Pretty Girls Don't Cry Page 13

  “I sure will, partner.” She pushed open the door when they reached her house. “See you next week! At our new job!”

  “Nora wait, I got you something.” He rolled down the window and passed her a gift bag with four pounds of something in it. “Open it when you get inside, out of the rain. You can thank me later.”

  He drove off, and Nora ran into her house. Her parents were already asleep, so she crept as silently as she could to her bedroom, where she opened the bag and the box inside.

  It was a special alarm clock that lit up before the alarm sound went off. Starting next week, Nora would be getting up at four in the morning, in the dark, to go to her new job. Her new job. On a morning show. It didn't get much bigger than that.

  She wondered if she would be on billboards.

  Chapter 9

  Aaron Edward

  Aaron Edward drove up to his big, empty house. The live gig had gone so well that he was wondering if he'd made the right choice in stepping away from his career as a musician to focus on the recording studio.

  The leather pants, which he'd bought as a joke to wear ironically, had felt good. On the tiny stage, even with the scent of fried cheese and hummus in the air, he'd lost himself in the magic of performing. The music flowed, the lyrics came from muscle memory without effort, and he'd been in that state of flow.

  Then he'd seen Nora. Sassy little scrapper Nora, who'd caught tadpoles in her bare hands in the pond behind the school, and laughed at him for being squeamish. He wouldn't even touch them, let alone walk around with a wriggling handful, pants rolled up and ankles deep in more of them, clotting the edges of the pond. They were such troubling things, those half-frogs, with their budding arms and legs, caught between two states.

  The other boys at school had teased her, called her names he couldn't remember. She was a gorgeous woman, and had been a cute kid. When she was fourteen, on the cusp of womanhood, she'd shot up in height. She would never be tall, but she did blossom out of the tiny range, and her once-boyish hands became slender and graceful. He'd been transfixed by her hands—so much that when he was playing his guitar for her, he would forget half the chords he knew.

  Nora had a spotlight effect on him. Tonight, when they'd made eye contact during a song, it had broken his flow, washing away his well-rehearsed lyrics.

  Aaron looked around, surprised to find himself in his driveway. He didn't remember getting there. He turned to the empty seat where Nora would have been if she'd come with him instead of running away.

  He imagined her there, with those graceful hands poised together on her leg, and her, looking up at him with those wide, sea-green eyes.

  How could he ever make it up to her? How much money could make it right? Because of his poor judgment, she'd nearly died, and she'd lost a foot. Aaron shuddered, imagining what it might feel like to lose a limb. Some people experienced phantom pain in the limb that wasn't there—nerve damage, or psychic pain, depending on your personal philosophy.

  How could he ever tell Nora that the worst thing that had ever happened to her had turned out to be the best thing for him?

  Chapter 10

  Nora

  Nora's new apartment—her first place that wasn't shared with her parents—was the kind of place you wanted to spend time in. The windows faced south and west, so she'd be getting plenty of sun in the afternoons, when she came home after her shift. The windows had thick blackout curtains to draw in the evenings, when she went to bed while other people were eating dinner.

  The building had at one point been a cannery, and the big windows had saved the factory owners cash on electricity. The windows had all been upgraded when the building was converted to lofts and had new plumbing and electrical installed throughout. One of Tianne's blogging contacts had found the place listed for sale, but sitting empty for nearly a year, and had suggested Nora make an offer to rent. The owner, an interior decorator with a dozen investment properties, had been happy to rent to her. Nora suspected it was more about her good credit rating, and the market, than her friendly smile.

  The loft was on the top floor, so she wouldn't be hearing noisy footsteps from above. Exposed red bricks along the exterior walls cried out for original art, and the stainless steel appliances were relatively new. The kitchen tap dripped if you didn't wiggle the handle, and the bathroom was painted an atrocious arsenic green, but those were flaws Nora could live with.

  The first time Nora returned from errands, winded from walking up four flights of stairs, she dropped her grocery bags in the kitchen, stretched out on the new-to-her sofa in the living room with the soaring high ceiling, and felt the glamor seeping into her.

  She didn't notice the ice cream melting and seeping out of its bag until it was too late. When she used her webcam to make a video call to her parents that evening, they laughed together over the ice cream. Nora walked around the apartment with her laptop, giving them a virtual tour.

  Nora's mother wrinkled her nose. “Don't those old bricks smell musty?”

  “Keep an eye out for spiders,” her father said. “You want to keep the spiders, though, because they eat the other bugs. So if you see a spider, pick him up and put him out of the way when you're vacuuming.”

  “Is that tap dripping?” Nora's mother asked. “I can see something behind you, dripping. We'd better come down next weekend and make sure everything's safe. Show us the shower equipment.”

  “It's fine,” Nora said. The previous tenant had installed safety bars, and Nora had picked up a shower chair from a medical supply store. It wasn't pretty, or as deluxe as what she had at her parents' home, but it would do.

  “Leave the TV or radio on when you go out,” Nora's father said.

  “Dad, I've got nothing in here to steal. Besides, I think burglars know about the old leave-the-radio-on trick.”

  After another twenty minutes of home security tips, including leaving a large pair of men's boots outside the door, Nora signed off, pulled the blackout drapes, and prepared herself to wake up in six hours, at four in the morning.

  At midnight, she was still awake, and thinking about Aaron Edward.

  In elementary school, he'd been two grades ahead of her, and one of the good ones. While the boys her age teased her and called her Nosy Nora, leading to scuffles, Aaron Edward, called Eddie in those days, would split the fights up, or take her side. Once, he held a boy down so she could spit on his face. Thinking back, this was not the best solution to dealing with bullies, but it certainly was fast and effective.

  They didn't socialize much, because at that age the boys and girls stuck with their own groups, but by the summer she was fourteen and he was sixteen, and they found themselves at the same summer camp, everything had changed.

  The girls in Nora's cabin were all aflutter over Eddie, who carried at minimum five packs of gum so he always had an excuse to talk to the girls, and they to him. The group of girls Nora shared a cabin with took turns at night wearing a men's black jean jacket from the Lost'n'Found, and talking in a deep voice, pretending to be Eddie. Then, the girls would kiss while everyone watched.

  None of them thought there was anything queer about it, though when Nora thought back over those nights, the girl who found the black jacket had been the one to come up with the idea, and she did take more than her fair share of turns playing the boy. And she hadn't been a bad kisser at all.

  Nora fluffed her pillow, rolled over, and wondered what that girl—her name was Jennifer, but she preferred to be called simply J—was up to.

  At one o'clock, with only three hours of potential sleep, Nora regretted not having taken a sleeping pill earlier, but it was too late now, as the ones she had lasted eight hours. She got up, grabbed her crutches, and went to the kitchen to make a warm cup of milk.

  A few hours later, when the alarm clock went off with its buzzing sound, the room was strangely bright. Danger? No, it was her new glowing alarm clock, and not, as she had imagined for a moment, that aliens had come to take her away.


  *

  Nora got dressed slowly, choosing a pair of slim-fitting brown slacks and a bright pink shirt. Her beaded necklace looked great with the outfit, and really dialed it up from casual to business, but the necklace was too noisy to wear on air. The beads would touch the desk when she leaned forward, or she'd forget, and play with them absent-mindedly. She opted instead for a cameo pendant, a good luck charm from Tianne, who promised she'd be listening to Stevey and Nora's first show from her home miles away, via the station's internet feed.

  “But it's so early,” Nora had said to her friend.

  “Did you not notice I have a baby?” Tianne replied, and they'd shared their last laugh together before Nora got in her car and left Eugene.

  And here she was, in Portland, at her new job.

  Nora put on some tinted moisturizer, pleased to note how the tip of her nose was softening as the swelling dissipated. It had been a little stiff, and she'd worried that a lack of movement would give away her surgery, but now it moved. It was not as flexible as before, but then again, it also wasn't enormous. Her pale green-blue eyes looked pretty. Even her intensely curly hair didn't seem like such bad luck; some women paid a lot of money to get a spiral perm, and Nora had one for free.

  The station was in the same part of town, and only ten blocks away, but it was still dark out, so Nora drove her car. The area seemed safe enough to her during the day, but she was small, and her father would have insisted she choose safety over exercise.

  She passed two billboards on the way to the station: one with a whole group from the new station, and one with just her and Stevey, holding rubber duckies and covered in suds, as though they might be in a bath tub together. The picture had been taken just three days earlier, and Nora thought if she'd been a regular commuter looking up at that billboard, she would have turned the dial for Stevey. His biceps were visible, and he had a tattoo on one. It was an old-fashioned Mom tattoo that would test well with listeners, who didn't need to know it had been applied to the photograph by the graphic designer.

  Stevey was an attractive man, and with his unclear genetic heritage, he could belong to any number of groups, from Latino to mixed Asian. Next to him, Nora looked very white. She made a mental note to wear more makeup to the next photo shoot so she didn't wash out. As she was driving past the billboard, she remembered to check out her nose on the billboard. It looked great, in the sense that it didn't stand out as anything but a normal nose.

  *

  The studio was, like Nora's loft apartment, in an old industrial building that had been converted from factory use. The sun wasn't up yet, and wouldn't be until half past five a.m., but the interior was cheerful, as the bricks on the interior had all been painted a shiny, bright white, and the new, light-toned hardwood floors gleamed. The owners had brought in a feng shui consultant, resulting in a greenhouse worth of potted plants placed throughout, as well as red-toned area rugs, and desk dividers made not of standard upholstered panels, but reclaimed stained-glass window panels and paint-flecked antique doors. It was unlike any radio station Nora had ever been to, and made her former workplace look like the DMV by comparison. She hoped her first pay check wouldn't bounce.

  She found Stevey at his desk, which was across from hers, and gave him a hug. Their morning show producer brought over a chair and a plate of cinnamon buns, and they sat down to discuss strategy. Nora was used to having more creative control over her segment, close to absolute control, but the morning drive was big money, and thus required more planning. The combination of lack of sleep and first-broadcast pressure pulled her stomach in on itself, and she had to force herself to get down even half a cinnamon bun.

  The sun came up, and they got settled in the studio, which had an exterior window, recently upgraded to be triple paned.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Stevey said as he settled in.

  “Sounds ominous.”

  Their producer, a fast-talking redhead named Stacy, ran them through the equipment again, and they recorded some sweepers that would run between commercials and music, allowing the DJs to take washroom breaks.

  As she leaned back from the microphone, Nora said to Stevey, “Every time feels like the first time. You've got a good decade of experience on me, do you ever stop feeling nervous?”

  “Nope, and I hope I never do. Little bit of nerves gives you some edge, some fire.” He gave her a wink, and they began.

  The first hour of the morning broadcast went well—almost too well. Mistakes were an expected part of the first-day fun, and listeners would be disappointed by a lack of shenanigans. Stevey kept hinting, on air, that he had something up his sleeve for Nora.

  During the second hour, Nora and Stevey tried a new segment called What am I Eating? Nora got the idea from Tianne and the blind taste test of the puddings. Stevey proved himself quite the gourmet when he accurately identified cubes of tofu, grape Jell-O, and frozen pineapple chunks. “I eat these all the time, instead of ice cream,” he said.

  Nora didn't guess any of hers correctly, though Stacy, their producer, got a good laugh out of her reaction to the tapioca—spitting it back out while squealing.

  In the third hour, Stevey brought in his special surprise guest, a broad-shouldered, tanned woman with short hair and piercings up and down both ears. The woman, who worked in the accounting department at the studio, introduced herself as J, just J, and Nora suddenly realized where she recognized her from, but it was too late.

  Stevely delightedly interviewed J, getting her to talk about summer camp and kissing girls, with one of them being Nora. He kept playing the same stinger after his jokes, a kissing sound followed by a lady's sigh. J made eye contact with Nora the whole time, which Stevey commented on, of course.

  Stevey said, “We're going to play a certain Katy Perry song next, but first, any reaction from you, Nora?”

  The station's population had been steadily increasing over the three-hour show, and now there were fifty people or more gathered around the studio's interior window, watching, plus everyone in their cars and offices listening, Nora knew it was up to her to establish her on-air personality in her new city. She'd been known as “nice” and “friendly” back on her afternoon show. Nora had been safe and reliable, but now she wanted to be more. She wasn't going to play the prude, disgusted by Stevey's antics. She wanted to be as big as those billboards outside.

  “For the record ...” Nora said slowly. “J here has the most gorgeous lips you've ever seen. They're full on the top and bottom, naturally deep pink, and I dare say she could model lipstick. I can't imagine anyone turning down a chance to kiss J.” The music for the song was already started, and over top of it, she said, “For the record, although I've been kissing boys lately, on one hot summer night, I kissed a girl, and I liked it.”

  The chirpy sounds of Katy Perry bubbled up, and once she was sure the microphones were cut, Nora said to Stevey, “I'm going to kill you,” but she did have a smile on her face.

  “All's fair in love and radio,” Stevey said. “It's the theater of the mind.”

  “It's the theater of the bizarre.”

  “That's a good name for our show,” Stevey said, typing something on a laptop.

  Nora turned to J and thanked her for being such a good sport.

  “You should come out with me and my friends some weekend,” J said as she walked to the door.

  Nora thanked her, saying it sounded like fun and she looked forward to learning more about the city.

  After J left, Nora said to Stevey, “How on earth are we going to top that tomorrow?”

  “Therein lies the fun,” he said. During the next live update, they talked further about kissing, and Nora agreed she'd kiss Stevey live, on air, on Friday, just to clear away any of the will-they-or-won't-they tension.

  Stevey's eyes widened, showing extra bits of white around the pupils, signifying fear—Nora knew fear, having seen it on guests who were nervous—but Stevey kept his voice positive while they were live. They agreed
to some terms and conditions, including a set amount in donations from listeners to the charity of Nora's choice.

  *

  Before the week was up, Nora found one potential problem with working the early show, besides thinking aliens were coming for her when the alarm clock lit up. When she left work at the end of her day, the stores were still open. She kept finding new cute boutiques, and they were always having sales she couldn't resist.

  She strolled down one of the shopping streets, wondering how it was that people in Portland were so similar to people in Eugene, and yet, slightly different. Her new city was a tiny bit more multi-cultural, and younger.

  A sidewalk rack of dip-dyed shirts caught her eye, and she reminded herself she was making more money, and it was good to support the local economy of her new home.

  Inside the shop, the sales associate brought some dresses to the change room and insisted she try them on. Nora didn't normally wear dresses, but she slid on the floral-print summery one. The hem fell a little below her knees, and if you didn't look too close, you wouldn't know she wore a prosthetic on the right, thanks to the skillful job the artists had done matching her skin tone. She put her shoes back on and came out to look in the mirror, cursing evil changing rooms that didn't have mirrors inside them.

  “Perfect,” the girl said, looking her up and down, not stopping on the leg.

  “I'll take it,” Nora said. She could always wear opaque nylons, just to be safe.

  When she got home, Nora didn't have a place to hang the dress. Her closet was divided into two bars, one over top of the other, for shirts and pants on hangers. There was nowhere long enough for a dress.

  She laughed and lay back on her bed, draping the dress over herself, and promptly fell asleep.

  *

  On Friday, Stevey kissed Nora while one of the interns counted down from ten seconds, which they had determined was the optimal time for a first kiss.