Mooshie relaxed. What a ham, Zelda smiled.
“You remember my name?”
“Dara Dinton.” The ‘bot turned away bashfully. “I got one of your tunes on the rad. Copied it this morning. The Beach Boys cover.”
“Cover?” Mooshie said in mock indignation. “You saying my version of I Get Around is some shit imitation?”
“No, no, no.” It took both hands off the wheel; they nearly grazed a bus. “You’re much better.”
“Damn straight.” Mooshie slid away the glass and stuck her head onto the robot’s shoulder. “If you got it, play it.”
They listened to Mooshie’s version four times, the last with her singing along, before pulling up before the two-story house with the wide front yard in Pelham Parkway. The ‘bot’s black eyebrows raised knowingly as he looked between the women, trying to figure out which one was pregnant. Lopez slipped two tickets into its pocket.
“This is for Thursday’s show. Bring a friend.”
The A21 tapped the tickets as if they were a real face. “Thank you, Miss Dinton. I’d be honored.”
“Just applaud, scream and act delirious.”
“How can I not?”
She kissed it on the forehead; the A21 pulsed a blush.
Mooshie led Zelda past the discarded red bicycles on the front walkway, ducking under Happy Birthday Danielle balloons hanging from the porch, and into the narrow hallway. A gray-haired woman greeted them with a friendly smile, wiping her hands on the checkered apron.
“I’ve been baking cookies. Chocolate chip, which I hope you like. One of Grandma’s recipes. Forgive the mess.” She shrugged helplessly at the toys and balls and plates all over the living room. She motioned them onto the comfortable plaid couch where they waited quietly. Children squealed somewhere in the back.
“It’s play time. I give them an hour to run wild.” The woman suddenly noticed Mooshie, asking pleasantly, “Who are you?”
“Dara Dinton. Her friend.”
“Friends are good, too.”
Zelda wondered how the woman could talk and never stop smiling. She hated her.
“And will you be accompanying Zelda every week?”
Mooshie nodded slowly.
“Well then, we can all have a most pleasant relationship. Zelda, how do you feel?”
“Scared.”
“Parenthood is daunting. The most important job we will ever have. For no matter how long.”
“Seven and a half months,” Zelda said.
“But you’re still a mother and always will be. Have you told your employer?”
Zelda shook her head. “Not yet. It’s a busy time of year.”
“You’re afraid?”
“I just got the job and I’m doing well…”
The woman’s smile deepened, somehow. “They can’t take that from you. If they discriminate in any way, any way, Zelda, their business will close and they will go elsewhere.”
Elsewhere hung ominously.
“They’re there to support you. Nurture you, along with your friends. As we will.”
“So what happens here?” Mooshie jumped in impatiently.
“Zelda learns to be a mother and how to love her baby.”
“The baby you’re taking.”
“Moosh…”
“You think your friend is being punished.” The woman had heard this one many times. “You, Zelda, feel like a bad girl.”
“The worst.”
“You made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. But you can’t allow that to seep into your child and have it come out angry. Is it a boy or a girl?”
Zelda shrugged and the woman’s smile faded slightly.
“You didn’t ask?”
“I don’t want to know,” Zelda shouted. “I just want this to be over.”
The woman sat on the coffee table, tucking a couch cushion under her rear. “This is all natural, sweetheart. The anger, pain. Self-loathing. Why didn’t I tell him to withdraw before climaxing? Why am I a slut? Where is my sense of responsibility?”
“Which this’ll change?” Mooshie asked sullenly.
“Always,” the woman said with arch confidence. “As you will learn over the next seven months and sixteen days, every single American child is precious because this is what we face.”
The room went dark and a screen as wide as the wall edged out. Endless streams of half-naked dirty Allah children kicked soccer balls back and forth until the balls became rifles, firing as the crescent moon and star fluttered over Moscow and Berlin and Paris and London and Rome.
Zelda stared at the children, smiling, laughing, playing. She hated them, too.
The lights came back on and the screen retreated into the wall.
“It didn’t have to be that way,” Mooshie said stonily.
“Pardon?” The woman finally lost her smile.
Louder, “They could’ve been beaten.”
The woman was flustered. “That isn’t the point.”
Zelda didn’t like the way the woman studied Mooshie. Two brats with pigtails burst into the room and froze, clutching their dolls safely away from Zelda, who was obviously planning on burning all their toys.
“Darlings, meet Zelda Jones,” the woman said, relieved not to deal with Mooshie. “She’s going to be your Mommy.” The woman considered Zelda with a resigned sigh. “First, we’ll start with your diet. You have a puffy face, obviously too much sugar. That’s now banned from your Lifecard.”
“You’re not taking away my donuts,” Zelda snarled, scowling at the girls as if they’d be a grudging second choice dessert; the children hid behind a chair.
The woman laughed. “I love your sense of humor.”
Mooshie poked the matron in the thigh. “She ain’t kidding, honey.”
• • • •
ANNETTE’S POUT COULD ruin a sunrise, Puppy thought as she stomped into their last ever Couples meeting. Except today, the best game he’d pitched since he was twenty-one. Seven innings, only one run, Ty gambling on a diving catch which skipped past to the wall, four hits, two walks and eight strikeouts. Curve, slider, fastball, change, everything clicked. Fans barked themselves hoarse. Eighteen thousand and thirty-two of them, Frecklie had announced proudly.
Even the Merry Owners were happy, airily dismissing the plumbing bills to re-open bathrooms as part of doing business, though they still didn’t see why there had to be toilet paper in every stall.
Eighteen thousand and thirty two. And they all came to see him pitch. The hell that it sounded arrogant, selfish, egomaniacal, un-Family like, counter to Grandma’s teachings; who cared?
He was a star. Fans barked out a bus window on his way over here. Hazel had spent half an hour interviewing him for the Late Sports Show. He just got two sacks of mail from as far
