Part 13 (1/2)
”Of course I'm your mother. I'll always be your mother. But you're such a good girl, you hardly need any mothering. You need cheering up.”
Janet leaned toward her, plucked the ice cream out of her hand, and scooped out the last good marshmallow stripe. ”Isn't it better than getting a lecture?” she asked.
”Yes,” Amber said, with some trepidation.
”You don't sound so sure. Haven't you ever done girl talk before? You dish, and then I give you all kinds of useless advice, and then we mock him for a while until we're giggling and you go home and take a shower and pull yourself together. You'll feel better after, I promise.”
She looked at her mother, dressed in those impractical clothes, with her sympathetic eyes and mischievous smile.
Why not? She thought. Why the h.e.l.l not?
”Okay.”
”Oh, good.” Janet leaned toward her. ”Now tell me what happened in the bas.e.m.e.nt.”
Chapter Thirteen.
Tony kept away from the community center all morning, messing around with paperwork in the office until he ran out of excuses not to do his job.
He drove the fifteen miles from Mount Pleasant to Camelot at a crawl. When he got there, the blonde was behind the desk, and Amber was nowhere in sight.
He found Patrick hanging sheetrock in the meeting room closest to the old part of the building, holding the panel up while a nineteen-year-old college dropout named Casey pounded in the nails.
Tony usually had Casey pus.h.i.+ng a broom. He never gave him work that involved skill. The kid didn't know his a.s.s from apple b.u.t.ter.
”What are you doing?”
Patrick gave him a wry look. ”Hanging rock.”
”Where are Rick and Matt?” Tony asked. His regular sheetrock guys had been scheduled to come in this morning.
”They didn't show,” Patrick said.
”Neither of them?”
”Right.”
”Jesus. Did you call them?”
”No. Where have you been?”
”In the office.”
The sheetrock needed to get done by Wednesday, and Patrick had only three panels up. Tony and Patrick working together could have finished the whole room inside of two hours. Rick and Matt were even faster.
”How long you been at it?”
Patrick looked at Casey, and the kid shrugged. ”I don't know, since ten?”
Three and a half hours.
”Casey, you can take five. I'll handle this.”
The kid handed Tony his hammer.
”Where are the nails?”
Casey pointed to a box on the other side of the room.
”What the f.u.c.k? Bring them over here. When your break's over, go clean the floor in the aerobics room. Somebody's been walking on it with dirty boots again.”
Tony took over pounding nails through the panels into the joists. It felt good to hit something. He'd spent the past two days filled with restless violence.
”Dude, where'd you go this weekend?” Patrick asked. ”Cathy said she called you during the storm and you weren't home. I called three times yesterday.”
”I was here during the storm. Working late.”
And I was home all weekend, pacing holes in the living room carpet like a caged animal.
His brother s.h.i.+fted beneath the panel, finding a better position for his hand. ”You had to go down into the bas.e.m.e.nt with the lights out?”
”Yeah.”
”That sucks. Was it just you, or-no, that director girl would've still been here, huh? I bet that was interesting. She try to jump your bones?”
”Shut up.”
The warning in his voice made Patrick look over. Tony watched him leap to the logical conclusion.
”You were holed up with the director girl, huh?”
”Her name's Amber. And no. I was home all weekend. I didn't answer the phone because I didn't want to talk.”
”Touchy.”
Tony hammered without saying anything, hoping Patrick would take the hint and leave him alone.
Between blows, he heard the faint, intermittent buzz of a chainsaw. Amber must have called somebody to pull the limb off her car and cut it up.
Her voice came through from the other side of the plastic.
”No, Kim was supposed to take that s.h.i.+ft. Give her a call, okay?”
”That girl is cute,” Patrick said. ”With the whistle and all. Amber, huh? She gave me half her sandwich at lunchtime.”
Tony pounded another nail into the joist.