Part 60
Peter was still to stay at the Connors so that Oksana could get the house in order first, and so that it would be a weekend when he moved in. School had started. Peter drove himself and Tim to school; Tim thought it was pretty cool. He compared this to the bus. Peter wanted to go on the bus one day. They went on the bus. Peter thought it was pretty cool.
He called Zander to tell him about this and to tell him to come over that Friday night, because of the family having pizza and beer to watch somebody or other's tape of the New Hampshire 300.
The house was noisy and full of people - 16 year old boys seemed to be everywhere. Zander went back to the kitchen, slowing down in the little hallway to look at the pictures. In the kitchen, he saw Kathleen poking her head into the refrigerator, talking about whatever she was looking for in there. Then he saw Quinn leaning against the counter, concentrating hard on trying to open a salsa jar.
"Let me," he said, trying to take it from her.
She grabbed it back with a pretend little-kid look of injured competence, with the words that go along with such a look: "I can do it."
Kathleen looked up. "No, let him. That's one of the few things men can do right," she said.
Quinn stopped, then sheepishly gave the jar to Zander. "Don't want you to miss a chance to do something right."
"Thank you," he said, twisting hard on the lid.
"There are so few things women cannot do right," he said, teasing Kathleen. "The ones they can't do are the strangest list. Open jars. Parallel park. There's no logic to them. You just have to learn them as you go along and memorize them."
"Like the Russian verbs that have to be in the - the Whatever case," Quinn said.
Zander's eyes flew open. Laughingly, he said, "Where in the world - oh, Pete. Is that his homework? He doesn't need any help with that."
"Oh, no. He was helping Tim."
"He's got Tim taking that class. Probably convinced him it is an easy A."
"I don't know about Tim," Kathleen said. "But Peter better get an A in Russian, or he will never hear the end of it from me."
"Me either," Zander said.
It was fun to just hang around there, watching the race tape. Easy. Everybody made jokes, commented on the cars or the drivers or argued about them in fun. When the race was done, everybody ate pizza and drank coke, or beer and made smart aleck comments, or talked about the race on the tape, or some other race that was coming up or some other race that had taken place in the past, or this or that raceway, and why it was harder than this or that other raceway and which type of car was best on which type of track.
It got later and most of the teenagers were gone. Joe was in the den with Tim, Peter and Brad, now they were playing some video game of baseball.
Zander watched that awhile, then went into the dining room. Quinn and her parents were just talking in there, over the remains of pizza.
Quinn looked up at him. "Sit down," Kathleen said. "How is the house? I heard you saw it."
"It's in a terrible neighborhood," he said, unthinkingly.
All three of them laughed. It gave him a really nice feeling, to have made them laugh, though he had been serious, but he saw how he had inadvertently made a joke. They seemed to laugh at everything. Not because they were making fun of it, but more because life was – so strange, and people were - so funny.
"Well," he went on, changing to go along with the funny side, "there are some really undesirable characters in that neighborhood. You can always count on Oksana. She's got to buy a house in this town. But no, that can't be the end of it. She's got to pick one around the bend from my ex-girlfriend's."
"You have to be a neighbors with little Emily!" Quinn exclaimed.
"No. But Pete does. Oksana does, and that doesn't look good at all."
"No big deal," Danny said, "we'll call the National Guard in."
"The houses over there are all back from their gates," Kathleen said. "They'll never even notice each other."
"In this one, you do," Zander said. "Who lives in the purple house?"
"The Daleys. There's a girl Quinn's age. Didn't you and she used to play together?" Danny asked Quinn. "What was her name?"
"Kayla. I think now, she is married."
"The father drives an old mustang. I've seen him drive by. Sometimes I've seen him working in the front lawn," Danny said. "Mind you, I haven't talked to him in years. Come to think of it, I wonder if I've ever actually talked to him. I know he's Larry Daley, and his wife is Jan Daley, and I know what she looks like. I could recognize them anywhere. Now as to what they could be doing in that house, they could be building bombs or manufacturing cocaine or burying the victim's bodies under the basement floor, for all I know."
"This neighborhood used to get together a lot," Kathleen said. "The civic association had meetings. We had Easter Egg Hunts, and Halloween pageants. All the kids played together. We had barbecues. It seems as if the kids in the neighborhood were all little at one time and now there're all teenagers and young adults, and those things don't happen. Strange. You get busier when the kids get this old."
"Have to drive them around everywhere," Danny agreed. "Take them to colleges, go to weddings. They are more work than little kids are."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Quinn said, teasingly.
Danny threw a balled up napkin at her. She tried catching it, but it got away onto the floor.
"Come to think of it," Danny said. "I haven't seen Mrs. Daley in years."
"Well, she must live there," Quinn said.
"I walk by and see people, mowing the lawn. Or drive by and wave. Or they walk by here, walking the dog, or taking a walk. But not her. I haven't seen that woman in years. I wonder what he did with her?"
"You've seen her. You just forget," Kathleen suggested.
"I don't remember everything, but I haven't seen that woman in 10 years."
"I wonder what he did with the body," Quinn said. "Are you going to call the cops?"
"He must have done something, because I haven't seen that woman in years."
"Oh Danny, be quiet," Kathleen said. "Now I'm going to have to slow down and stare every time I pass that house, to try to get a glimpse of her. Now, Zander," she said. "You can feel much better. Whatever that neighborhood's flaws, at least people don't mysteriously disappear."
"They wouldn't know each other, anyway," Zander explained. "The lawns are behind the gates and the gardeners work on them, so nobody sees somebody else working on the lawn as they walk by."
"They pass each other in their Mercedes," Danny said. "They look carefully, to see if the other guy's Mercedes is bigger and better."
Zander laughed.
"Zander has this friend, Elizabeth," Quinn explained. "Her boyfriend, Lucky, explained it all to me. The reason the neighborhood is not safe is that Zander is a threat to little Emily and her grandfather."
"Little Emily and her Grandfather. Sounds like a fairy tale!" Danny said, exploding into laughter.
"Emily's grandfather wouldn't mind making me disappear," Zander said.
"Why, didn't he like you?" Danny asked.
"How could someone not like you?" Kathleen asked.
"He said I was a deviant. A miscreant."
"Huh?" Danny got up. Zander wondered where he was going. When he came back in, he had a big book. Quinn started giggling really hard.
"Look, Zander," Kathleen said, "Danny has the dictionary."
"Well," Danny said. He turned pages, and took a little too long to find what he was looking for.
"Look under 'D'" Quinn said, giggling even harder.
"OK," he said. "OK. 'One that differs from a norm, especially a person whose behavior and attitudes differ from accepted social standards.'"
"That's you, all right," Quinn said to Zander.
"His picture is right here," Danny said, "See?" He turned the dictionary toward them quickly, then turned it back. "Miscreant," he said, turning pages, "An evildoer; a villain. An infidel; a heretic."
"He's not Catholic," Quinn told them.
"Oh, of course, he's a heretic, then," Danny said.
"You guys are so," Zander said, struggling for a word, "so, so . ."
"Silly," Kathleen said, helpfully.
"Poor Grandfather," Danny said, "Soon he'll have to see Zander driving by in a Porsche."
"He'll report it stolen," Zander said.
"You can just park it over here," Danny said.
"Wouldn't that be painful to you and Tim," Kathleen put in. "What an inconvenience."
"Not nearly as inconvenient as what poor little Emily has to do." Quinn said. "I'm not sure I understand why, but Elizabeth's friend Lucky has tried to explain it to me several times. Zander has too. I still don't get it. She went to college, but she can't tell any of her friends where she went. I don't get it, because if she just told Lucky, he wouldn't tell Zander. If Zander finds out, he's apparently going to go there and force her away from there. Carry her off to a castle somewhere."
"How romantic," Kathleen said.
"Really romantic," Quinn said. "it is so romantic. Hey! I know. Oksana's detective. He found you. Surely he could find Little Emily?"
"Little Emily, you keep saying, Quinn," Danny said. "Now how would you like it if Zander here kept calling your old boyfriend, what's his name the lawyer, what was his name - Shyster Sean?"
Zander laughed. "And she will eat those words. Little Emily in her stocking feet can look down on the top of her head."
"Oh no! I completely forgot!" Quinn suddenly said.
"Forgot what?" Danny asked.
"I'm meeting Paul at the movies. At 8."
"Since it's 11, that is going to be a challenge," Danny shook his head and sighed.
Quinn went out of the room and came back with her purse. She pulled out her cell phone.
"Off," she said, as if examining evidence. She listened for a message. "He went home," she said.
"That does it. Split. Amicably. But split," Danny advised.
"Would you do anything to try to stop Quinn from dating anybody?" Zander asked him. "Behind her back, I mean."
"No," Danny said. "Why bother with something like that, when I tell her to her face, and she doesn't listen?"
"They fell in love in high school," Quinn explained. "They saw each other across the cafeteria, and it was all over. They refuse to see how everything is so much more complicated now," she continued, as if Zander of course understood perfectly.
"They only want to protect you from making a mistake," Zander said.
"Hell, no!" Danny said. "I'm protecting Paul from her! We men have to stick together! Imagine! Poor guy! How in the world do you just forget a date?"
Zander was speechless, and then he started laughing, helplessly, a little appalled that Danny's irreverence extended this far, but seeing that Quinn thought nothing of it and just flung it back at him.
"Let him go," Kathleen advised. "To find a girl who is crazy for him."
"Oh, that sees him across a crowded room, and boom! That's it," Quinn said.
"I'm telling you, we have to stick together," Danny said to Zander, "She forgot to meet him at the movies? She forgot?"
"He'll understand," Quinn said.
"Think about it Zander," Danny continued, "Never accept such an excuse as that. If this Paul had not graduated from medical school, he'd be a sorry character indeed."
"Why, because he is reasonable, and understanding?" Quinn asked.
"He ought to be so mad, smoke should be coming out of his ears! He ought to be over here by now, knocking at the door!"
"Poor Paul! You think he ought to be miserable over me forgetting a date?"
"Well, yeah! That's how it is when you are madly in love!"
"The world would be in a chaos if that were true."
"The world is in a chaos," Zander said. "Stood up doctors. Unsolved assassinations. Girls in hiding at colleges. Missing neighborhood women."
All four of them were in stitches. Danny plopped the dictionary down, and flipped the front cover over it, closing it decisively, as if to say to Zander, "you've figured it all out and the book is closed."
