Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [77]
Diana was only a few inches shy of Finney’s six feet, and when they danced he couldn’t help noticing they fit together like a hand and glove. He’d had a lot of surprises recently, few as pleasant as the kiss she’d given him earlier. There was something vaguely adolescent in the way he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“So, you’re house-sitting, did you say?”
“My parents took their motor home to the Southwest so they could use up the last of the country’s petroleum supplies. Mom’s always wanted to see the high desert in the autumn. I’m sitting with eight parakeets, two hundred houseplants, and an answering machine that fills up twice a day. I swear my mother is the most gregarious woman on the face of the earth.”
“You are indeed a dutiful daughter.”
“It’s the least I could do to make up for all the grief I’ve given them.” She laughed. “No, really, two of my brothers live out of town, and the other one works fourteen-hour days and barely ever sees his wife and kids. It was me or a professional house-sitter, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you grew up on the Eastside?” he asked.
“Want to hear my sad tale, do you?”
“I do.”
“I wish it was sordid. At least that would be interesting, but I was a typical spoiled Eastside brat, raised on Pickle Point just off Meydenbauer Bay in a house almost as large as Ten’s. We lived about sixty feet from Lake Washington in a neighborhood of disgustingly conspicuous wealth. I had a stay-at-home mother with a master’s degree in English, who thinks all little girls should grow up to be just like her, and a father who is one of the founders of a law firm with offices in Seattle, Spokane, and Portland. I had three brothers who treated me like a boy until I was sixteen, which was how I wanted it.” She laughed. “Now for the sordid part. I had it all: private schools, tutors, my own pony at age three. We grew up with a full-time housekeeper and a summertime grounds-maintenance team.” She rubbed her nose against his cheek. “I broke this playing football when I was twelve. I broke it again when I was fourteen. My parents were apoplectic when I refused cosmetic surgery.”
“Ever regretted it?”
“Not for a minute.”
“It’s cold.”
“That’s why I’m warming it up on you. Did you know cats live their lives through their noses?”
“I did know that. And congratulations.”
“On what?”
“On breaking it twice. I haven’t even been able to get my nose to bleed.”
“We were soooo spoiled. I was chauffeured everywhere by my mother in a Mercedes. Ballet, piano, ski, gymnastics lessons. In high school my parents gave me an Alfa Romeo. Were they ever teed off when I traded it in for that Jeep. Except for that and being a tomboy, I was an exemplary child until I dropped out of Pepperdine five credits shy of a degree.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was a pinch of postadolescent rebellion.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“Social work with kids, counselor at a summer camp, clerk in a Starbucks shop, and training for triathlons. When I eventually joined the fire department, my mother told me firefighters were tobacco-chewing rednecks or lesbians with crewcuts. I said, ‘No, Mother. The lesbians chew the tobacco and the rednecks have the crewcuts.’ Mother still talks about my completing a degree in communications and perhaps turning out a novel. Mother has two half-finished novellas tucked away in a dresser drawer.”
Finney didn’t mention his ex-wife’s ambitions in that direction.
“That’s enough about me. What about you?”
He told her about his childhood trekking around the West Seattle