The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [17]
“You’ll be my boss. Can you handle it?” She swung her crossed leg, silver high-heeled sandal dangling from her narrow foot.
It would make everything more fun to have someone he actually knew and liked working with him. “You can help me train the language arts scorers.” He made this statement without thinking about it first. As soon as he said it, he knew he shouldn’t have. But for the first time in forever, he felt a bit reckless. He was aware that he was willing to risk pissing off his boss because he wanted Gigi’s company, but what was wrong with that? Why was he arguing with himself?
Suzi and Davis, gliding past, waved at Vic. Then Suzi clapped her hand over her mouth, meaning, Uh-oh, I forgot what time it was!
Otis continued round and round with smooth scissor strokes, looking neither left nor right, his shaggy hair flying out behind him. A couple of tweenage girls struggled valiantly to keep up with him. He would never notice them.
“Don’t you have to be, like, a permanent employee to train scorers?” Gigi asked him. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to.…”
She was right. Temps weren’t supposed to train people. “I can assign you any job I want to,” Vic said. “That’s why I make the big bucks!” Gigi kept staring at him quizzically, so he kept on, digging himself deeper into the hole. “I know you’d be good at it. You won a teaching award, right? So, congratulations! You’re a trainer! If they sold booze in here, I’d buy you a martini to celebrate.”
“Rain check!” Gigi said, moving aside as Suzi came hurtling toward Vic, falling on top of him and nearly knocking him down.
“My friend’s here!” Suzi said to her father, clambering shakily to her feet. “My friend Mrs. Archer. The one who wants to take me to Italy. Come meet her.”
“Don’t have time right now, kiddo,” he said, waving and smiling at the old lady, who sat by herself at a small table on the edge of the party. She waved back, and for a moment he was afraid she’d get up and come to them, but, thank God, she didn’t.
Suzi went over to Mrs. Archer before they left, her Rollerblades slung over her shoulder, and gave her friend a hug good-bye. Now, as Vic often did, he felt proud to have a daughter like Suzi. She always put herself out for people. Everyone except her own sister.
* * *
Vic thought that the best way to handle the whole Italy thing was just to ignore it, but Caroline thought differently. She wanted to meet Mrs. Archer and size her up, and she wanted Vic to be there with her.
“You’re not thinking of actually letting her go off to Italy with a total stranger,” Vic said.
“What I think,” Caroline said, “is that Suzi probably read too much into a casual invitation. Let’s find out for sure instead of thinking.”
“Why do you hate me?” Vic asked her.
She sighed, looking even more exasperated. “What kind of nincompoop question is that?”
“We should rent a villa in Tuscany,” he suggested, “Just you and me.” Neither he nor Caroline had ever been to Italy.
“Like I have time,” she said. “Have you seen the pile of laundry in there?”
Nowadays everything Vic said got on Caroline’s nerves, so he tried to stay out of her way. In the evenings he’d been escaping to his little study (closet) in the basement to check out the National Hurricane Center Web site. After supper and before Nancy Archer was due to arrive, he snuck down and sat in his dark study bathed in the blue glow of his Mac laptop.
Praise be! A new hot spot! He clicked on the little orange circle on the map.
A TROPICAL WAVE IS LOCATED OVER THE FAR EASTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN ABOUT 350 MILES SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS. THE ASSOCIATED SHOWER