they live together and dress very tidily.”

Lisa laughed. “You should see them up close. Half of them wear clip-on ties. I'm pretty sure there's a gay rule against clip-on ties.”

Janice said, “How about Elder Keester? Does he wear clip-on ties?”

“It's Elder
Keesler,
you moron. And no, he was wearing this very cool retro tie on Sunday. I'm hoping he wears the same one when he comes to dinner.”

Janice flopped back down on the floor and picked up a pizza crust. “So, are there any Mormons on motorcycles? I might be able to go for a Harley Mormon.”

Lisa laughed and then fell quiet. She was wondering what Elder Keesler was doing in his apartment right now. Elder Keesler. Elder Keesler. Elder Keesler.

Janice was quiet, too. Then, a little too casually, she said, “You know, I've been thinking about that stuff you told me about Maurice.”

The mere mention of his name made Lisa wary. “And?”

“And that whole Gomez thing kind of just sounds like a bad joke to me. And I'd rather have to wear my shirt a little small than way big, which is what Ned handed to me.”

Lisa considered—and rejected—this. “No,” she said, “those actions were the first droplets of Maurician slime.”

Janice gave this a chuckle. “Okay, class, let's make a note of ‘Maurician slime.' ”

There was a silence. Lately there had been a lot of silences. Finally Lisa said, “Okay, I'll bet my too-small T-shirt that Maurice Gritz is a sleazeball sexist creep.”

“Says our little Mormon, who is right this minute lusting after a celibate missionary.”

“I left out racist,” Lisa said, flushing. “I should've said sleazeball racist sexist creep.”

“That's a mouthful, girlfriend,” Janice said, laughing.

Lisa forced herself to stop looking out the window and sit down. She didn't immediately look at Janice, but when she did, Janice didn't look mad. She had finished her crust and was looking at the half moon of unbroken pizza.

“Okay,” Janice said, “just one more.”

“We'll do sit-ups afterward and go for a run.”

“Hundreds of sit-ups,” Janice said.

“Thousands.”

They each broke off another slice.

A bite or two later Janice said, “So what about that one guy who got assigned to your crew, the one who's always following you around?”

Lisa's cheeks pinkened slightly. “Mick Nichols. And he doesn't follow me around.”

“Oh, excuse me very much. He just happens to pop up wherever you happen to be.”

Lisa didn't say anything. To her surprise, she felt a pleasant warmth moving through her body. She didn't know Mick Nichols, but she didn't mind the idea of him popping up wherever she happened to be.

“So what's his story anyway?” Janice said.

Lisa shrugged. “He's A.P. and doesn't play sports. That's all I know.” She could picture him though. He was average sized, but he had dark curly hair, and something about his eyes made him look like he was always amused at something, and she didn't know why exactly, but she liked the way he walked. “He's kind of cute, I guess, and at least he's not rich.” He also wasn't Mormon, but who was, besides Thaine Briscoe, and he was about two feet shorter than Lisa.

“I'd trade him something good for that olive complexion,” Janice said. “I'll bet he gets tan in about ten seconds.” She was quiet a few moments. Then, “He's friends with Weinie Reece, isn't he?”

Alarms rang in Lisa's head. Winston Reece was in two of Janice's classes, and Lisa knew Janice believed in indirect negotiation. “Don't even think about it, Janice,” she said.

Janice was grinning. “Think about what?”

“About grilling Winston Reece about Mick Nichols!” Lisa said.

“Let's not call it grilling,” Janice said. “Let's call it a few gently probing questions.”

“I mean it, Janice!” Lisa said.

“She means it,” Janice said, still grinning.

Lisa set down her pizza. “Look, Janice—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Janice said. “Settle down, schoolgirl.”

Lisa was wary. “So you promise?”

Janice stopped grinning. They'd made a pact a long time ago. That a promise really would be a promise. “Yeah, I do,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Promise not to talk to Weinie Reece about Mick Nichols's interest in one Lisa Doyle.”

Lisa nodded and went back to eating pizza and talking about other boys, but her mind kept coming back to Mick Nichols, which was okay, she guessed, and, more often and urgently, to Elder Keesler, which wasn't. Suddenly she set aside her half-eaten slice of pizza. “Let's go for a run.”

“It's fuh-reezing out there,” Janice said.

“It is not,” Lisa said. “Nippy, maybe. Brisk, at most. And that's why God made hooded sweatshirts.”

Janice said, “That's why God made cozy little kitchens to stay warm in,” but she'd already put down her pizza, too, and was pushing back from the table. “Okay,” she said, “what did God do with my running shoes?”