Secrets of a Shoe Addict (23 page)

“I’m trying!” She laughed.

He did not.

“It’s easy,” he said. “You just hit them with your players’ legs. Like this.” He spun one of his poles and, sure enough, the ball went flying toward her goal.

She tried to rush over and maneuver one of the players to block it, but she was too slow.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Zach give an exasperated
Sheeesh!

“Maybe we should take a break and get something to eat,” she suggested, already planning to eat without regard to Weight Watchers. She’d worry about that later.

“The game’s not over yet.” Zach leapt back, knocking the ball around. “Get back to your station!”

She tried, she really did, but she wasn’t quick enough.

And then, with a loud
“Like this!”
Zach whipped his pole around and sent the ball flying right off the table and into Sandra’s cheekbone.

“Aaah!” She raised her hand to her cheek, which was already pulsating, sending blood north to form what would undoubtedly be a big, ugly, black-and-blue bruise.

“Well, that’s not supposed to happen,” Zach said, as if the table had come to life and deliberately attacked her itself. “Why didn’t you duck?”

“Why didn’t I—?”

“You should have ducked. I mean, I can see you’re too heavy for,
like, a game of touch football or tennis or something, but you’d think you could have at least gotten out of the way.”

Too
heavy
? Was Peter Pan here actually insulting her weight?

That was it.

“Thanks for the game, Zach, I really enjoyed it, but I think I’m going to go home. And put ice on my cheek.”

“I guess you should do that,” he agreed. “Can I have your tokens?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The tokens you just bought. Since you’re not going to use them, can I have them?”

She reached into her purse and started to get out the five dollars’ worth of tokens she purchased, then stopped. “Look for them on eBay,” she said, then turned and left without looking back.

Mostly because it hurt too much to move her aching head.

Chapter
      
14
  

I
t was shortly after noon, Loreen had shown two houses that morning, and her client had been seriously interested in one of them. Things were looking up.

So it was with great optimism that she logged on and decided to take a call or two before Jacob got home. She was going to turn this around and get good at it, like Tiffany and Abbey seemed to be.

It didn’t take long for the phone to ring.

“Hello?” That was a mistake. She modulated her voice and added, “This is Mimi. Who’s calling?”

“Hey, Mimi, this is Caveman, calling for some fire.”

“C-caveman?” No way, that was nuts. Two seconds in, and she’d already made another embarrassing mistake. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard you.”

“Caveman,”
he repeated. “What is this, did I call my fifth-grade math teacher?”

“Were you . . . did you
want
to talk to your fifth-grade math teacher? Is that your fantasy?”

This wasn’t going well.

“You’re joking, right?”

Um. Sure. “Whatever you want. Caveman.”

“Aw, man. This blows.” He hung up the phone with a dramatic clatter.

She’d failed
again.

And it should have been a no-brainer.

Loreen considered it with skepticism. What if it was Caveman again, calling to yell at her? Then again, if it was, he’d be paying handsomely for the privilege, and listening to that would probably be easier than listening to the sexual fantasies of someone who called himself Caveman.

The phone kept ringing.

Finally, she grabbed it. “This is Mimi. . . .” She took a chance. “Caveman?”

There was silence.

“Hello? Caveman? Are you there?”

“Mom?”

She dropped the phone and uttered a word she would have grounded Jacob for saying. “What are you doing here?” she asked, knowing her voice was too sharp and her face was as red as a Halloween mask.

“It’s a half day.” He put his Spider-Man backpack down. “Who are you calling Caveman?”

“It . . . ah . . .”She had no answer. She had not one damn answer that could make sense to
anyone
, much less a child. Except . . . wait a minute, this
was
a child she was talking to. “It was GEICO,” she
said, referencing the car-insurance company that featured cavemen characters that never failed to crack Jacob up.

His face broke into a wide grin. “Cool!”

Loreen cleared her throat. “Get washed up and go downstairs. I’ll make you a snack.”

“Jack Bryson’s coming over,” Jacob said. “We’re gonna practice pitching.”

“Great!” She meant it. She was utterly unprepared to have Jacob home, and she needed some time to recover from the shock of him showing up, and the horror of what he
could
have overheard if she’d been any better at her job.

Her poor performance was almost equally disturbing. As she dialed the number to log off of Happy Housewives, it occurred to her that she really wasn’t pulling her considerable weight in this endeavor. Every call required instant sexual banter, and while obviously she should be ready to do that, she wasn’t. She needed something equivalent to a musician’s fake book, a list of lines she could use as springboards for conversation.

She needed to call Sandra.

“I need to lose weight,” Sandra told Dr. Kelvin Lee. “Fast. So can you do acupuncture
and
auricular therapy?”

Dr. Lee looked at her in that patient, unflappable way he always looked at her. She wasn’t sure if he was just used to her or if
all
his clients were this neurotic. Probably most people saw an acupuncturist for physical pain more than for mental and emotional needs.

Still, last year he’d worked wonders in getting rid of her anxiety and agoraphobia, so she’d begun to think he was a miracle worker.
She just couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of asking him about weight loss before.

“Certainly,” he said, ushering her into room 4, which was the one without a window. She liked room 2 better. “But first, some arnica root would be helpful in healing that bruise.”

She raised a hand to her cheek. Apparently her cover-up hadn’t worked so well as she’d hoped. Now Dr. Lee probably thought she was in some sort of abusive relationship. “I got hit in the face by a ball in an arcade the other day,” she explained. “It actually looks a lot better now than it did at first. So about the weight-loss auricular therapy? . . .”

He nodded. “And we have some very effective homeopathic remedies, as well.”

“I’ll try anything,” she said. “Everything.” And who, upon being insulted by a puppet
and
an overgrown, overcompetitive man-child, wouldn’t?

“Very well, then. Lie down.”

She climbed onto the table, and Dr. Lee walked to the end by her head and started manipulating her earlobes, looking for the spot for the needle.

Sandra knew the ropes at this point.

“Can you put, maybe, a larger needle in or something?” she asked. At this point she was willing to look like a Zulu tribeswoman if it meant she got to be skinny, too. “Is there a way to make it work faster?”

“Sandra, you know it is not possible. The art of acupuncture is based upon stimulating your body’s existing responses. It’s not a ‘more is better’ proposition.”

“It never hurts to ask.” She jumped slightly as he put the needle in her earlobe.

Dr. Lee just shook his head and chuckled. “No, it doesn’t hurt to ask. But my answer will remain the same.”

“I’m afraid my question will, too,” Sandra said. “Ouch! It hurts! It didn’t hurt last time.”

“It is a new meridian. This one perhaps needs more work.” Dr. Lee looked at her, and even though she’d never seen even one shade of judgment in his eyes, she felt embarrassed.

“My weight has certainly been a problem longer than my anxiety,” she said, half expecting him to say something reassuring.

Instead, he simply nodded. “That could be why. Now, turn over and I will complete the acupuncture.”

Recently, Sandra had become less self-conscious about lying on the table in her underwear while the man put acupuncture needles in her. She rolled over onto her stomach and closed her eyes as he inserted the barely perceptible needles into her pressure points.

“Relax for fifteen minutes and I will be back.” Dr. Lee turned down the lights and turned up the PA to the gentle lull of James Galway’s flute lilting over Debussy.

It really was relaxing, odd as that seemed.

Until her cell phone started ringing.

Now, Sandra wasn’t normally one to panic, so the first time it rang, her initial thought was that she’d just call whoever it was back. When the person hung up and called right back, she felt mild irritation that the caller couldn’t just take a hint and leave a message.

But the third time it rang, Sandra’s nerves tightened. Maybe it was an emergency. Had someone been hurt? Or . . . worse? It had been six years since anyone she knew had died, and oddly enough, it had occurred to her a couple of weeks ago that, God forbid, something bad might be about due.

Gingerly, she pushed herself up from the table, careful about the needles sticking out of her like a half-bald porcupine.

The phone was in her purse, which, unfortunately was deep. This was unfortunate because she had needles in the back of her hand, so she couldn’t just dig into the depths of the leather bag to find it.

Very carefully, she pulled the flaps open and reached for the light of her ringing phone.

“Hello?” she asked urgently.

“Sandra? It’s Loreen.”

“Oh.” This was surprising. “Loreen. Is everything okay?”

“Yes. I mean . . . well, yes. But I need some advice. About . . . you know . . .”

“Yes? . . .”

“I need some ideas of what to say. How to get a conversation started.” She hesitated. “And keep it going.”

“Oh. Well, it’s not so hard. You just sort of feel the guy out to see what he needs. You know,
Why are you calling me tonight, Bart?
That sort of thing.” Sandra started to sit down and remembered the acupuncture needles just in time.

“What if he asks what
I
want to do.”

“Then you say something along the lines of
whatever you want to do, big guy, I just want to make you happy
.”

There was a knock at the door and the nurse poked her head in. “Is everything okay in here?”

“Yes. Fine. I just had a call.”

The nurse bowed out, but Sandra wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard.

“Look, I’m at the doctor’s now,” Sandra said, lowering her voice. “Do you want me to stop by on my way home?”

“I don’t want to trouble you—”

“It’s no problem.”

“
Seriously?
Because I’d really appreciate it.”

“Sure.” Sandra turned to look at the clock. “It’ll be about forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be here. Thanks!”

“No problem at all.” Sandra hung up the phone and went back to the table. She liked Loreen. It would be fun to stop by and help her out. Certainly a lot more fun than sitting home alone watching
Wheel of Fortune
and wondering if she should go on another blind date.