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  “Let’s capture the moment,” his mother said as she grabbed her Polaroid and led Jon outside to the wisteria bush. “All I have to do is figure out the automatic timer and we’re all set.” She took about half an hour doing it, while he waited as patiently as he could. Then she scurried from the camera to him before the timer went off.

  And, with a flash, the moment was over.

  Jon was exhausted. He was only twenty-eight, but he wondered how many more Mother’s Days he could survive before they killed him. He had three more stepmothers to get through, despite the three meals distending his gut. But tea, an early dinner, and a late supper were all on the agenda before he could meet Tracie at midnight. Grimly, Jon climbed on his bike and pedaled off into the Seattle rain.

  Chapter 4

  Tracie raised her head, trying to see the clock. She could, but that didn’t help, as it clearly had been unplugged so that Phil could use the one overburdened outlet to plug in his guitar. No wonder he was always late.

  Phil’s apartment was a typical poet/musician’s hellhole. He shared the space with two other guys, and it seemed that none of the three of them had heard of power strips, extension cords, vacuums, or the advent of dish-washing liquid. Tracie closed her eyes, turned away from the squalor, and cuddled up against Phil’s warm side. She knew she had to get up, get dressed, and go meet Jon‌—as she did every Sunday night‌—but this felt so good. And today was Mother’s Day. A quick wave of self-pity washed over her. She told herself she only wanted a few more moments in the gray zone between sexual exhaustion and sleep. She dozed there for a while, then slept again, and when she next awoke, the streetlights had gone on and she knew it was getting late.

  She began to untangle herself from the wrinkled sheets, trying not to wake Phil. But as she stood up, Phil, only half-awake, grabbed at her with his long, long legs and pulled her back to the bed. “Come here, you,” he said, and kissed her. He smelled so good‌—like sleep and sex and bread dough‌—and she responded; then her mouth guiltily pulled away. “I’ll be right back,” she promised, and Phil mumbled and turned over.

  Tracie crept out of bed, slipped into her clothes, and snuck out to get the Sunday paper. It was already quarter past nine! God! No wonder she was ravenous. She’d better pick up some coffee, eggs, and bread for toast. Then she thought of the state of Phil’s kitchen and gave up that idea. Maybe just a couple of cheese Danishes. She’d leave the cooking to Laura. Tracie felt in her jacket pocket for money. She’d only need a few dollars. Most importantly, she wanted to get the Sunday paper and see what the Mother’s Day article looked like in print.

  It was funny: She’d been working at the Times now for four years, but she still got a thrill seeing her byline. Maybe that’s what kept her a journalist. She knew she could probably earn a lot more money hiring on as a technical writer at Micro/Con or any of the other high-tech companies in Seattle. But she didn’t have an interest in writing manuals or ad copy. There was something magical to her about the immediacy of newspaper work. The gratification of working on an article and seeing it‌—with her name at the top‌—just a day or two later kept her hooked.

  She walked to the deli closest to Phil’s place. It wasn’t clean, and the food wasn’t good, but, as they said about Everest, it was there. Across the door was a hand-lettered sign that said HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY. She ordered a couple of coffees, bought a pint of Tropicana juice, but couldn’t manage to sink to the level of the stale-looking pastries in the smudged case in front of her. She just went for a paper and called it a day. Then, even before she could leave the store, she had to look at the feature. She opened to her section. It wasn’t on the front page. She began to look through it. And kept looking. Not on page two or three. Not even on the following two. Then she found it. On the bottom of six. Truncated. Overedited. Sliced and diced. Trepanned. The thing had been cut up and then stitched back together as badly as Frankenstein’s monster. She actually felt sick to her stomach. Goddamn it! Tracie scanned it again. It couldn’t be as bad as she thought, but it was. It really was.

  She threw the rest of the paper on the counter, turned, and walked out with the Sunday section still in her hands. She almost stuffed it into the first garbage pail she saw and did go as far as crumpling it up, but her outrage was so strong, she needed to hold on to it, just to share it with Phil and look at it again. She walked through the spring night, back toward the apartment. Why did Marcus do this to her? Why did he even bother giving her an assignment if he was going to rewrite it? She could swear he did it out of spite. What was the point? She could never use this as a clip. Potential employers would think she was a moron. What was wrong with Marcus? What was wrong with her for putting up with Marcus? Or why did she even bother to struggle over her work? Why not just hand in bad stuff and let him revise it as much as he wanted?

  She was to Phil’s door when she realized she’d forgotten both the coffee and the juice, but now she didn’t care. She just wanted to crawl into bed and blot out everything. It was too bad that she had to see Jon later. Usually, she looked forward to their midnight meetings. But now she felt like being alone, crawling into a hole somewhere. She couldn’t go home to her apartment because Laura was there and would be cheery and busy. Of course, when she showed her the paper, Laura would get even more upset then she was, and then she’d have to spend her time calming Laura down. Laura would tell her to quit, to get a new job, one where they appreciated her. But it wasn’t so easy to get a job as a journalist writing features for what the Superman show used to call “a large metropolitan daily.” Without a nice portfolio of well-written articles, her value had actually gone down since she had left school with her masters in journalism.

  Tracie sighed as she walked up the dirty stairway to Phil’s apartment. She wanted to be held like an infant. She walked in the door, then through the living room, trying to ignore the month’s worth of accumulated dirty dishes, the piles of clothes, CD cases, and the assorted sordid detritus of three pathetically dirty man-boys. She walked into Phil’s bedroom.

  “Hey, where you been?” he asked. “You took so long that my feet are getting cold. And where’s my coffee?”

  She sighed. Sometimes, Phil was incredibly self-involved. “ ‘Hello, Tracie. How did you sleep? What’s wrong? Mother’s Day a little tough on you?’ ” she began, imitating his voice. “ ‘Oh! Marcus, your bully editor, cut your Mother’s Day feature to shit? I’m so sorry. And you worked so hard on that story.’ ”

  He didn’t show any remorse, but he sat up in bed and opened his arms. “Hey, come over here, baby.”

  Tracie hesitated, but the newspaper crumpled under her arm made her feel so bad that she needed comfort more than pride just at that moment. When Phil gave her that look, everything seemed better. He needed her, and Tracie felt so desired that work seemed instantly unimportant. She crawled in beside him. He gave her a deep, hot kiss. Tracie melted into his arms.

  “Life is always hard for the artist, baby,” he said, holding her tighter and starting to rub her back. “You know, I just finished another story.”

  “Really?” Tracie knew Phil could write only if he was inspired. He didn’t believe in deadlines. “They kill your creativity,” he’d said. “That’s why they call them deadlines.” “What’s the story about?” Tracie asked shyly. Secretly, she’d always hoped he’d write something about her. But so far, he hadn’t.

  “I’ll show it to you sometime,” he said, and pressed both of his hands on either side of her spine. It was soothing. He was so much bigger than she was. It felt great to be held against his wide chest, encircled by his arms. This was what she wanted. Not sex, not words, just dumb comfort. She nuzzled against him. Then he turned her to him. “Nobody kisses like you do. You love me?”

  Tracie nodded and hugged him back. “And my ironing isn’t bad, either,” she said. “But I have to go. I’m meeting Jon.”

  “Fuck Jon,” he said, then lowered his voice. “No, fuck me.” He nuzzled her ear. “I want you,
” he whispered.

  “Phil, I have to go or I’m going to be late. I have to meet‌—”

  “The computer weenie.” Phil shifted his weight so that his whole length was against her. “Why don’t you stay here with my weenie instead?” he asked.

  “Phil, I mean it. I have to‌—”

  He grabbed her again and pulled her to him. “You look so sexy right now . . .”

  “You only say that when you’re horny.”

  “I’m horny all the time, so you always look sexy to me.”

  They struggled with each other until Phil was on top of her. She gave him a deep kiss. Oh, she liked him to touch her so much. When he began to unbutton her shirt, she stopped struggling. He wasn’t always hot for her. Tracie was smart enough to notice that Phil withheld sex sometimes. She thought it was one of his power plays: make her want it and then pretend to be bored.

  The sick part was, when he teased her it made her hotter for him. Most of the men Tracie’s age were only too happy to grab her and stuff their thing inside her. Phil was the first man she’d known who knew how to hold off until she was almost ready to beg for it. She shivered just a little, but he was close enough to feel it. “I know you like me,” he whispered. “You can’t help it, can you?”

  “No,” she murmured, and he lifted her at the hips and pulled off her jeans as if she were no heavier than an infant. He ran his tongue from her knees all the way up to her breasts.

  “So pink and so pretty,” he said, and she felt a little thrill run from the back of her neck directly to her groin. He hooked his thumb under the elastic. “These always remind me of those frilly paper things that cupcakes come in.” He kissed her again. “Come to me, my little cupcake.” For an insane moment, Tracie thought about the farm cakes she craved, but when Phil moved his thumb elsewhere, she was right back to business.

  And business was good.

  Tracie’s eyelids fluttered open. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep again, but the sex had been so good, and being held by Phil and slipping off to sleep after a really satisfying orgasm had been too hard to resist. Not a bad way to spend Mother’s Day, or any day, for that matter.

  She remembered Jon again. She sat up and began to gather her clothes. Phil groaned, rolled over, and grabbed her back. He put the side of his face in the crook of her neck so that his mouth was just at her ear. “If you didn’t have to leave,” he whispered in her ear as he caressed her arm, “I’d be tempted to start kissing you right here.” He was quiet while he kissed the nape of her neck, then her shoulder. His breathing was getting heavier. “I’d move my way down to your nipples and then I’d . . .”

  Tracie felt Phil’s erection against her leg. “Still playing hard to get?” Tracie asked.

  “Hard, anyway. And you know why? Because of you, baby.”

  Tracie reached down to the inside of Phil’s leg. “Oh, yes,” she cooed. She took one hand and began to kiss his fingers. But then she stopped. “What is this?” She held up his hand. They both looked at it. A phone number was scrawled in blue pen across his palm.

  “Uh.” There was a tiny pause, the shortness of which only an experienced girlfriend could interpret. Was it the pause to remember or the pause to make up a plausible lie? “One of the guys’ new phone numbers. From the band,” Phil said.

  “An 807 exchange? You’re telling me this is a Gland’s phone number?” she asked. “Frank’s? Jeff’s? I don’t think so. Since when did they move to Centralia?” She looked at Phil, hoping to see truth in his eyes.

  “Jeff moved awhile ago,” he said, pulling away from her. He swung his long legs over the side of the mattress, sat up, and reached over to the night table for a cigarette. “I have to call him about rehearsal tomorrow,” he told her.

  “Whose number is it, Phil?” Tracie asked. She picked up the phone, prepared to dial.

  “Jeff’s,” he said, his back still to her. He lit a match, sucked in a deep lungful of smoke.

  She hated him right then. She wasn’t stupid, after all. It was probably the phone number of that skinny little girl from Friday night. She should have known! She began to dial. “Phil, if I dial this number and I don’t get Jeff, I’m going to cut off your hand, so your penis never has a friend again.”

  “Go ahead, baby,” Phil said calmly as he did a French inhale. “Of course, you’ll look like a psycho bitch and I’ll look like an asshole, but hey, I don’t mind.”

  Tracie paused. Was he being casual or just acting as if he was? She couldn’t tell. And did she really want to know? Phil took a deep puff, then exhaled. “I mean, I can’t help it if Jeff’s old lady answers the phone and gets mad. She hates him to get calls there. Especially from women. And so late.”

  “Late? It’s only ten-thirty.” God! She’d be late for Jon!

  “Why don’t you stop fussing and come here and get what you really want?” Phil asked her. Sometimes she hated him. He put his cigarette down and opened his arms again to her.

  “I miss you already and you’re not even gone,” he said, and rolled on top of her and kissed her again. His long body wasn’t heavy enough to really pin her against the bed, but she liked the sensation of almost being pinned. His mouth tasted sharply of tobacco, but his tongue was so warm and alive. It searched hers like a friendly little vole looking for a home. Tracie dropped the phone and reached for the water bottle she kept on her bedside table.

  “I’d like some of that, too,” Phil said, and started to get up on his elbows.

  “It’s all yours,” Tracie replied, and doused him with it. Just in case he was a liar. He yelped, but she paid no attention. She had no time to find out‌—and maybe she didn’t want to know. She’d be hellishly late for Jon. She pulled on her clothes, slipped into her shoes, and crossed the floor. “I’m outta here,” she called from the door, laughing. Her last look at Phil was of him untangling the wet gray sheet from his lanky body.

  Chapter 5

  Jon’s office was impressive in size and location, occupying the corner of a building on the low-rise Micro/Con campus, with a view of the topiary garden. But instead of the usual corporate chairs and sofa he had been offered, Jon had used his decorating budget to buy vintage beanbag chairs upholstered in leatherlike Naugahyde. A lot of Naugas must have died, ’cause there were at least half a dozen shapeless mounds of chairs spread around the room. In the center of them, there was a coffee table actually made of coffee beans suspended in a clear acrylic. Jon particularly liked the coffee table. Narrow shelves lined one wall‌—not for books, or even software CDs, but for the vast collection of action figures he had acquired for work (he had a huge annual budget for them). They shared space with his numerous Pez dispensers (his own private collection). Jon had more than four hundred, including the rare Betsy Ross, the only Pez dispenser ever created based on a real person.

  He more than liked the nonsense of his office. There was a method to his madness. It put people at ease, and encouraged playfulness, hence creativity. But there was no nonsense on his desk. Only three photographs were set at the corner of the shining (renewable) teak surface: a picture of his mother, a picture of Tracie and him at college graduation, and a picture of a much younger Jon standing with his mom next to his father, just after they’d planted the wisteria around the doorway of their house and just before Chuck had split.

  Now he pulled out the Polaroid his mother had taken earlier in the day and inserted it into the corner of that frame. He stared at the picture: Jon Delano, twenty-eight years old, embracing his mother, and for a moment, it changed before his eyes. It turned black and white and suddenly there was no mature blooming wisteria nor a mature Jon. Instead, a very young Jon and his young mom were embracing while Mr. Delano walked past them, struggling with two suitcases. Jon blinked and the actual Polaroid returned. Spooked, he got up and walked away from the desk.

  Well, he was really tired. Not to mention stuffed. Thank God Toni, his last stepmom but one, had canceled at the last minute, or his stomach would probably have b
urst. He looked out the window to the lit garden and the darkness beyond. It was almost 10:00 P.M., but that didn’t stop people from working on Sunday at Micro/Con. All the staff prided themselves on the incredibly long hours they put in. Sunday was just another workday, and even now the parking lot was almost half-full. Jon patted his belly and sank into a beanbag, wiggling his butt until it assumed the position. There was something about Mother’s Day that depressed him, and it wasn’t merely surveying the trail of human wreckage his father had left behind.

  Jon had grown up listening to the women’s complaints. It wasn’t only his father’s various wives, though; it was also the women who gathered for coffee at his mother’s house. Other women had even worse stories about their exes, stories that he’d listened to, hiding behind the couch, when he was seven, nine, and fourteen. His mother’s friends seemed incapable of ditching their husbands or finding ones who treated them well. Why’d they stay? he still wondered. He thought of Barbara and her baking. After the biscuits had come the inevitable question: “Hear from your father?” He thought of Janet’s skinny shoulders when she turned her back on him, pretending to arrange the flowers, and asked, “Have you heard from your father?”

  It wasn’t Mother’s Day, Jon decided. Not for him. For him, it had been Heard from Your Father Day and Have You Got Anyone Special Day. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and, with his right hand, removed his glasses so that he could massage the reddened flesh under the nosepiece. Jon had almost two hours before his customary midnight date with Tracie and, although he had piles and piles of work to do, if he just kept his eyes closed and napped for just a minute, ten minutes at the most . . .

  Jon was eleven and sitting in a leatherette booth across from his father. A plate of untouched eggs, their whites runny, the yolk congealing, sat undisturbed in front of him, while his father was busy tearing pieces of the running egg albumen with a side of his fork, then pushing the nasty stuff onto a burned corner of toast and popping it into his mouth. Jon was aware that he was asleep, yet the man in front of him was so real, so perfectly reconstructed in his dream, that it was impossible to believe the guy was not there. Jon could have counted each bristle of his father’s five o’clock shadow. Chuck finished the last bit of egg, wiped the plate with some of Jon’s toast, and began to chew it up. He leaned forward. “Just remember this, son,” he said. “There’s not a woman in the world who won’t buy a lie she wants to believe.”