Telfair got to his feet and walked over to O'Sullivan. "You want to see something cute?"
"What's that?"
"Watch." Telfair reached out and touched his pet rat on the head. "Say goodbye to the nice gentleman, Charlie."
And with that, the rat got right up on his haunches, right there on Telfair's shoulder, and started chittering crazily.
"And people say you can't train rats," Telfair said. "But what the hell do people know anyway?"
O'Sullivan took one more look at the old man's Milk of Magnesia eyes and got out of there.
While two customers were in the back in the science fiction section, Richie told Marie his secret.
Two years ago Richie and his family had lived in the state capital, where his father was a bank president. As the son of a wealthy and prominent community leader, Richie's life had been enviably simple and full. Then came the sudden bank audit and his father's even more sudden pleading of guilty to an embezzlement charge. For the previous five years, it was revealed, Richie's father had been a secret addictive gambler, first going through the family's entire small fortune, then beginning to use bank funds. Richie's entire life changed. He went from being one of his school's most popular boys to somebody people whispered about, and pointed to and smirked at. His father was sentenced to ten years in prison and the family had been forced to move here to an apartment on a side of town that was barely respectable. His mother worked as a secretary in her brother's law office. How Richie and his two sisters would ever get through college was unknown at this point.
As Richie told Marie all this, she saw him suffer through embarrassment and pain. By the time he finished his story, his voice rasped with a very real agony. He was afraid for his father in prison-afraid that one of the inmates would stab him-and he was equally afraid for his mother. She was not in the best of health. The scandal had made her even weaker. And her stressful forty-hour-a-week job couldn't be doing her any good, either. Richie had taken a job at a local department store. Three nights a week and Saturdays he sold sports gear even though his interest in sports was minimal at best.
So there it was.
The secret hurt that was in his eyes but that he'd never talked about. The secret hurt that forced him to sit at the same table with the 'geeks.' She almost called him a geek-affectionately, of course-but she thought he might take it the wrong way. At least until he knew her better.
When he finished, he took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and said, "You mind?" He sounded as if he'd just finished making a long confession to a priest. He looked relieved, too.
She pointed to a sign above the door: NO SMOKING. "Brewster'd be awful mad."
"Maybe I'll step outside."
"Maybe you shouldn't smoke."
He grinned. "I figured you were the den mother type."
She grinned back. "Is that what I am?"
"No," he said, looking at her slyly, self-confidence coming back to his tone and face again. "What you are is cute. Very cute."
She felt exultant. Cute. Very cute. Maybe this first date was going to turn out just like her fantasy after all.
They were sitting on stools behind the counter with the cash register.
"Tell you what," he said.
"What?"
"Why don't I go out and have a cigarette and then go get us some Blizzards?"
"Only if you'll let me pay for my own."
"I really wish you'd let me pay for both of them." He smiled again and made a muscle with his bicep. He wasn't particularly muscular so that made his self-deprecating gesture all the sweeter to her. "That way I'd feel more macho."
"Well, if you'd feel more macho, maybe I'd better let you pay."
"Then next time you can pay."
"And will I get to be macho then?"
"You know," he said, crossing his eyes like an old vaudevillian comic, "That's a very good question."
Before she could respond, the pair from the back were at the counter. One young man-portly with long greasy hair-set down two science fiction paperbacks. The other young man- skinny and already balding even though he couldn't have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three-set down a copy of Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle.
As she checked them out-Richie still waiting around-she felt them staring at her. Occupational hazard, Brewster always told her. "You're so pretty, half the guys who come in here are going to have crushes on you. You wait and see." And so they did. While she was flattered by this kind of attention-heady stuff for a girl who usually thought of herself as some drab and crippled drudge-it also unnerved her. She didn't know how to respond.
When the two young men left, one of them pointing to a copy of an art magazine with a beautiful nude on the cover, Richie said, "Boy, you've got fans everywhere."
"They're nice guys. They come in here a lot."
"And I know why, too. To see you."
"They really like science fiction."
"They like you better."
"Strawberry."
"Huh?"
Tired of the subject of other boys-wanting to talk about
Richie if the subject had to be about boys at all-she said, "Strawberry. My Blizzard."
"Oh."
"You sound disappointed."
"Somehow I thought you'd be more adventurous. You know, a Blizzard with everything in it."
"Everything?"
"Sure-M amp;Ms and strawberries and 7-Up and-everything." He laughed. "It's the only way to live."
"Well, if you're going to go macho on me again I don't suppose I have any choice. Everything."
He was already on the way out the door. "You won't regret it. Believe me."
Then he was gone, the bell above the door tinkling, the air the sadder for his absence.
She couldn't believe how much closer she'd felt to him during the past fifteen minutes of conversation.
That was one thing her first date fantasy hadn't allowed for-real friendship to accompany the passion.
"Then do you know of a Marie Fane?"
"I think she's Kathleen's daughter. I'm not related to Kathleen but I know of her through a relative. She's like a shirt-tail cousin or something."
"How old would Marie be?"
The woman on the other end of the phone paused. "High school age or thereabouts, I'd guess."
"And her mother's name is Kathleen?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'll give it a try then. And thank you very much."
"Oh, you're most welcome. Like I said, we watch you on TV all the time. We like you a lot."
Chris Holland smiled. Sometimes a compliment could make you feel better than getting a new car. "Thanks again."
The woman hung up.
Chris put the phone down and said to Emily Lindstrom, "According to her there's a Kathleen Fane."
"Wonder why it isn't in the book?"
"Don't know. I'll try information."
They were still in the apartment Dobyns was using. The dead meat smell was as bad as ever.
When the wispy voiced male operator said "Information." Chris gave him the city and name she was looking for.
After half a minute, the live operator vanished and a recording took over.
"We're sorry but at the customer's request, the number is unpublished."
"Shit," Chris said, slamming the phone down. Then, "Excuse my French."
"What happened?"
"Unlisted number."
"Oh. Great. We've got to find this Marie Fane and warn her. Dobyns is on the way right now."