Born To Be Wild

THIRTY-EIGHT

By 1940, soap operas represented 90 percent of all commercially sponsored daytime broadcast hours.

Daniel and Jack arrived at Mary Lisa’s house at exactly a quarter to six that evening, the exact time Lou Lou had made Daniel promise to be there when she’d called him two hours earlier. Jack had complained, and hadn’t stopped complaining when he stepped out of Daniel’s car.

“Why does she want us here at exactly”-he looked down at his watch-“five forty-five?”

“You heard me, ask Lou Lou. She said don’t bother trying to grill her like a cop and she started singing ‘Kiss My Earrings,’ that new funky song by some idiot I’ve never heard of that drives me nuts. I tried threatening her with handcuffs-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll bet that really scared her. Knowing Lou Lou, I’ll bet she told you to bring them on.”

“Hmm, she did mention something about soft fur lining being nice. It’s their show tonight, Jack, so it’s their rules-at least this time.”

There were no parking places in the driveway so they’d had to park half a block away. They walked in through the open door to see a dozen people sprawled in Mary Lisa’s living room, all of them busy talking, eating Wheat Thins, cheese cubes, and deli food off huge trays, and drinking beers and soda. Jack carefully stepped over some remains of salsa and tortilla chips. Mary Lisa looked up, grinned, and waved them in. She looked so utterly pleased with herself, that Jack felt his blood run cold.

Daniel watched Lou Lou dive for the last cheddar cheese cube, beating a tall, lanky guy he’d never seen before. He didn’t look like a movie star or a producer. Maybe he was just a regular guy, who knew?

Someone put a beer in their hands, offered them some guacamole dip and a bowl of thick greasy tortilla chips.

Lou Lou clapped her hands. “Showtime!” It was almost six o’clock on the dot. Everyone quieted, and the chewing noises grew faint as Mary Lisa clicked the remote to the local news.

The camera panned over to anchorwoman Elizabeth Verras and for the first time Jack saw her on full display. She looked buff and gorgeous, her teeth so white they nearly glared on the TV screen. The first item out of her mouth, after her greeting, was Ramos’s name and a description of the white van, with an artist’s mock-up of what the van must have looked like with the letters and the motorcycle on its side. “If anyone knows the whereabouts of this van please contact Channel 6. The owner is considered dangerous and is wanted for questioning in connection with a kidnapping.” The station phone number scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Then Elizabeth read it aloud twice. She never mentioned Puker or Mary Lisa, but she presented the piece cleverly, acknowledging it was rare for the station to make such an announcement, but with an unspoken glimmer that promised all would be revealed if the right person called in to help.

Mary Lisa clicked off the TV and gave everyone a big fat smile and a bow. “Well, what do you think? It’s gonna get called in, you know it will.” There was clapping and a chorus of cheers, with shouts of “Way to go, Mary Lisa,” and “Well done!”

“I wonder if the guy really fixes hogs.”

“Or if he brings home the bacon.”

There were boos and laughter, and some high-fives for Mary Lisa.

Jack dipped a thick chip into the guacamole, furiously chewed, and swallowed it. “So that’s who you called from the hospital.”

She nodded, looking all superior, and studied her fingernails, lightly buffed them against her sleeve, knowing he was not taking this well and enjoying herself.

“Yep, it’s my first foray into investigatorhood. Not bad, huh? You know, I should add a bit more lemon juice to the guacamole, it’s turning.”

“Forget the frigging guacamole. How’d you get the station to do it?”

“Well, not the station, really. It was Elizabeth. She did brilliantly, didn’t she?” She frowned down at the guacamole. “Fact is, she owed me one.”

“What?”

“Sorry, you’re the wrong chromosome.”

Daniel shook his head at her and grinned when Lou Lou turned to smack him on the shoulder. “Is she smart, or what? Both she and Elizabeth.”

Jack chewed on another chip. “She’s an idiot. If she had a brain, she’d probably loan it out to one of her friends.”

Mary Lisa rounded on him. “Oh yeah? I’ll bet your brain is so primitive it takes you hours of excruciating concentration to achieve a synapse. Let’s see what happens, all right? What would you have done?”

He counted off on his fingers. “We put an APB on the damned van, we’re checking state and federal databases for a James or Jamie Ramos or his aliases, we put in a call to Immigration, and we have detectives out checking the motorcycle repair and parts shops.”

“Right, Jack, we’ve done all that, but with no results yet-”

“-So far.” Jack pointed a finger at Mary Lisa, ignoring all the interested onlookers, some of whose autographs he was sure he could sell back in Goddard Bay. “You are not an investigator, Mary Lisa, you’re a soap opera star with an alter ego who’s even nuttier than you are.”

Mary Lisa was sore from her afternoon with Chico, but she managed to throw a pillow at him, and got him square in the face. “That was my fast pillow. You want to see my curve?”

The place fell apart. Jack was sure the howls of laughter could be heard all over the street, that is, if any of her neighbors weren’t already there with them. He looked over at Daniel, who was trying not to laugh. He bent down and dove at Mary Lisa’s waist, caught her as she whirled around to run.

“Police brutality!”

“Hit him with your curve, Mary Lisa!”

Jack carried her outside over his shoulder, climbed down her back deck stairs, and walked through the sand toward the ocean.

She was laughing too hard to really hurt him, but she still pounded his back for show. He considered walking to the water with her and throwing her out as far as he could, but the fact was, he was wearing his new low black Italian leather boots.

He set her down, still holding her arms. “You stole that line from me.”

She laughed. When she was down to hiccups, she said, “When we get back, I’ll give you credit, okay? ‘Hey, guys, it was Jack’s line about the curve pillow!’ Talk about a pitiful ego. Poor baby, I didn’t-”

Jack growled, pulled her hard against him, and kissed her. “You damned witch-” And he kept kissing her.

Mary Lisa froze, shocked to her toes. What was happening here? It was lust, incredible lust, and it was ripping through her, and she thought she was going to simply lift off the beach and float, or maybe become one with the beach sand, maybe rip off his clothes so she could kiss every inch of him. Boy, would that ever be nice and-what was she doing? This was Jack Wolf who was kissing her, the guy who’d tossed her butt in jail three years ago and would have tossed the key into the ocean if he could have gotten away with it. He was also the guy who’d come down here because she was in trouble, to help her. It didn’t matter. What she was feeling, she didn’t want it to stop. She thought about how nice it would be to trip him backward and fall on top of him. Maybe I can get Daniel’s cuffs, lock his hands over his head, and kiss him and keep kissing him-

He let her arms go and pulled her so tight against him the people on her deck couldn’t see even a sliver of light from the half-moon between them.

Jack was locked and loaded and crazed. His only thought was to take her down to the sand and rip her clothes off, his Italian leather boots be damned. He wanted to do the beach scene from that old movie From Here to Eternity right here on this mostly dry sand. He became aware of noise, too much noise. No, block it out, it’s not important. Who cares?

But he raised his head to see every single person who’d been in her living room standing on the back deck, watching and laughing at them.

He cursed, jerked her arms from around his neck, and managed to pull away from her. He was in sorry shape, actually in pain. He stepped back and took a breath, his heart kettledrumming the 1812 Overture. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.” And he turned on his beautiful booted heel and strode back up the beach toward her house.

Mary Lisa felt like he’d smacked her silly. Her wonderful lust mixed with rage. She yelled after him, “Just what did you mean, you ‘didn’t mean to do that,’ you jerk?”

He didn’t turn, kept walking. He felt a wet clot of sand hit him square in the back.

“You coward! You tease! You should be shot!”

He was a man in pain, a man on the edge. He’d done the right thing, only to have the object of his lust scream at him, throw dirt on him. So he was a coward and a tease, was he?

He jerked off his beautiful boots, shrugged off his jacket, threw his wallet and gun down on top of the pile, and strode toward her.

Mary Lisa recognized a man who’d slipped his tether. She took off. She couldn’t hear him but she knew he was after her. He heard the shouts.

“She’s fast, five bucks says she’ll beat him!”

“Nah, he’s in real good shape. Ten bucks says he’ll bring her down in the next ten yards.”

“What’s he gonna do, anyway?”

“Does she really want to get away from him? I don’t think so.”

There were hoots of laughter, and then Lou Lou yelled, “He’s a serious man, Mary Lisa. Run! Well, if you really want to, that is.”

Jack never saw the piece of driftwood until he tripped over it and went airborne.