Page 7 of The Frog Prince
I look at the bike on his shoulder. “Going for a ride?”
“I did earlier. Heading home now.” He smiles, great smile, great teeth, little creases at his eyes from all the sun exposure. “The offer still stands. If you ever want to join me—”
“Right.”Right.Like I need to get evicted. “Thanks.” I tense, hearing footsteps on the stairs again. Cindy’s on her way down. I’m not in the mood to deal with her tonight. “Good night.”
“Night.”
I disappear into my apartment, shut the door, lock it. Cindy’s shadow passes by outside the frosted glass. “Who were you talking to?” Cindy asks, and I hesitate inside my door before turning on my hall light.
“Holly.”
“Why?”
I move away from the door. I don’t need to hear more. My apartment’s got a great big bay window with lovely crown molding, but it’s also got Cindy, and I don’t like living beneath her apartment. It’s okay if I can hear her music, but she doesn’t want to hear mine. She can have guests, a wild party, but I have to get permission before I have anyone stay overnight (like who would be overnighting?). She gets three parking spots, and I get the street. I know it’s her building, but maybe that’s the problem—it’sherbuilding. It’s her everything. I’m paying a fortune, and yet I don’t even feel as if I belong here.
In my kitchen with the cute little table in front of the window, I stand there and look around. The kitchen’s fine, everything’s fine, and yet I don’t know what I’m doing in San Francisco. I’m not a city person. I’m a small-town, angle-parking, everybody-knows-me kind of person.
I grew up riding my Schwinn bike with the plastic floral basket on the handlebar down Main Street, waving to everybody I knew, and I knew a lot of people. We bought our cakes at Bothof’s Bakery, medicine at Main Drug, shoes at Dick Parker’s, stationery at Togni Branch. It was a one-horse town, and I loved it. People knew me.
And then, when my dramatic whirlwind marriage to the handsome foreign husband fell apart, people knew. Too many people knew. Which is what drove me out of the valley and into the city. Too many people knew me, and every one of them had an opinion.
No one thought I’d get married and divorced in less than ten months. No one thought I’d be the one unable to honor a commitment.
Least of all me.
I strip off my clothes in my bedroom, and just when I’m naked, the doorbell rings.
With a robe wrapped around me, I answer the door. Cindy.
I open the door, smile my tired, tight smile that I only know how to smile anymore. “Hi.”
“Holly.”
Is she mad at me? I open the door wider, when I want to shut it in her face. “Want to come in?”
“No.”
We look at each other for a long minute. Cindy’s five years older than me. She went to Stanford. She’s a successful money manager. In fact, she makes a lot of money. She’s attractive in a serious, hard-ass kind of way, and she’s got Drew, Mr. Fit, and I don’t know why she doesn’t like me better. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to as prestigious a college as she did; maybe it’s because I studied English, not finance and international economics; maybe it’s because she’s very thin and doesn’t overeat and it’s obvious from my pants size that discipline isn’t my forte.
“I’m going away this weekend,” she says, and her gaze stays fixed on a point behind my shoulder. She’s checking out the fireplace. “Make sure you keep the front door locked at all times.”
We share a common entrance and front door. “I will.”
“And please don’t let your guests park in the driveway.”
Whatguests? “I won’t.”
Her forehead creases. She stares harder at the fireplace. For a moment she says nothing, and then, “Is there a crack in the surround?”
I turn around, look at the fireplace and the pink marble surround that’s original to the place. The apartment looked so much fresher and prettier in the sunshine that very first day I saw it, three months ago, than it does now. But three months ago I was desperate for a place of my own, and right now all I want to do is close the door and be alone. “There’s always been a crack.”
“There was never a crack.”
The good margarita fizz is wearing away, leaving the bad margarita fuzz. “The marble’s been cracked since I moved in.”
“No.”
I don’t want to do this anymore. Any of this. I’ve had it with people I don’t like, people I don’t know. I want the Marshes back, who ran Main Drug and let us charge everything to our account—Band-Aids, toothbrushes, grape sodas, Jean Nate perfume sold in sets. I want Mr. Parker, who always gave us balloons when we bought our shoes. I want the short, stocky lady at Togni Branch, who could get any filler for any academic planner, you just watch. I want my brother and sister and the sprinkler in the front yard, and most of all I want my dad back with my mom and to have him happy that we’re his family again.