Daring—very daring—to slide onto a bench which was already occupied. But Paula thought the next bench looked dirty. The air was cool, though, and the sky, if cloudy, was bright. Anyone with an experience of movies knew murderous attacks took place on rainy nights or shadowy pathways.
She cast a wall-eyed glance at the man as she slipped her paperback free. He seemed to be ignorant of her presence, his eyes closed while one foot bobbed to whatever he was listening to on those earphones. You couldn‘t be too careful, of course. And there was Dickie to consider now, on top of all previous fiendish possibilities. Plus a murderous attack would mess up her schedule for the whole day.
Time now to get back to Leofwine, and her stroll in the garden. Paula had doubts about the author’s claim that Leofwine found peace in the garden. For the preceding two hundred pages, Leofwine had behaved like the kind of woman who didn’t go out in daylight lest the rays of the sun bleach her toenail polish. Still, one had to cut the author a bit of slack. This was bench reading, not a novel designed to change the mores of the modern world.
She was just settling herself when she felt the plastic pop from one ear, allowing a dusty song about how love could be kind and cruel, wonderful and terrifying, funny and awe-inspiring to blare out into the morning air. Her electronics liked the song so much it seemed to blare it out twice, one version slightly ahead of the other.
Paula smiled a quick apology to the man on the bench, and found him smiling an apology himself. That was where the second version of the song originated: one of his ears had similarly rejected its speaker, probably when he slid away to make more room for her on the bench. Paula caught at her earphone and shoved it into the right place on just the fourth try.
Rick took five tries to accomplish the same thing; he was keeping an eye on the woman. She seemed self-possessed, well-clothed. But you could never be sure who was waiting for the right moment to launch into a pitch for a handout. Plenty of these street people took babies out to show off why they were asking for money.
He glanced at the child in the stroller, who chose that moment to wake up, possibly prompted by the blare of music. Round eyes blinked, and then the child laughed at something unseen by Rick. Most infants are attractive when laughing: Rick had to smile.
The woman noticed, and smiled back. Rick started to look away before she could speak, and saw her frown.
Smiling at the baby, Rick had not noticed a wayward breeze dropping a pink flower petal onto his lap on the right spot to make it look—for a second—as if he had dressed very carelessly before coming out. Paula had not noticed the breeze either, but she had noticed the petal right away. It held her gaze long enough to make her frown. When she realized what she was actually seeing, she blushed a little and turned away.
But the frown, and the questioning arch of one sharp eyebrow, made Rick feel he had to say something. If the woman was not after a handout, perhaps she thought he was interested in her baby as a kidnapper. Best to disabuse her of that notion.
Still smiling, he said, “I do like that bib.”
Understanding the petal had already told Paula this was not the kind of creep she’d assumed at first. But she was still alert for trouble, and her mind informed her, “First thing he says to me starts with the word ‘I’. He’s really talking about himself.”
What she said aloud was, “Yes. Of course, Dickie’s not old enough to realize that’s Herman Melville.”
Rick nodded, thinking, “Good job I didn’t ask her where she found a bib with Karl Marx on it. What a show-off!”
Aloud, he said, “Oh, Moby Dick and Dickie are a natural match, aren’t they?” That would show her he knew who Herman Melville was.
“Ah,” thought Paula, “He’s really telling me he knows who Herman Melville is. This man simply has nothing to talk about except himself.”
She expelled a breath with ruffled the fringe of hair on her forehead. “It’s really appropriate when he wails.”
“Uh-oh,” Rick thought. “Gotta top that. Still, she’s got an original line.”
“Would you call that a Type E joke?” There! What did she think of that?
“Not bad,” is what she thought. “So you’ve heard of a Melville boo besides Moby Dick. One and a half points to you. What now? Ask Dickie if the cow says ‘O moo’?”
She was saved from this fate by Dickie, who shouted “Tglagh!”, reaching two little hands apparently toward the man.
“No no, Dickie, that’s not your da-da.” Paula patted his hands without really pushing them back. “He’s in Phoenix.”
“Letting me know her husband’s out f town, is she?” Rick decided he was probably sophisticated enough to resist the wiles of a woman with a stroller. “Play it cool,” he told himself, “Unti you can walk away.”
Smiling at the baby instead of looking at her, he remarked, with extreme apathy, “Phoenix, eh? On work?”
“On the lam,” said Paula, before she could stop herself. Why had she mentioned Robin at all? This man hardly needed to hear that story.
“Hmmmm. Why did she feel like bringing up the one who got away?” Rick thought. “And what do I say? Can’t introduce myself. She’ll think that now I know the coast is clear, I’m interested.”
“What is he thinking? Should I casually mention an older brother, to make him think Dickie and I don’t live alone? Sounds stupid and I haven’t even said it yet.” Paula smoothed down some hair that was not out of pace on Dickie’s forehead.
“Tgeb,” said Dickie, pushing her hand away. “Geb?”
An hour seemed to pass between “Tgeb” and “Geb”; Paula ran her tongue across the backs of her front teeth. “Do I introduce myself? If I tell him my first name, he’ll think I’m interested, and if I use my last name, he can look up my address and phone number.”
“Well, if he’s on the lam, he should have gone to Los Angeles, since that’s where the Rams are.” The sexual symbolism of a ram on the lam struck him just as he uttered the last syllable. “Er, sorry.”
The symbolism seemed to have missed her. “You do look sheepish.”
Rick lowered his head a bit. “I knew I couldn’t pull the wool over your eyes.”
Paula wondered whether it was wise to carry on this kind of combat with a stranger; puns had not been covered in any Twelve Step Guide to Intelligent Interaction. Then she realized she HAD to reply, “Shear genius!”
“If we’re going to engage in wordplay to the death,” Rick was thinking, “I suppose it’s a gentleman’s role to start the introductions. Or would she think that’s old-fashioned?” It was difficult to consider these problems when he had to admit, “I knew I couldn’t stump you with such a yarn.”
“Stringing me along, eh?” she snapped back, at the same time wondering why he couldn’t tell her his name, so she could avoid pretending to accidentally drop a business card?
If it was old-fashioned for him to start with the introductions, then why didn’t she? “I’m losing the thread of this conversation,” he told her.
“Pretty good line,” she sniffed. “Be careful, or I’ll sic my thesaurus on you.”
Rick was impressed. “Not everybody knows how to pronounce thesaurus.” He frowned slightly, checking his own pronunciation even though he knew it was right.
Paula didn’t notice the frown. “I can spell it, too. I’m a proofreader by trade.” There. One step closer to an introduction without committing to anything.
Dickie was waving at something just behind the bench. “Thglagaldagha!”
“How do you spell that?” asked Rick.
“It’s his word. Let HIM spell it.”
Rick grinned. “Who…ahem…for whom do you proofread?”
Paula smiled back. “I’m free-lance. Anyone old enough to realize the computer’s programs can’t do everything. I index as well.”
“That sounds interesting.” Rick knew better than to tell anyone their job sounded like fun; no one ever talked about a job except to complain about it. “You get to read all kinds of things before anyone else.”
Paula grimaced. “It would be more interesting if people could spell.”
He spread out his hands. “What more could you want? That guarantees steady business.”
Paula’s eyebrows arched up, the eyeballs rolling up until the pupils were out of sight. “No way. I lost my latest job because I was finding too many mistakes in the text.”
Rick was on familiar ground: let anyone complain about their own job long enough and he could whine about his. “Why? Were you getting paid by the mistake?”
The memory was still painful; Paula shrugged. “They said I was just too picky.”
“Huh! What was it?”
Paula’s upper lip stretched in an effort to keep the rest of her face straight. “An English textbook.”
Rick lowered his head; his eyes arrowed. “You’re joking.”
She raised a hand. “Proofreader’s honor.”
“Were the mistakes their own, or the computer’s?” Rick leaned back, stuck out his legs, and crossed his ankles. “If the program says King Author carried Excalibur, they accept it.”
“Of course.” Paula tossed a hand in the air. “Take the machine’s word for it. It was programmed by wiser heads…which majored in math and keyboarding.”
“What can you say to someone who spells ‘unknown’ with an x?” Rick’s hands went up in the air, echoing her gesture. He thought about asking her rates; maybe she’d like to index the back issues of “A Note From Mother”, the comic produced in his spare time when he had spare money. He could use a proofreader, too: Vivian couldn’t spell “Cat” without recourse to her mouse.
Paula laughed, but told herself “Watch it. He’s stretching out; he’s starting to relax. Either he’s decided you’re not a threat, or he thinks he’s making progress. No one’s making progress on ME, Pal.”
Perhaps she should go back in now. She could stay and maybe let him make a LITTLE progress. Or she could come back tomorrow and find out if he was always here around this time. She ran one hand across the handle of the stroller, which shifted the pocket on the back. A red and white magazine slid to one side, allowing the title “Chariots Afire: Fantasy Criticism” to show above the headline “Spider-Man’s Web Address”.
Rick leaned to his left. “Do you read that?” he demanded.
Paula shoved it down a little more securely. “You’ve heard of it?”
He nodded. “You must have a job if you proofread it. I don’t know what kind of editor they must have.”
Rick noticed the silence that answered this before realizing her chin had come down and her eyes were almost closed. “Stupid,” he told himself. “Who’s going to carry a copy of that but someone on the staff?” He cleared his throat.
“Actually,” he said, his voice loud enough to distract Dickie for one second from the paper cup bouncing along in the grass, “It’s not so much their editor as one of their reviewers: Paula Rogers.”
Paula hardly noticed that she was in a position reminiscent of a large cat about to pounce. A paper envelope from fries was jerking in a strange pattern along the sidewalk, and she did not notice this at all.
“What did I review?” she demanded.
Rick sat up, uncrossing her ankles and shoving both feet under the bench. “Ah Sorry. I expected her to be drooling.”
“Dickie handles that department for the magazine,” she told him. “What did I review?”
He set his back and shoulders against the bench. The best thing to do was act as if he did this all the time, and didn’t care. “Moonwebs.”
Her intense gaze shifted to a frown of puzzlement. A scrap of newspaper rolled up into a ball and then spread out into a triangle, but only Dickie noticed. “Moonwebs. Moonwebs?”
This hurt worse than the original review. “You called the review ‘Tap Shoes of Doom’.”
Paula remembered her own titles better than theirs. “Oh. The dancer with mystic powers.”
His eyelids came down; his shoulders twitched. “You said it had the internal consistency of a Screwy Squirrel cartoon.”
She had rather thought that line would leave a scar; she just never expected to meet the walking wounded. “Well, yes, I….”
Rick had more to deliver; he had rehearsed his rebuttal since he had first read the review. “Aside from the fact that it had nothing much to do with the review, hardly anyone who reads little critzines like yours is going to be old enough to get the reference.”
Paula had actually thought this at the time; she had thought of the line some weeks earlier and had just been waiting for a place to use it. But this buzzard had not earned the right to point that out. After all, he was dumb enough to have written that stupid comic book in the first place. She shoved a foot back under the bench, bracing for combat.
“It made as much sense as your untutored peasant girls making reference to sixth century Frankish queens.”
“She might be a sixth century peasant girl.” So she had caught the Fredegund reference. This woman was dangerous.
Two starws caught up in a breeze lunged at each other and engaged in a brief fencing match. Dickie’s eyes were fastened to the sight, which no one else seemed to notice.
“As for doing a comic book centered on a dancing….”
Rick’s jaw jutted. “You said it was a rip-off of ‘Zell, Sword-Dancer’, and claimed I’d watched Riverdance too often on videocassettes in my youth.”
Her face came eight inches closer to his. “You took a peasant girl who had no more training than an annual prance around a Maypole discovering, under a full moon, that she has a talent for intricate and mystic dance moves.” Her upper lip curled. “Lust exactly when it’s needed.” She tossed her hair. “And your spelling is ridiculous!”
This caught Rick in mid-retort. “That wasn’t my…Viv…someone else did the lettering!”
She nodded sharply. “You could have checked.”
A Milk Duds package stood up on end and spun around, the wind managing somehow to bounce it upside-down and back without interrupting the spin. Then it, and the dueling straws, dropped to the ground as if the wind had lost interest.
“And Issue 5 covers the whole dance training question,” Rick replied. This sounded limp, even to him.
“You couldn’t think of an excuse before that? What makes you think you’ll have an Issue 5?”
“At least as many issues as Chariots Afire.” Rick leaned back into the attack, his shoulders rising from the back of the bench. “And where do you get your Illustrations? Do you copy them off the restroom wall, or does Dickie do them with crayons?”
“He eats crayons.”
“Dickie? Or your illustrator?”
“It’s not as if your…what’s her name?…Slainhe is any lost Rembrandt sketch. It’s a good thing you TOLD us that was expert dancing, since she looked as if she was playing hopscotch.”
“The review made it sound as if numbered steps would be about her speed,” muttered Tick.
Paula snorted. “She wouldn’t have learned numbers.”
Nothing in the park was amusing Dickie right now. He was wrinkling his nose and chiisuing between a whimper and a wail when movement beyond the fence caught his eye. One of those green things that turned up late in the books mama read to him was rising through the weeds along the park lodge. She always made the most entertaining hiss sound when these things appeared in the books. Dickie waited to hear what sound this one made.
The hiss started, and then water gushed from the creature’s mouth. Dickie applauded; Mama had never done THAT.
“Hey!” bellowed both adults, as the water from the hose hit them. Rick threw himself forward, pushing the stroller so his body was between the spray and Dickie.
“Where….” He started to say, turning to the proofreader.
But Paula was in midair. Rick’s mouth dropped open, collecting water, as she cleared thewaist-high fence in a single bound, diving for the tap.
Turning away, Rick coughed water from his throat. This cleared Dickie’s view of Mama holding up the now silent green creature. “How could this….” She started to ask.
Rick leaned against the side of the stroller. “What kind of special training do you need for a jump like that?”
Paula started a glower, but laughed, and let the hose drop. “I don’t DO Celtic dancing! I can’t keep my hands still that long.”
“I can change it to mystic square-dancing,” said Rick. “Let’s hear a good old yee-hah!”
Patla had traded her interest in dancing for one in the fence. “How do I get out of here now?”
Rick put out a hand. “If jumping again would endanger your secret identity, just climb over.”
Well, look out.” Paula put a foot on the metal rod that ran left and right in the fence. “One, two….” Hands down on the top rail, she pulled herself over.
“That’s got it.” Rick put his hands on her waist, and helped make sure she landed on her feet. He did not, however, immediately let go.
Paula turned a little red. “People can see you.”
Rick stuck his hands behind his own back, but pointed out, “Doesn’t matter. In a thousand years, they’ll all be dead.”
Paula’s face was turned from him as she checked Dickie and the stroller. Not much water had hit Dickie, who was laughing and clapping about it. “So will you.”
“Will you write to me, even if I’m dead?”
This brought her face toward him. “What?”
Rick turned his face toward the sky. “Just address the letter ‘Tomb it may concern’.”
Her shoulders sagged; her brow came down. “You shouldn’t joke about grave matters.”
Dickie chortled, most likely at a leaf that danced just beyond his toes. Rick shrugged. “I’d stay and argue that with you, but if I don’t change out of these wet clothes, I’ll start coffin.”
“Me too. Here.” Paula reached behind the copy of Chariots Afire and drew out a card. “If you Slainhe wants her dialogue spelled right next time.”
Rick reached into a damp shirt pocket for a simple piece of plastic. “If you want to knock any more plot devices, I can give you a cut rate subscription.”
Having officially ended the conversation by trading business cards, they should probably have walked away in different directions. This did not seem to occur to them.
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