Page 25 of Joey

“I was acting in a local play. I have the lead part.”

“What play?” I ask.

“Dingo Dance,” she says.

“Never fucking heard of it,” Wald says.

“No, it’s… my friend. He’s an independent—”

“We don’t really care about that shit,” Wald says, cutting her off. “We’re more interested in what your weekend says about you as a person.”

“Me as a person?” confused Linnea asks. “I thought this was an acting job?”

“It is,” I say. “But we’re looking for a very specific type of person to play this part. A person who sends just the right message. So… what else do you two do? Aside from act and model?”

They both look at each other like I’m speaking a foreign language.

“I do a lot of things,” Linnea, clearly the more aggressive of the two, says. “What sort of things do you want to know?”

“I want to know who you are,” I say. “So tell me that, in words, without talking about your jobs.”

“I know who I am,” the third girl, Brooke, says. “Would you like me to go first so they can have a little think?”

I take that back. I think Brooke might be the most aggressive of the three.

“Sure,” I say, redirecting my attention to Brooke. I have to be honest. She’s a little… pink for my taste. She looks more like an actual Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics sales rep than an actress or a model.

Brooke stands, smooths out her skirt—which makes Huck, Wald, and I all look at her perfectly shaped hips—and then says, “I spent the weekend in the park.” She stops to look at me, her eyes narrowing just a little.

“Doing what?” I ask.

“Frisbee,” she says. “I’m a two-time world champion Frisbee player. Well, I was. When I was a teenager.” She laughs a little. “Boy, that was a lot of travel and work. But now I just play for fun.”

“Who did you play with?” I ask.

“Oh, you know. I go alone to the park and try to get a game going. I’m new in town,” she explains. “So I don’t have many friends yet. But I’m just one of those outgoing people. The kind who makes friends everywhere she goes.”

She stops, and again, she narrows her eyes at me. Like she’s waiting for a reaction.

“Did you make any new friends last weekend?” Huck asks when I say nothing.

“Several acquaintances I’ll probably never talk to again,” she says. “But I did meet a bunch of dogs.”

“Dogs?” Wald asks.

Still, she’s staring at me. Trying to read me, I realize. She’s clocking my reactions.

“I love dogs. And kids.” She smiles. “So on Sunday I started a new game up at the park, only this time I only invited dog owners and kids. It was a blast. So much fun. I’m actually going to adopt a dog as soon as I get settled here.”

Now she’s looking at Huck. Because Huck is grinning at her, then me, then her again. “Good answer,” Huck says to me, nodding his head.

“OK, are you two ready now?” Wald asks the other girls.

But I hold up a hand and direct my gaze to Brooke again. “One sec,” I say. Because I know she’s lying. Every fucking word that just came out of her pink little mouth is a lie. Even that story about her roommate. And I’m going to prove it. “What kind of dogs?”

“Oh, let’s see,” she says, rolling her eyes up like she’s thinking. “There was BoBo, the shepherd mix. He was a fantastic Frisbee player. If I were going to put together an interspecies Frisbee team, I’d pick BoBo first. Then there was Jackal. He’s one of those blue merle Australian shepherds. Pure. His owner told me.” She blushes. “He was cute. I might date him. And then—”

“Who cares?” Wald says. He’s talking to me. He was not keen on this idea of Huck’s at all. He wanted me to pick up a girl in the gym and try for a true connection. But I don’t have time for that shit. And who the hell finds a true connection in a gym? Sometimes I just have to shake my head at Wald because while he does fuck a lot of women, he has no clue about how to date one. Besides, I don’t want a gym girl. I want a sexy mom. And those aren’t easy to find.