Chapter Twenty-Three: Two Girls in One

I took a deep breath. Then, I picked up the receiver.

“Diggory Franklin’s office.”

“Hello, Mr. Franklin. It’s Calla Wiley. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. What can I do for you, Calla?”

“Well, I’m actually returning your phone call from this weekend. I hope you can forgive me for not calling you back sooner. I haven’t checked my messages at all, I’ve been so busy in the lab. I wanted to apologize.”

“Oh, there are no apologies necessary. We just met, and we’re both very busy people.” I spoke to her as I would a normal person, but I kept rolling my eyes. How could she sound this normal, and then slide off the deep end in other conversations?

“Well, yes. I know you must be busy. I hope I didn’t call at a bad time?”

“Not at all, Calla.” I paused. “I wouldn’t have given you my card, if I didn’t want you to call. I was beginning to worry that I had offended you, however.”

“Offended me? No, not at all! I should have called you again on Saturday or Sunday. I just got so busy, it slipped my mind. I know we’re strangers, Mr. Franklin, but I’m a very conscientious person. I don’t often forget to be polite. I wanted you to know that.”

“Well, thank you for explaining.” I realized that I was being very formal, as if this was a business call. I had no idea how to restore the fun, flirtatious energy of our last face-to-face meeting.

She seemed to have no memory of her bizarre warnings. I wanted to know more about her, figure out what was going on. Maybe Bianca could explain about the personality changes? Her roommate must know her well. The only way to find out was to get closer to her. Maybe then I could figure out my attraction for her, help her with this strange problem, and get some answers.

“Anyway, we’re a bit off track here…” I said. “I called on the weekend to thank you for a lovely time at the gallery and to see if you were interested in grabbing coffee.”

“I told you before, I’m not really interested in dating…”

“I know. Just as friends. You seem new in town, and you’ve met my best friend, Matt. Obviously I need to spend time with a better class of people.”

She laughed. “Well, it would be hard for you to do much worse, that’s for sure.”

“To that end, I’m extending the hand of friendship. Coffee tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll be there. Eight o’clock sound okay?”

“Perfect.”

We exchanged good-byes and hung up. I smiled. That hadn’t been so bad. Not great, but not a total disaster either. Face-to-face, I’m sure we’d do better in the morning. And then I could convince her to come to my parents’ dinner party the next evening after that. Hopefully I would survive the week without much more craziness.

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“Ready to go?” I asked, standing in Vanessa’s doorway at about five to seven.

She smiled as she turned off her computer. “All set.”

I helped her into her suit jacket, and we walked down to the elevators.

“So, this is your idea. Where are we eating?” I asked.

“I thought you’d like this little Italian place I love. Soprafino’s?”

“I like working with you already,” I said, grinning. We got onto the elevator.

“Oh? You’ve heard of it?”

“Probably my favourite in the city. It’s small and cozy, so it’s not pretentious like some places…”

“But the food is first class. I know what you mean.” She smiled. “Oh, I had some ideas about our team. I think we can safely narrow it down to three of the five interns. I was looking their files over today, and talked to a couple casually. Darren Rice is a very quiet boy; I don’t know why he’s taking law. I looked into his grades, and he tests well but his writing is very dry.”

“You looked into their grades?” I raised an eyebrow.

“They have to submit transcripts to get into our program. I saw some examples of his essays, and he’s not very creative. I think he’s fine in a research capacity, but he’s not one for taking initiative.”

“Well, things will be pretty fast-paced out there. I guess Rice is off the list.”

“Exactly. I also don’t want Sasha Bailey on the team either.”

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