“It’s not a date. I have to.” She objected in such a passionate way he had to smile.
“Of course it’s not a date. But—” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s only a token. If they saw me letting anyone else share it, I would get a bad name.”
April fell silent. She liked the fact that he didn’t make it a man-woman thing. He said anyone else. She wondered if this was where his father was a cook before he died, and that’s why the bill was only a token. She understood about tokens. Everybody save face. She didn’t feel she could ask him right then, though.
“I’d like to drive you home,” he said when they were out on the street.
It was a warm, clear night. April looked up at the crescent moon. Her mother used to torture her with a story about a girl child whose angry parents sent her to the cold, empty moon as punishment for her disobedience. April grew up thinking the world’s favorite symbol of romance was a prison whose walls closed in to nothing every thirty days. No romance for her. She smiled at fish-in-water Sanchez.
“Thanks, but then I’d have to take the subway back.”
They turned up Columbus, heading for the precinct.
“Not necessarily. I could come and get you. We could talk about the case,” he said.
April shook her head. “That’s a very hard way to get from the Bronx to Eighty-second Street.”
“I get up early,” Mike argued.
“I thought this wasn’t a date,” she said more sharply than she meant to.
“Who said it was a date? We’re working a case together. So I drive you home, what’s the big deal?”
They debated about the bigness of the deal all the way back to the lot. Fine to work with each other. Maybe okay to have Mexican food. Not okay to drive back and forth in red Camaro making everyone in her neighborhood and everyone in the precinct think just what April didn’t want them to think. She drove herself home, stewing about the trouble she was in with this case, and with Mike who wasn’t going to be happy just working together for long, no matter how nice he could be when he wanted to.
She was not surprised to find the light on in her parents’ part of the house when she got back at two o’clock. Nor was she surprised when her mother opened the door loudly demanding, in Chinese, explanations from her thoughtless daughter. How she could stay out so late without letting her worried mother know where she was? Who was she with, and what kind of no-good person would let her come home at this hour all alone?
“Mom, I’m a cop,” April said wearily. “I’m on a case.”
“What kind of case at two o’clock in the morning? I know what kind of case. Humh.
“I’m a cop,” April protested. “Just doing my job.”
“Maybe a cop, but still a woman.” Sai stood there with a hand on her skinny hip, resolutely blocking the door, as if she would not budge an inch until her every question was answered, including what her daughter had been eating to make her mouth smell so bad.
52
Emma sat on the edge of the sofa for many minutes, fighting the nausea and dizziness that came from the effort of leaning forward and untying the ropes around her ankles, knot by knot, with shaky fingers. The pain from the blow to her head was intense, and her legs trembled so much they didn’t support her when she finally tried to stand up. She sank down on the hard sofa again.
“Help.” Her voice sounded pitifully weak.
She looked around. Must be a phone. Everyone had a phone. Where was the phone? She saw a window by the sink with the dripping faucet. Maybe she could open the window and call for help. Maybe she could jump out.
She organized herself enough to get on the floor and start crawling toward it. How many feet was it?
“Help …”
She couldn’t seem to make much noise.
The window was just above the counter. She pulled herself up to the counter and grabbed at the shade covering the window, missing the cord on the first two tries.
She sagged against the sink. Don’t fall down, she told herself. She grabbed the cord again and this time succeeded. When she pulled on it, the shade snapped all the way up with a ferocity that startled her. She cried out and looked behind her, certain the door had opened and he was back. Everything was the same.
She turned back to the window, panicked. She had to get out there to the other side. She was on the second floor, pressed against the glass, naked in the artificial light. There were cars but no people on the street below.
She could tell by the sky that she wasn’t in Manhattan. There were no skyscrapers with lights that cut pieces out of the sky here. In fact it was a long way across a maze of roads with walls to the row of low buildings on the other side. Where would the street be so wide she could hardly see the houses on the other side? The skyline was a map for anyone who knew the buildings.
It was dark, but there were a lot of streetlights. It seemed that the window fronted on a number of streets parallel to each other. Emma desperately tried to think. What was she looking at?
She pounded on the window at a man in a passing car. He didn’t turn his head.
The latch on the window was too high for her to reach it without climbing up on the counter. Her muscles ached from having been stretched so long over her head. She shuddered. How long had she been lying there with him looking at her? Had to get away. She struggled to get up on the counter. She could hardly stand, much less pull herself up.
She stopped suddenly, confused by the roar that kept pushing through the haze in her brain. Through the thunder she could see lights and a dim shape in the sky. She frowned, struggling to name what she saw, tilted her throbbing head to one side.
Looking at it this way, she suddenly realized that although the street in front of her was flat, the street beyond that was on an angle. It was going up a hill to a Christmas tree of lights. Strings of lights out there like lace in the sky. That made no sense.
She inched down the counter. There she could see the side of a house. The light was on in the room opposite her, but there was no one in it.
It was then that she saw the phone. It was a white wall phone, a few feet to her right, almost hidden by the refrigerator. If she hadn’t been standing right next to it, she might never have seen it.
“Oh, God.” She reached for the phone and almost collapsed with relief when she heard the dial tone.
She tried her own number first. The receiver shrilled three discordant notes in her ear.
Oh, God, where was she? Emma fought back her panic and tried two-one-two, then her number. Was flooded with relief when it began to ring.
The phone rang and rang. Had she called the wrong number? She dialed again, more carefully this time. Two-one-two and then their home number. It rang again, a series of hollow echoes in her head. What was wrong? She was sure she had left her answering machine on. Had he come home and turned it off?
“God, Jason, pick up,” she cried.
Maybe he was in his office. She tried two-one-two and then his office number. The machine picked up on the second ring. His cool, reassuring voice said he couldn’t be with her right now, but if she would leave her name, date, and time of the call, he would get back to her as soon as he could.
Jason was always telling her he’d be there if she needed him, but he was always “with someone, with someone, with someone” whenever she felt she did. No needs that she’d had were ever sufficient for him to consider it necessary to be with her right now.
