"Feeling particularly mean today, Maggie?" Saint Just asked as he helped her put on her coat as she balanced on one leg.
"Well, he makes me so mad," she told him, jamming an arm into her sleeve. "Novack says he's fat because his mother overfed him. Is she tying him in a chair today, stuffing brownies down his throat? No, she is not. He's feeding himself. He's feeding himself right into that go-cart, and probably straight into a coronary. He can't keep blaming his mother for—oh, damn it!"
"Is that a bell I hear pealing, and so very close to home?"
Maggie rolled her eyes. "I know, I know. Looking at Novack is like looking in a mirror. Granted, a much larger mirror, but you know what I mean. It's probably why I get so mad at him—and feel so sorry for him."
"Far be it from me to attempt to stand in lieu of the esteemed Doctor Bob, but I do think you're making something of a breakthrough here, sweetings."
"Yes, I know. I am, I know I am, and I'm here to tell you it isn't painless. And why now, Alex? I've got too much going on to go sit in a corner somewhere and contemplate my navel, or whatever. It's been three days since Dad was arrested, and we're nowhere. Less than nowhere. I can't stand to look at him, he looks so sad. I'm mad, I'm upset, I'm frustrated, and I'm looking for a target to take out all my aggressions on. Nobody is safe around me. Nobody. So consider yourself warned."
Saint Just took hold of her coat lapels, much as he had with Sterling earlier, but this time it wasn't to smooth an unruly collar. This time it was to pull Maggie closer so that he could capture her mouth with his own and kiss her with all the expertise eight novels extolling his romantic prowess had instilled in him.
She fought him, but it was a predictably short fight, and with an extremely satisfying capitulation at the end of it, as she lifted her arms up and around his neck, pulling him even closer.
"Am I safe around you, sweetings?" he whispered against her ear a few moments later.
"You don't play fair," she whispered back, her body melted against his. "I so admire that in a man."
There was another shower of pebbles against the window, this assault containing at least one fairly good-size stone that cracked hard against the glass.
"Unaware that I am perhaps saving his life, our co-conspirator becomes anxious," Saint Just said, helping Maggie as she steadied herself on the walker. "Ready now?"
"Ready to bump down two flights of steps on my backside to find out what Secret Squirrel has been up to at the bowling alley? Oh, sure. I've been itching to do this all day. Grab the list, will you? Maureen put the addresses on it. Might as well do as much as we can before I have to face the stairs again."
Chapter Twenty-One
Maggie made it to the bottom step on her own, wishing she'd let Alex carry her, and wondering if it was possible to develop calluses on one's backside.
Not that she'd ever ask anyone that question, as it was one of those questions that elicits too many questions in return.
She knew that because she'd been asking that sort of question for most of her life. Some kids in school, for instance, asked why the sky is blue. Normal stuff like that. But Maggie asked questions like, "If the sky is blue up there, and the grass is green down here—what color is the middle?"
Alex was right. She'd not been an easy child.
And life wasn't getting any easier now that she supposedly was an adult.
Case in point: one Henry Novack.
"Hi, Henry," she said as Alex steadied the walker and she got to her feet, because even wooden steps got cold in December. "Love the coat."
"Yeah?" Novack said, patting at it, as though checking it for flaws. "I got it on sale. I think it makes me look fat. You know, being white and all. Do you think it makes me look fat?"
"Don't," Alex whispered as Maggie opened her mouth. "Some things are just too easy to be fun."
"I heard that," Novack said, and then shrugged. "Hell, I am fat. Morbidly obese, right?"
"Stop saying morbidly, Henry," Maggie told him. "It's defeatist. It's also cold out here and I forgot to put a sock on over my cast and my toes are freezing. Where can we go to talk?"
"I got my van parked right over there," Novack suggested. "I can turn the heater on?"
"Terrific," Maggie said unenthusiastically. "Let's go. Does your heater work?"
"I don't know. I'm always pretty hot, so I don't really use it. Natural insulation, you know?" Novack said as he led the way across the street, his corduroy pants swish-swishing together between his thighs, the shiny white material of his jacket keeping up an accompaniment every time he swung his arms. He looked and sounded, to Maggie, rather like a windup toy—with only the key missing from his back. "You're going to like what I have to tell you, though. Well, probably not. But I did learn something."
"You reconnoitered at the bowling establishment last evening, Henry?" Alex asked as he helped Maggie pull herself up into the front passenger seat of the van.
"I hung out at the lanes, if that's what you mean. Don't you English ever say anything the easy way?"
Maggie grinned as she looked into the backseat of the van, watching Alex settle himself. "Alex got one of those learn-a-word-every-day calendars for Christmas, Henry. Today's word is reconnoiter. Right, Alex?"
Alex used his gloved hand to push several paper bags with the names of fast food restaurants on them to one side of the backseat. "Very true. And yesterday's word was exterminate. It has several meanings," he said, looking hard at Maggie. "Would you care for me to use it in a sentence?"
"I'll pass, thanks," Maggie said, turning around quickly, then holding onto the sides of the seat because Novack had gone around to the driver's side and climbed into the van, and Maggie feared for a moment that the thing would turn on its side. "You might want to consider new shocks, or springs, or something, Henry."
"I would, if I'd won three million dollars," Novack said as he pulled off his knit cap. "I'd buy a new go-cart, too, considering how the one back there," he said, indicating the rear of the van with a hitch of his thumb, "is all dinged up now."
"Oh, come on, I didn't hit you that hard," Maggie complained. "And you're the one who rammed me a second time."
"No, not you," Novack told her as he unwrapped a chocolate bar, getting it halfway to his mouth before Maggie grabbed it from him and tossed it out the window. "Hey!"
"It's for your own good, Henry. Isn't it, Alex?"
"I wouldn't know, my dear. I'm fully occupied attempting to decide if one of the many bags back here is moving."
"You guys aren't funny, you know that?"
"Sorry, Henry," Maggie said, wishing she'd taken a bite of the chocolate bar before littering the street with it. "Tell us what happened to your go-cart."
"And my jacket," Henry told them. "You know? The one I had on the other night? Sleeve's ripped all to hell now, which is why I look like the Michelin tires cartoon guy today."
"I thought a Zamboni ... but, then, you were on the go-cart when I first saw you, so I—"
"Maggie, focus if you will," Alex said warningly from the backseat. "I do believe Henry is telling us he had some sort of misadventure last evening. Am I correct in that assumption, Henry?"
"There he goes again, but I think I got the gist of that one," Novack said, once more hitching a thumb toward the backseat. "The lot was full, even the handicapped spaces, so I had to park my van down the block, you know, and take my go-cart. Some jackass didn't see me when I was leaving and ran me off the road into a ditch. I don't call that no misadventure, though. I call that a dumbass who had too much to drink at the lanes, that's what I call it."