smiled. She knew that would bug him, so she tried to make it a debutante smile.
“‘As you wish,’ said Wesley to the princess,” she added.
“You’re the only princess around here,” Marcus grumbled as he turned and took himself off to darken the cubicle of some other poor journalist. Over his shoulder, he added, “And would you please try to get that Gene Banks profile fluff-free? I don’t want to hear about his Schnauzer.”
“He doesn’t have a schnauzer,” Tracie called after him. Then, in a lower voice, she added, “He’s got a black Lab.” It was true she mentioned the Micronerds’ pets and hobbies in her pieces, but that was a humanizing touch. Anyway, she liked dogs.
The phone rang, and it reminded her she’d have to call Phil about tonight, but at five after ten, it couldn’t be him. He never got up before noon. She lifted the receiver. “Tracie Higgins,” she said in as brisk and upbeat a voice as she could manage.
“And for that I am eternally grateful,” Jonathan Delano teased. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Marcus just had an aneurysm,” Tracie told him.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Jon asked.
Tracie laughed. Jonathan always made her smile, no matter what. He had been her best friend for years. They’d met in a French class at the university. Jonathan had the biggest vocabulary and the worst accent that Tracie had ever heard. Her accent was pure Paris, but she couldn’t conjugate a verb. She’d helped Jon with pronunciation and he’d helped her with grammar. They’d both gotten A’s, and the partnership had thrived ever since. Only Jon or her girlfriend Laura could tell from four syllables that she was upset.
“I have a huge new assignment and I wanted to go out tonight. Plus, Laura is threatening to visit, so I gotta clean up my place.”
“Famous Laura, your friend from Sausalito?”
“Sacramento, actually, but what’s the dif? Yeah. She broke up with her freak boyfriend and needs some recovery time.”
“Don’t we all? What kind of freak was he?”
“Oh, just the usual ‘I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-call-you-can-I-borrow-three-hundred-dollars?-and-I-didn’t-mean-to-sleep-with-your-best-friend’ kind of freak.”
“Oh. A freak kind of like Phil.”
Tracie felt her stomach drop as if she were in the Needle elevator. “Phil’s not like that. He’s just having a hard time working on his writing and his music. Sometimes he needs help getting by, that’s all.”
Actually, Tracie more often felt Phil didn’t need her help at all. While she always asked him to read her pieces, he rarely shared what he wrote. She still couldn’t tell if it was because he was too sensitive to criticism, or if he didn’t respect her opinion. Either way, Tracie felt attracted to that in him. His self-containment was so unlike her too-eager hunger for acknowledgment. He was cool. She was not.
Jon snorted. “Phil’s a distraction from things that matter.”
“Like what?”
“Um. Like the story of your mother’s early death. Your complicated relationship with your father. Your real writing.”
“What writing?” Tracie asked, playing dumb, though she’d been thinking the very same thing over coffee that morning. Jon meant well. He believed in her, but sometimes he … well, he went too far. “I don’t do any real writing.”
“Sometimes it creeps into the middle of a puff piece,” Jon said. “Your real stuff is good. If they give you a column—”
“Ha! It will be forever before Marcus lets me have a column.” Tracie sighed. “If he’d just stop cutting them and I got a few features published the way I wrote them …”
“You’d be a great columnist. Better than Anna Quindlen.”
“Come on. Quindlen won a Pulitzer.”
“So will you. Tracie, your stuff is so fresh that you’d blow everyone away. Nobody is speaking for our generation. You could be that voice.”
Tracie stared at the receiver of the phone as if hypnotized. Neither one of them said anything for a moment and Tracie put the phone back to her ear. Then the spell broke. “Come on. Marcus doesn’t even let my punch lines stay in my features. I’ll be writing holiday features until I’m old and gray.”
Jon cleared his throat. “Well, maybe if you focused more on your job …”
Tracie’s other line rang. “Hold a minute, would you?” she asked Jon.
“I’ll hold for Marcus but not for Phil,” Jon said. “I have my pride.”
Tracie punched the button, glad to hear Laura’s soprano. “Hey ho, Tracerino. I phoned because I’m actually getting on the plane now.”
“Get out. Right now?” Tracie asked. “I thought you were coming on Sunday.”
“Face it. You thought maybe I wasn’t coming at all. But I am. I really am. I’m just calling to say I packed up all my stuff and left my pots and pans with Susan.”
“So that’s it? You’ve told Peter?”
“I don’t think I had to tell him. He saw the look on my face when I caught him going down on our next-door neighbor in our bedroom. Plus, he told me Quincy was an asshole.”
Back in high school, Laura’d had a tremendous crush on Jack Klugman. Tracie could never understand why, but sometimes the two of them drove through Benedict Canyon and staked out the house where somebody had told Laura he lived. They’d never seen him, but there wasn’t an episode of Quincy that Laura didn’t know by heart.
Tracie’s eyes widened. “He didn’t like Quincy?” she asked in mock horror. “And he went down on your neighbor?” she continued. “Was your neighbor a man or a woman?”
At least Laura laughed at that; it was better than tears. By Tracie’s count, Laura had cried fifteen gallons’ worth over Peter already. “So what’s your flight number and what time should I meet you?” While Laura fumbled for the info, Tracie thought of her deadline and her date, but Laura had been her best friend for years. “I’ll meet you at the airport,” Tracie said, trying to assuage her guilt.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m a big girl,” Laura said, and laughed. Laura was six feet tall, and not skinny. “I’ll just take the bus to your place,” she offered.
“Are you sure?” Tracie asked.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Besides, you’ve got work to do. You still get Quincy reruns in Seattle, don’t you?” Laura added.
Tracie smiled. “Yup.”
“Great. So hang up. I don’t want to hold you up,” Laura said.
That reminded her. “Oh no! I’ve got Jon on hold!” Tracie exclaimed.
“Don’t
