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“My son doesn’t have an ex-lover,” she huffs.
She’s never heard of Lexi Caton? Does she not even follow him in the news? If I had a famous son, I’m pretty sure I’d have news alerts set up so I could read every story about him, then call him up and razz him about it.
So, this woman is either a stalker or a reporter, and she’s wasting my time when I don’t have any to spare. I should never have picked up the phone.
“Ding ding ding. Survey says ... you’re wrong. It also says I’m hanging up right now.” I should just hang up without announcing it, but unfortunately my mother raised me to be polite, and the habit still stuck with me.
“Wait. No. Don’t hang up. He has a scar on his right butt cheek.” she cries out.
I massage my right temple with the thumb of my free hand, scowling suspiciously at the phone.
“Yes. That sounds exactly like something that a crazy ex-lover would know. You have a very nice day.” I go to hang up again.
“I’ll tell you how he got it,” she yells into the phone.
And I hesitate. A little angel on my left shoulder cries out, “Hang up on the crazy woman.” A little devil on my right shoulder says, “She could really be his mom, and if she is, this story could be so great. You can spare two minutes of your life to find out.”
“Go on,” I say. “Talk fast. I’m on a deadline.”
“He was six years old. He’d just gotten a slip and slide for his birthday. His father told him not to put it on this steep hill behind our house. He did it anyway. He turned the hose on, jumped on the slip and slide, and went shooting down the hill. And he kept going. He ended up going ass over head into the hedge, and he impaled his butt on the branch of a hedge that was trimmed into the shape of a rabbit. He got up and limped back to the house with the branch still sticking out of his butt. He had to be taken to the ER with the branch still sticking out of his butt, face down in an ambulance, and he couldn’t sit down for a week.”
I burst out laughing. That, honestly, sounds too crazy to be made up.
Mason was attacked and severely wounded in the ass by a bunny hedge.
Oh. My. God.
If that’s true, I am so going to use that story against him. I am going to weaponize it. I am going to torment him with it.
A bunny costume is very possibly happening in the near future.
Okay, is that going too far?
Nah. This man made me listen to Macarena twenty-seven times in a row.
“There you go,” Mason’s possible-mother says triumphantly. “Nobody else in the world would know that. Now. The number, please?”
I shake my head in annoyance. It’s a great story, but I’m not an idiot. “I still need to call him and check with him first. Why don’t you give me your number? If he wants to call you, he will.”
“No,” she cries out in alarm. “I’m in town and trying to surprise him. He loves surprises.” Not in my experience. “You’ll ruin this for him, and he’ll be really mad at you. This is the kind of thing that has made him end professional relationships before. He will cut you right off. I need that number, now.” Her voice has gone sharp and angry.
“I said what I said.” I hang up. I get a very sketchy feeling from this woman, mother or not. The way she talks about him, it’s like she doesn’t know the first thing about him. I mean, I know him better than she does. So I hope it’s not really his mother, because that’s just sad.
Immediately my phone rings again, and it comes up as an unknown number.
Shaking my head, I pick up my phone to call Mason. I need to find out what’s up with this. I wish she’d left me her number to give him.
I pick up the phone to call Mason. Before I can punch in his number, my cell phone rings with Ruby’s ringtone, which is, of course, “Ruby Tuesday.”
I answer immediately, as I always do for her. “Is this Ruby, or is this someone who’s kidnapped her?” I ask. “I have a particular set of skills ...”
Ruby lets out a loud snort. “Your only skills are being unreasonably paranoid about my safety.”
“No, I am in fact quite reasonably paranoid about your safety. This is Manhattan. Crimeville. The streets are so mean, Superman won’t even come here these days.”
“Wrong. Saw him yesterday, panhandling in Times Square.”
“And there you go,” I say. “The city broke him. It eats people up and spits them out. You could have gone to a nice safe college in the Midwest and met a boy who herds cows, but no, you gotta follow me to the Big Apple.”
