Rhymes With Cupid (5 page)

I got the cinder block she was talking about and somehow managed to heave the wardrobe up several inches. I pushed the big cement brick under with my foot, fighting back tears the whole time. A second later, my mother shimmied out from underneath, stood up, and brushed the floor dirt and sawdust out of her hair. She crouched down to examine the wardrobe. One of the doors had cracked a bit in the fall and, even with the two of us lifting, there was no way we’d ever be able to get it standing upright again. The thing weighed a ton.

“Well, maybe we could just store our extra winter coats in plastic bins under the stairs instead,” she said, and that was when my mother noticed the tears streaming down my face. She understood immediately. “Oh, Elyse. Oh, sweetie. I’m all right.” She stood up and held out her arms to show me. “Not a scratch. I’m fine.”

“But what if you hadn’t been? Mom, that thing could have crushed you.”

“But it didn’t.” She put her arms around me, then pulled away to wipe the tears off my cheeks with her fingers.

“And you were all alone down there. What if I hadn’t come right home for some reason?”

“But you did.”

“I was supposed to help you sand this last night,” I sniffed, looking at the wardrobe, “when I was done studying. I forgot. If I hadn’t forgotten, you wouldn’t have been doing it all by yourself.”

“That’s all right, Elyse. It’s my responsibility to get these things done. I’m the adult in this family.” I hated it when she said things like that. Maybe it was true when I was a kid, but now I was seventeen. She shouldn’t have to take care of everything all on her own anymore. It was bad enough that my father had walked out on her with barely a backward glance; she should have at least been able to count on me. “From now on I’ll be more careful when I’m fixing things around the house. I promise,” she said.

“And ask me for help,” I said, giving her my best “I am so serious right now” look, which she totally ignored.

“Come on,” she said instead. “Come upstairs. We’ll order a pizza. You’ll feel better after you’ve had something to eat. Then you can help me with my homework assignment.”

My mom’s “homework assignment” turned out to be hand-lettering forty-five place cards using gold ink and a calligraphy pen. After an afternoon of extreme parallel parking followed by the near-crushing-death-of-my-mother-by-a-wardrobe, my hand wasn’t exactly steady, to say the least. I went through five different cards before I finally did one that was good enough to keep.

“They’ve got the Bradford ballroom booked out for lunch, and they’re closing the entire spa for the afternoon,” my mom explained. “The whole thing is being catered by Chez Pierre, and they’re giving away all kinds of raffle prizes.” She stacked another neatly lettered card onto her pile. “I still miss Chudleigh’s Auto Insurance, but I have to say, they never had staff appreciation days like this.”

I took a bite of my Hawaiian slice and washed it down with some iced tea while I watched my mother work. The bags under her eyes were huge and dark, but besides that, she looked good. She’d been waking up at six
A.M.
the past two days so she’d have time to blow-dry her hair and do her makeup. Apparently one of the requirements of working reception at a spa was to look put-together. She even had pink polish on her nails—something I’d never seen her wear before. She noticed me noticing it. “Oh, Claire—one of the aestheticians—did this for me at break. It doesn’t look too glitzy, does it?”

I smiled, putting down my pizza crust. “It’s nice,” I said. I wiped my hands on my napkin and picked up another place card to letter. “Seriously?” I looked down at the list of names my mom had given me. “This is somebody’s real name?” My mother finished clearing the plates, then peered over my shoulder.

“Oh. Valter. He’s the spa’s Swedish masseuse.”

“And his last name’s Bigaskis?”

“Yes.”

“Pronounced ‘big-ass-kiss’?” I asked, enunciating the word in my best imitation of a Swedish accent. “Like, ‘Val-ter Big-ass-kiss’?”

“Elyse,” my mother scolded in the same tone she used to use when I’d pick my nose or make farting sounds with my male cousins as a kid. “That’s not funny.”

“Yes it is,” I said. “Kind of, at least. You’ve got to admit.” But my mother didn’t look like she was about to admit anything. “Val-ter Big-ass-kiss,” I said again, giggling a little to myself as I lettered the place card. My mom hadn’t cracked a smile, so I tried to stop laughing.

“Oh.” She sat down and picked up another place card, changing the subject. “Dina called for you earlier. I guess she didn’t realize you had a driving lesson. She was wondering if she could confirm you for the chocolate-vanilla cheesecake. Sounds like a fun party.”

I groaned. It had been a long day. The last thing I wanted to think about was Valentine’s Day, or Dina’s ridiculous party, but now that Dina had told my mother all about it, I knew there was no way out—I’d be going.

“I told her no problem. I’ll help you bake it if you want. We still have your stuffed panda bear collection, too. I packed them in one of those filing boxes for the move. It’s somewhere in the basement. I said we’d see if we could dig them up. They’d make great decorations.”

“Mom!” I cried. It was bad enough that I was being forced to party on Valentine’s Day when all I wanted to do was mope. I didn’t want to drag along a bunch of stupid childhood stuffed animals.

“You’ll have fun, Elyse. It’s good that you’re going out.” I sighed. “And it’s two weeks from today, too. You know what that means, don’t you?” I gave her a blank look. “You’ll have passed your road test by then. You can drive to Dina’s yourself.”

I dropped Valter Bigaskis’s finished name card into my pile and reached for another.
Drew Hulse
. Nothing funny about that one. In fact, it was one of the most depressing names I’d ever heard, which was fitting, because I was suddenly feeling gloomy—not to mention very, very tired.

Chapter 5

O
n Saturday morning my bootlace came untied just as I was running down the steps. I stopped to tie it and, as a result, just missed the stupid number four bus again. Since my mom had already left for the grocery store, I had no choice but to wait. I ended up being fifteen minutes late for work. When I got there, Dina was wrestling with a bunch of unruly helium balloons while trying to sell a frazzled-looking mother on the customer loyalty Cupid promotion.

“Thanks,” the mother was saying distractedly, keeping an eye on her two sons, who were playing tag dangerously close to the crystal dolphin figurines. “But it’s my son’s sixth birthday party today. We’ll get enough noisy, battery powered toys as it is.”

The day before, when someone had shared a similar concern, I’d overheard Dina trying to convince them that—if you took the batteries out—Cupid could also make a lovely centerpiece for a Valentine’s Day dinner table, but for some reason, she didn’t even bother. “Dammit,” she said instead, under her breath, as a robot-shaped foil balloon made a break for freedom and floated toward the ceiling.

“I’ll get the stepladder,” I offered, dumping my bag behind the counter and heading for the back room. As soon as the mother had left with her bratty kids and her bunch of balloons, I turned to Dina. “You don’t seem so good. Everything okay?”

She sank down miserably on the stool behind the counter. “Elyse, if you called somebody, and they said they’d call you right back, when would you expect to hear from them?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe in a couple of minutes.” I could tell from the look on her face that I hadn’t given the answer she’d been hoping for. “Or, it depends. If they’re really busy with something, it might be longer.”

“How much longer?”

“An hour, maybe? Two hours.”

“Not sixteen?”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what we were talking about, although I had a pretty good guess. “No. Probably not sixteen.” I hesitated. “Unless something really important came up. Or there was an emergency.”

“Oh my God. I thought of that, but then I tried to talk myself out of it. But what if you’re right? I called Damien right after work yesterday. Ten after six. He was just on his way out and he sounded
really
out of breath. He said he’d call me right back but I haven’t heard anything. And I’ve texted him twice since then. Oh my God. It all makes sense, though. What if one of his parents fell down the stairs or had a heart attack or something? And then he had to rush home? Maybe he’s at Middleford General right now? Should I text him again? No, wait. You can’t use cell phones in a hospital, right? Because of the heart monitors. Elyse, do you think I should call his parents’ house to make sure everything’s okay?”

“I’m sure everything’s fine, Dina,” I said. “And if it isn’t, then he’s probably just too busy to call right now.”

“You’re right,” she said, clearly unconvinced but seeming like she wanted to believe me. “I’ll just wait. He’ll get in touch if he needs me, right?”

“Of course he will.”

She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and flipped it open, just to make sure it was still working, then put it away before walking toward the card aisle to help an old lady with a cane. While I was ringing through the old lady’s anniversary card, I saw Dina check her phone again. Suddenly, I thought of the perfect way to distract her.

“I have something to tell you,” I said as soon as the store was quiet again. “You’re not going to believe it, but guess who my new driving instructor
and
neighbor is . . .”

“You’re kidding!” Dina said once I’d told her the whole story. “That’s such a coincidence. He seemed so nice. Is he a good teacher?” she asked.

“The worst.” I told her my parallel parking horror story from the night before. She was appropriately sympathetic. I was just about to tell her the stuff I’d found out about him moving here to take care of his grandfather (which I knew she’d go gaga over), but Dina’s back pocket started buzzing. “It’s Damien,” she said. She slid out her phone, flipped it open, and read the text message.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She scrolled through his message a second time. “That’s a relief,” she added, but she sounded disappointed. “He was at a keg party with some friends, got drunk, crashed there, and just woke up. He forgot I called.”

She started pressing buttons.

“Please tell me you’re not texting him back this second.” She looked up. “The guy didn’t even apologize for taking sixteen hours to get back to you. It didn’t even cross his mind that you might have been upset or worried.”

She paused, lowering the phone. “You think I should wait?”

“Yes!” I said. “And, anyway, you just answered your phone while I was talking to you and rudely interrupted my story about pen-buying guy—I mean, Patrick.” She looked up. “I was going to tell you how he was asking about you in the car.” It wasn’t that I was intending to be dishonest with her . . . but the lie just kind of slipped out.

“No way,” she said. “He wasn’t! What did he want to know?”

“Well . . .” I stalled for time while I tried to think up something that sounded vague enough not to get me busted, but specific enough to seem true. “He wanted to know how long you’d been working here and, um—what your hobbies were.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him you’d been working for Mr. Goodman since the summer, and that you were really into supporting important causes in your spare time. And it turns out he’s all about helping people and putting others first, too.” I soothed my conscience by adding that last part, because he’d definitely said something about helping his grandfather out around the house, anyway. She flipped the phone shut. “I also mentioned the panda party,” I went on, improvising.

“What did he say?”

“Not much, but I think it’s just because he’s too nice to ask for an invitation. I’m pretty sure he’d say yes if you asked him yourself.”

“Really? Is he single?”

“I don’t know.” He hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend but, then again, we’d only spent an hour together, and in the last twenty minutes, I’d been too mad to talk to him. It was possible he had a girlfriend, either here or else back in Toronto.

“Can you find out?”

“We have another lesson this afternoon. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh my God,” Dina said. “Maybe this is, like, fate. I mean, he walks into the store and we meet, and then he ends up being your neighbor
and
your driving instructor, so I’ve totally got an in.” She slid her phone into her back pocket.

Mission accomplished. “So you’re not texting Damien back now?”

“No.” She smiled, then added defiantly, “I’m busy at work. He can wait a while, right?”

I stepped out from behind the cash so she could take over. “Dina, as far as I’m concerned, that jerkwad can wait forever.”

“Elyse!” she said, covering Cupid’s ears with her hands. “Watch your language in front of the baby!” But she was smiling, so there was no question in my mind that I’d done the right thing. Even if I’d had to tell a few small, white lies, the ends totally justified the means.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought until three thirty, when Patrick walked into the store. I was stuck with a customer who wanted to know every little difference between the four brands of white copier paper we carried, but Dina waved him over. By the time I managed to get my butt over to the cash, they were already talking pandas. Things were about to get kind of complicated.

“So I think it’s important,” Dina was saying. “If we can raise just five hundred dollars we’ll make a small but real difference in helping to preserve the population of giant pandas. And, like I’m sure Elyse told you, the whole theme is going to be black and white, so it’ll be really fun.” Patrick shot me a strange look but, to his credit, didn’t mention that this was the first he’d heard about a panda party. “Elyse is going to be baking some snacks. And, trust me, you don’t want to miss her cheesecake. So, if you’re free . . .” She trailed off.

“Yeah,” he said, giving me the weird look again. “I think I might be.”

“Cool.” Her eyes lit up. “Hang on. Just let me ring this up and then I’ll tell you all about Oreo—the panda we’re adopting. I can even show you a picture. Talk about cute!” Patrick politely stepped aside as the paper guy piled six packages of EverTree brand copier stock on the cash.

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked while Dina rang up the purchase and bagged the paper. My irritation about the driving lesson was still pretty fresh. “I’m not done until four. And you can’t just hang out here. Sometimes Mr. Goodman stops in on weekends.”

“Who said I was hanging out? I’m shopping.” He picked up a Beanie Baby rabbit and shook its head, flopping its ears around.

“Oh yeah? For a bunny?”

“Nah,” he said, setting the Beanie Baby down. “No bunnies today. I need a pen.”

“You just got one yesterday.”

“Yeah. About that?” He ran his fingers through his curls. “It’s a little too sploodgy.”

“Sploodgy?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Yeah. Like, when you press down on the tip, the ink sploodges out. Do you have anything that writes really crisply?”

“Right,” I said, trying to keep the mocking tone out of my voice. “Something crisp, not sploodgy. Follow me.”

Patrick took ages in the pen aisle, doodling with different pens on the scraps of notepaper Mr. Goodman left out for that reason. “This one is pretty good,” he said finally, holding up a WriteSmart ballpoint. “But do you have it in black?” I searched through the bin and thrust a black pen toward him.

“Here.”

“Whoa,” he said, jumping back a bit. “Getting hostile with the writing instruments there. You’re not still mad about that parallel parking thing, are you?” he asked, taking the pen from me carefully, like I might have laced it with explosives.

“Mad? Why would I be mad?” I shot back.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because I was kind of a jerk about it.” That took me off guard. He tucked his new pen behind his ear. “I’ve been thinking about it, and look, I knew you weren’t going to hit those cars. But that doesn’t mean you felt ready, I guess. Like you said, we probably should have practiced in a parking lot or something first. I’m sorry. Okay? I won’t do anything like that again.”

“Okay,” I said, my anger melting away so suddenly that I didn’t know what to say or do next. Why had I been so pissed off in the first place? I already almost couldn’t remember. “Um. Anyway,” I stuttered. “I’ve got stuff to finish shelving, but Dina can ring that up for you at the cash.”

“Okay. But, wait.” He stopped me. “Can you help me with one more thing first?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to buy a valentine.” Now it was his turn to look embarrassed.

“For your girlfriend?” Maybe I could get the dirt Dina was looking for.

“Not exactly.” His cheeks went kind of red, making his freckles stand out. “Not yet, anyway. Just this girl I met.” I glanced ever-so-quickly in Dina’s direction to see if he’d follow my gaze, but he was busy staring at the floor.

“Well,” I started, “we have a big selection.” I led him over to the valentine section, which was marked by an absolutely giant, obscenely sparkly heart-shaped sign hanging from the ceiling.
LOVE IS IN THE AIR.
“This is where the romance happens.” I pointed to the sign, rolling my eyes. “In my personal opinion, almost everything in this section is nauseating, but a lot of girls like this kind of thing.”

I picked up a card with Tweetie bird on the front. I opened it and read: “I’m lucky to have a tweetheart like you, who’s caring and loving and wonderful, too.” I stuffed it back in the slot. “Tweetheart isn’t even a real word.”

I picked up another with a pastel-colored painting of a couple dancing on the front. The woman was in a flowing red gown. “My dear, my heart, my lady in red. When I’m with you, I feel inspir-ed. Happy Valentine’s.” I closed the card and made a face. “Really? Since when has the word ‘red’ rhymed with the word ‘inspired’? Since never. But that’s what you’ll find in half these cards. It’s like the companies can’t afford to hire poets who know how to rhyme anymore. Sad.”

Patrick was smiling. “Well, what about this one? Girls would think this is cute, right?” He handed me a card with a picture of a baby riding a motorcycle.

“Baby, you get my engine going.” I handed it back. “Okay, first of all. Gross. Not cute. And, second, the joke card is a huge cop-out. It’s like you’re saying, ‘I really like you, but I’m too much of a chicken to actually come out and say it, so I’m giving you this picture of a baby in a motorcycle helmet instead.’ Again, kinda sad.”

“You know you’re not the world’s greatest salesperson, right?” he teased, putting the card back.

“Hey,” I retorted. “I’m trying to do you a favor here.” I picked out a card with a simple red heart on the front, set against a silver backdrop. “This is the least bad one we have.” I handed it to him and watched him open it.

“It’s blank,” he observed.

“Exactly,” I said. “If you like someone, you should care enough to write your own message. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.”

He flipped the card over to check the price, then put it back. “I’ll think about that one,” he said.