Waltz of Her Life

Linda's stomach flip-flopped. She took in a deep breath, trying to steel herself for the confrontation. "Lauren…" she began.

"Don't tell me you signed up for another year at Camp Nasty!"

"Okay, then I won't tell you." She felt like she was going to cry.

"Linda! Another year of fire drills in the middle of the night? Another year of walking up ten flights of stairs when that fucking elevator breaks? Another year of that slimy, shitty food?"

"I just don't think I'm ready for an apartment."

Lauren sighed from the other end of the line. Linda envisioned her standing and pacing now, gesturing with her hands while she spoke rapidly and angrily. "We still need two girls. With you it would have only been one strange girl we needed to look for. Now we need two!"

"Well, it shouldn't be too hard to find somebody."

"Oh yeah? We could end up with two shitheads. Thanks! You just ruined my whole summer."

"Lauren, I'm sorry!" Before the word "sorry" completely escaped from her lips, Lauren had hung up the phone.

When Linda plopped back down on the sofa to watch the rest of the Charlie's Angels, her mother asked "What happened?"

Linda told her about Lauren's plan to get an apartment and how upset she'd been when she told her she would stay at the dorm rather than move into the apartment with her.

"Well, you don't need an apartment yet."

If only Lauren could see it that way, Linda thought.

Linda took a day off from both the feed store and the hospital, on the day that Seth said he would be passing through. The night before, she warned her father, who was watching a Cubs game on television. "He's going to be riding a motorcycle, with two other guys."

"What is he, crazy?"

"No, it's what he does for a living. He fixes motorcycles, and other kinds of engines." "A grease monkey?"

Linda tried to avoid getting exasperated with him. He had a habit of pigeonholing whole groups of people, the way Archie Bunker did. "Well, he likes to work with his hands. And, before you freak out, he has long hair."

"A hippie, too? A long-haired hippie grease monkey is coming here to see you?"

"Daddy, not every guy who has long hair is a hippie. He just likes to wear it that way."

Her father waved a hand dismissively after shouting at the TV when a Philadelphia Phillies player hit a home run. "Long hair went out with the sixties. None of the guys at the yard have long hair anymore. If a guy has long hair nowadays, he's either a hippie who doesn't know the sixties ended or he's got some other type of problem." He smirked at her before returning his attention to the game.