Bad Boy (8 page)

Tracie gave him a look, then shrugged and threw both products into the cart. She turned toward the front of the store and marched away. Jon followed her. He wouldn’t give up on this brainstorm. He hadn’t gotten where he was at Micro/Con without persistence. Maybe humor would work. He crouched down, holding on to the cart handle, and began begging, the way kids beg their mothers for stuff in all stores. “Please? Please will you? Please? Come on. I’ll do anything. I promise.”

Tracie glanced around, clearly embarrassed. “Get up!” she hissed. He knew she hated public scenes and was counting on it. “Jon,
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you have a great apartment, a terrific job, and you’re going to be rich
‌
—as soon as you cash in your Micro stock options.” She tried to ignore the old woman with a basket over her arm and the tall young man with a cart full of beer. “Get up,” she repeated. “There have been plenty of girls who liked you.”

He didn’t get up. “But not
that
way,” he whined. “It’s never
that
way. Women want me as a friend, or a mentor, or a brother.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Bitterness didn’t sell projects. Anyway, Tracie was one of those girls, foremost among them, but he didn’t need to say so.

“Come on. Stand up,” she begged again. “People are looking.” Actually, the two had wandered off and now there was only a clerk, who wasn’t looking, because he was too busy affixing price labels directly onto grapefruits. Tracie left him. Fine. He’d use her embarrassment against her. He could make it work for him. Tracie pushed the cart to the checkout line at the front of the store. Good
‌
—there were lots of people around. Jon helped Tracie put the groceries on the conveyor belt. Still on his knees, he whined loudly, “I want interesting girls. The hot girls. But they all want bad boys.”

“Get up,” she hissed. “You’re exaggerating.” Unfortunately, it was too late for a crowd to gather. He’d have to use his trump card: her innate honesty.

“Come on, Tracie. You know it’s true.”

“Well . . .”

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The cashier finally stared at the two of them. Then she shrugged and totaled the purchases. Tracie fished in her bag for the money. Jon sighed, stood up, and looked blankly at the rack of tabloids and women’s magazines. His knees were hurting. Begging was hard work. Then he noticed a
GQ
magazine. Some young movie star was on the cover, one who had recently dumped his girlfriend, publicly, on TV, right before the Oscars. Jon looked back at Tracie and pointed at the magazine cover. “I want to look like one of
those
kind of guys,” he said.

“It’s not just about looks,” Tracie told him, picking up her bag. “You’re good-looking . . . in a nice-guy kinda way.”

He took the bag from her and the two of them began to walk out. “Right. And that guy doesn’t look nice. He looks hot.
He
didn’t take his stepmoms out on Mother’s Day.” He turned back around and pointed to the guy on the cover. “What
did
he just do? You know.”

Tracie glanced at the magazine and shrugged. “He just told his new girlfriend that he’d like to see other people,” she told him, and walked out the exit.

Jon followed her. “I could do that! If I had a girlfriend. And if you’d help me,” he pleaded. “Look at it as your dissertation.” He ran back, grabbed the magazine as a reference point, threw a five-dollar bill on the counter, and raced after Tracie. “You’re an expert,” he told her. “Only you could distill all the rotten behavior that you found so adorable and inject me with it.”

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Tracie was at the door of her car, fumbling with the keys. She took the bag from him, opened her door, and got in. “Forget this, would you?” she requested. “You’re just having a larger dose of your weekly Sunday self-hate than usual. You’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Yeah. When I see Samantha,” he agreed glumly. “That will make me feel real fine.”

“Oh, Jon, just get on your bicycle and go home,” Tracie told him, so he did.

Tracie’s one-bedroom apartment was sunny, long, and narrow. It wasn’t exactly small, but the kitchen consisted only of a sink, a half-size refrigerator, and an old black gas oven
‌
—which she did keep her extra shoes in. Now, for privacy, a temporary screen concealed one end of the place, a “guest room,” so that Laura could have some privacy. Other than the cot, screen, and sofa, the only other real piece of furniture Tracie had in the living room was a desk covered with notes and photos and Post-its for article ideas. In fact, the whole apartment was covered with Post-it notes stuck on various surfaces.

Now at almost 2:00
A.M.,
after her day of
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sex with Phil and weird late-night breakfast with Jon, she was exhausted. She entered the place as quietly as she could. But Laura was up, busy with mixing bowls and cookie sheets. And
‌
—to Tracie’s complete surprise
‌
—Phil was there, too, lying on the sofa and strumming his bass guitar. He looked over at Tracie. “What took you so long? I blew off a rehearsal to be here. Plus, Bobby would have bought me free drinks because he just got his tax refund.”

Before she could answer, Laura responded, protective as usual. “It sucks to be you,” she told Phil cheerfully.

Tracie tried to ignore Phil. Phil was odd, and in some ways adorable. He showed his affection like this, by turning up because he missed her but not being able to admit it. Every time it happened Tracie got a kick out of it. He looked sexy, stretched out there, but he knew it, so she’d act cool. “What are you doing?” she asked Laura, who was cracking two eggs at a time into a bowl.

“Welding a crankshaft.”

‘You’re cooking something, aren’t you?” Phil said, as if he’d just discovered DNA.

“Not cooking. I’m
baking
,” Laura told him. She smiled at Tracie. “Did you get the baking soda?” Tracie nodded. Back in Encino, a weekend had never gone by without both brownies and sugar cookies. Laura baked from scratch, even back then. Tracie’s only contribution had been licking the bowl.

“My mother used to bake,” Phil offered. “Chickens, hams.”

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Laura rolled her eyes, then took a tray of cookies out of the oven. She lifted up one and gestured toward Phil. “Stupid want a cookie?” she asked with a cheery smile.

Tracie couldn’t believe it. She waited for Phil’s scowl, but instead he merely held out his hand. Tracie watched, amazed. Maybe the way to a man’s heart
was
through his stomach.

“Wow!” Phil said as he sucked down the sugar cookie. “These are
amazing
!”

“Yeah. Fat and sugar can be a really powerful mood elevator,” Laura said. “I’m hooked.” She patted her hip.

Tracie hated the way she put herself down. “Laura, what’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder?” Tracie asked.

“I know that,” Phil offered. “One’s a liquid and one’s not. Easy.”

Laura snorted. “Oddly enough, baking soda is not fizzy and you do not drink it through a straw,” Laura told him. She turned back to Tracie. “You know, baking soda is like cream of tartar. You don’t have to use them often, but when you need them nothing else will do. Boy, at Easter, I could have sold my supply of cream of tartar for more than you’d get for crack cocaine. The housewives of Sacramento were frantic.”

Tracie smiled. She’d forgotten how odd, how unique Laura’s humor was. Who else but Laura would be able to create a sentence combining crack and cream of tartar together.

“Cleanup time!” Laura announced, but Phil
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just picked up another cookie. Tracie shrugged. Phil didn’t clean up his own place. Laura began to wash dishes, so Tracie covered and finished putting away the last of the ingredients.

“What took you so long?” Phil asked her, wiping crumbs from his mouth.

Tracie moved Laura over by hitting her gently with her hip and washed her hands. “It was the weirdest night. Jon asked if I could do a makeover on him.”

Phil laughed. “A makeover on Techno-Nerd? What did he want to be made into?”

“Somebody more like you,” Tracie said as she sat down on the sofa and slipped out of her shoes.

“Mr. Micro T. Stock Option? Now,
that
is impossible,” Phil said. “The guy was born to wear glasses and work a day job. Day jobs were invented for people like him.” Tracie was about to jump to Jon’s defense, but then she noticed that Laura had left a bowl at the side of the tiny kitchen counter. She was about to bring it to be washed when she realized what it was. Gratefully, she picked it up and began to wipe the glass with her finger, then inserted the finger in her mouth.

“Just how many shares does he have, anyway?” Phil asked.

“Somewhere around thirty thousand, I think,” she said, shrugging as the sweetness hit her tongue.

“Wow! So he’s really rich. You’d think he’d never be lonely,” Laura said. “When do I meet him?”

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“Forget it,” Phil told her. “You’re better off with Jeff, and his IQ is in the double digits. But at least he has rhythm. He’s still talking about you.”

“Jon just doesn’t get opportunities with the kind of women he likes,” Tracie said.

“Too much money and you can’t get a honey,” Phil said. “And the guy wanted to be like me?” He laughed.

“Maybe I’m his type,” Laura observed.

Tracie ignored her. “And what makes you think you’re so impossible to imitate?” she asked Phil.

“Nothing. But he’s so fuckin’ lame. Totally void.”

“Yeah,” Laura agreed. “Never like a guy under thirty with a day job and a fortune in stock. That’s my motto.”

Phil missed her sarcasm and nodded. “Well, anyway, it’s hopeless. You couldn’t do it,” he told Tracie.

“
He
thinks I could do it,” Tracie retorted. Why was Phil so cruel when he spoke of Jon?

“Oh, Techno-Nerd thinks you can do anything.”

“She could do it if she wanted to,” Laura snapped at Phil as she rinsed off the last cookie sheet and retrieved the now-clean bowl from Tracie.

“Yeah. He has more faith in me than you do,” Tracie told him. “What if I did change him, make him a hottie?”

“You should, and maybe write a feature
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on it,” Laura said. “You know, a kind of day-by-day diary. People love makeovers.”

It was a good idea. Plus it would really antagonize Phil, and she was in the mood to do that now. “Yeah!” Tracie agreed.

“Yeah? What, are you crazy?” Phil asked. “Why would you want to waste time writing about crap as ridiculous as that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tracie said. “Everyone is interested in transformations. It’s archetypal. You know, like Jung.” Phil worshipped Jung. “The old Cinderella story.”

“But I thought you weren’t interested in
old
stories,” he said. “You’re interested in
new
stories.”

‘Yeah,” Laura said. “Phil showed me one of his new stories.” She caught Tracie’s eye. Her mouth curled into the W it made when she didn’t want to laugh.

“Really?” Tracie asked. Despite Laura’s contempt, she was hurt. Phil had rarely shown her any of his work. “What did you think?”

“I think it could have been improved by characters and a plot,” Laura opined. “Otherwise, it was great.”

“Thanks,” Phil said, as if he hadn’t just been insulted. “It’s a collective unconscious kind of thing.” Well, Tracie thought, he probably didn’t care about what Laura felt about writing. But why had he even shown her anything? “Anyway, even if you wanted to write crap like that, you couldn’t make it happen,” Phil added. “Making him cool would be like trying to refrigerate the Amazon. Too big a job. Impossible.”

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“Wanna bet I could?” Tracie asked.

“Bet what?” He reached out a finger to wipe the edge of her mouth, but Tracie dodged away. None of that stuff now, and certainly not in front of lonely Laura.

But there was a wager here. A legitimate way to address her gripes, teach Phil a lesson, and maybe move their relationship forward
‌
—or end it. “Bet you household money,” Tracie said, inspired.

“Whoa. I don’t pay household money.” He almost dropped the latest cookie he was conveying to his mouth.

“Exactly my point, Phil. You eat here and sleep here most of the time, but you don’t pay rent, or even chip in on the groceries.”

“You know I can’t, baby.” He looked over at Laura then put his arm around Tracie and walked her over to the screen. He lowered his voice. “I’m still paying off the amplifier, and right now I’m even behind on my share of the apartment rent,” he told her, gently pushing her toward Laura’s bed.

“Not here!” she said sharply. What was he thinking of? “Anyway, if you gave up your place . . .”

“I think this is the point in the conversation where I diplomatically withdraw to provide you with the privacy you so obviously require,” Laura said as she wiped her hands on the pathetic excuse for a dishcloth that Tracie had dug up somewhere. “I need a good, long, loud shower,” she told them, and disappeared into the bathroom.

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Phil took Tracie by the arm, went into the bedroom, pulled off his boots, and pulled her onto the bed. “Come over here,” he said, and reached out to her.

“Phil. Stop. Seriously! Listen to me for a minute,” Tracie insisted as he took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. “If you moved in . . .”

Phil removed his arm from her shoulder and slid it under the pillow. All at once the emotional temperature dropped fifty degrees. “Hey, I have to have my own space,” he told her, and turned to the wall, obviously wanting her to end the subject, or, better yet, fall asleep.

“But you were so sure about Jon. You afraid to bet?” Tracie egged him on. “If I can turn Jon into someone cool, would you give up your place and pay half the rent here?”

“It’s not going to happen,” he insisted.

“But if it did?”

He turned around, looked at her, and then grinned wolfishly. “I’d do whatever you wanted. But what if you can’t?”

Tracie thought about it some more. “Then you can use this place as a free hotel where you drop your laundry and eat your meals but never have to make the bed.” She paused again. “Oh, wait. You’re already doing that.”