Breaking the Bank (22 page)

“Can I give you a hand?” asked Choi, who was right behind Costello.

“No, I'm okay.”

“Who's
that
?” Eden asked, fully awake now. Awake and alarmed. “We have company,” Mia said. “They're not company,” Eden aptly pointed out. “They're the police.” Her eyes got wider and rounder as her mouth got smaller and tighter. “Mom.” She turned to Mia. “Why are the police here?” Mia couldn't meet her gaze and instead looked toward the open doorway, where Choi and Roy were busy opening and shutting, lifting and inspecting.

“Hey!” Eden cried. All at once she was off Mia's lap and streaking across the floor. “Don't touch Petunia!”

Roy ignored this and kept on at what he was doing, but Choi had the grace to stop and look slightly abashed, though he clearly had no idea of who or what Petunia might be. With great dignity, Eden took her balding stuffed cow from the bed and tenderly carried her back into the living room. Then she settled, cross-legged on the floor, to watch as the two in blue finished their job.

Mia could not bring herself to say a word about what was happening, and for once in her life, Eden seemed to have no more questions. They sat quietly for another few minutes, until Eden's eyelids began to flutter. Using Petunia as a pillow, she put her head down on the floor and was almost instantly asleep. Mia took the blanket from her own bed to cover her and then returned to Eden's room, where Choi and Roy finally seemed to be finished with their odious job.

“Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Saul,” said Roy. Mia saw him glance at Eden, tucked in her fetal curl on the floor, and in that second, she hated him just a shade less. “You'll be hearing from us soon.”

“So don't go anywhere,” added Costello. “You mean I can't go to work? Or take my daughter to school?”

“I meant like out of state,” Costello said, shaking her head slightly, as if she couldn't believe Mia was so naïve. Not a single hair moved with the motion.

Well fine,
thought Mia.
Who's planning to go out of state? Not me.
Except the next minute she remembered that she had told her mother that she would be coming out west after Christmas. It was this new wrinkle that Mia was trying, mentally, to smooth as she walked the three of them to the door.

M
IA
, I'
M REALLY
sorry,” Fred said for about the tenth time in the five minutes they had been on the phone. “I've known Weed for years; I had no idea he was dealing. Using, yeah. But a lot of people use. And as for the police being on to him, I swear didn't have a clue.”

“That's okay, Fred. I know you didn't know. You were only trying to help.” Mia unbuttoned her coat and set down the bag of groceries she had toted home from Whole Foods. Eden was sitting in front of the television, and Mia had just started to consider the dinner options— pasta or eggs, eggs or pasta—when Fred called. She had called him earlier in the day, but a wine merchant from California had beeped in and they hadn't had a chance to finish.

“So there were three of them.”

“Uh-huh.” She peered into the bag and discovered that she hadn't bought eggs after all. How could she have forgotten?

“And they searched the entire apartment?”

“They did.”

“You must have been pretty freaked out.”

“I was.” This was driving her nuts; didn't he get it? She was not free to discuss this, not with Eden sitting right there. While her daughter seemed to be engrossed by whatever twaddle she had on, Mia knew that if she so much as uttered the word
police,
the television program, in all its compelling inanity, would be instantly abandoned in favor of rehashing the real-live drama that had played out in their apartment last night.

“I guess you can't talk,” Fred said.

Bingo! But she said, in the most off hand, conversational tone she could summon, “That's right.”

“How about if I ask questions that only require a yes or no answer,” offered Fred. “Here goes—do you have a lawyer lined up?”

“Not yet,” said Mia. “I'm working on it.”

“Guess you don't want a recommendation from me.”

“No, Fred.” She had to control herself, because this comment made her feel like shrieking or hurling the eggs she wished she had remembered to buy. “I really don't think that would be a good idea.”

He was quiet for a moment; she could hear him breathing. “What are you doing?”

“Now?”

“Tonight.”

“Not much. Making dinner, for a start.”

“Let me take care of dinner. It's the least I can do.”

“That's very sweet, but I don't feel up to going anywhere. And I don't want to ask Luisa's mother to watch Eden again.”

“I'll get takeout and bring it over. You like Thai?”

“Sure, but—”

“Great. I'll be there in an hour. Kyra will be with me; is that okay?”

“That's fine,” she said. Fred's daughter was what—sixteen? Seventeen? Eden would like hanging out with a teenager. “I really appreciate it. But Fred”—she marched into the bathroom with the phone and shut the door firmly—”I don't want to hear
one single thing
about last night in front of Eden. Not a
word,
okay?”

“Not a word,” Fred repeated before clicking off.

He'd better be trustworthy, Mia thought. She had spent the entire day fixated on her one and only brush with the law, ducking into the ladies' room at the office to make furtive phone calls, completely unable to focus on the manuscript or any other aspect of her job. There was nothing more she could do about it tonight, and she needed, in a major way, to give it a rest. Plus, she was guilty about having told Eden
an out-and-out lie: she had said that the police were in their apartment because of its proximity to Manny's; they were trying to find out more about him and mistakenly thought Mia might somehow be involved. Eden was not convinced and kept asking questions. But Mia was able to stave them off—barely, temporarily—and she most emphatically did not want the topic reopened again tonight.

F
RED SHOWED UP
forty-five minutes later; he had motorcycle helmets, plastic shopping bags filled with food, and his daughter. Kyra was tall—almost as tall as Fred, who must have been six feet. She wore her brown hair in two slightly goofy-looking pigtails that spurted out from either side of her head and was dressed in a confusing amalgam of layers: lace-trimmed baby-doll dress over jeans, two pairs of leg warmers bunched over the jeans, a long, tight sweater, and a cropped vest over that. Her bag, one of those canvas messenger affairs with all kinds of pockets and compartments, was bulging painfully with the essential contents of her young life. Mia imagined her lugging it everywhere with her, the teenage version of a security blanket. But she seemed sweet and not at all condescending toward Mia, Eden, or even, amazingly, Fred. After they had eaten—or, in Eden's case, nibbled— the glass noodles, spring rolls, and pad thai that Fred brought over, she asked Eden if she wanted to watch a DVD.

“We don't have a DVD player,” Eden said, clearly disappointed. “I do,” Kyra said, opening up her bag and rooting around inside. Mia spied a bottle of hair gel, a makeup case, and a cell phone, and that was just the first layer. Sure enough, after a minute or so of digging, Kyra came up with a small portable player. “I just need a place to plug it in.”

“If you want, we can go into my room,” Eden said shyly. “Sure. I want to see your room, anyway.”

The two girls left the table, where Mia and Fred sat facing each other over a field of empty takeout containers.

“She's a nice girl,” said Mia as she began to gather up the trash. “About ninety-eight percent of the time, that's true,” said Fred. “And the other two percent?”

“Ah, you know. Typical teenage stuff. Plus, sometimes she gets mad at me because I split up with her mother. She blames me for the divorce even though it was my ex-wife's idea.
She
was the one who started sleeping with her Pilates instructor.”

“Eden's the same way,” Mia said. “Lloyd left, but she blames me.”

“You said he's been traveling a lot lately?”

“In Asia. For a while, he was living with his girlfriend—the one he left me for—in Queens. But she's given up the apartment, and God only knows where he's going to land. Sometimes I wish it were far away; then I wouldn't have to see him.”

Was this true? She didn't even know anymore. What she did know was that she was not up for exploring the nuances of her present feelings for Lloyd with Fred. “For Eden's sake, though, I hope it's somewhere close. This business of his swooping down and then disappearing is tearing her up.”

A burst of laughter from the other room distracted Mia for a moment; she looked at Fred and smiled. If Eden was happy, how bad could anything be?

“She's good with younger kids,” Fred said. “She wants to be a camp counselor this summer.” He walked over to Mia, who was standing by the sink. “Hey, let me do that.”

“I'll dry then,” she said, stepping aside.

After the dishes were done, Mia suddenly felt awkward and unsure of what to offer next in the way of entertainment. Fred already knew she didn't have a DVD player, and her VCR had broken months ago. The reception on the television was erratic, but unless they wanted to join the girls in Eden's room, that was pretty much it.

“Do you want to see if there's a movie on?” she asked Fred.

“I've got a better idea.” Fred searched the pocket of his jacket and held up his prize—a five-inch transistor radio with a titanium finish—so that Mia could see it. Then he turned it on and adjusted the frequency. In seconds, there was the sound of big-band music— shades of Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington—filling the room. “Care to dance?”

“You do think of everything, don't you?” Mia was actually charmed. “I try,” said Fred. “Though I mostly use it for listening to the game.”

“Baseball?”

“Baseball, football, basketball, tennis, soccer—if there's a ball, I'm there. Oh, and hockey. I follow hockey, too.”

“That's a puck, not a ball.”

“Close enough,” said Fred, and then he reached for her.

Fred was what once would have been called a smooth dancer. He knew how to lead, but he was not overbearing, and he had a nimble way of moving that made her feel graceful, even though she knew that she was only a mediocre dancer at best. She had taken a bunch of les-sons once, while in college, because at the time it had seemed like a cool, retro thing to do. It
was
a cool, retro thing to do, Mia decided, as Fred spun her around. And it was fun, besides. Like sex, without all the attendant complications.

“You're good,” she said, letting herself lean into him just a little bit more.

“You're not bad yourself.”

“Liar.”

“Well, okay. Maybe you are bad. But I don't care.”

“Well, you should. I might step on your foot.”

“Step, stomp, do anything you like,” he said, dipping his head so that his lips tickled her ear. “I can take it.”

She lifted her face and kissed him, quick and light, on the mouth. He didn't respond, so she tried again—a little harder, a little deeper.

This time he kissed her back, a long, juicy, Hollywood close-up kind of kiss. She ran the tip of her tongue over his chipped tooth, testing the sharpness, the delicately defined edge. It was only when they heard the cheering, a great swell of noise, that they pulled apart. Mia was momentarily confused until she realized it was the sound track from the DVD. “Maybe we should go and check on them,” she said.

The door to Eden's room was closed. Mia knocked, but there was no answer, so she cautiously turned the knob and peered in.

“Everything okay?” asked Fred. “Take a look.” She stepped away so he could see. The two girls had fallen asleep on the bed, Petunia wedged in between them. Eden's face had been dabbed with color—sparkly blue on her eyelids, pink on her cheeks, a deeper shade of rose on her lips. The contents of Kyra's makeup bag—a jumble of brushes, pencils, wands, and tubes of shimmering pigment—were strewn around them. The DVD was still playing, and Fred turned it off.

“Kyra's down for the count,” Fred said. “She's up by six for swim practice, and she tends to conk out pretty early.”

“What time is it, anyway?” Mia asked. “Ten past ten.”

“Then Eden's probably out for the night, too. I guess we could just leave them there. Like they're at a slumber party.”

“We could,” said Fred. “We certainly could.”

Mia didn't look at Fred until he was standing beside her again. “That leaves you and me . . .” he began. The music from the radio in the other room filled the silence. Mia didn't know what she wanted. She did kiss him after all. But a kiss was just a kiss, right? That was what the song said anyway.

“You okay?” Fred asked. When she didn't answer, he added, “I told you I'd wait. No pressure, all right?”

She looked at him then. He was so earnest it pained her. He had
probably been a Boy Scout when he was a kid. So now he was a Boy Scout turned bartender. She giggled.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked. “No,” she said. Actually, she had been, but immediately stopped. “I'm not.” She touched his hair. His buzz cut was plush under her fingertips; it felt good. “You really think they'll stay asleep?”

“I do,” Fred said. He pulled her closer and started to nuzzle her neck.

“I didn't make my bed today,” she said. “Do I look like I care?”

F
RED WAS RIGHT
: the girls remained asleep for so long that they got to do it twice. The first time was frenzied and awkward; in his haste to get Mia's panties off, he ripped them, which was actually kind of funny but annoying, too. He accidentally slammed her head against the wall, causing him to pull out so he could cover the nascent, just-blooming bump with kisses. And his hand caught in the braided chain that Mia wore all the time now; the chain snapped and the locket slithered deep into the bedclothes. Ruefully, Mia dug it out and set it aside to deal with later.