Chapter Four

Devon’s mother had a friend who knew someone at the southern campus at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, who had a contract for group rates at the Claremont Inn. The Dingoes were lodged in two rooms, connecting, for $39.95 a night at the price of a campus visit by Devon, who would have to pretend to be a prospective seminary student.

It was Claremont rather than LA, and the Claremont Inn was a little on the run down side, but it was clean, there was cable, and the breakfast buffet was not bad. On Friday and Saturday night, they could only get one room, but as the hotel emptied on Sunday, the manager had made the connecting room available for an extra ten bucks. They had cleared enough money over their weekend in LA to barely afford it.

“Does that mean, that you’re like going to have to pretend you want to be a priest?” the Dingoes drummer, Dan asked with a grin.

“Should I wear a tie or something?” Devon wondered.

“Do you have a tie?” Oz asked.

“No,” Devon looked appalled. “A tie? No way.”

“Then, no tie,” Oz pointed out. “You don’t want them to want you, do you?”

Devon thought about that for a moment. “I guess not,” he admitted. “But, I kind of feel like I should at least pretend like I’m really interested. I’m getting the free continental breakfast,” he pointed out, waving his ‘Welcome to San Francisco Theological Seminary’ folder. He had one remaining complimentary buffet coupon clipped to the folder by a plastic paper clip with a cross on it.

Looking at it, Oz thought it was something that Willow would like to have. A plastic paper clip with at cross on it.

Oz sat on one of the double beds next to the phone as Chris, the Dingoes bassist came in. Chris was in charge of food. He had an envelope full of coupons his mother collected for him.

“’Kay, we’ve got the 5 for 5 bucks Arby’s—“ this was greeted with groans. Everyone was tired of Arby's. “And,” Chris shook his head at the reaction, “Buy one large Papa John’s pizza, get a second large pizza for three bucks,” he said, “Or, we’ve got some KFC coupons . . .”

“Pizza, show of hands,” Dan called it. “Did anyone notice that someone was running across the roof last night?” he asked.

Devon threw in with pizza, and Oz shrugged and nodded. “Pizza is good,” he agreed. And yes, he had noticed. The running across the roof, toilets flushing, the loud couple having sex, and the amazing amplification properties of the hallway.

He was sharing one room with Devon, who had woken up in the middle of their neighbors’ ‘oooh oooh oooh’ moment of sexual tension to ask Oz to let the owl out. It was moments like these that he really loved about being in a band. The performing, the urban camping, the penny pinching negotiations over food. He didn’t even try to imagine Willow in this setting. She belonged to a different compartment of his life that occasionally intersected, but weren’t meant to be joined together.

He refused to feel guilty about it. When he was away from her, he missed her, and he liked the feeling of missing her. She was a line from a sonnet that they had studied in senior English, she was his ever fixed mark.

Chris negotiated them down to two ingredients and went to the other room to order the pizza. Oz checked his watch. It was ten after seven. He asked Willow to be home at seven. He picked up the phone, dialed his calling card number, and then dialed the San Jose number he now had memorized. It had been three days since he had talked to Willow, an unusually long time. Dan had followed Chris into the other room to argue with him about the two ingredient stipulation. Devon was reading through his folder of campus information about the seminary.

“Dude,” he said to Oz, “this is for a master’s degree. I haven’t finished college,” he pointed out.

Oz grinned, and shook his head, the phone was ringing and at any second she would pick up. Maybe sounding breathless and as anxious to talk to him as he was to hear her voice. That would be nice.

When he got no immediate response, Devon looked up from his campus map and saw Oz on the phone. He nodded. “Calling your girlfriend?” he guessed. “You want me to get lost?” he asked, nodding towards the door to the adjoining room.

The answering machine picked up. He missed the clicking sound of it coming on with Devon talking and just heard, “Hi. I’m not able to get to the phone right now, so please leave a message and I will call back. Promise!” recorded by Willow when she moved in. He frowned. Not home? It was after seven. Where was she? Was she alright?

He shook his head at Devon, waiting for the beep to record a message, “Wills, its Oz. Starting to get a little worried, baby. Where are you? Give me a call,” he read the phone number off the phone and gave the room number. “Give me a call as soon as you get in, okay? Don’t worry about what time it is,” he added before hanging up.

“Not there, huh?” Devon said. “Maybe they’re making her work late,” he said.

“Yeah,” Oz thought it was possible. He dialed her office and got voice mail again. He repeated his message and hung up.

Dan came back in to get the keys to the van to go pick up sodas and the pizza. Chris volunteered to go with him. After they were gone, Oz sat watching television without absorbing any of it.

Devon tossed his folder of seminary information aside. “How long has it been since you talked to her?” he asked.

“Friday morning,” Oz admitted.

It sounded like a long time, even to Devon. Willow Rosenberg was an odd girl. Smart, and kind of pretty. She was the sort of person you could rely on, though Devon knew a lot of odd things happened around Willow and her friends.

“She hasn’t been home?” he guessed.

Oz looked over at him. “Its not like she has to sit around at home waiting for me to call,” he pointed out.

Devon nodded, “True, but this is Willow. She would so sit around at home waiting for you to call,” he pointed out. “Maybe you should call one of her friends.”

Oz considered it for a moment, and then he picked up the phone and dialed Buffy.

It was dinner time at chez Summers. Joyce Summers was eating in the kitchen at the breakfast bar. With teenage Slayer enhanced telephone reflexes, Buffy usually got to the phone first, but she was out with Xander.

She left the stool and walked over to the wall phone. “Hello?”

“May I speak to Buffy,” a boy asked.

“She’s not here right now,” Joyce told him. “Would you like me to have her call you later?”

“Mrs. Summers? This is Oz, uh, Daniel Osborne, that is,” he said. “I’m—“

“Willow’s boyfriend. I know who you are Oz,” Joyce was amused. “Would you like Buffy to call you? Where are you?” she asked. “How is your band doing?”

“We are outside of LA,” he said, “And, good. Not starving or sleeping in the van, good,” he qualified. “Sunnydale is the same?”

“Quiet,” Joyce informed him. “Most of the vamps in town got dusted during the Ascension,” she sounded remarkably matter-of-fact.

“Right. That’s of the good,” Oz said. He came to the point of his call. “Actually, um, I’ve been trying to reach Willow for a couple of days, and I’m getting voice mail everywhere. Do you know if Buffy has talked to her?”

He was over reacting. She was probably busy, and he was impossible to reach since he was out in the evenings when she was at home.

Buffy had complained at breakfast about not getting any of her emails to Willow answered. “Buffy’s father gave her a computer for her graduation present, and she’s been trying to email her, but she isn’t sure if she has the right email address,” Joyce said.

Oz sat up. Willow, who checked her email before she finished getting dressed in the morning and spent the entire day on line at work, had not responded to email messages? That sounded very not right to him. The phone line hummed.

“This is Buffy. She may have gotten the email address wrong,” Joyce pointed out. Not that her daughter was stupid, but she always had so much on her mind. In that way, Willow was the perfect compliment to Buffy. She tended to be more organized and she was always willing to pick up the slack and be Buffy’s memory, tutor, or study buddy.

“Friday around noon was the last time I talked to her,” Oz said. “This doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Is there any way that you could go to San Jose? Or, wait a minute. I guess we are closer. Maybe Xander could go?” she suggested.

“Yeah,” Oz said. “That’s a good idea,” He kind of wanted to go himself, only he was driving the van, with all the band equipment and band members, who would be stranded in Claremont if he took off. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Xander to go. He was all over that. Willow was with him because that was what she wanted. She had made that more than clear to him. “I think I’ll go myself.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Joyce said, hearing how anxious he was, in what he wasn’t saying. “You have a Sunnydale mindset,” she reminded Oz.

“Sure. It probably is nothing,” Oz agreed, “Thanks, Mrs. Summers—“

“Oz, call me Joyce,” she corrected. “Why don’t you call as soon as you get there? I’ll let Buffy know to expect you to call.”

“Thanks, Joyce,” Oz said. Some how he had felt more like an adult calling Buffy’s mom Mrs. Summers than using her first name. “No matter how late?” he confirmed.

“No matter how late,” she agreed. “Willow is family.”

“Right,” Oz agreed. “Okay, then,” he said. “So I’ll talk to Buffy or you in a couple of hours,” he said. “It’s probably nothing.”

Devon, who had heard Oz’s side of the conversation, was philosophical. “It’s not like we have a gig lined up for Wednesday night.” Monday and Tuesday were club weekend days, with no action to be had unless you were willing to play free. “And we can crash on your girlfriend’s floor, or something,” he pointed out, not demanding to be talked into the eight hour journey north.



The conversation with Oz bothered Joyce more than she let on. There could be a lot of reasons why Willow was not returning phone calls, though none of them was particularly reassuring. After she finished her dinner and before she started cleaning up the kitchen, she called Rupert Giles, intending to leave a message there for Buffy to call home if she stopped by the Watcher’s apartment or called to report in after her patrol.

Despite the fact that the Watcher’s Council had fired him, he had remained an uninterrupted presence in Buffy’s life. Resentment and gratitude colored Joyce’s feelings toward him. She would always resent the Watcher’s Council and the way that they had kept her in the dark for so long. Encouraging Buffy to lie to her had been unforgivable. She was grateful, though, that Giles’ loyalties were to Buffy, and not to the organization he had served. She was more appreciative of how he had adapted to meet Buffy’s needs rather than trying to mold her into a perfect little Slayer.

There remained a fair amount of awkwardness between them. She heard it in his voice when he recognized hers. “Ah, hello, Joyce,” he said. “Buffy is not here right now, if you are looking for her,” he said, sounding very much like he hoped that was the reason for her call.

“If she stops in, could you have her call me?” she asked. “She went out with Xander. I think they were going to the Bronze, or maybe to the movies?” she wasn’t sure. “It’s important,” she stressed.

“Yes, of course,” he said, and then, cautiously, “Is anything wrong? That is, is there anything I can—uh, help with, or—“

“Oz called looking for Buffy,” Joyce interrupted. “He hasn’t been able to reach Willow, and he’s worried,” she said. “It may be nothing, but he was asking if Buffy had spoken to her recently,” she explained. “He’s going to San Jose tonight to check on her, and he’s going to call when he gets there.”