He gave me a small squeeze. “You’re going to be killer when you get the training wheels off..."

Part 3 - Hollywood

Chapter 16 - Spuma

I glared at him. “Are you telling me you knew all the time?”

“Well, not all the time,” he admitted. “But I kinda sorta figured it out. But I thought your name used to be Dannie.” He made a motion with his hand. “Which could be a boy or a girl’s name.”

“It was Davey. Is Davey….” I trailed off.

“How long have you been living as Kissy?” he asked. “You’re pretty good at… that’s going to sound weird.”

“What’s going to sound weird?” I asked.

“Saying you’re pretty good at being a girl.” He grinned. “You are a girl, just you come across a bit of a tomboy sometimes. Like how you sit, and sometimes how you say something….” He paused. “I think I only noticed because I’ve known you so long?”

“I didn’t know you knew me that well!” Was I pouting? Maybe.

“I’m well known to have an eye for pretty girls. Of course, I noticed you. Even at eight you were so cute.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I was a boy back then. Never even thought about being a girl.”

He snorted. “I wasn’t sure. Sis said you were a boy but I wasn’t sure she wasn’t just fooling with me.”

“Good grief.” I don’t think I rolled my eyes at him. But I might have.

“She told me how your dad threw a fit when he caught you and her playing with makeup. And she painted your nails because you asked her too.”

“What?” Ice went down my back. I didn’t remember this. I looked at my hands with their sophisticated two-tone French nails. But I saw younger, pudgier fingers with nails painted Baby Doll Pink.

Rory commented. “Your freckles really stand out when you do whatever you just did, Babe. Even in this light. Hey, you know, Sis was the one who gave you the nickname Butterscotch because of the color of your freckles.” He laughed. “Still true. I think they’re cute, but some girls don’t like having ‘em.”

He stopped talking and peered at me in the candlelight and the light of the sun setting. There were dim bulbs at the waiter stations, too, but their light didn’t reach our table. “Are you okay, Babe?” he asked.

I shook my head but said, “I’m all right. What time is it?”

He shrugged. “About eight I think? It ain’t dark yet.”

I took as deep a breath as I could and said, “In answer to your earlier question, I’ve been Kissy Davis for about… seven hours.”

“Huh.” He looked curiously impressed. “You mean this is your first day going out in public, deliberately dressed as a girl?”

I nodded. I made a face and shrugged. What could I say?

“Wow,” he said. He still had my hands caught in one of his big ones. He gave me a small squeeze. “You’re going to be killer when you get the training wheels off, Babe.”

I shook my head. “I—I'm—I’m not sure.”

“Not sure? Not sure you’re going to stay a girl?”

I nodded miserably.

“You’re just trying it out?”

“Yeah. This girl I met…. She’s a lesbian….”

“And she wanted to see how you’d look as her favorite meal?”

I winced. “Don’t be crude, Rory.” It was funny, though, and I had to suppress a small smile.

“I’m a guy. We’re crude, sometimes. Not like you refined and sweet ladies.” I could see his grin.

“Now you’re teasing me.” I pulled my hands away and he let me.

“Sure, but I hope I’m not being mean about it. You’re easy to tease and you blush so pretty.”

“Damnit, Rory. Are you trying to make this hard?”

“Babe,” he said sounding serious. “That’s my line, isn’t it?”

My purse buzzed against the back of the chair where I had hung it, just in time. I must be getting a text. For a distraction from Rory’s teasing, I decided to look. “Might be Mom,” I told him as I retrieved my phone.

It was Marty from my gaming group. I kept my answers short.

Dude you going to make it at all tonight
Proly not
You wont believe who showed up to play
Who
Armand the man he’s home on break
Cool
He asked about you
Ok
We told him you had a date
Ok
Did we lie
Am on date now, quit texting
Dude

I turned off Skype and put the phone away. If Mom texted me, she’d use SMS through the phone circuits.

Rory had been watching me. “You even text like a girl,” he said.

“How’s that?” How does a girl text different from a boy?

“With your thumbs, quick as lightning.”

“That’s the way everybody does it!”

“Not me, my thumbs are too big. I have to use my pinkie.” He held up his little finger and made a face like Dr. Evil.

I laughed at him. It was so unexpected and he had Myers’ expression down perfect.

He grinned, asking, “Was that your mom?”

I shook my head. “No. Nerd patrol. They miss me.” I sighed. “Marty said Armand showed up.”

“Fucking Armand,” said Rory fondly.

“Hey,” I protested. Armand had been very nice to me in school.

“Armand had a thing for you, too, you know?”

“I—what?—a thing? What kind of thing and what do you mean, too?” Did I go through twelve years of school with blinders on?

“He told me about you in the—what did you call it?—nerd patrol? Said you were the only girl who showed up.”

My face may have lit up the whole rooftop, I know a couple other diners looked our direction. “He thought I was a girl?”

“You are a girl—he noticed.”

I shook my head.

“I couldn’t talk him out of it. He said you were a girl pretending to be a boy and you had the whole school fooled. Except him.”

“Then why—why did he think—I don’t understand?”

“When he called you by some actress’s name?” I nodded. “He was probably trying to give you a compliment. Guy is hopeless at social shit. Not soo-a-bee like me.”

I didn’t get the joke, at first, when he butchered the Spanish word for smooth. When I did get it, I snorted, again to keep from giggling.

I rubbed my arms, I could feel the air changing from offshore to onshore flow, it would be a cool night with wind from the ocean penetrating miles inland. “Can we go?” I asked.

“Sure, Babe,” he said, standing and coming around the table to help me with my chair.

“Where’s my hat?” I asked.

“You left it in the truck,” Rory answered.

Domenick appeared with a small paper bag. “Uncle Jake’s treat tonight, kids,” he said. “And Mama sent two slices of cheesecake and two bottles of spuma in cold sleeves.” He presented the bag to Rory.

“Thanks,” said my date. “And thank Uncle Jake and your mama for me.”

Lou came over to say goodbye and warn me. “Don’t trust this one. He’s a criminal.” But he and Rory traded fist bumps again.

Did they like each other or not? I realized I never had really understood boys.

Rory put his free arm around me, the one not holding the bag. “You’ve got goosebumps,” he commented.

I wasn’t sure if they were from him holding me or from the onshore breeze.

“Get her off the roof, man,” Lou told him.

We rode down alone in the tiny elevator, Rory’s arm around me again. “What’s spuma?” I asked.

“Fizzy lemonade,” he said. “Well, the word means foam, actually.”

In Spanish, foam is espuma. Could you turn such Spanish words to Italian by leaving off the ‘e’? Spume means foam in English, too.

Rory’s arm stayed around me as we walked to the truck, and it helped with the coolness of the wind. He boosted me into the front seat of the truck on the driver’s side and I had to clamber over the console to my seat. I really needed the help up because it was a huge truck with a heavy door and I was tired.

He climbed in behind me and passed me the goodie bag which I put on the floor behind the console. My hat lay on the back seat, I noticed.

“Hey, Babe, wanna drive in the hills?” he asked as he started the truck up.

I just looked at him. “This is my first date with a boy and you want to take me up on some hillside to neck?” My heart did not add an extra beat when he made the suggestion. No, it didn’t, I swear.

“That was the thought,” he admitted.

“Can you just take me home? You can come in and we can eat cheesecake and drink lemonade.”

“Yeah? Okay, Babe, that sounds good.” He made a couple of turns and we ended up on Vine heading north. When we crossed Hollywood, alarm bells went off.

“You didn’t turn,” I accused.

“Ah,” he said. “If we go straight to your place, we're not going to want to eat cheesecake right away, and—uh—I can’t see us—uh—wrestling on the sofa while your mom might come in at any moment, so I thought we’d just take a little drive first. Just a drive.”

“We’re not gonna wrestle,” I said firmly. No extra beats, no, sir.

“Sure, Babe,” he said. “First date, I’m lucky if I get a kiss at the door, right?” He grinned at me.

“You’re a doof,” I said.

“Is that good?”

I put out a hand and wobbled it. “You’re on the bubble.”

“Hah,” he said.

So we drove up into the hills for half an hour or so. We stopped once at an overlook where we could see the Hollywood sign reflected in the lake. Reservoir, really. Honest lakes are rare in Southern California.

We didn’t do any necking. For one thing, the big console sat between us in the front seat. “We could climb in the back,” Rory offered.

But I said, “No,” and he didn’t push it. He was actually making me feel—I wanted to say good about myself with all his attention—but it was more complicated than that. Like I wanted him to say all the things he would say to a real girl but still it scared me.

We finally came down out of the hills and reconnected with Hollywood. We’d seen a lot of beautiful homes and they made me think of Marjorie, though I knew she lived somewhere a mile or so east, nearer the Griffith Observatory.

What a day, I thought.

I directed Rory to turn onto New Hampshire and pointed out our apartment before I noticed. Mom’s car was in the carport.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“What?” Rory asked as he turned into the driveway.

“Just make a turn and get us out of here,” I said.

“O-okay,” he said, making a K-turn as if that were what he intended all along. “What’s wrong?”

“Mom’s home,” I said.

“Want me to let you out a block away?” he asked. “You could walk in like nothing was wrong and like I ain’t even been here.”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t know about Kissy.”

“Oh, ho,” he said. He went on down to Vermont and turned south. “When are you going to tell her?” he asked.