Her words were a blatant attempt to pick a fight, leveraging the neverending argument centered around the you-never-do-anything-I’m-always-stuck-with-the-rotten-jobs theme. The premise of the argument was as true as it was false. His work as an account executive for the telephone company kept him working most nights and weekends, but he tried his best to factor in family time. It was the major frustration of his life that he no longer controlled his time—the one element he valued most over all the others. What time he had left after doing his job was controlled by Patty and her assigned chores. To be sure, there were hours left at the end of each day, but his body demanded that he dedicate those to sleep.
He declined to take the bait, choosing instead to ignore her comment. She was as stressed as he was, and that damned rug meant a whole lot to her. When he bent down to kiss her goodbye, she turned her face away. He kissed her on the neck anyway.
“I’m really sorry, Patty, but I’ve got to go,” he said. He picked up his briefcase and walked toward the garage, pausing for a moment at the door. “I hope you learned something from this, Peter,” he said to his son, who remained silent on the far side of the room. “And Patty?”
She looked up from her task, her eyes still hard.
“Please don’t kill the dog.” Through the mask of anger, he saw the faintest glimmer of a smile. He blew her a kiss and left.
The garage was like a sauna, the unmoving air instantly bringing beads of sweat to Todd’s forehead. Even as the overhead door rumbled open, there was no relief, not the slightest trace of a breeze. It was on days like this that Todd wondered how he ever grew up without air conditioning.
As he backed down the driveway, he admired his landscaping efforts from the previous weekend. After three months of watching the house rise from its origins as a plot of dirt, and only four weeks after closing on the mortgage, the house was beginning to look like a home, like someone actually lived there. He half hoped that Patty and Peter would appear in the window to wave goodbye, but a glance back caught no evidence of a curtain parting.
Little Rocky Creek was turning out to be a terrific place to live. The neighbors all knew each other, and everyone seemed to be at the same stages of their lives: young professionals struggling to establish themselves, and every month barely scraping together the cash necessary for the mortgage payment on these, their starter homes. There were lots of kids in the neighborhood, no crime to speak of, and a strong community spirit that bonded everyone together.
Who’s that?
A boy, maybe twelve, thirteen years old, was crossing the street in his direction. The face looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place it with any of the families in the neighborhood. But then, Todd didn’t know too many of the folks who lived up in the first section that was built. He was a good-looking kid, long and thin with disheveled blond hair, but there was something in the way he carried himself that made Todd think he was up to no good.
By the time Nathan saw the car approach, there was nothing he could do. His first instinct was to run and duck out of sight, but his last opportunity to do that without being seen came and went in the two seconds it took to consider the option. All he could do was try and blend in. He didn’t even alter his stride as he crossed the street, though he did change his course to head back toward the front part of the neighborhood. No sense showing this guy where he was going.
The Chevy approached from behind him on the left, slowing ever so slightly as it passed. Nathan smiled politely and waved.
Todd waved back. The kid looked normal enough, and he certainly wasn’t trying to run away. Just a tired kid on his way home from whatever a kid that age could be on his way home from at this hour of the morning. One thing was for sure, Todd thought: When Peter got to be that age, he was going to be kept on a tight leash.
As he accelerated toward the end of the street, Todd’s thoughts turned to the Reischmann proposal, and the details of how he was going to structure his presentation. He never even looked back in the mirror.
As soon as the Chevy was out of sight, Nathan made a right-angle turn and headed back for the woods, suppressing his urge to run. Once back in the comfort of shade and obscurity, he leaned his back against a tree and slumped to the ground, taking a minute or two to collect himself.
“That was stupid!” he declared in a whisper, banging the back of his head against the tree bark. “I never should have gone out in the open! What’ll I do if that guy recognized me?”
Just one more thing to worry about over which he had no control. He hated himself for making so many mistakes. In the past twenty-four hours, luck alone had pulled him through every challenge. One of these times, luck was going to look the other way, and he was going to have to engineer his own solution. His head told him that it was useless to worry about things he couldn’t change, but these were things that could get him thrown back in jail, or even killed. That was why you needed grown-ups, he figured, to help keep it all in perspective. That was why he was so lonely without one around.
He felt like he was stuck in quicksand. Everything he did to get himself out of this mess just got him in deeper and deeper. Killing was wrong, stealing was wrong, breaking and entering was wrong, yet he’d done all of them. These were things you went to hell for, yet he was planning to do most of them again.
And how could he stop? One way or the other, his future was sealed. Either he was going to get out of the country successfully, or he was going to spend a very long time in prison for doing what he’d already done, even though he’d had no real choice. How much worse could it be getting caught doing more of the same?
As these thoughts ricocheted through his brain, energy drained from his body. He needed sleep, and the brighter outlook that rest always brought. With an enormous effort, he gathered himself to his feet and embarked on the last two hundred yards of the night’s journey.
Ten minutes later, he had gained entry to 4120 through a ground-level basement window, made his way to the master bedroom, stripped down to his borrowed undershorts, and fallen fast asleep.
Chapter 18
For Enrique, the biggest surprise of all was his continued surprise at Denise’s ability to suck him into her crises. All night long, through the endless hours of rehearsal and hand-holding, the single thought that propelled him through the agony was that of the sleep that would be his reward after the limo finally picked up Denise to take her to the studio.
Then, somehow, he found himself with her in the limousine, and now in the wings just off-camera, waiting for her satellite interview to begin.
He had to hand it to her, though. In the presence of others, she handled herself like a pro. Calm and articulate, she carried herself as though she’d been born in a television studio. The difference between her real self and her stage self was near schizophrenic. She was born for this line of work, just as he seemed born to the task of helping her access the TV star that was hidden deep down inside a paranoid single mother who never came to grips with the depth of her natural talent, and who feared unemployment more than anything else in the world.
The ABC staffers in Washington went to great lengths to make Denise comfortable as she was prepped for the interview. Her job, it turned out, was to sit quietly while she was serviced. Makeup was applied by a professional artist in a very comfortable, if Spartan, dressing room equipped with all manner of junk food. It occurred to her that a doctor would have a field day bringing the blood sugar and caffeine levels of television people under control. The issue of her hair had been settled by the hairstylist, who told her that ponytails on black women made them look hard and unattractive. Under different circumstances, Denise might have taken offense, but she found that the prospect of facing millions of people made her extraordinarily receptive to suggestions. With far greater speed and efficiency than she had ever experienced in a hair salon, her “do” was transformed into a much more stylish, professional bob. Enrique seemed relieved when he saw it for the first time.
With seven minutes left before she was to talk with Joan, or maybe Charlie—there was still some problem with the scripting in New York—Denise was seated in a well-worn though surprisingly comfortable chair, in front of some cheesy faux-glass blocks through which the audience was supposed to believe you could see the Capitol building. Up close, the scenery wouldn’t fool anyone, but in the monitors, sure enough, it looked convincing.
