Bad Boy (7 page)

“You brought flowers?” Tracie cried, her hands flapping in exasperation. “God, that stinks of desperation.”

“Maybe that’s why it lasted eleven minutes. We’d hardly begun to talk when she said she’d left clothes in the dryer and didn’t want them to wrinkle.”

“That’s a new wrinkle in lame excuses,” Tracie told him. They both let the horror of it sink in for a few moments. Then, as always, Tracie brightened. Jon was certain her optimism was genetic. “Oh, forget about it. I’m sure she wasn’t a natural redhead anyway. The drapes never match the rug.” Jon managed a
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grin and Tracie grinned back. “So what about Saturday night? You know, the date with that woman you work with? The one you yearn for with the lust of a thousand pubescent boys. What’s-her-name?”

“Sam. Samantha,” Jon reminded her. For a moment, he wondered why he always knew every friend and boyfriend of hers by given, middle, and nicknames but she . . . He sighed. “Actually, it was worse,” he admitted.

“How could it possibly be worse than an eleven-minute look-see?”

“Well, for one thing, I was meeting her outside. For another, it was raining. And for a third, she never showed.”

Tracie’s lower lip dropped in real surprise. Then she exaggerated it, just to cover. “She
totally
stood you up? She wasn’t just late? I mean, you waited long enough?”

“Two hours.”

“Oh, Jon! You stood in the rain for two hours?”

“Yeah. I didn’t mind that as much as the fact that I have to see her tomorrow at work.”

“Ouch!” Tracie winced, his upcoming humiliation on her face, then tried to recover. “At least tell me she called and left a message with a plausible lie,” she begged.

“Neither. No message at home, work, not even an E-mail. And I’d left messages for her on all three.”

Tracie grimaced. Jon flushed, embarrassed again. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said.

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Jon got defensive. “Well, what should I have done?”

Tracie narrowed her eyes. “It reminds me of the Dorothy Parker line: ‘ “Shut up,” he explained.’ ”

“But how else could she know I was waiting?”

“Like she needed to? You weren’t humiliated enough already?”

Now she was irritated with him. Jon saw something in her face that looked too much like pity. “Well. What else could I do?”

Before Tracie could answer, Molly returned to their table, obviously drawn by bits of the conversation she’d overheard. “Find girls who want to date you? An older woman, perhaps,” Molly suggested as she batted her eyes at him. Tracie didn’t even look up but Jon managed a wan smile. “Oh, I guess that’s a dumb idea. But then I didn’t go to college.” She whisked their empty plates away and sashayed back to the kitchen.

Tracie sighed. “Okay, Jon, you win. Your weekend was worse. I think that’s eighty-three consecutive weeks. A new world record.” She scribbled on a Post-it pad she pulled from her purse and stuck it on Jon’s shirt. It had a blue ribbon drawn on it.

“Great. Winner of the Losers.”

Tracie stopped to consider him for a moment. “You know, it’s not
all
your fault. Women tend to gravitate to . . . trouble. Men who are . . . challenges. You know, on Friday, my friend Laura arrived . . .”

“Laura? She finally came? Will I at last get
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to meet Laura?” Jon had been hearing about Laura for years.

“Sure, but the point is, she’s come to stay with me since she broke up with Peter. She’s nuts about him, but Laura calls him an IPPy
‌
—”

“And that would be?”

“An Intimacy-Phobic Prick. So I think maybe women prefer pricks until they give up on them.”

“It’s not fair; I try so hard.”

“To be a prick?”

“No. Not to
‌
—”

“I know. That was a joke. But see, maybe that’s the point: You try too hard and you’re . . . too nice.”

“How can you be
too
nice?”

“Jon,
you’re
already too nice.
You’re
too considerate. I mean, look at the data. Today, you visited your mom
and
all wicked stepmothers. You’re too nice.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jon told her.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Tracie agreed. “It doesn’t even make sense to us. And I don’t think we like to suffer. But I know we hate to be bored. Take Phil, for example: He fascinates me. He keeps my life so interesting.”

“He’s a bass player, for God’s sake,” Jon said, totally exasperated. “Dumber than dirt.
And
self-involved.
And
selfish. You call
that
interesting?” he asked, then realized he’d probably gone too far and maybe hurt her feelings.

Tracie only smiled. “You have something
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against guys who play four-stringed instruments or something?”

Jon calmed himself. “Not all. Just him. He’s not worthy.”

“But he’s so cute. And the sex!” She blushed.

Jon looked away. That was his punishment for going too far. There were some things he didn’t need to know. He sighed. “I’d give anything to be able to land chicks the way guys like Phil do. If I could just learn to get dumb. Or pretend to be selfish . . .” He paused. “Hey, Tracie, I’m getting an idea.”

“You
always
have ideas,” she said, getting up. “That’s why you’re the Intergalactic Alchemist of Cosmology Development and Systems Conception Worldwide, or whatever it is you are over there in Micro Land.”

“No. Not an idea like that,” Jon said, getting up to join her. She couldn’t leave yet. “I mean an idea about my
life
.”

“Great. Can we discuss this next week? I need to go to the supermarket.”

“For what? Panty hose?” Tracie hadn’t been inside a supermarket in years.

“No. For baking soda. And flour.”

“Are you doing a science project? Or is it something for your hair?”

“It’s to bake,” Tracie said, attempting a dignity she couldn’t quite achieve with him.

“Since when do you bake? And why do you need to at midnight?” Jon knew Tracie well enough to know that she thought the black thing in her kitchen with the door in the front was where you stored extra shoes. And he hoped
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to God she didn’t have buns in her oven. “Is this some trick to try to get Phil to turn over and play dead? Because your baking will kill him . . . not that that’s a bad thing.”

“I’m not going to dignify any of that with a response,” Tracie said, rising.

Jon got up, too. He didn’t want to show how desperate for company he was. And also he was interested in the mystery of Tracie’s new domesticity. Then it came to him. “It’s your friend, your friend Laura from San Antonio. Isn’t Laura a chef?”

“So what?” Tracie said as she shrugged into her jacket. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to do things, too.”

“You know how to do a lot of things,” Jon agreed. “You’re a really good writer, a good friend, and you know how to dress. You’re great at picking out gifts for mothers. But baking . . .”

Tracie gave him a look. “She’s from Sacramento,” she corrected him, which was her way of acknowledging he was right.

Jon smiled. “I’ll help you grocery shop,” he offered.

“What? Don’t you have to work, or sleep? You always need to do one or the other. Anyway, it’s the most boring thing in the world.”

“Not to a man who offered to fold laundry and was turned down,” Jon pointed out. “I can push the cart for you.”

“If that’s what you want.” Tracie shrugged and started to walk away from the booth as Jon went through his pockets and hurriedly threw
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a twenty onto the table. Without turning around, Tracie spoke: “You’re overtipping again. See, your problem
is
that you’re just too nice.” Tracie shook her head as she wound her way through the deserted tables. “Women don’t want nice guys.”

Jon’s excitement was mounting. Exactly. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? It was perfect, a conception that came to him complete from beginning to end, as the Parsifal project had. He had to get Tracie to understand, to agree, and to make his vision a reality. But he was good at that. “See you next week,” Jon shouted to Molly, then caught up with Tracie as she walked through the door.

“So what’s your idea?” Tracie asked as she pulled a shopping cart from the corral. “If you’re planning another fake, on-line Girls of the Silicon Forest calendar, I’m out.”

“Come on, Tracie. I’m serious. I gotta make a change before I need Viagra.”

“Oh, don’t be so overly dramatic,” Tracie told him as they walked up the paper-goods and health-care products aisle. She looked him over with her peripheral vision as they panned the dairy counter. “Your sell-by date hasn’t expired. You’re good for another two or three years yet.”

“I’m not being dramatic. I’m being realistic.” He took a deep breath. He had to get her cooperation. “I want you to teach me to be a bad boy,” he said.

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Tracie was about to pass the hair-care products when she stopped and turned around to look directly at Jon. “Huh?”

He felt his heart actually thumping against his ribs. He gulped down a breath. “I want you to train me to be the kind of guy that girls always go for. You know, the kind of guy you’re always going with. Phil. Before him, Jimmy. And you remember Roger? The skin-popper. He was
really
bad. And you were nuts about Roger.”

“
You’re
nuts,” Tracie said, and pushed the cart forward, leaving him behind her. She grabbed a bottle of Pert
‌
—a shampoo she’d never select if she wasn’t flustered
‌
—and Jon quickly caught up to her in the almost-deserted baking-supplies aisle.

“Please, Tracie. I really mean it.” He had to both calm her and create a wave of enthusiasm. He reminded himself that he knew how to build project teams.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you want to be a bum? Anyway, it’s impossible. You could never act
‌
—”

“Yes, I could. I could if you would teach me.” Overcome objections, he told himself. Then enlist her talent. “Remember what a good student I was in school? Come on, Tracie. Look at it as a challenge, a way to use all the research you’ve gathered from those tattooed boyfriends of yours.” He observed her interest. Now, create desirable opposition. “Otherwise,” he said, as casually as he could, “Molly is right.”

At the mention of the waitress’s name,
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Tracie stopped again and turned to face him. “Right about what?” she asked, brusquely. Then she turned away to examine the flour.

“Repetition compulsion,” he explained, his heart beating hard. He’d hooked her. “You’ve just been repeating yourself for no reason for the last seven years. Wasting time. But if you could become an alchemist . . .”

She crouched down, reading the label on one of the lower flour sacks. “Who would have thought there were so many different kinds of flour?” she asked, a mere distraction technique he’d simply wait out. “Do you think she wants sifted bleached or sifted unbleached or unsifted unbleached or unsifted bleached?”

Jon remembered Barbara’s biscuits of fifteen hours earlier and grabbed the presifted bleached. “This kind,” he said, handing her the package. She stood up and accepted the bag. “So how ’bout it? Will you teach me?”

She shrugged, placed the flour in the cart, and began to move down the aisle. “Okay,” she admitted. “Maybe I can write a pretty good feature and blow-dry my hair on a rainy day in Seattle without getting frizz. But I can’t bake, and no one could teach
you
to be bad. You can’t be bad, so this can’t be serious.” She turned away.

Jon suddenly felt desperate. He imagined seeing Samantha at work the next morning and could hardly bear it. Plus, Tracie was right: It was much worse that he had called. What made him so unutterably stupid at times?

But despite her disclaimer, Tracie could help
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him, if only she would. She held the key, but she wouldn’t give it up. What kind of friend was that? He told himself he had to go for a strong close. He’d succeeded in getting million-dollar project allocations. He could do this. He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around, looking directly in her eyes. “I’ve never been more serious in my life. And you’re the only one who can help. You know all my dirty little habits
and
you’ve got your Ph.BB. You majored in Bad Boys all through college and you’re doing your graduate work at the
Seattle Times.
”

“Well, it would be a challenge, that’s for sure,” Tracie said, smiling at him. With affection. Yes! he cried to himself, though he didn’t let his victory show. Tracie raised her eyebrows and with them her last objection. “But why would any alchemist want to turn gold into lead?” she asked, and took his hand warmly.

“Because the gold really wanted to change,” Jon told her. “What if the gold
begged
the alchemist?” He knew, right away, he’d gone too far.

She let go of his hand. “I don’t think so, Jon. I love you just the way you are,” Tracie said, sounding just like his mother.

“Yeah, but no one else does,” he reminded her, but it was too late. She shrugged and again moved down the aisle.

“I couldn’t do it. Hey, did I say baking soda or baking powder?” she asked, looking at dozens of each stacked neatly on the shelf.

“You said soda,” he told her. “And you could make me over if you wanted to.”

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Tracie paused. He hoped she was considering the project, but after another minute she shook her head. “I think I have to get baking soda. But maybe it was baking powder.”

Jon sighed. “What’s the difference?” he asked, dispirited.

“You use them for different things.”

“Duh. And what would those things be?” he asked. He was angry with her and he wasn’t going to let her get away with anything. “And how are they different?”

“Baking powder makes cakes rise.”

“I can read cans, too, Tracie,” he told her. “So what about baking soda?”

“Well, you can brush your teeth with it and you put it in your refrigerator to deodorize it.”

“And your friend from Santa Barbara forgot her Crest or was knocked over by the odor of your Frigidaire?”