Free The Bronze King by Suzy McKee Charnas

them out anyhow, the animals I mean, so I didn’t mind. But Mom was nervous. Maybe she thought I was selling my own stuff to finance some godawful habit.
    I have to say I envied Joel being able to lie so casually, even if only to the doorman in his building, saying I was from his school. Well, implying it, anyway. Myself, I am a lousy liar because I tend to forget what I’ve said by the time I have to repeat the lie or go on from there.
    So I don’t do it much. It seemed to me that this was one of those necessary times, though. I mean, my mother has told me often enough not to talk to strange men; all mothers say that, and they’ve got good reasons, too, as anybody knows who reads the papers. She would not be delighted to hear about Paavo.
    I said, “I was out with Megan.”
    Mistake.
    Mom had called Megan’s mother. She had called Barbara’s mother. She had even called Margie Acton’s mother, and that was really pushing things.
    She sat on the sofa in the living room, my neat, intense mother with the beautiful mascara and the carefully polished nails, and she fixed me with a steely gaze that would have terrified the men she went out with if they’d ever seen it.
    â€œTina,” she said, “you’d better tell me what’s going on. I’m on my own with you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep an eye open for your welfare like other parents. It means I have to do it for two, you understand? And I take that responsibility very seriously.”
    I thought for a minute I was in for the lecture about how she was not happy about being a working mother and not having as much time for me as she’d like but she’d get that fixed as soon as she could, if only a decent man would come into her life. I believe there was a time when divorced and working mothers didn’t lay things out exactly that clearly to their kids, and frankly I’d just as soon have gone that route, but I guess you get what you get.
    This was not, however, that lecture.
    â€œYou weren’t with Megan or Barbara or Margie,” she said. “Is it possible that you were with Joel?”
    Wowf. I tried to keep my face still but my mom is nobody’s fool, let me tell you, no matter how silly she sounds simpering at some guy on the telephone. I could see she’d spotted something in my expression.
    â€œJoel who?” I said, stalling.
    â€œJoel Wechsler, of course.” Mom sat back and watched me. She fiddled with the string of baroque pearls she was wearing. They looked like plastic to me, and I’d said so once and we’d had some words about tact.
    I did not like her right now because I knew there was no way to turn off her concern, which I really appreciated when I needed it. This was not one of those times. This was a time when she could use that concern to spoil something that belonged to me, myself, alone.
    How in the heck did she know about Joel?
    She read my mind. “You were seen today,” she said. “Going up to Joel’s parents’ apartment.”
    God. Was my mother actually spying on me? Could one of her ex-boyfriends live in Joel’s building or something? Would one of them use me as an excuse to call her?
    â€œWell, somebody’s wrong, then,” I said, but I knew it was all doomed, the whole business.
    â€œI don’t think so,” my mother said. “Do you remember coming to my office that day I forgot a manuscript, and I asked you to bring it down after school? Do you remember the writer I was having a conference with, the one with the blue hair?”
    Did I ever. One of my mother’s authors. Oh God. I shrugged.
    â€œMrs. Teitelbaum,” said my mother, “author of Cat Fancies, The Haunting of Desire, and Children of Neglect. That author. She knows every bargain in New York City, does Mrs. Teitelbaum, and she gets her hair cut by a very, very chic hairdresser at his own apartment for half the price he