Frenzy

her as a release for his bottled-up anger. And the harsh abrasiveness of this confrontation slammed the door on her once and for all.

'How you could do something like this to me when you know this sort of crap is the last thing I need right now and ...' She only heard a blur of words. But wasn't that just like her father? The last thing HE needed. Never mind what anybody else needed. He could go to hell for all she cared.

She'd tried so hard to give him extra love when Mom had left. The little extras. Worked so hard to be home for him. Clean up after him. Feed him nourishing meals. Do all the things her mother had done around the house. She tried to talk to him, and he didn't want any part of it. When she was solicitous and sympathetic, he'd responded by pulling himself inside the shell of a shattered ego where she couldn't get at him. Now this.

They rode in silence for another half-hour and each kept their own raging counsel, sitting there unspeaking, seething with anger and frustration and self-pity, fuming with bitterness, and the hacksaw edge of their actions and words severed the last of the bonds between father and daughter.

When they pulled up in front of the house, she was out of the car and the front door was slamming before he's reached for the automatic garage-door opener up on the sun visor. And by the time she heard him come in the house, she'd already run upstairs and put some of her mother's old medicine in the case of birth-control pills and hidden her goodies safely away. Eventually he'd get around to asking for them. Or more likely, he'd open her purse and confiscate them without saying anything.

As soon as she heard him back in his office and she'd double-checked that the door to the office was shut, she quickly dialed the Dawkins number.

Greg's mom answered, 'Hello?'

'Hi. Is Greg there?' she asked quietly.

'Sure, hon. Oh, do you know what your dad wants with Jerry?'

'Huh?'

'That's okay. I thought maybe this was about the other call. Just a second, Greg's on his way.' And she heard him take the phone away from her.

'Yeah.'

'What happened?'

'Came along while I was parked,' he said in that abbreviated way he talked when he wanted her to know somebody was listening. Speaking so softly she couldn't hear all the words.

'What?'

'Said to get out of here or he'd call the cops on me. Underage. Throw me in. Get it?' He was whispering and not making sense.

'But we haven't done anything. I'm still a VIRGIN,' she said, louder than she meant to, the word echoing in her bedroom like a pistol shot.

'Said if I did. Go to jail 'n' that. Going to tell my dad. See I never drive again. He thinks it was Dad's car. Called here and left word with Mom. You gotta stop him.'

'I can't stop him. He's a madman. He hit me on the way home and called me a whore and a slut and all this stuff. Told me I was a stranger from now on and all this junk. And I can never see you again.' She was sobbing again in spite of herself. 'I told that bastard —' She heard the door downstairs. 'Gotta go. I'll call you tonight,' she whispered, and hung up quietly and waited for the footsteps on the carpeted stairway.

She said nothing when he knocked on the partially open door.

'We have to talk this out, Tiff. May I come in? There's no point in you sitting there not talking to me.'

She sat perfectly still. Saying nothing. Looking at nothing. Trying not to show him anything. Let the bastard talk and then get out.

'I'm very sorry I slapped you but you pushed me too far, is all. I've never raised a hand to you in my life, as you well know. But I'm not sure that was the best way to raise a young lady, seeing how things worked out.

'Still. I love you very much, whether you want to accept that right now or not. I hope you'll understand that it was a combination of seeing you about to make a mistake that could ruin your life' — she allowed herself a smirk as he said this —'and the bad timing of it, coming right in the middle of what I think of as a marriage accident. I mean, here we are sitting in the middle of the wreckage of our home life. Mom leaving and all that, and you pull something like this.' He shook his head in disbelief.

'I meant every word I said in the car. You've become a stranger to me. You're willful, self-centered, and this thing now — you've become wild. Dangerously so. And all the money and the luxury and no siblings — it's been a mistake. And we're both going to change.

'I'm going to have to start being a father to you for real. I'm going to start laying down the law, and even though it's for your own good, I know you're not going to like it. I allowed your mother to make the rules before, and she didn't care enough about you to do it, and I was too busy with my work. And you've been allowed to reach your teenage years without any parental controls. It isn't your fault. It's my fault. But all that is over now.'

She took a deep breath, letting it out real slowly to show him how boring he was.

'We're going to start with the telephone. I don't want you to call Greg again. Is that perfectly clear? You just called him a few minutes ago, didn't you? I mean, even after what we just went through, you couldn't stand to not hear his voice, eh? So I can't trust you anymore with telephone privileges.' He walked over to her bedroom phone and took out a large pocketknife.

She turned away while he sliced through the cord. She made her mind an absolute blank.

'I'm sorry I have to treat you this way. But you obviously are unwilling to meet me halfway. I can no longer allow you to have money of your own. You'll be given a small weekly allowance for your school things. I don't want you going out of the house except for . . . '

She had tuned it all completely out. She let herself think about Greg and those eyes and those soft hands and sweet ways, and let her mind daydream about how it would be that first time. It was going to be soon, she promised herself. No matter what she had to do.

'... while I'm at it I'll take the pills and whatever they gave you in the clinic today.'

And she heard him searching for her purse and opening it and going through it and taking things, and she had to fight to keep from laughing out loud.

She had terminal cabin fever by the time the weekend rolled around, and her dad finally left the house for the first time in days. She ran downstairs and phoned Greg's number and held her breath, fingers crossed, praying he'd be home. She heard him pick up the phone and say hello on the second ring.

'Don't ask questions,' she urged him breathlessly. 'If you want to make love to me, hurry over to the house and pick me up. I'll be down by the highway where you turn off, okay?'

'Huh? Oh, oh, yeah. Okay. I'll be right there.'

'Hurry,' she said, hanging up while he was saying, 'Don't worry. I will.' And she dashed back upstairs and put some fresh lip gloss on, which she didn't need, and a little eye shadow, which she almost never wore, and checked her hair, and sprinkled some more perfume on, and made sure the pills were in her purse, and scampered off across Ruffstone Terrace to the highway. One great-looking fourteen-year-old virgin-but-not-for-long.

'Hey,' he shouted through the open window.

'You got here fast.'

'I don't mess around,' he said as she ran to the car and got in.

'You got your dad's car.' She was surprised.

'He's not home. I didn't ask. He and Mom took the wagon.'

'Where do you want to go?' She said it almost absentmindedly.

'Huh?'

'I want to make love to you,' she said, turning in the seat beside him, snuggling as close as she could. 'Now.'

In less than five minutes he was pulling off the road behind a motel-and-restaurant he knew about, and popping open the trunk. He gestured for her to get out. 'Come on,' he said. He'd produced an old army blanket.

'Where'd you get that?'

'We keep it in the trunk. For medical emergencies.' He smiled.

'Is that what we are — a medical emergency?'