Part 99
Zander was watching Pete's baseball game at Mercy High School. He was taking a few days off. There had been no way around it. Quinn, Kathleen, Danny, Joe, Oksana, Amanda, Sergei, Pete, Tim, Brad and Dr. Baldwin had all agreed. Alexis had agreed too, and Rosa. He later learned, talking to Quinn, that Joanna Shields agreed. He had teased Quinn about finding out if Paul Whitman or Edward Quartermaine agreed.
It was the second inning. He was the only one there so far. He looked for any of the Connors to arrive; they came to the games as and when they could. He wondered if Oksana or Sergei would show up. Or even both. He noticed each of them was in town more these days. He had never known them to travel so little.
Tim was playing left field. Pete was playing third base.
"Hello," he heard, in Russian.
He looked up. Oksana was sitting down by him.
"Hi," he answered, in that language.
Oksana was trying to read the scoreboard. "Inning, 2. R, is that runs?"
"Yes."
"No runs, either team. What is H?"
"Hits."
"One hit, home team."
"That was the first baseman. Lou Domano. E is for errors. Where someone drops the ball."
"What is Peter? The third base man?"
"Very good. Tim is behind him in left field."
"So left or right is decided by someone off the field."
"Right. Must be, it was decided by looking onto the field from home plate."
A second later, Zander saw Sergei coming toward them. "Hello, son," he said, sitting down on the other side of Zander. "Hello," he said to Oksana. She said hello. Zander felt as if he should introduce them.
Pete fielded the ball and threw it to the first baseman for an out. The inning was over.
"What happened?" Oksana asked.
Zander explained.
Pete was the first one at bat. He managed to sink a hit into right field. Zander explained that.
The next batter struck out, but the next one hit a long single, from which Pete managed to get to third.
Tim came up. He hit a line drive straight to the second basemen, who went to field it, but bobbled it. Pete ran for home plate and slide into it just in time.
"He stole home!" Oksana clapped.
Zander smiled. "No Mom, it is an error."
"An air?"
"The second baseman dropped the ball."
"So then Pete scored the run."
"It is on an error, when the fielder dropped the ball, because if he had fielded it, he would have thrown Pete out."
"They do not know that."
"Well, that is how they record it."
"A bunch of rules," Sergei said.
The Connors came with Joe and Brad. They sat on the bleacher behind Zander and his parents.
"Pete stole home," Oksana told them.
"No, he got there on an error," Sergei said.
"Dad's right," Zander told them.
"It looked like he stole home to me," Oksana said. "He ran and slided."
"I think I would probably agree," Kathleen said. "I'm not interested in those fine points, either."
"Sander used to steal these bases, a lot, a long time ago," Oksana said. "I couldn't go to many games. When I did, someone would tell me look, he stole a base."
"Hey, now you are done with your GED test, Zander, you can get on a team somewhere," Joe said. "Quinn thinks sports will be fun for you."
"I've heard that," Zander said. He smiled. "I will surely hear it again. I can start looking around now. But if the test results come out that I passed, we are going to work on placement tests for college credit and I am going to sign up for summer session at PCU. I don't want to waste any more time."
"It'll all work out," Kathleen said. "You need some sports in your life, too. Work off all that excess energy."
"Keep him out of trouble," Oksana nodded.
"I haven't been in any trouble," he retorted.
"I tease you," Oksana said.
"Oh," he said, a little cast down, as if he thought maybe he should have known that. But he quickly looked up. How should he have known?
"You like tennis, you should play," Oksana said. "That is how I really mean it."
"OK."
Jeremy Marshall came up. He was the big star on the team.
He hit a triple, and Tim ran in to score.
"Two to nothing!" Danny said, jubilantly.
"Go Mercy High!" Kathleen laughed. "Where's our cheerleader?"
"At work," Zander said. "You're doing all right though, Mrs. Connor."
"Where are the real ones?" Oksana asked.
"They don't come to baseball games," Zander said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know," said Zander.
"I don't either," Kathleen said. "Strange. The pace of the game, I guess."
"Were you a cheerleader, too, Mrs. Connor?" Zander asked Kathleen.
"No," Kathleen said. "I was on the yearbook committee, though. And the chess club. My extracurricular activities didn't tend to be sports."
"What were Danny's?" Zander asked.
"Hanging out and working on old cars. But if you say Danny to refer to Danny then you must call me Kathleen. I can't have Danny beating me to something for too long."
"OK," Zander smiled, "Kathleen. But if Danny was working on old cars, and you were working on the yearbook, how did you meet him?"
"I saw him in the school cafeteria one day, and he came over and started talking to me," Kathleen said.
"Oh, the famous love-at-first-site Quinn talks about."
"That's right," Kathleen smiled. "You know what a cynic Quinn is about that! But it is true, nevertheless!"
"I think that must be unusual," Oksana said.
"How did you meet; you and Sergei?" Kathleen asked.
"At an ice skating rink. The first thing he said to me was he wanted to talk to my coach about something I was doing wrong."
Zander listened intently. He knew they had met that way, but had never heard before that Sergei had noticed something Oksana was doing wrong in skating.
"How old were you?" Kathleen asked.
"Seventeen."
Zander heard the crack of a bat. He looked, and saw Pete fielding the ball and throwing it to first base for the out.
"Pete just got the batter out," Zander said to Oksana, absently.
"So no love at first sight?" Kathleen asked Oksana.
"No, no."
Sergei had been talking to the other guys. Kathleen reached over and tapped his shoulder. He turned around, smiling.
"What do you think of this, Sergei?" she asked. "Oksana said she first saw you when you criticized her skating."
Sergei stopped for a second, to think back. "Yes," he said. "She was sliding too much on her spins. I just been assigned to work on the group she was in. I had more experience than her coach, so I went to talk to him about it. He nodded and nodded and listened to me, and I still was looking at her and could not stop looking at her."
"She said it was not love at first sight."
"Maybe not to her, but I don't know, maybe to me it was."
"Come on," Oksana said. "No way it was. You talk to me about nothing but skating for at least a year."
"Well, heck, that doesn't mean he wasn't in love," Danny said, hearing the conversation, "it only means you didn't catch on to him, Oksana. He was playing it close to the vest."
"He never admits this before tonight," Oksana was saying, "he made it up, just now." Zander could see his father smiling. He did not know what to make of it.
Gia was annoyed again. V. had come out to ask questions about Emily on the evening of their engagement party. Sure enough, Gia thought, our engagement party has come to be about Emily.
Neither Gia nor Nicholas had not been able to remember a thing concerning Emily's leaving, or AJ's or Jason's. "I thought maybe Jason left on his own," Nicholas said. "I remember seeing him walk out. But there's a porch out there. Some people were out there, too. Maybe they saw something."
"Had she had anything to drink?"
"I remember Lucky getting her a glass of champagne," Gia said. "I didn't see her drink any of it, though. Not to say she didn't. I didn't see it, is all."
"She was fine, that way," Nicholas said.
"Were you talking to her in the last half hour before she left?" V. asked him.
"I'm not sure. Probably. I was wandering around, talking to everybody. But I've never seen Emily even tipsy."
"Maybe we should hire somebody to watch her," Gia told Nicholas, after V. had left. "At the wedding. Do we really want to risk things going wrong at the wedding because of some problem she has?"
"Everything will be fine," Nicholas insisted. "Lucky will be with her, remember, he is going to be her date."
"I hope he can take care of her," Gia said. "I don't want to have my wedding remembered for her driving off drunk and hurting somebody."
"There's no question of that," Nicholas said. "Emily wouldn't do a thing like that."
"That is what it sounded like V. was investigating," Gia said.
"If she is, she is barking up the wrong tree," Nicholas said. "Emily was fine that night. AJ and Jason were there! Why would she drive herself anywhere?"
"I don't know," Gia said. "But simply because she didn't have a good reason doesn't mean she didn't do it."
V. went out to the island, to ask Stefan and Stavros if they remembered anything. Walking from the dock to the house, she saw Lucky Spencer and a pretty girl in the garden.
"Hey, Lucky, I have some questions for you, which I may as well ask you now that you are here," V. said.
Lucky looked up from his camera, which he had been adjusting.
"What about?" he said, affecting an air of unconcern. His father had taught him to say as little as necessary to cops.
V. explained.
"I remember talking to Emily there, but I didn't see her leave," he said. "I got her a glass of champagne. I remember her drinking a little bit of it. No way was she under the influence. She was kind of tired, not in a really good mood. That was why she left early. But I thought her brother AJ took her. And he was driving, and he's driven drunk before. You should be asking about his drinking."
"There was no evidence that he had been drinking," V. said. "We were more concerned with the question of whether he was actually driving."
"He wouldn't let Emily drive that night, based on how quiet she was alone. If he thought she had something to drink, and he didn't, there is no way he would let her drive."
"That's what he says, too. Well, you may be right."
"Why are you guys even looking at it?" Lucky asked. "What other explanation could there be?"
"Oh, evidence," V. said. "Little things that don't add up. We only have to straighten them out for the files. No big deal."
She went on into the house.
Lucky and Lisa had been talking about music. He liked the blues, she liked Cuban music, but they both liked Ruben Gomez. She liked to sing.
"Do you really?" he asked, eyes aglow.
"Sure," she said. "Look over here! This is some rose garden! You could put a whole row of models here."
"Yes. And the sundial is a good prop."
"These have been laid out very professionally."
"Did you design Oksana's?"
"Oh no. I only keep them up. And do a little work on the landscaping, and take care of the pool and the tennis courts."
"Hey, I thought of something. Do you want to do a number with me for the Nurse's Ball?"
"A song?"
"Yeah. I sing in it every year, but I'm always trying to vary the approach. We can make a duet out of something you like. I can play it on the guitar."
"I'd like to. Sure."
" Do you play any instrument?"
"Guitar."
"No kidding! You can play too if you want."
"That'll be fun."
"OK. Do you want to hang out here any more or go on to the Barrington garden?"
"Let's go to the Barringtons. I've been curious to see it."
"I was on the porch, talking to Stefan," Stavros said. "I thought I remembered AJ leaving at the same time as Jason, but I don't have a real clear memory of it. It wasn't something I was paying close attention to. I just remember the two of them going off, but they could have been going for a walk for all I know, or one of them could have come back and I didn't see that."
"OK, sure," V. said. "How about Emily? Did you notice her state? Tipsy? Weaving? Or sober?"
"I couldn't say," Stavros answered. "I didn't notice her enough to say one way or another. I didn't see anything egregious."
"And you?" she directed this to Stefan.
"No, I didn't see anything obvious about her either," Stefan answered. "Though I too think AJ and Jason went together, and I thought I heard something about going after her. I don't know who they meant by 'her,' though. I don't know what they meant by going after her, either."
"The inference is clear," V. said. "But you're right, it's not certain. Well, thanks for your help."
Tim was playing chords, warming up, and teasing Quinn about what song she might want to do. "Something hippie," Joanna said. She was there, helping. They decided to look through Danny and Kathleen's music. "They're old enough to have something from that era," Quinn observed.
"We are like Peter, Paul and Mary, remember," Joanna said.
"OK, they have some of those," Quinn started looking through old records. "What are we, Peter, Paula and Mary?"
"Yup," Tim said.
"I found out AJ has the same lawyer as I do," Joanna said.
"Weird, wouldn't he have the most expensive one?"
"You'd think, with all that extra trouble. What an awful case that must have been."
"I guess that is a pretty good firm. I remember Sean talking to them when he was here."
"What about, was he going to work for them?"
"I think there was some interest in clerking there for the summer. But we ended up in Kentucky for the summer."
"Well, old AJ was friendly as ever," Joanna said. "I wonder if he can do anything at the Nurse's Ball. Something were he could be useful to the hospital."
"Yeah! Now as to our number, what will we do about our costume? Mom can help."
Tim was dispatched to bring Kathleen into the room.
"We need bell-bottoms, all three of us. Headbands," Quinn was surmising.
"I don't know," Kathleen said, as she came in, hearing them. "You are more folksy than hippie. Headbands and love beads might be too much. Long skirts, maybe?"
"I'd like that," Joanna said. "Maybe Tim can wear a fake beard."
"Hmmm," Tim said. "Interesting."
"Where could we find things like this, a thrift store?" Joanna asked Kathleen.
"I don't know. We might not find anything nowadays. They wear flares now, sometimes, no? I never thought that style would come back in again."
"Maybe we don't need that," Quinn said. "Look at the pictures of Mary on the albums. She wore a simple sleeveless black number most of the time."
"Oh, a sort of Greenwich Village folk scene look, that's it!" Kathleen exclaimed. "We were thinking later in the sixties."
Joanna was looking at the albums. "If we really work on getting our hair to look like that," she said. "We could really pass for this look."
"Come on," Tim said. "Let's work on these songs. Doesn't matter what you look like if you don't know what you're singing."
"Yes sir, Bob Dylan!" Quinn said.
"Let's do 'Blowin' in the Wind'!" Joanna suggested.
"OK," Tim said. "I'm game."
"This is going to be very interesting," Kathleen declared.
Zander, Alexis and Jerry were watching a race at the Port Charles Motor Speedway, in which Paul and Quinn were driving. Elizabeth sat down next to him.
"Hey," she said.
"Hi," he answered. He looked back at the cars.
"Do you ever worry?" she asked. "It looks dangerous."
"No. Quinn knows what she is doing. I don't think she cares about winning enough to take unnecessary risks. It's for fun."
"Paul, too. It still looks dangerous to me, though. Even if they are doing it only for fun."
"More dangerous than windsurfing. Maybe not much more than skiing, I suppose."
"Maybe. With all that metal out there, too, though. Oh, well. I think Quinn is ahead of him again."
"Does that bother him?"
"No, I don't think so. It seems to make him far more nervous to think of singing at the nurse's ball."
"Are you still doing all those colonial costumes?"
"We have Carly to work on that, believe it or not. She has some ability to design and sew."
"They let her near a needle?"
"Near a sewing machine, supervised."
"Would she do something for sixties folksingers? Quinn and them need that for their number at the nurse's ball. They keep talking about who or where they're going to get that together."
"I'll ask her. She would probably like it. She is good at this."
"Is it calming her down?"
"I think it is, believe it or not. She is rational to talk to, anyway."
They watched the track for awhile.
"Well, Elizabeth," Zander said, "it looks like Quinn will surely come in ahead of Paul."
"Better luck next time!" Alexis yelled after Elizabeth, as she smiled, and got up to go.
"Thanks, how helpful," Quinn to Zander, when he told her how the idea had occured to him to ask Elizabeth about their costumes. "How did you even know to ask that?"
"You and Joanna talked about it when we were in Kelly's the other day," he said.
"I don't even remember talking about it. You've got a good memory, you know? I think you will do so well in college."
"Thank you, Madam Encourager. What would I do without you?"
"More like you used to do, I think. This is why I am the one for you. One of the reasons."
He put his arms around her. "Oh, I know that," he said. "I am glad to hear you say that. I only hope I do you any good."
"Of course you do. It's hard to put a finger on, but you do. So believe that, OK? Like your remembering that about the costume. Not the convenience that you remembered, but that you would, or did, something about, I don't know. You pay attention to some things that make a person feel like they matter."
"Now," he said, pushing her hair back a little, "I noticed you beat Dr. Paul."
"I did? I didn't even notice!"
"I was sitting with Elizabeth, so we were competing. She claims he doesn't mind you beating him."
Quinn smiled. "I'm glad I've got a cheerleader."
They were leaving to go to Indianapolis soon. The Connors had gotten another van for nine people to make the trip.
Zander was looking forward to it. He threw some clothes into a bag and headed up to the main house to see if Pete was ready to go.
Rosa said he had already gone.
"How can that be?" Zander was puzzled. "I swore I told him to wait for me. We don't need to take two cars over there."
"You must," Rosa laughed.
When he went out the front door, he saw the keys to the Porsche and the little signs proclaiming it to be his.
Quinn. Indianapolis. This Porsche. He sighed.
He took the keys and went out to get the car.
When he pulled up in the driveway at the Connor's, no one was outside. He decided they would prefer a show, and hit the horn. But there must have been too much talking inside the house, because they didn't seem to hear. He didn't like the idea of laying on the horn.
So he pulled back out of the driveway and then went halfway around the block. He stopped to call Quinn's cell phone.
Fortunately, she answered. He felt foolish for a second.
"Go outside," he said.
"OK," she giggled.
He pulled away from the curb. He was happy that she didn't ask him why, for some reason. He turned back onto the Connor's street. He had to admit the car handled like a dream. Quinn was going to love driving it.
When he pulled back into the driveway with the car, Quinn was on the front steps. She ran up to him on the driver's side.
"You brought your car!" she hugged him. "How do you like it?"
"It runs like a dream. Of course."
"Of course it does."
They looked at each other for a minute.
"Here," he said, giving her the keys, "take me for a ride."
She took them, but said, "Oh, no! You drive, and I ride."
"I want you to drive it."
"It's your car!"
"You can drive my car."
"Later, sure. Right now I want to be the passenger."
"Quinn!"
"Come on. I'm natural for the front seat passenger. You know. The girl. Wait, I need a pair of sunglasses." She laughed and ran over to her car and got her sunglasses out. "OK," she said. "Now you must have already gotten all the envious glances checking out the car. Now you got the car and the girl. It's be twice as cool, won't it?"
"I wouldn't know. I didn't notice any of that. I was thinking about you seeing it on the way over."
"You shouldn't have been! But come on, before they get their eyes on it."
Sure enough, by now Kathleen was coming out the front door, wondering what Quinn was doing.
"Look," he heard Kathleen crying back into the house, "he's got his car!"
Quinn laughed and told him to pull away.
He drove around the block again. Quinn rolled down the window. A couple of guys in an old car slowed down and whistled in admiration. The driver rolled his window down and yelled, "great car!"
Zander looked over at Quinn. He could see her big smile under the sunglasses.
"You will get tickets in every country in Ohio," she said.
"You can drive. I'll pay your fines."
The whole family was out on the lawn when they pulled back up.
"I thought we might take it," Zander said. "Everyone can drive it."
"He's really big on everybody else driving it," Quinn explained. "I had to hold a gun to his head to get him to drive me around that block just now."
"And you had to keep it on him the whole time!" Pete said. "I'm amazed the battery didn't die. It sat there in the garage. It was the funniest thing. It's a big joke at school. Everybody in the school knows my brother's Porsche is in the garage and how they're going to take it for him."
"How amusing," Zander said. "For that, you will be the last to drive. Quinn, first. Please?" He put on his most entreating look.
"If you drive it up to I-70, I'll drive for awhile after that," she said.
The other seven were piling into the van.
"Wait for us to leave first," Joe advised. "If you do, we will never catch up."
