17

Gia found herself thinking of Jack and resented it. She was sitting across a tiny dinner table from Carl, a handsome, urbane, witty, intelligent man who professed to be quite taken with her. They were in an expensive little restaurant below street level on the Upper East Side. The decor was spare and clean, the wine white, dry, cold, the cuisine nouvelle. Jack should have been miles from her thoughts, and yet he was here, slouched across the table between them.

She kept remembering the sound of his voice on the answerphone this morning… “Pinocchio Productions. I’m out at the moment”… triggering other memories further in the past…

Like the time she had asked him why his answerphone always started off with “Pinocchio Productions” when there was no such company. Sure there is, he had said, jumping up and spinning around. Look: no strings. She hadn’t understood all the implications at the time.

And then to learn that among the “neat stuff” he had been picking up in second-hand stores was a whole collection of Vernon Grant art. She found out about that the day he gave Vicky a copy of Flibbity Gibbit. Gia had become familiar with Grant’s commercial work during her art school days—he was the creator of Kellogg’s Snap, Crackle, and Pop—and she had even swiped from him now and again when an assignment called for something elfin. She felt she had found a truly kindred spirit upon discovering that Jack was a fan of Vernon Grant. And Vicky… Vicky treasured Flibbity Gibbit and had made “Wowie-kee-flowie!” her favorite expression.

She straightened herself in her chair. Out, damned Jack! Out, I say! She had to start answering Carl in something more than monosyllables.

She told him her idea about changing the thrust of the Burger-Meister placemats from services to desserts. He was effusive in his praise, saying she should be a copywriter as well as an artist. That launched him onto the subject of the new campaign for his biggest client, Wee Folk children’s clothes. There was work in it for Gia and perhaps even a modeling gig for Vicky.

Poor Carl… he had tried so hard to hit it off with Vicky tonight. As usual, he had failed miserably. Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn the volume up and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound like they’re reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they’re saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.

But Vicky hadn’t been turned off this afternoon. Jack knew how to talk to her. When he spoke it was to Vicky and to no one else. There was instant rapport between those two. Perhaps because there was a lot of little boy in Jack, a part of him that had never grown up. But if Jack was a little boy, he was a dangerous little boy. He—Why did he keep creeping back into her thoughts? Jack is the past. Carl is the future. Concentrate on Carl!

She drained her wine and stared at Carl. Good old Carl. Gia held her glass out for more wine. She wanted lots of wine tonight.