Bad Guys Read Free Page B

item there.
    Sarah was coming into the kitchen as I returned, and Paul was bringing her up to speed. “Angie has a stalker.”
    Sarah said, “Huh?”
    “The thing is,” Paul said, “I think Angie actually likes him. He’s mysterious.”
    “Fuck you,” Angie said to her brother.
    “Hey,” I said. “Come on.”
    Sarah let out a breath. “You got coffee going?” she asked me. I pointed.
    Paul said, “And Dad’s in training for the Irritable Olympics. Those are our main headlines this morning.”
    “Two days ago,” Angie said, “I run into him at Starbucks. I’m there with my friends, we’re getting ready to go, and he walks in, like he’s my best friend, and he’s Mr. Oh-So-Perfect Gentleman, helping me on with my coat, handing me my purse.”
    “Who are we talking about?” Sarah asked. Good question, I thought. I might have gotten around to it eventually. A trained journalist, that’s me.
    “Trevor Wylie,” she said. The name didn’t register with me immediately. Switching gears, Angie said, “Am I going to be able to get a car tonight?”
    After waiting in line behind Sarah, I poured myself a cup of coffee, added some cream, spooned in two sugars. Sarah already had that morning’s
Metropolitan
in her hand and was scanning the front-page headlines, looking to see whether any of the stories she’d promoted at the newsroom’s budget meeting the night before had made it to the front page.
    “I don’t believe it,” she said. “They didn’t put the dead skateboarder on front. How many sixty-year-old skateboarders are there? He was
sixty
. That’s what makes it news. Assholes.”
    “Hello?” Angie said. “I need a car tonight? Is anyone there?”
    Sarah looked over her paper at me, and I looked at her. Without actually saying anything, we had entered consultation mode. We were asking each other,
Do you need a car? And are we going to let her have a car
?
    “Why do you need a car?” Sarah asked.
    Angie sighed, the I-told-you-this-before sigh, and said, “Remember, I’ve got all these evening lectures, and it’s a lot easier, and safer, coming home if I’ve got the car instead of taking the subway.”
    “Oh yeah,” said Sarah.
    “I mean, you’re the ones who freak out about me taking the subway at night, so if you don’t want me to get raped, you should let me have the car.”
    No pressure there.
    Our kitchen phone rang. “That’ll be him,” Paul said. “Betcha anything. He figures your cell is off or something.”
    “Don’t answer it!” Angie said.
    Paul looked over at our wall-mounted phone so he could read the call display. How he could see it from where he stood, without binoculars, was beyond me. “Shit, nope. I was wrong.”
    Now that Paul was satisfied this call was not Angie’s stalker, he made no moves to actually answer the phone.
    “So who is it?” Sarah snapped.
    “Paper,” Paul said.
    “Could you
get
it?” Sarah said, considering that Paul was two steps away while his mother was on the other side of the kitchen.
    I took a long sip of coffee, let the warmth run down my throat. Caffeine, do your thing.
    Paul grabbed the receiver. “Yeah? Sec.” He handed the phone to his mother—“I told you it was for you,” he said—as she strode across the hardwood kitchen floor, the newspaper scrunched into one hand.
    “I was sure it was going to be him,” Angie said, her body relaxing as though she’d dodged a bullet.
    “Who is this guy again?” I asked her. “Who’s phoning you?”
    “I just told you.”
    “Tell me again. I wasn’t taking notes earlier.”
    “Trevor Wylie.”
    “Isn’t that Paul’s old friend? The one with the zits?”
    “You gotta be kidding me,” Sarah said into the receiver. “I filled in for him last night. He’s still sick?”
    “You’re thinking of Trey Wilson,” Paul said defensively. “He’s the one with a face looked like a pizza. Trevor Wylie’s got a very pretty face, doesn’t he, Angie?”
    “Shut up. He