“Am I supposed to pick you up?” he hollers.
I lean over the banister and look into the kitchen. Cricket is staring at me, parted mouth and furrowed brow. His difficult equation face. As if I’m the problem, not him. I rip away my gaze. “Yeah, the usual time. Thanks, Dad.”
Lindsey and I run the rest of the way into my bedroom. She locks my door. “What’ll you do?” Her voice is low and calm.
“About Cricket?”
She reaches underneath my bed and pulls out the polyester vest. “No. Work.”
I search for the remaining pieces of my uniform, trying not to cry. “I’ll go to Max’s. He can drive me to work before Andy gets there.”
“Okay.” She nods. “That’s a good plan.”
It’s the night before school starts, and I’m working for real this time. Anna and I—and her boyfriend, of course—are inside the box office. The main lobby of our theater is enormous. Eight box-office registers underneath a twenty-five-foot ceiling of carved geometric crosses and stars. Giant white pillars and dark wooden trim add to the historic opulence and mark the building as not originally a chain movie theater. Its first incarnation was a swanky hotel, the second a ritzy automobile showroom.
It’s another slow evening. Anna is writing in a battered, left-handed notebook while St. Clair and I argue across the full length of the box office. She just got another part-time job, unpaid, writing movie reviews for her university’s newspaper. Since she’s a freshman, they’re only giving her the crappy movies. But she doesn’t mind. “It’s fun to write a review if you hate the movie,” she told me earlier. “It’s easy to talk about things we hate, but sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly why we like something.”
“I know you like him,” St. Clair says to me, leaning back in his chair. “But he’s still far too old for you.”
Here we go again. “Max isn’t old,” I say. “He’s only a few years older than you.”
“Like I said. Too old.”
“Age doesn’t matter.”
He snorts. “Yeah, maybe when you’re middle-aged and—”
“Golfing,” Anna helpfully supplies, without looking up from her notebook.
“Paying the mortgage,” he says.
“Shopping for minivans.”
“With side air bags.”
“And extra cup holders!”
I ignore their laughter. “You’ve never even met him.”
“Because he never comes in here. He drops you off at the curb,” St. Clair says.
I throw up my hands, which I’ve been mehndi-ing with a Bic pen. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to park in this city?”
“I’m just saying that if it were Anna, I’d want to meet her coworkers. See where she’s spending her time.”
I stare at him, hard. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” He grins.
I scowl back. “Get a job.”
“Perhaps I will.”
Anna finally looks up. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” But she’s smiling at him. She twirls the glass banana on her necklace. “Oh, hey.Your mom called. She wanted to know if we’re still on for dinner tomorrow—”
And they’re off in their own world again. As if they don’t see each other enough as it is. He stays in her dorm on weekdays, and she stays in his on weekends. Though I do admit that their trade-off is appealing. I hope Max and I share something like it someday. Actually, I hope Max and I share one place someday— “Oy !” St. Clair is talking to me again. “I met your friend today.”
“Lindsey?” I sit up straighter.
“No, your old neighbor. Cricket.”
The ornamental ceiling tilts and bends. “And how do you know that Cricket Bell was my neighbor?” My question is strangled.
St. Clair shrugs. “He told me.”
I stare at him. And?
“He lives on my floor in my dorm. We were talking in the hall, and I mentioned that I was on my way to meet Anna, and where she works—”
His girlfriend beams, and I’m struck by a peculiar twinge of jealousy. Does Max tell people about me?
“—and he said he knew someone who worked here, too. You.”
One week, and already I can’t escape him. It’s just my luck that Cricket would live beside my only Berkeley acquaintance. And how does he know where I work? Did I mention the theater? No. I’m positive that I didn’t. He must have asked Andy after I left.
“He asked about you,” St. Clair continues. “Nice bloke.”
“Huh,” I finally manage.
“There’s a story behind that huh,” Anna says.
“There’s no story,” I say. “There is definitely NOT a story.”
Anna pauses in consideration before turning toward St. Clair. “Would you mind making a coffee run?”
He raises an eyebrow. After a moment, he says, “Ah. Of course.” He swoops in for a kiss goodbye, and then she watches his backside leave before turning to me with a mischievous smile.
I huff. “You’ll just tell him later, when you guys are alone.”
Her smile widens. “Yep.”
“Then no way.”
“Dude.” Anna slides into the seat beside me. “You’re dying to spill it.”
She’s right. I spill it.