Zeke grinned. “Come and go any time you want to. Make yourself at home.”
Mike asked, “You wearing your black lace panties tonight?”
She stood motionless, her hands poised stiff over the drawer they had been about to explore. Ingrid screamed, “Michael Randall! How could you?”
Zeke said quietly, “Don’t let it bother you, Miss Randall. I had an older sister and I said the same things.” She turned, and the look was a kiss.
Mike went to her. He was as near crying as a man of twelve dared to come. “I was just teasing, Pat. I’m a louse.” She put her hand to his cheek. “So run along and let’s forget it, huh?”
When he was gone Inky said, “The maturing process is hard. You say things and wonder why. I was the same at his age. He’ll grow out of it.”
Zeke shook his head as he returned to the radio. “I don’t know. Most of us don’t. I’ve been saying things all my life I shouldn’t have.”
At that moment the phone rang, and Ingrid picked it up on its first note. Her voice dropped, and she carried the phone over to the far window.
“It’s a boy,” Patti said. “I can always tell. She sounds like Sandra Dee.”
Zeke sneezed, and the sneeze reminded him. “I was wondering about the cat’s dinner.”
She fished a dress out of the closet and shut the door behind her, standing very straight in a patch of evening sun. “You promised to call him by his name.”
Zeke shifted uneasily. “I did, didn’t I?” He couldn’t take his eyes from hers. Afterwards he thought they were blue, but he was never sure. “About D.C.‘s dinner. What if you didn’t feed him at all tonight? Wouldn’t he go out earlier looking for something?”
“That’s not what he looks for,” she said without thinking. “I mean
“
Zeke grinned. “I know what you mean.”
In the background Ingrid’s voice grew louder. “I don’t know whether I can go at all, Eddie. I’ll have to ask my sister
. I can’t help it, I never do anything without asking my sister. Okay, I’ll let you know, Eddie. Good-by.”
Patti stared in disbelief. “Since when have you ever asked my permission to do anything?”
Ingrid returned the phone to the night table. “Well, you didn’t want me to tell him the truth, did you? Eddie’s all right, I guess, if you want to run around with an encyclopedia, but I don’t want to go with him to the prom, unless nobody else asks me.”
“And I’m the villain, if you need one?”
Ingrid turned. “You don’t mind, do you, sis?” She displayed her most ingratiating smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re so sweet to me.”
“Horse-radish!”
As Ingrid started for the door, Zeke called to her, “Miss Randall.” At the “Miss,” her eyes lighted. At last, here was someone who knew and respected her age. And he was smiling. He was a living doll. She would write’ Mr. Hoover when this was over and tell him.
Zeke said, “As a special favor, would you keep your phone conversations brief? We’re running our own phone in here later but right now we have to depend on this one.”
“Why, of course, Mr. Kelso. I’ll do anything you want me to. Anything.”
“And no dates here tonight, please. No boy friends.”
She shot Patti a glance. I’m not permitted boy friends on a Tuesday night due to certain customs in this family that date back to medieval times. The thinking in this family ” She never finished. An explosion shook the room, set the pictures on the wall to trembling and. the cosmetics on the make-up table to clinking. Zeke tensed as his thoughts scrambled to place and identify the sound. Ingrid did it for him. “It’s nothing. Mike set off another rocket. He’s going to blow up the whole neighborhood someday but we must make sacrifices for science.”
“I want to speak to him,” Zeke said sharply. “Call him in, will you?”
Ingrid disappeared the same moment that the front doorbell buzzed. “Excuse me,” Patti said.
Zeke followed her silently down the hall, keeping out of sight as she opened the front door. He relaxed when the conversation between the two identified the caller as a tree man. “It’s dead, Miss Randall. No life in it at all. Nothing to do but take it out.” Zeke couldn’t hear what she said but the man answered, “I don’t know. Might have been. But these apricots, they get old like the rest of us and die.”
Mike came in then, trailed by Ingrid. Zeke asked his cooperation. Would he mind foregoing rocket research tonight? “I don’t want D.C.‘s nerves shattered,” Zeke explained, returning to the bedroom. He noted that for some inexplicable reason D.C. did not seem particularly disturbed. He was still washing away on that tail. He should have taken to the subterranean depths when the rocket went off. But he hadn’t. He had just sat there calmly and washed that long tail. This laundry bit, pursued over an extended period, was beginning to bother Zeke.
Zeke continued, “It’s important that we don’t do anything to upset his nerves tonight.”
“He hasn’t got any,” Mike countered.
Ingrid nodded. “You don’t get that kind for two dollars at the SPCA note 6 ôàêòîð VII (ñâåðòûâàþùåé ñèñòåìû êðîâè) , àíòèôèáðèíîëèçèí, ïðîêîíâåðòèí].”
Mike continued, “I’ve got one more rocket to go. He doesn’t mind, do you, you old skunk.” He roughed up D.C., and D.C. was pleased no end. He never missed a lick, transferring his tongue action from his tail to his boy. He shot a mischievous glance at Mike and grabbed his hand with his two front paws, sheathing the claws so he wouldn’t hurt him, and then seized a finger and gently tightened his teeth.
“Oh, so you want to get rough, huh?” Mike fell to the bed and began wrestling with D.C.
“Please,” Zeke shouted, the sweat breaking out on him. “You’re getting him all upset.”
Ingrid yelled, “Michael!” and Mike quit, much to D.C.‘s displeasure. He crawled along the bed after Mike, shooting out a paw, trying to pull him back.
Mike straightened. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Kelso, old D.C. will take you straight to those guys tonight. He’s braver than most anybody. He wouldn’t be scared to walk right into gunfire. We’ve got this police dog down the street, the biggest police dog you ever saw, but he doesn’t come up around here since D.C. ran him out a year ago.”
Mike added, “I’ll wait until tomorrow to fire the other rocket.”
He left, and Ingrid followed. She stopped as she passed Zeke, standing quite close to him. “You’re so masterful,” she said. “I wish the boys at school were, but let’s face it, they don’t measure up. They absolutely don’t.”
When she was gone he sat down again in the robin’s-egg-blue chair, and ran his long, bony fingers along the heavy cording. D.C. paused in his ablutions to glare at him, and Zeke glared back. “It’s mutual, chum. It’s mutual.”
Two hours to go.
In the kitchen Ingrid mixed up a batch of scrabble. “He hates me. He just hates me. And it hurts so. I was only trying to help the FBI with the fingerprinting and all. But he thinks I helped the enemy, and he’s never going to sleep on my bed again. He went straight to your room after it happened. Acted like I wasn’t on earth. When I tried to make up, he moved away, like I wasn’t there, and “
“He’ll get over it,” Patti told her. “He’ll stay in my room for a while to teach you a lesson.”
Ingrid nodded. “I know just how he feels. He’ll forgive me, but not right away.”
After tasting the scrabble, she tossed in another sack of peanuts. “Greg picked me up on the way home from school. Said he’d been looking everywhere for me because he wanted my advice on how to handle a girl who went to him to get a divorce.”