*

Precocious made it back to the office without running over any wayward school children or lamp posts. She was angry. Very angry. Not seeing color, but a fuzzy black and white angry. The problem was, she wasn’t sure *why* she was angry. She pushed open the front door of the office hard enough to send the hinges squealing and dropped her backpack into her chair. She yanked the files out, threw them with more force than necessary into the ‘to be filed’ tray, and spun around when she heard Zachary walk out from his office. “I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

Zachary, who had been headed for the coffee machine that was on the wheeled tray half-hidden by one of Precocious’s plants, paused in surprise. He looked her over with a critical eye and recognized the flash in her eyes as a dangerous thing. He decided not to bother with questioning her since he liked all of his body parts as they were. “See you tomorrow, then.” Zachary watched in amazement when Precocious stormed out of the office like hell was on her heels. The last time he’d seen her so pissed, she’d ended up throwing bright green paint on a half-dozen women wearing ‘Reelect Lott’ T-shirts. He hoped she didn’t have any green paint in her car. He poured his coffee and went back into his office, pausing only long enough to forward all of the front desk calls to his own phone. He regretted that move as soon as he sat down and the phone rang. “Hello?”

“Zachary, I think I’ve lost my fucking mind.” Tyler sounded winded and frantic, like he’d just run from something.

“What’s going on?” Zachary suddenly wondered if Precocious’s mood and Tyler’s frantic tone were related. “What have you done?”

“What makes you think-oh, fuck, forget it. You won’t believe me, anyway.”

Zachary’s eyebrows shot up, and he leaned back in his desk chair. “What’s happened, Tyler?”

“Apparently, I fucked Julia last night.” Tyler sounded bitter and angry at himself. “I got really drunk last night.” He paused. “Zachary, are you there?”

“I…I’m here.” Zachary had been struck dumb by the announcement. “Where the hell is your *sense*, man?!”

“At the bottom of a bottle of cheap booze. Thanks for asking.”

“Do *not* get snide with me, you dumb fuck! How the fuck did you fuck Julia? She’s in San Francisco!”

“No, she’s not,” Tyler sounded properly embarrassed and guilty. “She showed up at Linda’s opening on Friday night. Said she was just visiting for the show. Precocious and I managed to avoid her for awhile, but then she called me on her cell and started making drunken confessions.”

Zachary wasn’t liking the sound of things at all. “You talked to her, didn’t you?” He heard Tyler sigh and took it as a yes. “You’re an idiot; you know that?”

“I’ve figured that out, you asshole.” Tyler sounded pissed at the world. “I’m looking for advice. I can handle the put-downs, thank you.”

Zachary rubbed the slope of his nose with the pad of his thumb and sighed. “Why the fuck did you sleep with her?”

“I was *drunk*! I was very, very, very *drunk*!”

“That’s no excuse! This woman eats men for breakfast because she thinks it’s *fun*!”

There was a sudden, long silence on the other end of the phone. Tyler’s voice was contemplative when he spoke again. “You’re completely right.”

“I know I am.” Zachary was getting exasperated.

“No, no, I mean…” Tyler trailed off, his half-distracted tone making it obvious he was thinking. “She’s not the type to be without a man. She likes to loom power over them. She likes to use them. It’s what she does.”

“I know all of this.”

Tyler made a shushing noise. “Quiet; you’re not getting it. None of this is right. Julia doesn’t just materialize for no reason. She always has a plan. She always has a reason to do things. She’s an evil, conniving, heartless banshee of a shrew. She never does anything without a clearly outlined goal and a way to achieve it. She told me on the phone Friday that she was done with the last guy-“

“The watery eyed guy?” Zachary cut in just to make sure he and Tyler were thinking about the last guy.

“Yeah, him. She said it was over, and that she was sorry she had cheated on me. She never finishes a relationship with a man without having another one lined up. It’s one of the things I realized after we ended things-she always had someone waiting in the wings.”

“But she’s here.” Zachary was confused.

“I know,” there was another thoughtful pause as Tyler puzzled that out. He cursed lightly. “Son of a bitch. I think I’m the guy in the wings.”

“She left you. She was finished with you.”

“So we thought. She’s manipulative, Zachary. She’s back here for me for some reason…” Tyler trailed off. “I have to go.” He hung up the phone before Zachary could respond.

Zachary put his extension back on the cradle with a wry smile and a shake of his head. “Good luck, you dumb bastard.”

*

Linda was scraping paint off of the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony when she heard the front door open. “Precocious?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“I think I’m going to paint a mural on the doors, kind of a stained glass look.” Linda carefully peeled some yellow paint off of the doorframe. “I thought I’d go non-abstract and do a take-off on all those church windows of the Virgin Mary praying. Do you think if I did it up as Gene Kelly praying I’d offend the neighbors?”

Precocious walked into the kitchen and dropped heavily into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “The neighbors are atheist lesbians with a Great Dane. They’d love you for it.”

Linda turned around and put down the box cutter she was using to scrape the paint off the door. She stood up from her squat, brushed flecks of paint off of her jeans, and sat down in the chair opposite of Precocious. “What’s happened?”

“Zachary wanted me to go over some files with Tyler. I called his place, and he didn’t answer, but since I had to drop some other stuff off for Zachary, I just threw the files in my backpack and decided to swing by his place. I figured, if nothing else, I could leave the files on the front porch. I grabbed donuts on the way over, just in case he was up, and when I got there, Julia was there. Naked. And wet. And Tyler was only wearing a robe.”

Linda winced. “Shit. What’d you do?”

“I gave him the donuts, and I bolted.” Precocious dropped her head to the table. It hit with a dull thud. “Ow.”

“You’re supposed to headdesk, not headtable.” Linda stood up from the table and walked into the kitchen. She reached into the very back of the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Dandelion and Burdock soda. She walked back over to the table and plunked it in front of Precocious. “Drink up.”

Precocious eyed the soda with appreciation. She and Linda always had a pack of twelve bottles in the back of the fridge, but they tended to save it for the most dire of circumstances since they had to buy it online from Canada and have it shipped in. “Thank you.” She cracked the bottle open and took a long drink, coughing slightly when the licorice taste hit the back of her throat. “I could kill him.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Linda decided to save the rest of the bottles of Dandelion and Burdock and got a glass of water from the tap. “Why do you want to kill him, thought? Don’t tell me this is an irrational jealousy thing.”

“It’s not, trust me.” Precocious looked properly disgusted by the whole idea. “We had one very bizarre date. I’m not staking my claim or anything of the like. I’m just…” she paused to try to figure out what she was. “I just can’t believe that he would fuck her.”

“You don’t know that he fucked her.” Linda sat back at the table. “There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that she was wet and naked in his house.”

“What? The shower caught on fire, and she had to run for her life, towel be damned?”

“Or I could be blowing smoke out of my ass to try and make you feel a little better.” Linda gave a tight, apologetic smile to Precocious. “Fine, there is no perfectly reasonable explanation. Julia is a bitch. Your date is a whore who sleeps with his ex. Happy now?”

“A little.” Precocious took another drink from her soda, then stood up to go searching for something to snack on. “I just don’t get it. If women are supposed to be the weaker sex, why does it always seem to be men who fuck their exes?”

“You’ve fucked a couple of exes.”

“You know, it’s very hard to stay on my high horse when you catapult me off of it.” Precocious sat back at the table, a box of triple chocolate cookies in her hand. “Okay, yes, I’ve fucked a couple of exes, but not when I had even a minor chance of having someone lined up to screw in the near future.”

”Are you saying you would have put out for Tyler?”

“You’ve seen him, right?”

Linda had to agree with that. Tyler was very attractive; even he was showing his true colors as a massive man whore. “Fair point. Is it any consolation that he didn’t go out and pick up some stranger at a bar?”

“I’m supposed to find consolation in the fact that he *fucked* his *ex* as opposed to a *stranger*? You’ve been sniffing paint thinner again, haven’t you?”

“I sniffed it once to see what would happen.” Linda rolled her eyes. “You’re getting off the topic.”

“Yeah, I know.” Precocious shoved a cookie into her mouth. “I’m pissed.” Crumbs sprayed across the table. Precocious swallowed quickly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Linda swept her arm across the table and knocked most of the crumbs to the floor. “Tell me exactly why you’re pissed off.”

“Exactly?” Precocious watched Linda nod as she thought about it. “I guess it’s…” she trailed off and stared at the ceiling like it was going to give her an answer. “I hate the fact that I have the good sense to stay away from a relationship when I know it’s bad for me, and that he doesn’t have the same sense.” She made a disgusted face and took another drink of her Dandelion and Burdock soda. “I hate that I’m sitting here fighting the urge everyday to call Chad and go, ‘hey, maybe you’re not a total douche’, and that he’s fucking his ex-wife. I hate that he agreed to go out with me and seemed to be enjoying himself, and then abandoned me to talk to his fucking ex-wife.” Precocious’s tone was overly calm, like she was trying very hard to keep in control. “I’m not jealous. I’m just really fucking *mad*.”

“Men are stupid, you know.”

“I was aware of it before, thanks.”

Linda screwed up her face in frustration. She hated when Precocious got into a mood like this. It was hard to get her out of it. “What do you need me to do?”

“Egg his car?”

“No. What do you need me to do that’s legal?”

“Explain his psyche to me so that I sympathize and stop wishing to kick him in the nads?”

Linda sighed heavily and pushed her hair off of her face. “I think I’d rather egg his car.”

“I’ll buy if you’ll wing them.”

“I’m not going to egg his car; I just said I’d *rather*.” Linda rolled her eyes at Precocious and wished she could get more of a response than a bland stare. She took a deep breath and started arguing for the case that Precocious had thrown in front of her. “Men have an incapacity to be without companionship. It goes back to the days when they would club their women over the head, drag them to their caves, and rape them to produce children. Studies show that men actually die more quickly if they do *not* have a mate. Men have to have something warm in their beds that they can have sex with. Sometimes, the warm thing they have sex with is their bitch of an ex-wife who we believe is out to rule the world with a scary, scary fist and bad hair.” Linda paused and looked at Precocious hopefully.

“You’ve not made your case.”

“Damint.” Linda thought again. “It was a bad divorce, right?” Precocious nodded. “It left him somewhat bitter and distrusting?” Precocious nodded again. “Maybe it’s a revenge fuck. I hate you so much for what you did to me, but I’m sleeping with you so that I can kick your ass to the curb the next morning.”

“Nope. She looked like she was going to hanging around for at least the morning.”

“O-kay…” Linda was having trouble finding a new avenue to argue Tyler’s case. She was nearly desperate enough to offer to buy the eggs herself. She suddenly saw her route to making Precocious if not happy, then less mad. “The first time you saw Chad after you finally called it quits. What did you think?”

“I want to cut off his dick, plant it in the ground, and see if a real man grows.”

Linda had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. It would ruin her whole argument if she showed approval of Precocious’s reaction. “*After* you considered cutting off his dick, what did you think?”

Precocious flushed a little when she remembered what she’d thought. “He was the best sex I’d ever had, and if I ever got very, very, very, very, very, very, *very* drunk, I’d fuck him again.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Linda made an exasperated noise that sounded like giving someone a raspberry. “And you still had feelings for him even if he was the biggest douche bag you knew.”

Precocious crossed her arms and slumped in her chair. “Maybe.”

“No ‘maybe’ about it. You told me that exact thing after we ran into him at the grocery store a week after you broke it off with him.” Linda gave Precocious a hard look.

Precocious cursed. “Goddamnit. Aren’t you fucking artists supposed to be scatterbrained dumbshits who don’t remember fuck all about other people’s goddamned lives?”

Linda had hit a nerve. Precocious didn’t curse like a drunken truck driver unless she was truly pissed at being proven wrong. “I’m not saying he was *right* to fuck her. You never fucked Chad. I’m just saying that some people don’t have the willpower you do and that it can lead to them to do stupid shit that they regret.”

“I’m not mad at him.” Precocious ran a hand through her hair and tugged on the ends. “It’s just that I feel like I should have been able to point at him and say, ‘shit, he’s going to fuck her, and then I’m going to be fucked in the bad way’. I should have been able to tell that something bad was going to happen.”

“You’re not responsible for every dumb thing a guy does when you date him.”

“Well, someone should be, and they never think that it should be them.”

Linda gave Precocious an understanding look. “You want to run off together and be lesbians?”

“Sure, but I’m not opening an organic bakery with you.”

“Your mother would be so disappointed.”

The time to be serious was completely and fully over. Linda and Precocious broke into a fit of half-hysterical laughter. Every time they looked at each other, they were set off again, and it was a solid ten minutes before either of them could speak. Precocious somehow managed to beat Linda in the race to calm down. “Fucking hell. Thank you for that.”

“I do what I can to keep you from being completely irrational and impossible to live with.” Linda stood up, wiped tears from her eyes, and picked up the box cutter again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be a dumbshit artist.”

“I’m going to go call my mother.” Precocious stood up from the table, grabbed the cordless phone, and headed to her bedroom. “See you in a bit.”

“Yeah,” Linda was already hard at work.

*

Tyler walked into the kitchen with a determined set to his chin and the glint of a man on the edge of his sanity in his eyes. He watched Julia move around his kitchen wearing the extra bath robe he’d hung on the hook attached to the bathroom door, and more than anything, he wanted some fucking answers. “Why are you here?”

“I slept here last night, don’t you remember?” Julia had her personal setting on ‘warm and friendly’ again, apparently making up for the ‘frosty hell queen’ setting she’d adopted when Precocious had shown up at the door.

“I mean why are you still here? Or why are you here at all? You told me you wouldn’t come back to Kansas if Glenda to Good Witch ordered you here herself.”

Julia shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I wanted to see the show. I keep reading about this Linda Sexton; I wanted to see what she could do.”

“Bullshit. You’ve never gone to a gallery in your life for any other reason than to be seen.”

“Then, I went to be seen.” Julia opened a cupboard and searched around. “Where do you keep your pancake mix?”

“I don’t *have* any. I hate pancakes. I have always hated pancakes. You always *made* pancakes; I always *ignored* the pancakes, and you then went on to make *more* pancakes.” Tyler stalked across the kitchen, grabbed Julia by the shoulder, and spun her around. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I know it can’t lead to anywhere good for me. I know we fucked, and I have to tell you, I feel rather disgusted with myself because of that fact. Whatever you want, just say it, then get out of here. I don’t want to deal with you anymore.”

Julia stared at Tyler in what looked like, if Tyler had to guess, honest shock and disbelief. “I…I came to see-“ she clamped her mouth shut, swallowed hard, and stepped away from Tyler so that he was no longer touching her. “What do you want to hear, Tyler?” Her ‘frosty hell queen’ persona was back in full force. “Do you want me to drop to your feet and beg forgiveness? Do you want me to slap you across the face, call you an asshole, and leave? Do you want me to tell you about how I feel like a bad person because I cheated on you and left you when you did nothing but dote on me?” Her voice quavered on the last question, but her chin was high, and her tone was defiant.

Tyler was suddenly certain that every last molecule of air had been sucked from his kitchen. He stared at Julia in shock. He stared at her until she started to grow fuzzy around the edges and little dots started dancing in front of his eyes. He only remembered to breathe when his vision started getting dark around the edges. He breathed hard, felt his lungs burn, and he took a step back like Julia was suddenly going to pounce on him and go for his throat. “Don’t feed me that shit. Just *don’t*. I loved you. I loved you for eight fucking years. I loved you until you handed me a set of divorce papers that I didn’t deserve. I loved you when I found you with that bastard with the watery eyes. I moved away from here to be with *you*. I moved to fucking San Francisco to be with you. I did every goddamned thing you wanted me to, and it wasn’t enough, and you fucked around.” He took three more steps back and nearly fell onto his dining table. “I don’t fucking believe you. You’re not here for me. You’re here for you. You don’t have some mark set up to take care of you, so you’re running back to me because you think I will. I won’t. Get out.” He turned around, nearly fell on the table again, and walked out of the kitchen. “If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’m calling the police and reporting you as a trespasser and a stalker.” He walked out onto the front stoop and sat down. He realized that he was still holding the phone. After a pause, he dialed.

*

“Oh, hi, Precocious. How was your date?”

Precocious grimaced as she absently straightened up her dresser top and pumped some false cheer into her tone. “It was great, Matilda, thank you. Is my mother around?”

“Want to give her all the details, do you?” Matilda sounded very pleased at the idea.

“Something like that, yes.”

“Well, hold on for just a minute, and I’ll see if I can find her.”

“Thank you, Matilda.” Precocious laid on her bed and rearranged her pillows so that she was in a half-reclining position. She picked up the stuffed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that she kept around to protect her sheets and tucked him under her arm.

“Precocious, honey, your mom went into town to help with the shopping. Gary was supposed to go, but he had a bad reaction to some wild honey.”

“I didn’t know Gary was allergic to honey.”

“He’s allergic to the bees.” Matilda giggled a little. “I’m sorry. That’s a terrible joke.”

“It’s fine.” Precocious couldn’t help but smile. Matilda was too sweet *not* to like; bad jokes and all. “Just leave her a note on organic paper written in carrot juice, okay?”

“Funny girl. I will. Have a wonderful day.”

“I’ll try. You have a wonderful day.”

“I always do when I’m here, dear.”

Precocious cut off the phone call and held the receiver out to her Ninja Turtle. “You need to call anyone?” He stared at her blankly. “Pizza guy, maybe?” He kept staring. “April, the awesome rising star reporter that you secretly want to have cross-species sex with?” Precocious poked him in the nose. “You’re never going to make friends if you don’t call someone.” The phone rang, and Precocious nearly dropped it. She answered it quickly. “Hello?”

“Precocious?”

“Yes.” Precocious didn’t recognize the voice on the line. “Who is this, please?”

“It’s Tyler. I was hoping you would give me a chance to explain myself.”