Bad Boy

“Tell him to drop dead.”

“What?”

“Tell him to forget it.”

“Regret it?” Laura yelled.

Tracie pulled out a Post-it notepad—she was never without one—and scribbled on it. She slapped it on the bar. It read “Just Say No.” In a corner, a group of die-hard punk rock musicians sat in a booth. They were sucking down beers. “The Swollen Glands,” Tracie said, and indicated to Laura. “Phil’s band.”

“Well, they don’t look like my type, but it’s better than sitting here. Let’s join ’em,” Laura suggested. “Maybe they’ll buy us a drink.”

“Yeah, maybe they’ll win a Congressional Medal of Honor, too.” The two girls made their way through the crowd and over to the group in the corner.

“Hi, guys,” Tracie said. “Glands, this is Laura. Laura, the Glands.” Tracie sat down next to Jeff.

“This music sucks,” Jeff, the regular Glands bass player, said.

“Yo, Tracie. Doesn’t this suck?” Frank, the drummer, asked as Laura took the seat beside him. There was a silence until a beautiful blonde walked by.

“Yum, yum. Come to papa. I’ve got something for ya,” Jeff said.

“Forget her. She works with me at the Times. She’s a barracuda.”

“Well, I’ve got something I’d like to hook her with,” Jeff said.

“Now I know which Gland you are,” Laura said. She turned to Frank. “And you? Lymph, perhaps?”

There was a commotion at the door. Tracie brightened as Phil entered. She gave Laura a look, and Laura turned her head. “God. He is tall. And good-looking.” Tracie nodded. Her guy had a lot of grace and charm—when he wanted to use it. In his hand was a bass guitar, but she was disturbed to see that beside him was an extremely thin, pretty woman. The two made their way through the crowd and approached the corner table. “He doesn’t walk,” Laura said. “He swaggers. And who’s the skank? Heavenly Host, he’s worse than Peter.”

“You haven’t even met him yet,” Tracie protested, though she was already nervous about the so-called skank herself. “Give me a break.”

“Hey, girl. I got out late from rehearsal.” Phil put his arm around Tracie.

“Phil, this is Laura,” Tracie said, introducing them. Uh-oh, one look at Laura’s face and Tracie recognized her mood. It was overly protective. She was staring at Phil as if instead of being late and accompanied by this nobody he had thrown acid on her face. Laura tended to overreact in situations like this. On the other hand, Tracie had the same tendency when Laura was being mistreated.

“Hi, Phil. Nice to meet you, too. Oh! And what have you brought us? Your tuning fork?” Laura asked. Tracie gave Laura a discreet kick in the ankle. When Laura had gone too far with Tracie’s wicked stepmother (known to them always as W.S.M. and never Thelma), Tracie had used the same editing system. No one had hated her stepmother as much as Laura—not even Tracie herself.

As if dealing with Laura, Phil, and the skank wasn’t enough, Allison drifted over, too. Just because she had to work with Allison at the Times didn’t mean she had to introduce her to anyone.

“Hi, Tracie,” Allison said.

It was the first time Tracie could remember Allison saying hello to her or anyone. She wasn’t even nice to Marcus, and he never gave her deadlines.

In a way, Tracie knew she should feel complimented and she did. Phil was so attractive and had so much presence. His height, his clothes, his hair, and his attitude all worked. Hey, they had worked on her, and she had snagged him, and she was thrilled every time she looked at him. But, other women were constantly being snagged as well and she had to be ever vigilant regarding her potential rivals and Phil’s attitude toward them. Luckily, he was so used to female attention that he usually ignored it. Tracie sighed. She would have to introduce them. “Laura, Frank, Jeff, Phil, this is Allison.” And even though she knew she shouldn’t, Tracie looked at Phil and said, “And this would be …”

“This is Melody,” Phil said. “She needed a ride over here.”

“From where? Your apartment?” Tracie asked, and then wanted to bite her tongue.

Laura shifted slightly in her seat, so there was no room for anyone else at the banquette. Tracie had to hand it to her friend. Phil still ignored Laura as he tightened his embrace around Tracie’s shoulder. “You look like a warm stove on a cold night,” he whispered into her ear. “See you later, babe,” he said to Melody, who was then forced, albeit reluctantly, to melt into the crowd.

Tracie eyed the girl’s back as she left.

“Unchained Melody,” Laura muttered with satisfaction.

“Righteous Brothers. 1965. Phillies label,” Jeff said.

Best to just ignore her and what might have gone on, put it away, like a sweater at the back of the closet in summer. Not that she wouldn’t hear all about it from Laura later. “So, are you playing tonight?” she asked Phil.

“Yeah. Bob is letting me do the second show.”

Bob led the Glands, but not for long, if Phil had his way. “Great!” Tracie said, distracted. She looked back into the crowd to see if Melody was hanging around. She didn’t seem to be, which was a relief. Tracie trusted Phil, but only within certain parameters. She’d better stay the whole night, then. When you mixed music, alcohol, and Melody, you were outside the parameters. “When is Bob arriving?”

“Well, there’s the question,” Phil said with a frown.

“Which Gland is he?” Laura asked. “The adrenal? The pituitary?”

“The asshole,” Phil said.

“Oh. Then that would more properly be called ‘the anal gland,’” Laura said smoothly.

Though Phil was the newest member, he was already jockeying to be leader. But why he would want it, Tracie could not fathom. It seemed like a lot of work: begging for unpaid jobs with club owners, making endless phone calls about rehearsals, begging vans from friends to schlep equipment—all just to pick the lineup of songs. Big deal. She supposed picking the lineup would be fun, but she couldn’t imagine Phil organizing everything else. She thought, There must be a responsible side to him after all.

“You know,” Jeff said for what had to be the three hundredth time, “I’m not so sure about our name.” Tracie looked up to the ceiling and sighed. When the guys weren’t fighting with one another or rehearsing or drinking, they spent their time arguing over the band’s name. Tracie had managed to do a feature about them—overcoming a lot of resistance from Marcus—and she’d used the latest name that they had agreed upon: Swollen Glands. But now, once again, Jeff voiced an objection. “I saw this sign, and it was really cool,” he continued. “Up in the mountains. They had them everywhere. It just said FROST HEAVES. Great name, huh? And, like, free advertising. Cool, huh?”

“How about Watch for Curves?” Laura joked.

“Nah,” Jeff said, serious. “Too limp.”

“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.

“Yeah. Who cares? Whatever, man,” Phil said to Laura.

The band began to play “Last Kiss.”

“Pearl Jam,” Jeff said. “Epic Records. 1999.”

“That was just a cover,” Laura said. “It’s an old fifties song.”

“It is not. Pearl Jam writes all their own material,” Jeff said.

“Wanna bet?” Laura asked, raising her brows in a dare.

“Why don’t we bet each other a dance?” Jeff said. “Then I’ll win either way.” Tracie looked back at Laura, whose eyes had widened to match her brows. Wordlessly she extended her hand, and Jeff, who had to be less than half her size, took it and pulled her out onto the dance floor. God knows, Tracie thought, I’d rather give my jewelry to Allison than dance with Jeff.

“Where’s Bob?” Phil asked.

“Yeah. Where is he?” Frank echoed, obviously disgusted by Jeff’s departure. He and Laura were really getting into the music. Tracie had forgotten how well Laura danced. “I ask myself what would Guns N’ Roses do if they were here?” Frank continued.

“Pull out an automatic weapon,” Phil told him. Tracie had to laugh.

“Man, Axl Rose would turn over in his grave if he saw this,” Frank added.

“Is Axl Rose dead?” Tracie asked.

The band members turned to look at her as if she was crazy. “What are you talking about?” Frank asked.

“You said he’d turn over in his grave. I just …”

Phil put his arm around her. “She’s not smart, but she sure is beautiful,” he told Frank by way of excuse, then gave Tracie a long, wet kiss.

Chapter 3

Jonathan Charles Delano rode his bicycle through the morning fog on Puget Sound. The road wound along the misty shore. He wore his Micro/Connection jacket—only given to founding staff with more than twenty thousand shares—and a baseball cap. The wind caught him broadside as he made a turn and then, as he swung into it, the wind inflated his open jacket as if it were a Mylar balloon. Riding was good therapy. Once he hit a rhythm, he could think—or not think, as he required. This morning, he desperately wanted not to think of last night—a night he’d spent standing in the rain getting stood up—or of the exhausting day ahead. He was actually reluctant to get to his destination, but he pedaled his heart out as if participating in the Tour de France. Mother’s Day was always tough for him. For years now, he had been following this tradition, one he had invented out of unnecessary guilt and compassion. He figured that as Chuck Delano’s son, he owed something. And anyhow, as an only child, these visits were the closest he got to extended family. Anyway, that’s how he rationalized the visits.

As he pulled around the next curve of the coast road, the fog cleared all at once and a breathtaking view across the Sound opened. Seattle appeared as green-fringed and magical as the Emerald City—and he noticed that Rainier was out, the towering mountain that reigned majestically over the city when visibility was good.

As one of the four actual natives of Seattle—it seemed everyone else had moved to the city from somewhere “back east”—he’d seen the sight a thousand times, but it never failed to thrill him. Now, though, he could only take a moment to enjoy it before he continued pedaling across Bainbridge Island and finally up to a shingled house. Jon jumped off his bike, pulled a bouquet out of the basket, and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked at his watch, cringed, and bolted up the path to the front door. The name plate on it read MRS. B. DELANO.

He knocked on the door. A heavyset middle-aged blonde in a zippered sweat suit opened the door. Jon couldn’t help noticing Barbara was even bigger than last year. She had an apron on over her sweats. That made Jon smile. It was so … Barbara.

“Jon! Oh, Jon. I didn’t expect you,” she lied in the sweetest way as she hugged him. Barbara was his father’s first wife, only slightly older than Jon’s own mother, but somehow from a different generation.

Jon tried to be all the things he should be: in touch with his feelings, a good son, an understanding boss, a loyal employee, a good friend, a … Well, the list went on and on and made him tired. Being a dutiful stepson was the part that made him depressed, as well.

Something about the first Mrs. Delano really saddened him. It was her relentless cheerfulness. She seemed happy in her little cottage in Winslow, but Jon imagined that the moment he left, she’d begin to pine. Not for him—Jon knew no one pined for him—but for Chuck, Jon’s father, the man she had loved and lost.

There was no reason for Jon to feel responsible, but he did, and he guessed he would always feel it, so he’d prepared in advance for this day. He brought the flowers from behind his back. “Not expect me?” he asked, as cheerful as she was. “How could you not? Happy Mother’s Day, Barbara.” Jonathan presented the bouquet with a flourish.

“For heaven’s sake. Roses and gladiolus. My favorites! How did you remember?”

Jon figured this wasn’t the time to tell her about his automated calendar, tickler file, or his Palm Pilot.

Barbara hugged him again. He could feel her soft bulk. She obviously didn’t use the track suit on the track. “You’re such a good boy, Jon.” She stepped to the side to let him have access to the foyer. “Come on in. I’m making biscuits for breakfast.”

“I didn’t know you could bake,” he lied, reluctantly. He didn’t want breakfast and … well, once she got started, Barbara could really talk. And there were two questions he dreaded: the overly casual “Heard from your father lately?” and the even worse “Are you seeing someone special?” Though Chuck rarely communicated with Jon and though Jon almost as rarely had a date, Barbara never tired of asking. But that was probably because she was lonely. She and his father had no kids and she’d never remarried. She seemed isolated, not just on the island but in her life.

“You have to have coffee,” Barbara said.

“Maybe just coffee. I don’t have a lot of time. I really ought to …”

Barbara extended her hand and drew him into the house. “So, are you seeing anyone special?” she asked.

Jon tried hard not to flinch. If he didn’t already know that the little time he spent on his personal life was a fiasco, last night would have been proof enough. He and Tracie, his best friend, had spent years trying to determine whose romantic life was less romantic. This week, he’d finally be the definitive winner. Or maybe that would make him the definitive loser. As he followed Barbara into the kitchen, he knew that whichever one it was, it wasn’t good.

An hour later, Jon pushed his bicycle, careful not to skin the heels of anyone as he followed a crowd of people disembarking the Puget Sound ferry on the city side. Everyone but him seemed coupled up. Sunday morning and arm in arm with their sweeties. Except him. He sighed. He worked all the time—relentlessly as all the whiz kids. Seattle loomed over the waterfront, with its silly Space Needle and the newer towers gleaming. He mounted the bike, quickly passed the crowd, and pedaled wildly onto Fifteenth Avenue Northwest.

In less than ten minutes, Jon stopped abruptly outside a luxury apartment tower. He checked his watch, took another bouquet out of his basket—this one all tulips—and locked his bike against a parking meter. He entered the lobby of the building, an overdone mirrored space he used to visit when his dad took him for weekends. He pressed the elevator button, the door slid open, and he entered, pressing the number 12. Though it was only seconds, it seemed like a long ride.

The elevator stopped and the bell beeped as the door slid open. Jon sighed again, walked out of the elevator, and paused to gather himself. Then he knocked on an apartment door where the name below the brass knocker read MR. & MRS. J. DELANO, with the MR. & crossed out. A woman—almost middle-aged but younger and far better preserved than Barbara—opened the door. She was dressed (or even overdressed) in what Jon guessed was considered “a smart suit.”

“Jonathan,” the woman cooed as she took the tulips from his hand as if they were expected. “How nice.”

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mother,” Jon said to Janet as he kissed her the way she’d taught him to: carefully on each cheek, being sure not to smudge her beautifully applied makeup.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Mother.’ I’m hardly old enough for that,” Janet replied with a little laugh. There was something about Janet’s voice that had always made him feel uncomfortable. When he was younger, he’d felt that she was gently mocking him. More recently, he’d realized that she was actually flirting. “Let me just put these in water,” she said. She opened the door wider to let him inside. He’d never felt comfortable with Janet.

The apartment was as overdecorated as Janet was herself. She wore way too much gold jewelry and had way too many gold buttons. The apartment had too many gold frames and too much cut glass. When he was twelve years old and had visited his father here, she’d spent most of her time cautioning him not to touch anything.

Nothing had changed since last year except his flowers. It was frozen in time, like Janet’s face or the palace in Sleeping Beauty. But no prince was making it up here for Janet’s wake-up call. Jon liked Barbara, but he couldn’t actually feel anything but pity for Janet. Now she played with the flowers in the little sink of the tiny kitchen. “Have you heard from your dad?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“No,” Jon said quietly. It was the question he most hated hearing. It made his father’s exes seem vulnerable. Now he felt even more sorry for Janet and he’d have to stay longer.

“No? No surprise,” she said, and her flirty voice changed and became hard. She pushed the last tulip into the vase too hard and broke the stem, though she didn’t notice. “And how’s your social life?” she asked, and Jon felt she might already know the answer wasn’t good. She eyed him up and down, taking in his baggy khakis, his old sneakers, his T-shirt. Then she sighed. “Well, where shall we go for brunch?”