Small Steps - Louis Sachar [37]
“Stevens,” the father declared proudly. “Samantha Stevens.”
“Thanks.” Armpit picked up the phone and asked the operator for Samantha Stevens.
The blond family stared at him. “Is she staying at this hotel?” asked the father.
Five minutes later Kaira DeLeon stepped off the elevator, along with Fred, her bodyguard. Kaira wore denim shorts and a sleeveless top that stopped above her belly button. Her yellow toenails matched her flip-flops.
“How ya doin’, Knuckles?” she greeted him.
“Hi,” he said.
“Was that it?” she asked. “Is Knuckles your name?”
“No, I didn’t even get what you said.”
“Is it Elbow?”
“I’m not going to tell you even if you guess it.”
“It’s Elbow.”
“It’s not Elbow.”
Despite the weather, Fred was wearing a tan sports coat over a black T-shirt. He looked very stylish. If Armpit didn’t know better, he would have guessed that he was the rich and famous one of the two.
“You hungry?” Kaira asked.
“Starving!” he said, and he had been, until he saw her. Now he was too nervous.
“The café here is really good.”
She led the way down a flight of stairs. The hotel had been built on the side of a hill, so even though they went down, the café was still on ground level, with an outdoor patio overlooking the river.
“Three?” asked the hostess.
“Two,” said Kaira. “And we don’t want to sit too close to him either.”
On the way to their table they passed the blond family seated at a booth. All four smiled and waved to Armpit like they were old friends. He waved back.
“You know them?” asked Kaira, more than a little surprised.
“Sort of.”
They were seated at a table in the corner. Fred’s table was far enough away to give them privacy but close enough for him to come to her aid, just in case.
A waiter came by with coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Kaira had coffee but no juice. Armpit had just the opposite.
“Muscles?” said Kaira.
“I’m not going to tell you either way.”
She dumped a packet of sugar into her coffee, then another one, and then a third.
“So you like sugar in your coffee,” he said.
He felt awkward. They both did.
He was glad when the waitress brought them their menus so he had something to focus on. And when he saw the prices he was glad X-Ray had brought over the three hundred dollars. There was nothing on the menu for less than twenty dollars, and that included cereal.
“Toenail?” asked Kaira.
He didn’t answer.
The waitress returned. Kaira ordered lemon ricotta pancakes, and he ordered corned-beef hash and eggs.
“How’d you get my phone number?” he asked her.
“David got it for me, from security.”
“David,” said Armpit. “He was the guy with the vest.”
“What?”
“He wore a vest and no shirt.”
“I didn’t notice,” said Kaira. “So what was it like at that camp? Was it hard?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you do there?”
“Dug holes.”
“That all?”
“Pretty much. Every day another hole.”
Kaira nodded as if she understood, but he knew she didn’t.
“You like being a famous singer?” he asked her. It was a stupid question, and he wished he hadn’t asked it.
“It’s all right,” she said.
They sat in silence for a moment. It had been a lot easier to talk to each other when Ginny was there.
“Have you seen the view from the patio?” she asked him.
“No.”
“You need to see the view,” she said, in a voice that seemed unusually loud. “You can see the lake.”
“It’s actually a river,” he said.
“Whatever,” said Kaira.
“There’s a huge colony of bats living under a bridge right by here,” he told her.
“Bats?” Kaira said, again in an unusually loud voice. “Let’s go look at the bats.”
“You’re not going to be able to see them now,” Armpit said, but she was already out of her seat. “They only come out at night.”
“We’ll just look from the patio,” Kaira said again rather loudly.
She was talking to him, but he got the feeling that everything she said was for Fred’s benefit.
He followed her through the sliding glass doors out to the patio. A well-manicured lawn gently sloped away from the patio and down to a walkway. On the other side of the walkway the hill got much steeper and led down to the river.