Hot Springs (17 page)

Amid the various pornography on David’s computer there had been a series of shots taken at the office of a girl in a dental chair, a girl with dark hair and elaborate tattoos. She knew who it was—the part-timer David had taken on last year, after laying off Esmeralda Ortiz. The practice wasn’t doing well, though David didn’t share much in the way of details. There were three other dentists in the Springs who advertised their offices as being specifically Christian, and that was a lot of competition. What about non-Christians who needed work on their teeth? Wasn’t his business plan excluding them? Of course not, he’d said, they’re welcome, but she doubted they felt it. Did Hindu people go to their own dentists, she’d asked? Muslims? Jews? Teeth were teeth.

She pushed open the car door and stepped down onto the curb. A light rain was starting to materialize the way it always did late in the day in summer. In a couple of hours, it would be clear again, but for the next little while the winds would kick up and the skies would turn the color of pencil lead.

She mounted the front steps, doing her best to ignore the huge fact of David’s Jimmy parked in the driveway to her right.
Working late
, he’d said.
I’ll get some Chinese.

In response to her quick press of the bell, there came a sound of footsteps. She imagined she heard whispering, too, but it might just have been the wind in the trees. The door opened with a jangle
and there was the woman from the photograph, though this time fully dressed. White T-shirt, tight jeans. Robin. A birdy name. Her arms were blue with drawing, but her face seemed nice enough. “Yes?” she said.

“I’d like to speak with my husband,” said Tessa.

The woman’s expression remained unchanged.

“Can I come in? Is he naked or something? It’s all right if he is. I’ve seen him that way, too.”

She opened the door wider. “Well, I guess if you want to.” She had a gap between her front teeth, and Tessa wondered if this was attractive to David, somehow, from a professional point of view.

Tessa entered. From somewhere beyond the living room, which was small and decorated with lots of little art objects—pottery and framed things that looked like they came from craft fairs—she heard the toilet flush. “I hope I interrupted something.”

The woman gestured toward the kitchen table, which had a Scrabble board set out on it. “What do you think? Is
calzone
a fair word? I say it’s Italian, but he says that doesn’t matter.”

David entered the room. He wore jeans and a yellow short-sleeve shirt, a white T-shirt showing underneath the collar. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“Aren’t I supposed to be asking that?” She felt suddenly less sure of herself. Perhaps this could be innocent? The air smelled of coffee.

“I can leave you two alone, if you’d like,” said the woman.

“Robin, right?” said Tessa. “Robin Zierler. It’s easy to find an address these days, once you have a telephone number. Yours was on David’s desk. I don’t think you need to go anyplace.”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” said David, blushing visibly. “We’re playing a game.”

Tessa bit her lip. She was doing her best to keep up a front, to be
tough, to not care. But she felt she had no breath. “How?” she said. “How can you be playing a game at a time like this?”

“Don’t you think this has been hard on me, too?” he said. He came toward her, but she stepped back. With his unruly sun-bleached hair, he still looked young—younger than she did. He looked like a surfer. He’d done drugs in college back in Indiana, where he was from, had been born again while playing in some heavy-metal band there. She’d met him after he moved to Colorado. She’d liked it that he had a past, liked how his smile was so full of confidence and good cheer, how nothing ever seemed to get him down.

“Excuse me,” said Robin, “and I know it’s probably none of my business, but what are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” said David, keeping Tessa in his gaze. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you crazy?” said Tessa. “Nothing? This means so little to you that you haven’t even mentioned it to your mistress?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Robin.

“Our daughter,” said Tessa. She started to tremble.

Robin went over to the Scrabble board and began to put the pieces away. “Listen,” she said. “This is really nothing to do with me. I think maybe you guys need to go someplace and talk. Obviously, you’ve got stuff to work out. A little talk never hurt anything.” She paused, then looked up. “I still say
calzone
is illegal.”

“Our daughter was kidnapped,” Tessa said. “Or abducted. Taken away.”

Robin put the bag of tiles down onto the table.

“We don’t know where she is.”

“Is it about money? Do you think it was about money?”

“No,” said Tessa. “It’s not.”

“That’s enough,” said David.

“Was there, like, a note?”

“You see, we know who took her. We just don’t know where.” She looked at David, who had shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, ones she had washed for him just last night. She peered down the hall toward where she figured the bedroom was. Had they done it already? Were they getting ready to do it? Was Scrabble some sort of turn-on for them? She didn’t know anything. The energy she’d felt moments ago was draining from her like water. She had the idea that she must be hungry, and she thought about asking for a sandwich. Nothing seemed real anymore.

“You’re not going to faint, are you?” asked Robin.

“I’m fine,” she said.

David came toward her again and put his arms out in a gesture that indicated he was going to hug her. At the last moment, she suddenly brought her hands up to cover her face—she didn’t want his hug—and her right hand came in sharp contact with his nose, her finger actually traveling some distance up his nostril.

“Ow!” he said, jumping back. “What the hell?”

“Are you OK?” She tried to see past his hand, which he held tight against his face. There was blood coming out from underneath it. “You should lie down. We need a paper towel. Can he lie down someplace?”

“There,” Robin said. “Why don’t you use the sofa? But try not to get a mess all over, huh? I’ll get the paper towels.”

David found his way to the sofa and lay back. Tessa arranged an embroidered pillow—she liked Robin’s things—under his head. “Serves you right,” she said.

“You hit me.” His voice was muffled by his hand.

Robin brought over the towels, which she’d dampened under the faucet. Tessa took them and put them in David’s hand, tearing one off and using it to clean some of the blood off his cheek. “Noses can really gush if you bump them right,” she said. “You just keep applying pressure and don’t change position.”

“I’m going out for a cigarette,” said Robin. “You want to come?”

“I don’t smoke,” said Tessa, looking with concern at the figure of her husband clutching a wad of bloody towels to his face.

“I didn’t think you did. You could still come out.”

She stood and followed Robin into the evening air.

Robin closed the door behind them and lit her cigarette. Tessa’s parents had smoked, and she’d always loved the toasty, fresh smell of her dad’s Camels or her mom’s Marlboros right after they lit them. She had this thought, and then wondered at the way her mind was wandering these days. She might be going crazy.

“Do you think you broke it?” asked Robin, after a while.

“Nope. Though maybe I should have.”

Robin took another long drag on her cigarette. Her fingers, Tessa noticed, were long and bony. She could hear the sounds of a baseball game on someone’s television coming from across the street. “I’m really sorry about this,” said Robin.

“Thanks.”

“There’s Chinese food coming in a little while.”

“Ah,” said Tessa.

She took another drag and exhaled. “Did you know that your husband doesn’t pay income taxes?”

“No, I didn’t. What do you mean?”

“I mean that he thinks he’s exempt.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’m the office wife, right? IRS sends stuff all the time. He ignores it, mostly. We talked about it one time and he launched into this whole explanation about taxes being illegal, anyway. I think he believes it, and maybe he’s right, but so what? The U.S. government believes we’re supposed to pay them, and when you get right down to it, they’re the ones with the guns and badges.”

Tessa listened to the baseball game, thought how calm it sounded, how much like summer. “I don’t get involved in the finances.”

“I didn’t figure you did. That’s why I’m telling you. I mean, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and it really does bother me. It’s you he’s hurting, too.”

“I have other worries.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. Really. I can’t even imagine. I had a cat that ran off once, and I was busted up about it for two weeks. Made me swear off pets, actually. But, look, there’s another thing. Sort of bigger.” She paused. “I met the guy who took her.”

“What?” said Tessa. “How?”

Robin pushed her hair back from her forehead. “I bartend part-time, and he came in. We got to talking and I invited him to a party.”

“How many boyfriends do you
have
?” asked Tessa.

“None. Zero. I have no boyfriends. I’m currently playing the field.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“Well, I’m not sure I can explain it to you, then. I think maybe I don’t even like men that much. Sometimes I think that, anyway. But this guy was pretty nice. Name’s Landis.”

Tessa watched the ember of Robin’s cigarette write script in the air. A gust of wind brought with it some pinpricks of rain. She thought again of the man she’d seen downtown. “Did you sleep with him, too?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. But we did talk a bit.”

“About Bernice?” said Tessa. “About Emily?”

“Yeah. I didn’t realize it was your kid.”

Tessa closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. “Did he tell you anything about where they took her? Is she still here in town?”

“No.”

“Well, where are they?”

Robin stared at her. “I don’t know.” Tessa felt as if everything about her betrayed her weaknesses. Her outfit, tan pants and a matching top she’d ordered from J. Crew, and her necklace, three pieces of amber on a leather strap she’d bought at a boutique downtown, all of it spoke to the fact that she was a big phony. She’d actually dressed up to go meet her husband’s lover. What a loser.

“Please?”

“Honestly,” said Robin. “I don’t. If I did, I’d tell you. I didn’t even know you guys had adopted. Hey, was that about him or you? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I was—I had problems. I’m barren.”

She took another drag and exhaled. “That sounds kind of biblical.”

“I don’t see why. It’s just a word.”

“What kind of problems? Do you want to say?”

“Does it really matter?”

Robin flicked her ash and peered in through the front window. “He’s still on the sofa,” she said. “I can see his feet sticking out.”

“I need her back. Do you know what this is like? It’s like my heart was taken from me.”

“Me, I’d be angry,” said Robin. “I’d want to kick some ass.”

“I’m not like that,” said Tessa.

“I guess I’d want to kick my ass, too. We didn’t do anything, incidentally. We were just waiting for the food.”

“Thank you,” said Tessa.

Robin nodded. “This Landis, he’s no criminal. I’ve known plenty of criminals. It would be a shame for him to end up in jail just because he tried to help his girlfriend do something she was convinced was right.”

“She could have come and talked to us,” said Tessa. “For some reason, she hates us. She made sure we knew it from the moment she
moved in. Living with her was like living with a piece of radioactive material. I never did anything to her, never said an unkind word—nothing. In the beginning, I tried to think of it as my own pregnancy, but I gave up on that—I suppose it wasn’t fair to try. But she could have shared. One time, I found her eating ice cream in the kitchen at 2:00 AM, right out of the carton. I just stood, watching. She pretended she didn’t know I was there, which of course she did. She stood with her back to me, eating, taking her time. I kept thinking of things I could say, little conversation starters, but I heard them in my head and they sounded foolish, and so I kept quiet. After a while, she put the carton back in the freezer and tossed the spoon in the sink. Real loud. I wish now I’d said something. I wasn’t mad. I wanted her to eat ice cream. If only she’d given me a chance, I’d have liked to eat it out of the carton with her.”

“The old fuck-you spoon toss.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know where they are,” said Robin, “or where they went. He was careful not to tell me actual details, because then I’d be involved.” She bit her lip. “And yet here I am, involved. But I gave him my number. He might call.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “You can come stay with me if you want to. I have a spare room. I hate to see someone so beaten up like you are.”

Tessa just looked at her.

“Dumb idea?”

They were joined on the porch by David, still holding a paper towel to his nose. “We should go,” he said.

“You could have told me about this stuff,” said Robin. “I can’t believe you didn’t.”

“It’s none of your business,” he said.

“Oh, right, because I’m just your employee.”

He took Tessa’s arm and steered her off the porch, and Tessa did not resist. It was raining harder now, and she could taste it, and there was a hard, mineral smell in the air. “I could use you Friday,” he said to Robin.

“Use me how?” she shouted.

David walked Tessa to the door of her car. “She doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said, leaning close.

“Is that supposed to make it better? That makes it worse.”