“Oh,” I said. “Fruit Loops. You have any?”
Fortunately Christine had a box, and I took it into the bathroom with Alex.
I threw a couple into the bowl. “Here's a cool game,” I said. “You have to put your pee right in the middle of a Fruit He tried, and he did pretty good - hit the bowl anyway I told Christine the trick when we came out, and she smiled and shook her head. ”Fruit Loops. It's a guy thing, right?"
Mary, Mary
Chapter 55
THE REST OF MY DAY in Seattle was less stressful and a lot more fun. I took Little Alex to the aquarium, and it was easy, and gratifying, to throw myself into the time I had with him. He stared wide-eyed at the tropical fish and made a mess of his chicken fingers and ketchup at lunch afterward. For all I cared, we could have spent the day in a bus terminal waiting room.
I loved watching him be himself, and also grow up. Every year it got better. AU. Like the great one.
My mind didn't get too weighed down again until we were back at the house that night.
Christine and I talked for a while on the front porch. I didn't want to go inside, but I didn't want to leave yet. And if I wasn't imagining it, her eyes were a little red. Ever since I'd known her, she'd had mood swings, but they seemed to be getting worse. “I guess it's my turn to ask if you're all right,“ I said. ”Are you okay?”
“I'm fine, Alex. Just the usual. Trust me, you don't want to hear about my stuff.”
“Well, if you mean romance, then you're right. But otherwise, go ahead.”
She laughed. “Romance? No, I'm just a little overextended these days. I do it to myself, always have. I'm working way too hard.”
I knew she was the new head at a private school nearby Other than that, I really didn't have a clue what Christine's life looked like anymore - much less why she had been crying before I got back to the house with Alex.
“Besides,” she said, “we agreed last time I would ask about you. How are you doing? I know it's hard, and I'm sorry for that, for everything that's happened.”
I told her in the briefest possible terms about the Mary Smith case, Nana's recent dizzy spell, and that Jannie and Damon were doing fine. I leftJamilla out of the conversation, and she didn't ask.
“I've been reading about that terrible murder case in the paper,” Christine said. “I hope you're being careful. It surprises me that a woman could be a killer.”
“I'm always careful,” I told her. There was all kinds of Irony going on here. Obviously, my job stood for a lot between Christine and me, and none of it was good.
“This is all so strange, isn't it?” she said suddenly “Was it harder than you expected, being here today?”
I told her that seeing Alex was worth whatever it took, but that honestly, seeing her was hard, too. “We've certainly had easier times than this, haven't we?” she asked.
“Yes, just not as parents.”
She looked at me, and her dark eyes were so intelligent, as they always had been. “That's so sad, Alex, when you put i that way.”
I shrugged, with nothing to say.
She put a tentative hand on my forearm. “I'm sorry; Alex. Really. I hope I'm not being insensitive. I don't know what you're feeling, but I do think I understand the position you're in. I just -“ She mustered up her next thought. ”1 just wonder sometimes what kind of parents we would have made. Together, I mean.”
That was it. “Christine, you either are being insensitive or you're trying to tell me something.”
She sighed deeply. "I'm doing this all wrong. As usual. I wasn't going to say anything today, but now I have. So, okay, here it is. I want Alex to have a two-parent life. I want him to know you, and believe it or not, I want you to know him. For everyone's sake.
Even mine."
I took a step back, and her hand fell limply away “I don't know what to say to that, Christine. I think it's obvious that I wanted the same thing. You're the one who decided to move out here to Seattle.”
“I know,” she said. “That what I really wanted to speak with you about. I'm thinking of moving back to Virginia. Tin almost sure that's what I'm going to do.”
My mind, finally, was completely blown.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 56
VANCOUVER WAS ONE of the Storyteller's favorite cities - along with London, Berlin, and Copenhagen. He flew up there on Alaska Air and arrived just in time to wait on a long line with about five hundred “visitors” from Korea and China. Vancouver was crawling with Chinese and Koreans, but that was about the only thing he didn't like about the beautiful Canadian seaport, and it seemed a minor complaint.
He had some movie business in town that took up most of the day and also put him in a dark mood. By five or so that night the was in a wretched state of mind, and he needed to get the bottled-up anger out somehow.
Know what I need? To tell somebody what's going on, to share.
Maybe not tell everything, but some of it - at least an idea of how incredible this whole thing was, this totally strange period of his life, this wilding, as he'd come to call it, this story.
There was this foxy red-haired producer he knew who was in Vancouver to shoot a TV movie. Maybe he should connect with her Tracey Willett had her own wilding period in Hollywood, starting when she was eighteen and COntiuu ing into her late twenties. She'd had a kid since and had apparently cooled her jets some.
But she kept in touch with him, and that had to mean something. He'd always been able to talk to Tracey, and about almost anything.
So he called her, and sure enough, she said she'd love to have dinner and drinks with him. About an hour later, Tracey called back from the movie set, The movie shoot was running late. Not her fault, he knew. Probably some hack director's fault. Some disorganized, arrogant, glorified art director two or three years out of film school.
So he didn't get to see Tracey until past eleven, when she came over to his room at the Marriott. She gave him a big hug and a sloppy kiss, and she looked pretty good for having worked all day “I missed you, sweetcakes. I missed you so much. Where have you been? You look great by the way So thin, good thin, though. The lean-and-hungry look, right? It suits you.”
He didn't know whether Tracey was still into blow, or booze, or whatever, so he had a little of everything on hand, and that's what they did - just about everything. He knew right away she wanted to fool around, because she told him she was horny for one of the stunt men on the movie and because of the way she sat on the couch, legs set apart, looking him up and down with those bedroom eyes of hers, hungry eyes just as he remembered. Finally, Tracey pulled up her top and said, “Well?”
So he took her to bed, where she complimented his new lean body again. Tracey did a little more coke; then she took off her blouse to let him admire her tits some more. He remembered the drill with Tracey - you had to talk about how sexy she was and touch her everywhere for about twenty minutes, then at least thirty minutes of very energetic humping because Tracey couldn't have an orgasm to save her life, and was always getting so close, but never quite there, so keep going, harder; faster; harder; faster; oh baby, baby, baby. And when he came inside her, she seemed to like it, and she held him close as if they were a couple again, even though they had never really been a couple.
Once the sexual preliminaries were out of the way it was his turn to really get off. They were out on his terrace overlooking the city and Tracey had her head on his shoulder.
Very romantic and cute, in a pathetic sort of way, like going on a date with Meg Ryan, or Daryl Hannah maybe.
“I want to tell you a little about what I've been up to,” he finally said. Until then, everything had been about her.