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The ringback tone sounded once, twice. Pick up, pick up. Helga impatiently tapped her bare foot on the worn rug of her bedroom floor.
At three-and-a-half, a small tinkling voice answered the line. Without preamble, and with no regard for how late it was, Helga burst into speech.
"Get a load of this, Phoebe!" Helga couldn't stop guffawing as she began regaling the story to her best friend.
Several blocks away, Gerald tried to console his visibly distraught friend the best he could. "Arnold, what happened?"
Arnold sat on the edge of his bed, his face cradled in his hands, and moaned. He was still dressed in a red checked shirt and slacks, his one nice pair of shoes still shiny in the spot lighting. This time he'd forgone the cheesy tie; Gerald had nodded in solemn approval at him earlier that evening and had even given him a double thumbs-up.
"Did you smile at her?"
His friend grunted with a positive inflection.
"And you offered to pick up the tab at dinner." It wasn't a question.
Arnold sighed, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "Of course, Gerald."
Gerald crossed his arms, thinking. "Oh, I see. She pulled a crazy stunt and ran up the bill like that one time, right? You're broke, is that it?"
Arnold shook his head. "No… it was fine this time. She… dinner was… it was great."
Arnold had been nervously trying to play it cool all night. First they had dinner at Chez Paris. They'd had to walk there since neither of them really had their own car, but it was a tranquil and breezy evening, not too warm and not too cool. The moon was out, even if they couldn't see the stars yet. The walk had helped them break the ice better, to his advantage, Arnold had reflected, as he'd held the door open for her and watched her retreating legs slightly longer than he probably should have before following her inside. He was glad she was so boisterous or he might have run out of things to say.
Her hair had been down, a pleasant variation, but she seemed to be slightly bothered by it, as if she weren't used to it. Her hand kept distractedly pulling back her long bangs away from her eyes, almost in a nervous twitch, like she was hiding something. Arnold had impulsively reached for her hand then. Time stood still and he found himself staring at the candlelight flickering over her face and then—they both jumped in surprise as the snooty waiter cleared his throat and asked prematurely for their order.
"Okay, did you ask her to dance like we rehearsed? Nah, never mind." Gerald held up a hand and shook his head, lost in thought.
Of course, Arnold was a pro at dancing with the ladies—that couldn't have been it. As a matter of fact, Gerald had witnessed him effortlessly twirl their fair friend around the gymnasium floor and sometimes at Arnold's own rooftop shindigs, year after year. He could have sworn she'd almost liked it. And besides, he and his friend were a unanimous hit at both sixth grade dances long before that. Everyone knew Arnold and Gerald could groove up a storm. And Arnold had been practically giddy at the prospect of dancing with her again, this time in a strictly non-classmate kind of way.
Gerald hesitated, puzzled, remembering how his friend had once chanted a girl's name stupidly over and over to just fight the nerves of saying hello to her. With Helga, Arnold was practically the opposite… daring almost. When most kids would have run screaming, Arnold had marched up to the woman's locker one day out of the blue and asked her on a date in the most carefully offhanded way he'd ever seen. It was like he'd decided to just get it over with. He remembered Phoebe had looked like she was about to explode with unbridled joy as she almost dropped all her books.
"I don't get it, man." Gerald was stumped. "What did you do?"
Arnold glanced morosely over at the dog-eared book on his desk.
"Oh, Helga. This is—well, this is—quite—" a muffled giggle came over the line.
"I know, hilarious, right?" Helga gracelessly plopped backwards onto her bed and kicked her legs wildly in the air. "But Pheebs, it's your highly adept boyfriend we'll have to thank properly for this. You know as well as I do there's no way Paste-for-Brains came up with that goofy line all by himself—"
Gerald gasped, "Oh shit. You didn't? Don't tell me you…"
"I did."
Gerald's eyes grew wide as saucers. "You're a dead man. Bold, but dead."
"But Helga," Phoebe sounded like she was doing her best to seem gravely scandalized, "you have to admit that it was kind of… sweet…" Helga imagined the petite girl smiling dreamily with that sappy sparkle in her eye she saved only for her boyfriend and flaky pop stars.
"Come on, Pheebs," Helga was abstractedly winding the phone cord more intricately around various limbs.
"Fine, Helga." Phoebe's voice faded into tense silence before bursting out into an obscene fit of giggles, "I'll humor you. Say it again, one more time."
He was busy being astounded she'd let him live long enough to get this far. They'd eaten a modest yet much better tasting meal than they'd had in past visits to this particular restaurant. Partially it was because they weren't desperately cramming their faces full of food, but mostly it was because Helga had actually taken a few French classes and finally comprehended what it was they were ordering.
He was eventually leading her towards an old warehouse building near the docks, and she'd been joking lewdly about how creepy it was—he'd laughed and said something about not ruining the surprise and grabbed her hand to pull her along behind him. His insides squirmed again as he remembered what it felt like when she'd leaned toward him to translate, her hair swinging forward overwhelmingly as her long index finger slid smoothly over the text. He'd taken some Spanish and could have probably figured most of it out on his own, but he would rather enjoy this fascinating, curiously soft timbre to her voice than look at his own menu. It was vaguely familiar…
And then they were at the door, and he knocked, and it opened with a strong blast of trumpets and cymbals… He couldn't wait to teach her how to swing.
"Oh, Arnold. You are never gonna live this down, man…" Gerald whined, before he erupted into an undignified snort and, chortling, collapsed on the floor.
"Geralllllld!" Arnold fell backwards onto his bed and grabbed his pillow in an attempt to smother himself with it. His muffled voice blurted out, "But—but you used it on Phoebe, and she didn't laugh in your face and—"
"That's because I'm Gerald," he stated. "No offense, man, but there's a time and place for the happenin' dude to pull that kind of thing off—"
"I don't know what came over me, Gerald—"
Gerald sat on the edge of the bed and bit his lip to hold in another bout of laughter that was trying to escape. He sighed again and clapped a comforting hand on his buddy's shoulder. "Well, at least she'll keep it between me and you and Phoebe… But I make no promises about laughing at you tomorrow. It's not my fault you picked the most relentless girl in school…"
"Tell me about it, Gerald…"
They'd walked back to her house, Helga brazenly barefoot and carrying her shoes. Laughing. Holding her sides. And laughing.
Arnold was completely red. Humiliated. "Well, at least you had a good time…" he huffed.
Helga sucked in a breath, made a ridiculously straight face, and blurted, "Oh yes. Absolutely—" before blowing a huge raspberry, doubling over, and letting out another impish cackle.
"I just… I can't believe you used it!"
"But you said so yourself: 'chicks dig the purr!'" Arnold threw the pillow across the room, starting to look desperate.
"Yeah, but Helga isn't a chick—" Gerald froze at the look Arnold shot him and backtracked. "I mean, she isn't a regular chick." He sighed. "I thought we talked about this, man."
"Yeah. But… I dunno, Gerald. I kind of… lost my mind… in the heat of the moment…"
Arnold shook his head at Gerald, knowing what he'd gotten himself into but finally relinquishing his resistance to it. Let it come. He'd be ready. She was naïve to underestimate who she was dealing with. He didn't dare let Gerald know in case it backfired, but the steely glint that came into his eye was not missed by his best friend.
Helga twirled absurdly around in her lacy pajamas, as if she were dancing with an invisible person slightly shorter than herself, fluttered her eyelashes obscenely, and pronounced in a ridiculously dramatic voice slightly deeper than her natural one, "You dance superbly, my fair senorita—" Phoebe couldn't breathe on the other end of the phone.
Eventually Helga, wiping the tears from her eyes, gasped out an, "Okay, okay, I gotta get some shut-eye, see you on the bus Pheebs." She clicked the phone off and flopped onto her back, her bed covers long rumpled from rolling in laughter all over them, "Man, tomorrow's gonna be good."
For, yet unbeknownst to their two best friends, Arnold had finally found out how to shut Helga up. She'd blinked numbly, as she'd shuffled mechanically backwards into her foyer, the hand not holding her shoes held to her slightly open mouth, as he'd skipped lightly down the stairs of her stoop to the sidewalk below. "See you tomorrow, Helga."