‘A party on Friday night,’ I replied.
‘Did Bel invite you?’ she asked. ‘Can I come?’
‘No and yes,’ I said, nudging her to take a bite out of the Morning Bun. ‘Remember when I delivered those packages to 4101 Parva? It turns out this old – I mean, older lady lives there who used to be an actress and we started talking and I went back to visit and now she’s having a big party on Friday night and I think we’re sort of friends?’
It wasn’t disbelief on my sister’s face so much as she was looking at me like I’d had a mental breakdown.
‘You made friends with the woman who lives at 4101?’
‘Yep, Myrna Moore.’
‘And you’ve been visiting her?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And she’s invited you to a party?’
‘Technically, the party was my idea,’ I admitted. ‘She’s moving into a retirement home and wants to have one last blowout before she goes.’
‘What sort of blowout do you have when you’re a hundred years old?’ Suzanne scoffed. ‘Tea and cakes and haemorrhoid cream?’
‘She’s eighty-two and from what I’ve gathered so far it’s more likely to be oysters, champagne and poppers, but I can’t speak to the haemorrhoid cream. What people put in or on their bum is between them and their god.’
‘Fine, I’m officially intrigued,’ she replied through a mouthful of warm cinnamon goodness. ‘And if you can fit me into your busy schedule this evening, I’ve got the company season tickets for the Dodgers game tonight.’
Sitting bolt upright, I gave my sister a very serious look. ‘Did you just suggest we go to a sporting event?’
‘The tickets include free food and drink.’
‘Fine, I’m in.’ I held my hand up for a high five which she missed spectacularly.
‘I’ve got four tickets,’ she added. ‘So I invited Bel and told her to bring Ren.’
‘Oh good,’ I replied. ‘Fun.’
What could be more fun than spending several hours outside in a stadium watching a game I didn’t understand with my wonderful new friend who I loved and her amazing new boyfriend who I definitely didn’t really fancy at all, honest? Nothing. Maybe sticking hot pokers in my eyes but I couldn’t think of another single thing.
‘Hopefully this one works out for her,’ Suze said, standing up to stretch. ‘That girl has the worst luck when it comes to dating. She’s even worse than you.’
‘And how’s your love life?’ I asked, deflecting the blow. ‘I must have missed the queue of men beating a path to the door.’
‘Be ready to leave by four,’ she replied. Suzanne was pretty good at deflecting herself. ‘I want to make sure I get my bobblehead.’
‘I don’t even know who you are any more,’ I yelled after her as she marched inside, throwing up a very sisterly middle-finger salute.
‘This place is ridiculous,’ I declared when we finally trekked across the acres of car park and arrived at Dodger Stadium. ‘It’s massive.’
‘Almost as big as your mouth,’ Suzanne said sweetly as she punched me in the shoulder.
The Chapman girls were not sports people. I didn’t have a favourite football team, I couldn’t understand rugby and cricket was, to put it politely, for wankers. I was probably being harsh, but the thought of running up and down a field wearing white clothes then drinking tea was completely insane. The only sport Suzanne had ever shown any interest in before now was professional wrestling, and Gran banned us from watching it after a flying elbow off the top of the climbing frame resulted in bruised ribs for me and a broken wrist for Suzanne.
A cheerful man with a weathered face scanned our tickets as I attempted to catch my breath. Perhaps he hadn’t had to climb roughly fourteen thousand stairs to get to the gate. ‘The game hasn’t even started and I’m knackered,’ I grumbled. ‘How long until we can go home?’
‘Game starts at seven.’ She was altogether too chipperfor my liking. It wasn’t natural. ‘We’ll probably be home by eleven, half past at the latest.’
‘Four hours?’ I found myself frozen to the spot, only to be immediately but amiably jostled by twenty different people in oversized white shirts. ‘How can a game of rounders last four hours?’
Suzanne grabbed my wrist like a naughty toddler and pulled me out of the flow of traffic. ‘Be very careful what you say. People here take their baseball very seriously and I am not getting involved if you get in a fight. I told you when you got into one with that girl in Year Eight, first time, last time.’
