Miracle on 49th Street (11 page)

“Great,” Josh said, with about as much enthusiasm as if she'd told him she'd just bought a new backpack for school.

Just as they were about to walk out the side door of the gym, the one that led to the parking lot, Adam Burke walked through the same door, out of breath, looking more like a college kid than ever, Molly thought. This one late for class.

“Hey, man, I got stuck in traffic. I was afraid I was going to miss you,” he said to Josh.

Josh grinned. “I'll give you my answers bumper-sticker style,” he said. “We might be better than last year. Young guys fitting in faster than I thought they would.”

“But it's still early,” Adam said.

“And,” Josh said, pointing a finger at him, “it's a long season.”

“Really long,” Adam said.

It was then that he noticed Molly and Sam.

“Hey,” Uncle Adam of the
Boston Globe
said. “What are you guys doing here?”

M
olly looked at Sam. Sam looked at her. Then they both looked at Josh.

“Forget about that,” Josh said to Adam Burke. “Where you been at, man? Have I seen you since opening night?”

Adam said he had never gotten to take any time off after the World Series, so after the Celtics' opener he'd gone to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to stare at movie stars drinking cappuccino and try to pitch movie ideas.

“Got any good ones?” Josh said.

“Not according to any of the producers I talked to,” he said. “All of whom looked to be about Sam and Molly's age.” He nodded at them. “So what are they doing at practice?”

“Not for print?” Josh said.

It was interesting, Molly noticed. He wasn't talking to Adam like he was Sam's uncle. He was talking to him like he was a sportswriter. And maybe a snoopy one at that.

“Aw, don't do that to me on a day when I got here late,” Adam said, almost whining. “‘Not for print' always means it's something good.”

“Not for print?” Josh said again.

“Fine.”

Josh said, “Sam must've told you about Molly's mom. Did he mention that we went to college together? Her mom and me?”

“He might have.”

“After a few minutes with me,” Sam said, “what he mostly hears is
blah blah blah.
” Sam tried to raise his eyebrows but failed miserably, as usual. “Even when I'm telling him an interesting story.”

“Shut up, junior,” Adam said.

“Shutting up,” Sam said.

“Anyway,” Josh said, “now that I've gotten to know Molly a little, I decided that maybe she could use another friend.”

Molly watched him as he said that and noticed something she'd noticed before: When he was playing the part of Good-Guy Josh, when he wanted somebody to like him, he had this way of putting his hand in his hair and mussing it all up, the way a kid would.

Totally phony.

“Pretty cool,” Adam Burke said.

“I'm just doing what anybody would do.”

Now Josh tried to put his arm around Molly. She knew it was just for show. She pulled away, bent down, untied her shoelaces so she could make herself real busy tying them back up.

One of these days, he was going to put his arm around her—hug her, even—and mean it.

“Aw, man, this is a perfect column for me,” Adam Burke said.

“Not happening.”

“And did I mention that it's a slow news day?”

“Write about what a long season it is,” Josh said, grinning. “Your readers need to know stuff like that.”

“Very funny.”

“I'm not doing this because I want publicity,” Josh said.

Sam had moved behind Josh and Adam. Molly saw him stick a finger in his throat. Gag me.

“I'm doing it,” Josh continued, “because this girl has gone through a lot and came through it as a greater kid than ever.”

Sam must have put his finger too far into his throat, because he actually started coughing now. Josh and Adam turned around. Sam put up a hand, as if indicating that nobody was going to have to do the Heimlich maneuver on him.

“I can write the living…daylights out of this,” Adam said.

“I'm sure you could,” Josh said.

“Think about it, at least?” Adam said.

“Okay, I'll think about it,” Josh said to him.

To Molly and Sam he said, “C'mon, you guys, we gotta bounce.”

“You, Josh Cameron, are their ride home?” Adam said.

“Pretty much.”

“Aw, man, you're killing me.”

Josh tried to put his arm around Molly one more time as they walked out the door into the parking lot. She pulled away again, saying “don't” as she ran ahead of him.

“God, you're tough,” he said.

“Runs in the family,” Molly said.

By now Molly had discovered that there were two floors to Josh Cameron's condominium at Two Commonwealth. The first floor was all him. Upstairs was Mattie's room, her small kitchen, a laundry room, and a spare bedroom that Mattie used for television watching.

That one had become Molly's when Barbara would allow her to stay over once in a while after a Friday home game and a late pizza at Upper Crust.

When Josh finally woke up—he could sleep, Molly had decided, even better than he could play basketball—Mattie would whip them up some pancakes and for a little while, it would feel like a regular Saturday morning for Molly.

With a regular dad.

Even though there was nothing regular about this situation at all.

And she was running out of time to make it regular.

Sometimes she felt as if she were putting a gigantic puzzle together a piece or two at a time, first one corner and then the other. Knowing as she did that it wasn't coming together nearly as fast as she wanted it to.

Or needed it to.

And sometimes she wondered if she could ever make the pieces fit the way she wanted them to.

He didn't know how to talk to her, for one thing. Didn't know how to
be
with her. It's why, Molly was sure, he always had Mattie around when Molly came to visit, why he had Mattie bring Molly to practices and games. When he didn't know how to talk to her, Mattie could do the talking. And when Mattie wasn't around, if she was having dinner with friends or having a night off, that was when Josh struggled. They'd rent a movie, and he'd start watching it with her. But then he'd seem almost relieved when his cell phone would go off—instead of a ring or a chirp, it played “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones—and he'd have to leave the room to go talk to somebody. And wouldn't come back for what would feel like half an hour.

Then Mattie would be back, and Molly would want to laugh, hearing Josh telling her how the two of them had watched a movie together. Only it wasn't like that, not at all.

Molly noticed the only time he was with other people,
really
with them, was when he was playing basketball with his teammates, and Molly didn't count that. That was basketball. The rest of the time, he seemed happiest when he was alone, even the kind of alone he had going for him when he was with somebody.

It was weird, Molly had decided. Here was somebody the whole world thought of as the best team guy going, the one everybody else held up, even from other sports, as the ultimate team player.

But as soon as the game was over, all he wanted to do was be by himself. It's why Molly wondered if her mom had been right about him, that Josh Cameron couldn't really
be
with anybody. That all he needed to be happy was himself.

Molly was going to New York with the Celtics.

She had spent the night in the guest room after the Celtics had won their Friday night game against the Washington Wizards. The plan from there was for Josh to go to a late-morning practice in Waltham, leave with the team for the airport, where the team's own plane was waiting for them. Molly and Mattie would take the shuttle down to New York about the same time.

When Josh finally got up about ten, Mattie fixed them all pancakes. He said that since they were all going to get to New York about the same time, anyway, he'd have a car waiting for them at LaGuardia to take them to the team's hotel. Then they could all go out to an early dinner somewhere, or just have room service. He said the hotel, the Sherry-Netherland, had what he described as some la-di-da restaurant right off its lobby.

“Sounds like a plan, right?” Josh said.

Mattie said to Molly, “That okay with you, hon?”

“That's what I was asking Molly,” Josh said.

Mattie winked. “We're just doing what us girls do all the time,” she said. “Eliminating the middleman.”

Molly said to both of them, “The shuttle with Mattie sounds like fun. I've never been to New York in my whole life.”

Mattie said, “Done deal, then.”

She put out her hand for Molly to give her five.

“Road trip,” Mattie said.

After breakfast, Mattie walked her back to 1A Joyless Street. Molly picked out some clean clothes, packed them in her duffel, then called Sam to tell him about the road trip.

“Cool,” he said. Then he asked how much money she was bringing with her. “No money,” Molly said. Sam said, “What?” and told her she sounded like a rookie, that you couldn't go on the road without what he called “mad money.” Then he told her that he'd meet her in front of Two Commonwealth in fifteen minutes and explain.

He was waiting at the corner of Commonwealth and Arlington when Molly and Mattie got back.

“Here,” he said, handing Molly a wadded-up roll of bills that he said added up to a hundred and twenty dollars. Out of what he called his “emergency fund.”

“Now are you going to tell me what mad money is?” Molly said.

Sam said, “My mom said that when she was single, she always took money with her when she'd go out on a date, in case she got mad and wanted to go home.”

“I don't need this,” Molly said. “I sort of don't see that happening in New York.”

“You never know,” Sam said.

Molly said, “I'm going to think of it as glad money.”

“Glad?”

“Glad to be going,” she said. “Maybe I'll buy you a present with your own money.”

“Wouldn't that be like me buying myself a present?”

Molly gave him a quick hug, which she knew always embarrassed him, and said, “It's the thought that counts,” and then told him she'd give him a full report on Monday.

As she was running into the lobby of Two Commonwealth to catch up with Mattie, she heard Sam's voice behind her.

“The present doesn't have to be expensive,” he said.

The Sunday game was scheduled for seven o'clock at Madison Square Garden. Josh explained it was done that way so that every pro football game except the Sunday night game would be over. Normally Molly wouldn't have been able to go to a Sunday night game, even in Boston. But this Monday would be one of four or five during the school year when there were teachers' conferences at the Prescott School. So when the Celtics flew on to Detroit after the game, Molly and Mattie would stay over in New York and take the shuttle home the next morning.

She was going to have half of Saturday with Josh in New York City and a lot of Sunday afternoon.

“Even though this is your first trip here,” Mattie said during the ride to the hotel, “you've probably seen about as many sights in the big city as he has.”

Molly had the guidebook Mattie had bought for her at the airport open on her lap.

“You're kidding, right?”

Mattie shook her head. “His idea of sightseeing is looking out the windows of the bus on the way to the Garden.”

Molly pointed to her book. “He hasn't seen the Empire State Building?”

“Nope.”

Molly turned another page. “Statue of Liberty?”

Shake of the head.

“He has to have seen Central Park.”

“If he hasn't, we might have a shot,” Mattie said.

The Sherry-Netherland was right across the street from the entrance to the park, Mattie showed her. Mattie described it as the Public Garden and the Boston Common times a hundred. She said that Josh had actually helped pick this particular hotel for the Celtics. He liked the idea that it really didn't look like a hotel in front but more like an apartment building, and because of where it was located on Fifth Avenue, it was hard for people wanting autographs to hang around on the sidewalk without the doorman rousting them.

“I know they let him call the plays,” Molly said, grinning at Mattie. “But he gets to make the call on hotels, too?”

“You never heard people talking about the Cameron Rules?” Mattie said. “Sportswriters write that up all the time, saying they're more golden around the Boston Celtics than the Golden Rule.”

For today, as much as she ever had, Molly felt like a golden girl, like the girl in
The Princess Diaries,
one of those happy-ending fairy-tale movies she liked to watch. Like she'd been picked out of the crowd and turned into some kind of royalty. Getting driven to the airport in a limousine. Getting met up by another limousine at LaGuardia Airport, the driver holding a sign with her name on it. She and Mattie staying in a suite that was right next door to Josh's suite, on a separate floor from all the other Celtics players. Looking out from the living room window at Central Park, which really did seem to go forever, wondering if somehow Josh Cameron had a view of a park wherever he went in his life. There was even a skating rink in this park, Wollman Rink, bigger than the one in Boston Common, so big it even had bleachers around it.