to shake off the four cups I had at breakfast.”
“Suit yourself.” She was wearing a heavy-looking pair of horn-rimmed glasses that made her look older and more mature. They seemed to complete her. That deep auburn hair and golden skin had made her seem somehow almost unreal to me.
“Are the glasses something new?” I asked her.
“No, they’ve been around for years. I’m just giving my eyes a rest from the contact lenses.”
“Trish says you’ve got an outside job,” I said, rummaging in the refrigerator.
“At a medical lab,” she told me. “It’s not challenging, but it pays the bills. What are you looking for, Mark?”
“Sandwich makings. I’ve got the munchies.”
“Go sit down. I’ll fix you something.”
“I can take care of it, Erika.”
“Sit!” she commanded. “I hate it when people tear up the kitchen. Aunt Grace was too timid to scold the party boys, and the mess they made used to drive me right up the wall.”
“James told me that you were living here before your aunt got sick,” I said, moving out of her way and sitting down in the breakfast nook.
“I was strapped for cash,” she replied. “I’d been working at a lab over near Swedish Hospital, and the headman there was a groper who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I cured him of that, and he fired me.”
“Cured?”
“I threw a cup of scalding coffee in his face.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“He felt pretty much the same way about it,” she said with an evil little grin. “Anyway, Aunt Grace had an empty room, and she let me stay here until I got back on my feet.” She started putting some sandwiches together. “That’s what set off our ‘serious student’ program. You wouldn’t believe how noisy it used to be around here. After Aunt Grace had her stroke, I yelled for help, Trish came running, and we clamped down.”
“James told me about that when I first found the place,” I told her. “He said he backed your decision all the way.”
“Oh, yes. And nobody in his right mind crosses James. Truth is, I had to nudge Trish to persuade her to put that ‘no drinking on the premises’ policy into effect. She was a little timid about it.”
“Timid? Trish?”
“She was worried about the rent money. That was all that we had to pay Aunt Grace’s medical expenses. I told her not to be such a worrywart. I knew that sooner or later we’d get the right kind of people here, and things would turn out OK.”
“You’re putting a whole new light on things around here, Erika,” I said. “I assumed Trish was running the show, but you’re the one calling the shots, aren’t you?”
“That’s been going on since we were kids, Mark. Trish wants people to notice her. I don’t need that, so I let her stand around giving orders. As long as she gives the orders I want her to give, I don’t interfere.” She came over and handed me a plate with two fairly bulky sandwiches on it. “Here,” she said. “Eat.”
“Yes, boss,” I said obediently.
She let that pass. “I’ll bring you a glass of milk.” “I’ve sort of outgrown milk, Erika.”
“It’s good for you,” she said. She poured me a glass of milk and brought it to the table.
This girl was going to take some getting used to, that much was certain.
After I’d finished eating, I went back to Mary’s place to pick up Twink. I was fairly sure that Mary was still asleep, so I went around to the back door again to avoid waking her.
Twink was waiting for me, and she had one of those black plastic raincoats that always seem to make a lot of noise. They keep the rain off well enough, I guess, but they crackle with every move.
“Did you bring my books?” she asked.
“We’ll pick them up at my office,” I told her. “I don’t keep my spares on my own bookshelves. They take up too much room. Let’s hit the bricks, Twink. I want to get in and out of my little clothes-closet office before the suck-ups get there and go into the usual feeding frenzy.”
“Suck-ups?” she asked.
“The ingratiators. The second-rate students who swindled their way through high school by laughing at the tired jokes of third-rate teachers, and the personality kids who’d really like to be my friend so that they can smile the C-minus they’ll earn up to a B-plus.”
“You’re in a foul humor,” she accused, as we went out to my car.
“It’ll pass, Twink,” I told her. “I always come down with the grouchies on the first day of classes. I know for an absolute fact that I’m going to come up against a solid wall of ineptitude, and it depresses the hell out of me.”
“Poor, poor Markie. You can cry on my shoulder, if you want. Maybe if I mommy all over you, it’ll make you feel better.”
I laughed—I don’t think I’d ever heard “mommy” used as a verb before. “When did you get mommified, Twink?” I took it one step further.
“Probably while I was in the bughouse,” she replied. “Dockie-poo Fallon always prescribed mommification—or daddyfication—when one of the bugsies went brain-dead. He’d either mommify us or embalm us with Prozac. And believe me, if you really wanted to, you could probably calm a volcano down with Prozac.”
We clowned around all the way to the campus, and I realized as I pulled into the Padelford parking garage that Twink had banished my grumpies. I was supposed to be taking care of her, but she’d neatly turned the tables.
“Where do you want me to sit when I go into your classroom, Markie?” she asked me when we climbed out of the Dodge. “Since I’m not a real student yet, am I supposed to hide under a desk or something?”
“Pick anyplace you want, Twink. The other people in the class won’t know that you’re only auditing, and I wouldn’t make an issue of it. Just blend in.”
“What am I supposed to call you?”
“Mr. Austin, probably. That’s what the others are going to call me. Let’s keep the fact that we know each other more or less under wraps—the other kids don’t need to know. Doc Fallon says that you’re here to get to know more people—’broaden your acquaintanceship,’ he calls it. I may not altogether agree, but let’s play it his way for now. I’ll give you some time for the after-class chatter before we go back home. Try to keep it down to about a half hour. Oh, don’t get all bent out of shape about some of the things I’ll say today, OK? It’s a little canned speech I picked up from Dr. Conrad. It’s called ‘thinning the herd.’ My life’s a lot easier if I can scare the incompetents enough to make them go pester somebody else.”
“You’re a mean person,
