Only Child

“Oh, I don’t,” she said loftily. “As soon as he’s finished with the editing, he’s going to bring it by.”

“Did you ever wonder how we knew where to find you that first time?” Cyn asked me that night.

“I do work,” I said. “People—some people—know.”

“There’s plenty of men who...I mean, when that...happened to us, we could have gotten ourselves a—”

“You could have gotten yourselves in a worse jackpot, and you knew it,” I said. “You wanted a man for hire, a professional. Someone who does his work, gets paid, and gets gone.”

“That’s why you did it, for the money?”

“Why else?”

“We’re doing all...this, with you, now, aren’t we? And we’re getting paid, too, sure. But the money’s not that great. And we’re not making anything out of our business while we’re helping you.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just what we heard—that you take money, but certain kinds of stuff you like doing. Just like us.”

“What difference? As long as I get it done.”

“I...don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure. Rejji and I, we love to play. And getting paid for it, that’s perfect. I always thought, if we didn’t love it, maybe we wouldn’t do it so well on camera, understand?”

“Sure.”

“Except that’s not...Well, what I mean, I see now, it wouldn’t matter. If Rejji didn’t like it, there’d be a buyer for that. That was what Gresham...”

“You say that name too much,” I told her. “Isn’t that what you told Rejji when I first came to see you?”

“This is different,” she said, brushing aside what was in her way. “You, you’re doing this for that girl, no matter what you say. The way you’re doing it, it’s like the way you were when we...”

“She’s right,” Rejji said over her shoulder, from the corner where she was standing. “And that’s part of the word on you, too.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked them both.

“You got it bad for...certain kinds of people.”

“Gresham was just a freak. Nothing personal. A job. I didn’t feel anything for her.”

“You felt something for us,” Cyn said. “Tell the truth.”

“That’s me, all right, Cyn. A knight in shining armor.”

“Oh, you’ve got plenty of armor, all right,” Rejji said.

“Somehow, I never pictured you as a sports nut,” Cyn said later.

“You ever watch this?” I asked her, pointed at the screen where Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports was running on HBO.

“No. We don’t like—”

“Shut up and give it a chance.”

“Ooo! You better do it, Cyn,” Rejji teased. “You know what Burke’ll do if you’re a bad girl.”

“You silly...” Cyn stopped herself, caught by the images on the screen. Children playing baseball together. Lots of children, with all kinds of disabilities. Blind, in wheelchairs, brittle-bone syndrome, muscular dystrophy. Something they called the “Miracle League,” organized by a bunch of parents who just wanted to give the kids a chance to play. Each kid had a special buddy, another kid, an athlete who went every step of the way with the kid who needed it, from helping to hold a bat to pushing a wheelchair around the bases.

Rejji came over to see what we were looking at. She sat down, and watched, transfixed, until it was over.

“Some people,” she said, choked up, “they...they torture their own kids. And these ones, they...”

“Makes you think there’s two different species, huh?” I said.

“There are,” Cyn said, holding Rejji’s hand.

I spent the next day working the phones. Calling in favors. Hard to do secondhand, but Mama was an ace at relays.

The strip mall a few minutes away had a halfway-decent deli. I had them make me a rare roast beef on rye with a slice of red onion and Russian dressing. A side of potato salad, and a bottle of Dr. Brown’s black cherry. Picked up a copy of the Post, took it all back to my room, and sat down to watch the news.

It was the usual mulch. My eyes drifted back to the paper. I was deep into a self-righteous article about “unprovoked” shark attacks when the TV suddenly blurted something about a “daring daylight assassination” of a “known mob figure.” I dropped the paper, upped the volume. The victim had been sitting at the wheel of his white Cadillac SUV—in a no-standing zone in midtown, the announcer said, as if this confirmed some significant point— when someone walked by and put a single slug into his left ear. A police spokesman solemnly announced it “had all the trademarks of a professional killing.”

It had gone down in broad daylight. Nobody had seen or heard a thing, not even the SUV’s passenger. He had just stepped into a local store for a few minutes, asking the driver to wait. Found the body when he came back out.

The screen showed a close-up photo of the dead man. He had a round face that made his little eyes look even smaller. The announcer asked anyone with information to call a special number the cops had set up. The name of the victim was in bold black type beneath his photo. Vincente “Colto” Zandrazzi.

I was still watching television, thinking maybe the late news would have more on the killing, when the connecting door between our rooms opened and Rejji crawled in.

She came over to where I was sitting, said, “Cyn told me I had to—”

“You don’t have to do anyth—”

“I need to tell you a secret,” she said. “Please?”

“Rejji, I don’t want—”

“I know. Please...?”

“What?”

She crawled over to the TV set, poked around until she found the switch, turned it off. The room went into darkness, except for the light spilling from the connecting door.

She crawled back to where I was sitting. “I have to stand up to tell you, all right?”

“Sure.”

She stood up, bent over so her lips were right against my ear. I thought of Colto.

“I want to do this,” she whispered. “I want to see what it feels like. I want to know. But I can’t just...Cyn has to make me. But not really. You know what I’m...”

“What about me?” I asked her.

“What?”

“What do I want to do, Rejji?”

“Do me,” she whispered.

“Not with—”

“She won’t come in,” Rejji said. “And I won’t look.”

“Uh! Uh! Uh!”

Rejji, on her hands and knees, blindfolded, making an explosive little noise, somewhere between a grunt and a squeal.

I was right behind her.