Bingo Brown and the Language of Love (3 page)

“Front or back?”

Bingo smiled slightly. “Perhaps you should take it from the front so Melissa can see my face. Otherwise, she might not recognize me.”

“Oh, Bingo.” Cici blinked rapidly. “I meant front yard or backyard.”

“Just a little humor,” Bingo mumbled.

“Oh, I get it. … front … back.” With one finger—this was awkward because she had long, long nails—she pointed to her front and then her back. “Melissa told me how funny you are.”

She might be as big and blond as a college girl, but that was where the similarity ended, Bingo thought. “Backyard,” he said firmly.

In silence, Bingo led the way through the living room, the kitchen, past his apron and the half-skinned chicken breasts, out the back door.

“Oh, let’s do it over here by the fence,” Cici said. “The roses make a nice background. Melissa’s the kind that couldn’t care less about the background. She just wants a picture of you. I’m the kind that always likes to do my best.”

Bingo stood stiffly against the rosebush, with his hands in his pockets. He said quickly, “How’s this?”-

“It’s fine, but I’m not in focus yet.”

“Go ahead and take it,” he said through tight lips. He’d only been smiling for a short time, but the day was so hot his teeth were dry.

“There! I’ve almost got it.”

Why had he let this happen? Bingo wondered. Here he was with the sun in his eyes, smelling of mousse, while important chicken breasts waited to be skinned in the kitchen.

Well, he understood now man’s weakness for having his picture made. He was living proof of it. The trouble with living proofs was that you actually had to become the living proof before you—

A voice from the other side of the hedge said, “Hey, Worm Brain, is that you over there?”

It was Billy Wentworth!

Bingo pulled back into the rosebush. Thorns raked his arms, but he did not feel the sting. He wanted to pull the branches around him like a blanket and disappear.

“Take it! Quick!”

“All right! Oops! Now see what you made me do! My thumb was on the lens. I got a picture of my thumb. Now we’ve got to start all over again.”

“Hurry!”

But it was too late. Billy Wentworth, in his camouflage T-shirt, peered over the hedge. His monkey eyes landed on Bingo.

He gave a small smile, as if he had come across an enemy without any means of defense. “Here’s Misty and her stuff,” he said.

“In a minute,” Bingo said stiffly. The main reason he had chosen the back of the house was because there was less likelihood of being spotted. Now this!

Wentworth’s smile continued. “What are you taking the Worm Brain’s picture for?”

“I’m doing it for a friend of mine, you know, Melissa? She wants a picture of him.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. What does anybody want a picture for? To look at. Smile, Bingo.”

Bingo pulled his lips back into a smile.

“Not like that. Smile like you mean it.”

Bingo suddenly remembered how natural it had been to smile at Melissa. Sometimes, at night in the darkness, he had smiled just thinking of smiling at her.

“Perfect!” Cici said. “She’ll love it!”

The camera clicked and Bingo started gratefully for the hedge. Without meeting Wentworth’s eyes, he took Misty and her suitcase.

Cici followed. She said, “Oh, let me get one of you with the dog. This will be so precious. Hold the dog up! Oh, its face is so sweet. Could I pat it?”

Wentworth said, “Be my guest.”

Cici rushed forward and scratched Misty’s head with what Bingo now realized were Lee Press-on Nails, some of which needed repressing.

“Oh, and it has a little suitcase for its things. Can I look in it?”

Bingo surrendered the handle of the suitcase and stood stiffly, looking over the roof of his garage.

Cici knelt and unzipped the bag—another awkward move with the Lee Press-ons. She reached inside and pulled out a squeaky rubber newspaper.

“Oh, isn’t that precious? It has its own newspaper. And I can tell that it really plays with it. And dog food—oh, it eats Mighty Dog! Why, it’s too little for Mighty Dog, or maybe that’s why it’s eating it.” She looked into Misty’s damp eyes. “Are you trying to become mighty?”

Yes, Bingo thought, big blonds do not always have brains to match.

Cici browsed through the rest of the suitcase. “Oh, vitamins and a chew stick, and what’s this in the bottom?”

“Her blanket,” Billy Wentworth said.

Bingo turned in astonishment. He stared at Billy Wentworth. Billy’s voice had actually deepened on those two words, “her blanket.”

What was happening here?

“It’s like a real baby blanket.”

“It is a real baby blanket,” Wentworth said. His voice was almost purring with pleasure now, like a well-tuned engine. “It was mine.”

Bingo’s mouth dropped open as he gaped at the faded blue square. Billy Wentworth had once been a baby!

“She doesn’t have, like, you know, a basket or bed or something?”

“No, she just drags her blanket around and sleeps where she wants to.”

“That’s what a little neighbor of mine does! I baby-sit her. Bingo, is this darling little dog yours or”—she nodded to the face above the hedge—“his?”

“His.”

“And I,” the deep voice from the hedge said, “am Willy Bentworth.”

B
INGO SAID, “WELL, I’LL
be going now.”

He held out his hand for Misty. “The dog, please.” He said this in the formal way someone on TV asks for the official envelope.

Cici hugged Misty to her. “I’ll carry her inside for you.”

“That will not be necessary,” Bingo said.

“I can’t give her up yet. Please! I just love this little animal.” Billy Wentworth cleared his throat in a menacing enemy-sighted way. Bingo shrugged helplessly.

With a flick of her blond hair, a flash of Lee Press-on Nails, Cici turned. Bingo followed her to the steps and went up reluctantly.

In the kitchen Cici. spun around and said, “Who was that nerd?”

“Billy Wentworth. You don’t know Billy Wentworth?” Then Bingo remembered the deep-throated voice describing the dog blanket and added kindly, “He makes a bad first impression, but you get used to him.”

“Ugh, I can’t stand jocks.”

“Actually, he’s not a jock. He’s more into army stuff, ammo. He led our T-shirt rebellion last year. Perhaps you saw him standing on the garbage can at recess, or on the school steps, waiting for a face-off with the principal.”

“I must have been sick that day. Anyway, I know a jock when I see one. My mom married three of them.”

Bingo stood awkwardly in the center of the kitchen. He waited; then, when it became obvious that Cici was not going to leave, he reached manfully for his apron and tied it on.

“You will have to excuse me now, I am preparing, er, chicken chests.”

He grimaced. He was sorry he hadn’t been cool enough to say breasts, but it was done now.

“Oh, can I watch? I’ll sit over here and hold Misty. I won’t bother you at all.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Misty’s mouth is already watering for some chicken, isn’t it, Misty? Do you have any paper napkins, Bingo?”

Bingo didn’t answer. He turned on the oven—350—and bent over his recipe book. He had decided to pretend that no blonds were present.

Misty was watching him with her blank, all-seeing stare, but Bingo ignored that, too.

“Oh, here they are.” Cici pulled out a napkin and dabbed at Misty’s receding chin. Then she turned her attention to Bingo. “You’re probably wondering about how I came to have three jocks for fathers. Everybody does.”

She waited for Bingo to answer, but there was only the sound of chicken skin being ripped firmly from chicken breasts.

“The first was my real father. He was a golf pro. He and my mom split up, and she married a man who used to play tight end for the Atlanta Falcons.”

Bingo browned the chicken chests. Over the sizzle, he heard, “I was flower girl in that wedding. Then they split up, you know, and my mom married a man who manages the Nautilus. They pump iron together. I was the junior bridesmaid in that wedding.”

Bingo poured the sauce over the chicken and slid the casserole into the oven.

“If she ever gets married again, I guess I’ll be maid of honor.”

Bingo wiped his hands on his apron.

“So, you see, I do know something about jocks.”

Bingo got out the salad. He had already cut up the lettuce and vegetables and had planned to toss it, cheflike, at the table as a diversion for his parents. Now he had to do it as a diversion for himself.

“Can I tell you something?”

Bingo said, “If you like,” but he did not let up on his tossing.

“You are a wonderful cook,” Cici said.

Lettuce fluttered nervously into the air and onto the counter as Bingo’s head snapped up in alarm. “No, I’m not. I promise I’m not!”

He was only beginning to understand how important it was that this girl not like him. The thought surprised him. It had never even occurred to Bingo that the day would come when he would actually want to be disliked.

And, furthermore, he didn’t want
any
big blonds to like him. He wanted them to avoid him, to cross the street when they saw him coming.

It was strange how just one experience with a big blond could made a man yearn for a small brunette.

“I’m very careless; I don’t measure stuff,” he blurted out, gathering up the stray salad and dropping it back in the bowl. “Half the time I don’t even wash my hands.”

“Real chefs don’t either. I’ve watched them on TV. I wish you could see the way my mom fixes meals. She just, you know, covers everything with bean sprouts.”

“Smells good!” Bingo’s mom called cheerfully from the front door.

Bingo swirled, stricken.

“Quick! Go out the back door. Give me the dog! Go on! Go!”

“Why?”

“It’s my mom!”

“What does your mom have to do with it?”

“Just go!”

Bingo and Cici had a brief tug of war over Misty. Bingo won, but he staggered back and landed hard against the refrigerator door.

Condiment bottles clinked inside. Liquids sloshed. Ice cubes rattled.

“What on earth is going on back there?”

Bingo’s mom started across the living room.

“Nothing, Mom,” Bingo called. “Don’t come in. Please! I want supper to be a surpr—”

He didn’t get to finish because his mom was already there. She stopped in the doorway, taking in the domestic scene. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the blond.

Bingo put Misty on the floor. He smoothed down his apron modestly.

His mom’s face tightened in a way Bingo had never cared for. “So! What is going on back here?”

“She was just leaving,” Bingo stammered. “She was holding the dog so I could cook, and then I was trying to get the dog, and she was, well, she was just getting ready to leave, weren’t you?”

“Mrs. Brown?” Cici said in a cool, woman-to-woman way.

His mom responded with equal coolness. “Yes?”

“My name is Cici, with two
i’
s, you know, and I probably ought to explain to you why I’m standing here in your kitchen.”

“Probably.”

Bingo said, “Just go home, please,” to Cici.

He turned to his mother with bright desperation. “Mom, I made chicken in tarragon sauce, well, actually it’s oregano sauce because we didn’t have any tarragon, but since we didn’t have the tarragon, I won’t count this as one of my meals. I’ll just throw it in for—”

His mom said, “Be quiet, Bingo. That can wait. Go on, Cici. I really would like to know what you’re doing in my kitchen, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all, Mrs. Brown. You’re probably going to think this is silly, but I have this real good friend named Melissa. She moved to Bixby, Oklahoma, last spring. Did you know that?”

“It’s come to my attention.”

Bingo’s mom had gotten new clothes for her real estate career, and when she had them on, she acted—Bingo thought—very, very businesslike, too businesslike.

“Well, Melissa wrote and asked me to take a picture of Bingo, and so I came over with my camera, and after I took his picture—actually, I took two pictures—no, three, but one was of my thumb.”

She held up her thumb as if she were bumming a ride. “You know how sometimes you put your thumb on the lens when you’re nervous?” She flexed her thumb twice. “I wouldn’t have been so nervous if it hadn’t been for this nerd looking over the fence. So then …”

Bingo closed his eyes as the miserable tale droned on. He leaned back and let the refrigerator keep him from falling to the floor.

Mentally he began going over the multiple listings he would put under “Trials of Today,” starting with:

1. A mixed-sex photography session.

Under “Triumphs” he would once again have only the one word: none.

B
INGO LAY ON HIS
Smurf sheets. Misty lay on her blanket beside Bingo’s bed. Misty was snoring softly. Bingo was awake.

There was a knock at the window.

“I’m not here,” Bingo called.

“It’s me, Worm Brain.”

“I know.”

“And it’s important.”

“Wentworth …” It was a plea.

The knocks got louder. Slowly Bingo pulled himself up and went to the window.

Wentworth said, “Hey, you know that blond girl that was taking your picture this afternoon, the one who sort of liked me?”

“Yes.”

“What was her name?”

“Cici.”

“Cici.” Wentworth spoke it like an agreeable Spaniard. Then he said, “How come I never saw her before?”

“She’s not in our grade.”

“She’s older?”

Bingo shook his head.

“Younger?”

Bingo nodded.

“She can’t be younger. She’s built like a twin-engine—”

“Good night.”

Bingo didn’t wait to hear what twin-engine vehicle Cici was built like. He collapsed on his bed.

“Knock, knock,” his mom said. “Can I come in?”

“Apparently you already are,” Bingo said coolly.

“Oh, Bingo, maybe I did misinterpret the scene in the kitchen this afternoon, but when I came in the front door I heard scuffling sounds in the kitchen, and then when I came into the kitchen, there you were with this—this woman!”