Bad Boy

“Well, there’s always Yield to Pedestrians,” she suggested.

“There’s nothing wrong with Swollen Glands,” Phil said. “I thought of it, and anyway, the name’s in the paper. We don’t want to stop the swell of publicity that’s building. Right, Tracie?”

Tracie didn’t have the heart to mention that one article was more a pimple than a swell and that tomorrow there’d be another band in the paper. “Right,” she said, and caught Laura rolling her eyes. She hoped Phil hadn’t seen it.

Luckily, Phil was trying to get the bartender to fix him a drink. He then nuzzled closer and whispered into Tracie’s ear, “I’m happy to see you.”

Sometimes, Phil was a jerk. And Tracie knew he probably wasn’t ready to make a commitment, but there was something about his wild good looks, the way his hair brushed across his cheek, the way his fingers hardly tapered, but instead came to an end in flat, smooth nails. Phil was heat to her coolness and passion to her planning, and sometimes he made her forget all of the bad. Tracie responded to his whisper with a blush.

Laura picked up on Tracie’s blush and shook her head. “I think I’ll try to buck the trend and do something socially responsible, like picking up a merchant seaman. Later,” she said as she boogied off into the crowd.

“What’s up her ass?” Phil asked Tracie.

She just shrugged and sighed. It was too much to expect her friend to like her boyfriend and vice versa. She turned to her laptop. She’d completed her profile at work and begun the Mother’s Day feature, but she still had some polishing to do on it.

One of the things Tracie really liked about Phil was that he was also a writer. But, unlike her, he didn’t write commercially. He was an artist. Phil wrote very, very short stories. Some less than a page. Often Tracie didn’t get them, but she didn’t admit that to him. There was something about his work that was so personal, so completely contemptuous of an audience, that she respected him.

Although Phil had roommates, and had always had a girlfriend, Tracie knew he was essentially a loner. He could probably spend five years on a desert island and when a ship landed to rescue him he’d look up from his writing or his guitar and say, “This is not a good time for me to be interrupted.” He’d certainly said that enough to her, and she respected his integrity.

Sometimes she thought that journalism school and her job had spoiled her talent. After years of being told, “Always consider who might be reading your work,” she found Phil’s commitment refreshing, even if he looked down on writers like herself who took on commercial subjects.

Now she knew exactly who would be reading her feature: suburbanites over morning coffee; Seattle hipsters munching bagels at brunch; old ladies at the library. Tracie sighed and bent her head to get closer to the screen.

After just a minute or two Phil nudged her. “Can’t you put that down and enjoy the scene?”

“Phil, I told you I have to finish this feature. If I don’t get it in on time, Marcus will pull me off features altogether. He’d love the excuse. Or I could lose my job,” she snapped.

“That’s what you say about every story,” Phil snapped back. “Stop living in fear.”

“I mean it. Look, this feature is really important to me. I’m trying to do something unusual about Mother’s Day.”

“Hey, you don’t even have a mother,” Jeff announced.

Tracie turned to Jeff as if he was a child. “Yes, Jeff, it’s true that my mother died when I was very young. But, you see, journalists don’t always write about themselves. Remember, I wrote an article about you guys? Yet I’m not a Swollen Gland. Not even a mammary. Sometimes, journalists write about current events. Or they report on other people’s lives. That’s why they call us ‘reporters.’”

“Wow. The irony is so heavy in here, it’s breaking my drumsticks,” Frank said.

“Man, what time do we go on?” Jeff asked.

“Not till two, man,” Frank told them.

Tracie kept herself from groaning. Two! They wouldn’t be out of here until dawn.

“God. Was that the best Bob could do?”

“I hope these jerks clear out by then and we get a decent crowd,” Phil said.

“I’m sure you will. The Glands are really building a following,” Tracie assured him. She herself felt no such thing. In fact, the crowd could turn ugly if you cut off their supply of big-band standards.

Laura emerged from the dance floor, a short guy dressed like a forties bookie close behind her. Tracie noticed that a lot of small men went for Laura. The attraction was definitely not mutual. “Mind if we join you all? Or do you turn into rats and pumpkins at midnight?”

“Rats and Pumpkins. That would be a good name,” Frank commented.

Tracie looked at her watch. “Oh God. I’ve got to get this in.” She turned back to the laptop.

The band members were still giving one another glum looks. More dead soldiers littered the tabletop. Tracie snapped her laptop shut.

“This music sucks, man,” Frank repeated to the uninterested table.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Jeff echoed.

“Thank you for this introduction to Seattle. The conversation here really is a lot more sophisticated than in Sacramento,” Laura quipped.

Tracie looked up. “It all gets better when my work is done and the guys play,” she promised. She started to stand up.

“Where ya going?” Phil asked.

“I have to fax this to Marcus at home,” Tracie explained.

“Hey, don’t leave the table,” Phil said, catching her hand. “You’re making the band look bad. Don’t you realize other girls would die to sit here with us?”

Tracie shrugged and laughed. It wasn’t easy to find modem service in a bar. It would be hard enough to find a Yellow Pages, listing a twenty-four-hour copy center. Phil was being cute but difficult, and she couldn’t afford to get Marcus in an uproar. She’d have to do what was necessary to get her piece in and hope Phil would relax. If she could leave, she’d get back before the band’s performance. There’d be hell to pay with a pouting Phil for the rest of the night if she didn’t get back in time.

When she finally returned twenty minutes later, a swing-dance girl was in her seat. “I made it in just under the wire,” Tracie said, standing beside the table.

“Congratulations,” Jeff said, handing her a beer.

“So what’s new since I left?” Tracie said directly to Phil.

“Well, I hear the music still sucks, and I think there’s a new mascot,” Laura told her.

Tracie tapped the girl on her shoulder to get her seat back, shooting Phil a dirty look because he should have told the girl to move. “Hey, it’s not my fault,” Phil protested as the young woman walked away.

“I don’t know why these bitches want to dress up like Betty Crawford anyway,” Frank said.

“What assholes,” Phil agreed.

Laura leaned across the table to Frank. “It isn’t Betty Crawford.”

“What?” he asked.

“There’s no ‘Betty Crawford,’” Laura informed him. “You must be the drummer, right?”

“Huh?” Frank grunted.

“There was Betty Grable and there was Bette Davis. There was also Joan Crawford. But I don’t think Joan Crawford ever danced to swing,” Tracie explained.

“Whatever,” Jeff said.