Play Me, Page 3

  “I don’t want to copy somebody else’s idea,” Rory said.

  I sighed. “It won’t be a copy. It will be a satire.”

  “A what?”

  Even Joe was totally on board then. “I like it.”

  The rest is history. Or at least, it will be.

  I turn back out onto the main road. I see a girl hunched over a car on the side of the road. More accurately, I see a girl in a very short white skirt hunched over a car on the side of the road.

  A very, very short skirt.

  Just go, Gogo.

  I pull over, get out, and walk up behind her. Whoever she is, from this angle, she smokes. I make sure to call, “Hey!” as I’m walking so that I don’t scare her too much. “Are you auditioning for a part in a slasher film?”

  She straightens up and turns around.

  I stop short when I see who it is.

  Lucinda Dulko.

  The kind of name given to hot-but-monumentally-screwed-up Russian spies played on-screen by Nicole Kidman.

  The kind of name given to human sunbeams.

  But if you think that’s how every scene is going to end, with Lucinda popping up like some gleaming, otherworldly princess, you’re wrong. I was wrong. But that’s how it seemed to me then. Everywhere I turned, there she was, even when she wasn’t.

  10 Things I Hate About You

  “Oh,” she says, about as thrilled to see me as she always is. “Eddy. Hi.” She looks sweaty and annoyed, but that’s sort of typical. The times she doesn’t look sweaty and annoyed she looks cold and bored and too busy to care about anyone else. I think it’s all the tennis. I guess if I had to bounce a little green ball around for thirteen hours a day, I’d be cranky too.

  But since I’m already out of the car, I say, “Need help?”

  She doesn’t answer, instead reaching into the car and popping the trunk. She rummages in the trunk while I stand around like an idiot. Then she comes back to hand me a flashlight. “You can hold this while I check the engine.”

  “Great,” I say. But I flip on the light and hold it so that she can inspect the wiring. She drives some sort of ancient Oldsmo-Buick. A total piece of junk. The engine is all gunked up with sticky black crap; some of the bolts are fused with rust to the components. She’d be better off driving a lawn mower. Or a tricycle. If it were up to me, I would leave the thing to rot on the side of the road.

  “I don’t know,” Lucinda mutters, more to herself than to me. “I think it’s the battery. At least I hope it’s the battery. Won’t know till I get a new one, though.”

  “Uh-huh.” I think she needs a whole new set of wheels.

  She’s rummaging in the car again. She pulls out a cell phone, another old piece of junk, almost too big to be considered portable. As she dials a number, she says, “Thanks for stopping, Eddy, but you don’t have to stay. I’m calling my brother.” She waves a hand.

  I’m dismissed.

  Isn’t she a peach?

  But maybe because I’m still holding her flashlight, I wait to see if someone’s going to come for her. As she’s waiting for an answer, she frowns at the T-shirt I’m wearing, which has a picture of a pickle and the phrase Dill with it. Then she scowls at the phone. “He’s not answering.”

  Great. “Look, let me give you a ride home.”

  “Let me try my other brother,” she says.

  When the other brother doesn’t answer, I say, “I can still give you a ride.”

  “All I need is a battery. I’m sure of it.”

  “So I’ll give you a jump. You can drive it home.”

  She plays with her enormous phone. “Then I’ll have to find a way to get a battery tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I can give you a jump and you can drive it to Sears.”

  “I could.”

  “But…” I say.

  “But then they’ll charge me for the installation.”

  I’m thinking, Now I have to drive Lucinda Dulko to get a new battery. Why don’t I just hit myself in the head with this flashlight a few times for kicks?

  “Fine,” I say. “Sears is open till ten. I’ll drive you there so you can buy the battery. Then I’ll drive you back here.”

  She pauses. It’s a significant pause with lots of inaudible dialogue in it. She glances around as if God might show up to save her. Or maybe she’s considering throwing herself into traffic; I don’t know. For some strange reason, it strikes me as funny. “Don’t worry, Dulko, I won’t hit on you or anything.”

  She shoots me a glare that says, Hit on me and I’ll tenderize you with my racket, which actually makes me laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” she says, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Nothing. Come on.” I start walking back to my car. I can hear her sigh behind me, the sound of the trunk slamming shut. I get in and open the door for her from the inside.

  “Thanks,” she says grudgingly as she buckles up. When I laugh again, she says, “You’re cheerful.”

  “Sometimes,” I say. I shift into gear and pull onto the road.

  She looks around the car. “This is nice,” she says, as if I’ve forced her to admit it.

  “Thanks. It was my dad’s. I bought it from him.”

  We drive in silence for a minute or two. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her glancing from me to my stereo, me to my stereo.

  “I like driving when it’s quiet.”

  “Oh,” she says, sounding surprised.

  “What did you expect? Metal? Gangsta rap? Hardcore?”

  “I didn’t expect anything,” she says.

  “Sure you did.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Whatever.”

  All of a sudden, I don’t like the quiet. I get uncomfortable. “Well, I do like music. Metal, rock, some old punk. But I’m not stuck on any type of music.” I see she doesn’t care if I listen to rockabilly Klezmer bands with bagpipe solos; she’s picking at her skirt, tugging at the hem, trying to pull it down over her thighs, even though the thing’s short enough to be underwear (not that I mind). “What kind of music do you like?” It’s a question I always ask ’cause so many people mention the most obscure indie bands they know just to be cool.

  “Latin. Salsa. Tango.”

  Now I’m the one who’s surprised. “Tango?” Classical maybe, but…

  She nods. “My mom’s Argentine.”

  Lucinda’s skin is so pale it’s almost blue, and her eyes are blue, a scary pale blue, like a Slurpee. There’s no Salma in her Hayek. No Jen in her Lopez. No Sha in her Kira.

  “I know I don’t look it, but it’s true.”

  “But your hair is blond,” I say.

  She puts her hands to her head as if she’s just remembered that’s where people keep their hair. “Yes, I’ve been dyeing it since birth. Does yours come from a bottle?”

  “Of course. Loreal. ’Cause I’m worth it.” Girls always comment on the hair. They always want to know. “It comes from my dad. And his dad. And his dad.”

  “It’s a weird color.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it’s unusual.”

  I shrug. “It’s red.”

  “But it’s dark red. Not a color you see often.”

  I smirk at the road. “Do you like it?”

  She snorts. “Not as much as you seem to.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “Ha. You should play me sometime. I’ll show you harsh.” Then, like she thinks she’s said too much or been too friendly, she clams up and doesn’t say anything more until we hit the Sears parking lot. Okay.

  We go to the automotive department and Lucinda prices out batteries. “Buy the cheapest one,” I tell her. “That car’s not going to last the spring anyway.”

  She ignores me and debates her battery options with the sales guy while I pretend to inspect car parts. I keep sneaking looks. Lucinda might be a hard-ass, but she’s not bad. She’s short and curvy but with muscles in all the right places. A big chest she keeps strapped down with
ugly sports bras that climb up her neck. I try to remember who she’s gone out with. Mike Connelly, goalie of the soccer team. Guy had legs so short everyone called him Stumpy. Jon Sanchez, baseball player, the kind of pretty boy all the girls think is sweet and all the guys think is a girl. There was a rumor that she’d gone out with some way older dude, a coach she met at tennis camp, but who knows if that’s true or not.

  Anyway, none of it matters because she’s totally not my type. I like the tall cool ones, you know? I like red lipstick lips and long legs in fishnets. I like tiny tattoos hidden like gifts at the small of the back.

  As she’s talking to the sales guy, Lucinda slips out of her jacket. Underneath, she’s wearing a sleeveless shirt. It’s something, watching her slip out of the jacket. It’s like she rehearsed it so that it looks completely effortless and without any intended effect. Her exposed shoulders are smooth caps of muscle, singed pink by the sun. I want to touch them, which bugs me. Why would I want to put my hands on Lucinda Dulko? I don’t. I mean, not seriously. This is a girl that no one calls by her first name. This is not a girl with tattoos on the small of her back. This is not a girl who’s cool with it.

  After Lucinda decides to go with the cheapest battery just like any reasonable person would, the salesman rings it up. “Is your boyfriend going to help you install this, miss?”

  “Who?” Lucinda says.

  Because I’m annoyed that I had to wait for so long, because I can’t figure why Lucinda Dulko is getting so interesting, I put my arm around those shoulders and squeeze. “I help her with all her, uh, needs.”

  She elbows me in the gut. “Get off.”

  The salesman raises his eyebrows, but Lucinda’s already grabbed the battery and the receipt and is stomping away.

  “Wait up,” I say, jogging to catch her. “At least let me carry the battery.” That thing has to weigh thirty or forty pounds.

  “You’ve always been an ass, Eddy.”

  “Chill, Dulko. I was just kidding around.”

  She keeps marching along hugging her precious battery.

  I hate when girls walk away from me.

  I hate when they’re mad.

  I hate when they won’t let me carry their car parts for them.

  She drops her jacket. I pick it up and throw it over the battery she’s lugging. She glares at me. I think she’s going to blast me for what happened when we were twelve, but she says, “Even in the fourth grade, you were an ass.”

  “The fourth grade?” I say. “What did I do in the fourth grade?”

  More marching. “Never mind.”

  “Come on, you have to tell me. Or I’ll be forced to leave you in the Juniors department. They’ll make you wear a tube top and a shorter skirt than you have on already. Probably with fringe. It’ll be ugly.”

  She’s still marching, but she slows a bit. “You poured your milk over my head.”

  “Is that all? What was I, nine?”

  “Right. A nine-year-old ass.”

  Girls and their elephant memories. “So you don’t like me because I poured my milk on your head when we were little kids?”

  We’re at the car now. I open the trunk and she puts the battery inside. She says nothing until I unlock the car for her. Then she flops into the passenger seat. I get in the car and go to put it in gear, but she stops me by grabbing my wrist. “I lost,” she says.

  Her grip is strong. Almost immediately, my pinky goes numb. “Lost what?”

  “Today. I lost. And I had to wear this stupid skirt to school.”

  Even though it means admitting I saw her by her car, admitting that I was interested enough to look, I blurt, “I thought you were studying with Joe today.”

  She turns those Slurpee eyes on me. “I did study with Joe, but that was after the meet.”

  “Oh,” I say. Her hand is still around my wrist. “Don’t you always have to wear that stupid skirt?”

  “When we play at home, the coach wants us to wear our tennis clothes—skirts specifically—to school. Basically he thinks that if the guys see a lot of girls in short skirts wandering the halls, they might show up to see the matches.”

  “It’s not a bad plan,” I say.

  “Except it doesn’t work. They ogle us in the hallway, but they don’t care that we can play.” Ogle. Only a girl named Lucinda Dulko would say the word ogle.

  She sees me ogling her legs and pulls her hand away. “Oh, forget I said anything.”

  “Don’t mind me; I’m just being an ass again. Who’d you lose to?”

  “A girl I always lose to. Her name is Penelope. Penelope! Can you believe it?”

  “Have you forgotten that your name is Lucinda?”

  “Lucinda’s my grandmother’s name. It means ‘light.’ Penelope means ‘she-demon from hell.’”

  “Really. Is that from the Latin?”

  She smiles just a tiny bit. “The Greek.”

  “Of course. So, why do you always lose to she-demon from hell?”

  Lucinda stretches her legs in my car. I wonder if she’d like a massage. I’m good at those. Massages.

  “First time I ever played her was freshman year in division finals,” Lucinda is saying. “Penelope comes up to me in the locker room and makes some crack about my tennis dress.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You remember that I dumped milk on your head about forty years ago.”

  “Shut up and listen. She says something nasty about my dress, and then she tells me that she’s going to bagel me.”

  “Sounds kind of kinky.”

  “To you. To everyone else, it sounds like breakfast. Means she’s going—”

  “I know what it means. It means you won’t win a single game in the whole match. Your score would be zero, zero.”

  “Right,” she says, charging ahead as if she’s wanted to get this out since I found her on the side of the road. “I’m smaller, but I’m quicker and I’m better. It didn’t matter. I lost. She didn’t bagel me, but almost. I took only three games. I couldn’t get anything to work right. I couldn’t serve; I couldn’t move. My forehand completely broke down. And it keeps happening. I thought that I’d gotten over my nerves, but I didn’t. And she did it to me again today. This time she made fun of my hair. My hair! Who gives a crap about my hair? But then I go out and I lose, 6–2, 6–2. What is that about? Why do I keep losing to a twit who’s more concerned about her nails than her game?”

  She’s looking at me in the dark of the car, as if I actually might have an answer to her choking problems. “Well, you’re not really better than her if she’s able to psych you out so easy.”

  Her eyes glow like an animal’s in the dark. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m no expert, but isn’t tennis about the mind, too? Maybe she’s got a stronger mind than you.”

  I can feel her gaping at me. “She does not have a stronger mind.”

  “You just told me she did.”

  “I…” she says, and then stops talking, thinking about what I said.

  “So, next time you play her, here’s what you do. Before the match, you walk up to her in the locker room and you say, ‘Hey, Penelope. I knew I’d find you here. I could smell your BO all the way down the hall. This should help.’ And then you dump your milk on her head. I promise, you’ll wipe the court with her. Plus she’ll stink like bad cheese.”

  Lucinda laughs. And stops tugging at her skirt as if she could make it longer. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “My specialty.”

  “I know.”

  “Seriously. Sorry you lost today. Sucks.”

  “Yeah, well. It happens.”

  “Not to you, though.”

  She shrugs, but I can tell that I’m right.

  “Penelope doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Your hair always looks good.”

  The hands fly up to the head again as she glances at me. Her lips move as if she might say thank you, but she
doesn’t say anything.

  I win.

  I think.

  I pull up to her car—nose to nose so that I can keep the lights on. We jump out of the SUV. Lucinda sets the battery on the ground and pops the hood on her Oldsmo-Buick. Instead of getting her tools, she gets her ginormous phone from the front seat.

  “Calling for a pizza?” I say.

  “My brothers,” she tells me. She tries one number, then the other. “No answer.” She tosses the phone back onto the seat, moves around to the front of her car, leans over, and plucks at some of the wiring. Then she straightens up. “Well.”

  “Well,” I say.

  She pokes at the wires again. “I thought they would be home by now. Or at least answering their phones. I don’t know why they’re not answering.”

  “Okay,” I say, not knowing where she’s going with this.

  “You don’t have to stay, Eddy. I’m sure you have stuff to do. I’m fine here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Then it dawns on me. “Don’t you know how to install the battery?” Surprisingly, I’m surprised. I just assumed she was that kind of girl, the kind of girl who does one-armed push-ups and repairs motorcycles and still finds time to knit her own socks.

  Lucinda shuffles her feet. It is an amazing thing to see, Lucinda Dulko humbled to the point of shuffling her feet. “But maybe you know how to—”

  “Oh, I get it. I’m a guy, ergo, I know how to fix cars.”

  She moves to adjust her skirt for the millionth time but stops herself when she sees her hands are greasy. “Well,” she says. “Do you? Know how to fix cars, I mean? If you could, I’d—”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not sure I appreciate this stereotyping.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it about you, Lucinda, but I think you’re being really sexist.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Do you know how to install the battery or not?”

  “I have feelings, you know. Thoughts and dreams and feelings,” I say, making my voice quaver. “I’m not just some motor head with a Y chromosome.”

  “Eddy—”

  “Some hairy caveman you can use and abuse. Just because I’m incredibly tall and muscular and have superior mechanical ability doesn’t mean—”