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.Just a few close friends.” He lowered my hood and adjusted his Jeff Gordon cap.“Now fire it up and switch on the AC.”I started the Jeep, and right away, the cold air began to blow.“Perfect!” I shouted over the engine.Johnny smiled.“Ah’m a one-man pit crew.”I showered and put on a decent shirt.I had promised to take Calico out to dinner, and I was looking forward to getting beyond this stressful day.Her apartment was only about fifteen minutes away, but the traffic on 1–4 held me up for almost an hour.As usual, Calico’s door was unlocked.I found her in the bathroom, putting on makeup.“Humph.I was just about to give up on yew.” I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like she was talking in an English accent.She looked over my shoulder, into the parking lot of her apartment complex.“Which cah did you bring this evening?”“My Bentley’s in the shop,” I teased, “so I brought the Jeep.” I moved to hug her, but she turned her back and fiddled with a selection of lip gloss.“Sorry I’m late,” I said.“You wouldn’t believe the traffic.Everywhere you look, overheated Geo Metros on the side of the road.It’s like tourist stew out there.”“Is that sew?” she called out from the bathroom.Then, she mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear.“Beg your pardon.”She stuck her head around the corner.“I said, I’ll be right out.Make yourself at home.”I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, then flipped through a fashion magazine that was holding down a pile of bills on her kitchen table.Calico’s kitchen was the most lived-in room in her apartment.It served as an office, a waiting room, a library, and a den.Her kitchen table was stacked with mail, magazines, phone messages, and any other odds and ends that didn’t fall into the category of cosmetics or clothing.About the only thing she didn’t use her kitchen for was cooking.The way she decorated her apartment had always intrigued me.She had an eclectic collection of souvenirs, haphazardly displayed beside mundane objects.In the cupboard where she kept her Diet Coke was a bottle of Andoran wine in her birth year.Under a stack of old Vogue magazines, an autographed poster and front-row ticket stubs from Cirque du Soleil.And scattered like Easter eggs on every flat surface, hundreds of photos of herself in provocative poses around Orlando.“Here I am partying at PI—I was so drunk! Oh! And this is me cuddling a tiger cub.Isn’t he gorgeous?” Finding objects d’art among the piles of junk was like making an archaeological discovery.“I had the most annoying confrontation with Marco today,” I said, stretching out on her couch.“And then, out of nowhere, an old skater friend of mine showed up at the park, and he was acting completely inappropriate.I spent the rest of the afternoon chasing kids around, giving out stickers and coupons.”“A scandal?” Calico appeared in the doorway, wearing bright red lipstick and long, fake eyelashes.“How delicious!”“Well, ‘scandal’ might be a little dramatic, but, you know.” My words derailed.“Are you going onstage?”She smiled, and I could see a smear of bloodred lipstick across her teeth.“Of course not, dahling.Why do you ask?”“I’ve never seen you in this much makeup outside the Grotto,”“I felt like dressing up tonight,” she said, her voice taut with impatience.“Yew are taking me out to dinner, aren’t yew? I’m famished.”She went to get her purse.As I waited on the stair landing, I noticed Venus twinkling through the tree branches, and it reminded me of when we went skating in Celebration, the magical night when we first kissed.“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.” I smiled at her, but she gave no indication that she had even heard me.She shut her door and walked toward the stairs, swinging her hips like a catwalk model.I offered my arm, but she brushed past me, knocking me to the side.“Hey!” I cried out, clutching at the handrail.“What’s with you tonight? And what’s with the accent?”For the briefest moment, her eyes lit up with anger, then her expression melted.“I’m sorry,” she said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]