Just before one o'clock on Saturday, while waiting for Suzanne and Beth to arrive, Ivy was glancing over the day's special orders. As always, they were scrawled on Post-it notes and stuck on the wall. Ivy read one of the tags twice, then pulled it off. Couldn't be, she thought, couldn't be. Maybe there were two of them. Two guys named Tristan Carruthers?
"Lillian, what does this mean? 'For pick-up: Bl Blup Wh and 25 pnc.'?"
Lillian squinted at the paper. She had bifocals, but they usually rode her chest at the end of a necklace.
"Well, twenty-five plates, napkins, and cups, you know that. Ah yes, for Tristan Carruthers- an order for the swim team party. Blue blow-up whale. I've already got it ready. He called to check on the order this morning."
"Trist-Mr. Carruthers called?"
Now Lillian reached for her glasses. Settling them on her nose, she looked hard at Ivy. "Mr.
Carruthers? He didn't call you Miss Lyons," she said.
"Why would he call me anything?" Ivy wondered aloud. "I mean, why did my name come up?"
"He asked what hours you were working. I told him you take lunch between one and one-forty-five, but otherwise you'd be here till six." She smiled at Ivy. "And I put in a few good words for you, dear."
"A few good words?"
"I told him what a lovely girl you are, and what a shame it is that someone like you couldn't find a deserving gentleman friend."
Ivy winced, but Lillian had removed her glasses again, so she didn't notice.
"He came into the shop last week to place the order," Lillian continued. "He's quite a chunk."
"Hunk, Lillian."
"Pardon me?"
"Tristan's quite a hunk."
"Well, she's finally admitting it!" said Suzanne, striding into the store. Beth came in behind her.
"Good work, Lillian!" The old woman winked, and Ivy stuck the Post-it back on the wall. She began to dig in her pockets for money.
"Don't expect to eat," Suzanne warned her. "This is an interrogation."
Twenty minutes later, Beth was just about finished with her burrito. Suzanne had made inroads on her teriyaki chicken. Ivy's pizza remained untouched.
"How should I know?" she was saying, waving her arms with frustration. "I didn't get into his medicine cupboard!" They had hashed and rehashed and interpreted and reinterpreted every detail that Ivy had observed about Gregory's room.
"Well, I guess you've only been there one night," Suzanne said. "But tonight, maybe. You must find out where he's going tonight. Does he have a curfew? Does he-" Ivy picked up an egg roll and stuffed it in Suzanne's mouth. "It's Beth's turn to talk," she said.
"Oh, that's all right," Beth said. "This is interesting."
Ivy opened Beth's folder. "Why don't you read one of your new stories," she said, "before Suzanne makes me totally crazy."
Beth glanced at Suzanne, then cheerfully pulled out a sheaf of papers. "I'm going to use this new one for drama club on Monday. I've been experimenting with in medias res. That means starting right in the middle of the action."
Ivy nodded to her encouragingly and took the first bite out of her pizza.
"'She clutched the gun to her breast,'" Beth read. "'Hard and blue, cold and unyielding. Photos of him. Frail and faded photos of him-of him with her- torn-up, tear-soaked, salt-crusted photos lay scattered by her chair. She'd wash them away with her own blood-'" "Beth, Beth," Suzanne cut in. "This is lunch. Something a pound lighter?"
Beth agreeably shuffled through the papers and began again. '"She clutched his hand to her breast. Warm and damp, soft and supple-'" "His hand or her breast?" Suzanne interrupted.
"Quiet," said Ivy.
"'-a hand that could hold her very soul, a hand that could lift'-a whale, a blue plastic whale, I think. What else could that be?"
Ivy turned around quickly and looked across the mall to the shop. Betty was holding up a big piece of blue plastic and chatting away to Tristan. Lillian was standing behind Tristan at the shop entrance, beckoning furiously to her. Ivy glanced at her watch. It was 1:25, halfway through her lunch break. "She wants you," said Beth.
Ivy shook her head at Lillian, but Lillian kept waving at her.
"Go get 'im, girl," said Suzanne.
"No."
"Oh, come on, Ivy."
"You don't understand. He knows I'm on lunch break. He's avoiding me."
"Maybe," said Suzanne, "but I've never let a thing like that stop me."
Now Tristan had turned around and, noticing Lillian's imitation of a highway flagman, surveyed the crowd in the food court until his eyes came to rest on Ivy. Meanwhile, Betty had managed to hook the inflatable whale up to the store's helium canister.
"Yo!" exclaimed Beth as the whale took on a life of its own, growing like a blue thundercloud behind Tristan and Lillian. Betty disappeared on the other side of it. She must have cut it loose suddenly, for it rose to the ceiling. Tristan had to jump to nab it. Beth and Suzanne started laughing. Lillian shook her finger at Ivy, then turned to talk to Tristan.
"I wonder what she's saying to him," Beth said.
"A few good words," mumbled Ivy.
Minutes later Tristan emerged from the shop clutching the bag of party stuff, which had been tied up by the sisters with a fancy blue bow. The whale trailed above and behind him. He kept his eyes straight ahead and marched toward the mall exit. Suzanne called out to him.
Bellowed, actually. He couldn't pretend not to hear her. He looked in their direction and then, with a rather grim expression on his face, made his way toward them. Several small children followed him as if he were the Pied Piper.
"Hi," he said stiffly. "Suzanne. Beth. Ivy. Nice to see you."
"Nice to see you," Suzanne said, then eyed the whale. "Who's this? He's kind of cute. Newest member of the swim team?"
Ivy noticed that Tristan's knuckles were white on the hand that held the whale's string. Muscles all the way up his arm were tense and bulging. Behind him, the kids were jumping up and down, punching at the whale.
"Actually, the newest member of my act," he said, and turned to Ivy. "You've seen part of it- the carrot and shrimp-tail routine I do? I don't know what it is. Eight-year-olds find me irresistible."
He glanced back at the kids. "Sorry, got to go now."
"Noooo!" the kids cried. He let them take a few more bats at the whale, then left, weaving his way quickly through the Saturday shoppers.
"Well!" huffed Suzanne. "Well!" She poked Ivy with her chopstick. "You could have said something! Really, girl, I don't know what is wrong with you."
"What did you want me to say?"
"Anything! Something! It doesn't matter-just let him know it's all right to talk to you."
Ivy swallowed hard. She couldn't understand why Tristan did some of the things he did. He made her so self-conscious.
"You always feel self-conscious at first," Beth said, as if reading Ivy's thoughts. "But sooner or later you'll figure out how to act around each other."
Suzanne leaned forward. "Your problem is that you take it all too seriously, Ivy. Romance is a game, just a game."
Ivy sighed and glanced at her watch. "I've got ten more minutes on break. Beth, how about finishing your love story?"
Suzanne tapped Ivy's arm. "You've got two more months of school," she said. "How about starting yours?"
Ivy stood barefoot on the clammy floor, curling up her toes. The humidity and the pool's strong smell of chlorine invaded the locker room. Metal doors slammed and the cinder-block room echoed like a cave. Everything about the pool area gave her the creeps.
The other girls in the drama club were checking out one another's suits, rehearsing their lines, and giggling self-consciously.