Janice Macdonald - Out Of Control

“It’s just that Dad asked me to ask you.”

Daisy kept her mouth shut. I am going through a difficult time right now, she told herself as Emily walked her to the truck. But adversity tests character.

Still, it wasn’t the perfect frame of mind for meeting her father’s biographer. And she probably shouldn’t have worn a shirt that proclaimed, Doesn’t Play Well With Others.

Deep breaths. She started the ignition. Everyone comes into our lives for a reason, Baba said. Maybe Nicholas Wynne had come into her life to teach her tolerance. His job in the cosmic universe was to be the fly in her serenity. She would be firm, calm and polite. But there would be no biography.

HIS HAIR DAMP from the shower, Nick took a look at his clothes, lined up on hangers and still slightly wrinkled from their transatlantic voyage. Linen this, cotton that. Served him right he supposed for refusing to buy synthetics. He’d got most of the things on vacation in Nice last year and brought them, thinking they looked somewhat Californian. Now, inspecting himself as he left the apartment, he could see that they didn’t. Pity.

Out on the street, he eyed the never-ending flow of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, waited for a lull, then made a dash for it. As he reached the other side, he heard the screech of brakes and a hurled epithet from one of the vehicles. Assuming it had been directed at him, he turned toward the road. As he did, a flurry of movement caught his eye. He looked down to see a small, bedraggled and trembling white dog.

He squatted beside it and felt around for broken bones.

“Idiots like you shouldn’t be allowed to have animals,” a woman called out from the open window of a battered gray truck that had stopped for a red light. “You’re lucky it wasn’t killed.”

The woman’s pale oval face was partially obscured by a lot of long red hair, but he didn’t have to see her expression to know that she was angry. “It isn’t my dog,” he said politely, his hand still on the dog’s back. “But if I locate its owner, I’ll pass along your sentiments.” Bad-tempered shrew.

“You need to keep him on a leash,” the woman yelled.

“You need a leash around your neck,” Nick muttered, and then the light turned green and the truck roared out of sight, long hair trailing like a ribbon through the window. He checked the dog’s neck. No collar. It licked his hand. Now that he’d taken a better look, the dog was probably the ugliest little animal he’d ever seen.

The dog licked Nick’s hand again.

“Don’t get attached,” Nick said.

“LOOK,” DAISY MUTTERED to the waitress, “I’m not here, okay? This guy with an English accent is going to come in and ask for me but I’m not here.”

“Huh?”

“Long story. I nearly killed a dog and I’m too shaken up to talk right now, and I don’t really want to talk to him anyway, so just tell him I’m not here.”

“Is he, like, a boyfriend, or something?”

“God, no. I’ve never even met him—”

“Then how do you—”

“Leah.” She grabbed the waitress by the shoulders. “Puh-lease. I’m not here. What you see is a figment of your imagination.”

Leah, slowly shaking her head, left the kitchen. Daisy turned back to the crème brûlées. Her hands were still trembling from the near miss with the dog, and she was overdue for a showdown with Toby over the money he was spending. She felt too scattered to break the news to Nicholas Wynne that the biography was off. No. Avoidance was the only way out.

As she finished the desserts, she remembered she had to pick up Emmy from school. She peered through the serving window that opened into the dining room and saw a youngish guy sitting alone, his back to her. Could that be him? A bald guy talking to the hostess? Nicholas Wynne? Maybe. Damn. She was stuck in the back of the restaurant with no escape route. Thankfully, Toby wasn’t around—they’d run out of heavy cream and he’d gone down to the corner market for more—or she’d have to deal with him, too. Think, she commanded her brain. Her glance fell on the torch she’d been using. Sacrificing one of the crème brûlées, she scorched it until it began to smoke. Then to speed things along, she lifted it up just under the detector, which obligingly began to screech. For good measure, she yelled “fire” and dropped a pan on the floor. Three of the wait staff ran into the kitchen and in the ensuing commotion she slipped out of the restaurant.

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