Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (14 page)

Clover's hand slipped from my nephew's chest, down his quivering abdomen to linger at the belt that barely kept his corduroys on his hips.

A passerby, a young man in a yarmulke, carrying a backpack, shook his head and muttered, “Get a room.”

I had to do something.

On the corner, there was a trash can and a public telephone. In a burst of inspiration, I headed for it, juggling the box of cupcakes and scrabbling one-handed through my pockets for some change. Luckily, the phone hadn't been vandalized. I dialed Rawlins's cell number and fed coins into the phone.

Thank heaven the cell phone ruled every teenager's life. Rawlins answered his automatically. “Uh, yeah?”

“Rawlins,” I said sternly, “you're going to get arrested for that kind of behavior.”

“Huh?”

“I'm on the corner at the pay phone.”

He looked around, hastily disengaging Clover's hand from his pants. At the sight of me glaring at him, he nearly ripped the parking meter out of the pavement. “Uhm . . .”

“I'm coming over.”

“Oh—okay.”

By the time I had hung up the receiver and marched over to them, Rawlins had his libido sufficiently under control to pretend surprise. “Uh—uh, Aunt Nora!”

Clover took her arm away from his shoulder, tossed her head back and used her long fingers to rake her hair as if she were auditioning for a Pantene commerical. She took one look at me with my box of cupcakes and sighed with loathing.

My nephew swiped the back of his hand across his ear. “Aunt Nora, this—this is Clover.”

“Hello, Clover,” I said. “How nice to meet you.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

“We were just—you know, talking about stuff,” Rawlins said. “Stuff about—you know, just stuff.”

“How scintillating.”

As if I were invisible, Clover went back to eyeing Rawlins. “You're so hot,” she breathed. “I don't remember you being this hot.”

Rawlins turned an alarming shade of primrose. “Uhm . . .”

“I'm having a party.” She used her forefinger to trace an imaginary heart on his chest. “Friday night. It's supposed to be like my birthday, only it's not. Everybody cool is coming.”

“Oh,” said Rawlins. “Sounds great.”

“It's in a club. Chastize, do you know it? The owners are comping the space because I bring in, you know, business.”

“You do?” I couldn't imagine what business Clover might attract.

Clover ignored me and tossed her hair again. “Yeah, everybody cool wants to be with me. I'm gonna get written about in the newspapers and stuff.”

“Really?” Rawlins asked. “Aunt Nora writes a column for a newspaper.”

Clover gave me a longer scrutiny, but shook her head. “Not dressed like that, she doesn't. Anyway, I just got this new purse. Nice, huh? And these earrings. I kinda liked them when a boy gave them to me, but now I think they're gross. Do you think they're gross?”

“They look nice,” said Rawlins, except he wasn't looking at the earrings.

Clover toyed with the bangles on her wrist. “But these bracelets are so last week, right? I'm going to throw them away. Or maybe get some new ones for the party. So, you know, you should come, Raw.”

Rawlins was too mesmerized to understand her ploy. “What?”

“To my party.”

“Yeah, sure, great,” he said. “I'll be there.”

“I just wish I had some decent jewelry to wear.”

“Rawlins,” I said, “isn't Friday the night of the Spring Fling?”

“The what?”

“The school dance,” I said even louder. “You know, the tuxedo, the car?”

“Oh, right!” He was nodding. “Yeah, the Spring Fling.”

Clover's lip curled in teenage disgust. “You're not going to some loser fest, are you? How lame is that?”

“Well—”

“My party is way more cool than some school snooze. So you'll be there, right? I mean, you can use my name at the door and they'll let you in, even without ID.”

“Well.” Rawlins avoided my eye. “I'll try.”

“You're too hot for high school kids.” In full wheedle mode, Clover angled her body closer until her enormous breasts were directly beneath my nephew's nose. “Come about midnight. That's when things really start to rock.”

From the street, brakes squealed. Then a black Jeep pulled to the curb, and someone dressed in a khaki vest and baseball cap cranked down the window far enough to stick a camera out, aimed at Clover.

Another hair toss and eye roll. “Will you look at those guys? Are they ever going to leave me alone?”

“Who?” Rawlins was oblivious. “What?”

“The paparazzi,” she said. “They chase me everywhere. I can't escape. I gotta go, Raw. See you Friday, right? Ciao, baby.”

She gave him a deep, lingering kiss on the mouth in full view of the photographer, then squeezed my nephew's behind. I thought I heard Rawlins squeak, but she released him and strutted away, swinging her hips. The eye of the clicking camera followed her up the sidewalk to a fire hydrant where she'd left a gleaming BMW parked with one tire up on the curb. She struck a quick pose for the benefit of the photographer, then climbed into the car, and made a bad business of threading it out of its illegal parking spot before finally roaring up the street. She blew her horn just in case the photographer failed to notice her departure.

We watched the Jeep make a U-turn and follow, and I saw that the driver was the same photographer I'd seen snapping the girl's picture at Cupcakes the night before, the same girl I'd met in the bathroom.

“Is that Jane?”

“Who?”

“That girl with the camera.”

“I don't know. I wasn't looking at her.”

“Do we actually have paparazzi in Philadelphia?” I asked.

“Huh?” Rawlins wiped Clover's lip gloss from his mouth.

“And why Clover of all people? It's not like she's an actress.”

“She's hot.”

“Hot? Is that the only quality worth having anymore?” I rounded on Rawlins. “And exactly what do you think you were doing with her, young man?”

He hugged himself and turned as pink as a kid who'd just been nabbed for shoplifting Trojans. “I'm really sorry, Aunt Nora.”

He summoned a believably hangdog expression.

“It's not your fault,” I soothed, then caught myself. “No, wait a minute. It's completely your fault!”

“What am I supposed to do?” he cried. “She's a piranha!”

“You could have told her about Shawna, for one thing!”

“I know, I know. I hate lying. Look, I'm not going to her party, that's for sure.”

“Good,” I snapped. Then, softening, I said, “Hungry?”

“I guess.”

I offered him the box of cupcakes, but when he peeked into the cupcake box, Rawlins looked a little nauseated. “I'm not into sweets much. What about a pizza?”

To finance his snack, I handed over the nine dollars and change Rawlins had given me earlier. He drove me to the offices of the
Philadelphia Intelligencer
in the Pendergast Building and promised he'd be back in a couple of hours.

“Where will you go?” I asked. “Looking for Clover?”

“No.” He blushed again. “Maybe I'll pick out some flowers for Shawna.”

“Good idea.”

I kissed him good-bye, and went into the lobby, through the security checkpoint and up the elevators to the floor I shared with the rest of the writers from the Features department.

I had inherited the social column when Kitty Keough died after twenty-five years of high-society gossip. Since then, I'd struggled to keep up her schedule and her readership. Although I knew the city's social set better than most local football fans understood the Eagles' playbook, I found I didn't have Kitty's poisoned pen when it came to tattling tales. I was struggling to keep her readers flipping to the back page every day. My editor had already begun to wonder if the society page was a dinosaur that had wandered into the tar pit.

But the other writers in the department welcomed me—never more so than when I came bearing a box from Verbena's Bakeshop.

Skip Malone, the sportswriter, lifted a cupcake out of the box the instant I stepped off the elevator. “Hey, Nora, how's the rubber-chicken circuit?”

Mary Jude Yashurick, the food writer and the occupant of the desk closest to mine, savored her first bite with a swoon that spun her swivel chair in a complete circle. “You're a lifesaver!” She sucked frosting from her fingers, then tried to keep the crumbs off her bright yellow sweater by cupping her other hand beneath her chin as she ate the rest. “I need a sugar rush.”

“I was hoping to mooch some lunch from you.”

Mary Jude blinked at me. “Not in the mood for cupcakes?”

“Not exactly.”

“Upset stomach?”

“Nothing serious. I'm hoping for something bland.”

“I probably have something.” She hooked the handle of her desk drawer with the toe of her shoe and tugged it open to reveal her stash of goodies—samples sent by various food manufacturers. Under a mound of cake mixes, a freeze-dried lasagna and a lone can of macadamia nuts, she found a sleeve of organic wheat crackers. She tossed it to me. “Here you go. If it's organic, it's probably tasteless enough for you.”

I hefted the crackers in my hand. “Thanks.”

She unpeeled the rest of the wrapper from her cupcake. “You've been kinda scarce lately, Nora.”

I heard the polite suspicion in her tone. “A touch of the flu got me down, but I'm bouncing back.”

“Going out every night to cover the party scene?”

“Almost every night, yes.”

“Because if I didn't know better . . .”

I pretended to read the label on the crackers and didn't dare glance at my friend.

When I didn't respond, she scooted her chair closer to my desk. “You know, Nora,” she said in a lower voice, “I may look like a girl who fell off a turnip truck, but I didn't land on my head.”

Mary Jude had a top-notch Ivy League education, but now a single mom, she worked hard to earn the meager salary the
Intelligencer
paid so she could have the flexible hours needed to take care of her mentally challenged son, Trevor.

She said, “If you've got a problem, you can ask me anything. I know my way around all the resources, and I'm not judgmental. I can help, no matter what you decide to do.”

“Is it getting obvious?”

“That you popped up a bra size? Turn green at the thought of food? Yeah, to an observant expert in girl trouble like me, it's starting to look like you're thinking about a trip to the clinic.”

I felt a rush of emotion. Afraid to speak of my pregnancy, I had missed out on the kind of support a good friend could offer. I shook my head. “I don't think I can do that, Mary Jude.”

She polished off the cupcake, folded up the wrapper and tossed it into the trash can. “Me, neither. But I know your personal life is messy at the moment.”

“A little.”

“The mob boss is out of the picture, though, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you're seeing a hunk from the
Inquirer
now?”

“Maybe I'm better off solo,” I said, still not ready to tell anyone who had contributed his DNA to my science project. “You managed on your own.”

“Yeah.” She licked a final dab of frosting from her thumb. “The minute Trevor's father heard things weren't all hunkydory with my pregnancy, he took off for Miami and never looked back, not even a Christmas card. So what? The asshole doesn't know what he's missing. But we're doing fine. Trevor makes me see the world like a kid all the time, and that's a gift. It wouldn't have been my first choice, though.”

“Things may not work out for me in the life-partner subject, either.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. But you can make it on your own if you have to.”

“I'm so broke,” I said with a sigh.

“So shop at the Salvation Army instead of Saks.”

“It's not that. I'm getting used to poverty. But is it fair to a child to have only one parent?” Slowly, I opened the crackers. “I'm not even sure I can be a good mother. My own family definitely belongs in the remedial class when it comes to parental skills.”

“Yeah, I met your sister Libby when she tried to sell me a pink vibrator.”

“Sorry about that. But, M. J., what if something goes wrong? Or I have to cope with—”

“A child who's not perfect?” Mary Jude brushed cupcake crumbs from her desk. “I won't kid you—it can be tough. There are days when I can't stand leaving Trevor at home. And other days when I can't face going back to him.”

“You're so strong. And lately I've been a basket case.”

She nodded sympathetically. “You've been through a lot. And now you're pregnant and feeling alone, so it's scary as hell. Listen, you want to talk to somebody about adoption? I know a lawyer who specializes in the private kind.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But that doesn't feel right, either. This is something I really want. And yet . . .”

Mary Jude's phone began to ring, so she rolled back to her own desk. “I know, I know. Your brain feels like a pinball machine right now. Part of that problem is hormones. The best thing you can do is take care of yourself. And ask for help if you need it.” She grinned.

I went to my desk, oddly elated.