Read Love Game for Free Online Page B

repeated.
    Ruth turned toward me. “This is a nuthouse.”
    The grinding got louder. I felt my brain bouncing in my skull. “The dolphin that bought the house!” Grandma explained, her voice straining against the noise.
    “Woman, you need a padded cell,” Ruth said.
    “The dolphin that bought the house?” I asked Grandma.
    “Yes, he’s renovating it, and then he’s going to sell it. I hope a young family moves in.” She clapped her hands and pointed at me. “Or a single man!”
    “Single men don’t buy houses, Zelda,” Ruth sneered. “Neither do dolphins.”
    Grandma and I exchanged looks. We were thinking the same thing. Holden was a single man and he had bought the house next door, but that didn’t end the way we had hoped.
    “It’s not necessarily the end, dolly,” Grandma said.
    My brain clicked into high gear. “Flipper!” I yelled in triumph. “You mean a flipper bought the house across the street!”
    Grandma nodded. “That’s what I said. Dolphin. He says he’s going to turn it around quickly. I bet he’s got thirty men working on it.”
    “Not at this time of day, he doesn’t,” Ruth said. She walked upstairs and came back down a couple of minutes later with a baseball bat in her hand and a look of determination on her face.
    “Uh,” I said.
    “I’ll get them to shut up,” Ruth announced, and stormed out of the house.
    “I’ll put the fried chicken and mashed potatoes in the oven to keep warm.” Grandma walked back to the kitchen.
    I sighed. I didn’t want to run after Ruth in order to protect her from a twenty-five-to-life sentence and to save the dolphin from being bludgeoned to death. I had had bad experiences with the house across the street. As far as I was concerned, it should be given a wide berth. Besides, it didn’t take a genius to realize I shouldn’t chase after a bat-wielding Ruth Fletcher. She could be cantankerous, was probably a home-run hitter, and five gets you ten she was juicing.
    But it was obvious we weren’t going to eat until we were all sitting together at the table, and nothing could get me moving like the promise of mashed potatoes.
    In order to save time, I didn’t bother putting on shoes. I ran out into the night toward Ruth and the earsplitting grinding noise, wearing only Spencer’s tube socks on my feet. They were cushy and warm, and I would kill Ruth if they got holes.
    The house was bathed in floodlights and swarming with construction workers. They climbed on and over the house and passed in and out of the doors like ants in an ant farm. The grinding noise was actually several grinding noises. And the grinding noises were accompanied by knocking noises that I hadn’t noticed before.
    Luckily, Ruth was slow. I caught up to her halfway across the street.
    “Ruth,” I called. “Stop!”
    She turned with her bat resting against her shoulder, doing her best Sammy Sosa impression.
    “I’ll just be a minute,” she told me.
    “Ruth, you have a bat.”
    “This isn’t a bat. It’s a 1928 Louisville Slugger. Where it goes, I go.”
    “So do I,” I said.
    It was easy to find the man in charge. The flipper looked shockingly like Abraham Lincoln: tall, ugly, with ratty facial hair. He wore shorts, construction boots, and a puffy jacket, and he held an official-looking clipboard. Ruth spotted him at the same time.
    “Shut the hell up! Shut the hell up!” she yelled at him without preamble, lifting the bat high.
    He smiled like he was the lunch hostess at Denny’s. “May I help you, ma’am?” he asked her.
    “Turn it off!”
    “Turn what off?”
    “The noise! The lights! You can’t march into this neighborhood like a panzer division.”
    “I’ve got a license,” he said, holding up a paper, his smile never wavering. “I can do whatever I want until ten.”
    “Ten?” Ruth shouted. I stood back out of range of the Louisville Slugger. Her eyeballs glowed red. She was ready to blow.
    “Ten,” he repeated.
    “I’ll show you ten,