“So,” he said, after our order had been taken, and warm, moist hand cloths had been brought to our table. “You haven’t said a word about the film. Did you enjoy it?”
“It was…it was interesting.”
One side of his mouth drew up. “But not your type of flick.”
“I think I’d have to see several more movies like it before I could say that,” I replied. “It was new to me, that’s all. I didn’t know any of the movies your friends were talking about.” I may as well admit it, I thought; I certainly couldn’t fake it. “How do you know whether you’re really going to enjoy something before you’ve tried it a few times?”
Andrew smiled and touched my hand lightly. “Oh, sometimes you just know.” The way his hand grazed mine made me think he wasn’t referring to the movie.
Having decided earlier that I must stop reading romances, I now thought I had to read more, so I could figure out how to respond to gestures and words that seemed like part of a romantic movie.
Andrew sat back in his chair. “I applaud your openness to trying something new, Jamie.” He sounded a little like a teacher, but his eyes were warm. “Essentially, the film was a dream vision, a medieval form in which the protagonist is dealing with an internal struggle, falls asleep and has a vision, often one of a hunt, in which he enters a forest—the green wood that we see later in Shakespeare’s comedies—and pursues the beast. He acts in a way that resolves his internal conflict, which allows him to reenter the civilized world.”
“Oh.”
“I want to try writing a contemporary dream vision. My poems are rich in imagery, as dream visions are, and I’m exceptionally good at narrative. I’ve always been drawn to the more profound questions of life.”
The platter of sushi was placed between us.
“So I believe I’m a natural for the genre.” He lifted a piece of tuna with his chopsticks. “In fact, I think I can take it to a whole new level. I consider myself an innovator. Aren’t you hungry, Jamie?”
“Would it embarrass you if I asked for a fork?”
He raised his hand as if he had experience in summoning waiters in restaurants across two continents. “Would you bring the lady a fork?” he asked the man, then went on. “I’m feeling rather constricted by traditional forms, and find free verse uninspiring. I want to explore new ways of expressing myself. I have so much to share with others.”
“Writing is hard work,” I said, contributing the one thing I knew about the topic. “I’ve seen it with my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“She’s a writer,” I reminded him.
“Not quite the same type as I,” he replied.
“Well, she’s published three books, but you’re still in college. You have to give yourself time.”
He frowned, and for a moment I thought he looked insulted. “That’s not exactly what I meant. Rita is more of an entertainer.”
In other words, she wasn’t profound. But it seemed to me that she also had a lot to share with others. “She entertains with words that are printed on a page. Why wouldn’t that be writing?” I asked, unexpectedly defensive of Mom. Of course, I would have died before letting him see the working notes she had scribbled on her Post-its.
I sat back as the waiter placed a fork by my hand.
Andrew leaned toward me. “Let’s talk about you, not your mom,” he said with a smile. “Tell me about yourself, Jamie Carvelli. What is Jamie short for?”
“Jamie.”
His blue eyes twinkled, as if he were amused. “Do you have a middle name?”
“Rita.”
I had the fleeting thought that I should have made up a different one. “How about you?” I asked. “What’s your middle name?”
“Hunterton. It’s an old family name.”
“Andrew Hunterton Wilcox. Cool.”
“You know, I loved watching you play basketball today,” he said. “It was like watching a ballet.”
“A ballet?”
He smiled.
“I—I never thought of it that way.”
“Mmm.” He looked off in the distance, as if he were seeing a vision of me and Josh in the back alley. “The give and take between you and your opponent, your steps matched and countered by his, your wonderful grace and strength.”
I blinked, trying to replace my sweaty vision with Andrew’s.
“The sum of grace and strength,” he went on, his voice musical, as if he were reciting poetry. “What better definition is there of beauty?”
I blushed. Was he saying I was beautiful?
“Grace and strength—and vulnerability,” he added, one finger gently lifting my chin so I would look at him. I gazed back, words failing me again.
He laughed quietly and let go.
“When I was watching you play,” he went on, “a million lines went through my head.”
“Like what?” I asked, curious, and yes, fishing for a compliment.
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
“Wow.”
“I’m quoting Yeats, of course.”
“Wow all the same.”
He laughed. “You’re charming.”
It was an old-fashioned description, but a big improvement over all those guys in high school slapping me on the back and saying, “You’re the best, Jamie”—especially when spoken by a guy resting his chin on his hand, looking at me as if he’d be content to do so all night.
Andrew quoted a lot of poets that night as we talked on about movies, music, and a little about sports. I learned that his family was from Connecticut, that his dad was an exec at an investment firm, and his older brother a lawyer, which he didn’t seem to think much of. “Lawyers abuse words,” he said. “They trap with words. Words are precious things meant to create, to imagine, to dream with.”
Speaking of dreaming, this was like one, and I wanted to stay, but I was struggling to keep my eyes open.
“I should take you home,” Andrew said, and I nodded meekly.
On the way home, I fell sound asleep. One moment I was riding in his Jeep, wind blowing my hair, enjoying the romance of the city at night. The next moment, the custom leather seat, wider than my own shoulders, seemed to enfold me like a protective cape. I relaxed against it and felt Josh laughing softly, whispering in my ear, “I know how that is.”
I became aware of a face close to mine and a hand playing with a strand of my hair. “Sleeping Beauty,” his voice said, oh, so seductively. “Sleeping Beauty, shall I awaken you with a kiss?”
I opened my eyes and was momentarily confused when Andrew’s lips touched mine.
“I had a wonderful time, Jamie. Thank you,” he said.
“Me too…Me too.”
Inside my head, the various scenes from the long day were colliding, making me dizzy. I was so slow getting out of the Jeep, he gallantly opened the door, and helped me slide down from the seat, then waited for me while I struggled to unlock the front door.
“Thank you, Andrew. G’night.”
When I had shut the front door, I leaned back against it, eyes closed for a moment, summoning the energy to climb the steps and set my alarm for tomorrow’s camp.
“Have a good time?”
My eyes flew open. Now I was awake. Viktor had entered from the room behind the living room.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is he as sexy as he is rich?” Viktor asked.
I stared at him. “Why would you even think I’d share something like that with you?”
“I’m just being friendly,” Viktor replied with a small shrug. “And I thought you might make an effort to be friendly, too. After all, I am rather important to your mother.”
“I know that.”
In the dim light provided by the small lamp left on for me, Viktor sized me up. “You resent me. You never expected to run home to Mommy and find her with a lover.”
I nodded. I certainly couldn’t deny it.
“Think about it from my point of view,” he sa
id. “I never expected my lover to suddenly have a kid again. She didn’t tell me you were coming until the day you arrived.”
I bit my lip. I had been so caught up in my own situation, I hadn’t thought about it from anyone else’s perspective. I had put Mom in a bad position. “I guess we both have to get used to each other,” I said. “And it might take a while.”
“In the meantime,” he told me, “don’t encourage Rita to stop by the bakery.”
“You’ve been into the Kashi,” I said.
“The refrigerator is now full of junk,” he went on. “It took me four months to get her into barely reasonable shape. Don’t sabotage my efforts.”
I prickled. Barely reasonable shape? She was fifty, what did he expect? Aloud I said, “What Mom buys and what Mom eats is her choice, not mine.”
“You know what I—”
“And by the way, it’s not your choice, either.”
He met my eyes straight on. “Like I said, you resent me.”
“I resent anyone who tries to control another person,” I told him, and headed for the stairs.
Chapter 12
Thursday morning I arrived at camp three minutes late.
“Carvelli,” Josh said to me, with a flick of his head toward the other girls who were doing their warm-up jog, “an extra lap.”
I guess it was naive to think he’d say something like, “Good morning, Jamie. It was fun yesterday.”
Without a word, I started my laps then joined the others in their stretches.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Mona greeted me.
“Hey, Jamie,” a chorus of others chimed in.
“Must have been some date last night,” Mona teased.
“I was three stupid minutes late!”
Amber straightened up and grinned at me. “Look at your T-shirt, Jamie.”
Glancing down, I saw that it was on backward. No wonder it was uncomfortable. Instinctively, I checked for the label in my shorts, and everyone laughed.
“Keep with it, ladies,” Josh called from the bench, where he stood, one foot on the metal, and studying his clipboard.
“He’s on a mission today,” Brittany said.
“He’s on a mission every day,” replied Kate.
I did my stretches but my shirt kept pulling under my armpits, driving me crazy. “Mona, hold down the edge of my shirt, okay?”
She did, and I drew in my arms, pulling my hands through the sleeves just as Josh looked over. With my arms on the inside, I turned inside the shirt, like I was inside a barrel, then stuck my hands through the proper holes. Josh rubbed his forehead and looked away.
“If you wore stretchy tanks like Melanie,” Kate whispered to me, “it wouldn’t matter which is the front and which is the back.”
Today’s sexy tank top was tropical blue, but it had the same effect as yesterday’s. Apparently, word had gotten around campus: The school’s maintenance crew was taking its morning break at our field, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because they were interested in lacrosse drills.
We started with a shuttle drill, passing on the move, then a drill for scooping up ground balls. Josh took us to the other end of the field, and I figured it was because picking up ground balls requires a lot of leaning over. By that time, maintenance had to get back to work, but a crew of painters had arrived for a coffee break and simply shifted their positions to accommodate the drill.
Josh looked like he had a migraine. I saw that Mona was gritting her teeth.
“That girl has no shame!” Mona said to me at a water break.
“Mona, we had a bet,” I blurted out.
She stared at me. “I’m sorry?”
“Melanie and I had a bet,” I said.
“Tell me you didn’t.”
I held the cold water bottle to my forehead.
“Girlfriend,” Mona demanded. “Speak!”
“I bet her that she couldn’t seduce Josh—but listen, listen first—listen why I did.”
“There can be no good reason why!”
I had the feeling I was looking into the eyes of Mona’s grandmother.
“They said I was his favorite and tried to get me to seduce him, and I said he wasn’t my type, and then Melanie said guys like him were easy, and that she could bring him to his knees, and then I muttered something stupid like yeah, I bet, and then they said, how much?”
“And your answer was nothing,” Mona responded, her eyes flashing. “At least it should have been.”
“I told them I was just talking to myself, but they kept at it, Michelle and Brooke. And Melanie wanted to be in cool with them, so she wouldn’t let it go. I gave in. I was an idiot and gave in.”
“And yesterday, on the sidelines, you tried to end the bet.” Mona’s voice was a little less fierce. “That’s what that was all about.”
“Yeah, but she wouldn’t let me. I offered her twice the amount of money, but she’s got something to prove. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You can tell Josh.”
“What?”
“Listen to me, Jamie. Stuff like this can get a coach in big trouble—you know that, your dad’s a coach.”
“Yeah, but Josh is innocent. I mean, it’s not like he’s taken the bait…so far.”
“If it comes to he said, she said, it doesn’t matter. You owe it to him to warn him, to give him the heads-up.”
He’s going to hate me forever, I thought.
“Don’t you get it?” she went on. “Josh needs this job, he needs it for the rest of the summer. Maybe you don’t have to work, and I know I don’t, except that my grandmother would have my hide if I didn’t, but he and his gran really do need him to work. Are you going to chance screwing that up?”
“Is after practice soon enough?”
She nodded. “For him, yes. For her, I don’t know. I may knock her unconscious before the next break,” Mona said, with a glance in Melanie’s direction. Melanie was talking to Josh, drinking from her water bottle and throwing back her head as she did. I sighed. Nice view.
I spent the rest of practice dreading twelve o’clock. Josh barked at me twice, then seemed to decide it was best to leave me alone. Finally we lifted our sticks in the air and gave a shout, then I hung out with Mona, waiting for my chance to talk to Josh after the others left.
He had gathered his clipboard, gym bag, and bag of balls, when I called out to him. “Josh, can I talk to you?”
He turned and for a moment I thought he was going to say no.
“All right.”
Meanwhile, Mona was cutting across the field, fast.
“Where are you going?” I cried.
“I’ll meet you at the dining hall, if you want.”
What I wanted was for her to stay with me for moral support, but she was moving quickly.
I walked over to the bench, keeping a good five feet between Josh and me. “It’s about yesterday, and today, and actually, the day before, and I guess tomorrow, too,” I began awkwardly.
“Well, that’s every day but Monday,” he observed.
“Yeah.”
He set down his gear, realizing this wasn’t going to come out easily.
“It’s about Melanie and me.”
“Jamie, I don’t think it’s wise for me to get involved with whatever’s going on between two people I’m coaching. If we were a team, and I thought it was affecting the way we worked as a team, then I would have to be involved, but since we are not—”
“And you,” I said, “it’s about you, too.”
He got a wary look in his eyes.
“I made a bet with her. I bet that she couldn’t seduce you.”
Josh’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.
“Some of the girls said they tried to last year.”
He just stared at me.
“And they said, like, I was your favorite and that maybe you’d…” my voice trailed off as I saw him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, anyway, they told me I should try to—
to get a date or something. And I told them that you weren’t my kind of challenge.”
“I see,” he said.
“I’m not finished. So then Melanie said that guys like you were easy. You look cool, you look tough, but when you fall, you fall like a ton of bricks. Well, those weren’t her exact words—cool, tough, and easy were, but not the ton of bricks. What she said was that guys like you, when you fall for a girl, go ‘straight off the deep end.’”
“I see.”
“She said she could bring you to your knees.”
“And you were happy to encourage her.” The accusation was like a rope he snapped in the air.
“No, no, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to encourage her, I was just a coward about saying no, about telling her right then that it was a stupid idea. I tried to end the bet the next day, yesterday, when you saw us fighting on the sideline. I tried paying her off, with twice as much, twenty dollars,” I added, hoping he’d realize how sincere my effort was.
“An impressive amount,” he noted dryly.
“Try to understand.”
“I’m trying.”
Now I was getting mad, getting defensive. “Are you telling me you’ve never made a stupid bet in your life? Are you so cool and in charge you’ve never wanted to take back words the moment you said them?”
He blinked and looked away.
“I’m sorry, Josh. I really am.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I guess it’s too soon to ask for forgiveness.”
He turned to me, his eyes dark with anger. “Jamie, do you have any idea what kind of trouble I could get into if Melanie succeeded, or if someone simply perceived her as succeeding?”
“Yes. Mona made it pretty clear. And I should have thought about it even before that, since my dad’s a coach. I’m sorry, Josh.”
He stared out toward the goal.
“I don’t know what else to say.”
He picked up his things, but didn’t move farther.
“Um, do you want me to come tomorrow, or would you prefer me to call in sick?”
He silently beat his lacrosse stick against his leg, as if a long argument were going on inside him. “See you nine o’clock…sharp,” he added, but his voice had lost its energy.