do that for?”
“What’s the matter with you?” I demand. “You just found out the love of your life’s a big fat phony. Why aren’t you hyperventilating? Or at least crying?”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah’s eyebrows, badly in need of plucking, are constricted. “Sebastian’s not the love of my life. And he’s NOT a phony.”
“A pacifist who carries a thirty-eight?” Cooper, holding open the door to the backseat of the taxi, looks skeptical. “You don’t find that a bit hypocritical?”
“God, don’t you see?” Sarah lets out a bitter laugh as she climbs into car. “It’s so obvious. Someone planted that gun on him.”
I glance at Cooper as I slide onto the backseat beside her, but he shrugs, obviously as clueless as I am. “Sarah, what are you talking about?”
“It’s clearly a conspiracy,” Sarah explains, as if the two of us are simpletons not to have seen it. “A setup by the president’s office. I don’t know how they did it, but you can be sure they’re behind it. Sebastian would never carry a gun. Someone must have slipped it into his bag.”
“Washington Square West and Waverly,” Cooper says to the cabdriver, as he joins me on the backseat. To Sarah, he says, “I gotta hand it to you, kid. That’s a new one. A conspiracy by the New York College president’s office. Very creative.”
“Laugh all you want,” Sarah says. She turns her face resolutely toward the window. “But they’re going to be sorry come morning.Very sorry.”
I stare at her profile. It’s getting darker out, and harder to see. I can’t tell whether or not she’s kidding.
But then again, she’s Sarah. Sarah’s never been much of a kidder.
“What do you mean, they’re going to be sorry?” I ask her. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Sarah says innocently. “Don’t worry about it.”
I glance at Cooper. He’s trying not to smile. Although I don’t see anything particularly funny about the situation.
Sarah turns down my invitation to come over for dinner as we pull up in front of Fischer Hall. She says she has a lot of work to do—whatever that means. Cooper remarks when she’s gone that it’s just as well—he’s had as much twenty-something drama as he can take for one day.
“But what could she mean, we’re going to be sorry?” I wonder, as we make our way up the stoop to his front door. “What could she be up to?”
“I don’t know.” Cooper fumbles with his keys. “But it seems to me if she gets out of hand you have a good bargaining tool with the fact that she was letting that kid live illegally in your building. Just threaten to rat her out.”
“Oh, Coop,” I say. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” he wants to know. “You’re too soft on them, Heather. What was that whole thing earlier, with my car? Did you really think there was a chance in hell I was going to let them borrow it?”
“No,” I say. “But you’re one to talk. What was that other whole thing in your office earlier, where you were swearing at Sarah, and telling her to get the fuck out? Like you were really going to throw her out. You wouldn’t throw a cockroach out of there.Obviously.”
“Heather, you might not have noticed, but she was completely lying to us.” Cooper manages to get the front door unlocked, then pushes it open. “Do you think we’d have ever gotten the truth out of her if I’d coddled her the way you do?”
My cell phone rings. I pull it out, see that it’s Tad calling, and immediately send the call to voice mail.
Unfortunately, Cooper is standing close enough that he sees who it was. And where I sent the call.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asks, one dark eyebrow quirked.
“No,” I say stiffly. “I just don’t feel like talking to him at the moment.” I follow him inside, throwing my purse and keys onto the same console table in the hallway where he’s thrown his wallet and keys. “The point is, you didn’t have to be that mean to her… ”
Cooper turns to look down at me. “Yes, actually, Heather, I did. Sometimes, if you want to get to the truth, you have to push people. It may not be pretty, but it works.”
“Well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree,” I say. “Because I think you can be nice to people and get the same results.”
“Yeah,” Cooper says, with a snort. “In four years.”
“Sarah’s conscience would have gotten the better of her sooner or later,” I say. “Way sooner than four years. Try four minutes. Which is exactly what happened. And oh my God, what is that smell?”
Cooper inhales.
“That,” he says, in the tone of a man who is well pleased with a discovery, “is the succulent odor of your dad’s braised short ribs.”
“My God.” I am in shock. “That smells delicious.”
“Yeah, well, better enjoy it while you can, ’cause this is the last time we’re gonna get to experience it.”
“Shut up,” I say. “He’s only moving uptown. He’s not dying.”
“You’re the one who couldn’t stand having him around,” Cooper points out, as he hurries toward the back of the house, which is where the insanely good smell is coming from. “I was perfectly content to let him live here forever.”
“Come on.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing as I trot along behind him. “Forever?All that yoga and those aromatherapy candles didn’t bother you? What about the flute playing?”
“When I got to come home to dinners like this? Perfectly forgivable.”
“There you are,” Dad calls from the kitchen. He can hear us as we come down the hallway—but not, I know from experience, what we’re saying. His hearing’s not what it once was, and the walls of Cooper’s brownstone are thick. You can’t beat that nineteenth-century construction. “Stop bickering, you two, and hurry up. Dinner’s ready. You’re late!”
We rush toward the absurdly large (for Manhattan, anyway) skylit kitchen, to find the butcher block table already set, the candles already lit, and the wine already poured. Dad is standing at the counter tossing a salad, wearing a blue and white apron over a button-down shirt, olive green cords, and a pair of Crocs. He brightens when he sees us, as does Lucy, who thumps her tail against the floor in the contented manner of a dog who has already had her evening walk.
“Hello,” Dad says. “So glad you could make it.”
“Sorry we’re late,” I begin. “We had to take Sarah to the police station. It turns out she… ”
My voice trails off. Because it turns out we’re not alone with Dad and Lucy in the kitchen. There’s someone sitting at the table with a plate of food already in front of him, although he’s politely refrained from digging in yet. The same can’t be said, however, of his wineglass.
“Heather!” Cooper’s brother, Jordan, slurs, drunkenly raising a glass of wine in our direction. “Cooper! Did you hear the news? I’m gonna be a daddy!”
“I really didn’t have any other choice but to let him in,” Dad explains, much later after dinner, when Cooper has left to drive his brother back to his penthouse on the Upper East Side. “He was very insistent that he see you. And he was, as you could probably tell, in a very celebratory mood.”
Jordan’s mood, if you ask me, was more suicidal. But then, that’s what happens when you find out your wife’s pregnant, and you’re not a hundred percent certain you’re ready for fatherhood.
But that was something Jordan had asked me to keep between the two of us, when he’d trapped me in the hall on my way back from the bathroom during dinner.
“I never should have let you go,” Jordan informed me mournfully as he sandwiched me between his body and the wall.
Since we have this conversation approximately every three to four months, I knew the script and have my part down fairly pat. All I had to say was “Jordan. We’ve been through this. You and I never worked. You’re much better off with Tania. You know she loves you.”
This time, however, he veered from his accustomed dialogue by saying, “That’s just it. I don’t think she does. I know this is going to sound crazy, Heather, but I think… I think she just married me because of who I am. Of who my father is… the owner of Cartwright Records. This baby thing… I just don’t know… What if it’s just so she can score better alimony later on?”
