Fire And Spice. Karen Van Der Zee

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      Zoe put the stuff back into the bag-boxes of macaroni and cheese mix, a frozen pizza, a packet of hot dogs. The girl had managed to open the door and Zoe handed her the bag.

      ‘Thanks a lot. Do you live upstairs?’

      ‘Yes. I’m Zoe Langdon.’

      ‘I’m Kristin Meyers. It’s nice to meet you.’ Her smile was bright. She radiated cheer and peppiness. ‘See you!’

      Zoe climbed the stairs to her own apartment wondering who Kristin was. Not that it was any of her business. Come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed Mrs Garcia lately. Was she no longer working for the Sinclairs? Zoe stood in front of the window and looked down at the street, noticing Paul. His school bag hung by one strap from his shoulder. His head drooped and he focussed on his shoes as he kicked a pebble along the pavement. He’d been held after school today to do make-up work, work he had not done at home.

      Maybe Kristin was a sitter, or a tutor, or a combination of the two. Then again maybe she was Bryant’s woman of the week. ‘Oh, stop it!’ she said out loud to herself. It wasn’t her business. She didn’t care.

      Yes, she did. Secretly, she kept waiting for Bryant to call or knock on her door, in spite of the blasted convention that made him come home late every night.

      She turned away from the window. Something was happening to her and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to feel this way. She didn’t want his image in her head all the time. She didn’t want to hear his words over and over in her mind.

      ‘I think something is going on between us.’

      She was not going to sit by the phone like a lovesick teenager and wait for Bryant to call her. He had kissed her very nicely—well, okay, passionately, she corrected herself—but that did not mean that he was now going to spend every night knocking on her door. He was busy and so was she—at least, she could make herself busy. She should do something about her social life, make friends.

      She started a cooking spree and invited some of the teachers to dinner. She signed up for an evening class at the university. Maxie took her to a seminar on Indian spirituality on Friday night.

      She wrote letters to her friends, called her mother in Italy, took long walks and read a big book, or tried to.

      None of it helped one little bit. Her mind was determined to occupy itself with thoughts of Bryant, thoughts of him kissing her, touching her.

      The trees had started to turn in vivid colors, the fiery orange and red of the maples joining the rich golden yellow of hickory and the warm, coppery brown of the oaks. In the morning the air was cool and clear and to Zoe it was like a gift of the gods. Walking to school she would drink in the air like champagne, feeling light on her feet and smiling at the world in general. Ah, fall was so glorious!

      The six-weekly report cards came out, and Paul’s was a miserable collection of failing grades. With a sigh of despair, Zoe sent a note home with Paul saying she wanted another conference with Bryant. He called her at home that night and just hearing his voice made her tingle all over.

      ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How was your convention?’

      ‘Deadly. But it’s over now. I received your note,’ he went on, and there was a change in his voice, subtle but real. ‘I have no time to come to school in the morning, and frankly I do not expect a conference to change anything.’

      The lovely tingling stopped instantly and anger rushed through her in its stead.

      ‘Have you seen his report card?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Paul is in trouble, Bryant. You are his father. Don’t you think you ought to do something?’

      ‘I don’t think a conference is going to accomplish anything.’

      Not if he was not willing to cooperate, not if he didn’t want help. ‘So you’re going to stand by and let him fail? Don’t you understand that his behavior is a cry for help?’

      ‘Listen,’ he said impatiently, ‘I’ll come up and we can discuss it now if you like, but I can’t do this on the phone with him in the next room.’

      ‘Then come to my office tomorrow.’

      ‘Your office, your apartment, what’s the difference?’ He sounded annoyed.

      There was a big difference, but she didn’t want to argue over time and place. In view of the situation, she was glad to have a chance to talk to him about Paul at all.

      So she agreed, raced into the bedroom, looked at herself in the mirror and groaned at her faded jeans and sweatshirt. She put on some lipstick, brushed out her hair and a knock came on the door. He was dressed in jeans and a cotton sweater, and her heart leaped at the sight of him in his casual clothes. He looked sporty and strong and utterly male.

      She told him to take a seat and busied herself pouring them each a cup of coffee, her hands shaking. She sat down opposite him, willing herself to concentrate on Paul rather than Bryant.

      She took a fortifying sip of her coffee. ‘What did Paul say about his grades?’

      He waved his hand casually. ‘That this school is “stupid” and he wants to go back to his old school in Buenos Aires. I told him it was out of the question.’

      She stirred her coffee. ‘What did you say to Paul about his report card, specifically?’

      ‘What do you think I said? I told him it was a disgrace and that I expected better from my son. I found him a tutor, but apparently that has not improved matters.’

      Ah, Kristin. She couldn’t help feeling a tiny sense of relief.

      ‘The problem isn’t that he needs help with his homework,’ she said calmly. ‘He knows how to do it; he just doesn’t. He systematically refuses and that refusal is a symptom of the problem.’ Her mind produced the picture of Paul slumped in his chair, head down, fiddling with a paper clip. ‘Something is bothering him. He’s not happy.’

      He gave a crooked grin. ‘He’s twelve years old. Puberty’s looming. Of course he’s not happy. The world is a terrible place. Nobody understands him. Unfortunately, it’s a phase he’ll have to go through like the rest of humanity. It’s growing-up time. He’ll have to learn to adjust to changes and accept the inevitable.’ He sighed. ‘We can’t go back to Argentina. There isn’t a thing to be done about it.’

      ‘Your move here was a big change and it’s not easy to adjust to big changes like that,’ she said.

      He looked straight at her. ‘Oh, I know,’ he said slowly. ‘Believe me, I know.’ There was something odd about the way he said it, and deep down, way behind the brightness of his blue eyes, she saw a dark shadow.

      Had any of this to do with his wife, Paul’s mother? But she’d looked through all the records from Paul’s school in Argentina and there’d been no mention of a mother-no name, no address, nothing.

      ‘If you know,’ she said gently, ‘then you should be able СКАЧАТЬ