Susan Phillips - Fancy Pants

myself was something I had to do. It was the only way I could redeem myself." The closed, settled expression on his face didn't ease, and she was angry with herself for trying to make him understand.

"I want Teddy back tonight, Dallie, or I'm going to the police."

"If you were going to the police, you'd have done it by now."

"The only reason I've waited is because I didn't want the publicity for him. Believe me, I won't put it off any longer." She stepped closer to him, determined to let him see that she wasn't powerless. "Don't underestimate me, Dallie. Don't get me mixed up in your mind with the girt you knew ten years ago."

Dallie didn't say anything for a moment. He turned his head and stared off into the night. "The other woman I hit was Holly Grace."

"Dallie, I don't want to hear-"

His hand whipped out and caught her arm. "You're going to listen, because I want you to understand exactly what kind of a son of a bitch you're dealing with. I slapped the shit out of Holly Grace after Danny died-that's the kind of man I am. And you know why?"

"Don't-" She tried to pull away, but he only gripped her tighter.

"Because she cried! That's why I slapped her. I slapped that woman because she cried after her baby died." Harsh shadows cast by the headlights slashed his face. He dropped her arm, but his expression remained fierce. "Does that give you any idea what I might do to you?"

He was bluffing. She knew it. She felt it. In some way, he had cut himself open so she could see inside him. She had hurt him badly and he had made up his mind to punish her. He probably did want to hit her-only he didn't have the stomach to do it. She could see that, too.

With more clarity than she wished for, she finally understood the depth of his pain. She felt it through every one of her senses because it mirrored her own so closely. Everything inside her rejected the idea

of living things being hurt.

Dallie had her son, but he knew he wouldn't be able to keep him for long. He wanted to hit her, but it went against his nature, so he was looking for another way to punish her, another way to make her suffer. She felt a creeping chill. Dallie was smart, and if he thought long enough he just might find his revenge. Before that happened, she had to stop him. For both their sakes, and for Teddy's sake, she couldn't let this go any further.

"I learned a long time ago that people who have lots of possessions spend so much energy trying to protect what they have that they lose sight of what's important in life." She stepped forward, not touching him, just making certain she could look him directly in the eye. "I have a successful career, Dallie-a seven-figure bank account, a blue-chip portfolio. I've got a house and beautiful clothes. I have four-carat diamond studs in my ears. But I never forget what's important." Her hands went to her ears. She pulled the backs off the studs and then slipped the diamonds from her earlobes. They nestled in the center of

her palm, cool as chips of ice. She held them out to him.

For the first time he looked uncertain. "What are you doing? I don't want those. I'm not holding him for ransom, for chrissake!"

"I know that." She rolled the diamonds in her palm,. letting them catch the glare from the headlights.

"I'm not your Fancy Pants anymore, Dallie. I just want to make certain you understand exactly what my priorities are- how far I'll go to get him back. I want you to know what you're up against." Her hand closed around the diamonds. "The most important thing in my life is my son. As far as I'm concerned; everything else is just spit."

And then while Dallie watched, Black Jack Day's daughter did it again. With one strong movement of her arm, she threw her flawless four-carat pear-shaped diamond studs far out into the darkest reaches of the quarry.

Dallie didn't say anything for a moment. He lifted his foot and rested his boot on the bumper of the car, staring out in the direction she had thrown the stones and finally looking back at her. "You've changed, Francie. You know that?"

She nodded.

"Teddy's not an ordinary boy."

The way he said it, she knew he wasn't issuing a compliment. "Teddy's the best kid in the world," she answered sharply.

"He needs a father. A man's influence to get him toughened up. The boy's too soft. The first thing you have to do is tell him about me."

She wanted to scream at him, tell him she would do no such thing, but she saw with painful clarity that too many people knew the truth for her to keep it a secret from her son any longer. She nodded reluctantly.

"You've got a lot of lost years to make up for," he said.

"I don't have anything to make up for."

"I'm not going to disappear from his life." Once again his face grew hard. "We can either work something out ourselves, or I can hire one of those bloodsucking lawyers to stick it to you."

"I won't have Teddy hurt."

"Then we'd better work it out ourselves." He took his foot off the bumper, walked around to the driver's door, and climbed in. "Go on back to the house. I'll bring him to you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? I want him now! Tonight!"

"Well, now, that's too bad, isn't it?" he said with a sneer. And then he slammed the car door.

"Dallie!" She ran toward him, but he was already heading out of the quarry, his tires spitting gravel. She yelled after him until she realized how futile that was, and then she raced to her own car.

The engine wouldn't start for her at first, and she was afraid she had run the battery down by leaving her lights on. When it finally turned over, Dallie had already disappeared. She raced the car up the steep road after him, ignoring the way the rear end fishtailed. At the top, she caught sight of two dim red taillights in the distance. Her tires spun as she accelerated. If only it wasn't so dark! He turned out onto the highway and she raced after him.

For several miles, she stayed with him, ignoring the squeal of her tires as she accelerated around wild curves, pushing the car to reckless speeds when the pavement straightened. He knew the narrow back roads and she didn't, but she refused to fall back. He wasn't going to do this to her! She knew she'd hurt him, but that didn't give him the right to terrorize her. She pushed the speedometer to sixty-five and then to seventy…

If he hadn't finally turned off his lights, she might have had him.

Francesca felt numb by the time she returned to Dallie's house. As she climbed wearily out of the car,

she found herself replaying bits and pieces of the encounter in the quarry. Most men would be glad to have been spared the burden of an unwanted child. Why couldn't she have picked one of them?

"Uh… Miss Day?"

Francesca's heart sank as she heard the young female voice coming to her from the vicinity of the pecan trees at the side of the drive. Not tonight, she thought. Not now, when she felt as if she were already carrying a thousand pounds on her shoulders. How did they always manage to find her?

Even before she turned in the direction of the voice, she knew what she would see-the desperately young face, tough and sad, the cheap clothes undoubtedly topped by gaudy earrings. She even knew the story she would hear. But tonight she wouldn't listen. Tonight she had too much trouble clouding her own life to take on anyone else's.

A girl dressed in jeans and a dirty pink jacket stepped just to the edge of a puddle of light that shone dimly on the drive from the kitchen window. She wore too much makeup, and her center-parted hair fell like a double door over her face.

"I… uh… I saw you earlier at the gas station. At first I didn't believe it was you. I… uh… I heard from this girl I met a long time ago that… you know… you might, uh…"

The runaways' grapevine. It had followed her from Dallas to St. Louis, then on to Los Angeles and New York. Now it seemed her reputation as the world's biggest sucker had even spread to small towns like Wynette. Francesca willed herself to turn her back and walk away. She willed it, but her feet wouldn't move.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"I-uh-I asked around. Somebody said you were staying here."

"Tell me your name."

"Dora-Doralee." The girl lifted the cigarette that was shoved between her fingers and took a drag.

"Would you step into the light so I can see you?"

Doralee did as she was asked, moving reluctantly, as if lifting her red canvas high-top sneakers required superhuman effort. She couldn't be more than fifteen, Francesca thought, although she would insist that she was eighteen. Walking closer, she studied the girl's face. Her pupils weren't dilated; her speech had been hesitant, but not slurred. In New York, if she suspected that a girl was strung out on drugs, she took her to an old brownstone in Brooklyn run by nuns who specialized in helping addicted teenagers.

"How long since you've had anything decent to eat?" Francesca asked.

"I eat," the girl said defiantly.

Candy bars, Francesca guessed. And Styrofoam cupcakes stuffed with chemical frosting. Sometimes the street kids pooled their money and treated themselves to fast-food french fries. "Would you like to come inside and talk?"

"I guess." The girl shrugged her shoulders and flipped her cigarette down onto the drive.

As Francesca led her toward the kitchen door, she thought she could hear Holly Grace's scornful voice mocking her: "You and your teenage hookers! Let the government take care of these kids like it's supposed to. I swear to God, you don't have the sense you were born with." But Francesca knew the government didn't have enough shelters to take care of all these kids. They simply shipped them back

to their parents where, all too frequently, the problems started all over again.

The first time Francesca had become involved with a runaway was in Dallas after she'd done one of her early television shows. The subject had been teenage prostitution, and Francesca had been horrified at the power the pimps exerted over the girls, who were, after all, still children. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she'd found herself bringing two of them home and then badgering the social welfare system until they found foster homes for them.

The word had slowly spread, and every few months since then she'd found herself with a runaway on

her hands. First in Dallas, then in Los Angeles, then in New York, she would leave work at night to find someone standing outside the building, having heard through the grapevine of the streets that Francesca Day helped girls who were in trouble. Frequently they just wanted food, other times a place to hide from their pimps. Seldom did they say much; they had suffered too many rejections. They just slouched in front of her like this girl, smoking a cigarette or biting their fingernails and hoping that Francesca Day would somehow understand that she was their last hope.

"I have to call your family," Francesca announced as she warmed a plate of leftovers in the microwave and then set it out, along with an apple and a glass of milk.

"My mom don't give a shit what happens to me," Doralee said, her shoulders slumped so far forward that the ends of her hair nearly touched the table.

"I still have to call her," Francesca replied firmly. While Doralee tucked into the leftovers on her plate, Francesca called the number in New Mexico that the girl grudgingly gave her. It was just as she'd said. Her mother didn't give a shit.

After Doralee had finished eating, she began to respond to Francesca's questions. She had been hitchhiking when she saw Francesca pull into the service station and ask for directions to the gravel quarry. She'd lived on the streets of Houston for a while and spent some time in Austin. Her pimp beat her up because she wasn't turning enough tricks. She was starting to worry about AIDS.

Francesca had heard it all so many times before-these poor, sad children cast out too young into the world. An hour later, she tucked the girl into the small hideaway bed in the sewing room and then gently awakened Miss Sybil to tell her what had happened at the quarry.

Miss Sybil stayed up with her for several hours until Francesca insisted she go back to bed. Francesca knew she could never fall asleep herself, and she returned to the kitchen where she rinsed the dirty dishes from Doralee's dinner and loaded them into the dishwasher. Then she lined the kitchen drawers with

fresh shelf paper she found in the cupboard. At two o'clock in the morning, she began to bake. Anything to make the long hours of the night pass faster.