Sam and I looked at each other. She had a point. Kind of.
“I’ve cracked into a few secure locations,” Sam said. “And Mikey here could have Fort Knox renamed Fort Westen in no time. Right, Mikey?”
“Uh, right,” I said.
Fiona was heading somewhere. This was just the opening salvo. She raised her eyebrows, but kept her eyes on the magazine, turning pages casually. “I should have been a model,” she said to no one in particular. “Seems like I’d get to sit around on bearskin rugs in Uggs and a bikini, not a care in the world.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I said.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Fiona said.
“I think it’s cute when you guys repeat each other’s sentences,” Sam said.
“Do you know who Bruce Grossman is, Michael?” Fiona said. “I mean, do you really know?”
“I know he’s a person with a problem,” I said. “I know he’s a friend of Barry’s. I know he’s been a fool since he got out of prison. I know his mother is going to die soon. Isn’t that enough?”
Fiona shook her head slowly, like she couldn’t believe how utterly daft I was. “Right, right,” she said. She still hadn’t bothered to put down the magazine or look at either me or Sam. “What I’m saying is that the man is near a legend, Michael. I heard of what he was doing in Ireland. He broke into every bank imaginable. And so smart about it, too. Safe-deposit boxes are bank robber nirvana, Michael.”
“And?”
“And maybe he’d be good to keep around,” Fiona said. She looked up finally, smiling, flirting, batting eyelashes, doing that thing she does with the tip of her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip.
“No,” I said.
“No, what?”
I could see the wheels turning in her mind.
“No, he will not rob banks with you. No, you will not sell his services to other people who rob banks. No, you will not put him in a box and ship him to a small town in Iceland where there are very old banks. No, no and no.”
There’s not much about Fiona that remains a mystery to me, apart from her total nihilism. But it’s unusually cute, so there’s that.
“I’m just saying that in the position you’re in,” she said, “where revenue streams seem inconsistent, it might be wise to look at all avenues, Michael. It’s not every day someone from history shows up.”
“Duly noted,” I said, “and still, no.”
I went back to eating my yogurt and thinking about how to un-swallow Bruce’s problems. Fiona went back to reading her magazine, presumably thinking about the fashion shoots she’d missed in Bora Bora all these years. But Sam wasn’t doing anything. That was troubling, particularly since he’d finished his beer and hadn’t gone foraging in my fridge for another.
“Is he really from history?” Sam asked.
“The Safe-Deposit Bandit,” Fiona said. “There are probably textbooks about him.”
“As a kid, I always thought it was ‘safety’ deposit box,” Sam said.
“That’s because your American education never put the proper emphasis on enunciation. Both of you sound like you learned to speak with dirt in your mouth.”
Sam gave me a look that said, basically, What the hell?
“Something else troubling you, Fiona?”
“If you must know,” she said, “I’d like it if you found a way to describe me that didn’t make me sound like the help.”
“That’s my cue,” Sam said and headed for the door.
“Wait,” I said. “We haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with Bruce.”
“I can’t stand to hear you two fight,” Sam said, already halfway out the door of my loft. “It just breaks my heart.”
“Sam,” I said.
All that was left was his waving arm. “Call me later,” he shouted. “We’ll do some covert stuff together and it will be a great time.”
And then he was gone completely, leaving me alone with Fiona, who, in the last year or so, had become an inconsistent emotional concern. One minute she loved me, the next minute she hated me, a minute after that she was kissing me, two minutes later she was punching me in the head, five minutes later we were in bed… and always, always, there was some guilt on both ends.
And now this.
“If we’re going to talk about this,” I said, “you’re going to need to put that magazine down.”
“If I do that,” she said, perfectly calm, “I might be inclined to use it as a weapon.”
“Fine,” I said. I sat down on my bed, across from the chair she was sitting in. “Let’s hear it.”
“Well,” she said, “do you consider me your friend or your associate?”
“Yes, technically, I believe both are accurate descriptions.”
Fiona hurled the magazine at me, but fortunately she hadn’t slipped a sharp piece of broken glass into the pages beforehand, which is a nice trick if you want to really hurt someone. So the magazine just fluttered to the ground.
“Wrong answer,” she said.
“Fi, look, I’m not comfortable categorizing who we are to complete strangers, particularly not people like Bruce Grossman. He’s not exactly a confidential source.”
“I’m not speaking of him solely,” she said. “It would just be nice if, every now and then, I knew where I stood before I was offended by your boorish behavior.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking, I have no idea where we stand, moment to moment. “How would you like me to describe you?”
Fiona stood up then, went into my kitchen, poured water into a teapot and began preparing a cup of tea. It was as if I wasn’t even in the room. I watched her for a few moments, the simple, fluid motions of her actions, the lack of wasted space she conveyed. After about five minutes, the water came to a boil and she fixed her tea. She sat back down in her chair and played absently with the steeping teabag. “Any ideas come to you yet, Michael?” she asked.
“A few,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Remember them when next the moment arises.”
I nodded. “In the meantime”-I paused-“most elegant Fiona”-I paused again, to see how that went over; well, it turns out-“we need to figure out what to do with Bruce Grossman.”
“How much time do you presume he has left until the Ghouls figure out who did the job?” she asked. “Assuming Balsalmo didn’t tell them?”
“How many people living in Miami that they don’t already know could do the job?” I said. “Someone in Miami, other than Barry, other than Balsalmo, likely knows who Bruce Grossman is, especially if you did and you’re not even from these here parts.”
“Then maybe you should just go tell them before they find out.”
“You are elegant,” I said.
“I know,” Fi said. She got up from her seat again and poured her tea down the drain.
“You just made that,” I said.
“Merely as an instructional tool,” she said. She looked at her watch. “Have you called your mother lately?”
“No.”
“You should,” she said, “seeing as I am the only person who has the kindness to actually return her calls.”
“What does she have you doing?”
“I’ve agreed to take her shopping for lamps this afternoon.”
“You have fun with that,” I said.
She walked over and kissed me once on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
