A Lady Under Siege(43)

“Asses have asses!” Betsy giggled. “Damn it!” She muffed a shot. “Ten nine.”

“Watch your language,” Derek teased her.

“Which one, asses or damn it?”

“Both.”

“You say them all the time!”

“I’m allowed. When you stop living with your mother, you’re allowed.”

“She didn’t hear me.”

“I think she did. Check the window.”

Betsy looked up to see Meghan looking down at them.

“Mom! Come out and play.”

She shook her head.

“Come and play! It’s called blind badminton, because of the fence!”

Meghan opened the window wide enough to speak through. “Sorry honey, I’ve got so much work to do.”

“You always say that.”

“I’ll be down in a bit.”

“Your bits take hours.”

“Smoke break,” Derek announced.

“It won’t be hours,” Meghan said.

“Come now or forget it,” Betsy warned her.

“I’m closing the window,” Meghan answered. She did, and disappeared inside.

Derek sat on top of his picnic table and lit a cigarette. On her side of the fence Betsy entertained herself by batting the birdie straight up into the air, again and again, counting each successful swat out loud, to see how long she could keep it aloft. At eleven she stopped—“I think a bat flew by!” she shrieked excitedly.

“Too early for that,” Derek said. “Unless he’s messed up. How’s your mother doing, by the way?”

“She’s getting better, I’d say.”

“I don’t know about that,” Derek replied. “Had quite a lot to say to me at seven thirty this morning, and none of it made the slightest bit of sense. Which is fine, I suppose.” He sang a few lines from a pop song: “Wish I knew what she was thinking, Wish I knew if she was sane, Wish I knew if it was only a game. Do you know it?”

“Never heard of it,” Betsy said.

“What do they teach you kids in school? Are the seminal bands of the 1980s so easily forgotten? The Jones of Ark?” He sang another tune: “A human being, is only really being, when he is being, loved.”

“But why does everyone need to be loved?” Betsy asked. “It’s very unfair if it’s not their fault no one loves them. Why do the people in songs always go all crazy when they can’t have love?”

“Generally speaking, if pop songs are to be believed, love and the lack of it are the primary cause of madness, suicide, and crying all night,” Derek replied.

“Someone’s at your door,” Betsy said.

“What?”

“Your doorbell rang. The front one.”

“You heard it from here? I’m getting old.” Derek got up and headed inside through his open back door. “Should have kept my head out of the speakers at those long-ago rock shows.”

“Shouldn’t smoke,” Betsy yelled after him.

“I don’t smoke with my ears.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER Betsy was playing with a stray golf ball she’d found, rolling it around on her badminton racquet, when Derek reappeared with a friend in tow, exclaiming, “Come meet my new friend Betsy! You’ll like her, she’s ten.”

Betsy climbed up to her deck to get a look at them. Derek spotted her there. “Betsy, look who’s here. A sight for sore taste buds, my old buddy Ken.” Ken nodded to her. He had his long hair tied back in a ponytail, wore a black tee shirt that said Stay Heavy, and was doing arm curls like a weight lifter with a twelve-pack of beer in each hand. “Gimme one of those, I’ll lighten the load,” Derek demanded. “Two dozen beers here—if I’m quick enough, I’ll get eighteen to your six.”

“I have no interest in alcoholic beverages,” Betsy said haughtily. “To me they taste awful.”

“Youth is wasted on the young, so the old get wasted,” Derek said.

“Why do you like it?” Betsy asked.

“You’re too young to understand, unless that homeroom teacher of yours is a drunkard too.”

“No, only a bisexual. But he told us once he had a love-hate relationship with cocaine.”

“Me too, still do,” said Ken. “Love it when I have it, hate it when I run out.”