House of Secrets - v4 (5 page)

“You don’t deserve to get away with this.”

The statement wasn’t even completed before the steam from the shower blurred his reflection completely. Andy stepped into the tub. He moved into the searing stream and turned his face up into the water, tilting his head slightly to keep the water from pummeling his wound. Andy balled his fists as tight as he could.

I am a fool
.

I love my wife
.

I am an idiot
.

I love my wife
.

I will never, ever
, ever
do something so goddamned boneheaded again
.

I love my wife
.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He got the cry of pain under way even before he started his head toward the tiles.

C
hristine limped into the JFK arrivals terminal. The slender architect from San Diego who had chatted her up nearly the entire flight from Denver was insisting on steering her roller bag for her. It was his Hugo Boss, after all, that had come down on Christine’s ankle and pinned it to the cabin floor as the two had been jostling against other passengers to extract their bags from the overhead bin.

Christine wanted nothing but to get to ground transportation and grab a cab into the city and be home. As the thin joke had it, flying was for the birds.

But walking was for the capable-of-foot, and as she cleared the departures desk Christine had no choice but to hobble painfully to the nearest seat and slide onto it. Her architect-assailant rolled her bag over and parked it at her feet.

“You need to elevate it. Just stay put, I’ll go get you some ice.”

The man insisted on helping her ferry the injured limb up onto the roller bag. The slight elevation seemed inconsequential to Christine, but she said nothing about it. The man was as fussy now about trying to help her as he had been blunt with his flirting during the flight.

While the quasi Good Samaritan headed off in the direction of the food court, Christine pulled out her phone to call her daughter. Michelle wouldn’t be home from school yet — Rosa would be fetching her — but Christine wanted to leave a message to let her daughter know that she was on her way.

There was a message on her phone from Andy. Christine called home first.

“Hey, darling, it’s Mommy. I’m back now. I just got off the plane. I’ll be home soon. Tell Rosa not to start any dinner. I thought the two of us could get some takeout from Mama Buddha, does that sound nice? Don’t forget we’re going to Grandpa and Jenny’s this weekend. We’ve got some eggs to color! I’ll see you soon, goofy. I love you, sweetheart.”

Christine played her messages. By the time the architect returned with a plastic baggy of crushed ice, she was already clambering out of her seat.

“Hey. Whoa. You’ve really got to ice that—”

Christine cut him off, gesturing with her phone. “That was my husband. I’ve got to go. He slipped in the shower this morning. The fool man has got six stitches in his head!”

A
ndy and Christine Foster lived on the top floor of an apartment building on Greenwich Avenue, overlooking the Hudson River. Their view to the west took in the river, and beyond that, the stretch of New Jersey towns bordering the river. Most important, it included the large empty expanse that overtopped both the river and the far shore, the luxury craved by all New Yorkers: sky.

Christine’s father had not exactly given the couple the apartment when they got married. But nearly. Although he’d no longer been in office at the time, the former governor’s spheres of influence had remained expansive, and as construction of the apartment building on Greenwich neared completion, remarkably generous financing for one of the top-floor apartments had fallen into place for then congressman Andrew Foster and his pretty fiancée, bolstered by a sizable down payment that had been wired directly from the Bermuda-based account of Ambassador Hoyt. The card from Whitney and Lillian — which Andy had insisted be framed and displayed in the front hallway — showed an Appalachian lean-to tilting perilously close to an equally dilapidated outhouse.

YOU’VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE
With our blessings
.
Whit & Lil

Seven years after they moved in, Christine and Andy’s enviable expanse of sky had suffered the incursion of black smoke moving northward from the cruelly bludgeoned tip of the island. Christine’s particular cries on that horrible day — quite piercing at their peak — had been for vastly different reasons than those of so many of her fellow citizens. Far from being a response to the swift shuttering of so many lives, Christine’s cries had sounded the requisite agony accompanying the miracle of new life. A daughter. Barred from their home those first weeks after the cataclysm, Christine and Andy had given their newborn her first taste of true luxury living, taking her up to the other Greenwich — not the street but the town, Greenwich, Connecticut — and the rambling family estate where Christine and her brother, Peter, had spent their childhoods. The sprawling house was also where Michelle Foster’s parents had legally linked their fates in matrimony some years previous, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live.

So far so good. At least, so it seemed.

Rosa had left a phone message that she and Michelle were going to head over to Hudson River Park for a while after school, so Christine puttered the afternoon away on her own. She wasn’t able to get Andy on the phone until several hours after her return home. He’d been tied up in closed-door hearings all day over the situation in Athens (what the situation was, she didn’t even know) and she’d managed to catch him during a brief recess. She had grabbed the
Times
and pulled a chair up to the large picture window, elevating her foot on a stack of magazines. Out on the water, a large brown barge was being nudged upriver by a comparably tiny tugboat. Michelle called them pushboats, a logical enough renaming. Seven and a half years and counting and the little girl had never seen any of the cartoon-looking craft actually tugging anything. It was all push and nudge.

Christine opted not to share with Andy her own injury. It could wait. Instead, she scolded her husband. “What do you think you’re doing running around with fresh stitches in your head? Are you a nut? You should be taking it easy. I think you can put off saving the world for one day.”

“Tell that to the Greek defense minister.”

“Gladly. Put him on the line.”

A red balloon trailing a long white ribbon appeared in the window, moving diagonally across Christine’s vision, buffeted by minor gusts. Christine swiveled her foot gingerly.

“Seriously, Andy. Are you all right? How in the world did you manage to fall down in a shower of all things?”

“I didn’t mention the banana peel?”

Christine ignored the joke. “Seriously, though. You’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Andy said. “Except for my pride. I do feel pretty stupid.”

Christine laughed. “If I know you, your pride will heal up a lot quicker than your head.”

“Ouch.”

“Suck it up, Senator. But listen. I’m serious about you taking it easy. You’re not a hundred percent. I can hear it in your voice.”

Christine’s gaze landed on the newspaper on her lap. She winced as she shifted her foot again. “Andy, what’s all this noise about Chris Wyeth? I thought you told me it was just politics as usual. But it sounds to me like this VP thing is actually heating up. We’re not actually talking anything serious here, are we?”

“I don’t think so,” Andy said. “You know how it goes. Something’s got to bring the president’s honeymoon to a close. Too much good cheer makes people nervous.”

“So, it’s just political spitballs.” The term was a favorite of her father’s.

“Exactly. It’ll pass.”

The two chatted for another few minutes. Andy informed his wife that on orders from the doctor who had stitched him up, he was planning on taking the Amtrak back to New York the next day instead of flying.

“We don’t have anything planned until Sunday, right?”

Christine switched the phone to her other ear. “Not much. Some charity dinners. Dancing at the Rainbow Room. I think you’re giving a speech to the Aardvark Society. And, oh yes. You’re supposed to go down to the seaport and christen a boat or two and kiss a whole bunch of babies.”

“So, basically we’re just laying low until Sunday.”

“Basically.”

“Good. I’ll sign off on that plan.”

“Okay then, sweetie,” Christine said. “You’d better get back and patch things up for the Greeks. Otherwise everything will be in ruins, ha ha. I’ll see you tomorrow. I promise we’ll do absolutely nothing together. It’ll be nice. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Andy said. He added, “Seriously.”

Five minutes later, the front door opened and Michelle bounded into the apartment.

“Mommy!”

Mommy was still seated by the window with her foot up on a stack of magazines. She was still gazing out at the sky. Still musing on her husband’s sign-off.

Seriously?

What the hell was that all about?

D
imitri tossed the last empty mussel shell onto the plate. He tore a chunk of bread from the small loaf in the wicker basket and dabbed it among the shells, saturating it with garlic butter. The waiter was passing by the next table, and Dimitri waved the chunk of bread to get his attention.

“Hey! Another beer.” He shoved the piece of bread in his mouth.

Acknowledging the order with a nod, the waiter addressed the woman seated across from Dimitri.

“Would you like another Chablis?”

Irena Bulakov had been nursing her glass of wine throughout dinner. Over an inch remained. “No, thank you.” Her intention to smile fell short. She was nervous; she couldn’t help herself.

After the waiter left, Dimitri spoke through his chewing. “What is it, are you pissing in your pants over there? Why don’t you enjoy yourself? Here. Have some of this butter.”

As he slid the oval plate across the table, a few of the slick black shells spilled onto the floor. An elderly couple was coming through the front door to the restaurant, and Irena glanced over to see the Coney Island Cyclone a block away, silhouetted against the ghostly dusk.

“I don’t want the butter,” Irena said.

“You only ate half your fish.”

“I am not hungry, Dimitri. The butter is too rich.”

“The food is good here,” Dimitri said, scowling. “You see what it costs.”

“I’m sorry.” Irena leaned over and retrieved the empty shells from the floor and returned them to the plate. She hesitated, then lapped at her fingers. “There. Very tasty. Thank you.”

The beer arrived, and the waiter swapped it for Dimitri’s latest empty. Dimitri took a large swig, internalized the belch, and looked around at the nearly full dining room. A somewhat older crowd, many of the men wearing coats and ties. The pimply boy at the hotel across the street had recommended the restaurant.

Irena placed her hands in her lap. Her small shoulders were hunched forward. She had a narrow face with a small thick mouth and a long narrow nose. Her eyes these days generally knew two modes: weary and wearier. Tonight was the latter.

“Dimitri?” It was almost a mew. “Why don’t you talk to me? Please tell me. What happened yesterday? Why are we in a hotel? I am so confused.”

Dimitri had been drinking beer ever since meeting up with his wife. That was three hours ago. She had done as he asked on the phone the night before and packed a bag and located a hotel. She had phoned Dimitri at noon, as instructed, and told him where she was. When he arrived he was full of energy, but still grumpy and nonresponsive. All he would say to Irena’s questions was, “Not now. I have to think.”

Irena hadn’t dared to say it out loud.
But you don’t think, Dimitri. You drink
.

D
imitri had not been quite so round-bellied when Irena met him nine years before. He had shown her his smile more often back then. Soon after their marriage, however, she had come to discover that her husband’s good moods had a distressingly short shelf life. The same could be said concerning Dimitri’s employment. If he arrived home stinking of beer and ranting about how stupid his coworkers or his boss were, Irena could be pretty sure that her husband was out of work again. Just under two years ago, Irena had prayed to Jesus and crossed her fingers when Dimitri and his brother, Leonard, signed the lease for the building they were planning to convert into their Ping-Pong center. The brothers had been so excited. Dimitri had come to Irena with dollar signs in his blurry eyes.