Out Of Control

Amalia started crying. “You didn’t hear Franky’s voice. You didn’t see his face. Oh, Daisy, please—”

“Okay, okay.” God, next she’d be driving Amalia to the emergency room. “Look, it’s okay. I’ll tell him it’s off. I promise. Just calm down. And use your inhaler. I’ll call you later.”

She put the phone down. From Emily’s bedroom, she could hear the thump, thump, thump of the stereo. It matched the thump, thump, thump of her heart. She had a headache. The parrot squawked, regarding her, head to one side, with its bright, beady eyes. It squawked again, a shrill, ear-piercing demand for attention.

“You do that one more time,” she said, “and I’ll chop off your head.”

On the counter Baba looked up at her reproachfully from the cover of Forgiveness. She’d left the book there after speed-reading a chapter following an argument with Emmy earlier.

She regarded the parrot. “I didn’t mean what I just said. I’m sorry. Really. I know you’re hungry. I’d squawk, too.” She walked to the hallway. “Did you clean Deanna’s cage?” she called.

But, of course, Emmy couldn’t hear her over the stereo. She went back to the kitchen and fed the parrot. Deanna was a green Amazon. Emmy had wanted her so desperately that she’d promised to stop asking whether she could, please, use makeup like everyone else she knew. In the three months since Deanna had taken up residence in the corner of the kitchen, the parrot had heard Daisy nag Emmy so often that it had started squawking, “Clean the damn cage.”

Emmy appeared in the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”

“Heat up the soup if you’re starving, otherwise wait till I get home. I’ll do that baked chicken and potato thing you like.”

Amalia was always telling her that she should get Emmy to cook for herself, which was true. But food, good food, was a big deal with her, and she enjoyed cooking for other people. As a child, she’d grown to endure the weird combinations her father had mixed up like the paints in his artist’s palette. Broccoli with maple syrup, eggs scrambled with cranberry sauce. He didn’t like being bound by convention; just because salmon wasn’t usually served sprinkled with powdered sugar was no reason why it couldn’t be served that way. “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.”

She glanced around for her keys. “I have to go meet Nicholas Wynne.”

“Why d’you say it like that?” Emmy had hopped up onto the counter and was swinging her legs. “Nicholas Wynne,” she said, imitating Daisy’s voice.

“Isn’t that his name?”

“Yeah, but when you go to Kit’s, you don’t say, ‘I have to go meet Kit Niemeyer.’”

“Well, it’s different.”

“How?”

“Emmy, don’t bug me, okay? I’ve got stuff on my mind.”

“Want a peanut?” Deanna inquired. “Want some toast?”

“And you’ve got to start feeding her,” she said, with a glance at the parrot which was hanging upside down from her perch. “It’s not fair to leave it all to me.”

“Did Dad talk to you about me living with him?” Emmy said, her voice elaborately casual.

Daisy’s hand tightened around her purse, but she forced herself to remain calm. She figured Emmy had probably been rehearsing the words for some time. “He said he was going to,” Emmy added.

“Well, he didn’t,” she said carefully. This topic came up periodically, usually after they’d disagreed about something, and then it was dropped. She was fairly certain Emmy had no wish to live with her father, fairly certain, in fact, that it was mutual—Toby didn’t want a fourteen-year-old daughter cramping his lifestyle. Still, she had a knot in her stomach.

“He said he was going to,” Emmy repeated, popping a grape into her mouth. “He promised.”

Daisy glanced at the clock. She was going to be late. She looked at her daughter. “What’s the reason this time?”

Emily sighed. “I’ve told you like a hundred times. It’s only fair. You’ve had me for fourteen years. Now it’s his turn.”

“Quit banging your feet against the cabinet,” Daisy snapped. “And get down off the counter. What’s another reason?”

“He has air-conditioning in his apartment?”

The question mark at the end of the sentence and the faint smile on her daughter’s face told Daisy this wasn’t anything to lose sleep over, but she felt irritated anyway. Last week, Toby had asked her for a loan because the brakes had gone on his truck and one of his fillings had come loose, so he’d had to fork out money for the dentist and he was coming up short on the rent. But he’d pay her back, no problem.

She suspected him of putting Emmy up to this. She should call his bluff.

“Emmy.” She studied her daughter. “Maybe it seems like nothing to you when you talk about wanting to live with your father, but it gets me right here.” She poked a finger at her chest. “I know we’ve been fighting a lot lately and I’m not always the easiest person to live with, but I love you and I honestly try my best….” Her nose stung with tears and, not wanting to win a sympathy concession from Emmy, she just stopped. In an instant, Emmy was off the counter, her arm around Daisy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetie, more than anything else in the world. And don’t be sorry. You have a right to feel the way you do.”

“It’s just that Dad asked me to ask you.”

Daisy kept her mouth shut. I am going through a difficult time right now, she told herself as Emily walked her to the truck. But adversity tests character.

Still, it wasn’t the perfect frame of mind for meeting her father’s biographer. And she probably shouldn’t have worn a shirt that proclaimed, Doesn’t Play Well With Others.

Deep breaths. She started the ignition. Everyone comes into our lives for a reason, Baba said. Maybe Nicholas Wynne had come into her life to teach her tolerance. His job in the cosmic universe was to be the fly in her serenity. She would be firm, calm and polite. But there would be no biography.

HIS HAIR DAMP from the shower, Nick took a look at his clothes, lined up on hangers and still slightly wrinkled from their transatlantic voyage. Linen this, cotton that. Served him right he supposed for refusing to buy synthetics. He’d got most of the things on vacation in Nice last year and brought them, thinking they looked somewhat Californian. Now, inspecting himself as he left the apartment, he could see that they didn’t. Pity.

Out on the street, he eyed the never-ending flow of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, waited for a lull, then made a dash for it. As he reached the other side, he heard the screech of brakes and a hurled epithet from one of the vehicles. Assuming it had been directed at him, he turned toward the road. As he did, a flurry of movement caught his eye. He looked down to see a small, bedraggled and trembling white dog.

He squatted beside it and felt around for broken bones.

“Idiots like you shouldn’t be allowed to have animals,” a woman called out from the open window of a battered gray truck that had stopped for a red light. “You’re lucky it wasn’t killed.”

The woman’s pale oval face was partially obscured by a lot of long red hair, but he didn’t have to see her expression to know that she was angry. “It isn’t my dog,” he said politely, his hand still on the dog’s back. “But if I locate its owner, I’ll pass along your sentiments.” Bad-tempered shrew.

“You need to keep him on a leash,” the woman yelled.

“You need a leash around your neck,” Nick muttered, and then the light turned green and the truck roared out of sight, long hair trailing like a ribbon through the window. He checked the dog’s neck. No collar. It licked his hand. Now that he’d taken a better look, the dog was probably the ugliest little animal he’d ever seen.

The dog licked Nick’s hand again.

“Don’t get attached,” Nick said.

CHAPTER SIX

“LOOK,” DAISY MUTTERED to the waitress, “I’m not here, okay? This guy with an English accent is going to come in and ask for me but I’m not here.”

“Huh?”

“Long story. I nearly killed a dog and I’m too shaken up to talk right now, and I don’t really want to talk to him anyway, so just tell him I’m not here.”

“Is he, like, a boyfriend, or something?”

“God, no. I’ve never even met him—”

“Then how do you—”

“Leah.” She grabbed the waitress by the shoulders. “Puh-lease. I’m not here. What you see is a figment of your imagination.”

Leah, slowly shaking her head, left the kitchen. Daisy turned back to the crème brûlées. Her hands were still trembling from the near miss with the dog, and she was overdue for a showdown with Toby over the money he was spending. She felt too scattered to break the news to Nicholas Wynne that the biography was off. No. Avoidance was the only way out.

As she finished the desserts, she remembered she had to pick up Emmy from school. She peered through the serving window that opened into the dining room and saw a youngish guy sitting alone, his back to her. Could that be him? A bald guy talking to the hostess? Nicholas Wynne? Maybe. Damn. She was stuck in the back of the restaurant with no escape route. Thankfully, Toby wasn’t around—they’d run out of heavy cream and he’d gone down to the corner market for more—or she’d have to deal with him, too. Think, she commanded her brain. Her glance fell on the torch she’d been using. Sacrificing one of the crème brûlées, she scorched it until it began to smoke. Then to speed things along, she lifted it up just under the detector, which obligingly began to screech. For good measure, she yelled “fire” and dropped a pan on the floor. Three of the wait staff ran into the kitchen and in the ensuing commotion she slipped out of the restaurant.

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