LITMIR.BIZ

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single. “That enough?”

      “Daddy, it’s a dollar sixty just for lunch. You know that. And dessert is extra.” She shook her head but smiled. “We should just set up an account at the school like all the other kids do.”

      “You don’t need to start living on credit this early.” He took out another two dollars, handed them to her and ruffled her hair. “Here you go, baby. Get an ice-cream sandwich for dessert. I love those things.”

      “Okay! Thanks!” She threw her arms around him and hugged him before clambering down the stairs like a toy that had been wound up in his hands.

      With an ache in her chest, Bonnie watched her go, then watched Dalton sigh, shake his head slightly, and go up the stairs toward Mrs. Neuhouse’s apartment.

      Five minutes later she and Paula Czarny walked down the chipped sidewalk of Tappen Avenue toward the bus that took them to Hoboken, where they took a ferry into Manhattan every morning. It was a balmy fall morning, close to seventy degrees but in the sun it felt warmer. Bonnie was already sweating in her suit.

      “So tell me why you’re wearing this horrible drab color all the time lately, even though it’s hideous and makes you look like you’re seasick,” Paula said.

      “You don’t like it either?”

      “Hate it.” She frowned and looked at Bonnie. “What do you mean ‘either?’”

      Bonnie gave an exasperated groan. “Dalton Price. Couldn’t let me leave today without giving me at least one thing to feel self-conscious about. God, I hate him sometimes.”

      “I think he’s hot.”

      This made Bonnie impatient. “You’ve always had lousy taste in men.”

      Paula shrugged. “At least we’ll never fight over one. So, seriously, about this outfit. And the silk one yesterday. Is this what you’re doing with all the money you get from that fancy ad agency? Buying the most hideous clothes you can find?”

      Bonnie sighed. It wasn’t her first choice in colors either, but she had a mission. She’d bought these clothes with the single purpose of winning over Mark Ford, the new vice president of marketing at her company. He’d started working there four months ago and Bonnie had been…intrigued…ever since.

      He was the kind of guy you saw in cologne commercials, gliding across a sea of blue glass in a big white sailboat, his dark blond hair mussed by the wind, his face kissed golden by the sun. He was a modern Prince Charming whose smile promised a lifetime of happily ever after.

      Bonnie wanted a lifetime of happily ever after.

      “You’re missing the big picture here.” Bonnie stepped gingerly over a pile of what she hoped was only mud. “The reason I’m wearing this color is because Mark Ford likes this color. No, he loves this color. His entire office is painted this color.”

      Paula stopped and gave her friend a look that mingled disbelief and disapproval. “And you want to look like his office. This is your grand scheme to seduce him, to blend into the walls of his workplace.”

      Bonnie shook her head. It did sound stupid, put that way. “Leticia Bancroft says men have a powerful subconscious reaction to color. Wear a color he likes and he’ll be drawn to you like…” She searched for the perfect analogy but came up short. “A magnet. A really strong magnet.”

      They started walking again and Paula stepped squarely in what Bonnie was now fairly certain wasn’t mud, muttered an oath and scraped the stiletto heel of her shoe on the curb before saying, “I don’t think you ought to want a man who loves drab green.” She finished scraping her shoe and they resumed their walk down the hill toward the bus stop. “Sounds like some sort of latent militia thing to me. Like those guys out in the Midwest. Is it the Midwest? Or the Northwest?”

      “He is not the militia type,” Bonnie said, increasing her gait. She didn’t want to miss the bus again. She had a meeting at ten with, among others, Mark, and she did not want to come in late, soaked in sweat from running to Hoboken to catch the ferry to lower Manhattan. “He’s the blond, blue-eyed, captain of the football team type. The weekend house in the Hamptons type.” Definitely not the type to sneak into a closet with another woman at the office Christmas party; probably not the type to pass out on the front sidewalk after a night out with the guys; and absolutely not the type to fixate on buxom young blondes. No, Mark Ford was a grown-up. It was about time Bonnie went out with a grown-up. She would have sighed longingly if she weren’t running. “The marry-me-and-father-my-children type.”

      “Sounds dull.”

      Bonnie looked at her. “It’s not dull. It’s mature. Logical instead of just chemical. Unlike this thing you have for Mister Parker….” Mr. Parker was Paula’s boss. His first name was Seamus, but Paula thought it was “sexier” to call him Mr. Parker. “Or are you trying to tell me that’s love?”

      “No way, baby, that’s lust. Good ol’ lust. Oh, crud, there goes the bus!”

      Bonnie looked up just as the bus rumbled away from the curb at the bottom of Tappen Avenue.

      “Hey!” Paula shouted, pulling her shoes off so she could run faster. “Hey, wait a minute!”

      Bonnie, in more sensible, though olive-green, shoes, pounded down the sidewalk after her.

      Paula shouted an expletive and the bus jerked to a halt and the door shuddered open.

      Bonnie caught a glimpse of an old woman in a scarf looking out the window, and she winced. “Paula, have a little respect.”

      “You’re such a goody two-shoes,” Paula said to her, climbing the steps. “Seven-forty,” she snapped at the driver when she reached him. “This bus isn’t supposed to leave until seven-forty. It is now—” she thrust her wristwatch in front of the driver’s face “—seven thirty-seven. Thanks to you, I’ve probably got runs in my stockings and I’m gonna look hideous when I get to work.”

      “I didn’t tell you to run around widout your shoes on,” the driver said in a thick Jersey accent.

      He couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one, Bonnie thought. He had no idea what he was up against. She’d known Paula since kindergarten and she’d never known her to let go of an argument until some sort of blood was spilled. Hopefully humiliation and an abject apology would suffice.

      Paula drew up her petite frame. “The West Hudson County transit authority, who issues your paychecks by the way, employs you to follow the schedule that they’ve set forth. When you drive away before your appointed pickup time, you are, in fact, breaking your employment contract. Which is grounds for termination.” She narrowed her eyes at the driver. “Which means you’d be sacked. Got it?” She rifled through her large handbag and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “Now what’s your name?”

      “Don Vittoni,” he said miserably.

      She wrote and said, “Okay, listen, Don Vittoni, I’ll let it slide this time, but if you do it again, I’m gonna have to write a letter to your boss. Got it?”

      He nodded.

      “Good.” She smiled and turned to Bonnie, who was now cringing with embarrassment as the entire bus had gone quiet. “Let’s find some seats.”

      Three men scrambled to their feet, vacating their seats.

      “Thank you, gentlemen,” Paula said sweetly, pulling Bonnie down the aisle with her.

      They sat and the bus thundered away from the curb. Paula tapped the face of her watch. “Seven-forty. Right on schedule.”

      “I think poor Don Vittoni nearly wet himself,” Bonnie commented as they rumbled down the rough road toward the city.

      “That’ll teach him. Now, where were we?”

      “When?”

      “Oh, yes, green—”

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