Uptown Girl Read Free

wussy. When he and Kate were both exhausted (and – sadly – the flamingo’s leg was punctured), they sat panting and laughing together in the big chair, Kate on top. The door opened.
    â€˜Excuse me?’ Mr McKay asked, but despite his words he wasn’t the type to excuse anything. ‘I thought I heard a ruckus in here.’
    Mr McKay, the principal of Andrew Country Day lower school, was a hypocrite, a social climber,a control freak and a very bad dresser. He also had a knack of using words no one else had used for several decades.
    â€˜A ruckus?’ Elliot asked.
    â€˜We were just testing out a new therapy,’ Kate extemporized. ‘Did it disturb you?’ she asked innocently.
    â€˜Well, it was certainly loud,’ George McKay complained.
    â€˜From the little I know of it, AAT – Airborne Animal Therapy – can frequently be noisy,’ Elliot said, po-faced, ‘although it’s having significant measurable success in schools for the gifted where it’s being pioneered. Of course,’ he added, ‘it might not be right for this setting.’ He nodded at Kate. ‘I’m not the expert,’ he said as if he were deferring to Kate’s professional judgment. She smothered a laugh with a cough.
    â€˜We’ll put this off until after three o’clock, Mr McKay,’ she promised.
    â€˜All right then,’ he said primly. He left as suddenly as he had arrived, shutting the door with a firm but controlled click. Kate and Elliot looked at one another, waited for a count of ten, then burst into giggles that they had to stifle.
    â€˜AAT?’ Kate gurgled.
    â€˜Hey, straight men love acronyms. Think of the army. He’ll be on the internet in less than ten minutes searching for Airborne Animal Therapy,’ Elliot predicted. He stood up and began collecting the stuffed animals. Kate got up to help him. Theirony of the situation was that Elliot had helped Kate get hired and since then George McKay had told several teachers that he suspected them of having an affair. Ridiculous as that idea was, the sight of the two of them in the chair was not one to instill confidence in George McKay, who had frequently announced at teachers’ meetings that he ‘discouraged fraternizing among professional educational co-workers’.
    When Kate and her ‘professional educational co-worker’ finished laughing she smoothed her skirt and put her hair back up, this time with a barrette she found in her drawer. Elliot was standing still, looking down at the chair. He heaved a dramatic sigh.
    â€˜Oh shit!’ he told her. ‘You crushed my banana.’ He held up the mangled fruit from his lunch bag which had slipped under them during the battle.
    Kate turned, struck the pose of a femme fatale and rasped, ‘How times have changed. You used to like it when I did that.’
    Elliot laughed. ‘I’ll leave all banana handling to you and Michael.’
    Kate’s new boyfriend, Dr Michael Atwood, was going with her to dinner at Elliot’s place. Kate felt a little flurry in her stomach at the thought. She hoped they’d like each other.
    â€˜If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late tonight,’ Kate told him.
    â€˜Okay, okay.’
    She picked up her purse to prepare for leaving.
    â€˜So you like your work so far,’ Elliot said. Kate nodded. She loved it. ‘But even though I helped you get the job, you’re still not going to let me know where you’re going.’
    Kate didn’t bother to answer. Elliot was what people in Brooklyn called ‘a noodge’.

2
    In all the years Kate had known Elliot – over ten now – he’d always managed to cheer her up when she was sad and support her in her successes. Now, as they walked down the corridor to his classroom, she glanced at him affectionately. The stretched-out orange T-shirt, the ugly green over-shirt decorated with mustard, the