Free The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman by Louise Plummer

even know anyone could
be
that sick and alive at the same time.” His voice faltered. “Know what he said about you?” He turned.
    “That I had the world’s silliest backhand?”
    “No. He said, and I quote: ‘Kate Bjorkman is one of the true champions.’ ”
    I laughed. “He says that about everyone.” But I was pleased. “Besides, I’m not that good a tennis player.”
    He drew in his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t think he was talking tennis.”
    “Mouse player?”
    He laughed then. “Yes, that must be it. Kate Bjorkman is a true champion mouse player. That’s what he meant.”
    “Midgely always makes me think of Dylan Thomas,” I said. “I don’t know if he did this with you guys, but he spent weeks on Thomas’s poetry last year—and we were supposed to be studying
American
lit.”
    Richard nodded. “ ‘The Force That Through the Green Fuse—’ ”
    “ ‘Drives the Flower,’ ” I finished with him.
    “Did he make you memorize the whole thing?” Richard asked.
    “All twenty-two lines.”
    “I miss him already.”
    “Mmm.”
    It had stopped snowing. It was piled three feet high on the lawn and even higher along the curb where the snowplows had pushed it out of the street. Halos glimmered around the streetlamp. My breath frosted the window when I leaned my forehead against it.
    “Guess who else we visited?” Richard slapped the now famous thighs. “Dr. Bybee!”
    “You’re kidding. I didn’t know Mother gave him tulips—”
    “I don’t think she does normally, but I was telling herhow unusual it must be to have a guy with a doctorate in music teaching in elementary school, and I was carrying on about learning to play the recorder in third grade—”
    “I still have mine!” I couldn’t help saying.
    “And about the annual spring concert—we did a whole Gershwin program when I was in fifth grade.” He grinned. “Anyway, your mother took me to see him and he made me play recorder duets with him. Not only that, he made your mother and Fleur play too.”
    I shrieked and then covered my mouth. “Mother and Fleur? Really?”
    He laughed at the memory. “He had them playing ‘Jingle Bells’ within ten minutes.”
    I jumped up. “Come on, we have to play.” I grabbed his arm and led him across the living room and into Dad’s study, where I turned on the overhead light. We both squinted in the brightness. “They’re over here.” I pulled out the bottom drawer of Dad’s credenza and pulled out two wooden soprano recorders—mine and Bjorn’s. “Here,” I said, handing Richard one. “There’s music in here too.” I pulled out “Easy Christmas Songs for the Recorder,” along with an old folded-up music stand my mother had bought at a garage sale years ago, and set it up in front of the love seat, where Richard was already sitting. I sat next to him. “What do you want to start with?”
    He smacked his lips and tried a scale and then grinned at me. “Just start at the beginning,” he said.
    “Okay,” I said. “ ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.’ ” I turned and looked at him. “Ready?”
    He nodded. His foot began to tap. “And one and two and three and four—”
    We began. I felt a giggle rising in me and struggled to restrain it. We played most of three measures and then, caving into each other, broke into loud guffawing. We made these involuntary pig snarking noises in the backs of our throats, which made us laugh even harder. Snark, snark, gasp and snark.
    That’s how my parents found us: collapsed and howling.
    “You kids been in the liquor cabinet?” Dad asked.
    I shook my head. “We’ve been p-p-playing the r-r-r—these.” I held up the recorder and continued snorting.
    “You sound like Porky P-P-Pig,” Richard snorted and got hysterical all over again.
    Then Fleur appeared, wearing pajamas with feet in them.
    “Did they wake you up?” Mother asked Fleur.
    “As a matter of fact, no. Believe it or not, something louder is going on