“Nick?”
Max’s voice was still a little worried, so Nick said, “You don’t suppose Barbara has two cars, do you? You could be spending some significant time with her.”
“Funny,” Max said, but he went back work and let Nick concentrate on the Chevy which was what he wanted. Because there was nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing.
* * *
“Absolutely no dogs,” Lois said, and Quinn tried to look sympathetic. At four-thirty most of the turquoise booths in Lois’s were empty, and all of the tables were unoccupied, so if she looked understanding, maybe Lois would bend a rule here. Not that Lois was much for bending rules. Still, maybe if she talked fast …
“I know and normally I wouldn’t dream of bringing her in here, but its cold outside, and she’s freezing, and she doesn’t have a home.” Quinn tried to look as pathetic as possible since as far as she could tell, Katie had had only one definable expression, anxious, and that wasn’t endearing. “So I can’t let her out in a cold car—”
“No.” Lois folded her arms across her turquoise polyester uniform, pulling the fabric down across her breasts, making the white hankie in her breast pocket lie flat as a napkin. “The health department would close me down in a second. Maybe you could take it home …” Her voice slowed as Katie peered at her from Quinn’s arms, all dark worried eyes in her quivering little head.
Yeah, say no to that face, Quinn thought, and Lois said, “No” again.
It was no wonder Matthew had left her, with that kind of unsympathetic nature.
“All right, just let me tell Darla and Steph I can’t stay,” Quinn said, and turned to find Darla on the other side of the room, lounging in a booth all by herself. Quinn shook her head at her and called, “I’ll phone you later,” and Darla stood and stomped across the almost empty restaurant, her round, good-natured face puckered in exasperation, her equally round body moving toward them like a shapely but solid tank.
“Not later,” she said when she reached them. “I have stuff to say now. What—Oh.” She frowned down at Katie in the front of Quinn’s coat. “Another one, huh?”
“She was so cold,” Quinn said. “But Lois says she can’t stay, so we’re going back to the apartment.”
“We could do pizza there,” Darla said, her forehead puckered with thought, as she ignored Lois. “Only Bill’s probably home by now, and I have wonderful gossip. Max has another two hours at the station at least. Let’s go to my place. I’ll get my coat, and Lois can tell Steph to come on over when she gets here.”
“She’s late, too?” Quinn said at the same time Lois said, “Wait a minute.”
They both turned to look at Lois who was pursing her red-orange lips into a pout. Matching your lipstick to your hair is not a good idea, Quinn wanted to tell her, especially when nobody believes your hair anyway. Especially when you hang out in turquoise. But that would be tactless and non-productive, not to mention none of her business, so Quinn kept her mouth shut.
“That lipstick is not good for you,” Darla said. “Go more muted. Same thing with your hair. Sherry loses her grip when she does auburn.”
“Thank you,” Lois snapped. “I’ll tell Stephanie you were here.”
“And that we went to Darla’s, please,” Quinn said. “And we’re not waiting because we’re starving.”
“Really starving,” Darla said. “Imagine the money we’d have spent.”
Lois let her breath out, probably calculating how much money they’d spend and multiplying it by how much gossip she could overhear. “Oh, all right. Make sure nobody sees the dog. And if the health inspector comes in, one of you has to pretend to be blind.”
“Thank you, Lois,” Quinn said. “We’ll have dessert, too.”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Darla said when they were back in the booth with Katie between them, chewing on a rye roll. She’d shown an interest in jumping for the floor before Quinn had given her the bread, and now she stood, pressed against Quinn’s side, her eyes on Darla and her teeth in the roll. “This is excellent news,” Darla went on. “The Bank Slut dumped Matthew.”
Quinn winced and tightened her hold on Katie. “Don’t call Barbara that. It’s ugly.”
Darla grinned as she buttered a roll. “I think it’s funny. And Lois is the one who calls her that, so go yell at her, although God knows she’s got reason. Barbara snagged her husband after all.”
“I don’t think you can snag people.” Quinn let go of Katie who settled down beside her, evidently reassured that Darla was not going to do anything anti-dog. “Not if they don’t want to be snagged. I think you can only snag the ones who want to escape anyway.”
“So you’re saying Matthew was ripe?” Darla chewed her roll as she considered the possibility. “I never saw it. He didn’t seem like he was straining at the leash. And Lois is a damn good cook.” She shoved the basket toward Quinn. “I mean, what was she doing wrong?”
Quinn thought about Bill. “I don’t think there has to be something wrong. I think there has to be something right. And maybe Matthew thought he had it with Barbara and didn’t have it with Lois.”
“So it was okay for him to cheat on her?” Darla shook her head. “No way.”
“No,” Quinn said. “It’s never all right to cheat. But it should be all right to leave. If things aren’t right. Even if the other person is a good guy, even if everything seems good, if it doesn’t feel right, it should be all right to leave.”
Darla leaned back in the booth. “Are we still talking about Matthew and Lois?”
“Here, baby.” Quinn held out another roll to Katie. The dog took it gently and curled up on the booth seat to gnaw at it, her frantic hunger evidently gone with all her suspicions about her present company. “Isn’t she the sweetest?”
“They’re all the sweetest,” Darla said. “That’s why you keep picking them up, even when they look like something out of Stephen King. Stop ducking the question. What’s with you and Bill? Still having that hearty All-American sex?”
“I wish I’d never told you that.” Quinn thought about the hearty All-American sex. “Yes.”
“And he’s still filling your car every Saturday morning cause he does it when I’m at the station.” Darla poked around in the roll basket. “I want a cloverleaf roll. You didn’t feed that dog the last cloverleaf, did you?”
“Rye,” Quinn said and then Stephanie slid into the end of the booth and said, “You will never guess the amazing thing that just happened.”
“You made the cheerleading team,” Darla said. “We knew you couldn’t miss. Where have you been?”
“Stop it.” Steph beamed at both of them, slender and excited, all bright brown eyes and bouncing dark curls, looking exactly the same as when she’d made the junior high cheerleading squad, the senior high cheerleading squad, national honor society, and student council, not to mention the way she’d looked announcing all four of her marriages and her pregnancy. Steph’s life was made of moments, and she was evidently having one while they sat there.
Quinn obliged as straight man for her. “What happened?”
Steph settled into her seat and prepared to give up the good stuff: “Genevieve Bachman slapped Corey Possert right across the chops at the end of sixth period.”
Oh, no. Quinn scrambled through her thoughts to find a way to make this not bad news, a way that Genevieve would be all right, not fired, not forced to apologize to that worthless Corey which would be worse than being fired, if anything was worse than being fired for somebody who’d given her whole life to teaching—
“You’re kidding,” Lois said, and all three of them jerked around to stare at her. “Sorry, I just got here. You ready to order?”
“Cheese and spinach quesadillas, please.” Quinn said, ordering what she always did, obsessing on Genevieve. “Sour cream on the side. Steph, are you sure?”
“Mushroom burger,” Steph said. “Lots of fries, please. Double order. I’m positive. She told me herself.
”
“Spinach salad,” Darla said. “No-cal Italian on the side. And more rolls. This sucks. I like Genevieve.”
“No-cal? You’re not going to lose weight eating rolls and butter,” Lois said.
Darla grinned at her. “Still pissed about the lipstick, huh?”
“What lipstick?” Steph said.
“I like her, too,” Lois said. “But she can’t go around slapping kids.”
“Depends on the kid,” Darla said, and Lois snorted and left for the kitchen.
“She really slapped him?” Quinn said. “Did some kid tell you this? Because they—“
“No, I told you, she told me,” Steph said. “She told me when she handed over her classes. She quit. I’m full time now. I’ve got a job. She quit forever.”
She can’t quit. Quinn felt a flicker of panic; Genevieve had always been there, showing Quinn the ropes from Quinn’s first day teaching. She’d had lunch with Genevieve everyday. Her mother had gone garage saleing with Genevieve.
“Wow.” Darla looked grim. “She can’t quit. She’s always been there, from the beginning of time. She was our English teacher, for God’s sake.”
“She did it,” Steph said. “She’s gone. And I have a job.” She beamed at them all around, missing their silence completely, and Quinn wondered, not for the first time, how it was possible to be as clueless as Stephanie. Then Steph’s eyes widened and she shrieked and pointed. “What is that?”
Quinn followed her finger. “That’s Katie.” Quinn’s annoyance grew as Katie struggled to her feet, startled by the shriek. “She’s my dog.”
“Your dog?” Darla said, and Steph said, “You’re keeping a dog?”
“Unless Nick wants her, “ Quinn said. “If he doesn’t, I’m keeping this dog.” Maybe.
“Bill’s gonna be pissed,” Steph said.
“Which is probably the reason she’s keeping the dog,” Darla said. “And they say life slows down after the holidays.”
“Who says?” Steph said. “’Oh, and I forgot the best part. Well, not the best part, but the part that involves you guys.”
“Us?” Quinn said, and Darla said, “Wait a minute.”
“I get the school play, too! The musical! I’m directing!” Steph smiled at them like a maniac. “And you’re helping!”
Quinn thought about saying no, about explaining that she didn’t have the time, that she didn’t know about plays, that she didn’t want to be involved, but there wasn’t any point. If Steph was involved, they’d be involved. Darla wasn’t even bothering to make a token protest.
“Let’s keep it simple, huh?” Quinn said, but she could see Steph making big plans. Steph liked elaborate productions; Darla had a theory that was the reason Steph had been married four times: big weddings.
“Isn’t this just the best day?” Steph said, and babbled on about the play, Into the Woods, and how darling the script was, while Quinn thought about Genevieve and Bill and whether Nick would want a dog and whether she would give this one up if he did, and how she could keep this one if he didn’t.
“You okay?” Darla asked her. “Sort of,” Quinn said, and fed Katie another roll while Stephanie babbled on.
Appendix D: Crazy for You - Chapter One
This is the final published first chapter of Crazy For You, with all of the characters from the short stories with the exception of Caroline and Stephanie. Quinn’s older and a little worn down but still Quinn, Darla and Max are together but not as strong as they should be, the Bank Slut is still on the move, and Nick’s not married to Zoë any more. Knowing so much of what happened to the characters before the book opens made writing and revising everything that comes after that much richer. Maybe I should start writing more short stories; they definitely improved Crazy For You.
On a gloomy March afternoon, sitting in the same high school classroom she’d been sitting in for thirteen years, gritting her teeth as she told her significant other for the seventy-second time since they’d met that she’d be home at six because it was Wednesday and she was always home at six on Wednesdays, Quinn McKenzie lifted her eyes from the watercolor assignments on the desk in front of her and met her destiny.
Her destiny was a small black dog with desperate eyes, so she missed the significance at first.
She didn’t miss anything else. The dog that her favorite art student held out to her was the canine equivalent of an exposed nerve: wiry black body, skinny white legs, narrow black head, all of it held together with so much tension that the poor baby shuddered with it. It looked cold and scared and hungry and anxious as it struggled in Thea’s arms, and Quinn’s heart broke. No animal should ever look like that.
“Oh.” Quinn rose on the word and went toward Thea while Bill groaned and said, “Not another one.”
“I found it in the parking lot.” Thea put the dog down on the floor in front of Quinn. “I knew you’d know what to do.”
“Come on, baby.” Quinn crouched in front of it, not too near, not too far, and patted the floor. “Come here, sweetie. Don’t be scared. It’s all right now. I’ll take care of you.”
The dog trembled even harder, jerking its head from side to side. Then it made a dash for the nearest door, which, unfortunately for it, was the storeroom.
“Well, that’ll make it easier to trap and catch,” Bill said, his tone as cheerful and sure as always. It was always a beautiful day in the neighborhood for Bill, a man who’d taken the Tibbett High football team to five consecutive championships and the baseball team to four–fifth one coming right up–almost solely, Quinn believed, by never considering the possibility of defeat. “Know where you want to be and go there,” he’d tell the boys, and they would.
Quinn decided she wanted to be someplace else with a pizza, but she had to comfort this dog and get rid of Bill before she could go there. She crawled on her hands and knees to the door, trying to look nonthreatening. “Now look, dogs like me,” she said in her best come-to-mama voice as the dog cowered against a carton of oaktag at the back of the narrow storeroom. “You’re missing a good deal here. Really, I’m famous for this. Come on.” She moved a little closer, still on her hands and knees, and the dog peeled its eyes back.
“I suppose you had to do this,” Bill said to Thea good-naturedly, and Quinn felt equally annoyed with him and guilty about misleading him. “No more dogs,” he’d said the last time she’d rescued a stray. “You don’t have to save them all.” And she’d nodded at him to acknowledge that she’d heard him, and he’d taken it as agreement, and she’d let him take it that way because it was easier, no point in creating a problem she’d just have to turn around and fix.
And now here she was, cheating on him with a mixed breed.
She looked into the dog’s eyes again. It’s going to be all right. Ignore what the big blond guy says. The dog relaxed away from the box a little and looked at her with caution instead of terror in its worried little eyes. Progress. If she had another ten hours and a ham sandwich, it might even come to her on its own.
“You’re not bringing it home with you, right?” Bill loomed behind her, cutting off the afternoon light that came dimly through the wall of windows and casting a shadow over her so that the dog shrank back again, anxious at the darkness. It wasn’t Bill’s fault that he was huge, but he could at least notice that he cast considerable shade wherever he went.
“Because we’re not allowed to have dogs in our apartment.” Bill’s voice was patient as he went on, a teacher’s voice, telling her what she already knew, guiding her to form the correct conclusion.
My conclusion is that you’re patronizing me. “Somebody has to rescue strays and find them homes,” Quinn said without looking behind her.
“Exactly,” Bill said. “Which is why we pay taxes to support Animal Control. Why don’t I go call them–”
“The pound?” Thea’s voice was full of horror.
“They don’t kill them all,” Bill said. “Just the sick ones.”
Quinn looked behind
her and met Thea’s disbelieving eyes. Yep, Quinn wanted to tell her, he really believes that. Instead, she patted the floor again. “Come here, baby. Come on.”
“Honey.” Bill put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on, get up.”
If she shrugged his hand off her shoulder, he’d be hurt, and that wasn’t fair. “I’m okay,” Quinn said.
Bill moved his hand, and Quinn let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“I’ll just call–”
“Bill.” Quinn kept her voice as friendly as she could. “Go finish in the weight room so I can do this. I’ll be home at six.”
Bill nodded, radiating tolerance and support in spite of her illogical resistance to Animal Control. “Sure. I’ll go warm up the car for you and bring it to the door first.” He patted her shoulder and said, “You stay here,” as if she’d been planning to follow him, and after he left, she could picture him crunching his way across the icy parking lot toward her CRX as if slipping weren’t a possibility. It probably wasn’t for him; Vikings loved ice, and at six foot five, two hundred and forty-three healthy blond pounds, Bill was a Viking’s Viking. All of Tibbett adored Bill, a coach in a million, but Quinn was beginning to have doubts.
And it was so unfair of her to have doubts. She knew he’d warm the car for her, first opening the door with his key instead of hers, which was another thing about him that bothered her, that he’d had that key cut without her permission two years ago when they’d first begun to date. But since he’d had the key cut so he could keep her gas tank filled, it was completely illogical that she should be annoyed. It was wrong to complain about a man who was unfailingly clean, generous, considerate, protective, understanding, and successful, and who’d shelled out hundreds of dollars in fossil fuel for her since 1997. Really, the dumbass was the perfect man.