Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(65)

“I said stop it!” Her voice rose in pitch until it was shrill. She couldn't deal with the Fang-Toothed Phantom now— not with the Sassy Girl and the vice-presidency and her headache all plaguing her. Despite the passing years, her brother never changed. He was the same old Gerry—larger than life, just as outrageous as ever. But she wasn't nearly as charmed.

He lurched toward her, his face comically distorted, eyes rolling, playing the game he'd teased her with for as long as she could remember. “The Fang-Toothed Phantom lives off the flesh of young virgins.” He leered.

“Gerry!”

“Succulent young virgins!”

“Stop it!”

“Juicy young virgins!”

Despite her irritation, she giggled. “Gerry, don't!” She backed away toward the hallway, not taking her eyes off him as he advanced inexorably toward her. With an inhuman shriek he made his lunge. She screamed as he caught her up into his arms and began spinning her in a circle. Ma! she wanted to shout. Ma, Gerry's teasing me! In a sudden rush of nostalgia, she wanted to call out for protection to the woman who now turned her face away whenever her older child's name was mentioned.

Gerry sank his teeth into her shoulder and bit her just hard enough so that she would squeal again, but not hard enough to hurt her. Then he stiffened. “What's this?” he cried in outrage. “This is awful stuff. This isn't a virgin's flesh.” He took her over to the sofa and dumped her unceremoniously. “Shit. Now I'm going to have to settle for pizza.”

She loved him and she hated him, and she wanted to hug him so much that she jumped up off the sofa and gave him a sucker punch right in the arm.

“Ow! Hey, nonviolence, sis.”

“Nonviolence, my ass! What the hell is wrong with you, barging in here like this? You're so damned irresponsible. When are you going to grow up?”

He didn't say anything; he just stood there looking at her. The fragile good humor between them faded. His Rasputin eyes took in her expensive dress and the stylish pumps that had fallen to the floor. Pulling out a cigarette, he lit it, still watching her. He had always had the ability to make her feel inadequate, personally responsible for the sins of the world, but she refused to squirm at the disapproval that gradually came over his expression as he surveyed the material artifacts of her world. “I mean it, Gerry,” she went on. “I want you out of here.”

“The old man must finally be proud of you,” he said tonelessly. “His little Naomi has turned into a fine capitalist pig, just like all the rest.”

“Don't start on me.”

“You never told me how he reacted when you married that Jap.” He gave a bark of cynical laughter. “Only my sister Naomi could marry a Jap named Tony. God, what a country.”

“Tony's mother is American. And he's one of the leading biochemists in the country. His work has been published in every important—” She broke off, realizing she was defending a man she no longer even liked. This was exactly the sort of thing Gerry did to her.

Slowly she turned back to face him, taking some time to study his expression more closely. The weariness she thought she had glimpsed earlier seemed once again to have settled over him, and she had to remind herself it was merely another act. “You're in trouble again, aren't you?”

Gerry shrugged.

He really did look tired, she thought, and she was still her mother's daughter. “Come on out to the kitchen. Let me get you something to eat.” Even with Cossacks trying to break down the door of the cottage, the women in her family would make everyone sit down to a five-course dinner.

While Gerry smoked, she fixed him a roast beef sandwich, adding an extra slice of Swiss cheese, just the way he liked it, and putting out a dish of the figs she had bought for herself. She set the food in front of him and then poured herself a glass of wine, watching surreptitiously as he ate. She could tell he was hungry, just as she could tell that he didn't want her to see exactly how hungry, and she wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten a decent meal. Women used to stand in line for the honor of feeding Gerry Jaffe. She imagined they still did, since her brother continued to have more than his fair share of sex appeal. It used to enrage her to see how casually he treated the women who fell in love with him.

She made him another sandwich, which he demolished as efficiently as he'd eaten the first one. Settling down on the stool next to him, she felt an illogical stab of pride. Her brother had been the best of them all, with Abbie Hoffman's sense of the comic, Tom Hayden's discipline, and Stokely Carmichael's fiery tongue. But now Gerry was a dinosaur, a sixties radical transplanted into the Age of Me First. He attacked nuclear missile silos with a ball-peen hammer and shouted power to the people whose hearing had been blocked by the headsets of their Sony Walkmans.

“How much do you pay for this place?” Gerry asked as he crumpled his napkin and got up to walk over to the refrigerator.

“None of your business.” She absolutely refused to listen to his lecture on the number of starving children she could feed on her monthly rent.

He pulled out a carton of milk and took a glass from the cupboard. “How's Ma?” His question was casual, but she wasn't fooled.

“She's having a little trouble with arthritis, but other than that, she's okay.” Gerry rinsed out the glass and set it in the top rack of her dishwasher. He had always been neater than she was. “Dad's good, too,” she said, suddenly unable to tolerate the idea of making him ask. “You know he retired last summer.”