If Wishing Made It So by Lucy Finn Page A

threw the remote control on the coffee table. ‘‘I’m not feeling well. I’m not up to going out tonight.’’
    ‘‘What!’’ The veins on Kiki’s neck knotted up like twisted blue yarn. ‘‘You can’t be serious! We have reservations. We can’t just stand Odelia up. Michael, stop this nonsense right now. You have to go!’’
    Mike had never noticed before how harsh and irritating her voice was. Its sharpness cut into his brain like a buzz saw. He wanted to shout back at her, I don’t care about Odelia. I don’t care about the Foo Fighters. I don’t care—about you! Instead, he replied in a calm and reasonable voice, knowing that diplomacy was the wiser tack to take with Kiki, whose temper was legendary. ‘‘Of course you can’t stand up your friends. That’s why you need to go. Really. I want you to go without me. I can’t eat anything anyway. Plus, I feel so rotten, I’d spoil your evening.’’
    Kiki took a long hard look at him. ‘‘You do look pale. If you’re feeling that sick, maybe you do have food poisoning. I should call Odelia and cancel. I don’t want to leave you here alone.’’
    ‘‘No, no! I insist. You go ahead. I’m totally beat, that’s all. I’m heading directly to bed. Why let this screw up your night out? I’d feel even worse knowing that you’re sitting around here when you should be having a good time.’’
    ‘‘Are you sure?’’ She was already moving toward the bedroom to finish dressing.
    ‘‘Positive,’’ he called after her.
    Mike really didn’t feel good. His neck had stiffened up. His back ached a little. His nerves felt as if little cartoon mice were doing a tap dance on them. But he had lied about his stomach being queasy. He actually felt hungry. He thought about ordering a pizza or something once Kiki left. Then his thoughts went back to what he had been mulling over for hours: how to reach Hildy.
    He had called his mother earlier today. She didn’t have Hildy’s cell phone number. She had looked in the church member directory for St. Paul’s in Lehman and reported that only Hildy’s home phone was listed. She suggested that Mike leave a message for Hildy and when she got it— she must be checking her messages, his mother reassured him—she would call him back. And wasn’t it lovely that he had run into Hildy again after all these years?
    Then she fell silent. ‘‘And how’s Kiki?’’ she asked at last.
    His mother had tried to like Kiki, Mike knew that. They just didn’t click. His mother never complained when they didn’t come out to Lehman for her birthday, or even when they missed Christmas. They had invited her to go skiing at Aspen with them during the holidays last year, but his mother had said no, it was nice of them to think of her, but she always sang with the choir on Christmas Eve. She liked to be home. She’d go over to Aunt Letty’s instead of cooking since Mike wasn’t going to be there.
    Mike’s mother didn’t get mad or complain, but Mike felt guilty. He told Kiki that they should go to Pennsylvania for Christmas Day and leave for Aspen the day after or even that night. Kiki had given him that look, the one that said he was an imbecile.
    ‘‘Don’t you ever listen? I told you a half dozen times.’’ She was exasperated with him, obviously. ‘‘I’m shooting photos for People magazine’s big feature, ‘Brad Pitt’s Christmas in Aspen.’ We have to be there early on the twenty-fourth.’’
    As it turned out, Mike spent most of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone while Kiki was busy ‘‘with Brad.’’ He did some solitary skiing to pass the time and then drank martinis at a bar along with the other lonely people. Mike pushed the memory away and thought about Hildy again.
    This afternoon, after talking to his mother, Mike had reached his old friend George Ide at his auto repair shop in Trucksville. Over the clanging of metal and loud banging of an air compressor, George yelled out that he