The Merchant of Venice Beach Read Online Free Page B

moved to Southern California. None of them really envisioned the whole story, thought Suzanna. They just couldn’t imagine life without one another.
Now, whenever Suzanna did imagine life without them, she felt guilty.
She turned the DIAGNOSIS:Dance! business card over and over again, staring at it as if it were about to impart some great wisdom. Or give her permission to claim these dance classes as her own.
A little time apart will be good for all of us. . . . Besides, don’t I deserve my own space?
Suzanna looked up “character shoes” on eBay. Suzanna adored eBay and never bought anything without checking it out on the online auction site first. Fernando introduced her to it as a way of getting some great deals on stuff for the Bun’s kitchen. Eric, ever the poetic soul, at first eyed the website suspiciously, but after Fernando pointed out that you could buy leather-bound books for a veritable song, he was in. The three of them had gone through an eBay-
buying-frenzy. Suzanna feared they might need a twelve-step program to disengage, but luckily, things settled down. While the three of them now had a more sensible relationship with it, Suzanna was not about to go shoe shopping without seeing what eBay had to offer.
Both the tearoom and the bookstore were locked up for the night, but Suzanna let herself into the tiny office at the back of the bookstore half of the establishment. Eric often worked late hours even after he’d hung out his “Closed” sign, and after determining he was nowhere in sight, she jumped on the Internet and started scouting through eBay’s “clothing, shoes, and accessories” category.
Typing in the words “dance shoes,” Suzanna gasped when over twenty thousand choices appeared. Through much trial and error, she finally made her choice: a great pair of black-and-white dance shoes. She was about to bid on them when, in small print, she read, “These shoes will signal to the world that you are ready to SWING or HOP.”
Well, that’s not for me. I’m not big on signaling the world about anything I do, let alone swinging or hopping.
She narrowed her search to include the word “character” and was so absorbed in the process that she didn’t hear the boys walk in.
“Hey, want to just grab a pizza this—” Eric started to ask, but Fernando interrupted him.
“What are you looking at, Moan-a?” Fernando asked.
Suzanna bristled inwardly at the nickname. Fernando had been calling her “Moan-a” since high school because he thought Suzanna had a tendency to be a downer. Suzanna’s parents had worked relentlessly to ensure that Suzanna’s full name was never bastardized to “Suzy” or “Sue” or “Suzie-Q,” but you can’t stop nicknames, no matter how hard you try. Suzanna wished the boys would have settled on something as innocuous as a “Suzy” derivative. The only nickname that was worse than “Moan-a” was Eric’s little pet name for her. He called her “Beet” because Suzanna tended to flush easily. When they were teenagers and a bunch of the kids were hanging out, Eric would turn to Suzanna and say, “Hey, everybody, watch this: Beet, turn red.”
And then, as hard as she tried not to turn red, she would turn red.
Suzanna didn’t think the boys ever thought about the origins of these monikers, because they continued to use them affectionately.
“Nothing important,” Suzanna said.
“Come on . . . You’ve got on your eBay face,” Fernando said.
There was no denying “eBay face,” so Suzanna quickly clicked on the Health and Beauty section to throw the guys off the track. Suzanna looking on eBay for anything (but especially for beauty products that would make her look younger, thinner, sexier, shinier, or somehow more glorious) was business as usual around the Bun.
“Hey, guys,” she said, peering casually at the screen. “Did you say something about pizza?”
“Let’s see what you’re up to,” Fernando said, and put his chin on top of Suzanna’s