Mockingbird (28 page)

“You've been following the Deutsche Mark? When?”

“Frankly, Toni, you haven't been a lot of fun the last couple of weeks,” Angela said. She hefted the copy of Schwager's
Complete Guide to the Futures Markets
I had finally broken down and bought after committing myself to life as a speculator. “I've been sitting in front of the fan reading this stuff for the last ten days while you've been moping.”

“Lord. I'm so sorry. I haven't been much of a host.”

“It's too bad, because you're a way better cook.”

Which was true. I had slowly gathered that a Canadian's idea of spicy food pretty much topped out at dill pickles. I resolved to get back in the kitchen that night. Maybe stuff some poblano peppers for chili rellenos. Then a thought struck me. “Um, when are you supposed to be going back to Calgary?”

“Two days ago.”

“What!”

Angela shrugged. “I thought you could still use a hand around here, so I exchanged my ticket.”

“I didn't know you could do that.”

“I bought a full-fare ticket, in case I got here and, um . . .”

“In case you wanted to get the heck out of Dodge after meeting us.” I leaned back in the office chair, pushing hard against the pillows I had piled there to give some relief to my back, which was aching all the time now. “Good planning.”

Angela picked her current glass of iced tea off the computer desk and held it against her forehead. “To be honest, Toni, I didn't know how you guys would react to me. I mean, I'm the one who got Elena's money.” She smiled wearily, and I saw the crow's-feet around her eyes, the lines beginning to deepen on her forehead and around her mouth that she did not bother to cover with foundation, as Momma would have. “And I thought I might be too angry to stay here. I always hated you, growing up. Not you you. Whoever my mother had left me for. Because she loved you more than me.”

“She lived with us, at any rate.”

“It's the same thing,” Angela said.

She sat on the edge of my bed, watching the CNBC ticker. The black iron fan whirred, tugging at her sweaty shirt. “Toni, what does ‘directly' mean? You've been using that word a lot the last two weeks. As in, ‘I'll get to that directly.'”

“Um . . . ‘not now.'”

“I had finally begun to figure that out.”

I squirmed in my chair, pressing my fists into my back. It was stinking hot and sweaty, even with the fan on. I couldn't remember the last time I had been able to have even a sheet on me at night. My face was always flushed and my body felt as if I had just stepped out of a long hot bath twenty-four hours a day. “It goes with ‘fixin' to,' which means, ‘The thought had crossed my mind.' As in, ‘I'm fixin' to cut the lawn.'”

Angela laughed. She picked up the transaction book and read over her notes, then looked at me. “How about going into business together?”

“Business?”

“Trading futures.”

I stared stupidly at her, then wiped at my perspiring face, managing mostly to get a little more sweat into my eyes, where it stung. “Are you
kidding?
” I said, blinking. “You've made one trade, Angela. You made some money. I made money on my first trade too. It's not a good way to make a living. Ninety-five percent of all independent traders—”

“—go broke within the first year. I know. I've been reading your books, remember?” Angela shrugged, that same lanky, raw-boned nonchalance Momma always had about the future. “If it doesn't work out, it's not as if my life is over. Do you think I don't know what it's like to fail?—Or maybe it's you who's never failed before,” Angela said. She poked at me with the transaction book. “That's it, isn't it? You're scared because you've never taken that first big hit, have you? Never been divorced, gone bankrupt, been stuck in hospital with tubes up your nose.” She leaned forward and patted my hand. “Honey, don't be scared. It's a rare crash in this life you can't walk away from.”

“Did I ever tell you I worked as an actuary?”

Angela laughed. “You see everything as if the very worst was going to happen. Well, guess what? It usually doesn't. If it did, insurance companies would all go broke. Which they don't, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” I could not keep myself from smiling. “I hear you.”

“Even when the worst does happen, you survive. Hell, I survived a car crash that broke both my legs and the time Monica fell out a window when she was two and a breast lump and a bunch of divorces—you think I'm going to ruin my life over a few commodity trades?”

“Enough!” I said. “How many husbands have you had, anyway?”

“Two of my own,” Angela said, considering, “and countless others.” She looked at me and burst out laughing. “Toni, you look like you're choking on a pickle. Are you shocked? At the age of thirty-one?”

Yes! I wanted to say. Yes, you can't be cavalier about screwing other women's husbands! And yet . . . and yet I really liked Angela. I really did. And I didn't know the story behind her affairs. So all I said, after a long, stammering pause, was, “You really do remind me of Momma.”

“Uh-oh,” Angela said. “I love it when you say that; I love the idea that I have some part of her after all. But I also know
you
well enough to know it's not supposed to be a compliment.”

“But it is. Sort of. You have her style. Momma was a pirate. She was a privateer. You would have liked her. I wish you'd been with us.”

“I think I would have stood up to her a little better,” Angela said.

“I'm sure you're right. But she was so big, Angela. She devoured the room. But you could have laughed her off.”
You're the hatefulest child there ever was, Antoinette.
“I wish you'd been here. I think I would have liked not being the oldest child,” I said. And then, “I did the best I could.”

Angela said, “I know.”

Then she gave my hand a brisk squeeze. “Here's my offer. Between Elena's bequest and the money my wonderful lawyer screwed out of Darth Vader, I'm pretty flush right now. Have you ever heard me talk about the job I have in Calgary?”

“Um, no.”

“There's a reason for that. Frankly, I'm itching to call my boss and tell him my vacation is being permanently extended. Since I was supposed to be at work yesterday, he may have fired me already, mind you.” She shrugged. “I have enough cash to put us in four or five contracts at a time, which I think we're going to need to do, if we want to see a constant income stream. On top of that, I would buy one of those Omega Tradestations you were talking about.” She waved dismissively at the TV. “Waiting every ten minutes for a quote is insane; the market changes too fast. Also, I think we should work with a full-service broker, at least on big trades.”

“You really have been reading up!”

“We'd go in as partners. I want to be able to bug you into taking a risk every now and then, but we make no trades except by consensus.”

“Sounds fair,” I said. My heart was finally beginning to catch up with the sense of what Angela was saying. To have help arrive unlooked for; to see a chance that I would be able to make a living at home: suddenly all the panic I had been suppressing seemed to clamp around my chest like iron bands. “I don't wish to be beholden to you,” I said. “To you or anybody.”

“I'm not giving you anything, moron. I said we would be partners. I happen to think you're very smart. You know a lot about the markets, and about business, and about finance. I failed algebra in tenth grade. If you don't think your skills are valuable, that's your opinion. But you might at least be smart enough to shut up about it.” Angela laughed. “I cringe to imagine what you would be like at a job interview.”

“I never had to do one. I was hired out of school by a friend of Momma's.”

“Figures. You know, I think I was dead right. Your big problem, Toni, is that you've never really failed
big,
so you can't imagine picking yourself up off the ground afterwards.” She took a swig of iced tea and grinned. “Stick with me, kid, and I will personally guarantee you will fall flat on your face.”

“Now that's good to know.” I rubbed the sweat around my face a little more. I felt as if my body had been modelled out of margarine and was beginning to run in the heat.

“I do have one nonnegotiable condition.” She put her tea down on the table.

“Yes?” I said, waiting for my beautiful future to smash like a glass on the tile floor.

Angela pulled at her sweat-sodden blouse. “We
must
put an air-conditioner in at least one room of this pile. I've got heat rash up to my boobs. This city is so sticky it makes my earwax turn liquid.”

“Spare me the details. Air conditioning in the bedroom.”

“Then it's a deal. Podner.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it, giddy with relief and anticipation. “Are we going to topple the corporate world, then?”

“Fixin' to,” I said. “Fixin' to
directly.
”

And then, a moment later, I said, “Angela, you'd know if you were a repressed lesbian, wouldn't you?”

“I'm not.”

I flushed. “I didn't mean
you
you, I meant, you know, anybody.”

“Why do I think you've been talking to Candy?” Angela popped an ice-cube into her mouth and gnawed on it, considering. “It seems like the sort of thing you would know.”

“Good. That's what I thought.”

She ate the rest of her ice-cube. “Of course, maybe that's what ‘repressed' means. That you wouldn't know. If you knew, it wouldn't be repressed, would it?”

“You think so?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Can we talk about something else now, Toni?”

“I reckon,” I said.

Then there was Candy's wedding to prepare for, which meant dealing with Carlos and La Hag Gonzales, and of course with every day I got hotter and fatter and more pregnant. I wheezed and panted and grunted my way through the first three weeks in September with my head full of Deutsche Mark and canapés, wondering if I would ever find a husband, or even wear a belt again.

The day before Candy's wedding my underpants fell down.

Underwear is designed to fit the normal human shape. But when you are pregnant you are not just fat, you are fat in a funny way. Your abdomen has, say, eight pounds of baby packed like tuna in ten pounds of seawater. Add one fetal cafeteria, also known as the placenta, and then stuff the whole mass into your womb. Now remind yourself that you are not fat. There is no extra flesh below the abdomen; at least there wasn't on me. As a result, my belly had a steep undercurve. This proved too slippery a slope for my poor overstressed underwear to grasp. Despairing, their elastic weakened by my enormous girth, they gave up the struggle and plummeted to earth around my swollen ankles.

I was standing in the checkout line at Whole Earth Foods at the time.

It is extremely embarrassing to have your panties fall around your ankles in the middle of a busy grocery store. Even a hippie grocery store. With a sigh I shuffled forward and put my basket on the checkout counter and bent down. Bending down is a major operation when one is nine months pregnant, involving a lot of squatting, wheezing, and grunting. More squatting and puffing followed as I stepped out of my panties, left foot, then right, picked them up—no easy task—and stuffed them in my purse.

Straightening, I found myself the object of the fascinated gaze of a middle-aged man with a greying ponytail ahead of me in the line. “What's the matter?” I said with icy dignity. “Never seen a pregnant woman's underwear fall down before?”