News Blues (7 page)

Okay, maybe I was projecting a bit here, but I bet I wasn’t too far from the truth.

“When she comes down, you’ll have to meet her, ” Jamie added as we walked into the hospital. “You’d like her, I think.”

Men were so clueless. Didn’t he know that I could never like her? You could never like the fiancée of a guy you slept with.
It just didn’t happen.

“Sure. We’ll do lunch, ” I said, trying to sound amiable.

Jamie looked at me funny, but didn’t reply. We took the elevator up to the correct floor and entered the doctor’s office.

The interview went well. The doctor talked about the dangers of lead to a fetus and gave us examples ofthe dangers of lead
to a fetus and gave us examples of lipsticks that had tested positive. Evidently it wasn’t an exact science. When the lipstick
goo was being stirred at the factory, the lead levels didn’t mix in evenly. So each tube from the same batch could have completely
different levels of lead. And while nine times out of ten you were probably pretty safe, she did advise pregnant women not
to use lipstick during their pregnancy just in case. And that was all I needed for my story.

It would have been better if we had a victim. I knew the station would have loved to get video of a brain-damaged baby, forced
to live out a miserable existence all because his mother vainly applied lipstick every morning. But I could work around it.

I had to get this piece done and on the air so I could start working on that Mexican drug cartel one. Miguel had left a voice
mail for me this morning before I got in and I couldn’t wait to call him back and get the scoop.

I just had a feeling that was going to be the story that changed my life.

“How about that guy? He’s cute.” Jodi pressed a well-manicured finger up to the computer screen. Back at the station, she
and I had holed up in her office and opened the Match.com dating site.

“He’s not a blond, blue-eyed surfer from Czechoslovakia.”

She rolled her eyes. “Tell me again why he has to be that?”

“That’s my type.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to admit my embarrassing lie if I didn’t have to. Plus, Jodi might get suspicious
about Jamie. I wasn’t ready for the lecture she’d be sure to give if she heard of my overnight adventure. As much as I loved
Jodi, let’s just say she once had a cheating fiancé of her own and wasn’t too keen on encouraging her friends to engage in
such activities.

“Since when is your type a blond? You’re always dating brunettes. You hate blonds.”

“Tastes change. Besides, I like Owen Wilson. He’s a blond.”

“Right.” Jodi gave me a weird look and went back to searching. Unfortunately, there were fewer blond-haired Czechs who lived
in Southern California and surfed than one might have imagined.

“Click on him.” I pointed to a cute blond guy. Jodi complied and a profile popped up.

Ah-ha! He was perfect.

Blond, blue-eyed surfer. Lived in Czechoslovakia for several years as a child though he was originally from Germany. Under
hobbies he listed surfing. I couldn’t believe my luck. My imaginary guy actually existed. I should try this Match.com thing
more often.

According to his profile, Ted liked long walks on the beach, cuddling up to a roaring fire. Thunderstorms. (Why did everyone
always put that in their “likes” category? Was it supposed to be romantic or something?)

I pushed Jodi out of the way and jotted off a quick e-mail to Ted, asking him to check out my profile and whether or not he
wanted to go out tomorrow night. I normally would have been a bit more coy, but these were desperate times.

Then I went in and changed my profile so my likes agreed with his likes. Sure, I didn’t really enjoy foreign films or follow
European football all that closely, but the likelihood was that these topics wouldn’t come up on a first date anyway and I
only needed that one date to prove to Jamie I hadn’t lied.

I clicked back to his profile to see what he put under family. Ten kids?! He wanted ten kids? Wow, I felt bad for the woman
he’d make his broodmare. But okay. I typed “ten” under my desire for kids. Why not? I wouldn’t know him long enough for it
to matter.

Satisfied that I had created a profile that would intrigue him, I clicked off the site. Tomorrow night at this time, I was
sure to be on a date.

Ding, dong!

Why did the doorbell always ring the second I stepped in the shower? I could be conditioning my hair at four A.M. and someone
would be sure to stop by. It’d better not be a vacuum salesman, I thought as I turned off the water and grabbed a towel. Or
some Girl Scout. Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad on account of getting some cookies out of the deal. Thin Mints. Mmmmm.

Ding, dong!

“I’m coming!” Whoever it was, they sure were impatient. I scurried down the hallway, clad only in my towel, and opened the
door.

Lulu. And she had a big backpack, stuffed to the brim.

“Hey, sis, what’s up?” I asked, already kind of getting the gist.

“You said I could stay with you, right? Well, here I am.” She pushed by me and dumped her grimy backpack on my beige IKEA
couch.

Oh, great. Just what I needed. My crazy sister living in my tiny apartment. She stayed with me for a weekend once when my
parents went to Vegas, and she trashed the place in two days. It was not for nothing her childhood nickname had been Pigpen.

“Did something happen, Lu?”

Lulu slumped down on the couch, putting her combat-booted feet on the coffee table. “Dad took off to go be with what’s-her-face.
And Mom hasn’t been back from shopping.”

“What?” I asked, alarmed. “She never came back?”

“Nope. I stayed up ’til like one A.M. last night and there was no sign of her. When I woke up, I was still alone. I decided
to skip school and wait for her. But she’s not back yet.”

Fear raced through my heart. This was not good. Not at all. Mom could be lying in a ditch. She could have rented a hotel room
and committed suicide. She could be dead. My mother could be dead!

“Omigod. Omigod. What are we going to do?” I asked, not really addressing my sister, since I knew she would have no solution.
I grabbed the telephone and dialed Dad’s cell.

“Hi honey, ” he answered. “I’m so pleased to hear from you.”

“I’m not calling for a friendly chat, Dad, ” I said testily. I was still very angry at him and wanted to make sure he knew
it. “It’s Mom. She never came home.”

“I’m sure she’s fine, Maddy.”

I white-knuckled the phone. “She’s not fine. She’s missing. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“Well, according to my online banking register, it appears to be Hawaii. Oh, no. Wait.” I hear clicking in the background.
“She flew to Fiji this afternoon.”

“What? Why would Mom be in Fiji? Or Hawaii for that matter?” I screamed into the phone. This was unbelievable.

“Well, from what I can see by looking at the charges, it appears she’s shopping.”

“And we are not to be concerned that our cookie-baking, stay-at-home, never-been-outside-the-continentalUnited States mother
is suddenly on a globe-trotting shopping spree?”

“Honey, I’m sure she’s fine. She’s free for the first time in her life and she’s enjoying herself.”

“Fine. Whatever, Dad.” Furious, I threw the phone across the room. Unfortunately, phone throwing only hurts the phone itself,
not the person on the other line.

“So can I live with you?” Lulu asked.

I sank down into the armchair, head in my hands. What did I do in a previous life to make my karma so screwed up?

CHAPTER SIX

FROM:
“Diane Madison”

TO:
“Madeline Madison”

SUBJECT:
Hello from Japan!

Hi Sweetie!

Sorry this comes by e-mail, but you know those foreign phone charges can really add up! I’m at a Tokyo Internet café having
a grand old time and I thought I might drop you a line. So, how are you? How’s Lulu? Hope you are all doing well.

Not sure when I’ll be home—having way too much fun! I can’t believe all these years I sat around wasting time raising children
(no offense, Sweetie), when I could have been traveling the world!!!! Now your father will soon be stuck changing diapers
again and I’m free to do whatever I want—all on his dime!!! I may NEVER come home.

Make sure Lulu is doing her homework. And remind her that skipping school just ain’t cool.

Love you to pieces,

MOM

I couldn’t believe my mom was traveling the world and I was stuck taking care of my crazy sister. You had to understand, my
mother was the most non-travel-the-world type you’d ever meet in your life. And she never, ever shirked from the smallest
parental duty, never mind getting up one day and abandoning her teenage child. It didn’t make any sense.

I couldn’t mother Lulu. I could barely take care of myself. Like tonight. I had a date with the surfing Czech. Did I have
to now make dinner first? Get home in time to check if she made curfew? I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. I didn’t
even own a goldfish for this very reason.

Still, what could I do? She
was
my sister, after all. And despite what a pain in the butt she could be, at the end of the day, I loved her dearly. What was
I supposed to do, kick her out on the street? Sure, her being here would cramp my style a little, but we were sisters. And
sisters stuck together when their parents went off the deep end as ours had.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Lulu was in diapers and needed constant surveillance. She was sixteen. Mary from
Little
House on the Prairie
got married at sixteen. And she was blind! Lulu had perfect twenty-twenty vision—surely she could figure out how to use a
stove or call for takeout.

So after laying out a few ground rules, I headed to my bedroom to find an outfit to wear on my date. Ted, the surfing Czech
had called me yesterday, soon after I sent my e-mail. We talked for about three minutes—he said he was impressed by my profile—and
ended the conversation by making dinner and movie plans for tonight. To avoid potential future stalker issues when I inevitably
dumped him, I said I’d meet him at the Old Town Mexican Cafe, a fun restaurant in San Diego’s historic Old Town. We’d have
dinner. We’d have drinks. (Though not too many. I was so not having a repeat of Thursday with Jamie.) Then, we’d go to the
movies in Fashion Valley and at some point I’d take a photo for proof. This way, I could prove to Jamie that I wasn’t: a)
lying to him and b) pining over our one-night stand. He’d know that I, Maddy Madison, had a full, active social life with
cute surfer boys.

Then I could tell Ted it wasn’t working out and move on. Hopefully the surfing Czech wouldn’t be too broken up about losing
me, poor desperate online-dating-service guy.

The only problem now was what the heck I was going to wear on the date. After a brief closet assessment, I resigned myself
to the fact that everything I owned was hopelessly worn and/or ugly. Not that it mattered. After all, I was only using Ted
for a quick photo op. But what if he turned out to be really cool? What if by some rare stroke of luck, he was The One and
I had worn such an awful outfit that he ran away screaming and I ended up living out the rest of my life as the crazy cat
lady because I didn’t dress appropriately for the date? It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

Finally, I decided on a swishy black DKNY skirt, a red strappy tank top, and cute little flip-flops I’d gotten from Urban
Outfitters. The outfit said fun and flirty, but not to expect too much. A quick brush of eyeliner and a dab of lip-gloss and
I was ready.

At first, Lulu wasn’t too happy to learn that I was ditching her on our first night as roommates, but she seemed somewhat
appeased after I handed her twenty dollars, a pizza menu, and the telephone. I promised myself that I’d spend some quality
time with her the next day. See how she was doing. After all, this divorce was a major life change for her and I wanted to
make sure she was okay with everything.

Thanks to traffic and zero parking, I arrived at the restaurant fashionably late and scanned the place for a blond-haired
surfer-looking guy. No one in sight.

Maybe he decided to be fashionably late as well and was simply a bit more fashionable than me. As long as he didn’t stand
me up. That would be unbearable. To be stood up by a guy you were just using to prove to the guy you just slept with that
you weren’t a loser. Ugh.

Calm down, Maddy. Go get a drink
.

After checking in with the hostess, who told me there’d be a half-hour wait for a table anyway, I hit the bar and ordered
myself a nice glass of Chardonnay. I would have much rather had one of their delicious margaritas (they had
eighty
different types of tequila here), but this was a first date which meant I had to behave myself. I had to seem grown-up and
sophisticated.

I took a sip and then (in a very ungrown-up fashion) managed to spill half the glass of wine down the front of my tank top.
Great. Thank goodness I didn’t order a Merlot.

“Are you Maddy?” a male voice asked as I frantically tried to dab my soaking breasts with a napkin. I looked up.

“Yes, hi, ” I said brightly, pleased to see the Czech surfer (okay, I was going to have to start referring to him as Ted from
here on out) was actually pretty cute in real life. Had the total surfer look going on. Tanned, in good shape. And of course
blond hair and really intense blue eyes. Why the heck was he on an Internet dating service? I mean, he could surely get real
life women. Then again, I was on it, too. Though that was sort of for a different reason.

I realized he was staring at my chest and was about to be offended when I remembered I was still holding a napkin over my
right boob. Oh yes. Great way to make a first impression. I lowered the napkin, painfully aware that the combination of cold
wine and napkin rubbing had made my nipples stand at attention. He probably thought he turned me on or something. Bleh.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Ted.” He held out his hand. He had nice hands. Not too callused, but not too femininely smooth either.

“There’s like a half hour wait for a table, ” I informed him, after we shook. “I put our name in.”

“Cool.” He had an American accent and didn’t seem Czech or German at all. But that was okay. I just needed a photo, not a
voice memo, to prove our date. Though that brought me to my next question. How the heck was I going to snap a photo without
him thinking I was a freak of nature?

He ordered a Corona and paid with a Platinum card. Ooh, that meant he had money. Not that I was some gold digger, but still
. . . very interesting. Maybe this date wouldn’t be such a wash after all. Then again, he failed to ask me if I wanted a refill,
which wasn’t exactly a good sign.

“So, ” he said after getting his beer, “do you use Match dot com often?”

I felt my face heat. Did he think I was some pathetic creature who couldn’t get a date? Then I remembered he was on it, too,
so he probably wasn’t trying to insinuate anything.

“Nope. I’m a Match dot com virgin.” I chuckled.

He didn’t.

“My brother signed me up as a joke a couple weeks ago, ” he said. “We had a good laugh over some of the photos.”

Or maybe he
was
trying to insinuate something. I withheld a grimace. Who did this jerk think he was? He wasn’t
that
good-looking. In fact, if you lined him up side by side with say, Brad Pitt, he’d seem downright ugly.

“So, then, why did you decide to go out with me?” I asked, realizing my voice sounded a little huffy. “If it was all, you
know, a joke.”

“Well, duh. You’re a major babe. Not like some of the other women on there.”

Okay, he was redeeming himself a bit. A lot, actually. I smiled and flipped my hair back behind my ears in what I hoped was
a “major babe” manner.

“Also, you said you loved European football on your profile. Do you know how hard it is to find an American girl who likes
football?”

Uh-oh.

“So, what team do you support?” he asked.

Was it too late to run screaming from the restaurant?

“Um, team?”

“Yeah, you know. Football team.”

“Oh, right.”

Think, Maddy! Think
! My brain went completely blank. Actually “went” was probably the wrong term since it wasn’t exactly full of European football
team names to begin with. In fact, I wasn’t even positive if European football was football at all. Something told me it might
be soccer.

“England?” I said as half a question, praying that since England was a country in Europe they’d have a football team.

“Ah, you follow the national teams, eh? Should have known. Probbaly were a Man-U fan, too, before Becks crossed the pond,
right?”

“Um, yes?”

“Can’t say I blame you. I’d much rather see the old skipper in his natural habitat, too—rather than tune in to a pathetic
Galaxy match that he probably won’t play in anyway.”

What the hell was he talking about? I took a big gulp of my wine. I knew he was speaking English, but I had no idea what anything
coming out of his mouth meant. Oh, why had I written that I followed football on my profile? This was going to be a long date.

Definitely time for a subject change. “So, um, you surf?”

“No.” He laughed. “Sorry. My brother put that on my profile ’cause he said girls dug surfers.”

Of course. The football thing (which I had no clue about) was real and the surfing thing (which I could at least hold my own
in a conversation) was fake. I didn’t want to even broach the topic of the ten kids. So now what did we talk about?

Luckily at that moment the waitress announced our names and we were ushered past other diners to our table in the back of
the restaurant. Unluckier, when we got there, The Date From Hell turned the conversation back to football. He was like a mad
dog with a bone. Who cared how many goals this player scored last night? Or how so-and-so was probably going to get traded
because he screwed up royally in the midfield? Or how this other guy was always diving? I mean, diving? Was there a pool or
something?

He paused only for a moment, as the waitress took our orders and then launched back into his incomprehensible spiel.

I desperately wanted him to shut up. But what could I say? I mean, I was the liar who initiated the date under false pretenses,
not him. Now I simply had to sit back, enjoy my food and get through the night. Then I’d never have to see this football bore
again.

Oh, and I had to get a photo. Might as well get that over with now. Then maybe after dinner I could feign a headache and get
the hell out of Dodge.

“I have to make a quick phone call, ” I lied, reaching into my handbag for my cell.

“Is that a fake Kate Spade?” he asked. “The label looks funny.”

Oh, nice. My counterfeit bag was evidently so counterfeit-looking that even a macho guy who had been delivering a sports monologue
stopped long enough to notice it. I sort of gave him a half laugh which he could interpret as he would, ditched the bag back
by my feet, and flipped open my camera phone. Needed to get this over with ASAP.

Pretending to dial a number, I turned on the camera and framed him up. I felt like a secret spy. A double agent. I was on
a stealth mission to get photographic evidence of an international conspiracy.

I clicked.

SNAP!

Oh, shit. I forgot to turn the fake camera snapping sound off. I would definitely be fired from James Bond duty. Maybe Ted
wouldn’t notice.

“Is that a camera phone?” he demanded, looking a little pissed off. You know, between the handbag and the cell phone, he’d
become suddenly become quite observant.

“Oh, ha, yeah, ” I said quickly closing the phone and stuffing it in my bag. “I guess so.”

“Did you just take a photo of me?”

My face flamed. “Uh, I think maybe? It went off? By accident?”

“Did you delete it?”

“What?”

“Did. You. Delete. The photo. That you ‘accidentally’ took?” Now Ted looked seriously angry.

“Um, yeah. I did. It’s gone.”

“Let me see.”

I was in hell. Seriously in hell.

“What? Why? It’s fine. It’s gone, ” I said.

“Give. Me. The. Phone. Now!”

Reluctantly, I pulled the phone from my bag, hoping to delete the photo before he could see.

Unfortunately, he grabbed it out of my hands before I could manage to flip it open. And when he did his own flipping, of course
he saw his own mug staring back at him.

He pressed “delete” and threw the phone back at me. It landed with a loud clatter when it hit my bread plate and several diners
turned their heads in interest.

“You’re psycho, ” he said. “Completely and utterly psycho. Who does that?” He rose from the table. “No wonder you need a fucking
service to find a date! You’re pathetic!”

Before I could protest, he stormed out of the restaurant, leaving me to face the stares from the other patrons.

“She took a picture of him, ” whispered an elderly woman at the next table.

“On a first date?”

“Those camera phones should be illegal. I heard once that some people take them into locker rooms and then post naked photos
on the Internet.”

I had never been so humiliated in all my life. I wanted to stand up and scream and inform the whole restaurant that I wasn’t
a camera phone pervert, that I just needed a picture to prove to my engaged coworker with whom I’d had sex that I wasn’t a
loser with no life. But unfortunately, as willing as I was to make that speech, I didn’t think it would change any diner’s
opinion of me. In fact, it might sway the few holdouts in the opposite direction.