Authors: Paige Johnson
The girl only shrugged, all cutesy. “Who cares?”
I gaped like Wile E. Coyote.
“You’ll freshen up and come back to the room with me tonight, I hope,” she goaded with all her shiny teeth. “My daddy will be there to meet you. We can sell him further on Anthon—”
“He’s busy,” I replied without any knowledge of such, hands stationed at my hips. This attachment was really getting the worst of me. Like Detective J. Edgar and Clyde Tolson.
“Fine,” she said nonchalantly, plucking the plastic room card amidst her spare change. She shook her shoulders. “That just means we can talk him up any way we want. Maybe it’s best. Mr. Connors is very . . .
informal
anyhow. That could make for a bad impression. My father is very finicky with who he associates. No offense, but that’s how it is.”
At the elevator, I hovered by her tail and pressed the button for her as she balanced bags in her hands.
“I’ll see you at eight,” she breezed and did something extraordinary. She pecked my cheek like it was nothing—usual—leaving me rubbing my fuzzy, brightened cheek without rebuttal, with a pert flick of fingers as “’Til then” as the doors locked between us.
~
***
~
I actually spent an obscene time speculating if that little kiss meant anything. Ellie said she’s not a lesbian, but Ellie didn’t say she isn’t bisexual . . .
“I don’t like boys,”
I recalled her saying, but then I remembered another thing:
What am I thinking? I have a boyfriend (more of a manfriend, but a lover with a penis nonetheless) and she—
I stopped, wide-eyed. Ellie doesn’t know that. No one knows that.
By the time I applied myself to the Mix It, Match It, and Accessorize It game and exuded all my straightness on Anthony, I calmed myself into believing that if Ellie’s kiss meant anything, it woulda been on the lips.
I’m safe
, I thought.
Awkward conversations don’t have to find me! Ellie only expressed what rejuvenation gave her.
Fine. Fine by me.
And fine it will be
I told myself in regards to finally meeting vintage-chic Mr. Moss. Yet buds of worry kept popping up like weeds and bubbling in my stomach. I had to see Ellie before eight.
“‘
Finicky!’
” I phrased when I got there. “I’m not good with that. What the hell do I know? What the hell am I going to do? I’m as ‘informal’ as Anny!” I shuddered.
Ellie Anne smirked and leant on her calf, teasing me trivially. “That’s what you call your daddy? Anny?” she said.
“Yes, well we can’t
all
be as verbally gifted as you, Princess Pink,” I taunted her monotone wardrobe, slamming my hand against one of the walls.
Ellie Anne laughed again, mumbling euphorically, thinking me a great jester and tilting her head to the side. As my friend rested upon the window, she dazzled in the fierce illumination of sunset, the descending rays lighting up her yellow hair like a torch; dying flecks spilled through the loops of her bows and exploded on the metallic clips. For just a while, it seemed she harnessed the light.
She turned back to me and asked, “Dahlia, don’t you have any fantasies?”
I strained to view her ethereal quality in the radiance, at times wanting to slap her for it. “Yes of course, but what’s t—”
“Well, desert them. They’re no good. They give you things as nasty as doubt and worry and ambition. That’s your problem.
Fantasies, overthinking.”
I huffed. “Ellie Anne, you’re going to make me lose it one day.
Asking me to turn off nature, getting me to pick apart your babble. No wonder your daddy’s gone all the time! You’re a riddler, an absolute loon! It must take some time to recover.”
Proud as a politico, Ellie Anne swung her head. She couldn’t shield that sequin smile. “Dahli,
you’re
the one about to bust over a sleep-over! Gosh! Here, let me give you the run-down with a healthy dose of reality: First, you’re NOT your daddy, your Anny, so stop sweating it! Being his soldier for one evening is more than he could’ve done by himself, by default.
“Second, I like you and that’s all that matters. Daddy will take that into consideration well enough. Third, if he
doesn’t
like Anny, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll still see you; your father will still have the
same
shot at winning his dream, as perverse of a dream as it is.” She twirled around the pine planks in boredom, in her polka dot socks, ruffling the crinoline of her petticoat. So simple-minded, so rational.
Perfect legs, perfect legs,
I found myself saying when she did that, the tips of her knee-highs on display, their itchy lace mouths brushing against the other like Hydrangeas in a windy field. A little faster that childish dance and I would’ve caught glimpse of her panties.
“Anyway,” she sighed, taking to her tippy toes, “if you must know, if you haven’t assumed, Daddy’s a classic gentleman.” She raised her arms above her head and connected them like a music box dancer, elongating her already lanky form. “That may mean you have to adjust your tongue. Poor grammar, chopped words, and slang offend him. I notice you play with your hair in between bites; none of that.”
Pinpointing my flaws on demand as she goose-stepped, Ellie painted my face like a clown. “Sure, I can cut that out,” I assured, struck narrowly in the ego.
“You know, obviously, when Daddy comes home I want to know about him, not what happened around him, but I’ll take reign and steer the conversation. You just nod and look desperate ’til you have somethin’ nice and wonky to contribute, okay?”
Her marionette doll, I nodded like my strings were tugged.
She hugged me and said everything would be fine, her hot, moist little sentiments caressing my ears and taming my disposition.
Telepathic, I suppose, she got the door before her father got the chance to knock. “Father!” she cheered, divulging her wingspan, putting her breadth at his disposal, mug as alive as I’ve ever seen it.
Straightaway, Mr. Moss accosted her, more doting than I anticipated. “Ellie,” he cooed softly as a nightingale, head atop the hair busheled in his hands. His eyes flickered on me, ten feet behind, a second that allowed me to see where she got that powerful green. “Sweetheart, I’d forgotten you’d mentioned company, a testament to this faulty memory,” he said.
Pulling on the midsection of his fine, green dress shirt, Ellie replied, “Meet Dahlia Connors, daughter of Anthony Connors. He was man of the hour Friday night, do you remember that much, Daddy?”
“An elephant never forgets red affairs,” Mr. Moss proclaimed firmly, smirking self-assured. He extended a hand.
In the dim light of the foyer, he appeared barely old enough to father Ellie. Or perhaps he looked more like a mature man playing dress-up. His dingy gold, subtle curls silhouetted his strong profile like a cape. Lissome when he stepped further into the room, towards the lamps’ skirts to take my hand, my theories disintegrated as sandstorms. His tailored suit and long-legged stature couldn’t hide bulging muscle and graying root.
With slight effort, he crushed the tiny bones in my hand. “Oh. You’ve a firmer handshake than your father already, Dahlia.” He quipped, “He shakes just like a fish.”
I blushed, praying my false coat covered the natural.
Politically, what
can
Anthony do right?
I asked myself.
Mr. Moss said I could call him by his first name, Skylar. I chose not to because I’d go on and on about
Good Will Hunting
and Minnie Driver, but the option was there. He then asked if my father is on board with H.R. 2015, and I just stared at his steady eyes, brain blank.
“I’m only joking,” he admitted after giving me spout to fidget. Clearly, that one went over my head.
But not Ellie’s head; she tittered from behind, pacifying both her guests like a geisha.
I decided I didn’t want to be part of nerdy inside games when Ellie Anne slipped from her pointed feet, beginning to gush about the time she and I had been having, gusting out my jitters like a beer before prom night. She recommended we sit down to the meal she made before it goes cold.
Naturally, Mr. Moss took the head of the table after draping his suit jacket over the chair. “Dahlia,” he besought calmly, unfastening his bowtie, “you’re getting along with El well, aren’t you?”
“Inseparable, really,” his daughter chimed from the kitchen.
Posture as presidential as any Kennedy, I solemnly agreed. I folded my hands, but quickly had they disbanded as I thought it appeared too snobbish. “We haven’t stopped conversing since Anthony’s fundraiser,” I enunciated properly.
Mr. Moss quirked an astute brow.
“You call your father by his first name?” They lowered as though he disapproved. “How peculiar.”
“I think you’ll find Dahlia to be perfectly peculiar, Daddy,” said Miss Transcendentalist, putting his plate before him, smiling as big as the steak she prepared.
My discomfort manifested itself in scratching away my nail polish and cracking down on the bottom line of my teeth. I made a mental note to thank her for that
unsult
later. After Ellie Anne kissed her father on the cheek, provided me my portion, and took the seat nearest him, I could barely look at the two of them.
Utter aliens.
I heard her scoot her chair further in as Mr. Moss uncorked a wine bottle. The pour was audible for far too long. I dared tear vision from my hands. He filled a glass for Ellie, the same brand I drank the previous night if I’m not mistaken. I was astonished. I know a cup of fermented grapes isn’t that bad, but Ellie’s five years from legality, he her father, a man of the law.
C’mon!
She thanked him softly and took a kiss to the forehead. qct
“I’d offer you some, my dear,” he said, serving his eyes to signify he was addressing me, “but the taste is a dubious proposition in the threshold of Mr. Connors,
Anthony
as you would have it, I’m sure.” Though his timbre was indubitably polite, the latter resonated unpleasantly. It sat, perched strangely on his tongue for too long. “I have it so my daughter is to delight in it, in my company, rather than experiment when she is not.”
Everybody wants to believe Ellie Anne is a good, flawless girl, but of course she is not. She drinks in secret and mopes in augmented purgatory. From across the table, the guilty smiled with a plea in her eyes:
Please leave him to believe that, Dahlia Connors. Please.
Under any vendetta, I am no one to judge. I nodded accordingly. “I understand. Ellie Anne is a very honest girl and a better friend,” I assured. We all nodded like ostriches in the cartoons, lips parted.
Gracious in no time flat, Ellie Anne was laying the Helpless Visionary act on thick! Animated by her decadent knowledge—the White Collar lingo—the fair-haired girl even had
me
rooting more passionately for Anthony.
“He’s a real go-getter, Daddy. Isn’t that so, Dahlia?” she enticed. “He embodies Conservative principles better than your current Whip. Look at the DNC gnash their fangs at him like he’s Newt Gingrich 2.0, established; I mean, c’mon, the NRA gives standing ovations. Whichever acronyms you want to scramble, it’s a win. I think it’d be great all around to cross campaign trails again, Papa. Harold Winchester is sold on him as fervent as your oil bill, I’ve a place to know; I spoke with him yesterday . . . Oh, yes, he certainly remembers that fiasco Erin, Andrew, and Deben caused, that awesome week in the Alps . . .
Yes, I know . . . No, he didn’t mention. You know what he
did
tell me? He’s
green
. Can you believe that? A Texan!”
Raising his glass when he said it, “Ah.
Good. Like the American Dream. There are umpteen definitions but we all know what it means when we hear it” imparted bluntly from Mr. Moss’s lips.
I think he left a word out of that statement: politicians. As in we
politicians
know what it means when we hear it, because I definitely did not.
He’s new and fresh, inexperienced, a marketing ploy, an environmentalist, jealous?
Which is it?
I pondered, too self-conscious to voice my confusion, stuffing my mouth with food to stay untouchable. Which, by the way, cooking is another thing Miss Perfect is good at (though, confidentially, she burnt the potatoes).
Rustling her tall spotted socks, Blondie conferred, “The
Post
will eat it up, no doubt!”
“El, I’ll refute that the day Roger Clinton puts down the beer, the day feminists admit they’re selective and pick up a shaving razor.”
“Hey, I don’t thin—” I started to interrupt, Ellie’s father paying me no mind as his crafty offspring bludgeoned me under the table with her ideology book.
I wasn’t trying to ruin anything, really, I wasn’t. I know Ellie gets no time with her father (he congregating or bunking in his office half the time), and I never want to squelch that, but their banter was becoming too vicious. Those people didn’t seem worth making fun of. It made me uncomfortable.