If Wishing Made It So by Lucy Finn Page B

didn’t know who might have Hildy’s cell phone number, but maybe one of her girlfriends did. He thought she was still friendly with Susan. Mike remembered Susan, the cheerleader, didn’t he? She used to be Susan Jeremiah before she got married. He’d try to get her number for Mike, he said, and no, as far as he knew, Hildy wasn’t seeing anybody. Why did Mike want to know?
    Mike said he was just curious, that was all, and why didn’t George mind his own business.
    George laughed at him. ‘‘You still have something going for her, don’t you, Mike?’’
    Mike told him to shut up. Didn’t George remember he was engaged?
    ‘‘Maybe you’re the one who needs to remember, Big Mike,’’ George said, laughed again, and hung up.
    Afterward Mike called Hildy’s home number and left a message on the machine, asking her to call him. Hell, he had swallowed his pride and pleaded with her to call him. But he was sure she wouldn’t, not after meeting Kiki this afternoon. Mike lay down on the couch and put a throw pillow over his face. He felt miserable.
    Then he heard Kiki’s voice. ‘‘Michael? Oh, are you asleep already?’’
    He didn’t answer. He smelled the heavy floral scent of her perfume as she walked over to the sofa. She stood there a minute. He didn’t move. He made his breathing soft and regular. He added a snore or two to be even more convincing. Then he heard her walk away and go out the door.
    The minute he heard the door click shut, Mike sat up and tossed the pillow onto a nearby chair. He had a brilliant idea. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. He’d drive up to Ship Bottom and find Hildy, to apologize to her. It was the right thing to do.
    Hildy had told him she lived on Twenty-fifth Street, the first house from the boulevard. A gray house, she said, with whales on it. If he left right now, he’d be there in an hour. Maybe she hadn’t eaten yet, and she’d go have a pizza with him. Kiki didn’t eat pizza. She said it had too many calories.
    Before he walked out the door five minutes later, he had brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and splashed on some cologne. He checked what money he had in his wallet, grabbed his car keys, left the suite, and headed for the hotel’s parking lot.
    Whatever had been wrong with him must have passed, he thought. He felt great.
    Just eight miles south of Trump Plaza in the Victorian town of Ocean City, another man was also obsessing about Hildy Caldwell. Jimmy the Bug had spent most of his day trying to track her down too.
    His hunt had started off well. It had been easy to find out who had hit the jackpot on that Slingo machine, the one where he had left the bottle. The casino cashier wouldn’t give up the winner’s name or address, but for fifty bucks Jimmy had gotten a good enough description to spot the girl coming off the beach at Michigan Avenue: same clothes, same oversized tote bag with SAVE THE WOLVES on it, same blond hair. He knew right away it was the right chick.
    He couldn’t catch up with her, but he managed to get her license plate number. Even though it was a Pennsylvania plate, he figured he had it made. He’d have the genie back in no time. He got in his white Cadillac CTS and drove back to his summer-house in Ocean City. Once there, it took him a few phone calls, but he got a state cop, the nephew of one of his guys, to run the plates. By late afternoon, he had her name and her address.
    It turned out this Hildy Caldwell lived out in the sticks somewhere between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, about three, three and a half hours from Atlantic City. Jimmy the Bug made a few more calls, and a friend of a friend from Scranton agreed to send one of his guys to her house. The guy was supposed to wait for this girl to get back from Atlantic City if she wasn’t there already, grab her as soon as she got out of her car, and take the bottle. End of story. Only it didn’t turn out that way.
    ‘‘Puggy!’’ Jimmy the Bug