Bad Boy

“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.

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.”

Phil sat up. “Look, I told you, relationships are tough for a musician. You knew that going in. Right?” She nodded. “Relationships are like baths: At first they’re okay, but after a while they’re not so hot.”

“Is that what you think about us? That we’re not so hot?” she asked, getting off the bed. She didn’t want him if that’s what he thought.

“No, baby,” he said soothingly. “How can you ask that after this afternoon?” His voice got husky. He pulled her back to him, though she kept her body stiff and resistant. “Hey, I was just raggin’ on you. Look. I brought you something.” Phil held out his hand and opened his fist. In his palm was a black velvet ring box. Her heart jumped and she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Phil!” she breathed.

Tracie was in front of the mirror in the ladies’ room of the Seattle Times. She was applying Great Lash mascara while Beth looked on. She had dark circles under her eyes. She and Phil had been up till four, fighting, making love, and then fighting again. God, I need a haircut, she thought. She’d have to call and beg Stefan for an appointment.

“Then what?” Beth asked.

“So he’s like, ‘I need my own space.’”

Beth sighed. “My mother told me she would rent a warehouse for all the guys in Seattle I’ve dated who needed their own space.”

The ladies’ room door opened. Allison, the tall blonde who’d been at Cosmo and who could easily win a young Sharon Stone look-alike contest, entered the ladies’ lounge. Beth and Tracie eyed her hostilely. She joined them at the mirror.

“Hi,” Allison said as she needlessly fluffed her already-perfect hair.

“Hi,” Tracie and Beth said simultaneously, and with precisely the same lack of enthusiasm.

There was a moment of silence. Allison kept playing with her hair. “So,” Tracie continued, “Phil said he wanted to get married, but I’m like, ‘I don’t really know you well enough. I’m not even sure you’re right for me.’ But I took the ring anyway,” Tracie told the reflection of herself and Beth.

Beth stopped putting on her lipstick and almost dropped the tube. “He asked you?” she asked. “I mean, he popped the big one?” Tracie covertly eyed Allison in the mirror. She finished her hair.

“Bye,” Allison said.

“Bye,” Beth and Tracie echoed at the same time as Allison exited the bathroom.

“Phil gave you a ring?” Beth asked after the door closed completely. “For real?”

“No, for Allison. Phil gave me a ring box. With a guitar pick inside.”

“A guitar pick?”

Tracie imitated Phil’s voice from the night before to make a joke out of her disappointment. “‘It’s my first one. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to use one with a bass.’” She paused the way he had when he’d seen her lack of enthusiasm. “‘Hey. It means a lot to me.’” She went back to her normal tone of voice. “Well, it does mean a lot to him. You know, he lives for his music and his writing. He just doesn’t think about material things like rings.” Beth didn’t say a word. “Well, he doesn’t,” Tracie insisted, then showed Beth the pick, which Phil had had a jeweler drill a hole through, now on a chain around her neck. “Doesn’t Allison just get on your nerves?”

Beth became animated again. “You have no idea. Last week, she started dating this new guy. He was calling the office about six hundred times a day. By Thursday, he was waiting outside for her at lunch and after work. On Friday, she actually got a restraining order.”

“No shit,” Tracie said as she slipped the mascara wand back into its base.

“No shit! And he’s not a mental patient. He’s a big orthodontist in Tacoma,” Beth added. “I swear she has the power to cloud men’s minds. And I think she’s after Marcus.”

With a worse-than-usual display of neurosis and bad taste in men, not to mention career suicide, Beth had started up an office affair with Marcus. Now she tortured herself over it daily. Tracie thought Beth might be right about the Allison-Marcus thing, but there was no sense admitting it. “Well, you should give him to her on a silver platter.”

“Noooo,” Beth keened. “I mean, I admit he’s troubled. But I love him.” She blotted her lips and stood up to go. “Anyway, he’s not mine to give.”

“So let her have him. They deserve each other.”

“But I 26;”

Tracie couldn’t believe that Beth was still hung up on the jerk. “Oh, Beth, he dated and dumped you! You should have him up on harassment charges.” Tracie began to throw her makeup in her purse. “Why are guys like that? My girlfriend Laura with Peter? Me with Phil? And you with that bastard Marcus? How come they’re so immature and selfish?”

“They’re a challenge.” Beth sniffed as they walked down the hall. “I mean, if Phil and Marcus did what we wanted all the time, it would get boring.”

Beth was, of course, insane, but Tracie had to admit she recognized what Beth meant.

“Let’s face it. The difficult ones make us feel special. You know, with Marcus it was like if I got him to love me, I was really something.”

Tracie thought of Phil and how difficult he was. Then she remembered Jon and his request. Maybe he was right. Could she do it? Would it work? She sighed. “Sometimes I think we’re just masochists. But Marcus is definitely a sadist.”

“Never mind Marcus,” Beth told her. “Look at Phil! He’s not good enough for you, Tracie. I admit he’s cute, but he’s no good. And he’ll never make a commitment.” She grabbed the pick swinging around Tracie’s neck. “That is just pathetic,” she added.

“I don’t know,” Tracie said, feeling the glimmer of an idea. “I may have a way to force him to. And simultaneously get a good feature out of it.” They got to the corner where they had to part.

“Don’t bet on it,” Beth said.

Tracie smiled. “I just might,” she told her friend.

Chapter 9 (#ulink_3641affa-7b16-54b1-9a8d-ed17d44ea9c9)

Just outside of Jon’s office, there were dozens of carpeted cubicles filling a space almost the size of an airplane hangar. The noise of beeping phones, copiers, printers, and fingers tapping keyboards made a low but constant thrum. Jon was tired from having to deal with his mothers, working on Parsifal, being out late last night with Tracie while she shopped. But now, sitting here, he had to muster up enough strength to pay attention. After all, this was his department, his kingdom. A bunch of Micro/Con guys were deep in tech-development talk while he, the enlightened despot, listened, trying to keep his eyes open.

Jon looked up from the discussion group he was in and saw Samantha walking toward his office. His kingdom crashed around him faster than the “I love you” virus crashed the Filipino E-mail system. He remembered he was the Winner of the Losers. Humiliation was walking right up to him. There was something about Sam that Jon, or any other guy, for that matter, couldn’t resist. She was one of those tiny freckled redheads, tough in her job, but she had a sweetness—no, an innocence—that was a total magnet. He wanted to catalogue every one of her freckles as if they were constellations in the night sky. And that wasn’t taking her legs into consideration—so long, so lean, so perfectly proportioned.

Sam was in marketing at Micro/Con. Most marketing folk were empty suits, but she was a smart woman with a sense of humor, a lot like Tracie. He had first met her at last year’s sales conference, when the Crypton-2 had been completed and was ready for public release. The auditorium was filled with three hundred people—most of whom were uptight salesmen—but Jon couldn’t get over Sam as she stepped up to the podium and began her pitch with an insanely off-color joke about a midget and a washing machine. Not only had she made the guys roar, but she’d managed to be very ladylike at the same time. Even now, Jon chuckled at the memory. She had gusto. She had a certain aura about her that was magical. She was incredible. No one that Jon knew—not even Tracie—would be able to pull something like that off and get away with it. For months, he’d had her on his radar, always aware of where she was. At last, he’d gotten up the courage to sit next to her at a couple of meetings. He’d passed her funny notes; she’d laughed. He sat next to her in the cafeteria one day, and then he’d asked her out. She’d agreed, then stood him up.

Now, seeing her in the hallway, he wished he could get away with not having to speak to her. She was involved in a discussion of her own with some marketing gunslinger. They were all so damn slick. All style, no substance. Jon froze, then became visibly uncomfortable. He hoped the guys around him didn’t notice. She couldn’t pretend not to see him. He wished he could disappear or just push his head through the 100 percent natural fiber industrial carpeting beneath his feet and pull an ostrich, but there was no chance.

“Oh. Hi, Jon,” Samantha said calmly. She continued down the hall without missing a beat, her long legs a receding dream.