Card Sharks

swarthy man who had accepted an envelope from Brand.

I looked up at my husband. He was watching me now.

'I got an odd call at the office yesterday afternoon,' he said.

'Oh?' I'd had years of practice disguising my own weaknesses; my voice didn't tremble.

'Mmmm. Patricia said you'd hired her cousin the detective.'

Patricia knew where the real power lay, between Brand and me. She'd played it safe. Maybe even told herself she was doing me a favor. 'Do tell.'

'Mmmm. She said you hired him to take incriminating photographs of me, for the purpose of securing a divorce and custody of Clara.'

'She certainly has an active imagination.'

'Doesn't she, though?'

Jessica and Francine came out with Clara. Clara wore her peach corduroy dress. It had a felt poodle with blue rhinestone eyes on the bib over a white, short-sleeved blouse trimmed in lace. She also wore her white patent leather shoes and white stockings. Her dark hair was pulled back in white bows. I took Clara into my lap and buried my face in her dark chestnut-and-gold hair, which smelled of baby shampoo. I clutched her tight. She hugged back.

'Your hands are cold,' she said.

'Go get dressed,' Brand told me. I looked up at him, and my terror must have shown.

'NO.'

'Yes. Now.'

We both looked at Jessica and Francine, who knew something was up but not what.

'Are you going out, Maman?' Clara asked me. She'd put her hands on either side of my head and those beautiful, speckled green eyes were only inches away.

'Yes, she is,' Brand said, lifting her out of my arms. He handed her to Jessica.

I should have fought him. I should have clung to her and not let him have her. I could have run with her; maybe one of the neighbors would have helped me. Someone would have helped me.

I should never have let him take her like that.

Brand took me to an office in a skyscraper down in the Financial District. Dr. Rudo was there, dressed in a different Nehru suit, a black one that made his pale skin and hair and his violet-blue eyes seem luminous in contrast. He greeted me in a way that made me shiver and shrink away.

Brand said, 'I believe you wanted to speak to my wife?'

The room looked like a doctor's office, with the requisite diplomas and certifications. An overstuffed couch and cubist paintings on the walls made it a little less medical-looking.

I thought about Dr. Isaacs's office, and what he had said about stress. I wondered if I was going to die.

Dr. Rudo put me in an armchair before his big desk, saying to Brand with a glance at me, 'Yes, that would be charming. But a word with you first.'

As soon as the door closed and the tumblers of the lock turned over, I dumped out the pens from a pen holder on the desk and rushed over to kneel by the door. The open end of the wood cup I pressed against the wood, and on the closed end I put my ear.

I heard Brand say, '… only wounded.'

'Yes. It's a shame that the upper echelon's first impression of you will be how you failed at your first major assignment.'

Brand sounded desperate, angry. 'I was only the messenger. He didn't use a high enough caliber weapon. That's not my fault.'

Rudo laughed. 'Relax. It's a head wound. The senator will be dead before morning. And if not, we can send someone in to finish him off. Your wife is the more important factor. If her detective did get shots of you with our Palestinian friend, and she's passed them on, you're at real risk.'

'The bitch …'

Their voices faded to murmurs as the floor transmitted to my shins and knees the trembling of their footsteps. They had moved away from the door. I stayed crouched at the door, shivering and sweating till I could smell my own stink, and thought about the photos in the rolltop desk back home.

A moment later footsteps shook the floor again. Dr. Rudo's voice said, '… I doubt her resistance is high; this shouldn't take long.'

The tumblers turned and the door opened. They looked down at me. I tried to duck between their legs, but Brandon grabbed my arm and hauled me upright — virtually off my feet.

'My dear young lady, you're showing an alarming amount of initiative,' Dr. Rudo said.

'What are you going to do with me?' I felt embarrassed, apologetic, at how my voice quavered. He smiled.

'Just ask your a few simple questions. Come sit down. Relax. Nobody's going to hurt you.' He took me by the elbow and led me back to the chair.

Dr. Rudo made Brandon leave the room, and then we chatted. I should have been much more on the defensive; to this day I don't know how I could have relaxed around him, given what I knew.

But the questions all seemed so innocuous. I remember his cool violet eyes looking at me, and his head nodding…. I Went on about Clara, about myself and how much I wanted another child, about Brandon's ambitions. Memories and thoughts surfaced and spilled out of my mouth that I had thought were long buried.

And when he asked me about the photos, I should have been prepared but I–I don't know why; I must have been an idiot! — but I had become convinced that the photos Franklin had taken were harmless and pointless, that I had no reason to conceal them.

And, well, I told him where they were.

Do you know, it took me years afterward to realize that it was even odd I should have told him where the pictures were? Whenever I thought about the session my mind kept slipping and sliding off the memory of the pictures, every which way. I'm still disturbed by how I could have been so foolish, so easily fooled. I wonder if he hypnotized me?

Brandon came back in at some point and took me home. I don't remember that part too clearly.

When we got home, Clara and Jessica were nowhere to be seen. I had a high fever by then, and was freezing cold, quaking like an aspen leaf. My joints ached. Brand took the pictures out of the desk, then undressed me, put me in bed and looked through the photos. He made a call on the phone, sitting on the bed.

'Pan? Brand. I found them right where she told us. Yeah, he got some shots of the exchange but nothing too incriminating. I think we can destroy them and leave it at that. I'll take care of them.'

A pause. 'I'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble. Isn't that right, Joan?' he asked me, gripping me by my sweat-soaked hair. Pain spread inward from the loci of his knuckles. I moaned.

He released me and spoke into the phone again. 'OK. How about tomorrow evening? You can have supper with us.' Pause. 'Fine. Seven thirty. See you then.'

Next he set fire to the photos, one by one, and dropped them, flaming, into a crystal serving bowl. Except for several explicit ones of him and Marilyn. Those he waved at me.

'Perhaps I'll start my own scrap book with these.'

He eyed the photos for a moment, gave me a look, then threw back his head and laughed. I was struck at how honest and open that laugh sounded. He hadn't sounded so open in years.

'God, Joan. It's great to be free at last. Free to tell you how much I hate you. Your jealousies and suspicions, your pettiness, your clinging and complaining and prudishness and controlling, bitchy nature — you've made my life a living hell.

'But that's over now. From now on, you are Clara's mother and that's all. You have nothing to say to me, nor I to you. You'll be my wife to the public eye, but there's nothing between us any more. And if you ever try anything like this again,' he waved the picture at me, 'I swear I'll kill you.'

He put them in his wallet and then picked up the phone again.