minutes to persuade her that I wouldn’t think of buying one. I hook up the machine and begin screening the calls after that. I pick up when I hear Ned’s voice.
“Hey, Mary. I didn’t know you had an answering machine.”
“It’s new.”
“You going to use it instead of star sixty-nine?”
“Until my number gets changed.”
“I like it, it’s cute. You sound like a kid.”
“Great. I wanted to sound like a hit man. Hit woman.”
He laughs. “Not on your life. So how are you doing? You’ve been burning up the phone lines.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Anything the matter?”
“Yes, but I’m too tired to talk about it.”
“Just give me the headline.”
“I thought a car was following me, but it wasn’t. I thought someone broke into my apartment, but they didn’t. Not a good day.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah. Now I’m tired. I was just about to go to sleep.”
“I should let you go then.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. I’m supposed to tell you. Your father sends his regards.”
“My fatherwhat? ”
“I was at Masterson. He introduced himself.”
“To you? Why?” Ned sounds concerned, almost frightened.
“I don’t know. He said he wanted to meet me. I guess you told him that we-”
“I haven’t spoken to my father in fifteen years, Mary.”
“You haven’t? Why not?”
“It’s a long story. I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Can I stop by your office tomorrow?”
I offer a tentative okay and we hang up. None of this makes sense. Why would a grown man sound frightened of his father? Why haven’t they spoken in a decade and a half? How does his father know anything about me? I have so many questions lately, and no answers at all. I don’t like this feeling, that everything’s slipping out of control. I kept it together after Mike died, and it wasn’t easy. Now it’s all under attack. Threatened at the foundation.
I close the living room blinds and check the dead bolt. I decide to take a hot bubble bath to calm down. I push theANSWER CALL button on the answering machine and fill the tub. I undress quickly, throwing my clothes into a heap on the bathroom floor. I sink deep into the warm, scented water, artificially blue in imitation of the Caribbean. The box promised that the sapphire currents would wash my troubles away. Don’t worry, be happy. I lie still in the tub, listening for any sound in the apartment. The only noise is the crackling of the bubbles as they pop at my earlobes. I try to enjoy high tide, but as soon as I start, the telephone rings. I stiffen and wait for the machine to answer.
The rings stop, and there’s a mechanical noise as the tape machine engages. “Mary, this is Timothy Jameson. See me first thing in the morning. You know when I get in.”Click.
At least it’s nothim.
I relax in the warm, silky water. It feels good, therapeutic. I sink deeper, so the waves lap at my chin. I close my eyes. No problem, mon.
The next time I hear the telephone ring, the water is cool. Barely conscious, I hear the answering machine pick up the call. A woman’s voice says, too loudly, “This is Stephanie Fraser. We met in Judge Bitterman’s courtroom after your argument. I’ve been calling your office, but you haven’t returned my calls. We just can’t sweep this under the rug, Mary. We need to send a message. So please return my call. I know you must be busy, but this is important. Thank you.”
Click.
“Go away, Steph. I gave at the office.”
But now the water is cold, and I’m awake. How unpleasant. And I have to shave my legs, a task that used to make me feel grown-up but now is merely a pain in the ass. Cranky, I fish under the water for the Dove and soap up the stubble on my legs. I use a new plastic razor, for that extra-close shave. This way I can let it go for three more days. I’m negotiating my ankle bone with concentration when the telephone rings again.
The rings stop and the machine engages.
Silence. No message. No static. It’shim.
Click.
I feel a sharp pinch at my ankle. A crimson seam crosses the bone. The soap makes it burn.
“Shit!”
I hurl the razor against the tile wall, and it falls to the floor.
That’s when I see it: Mike’s picture, the little one of his face, in a porcelain heart frame. The only picture of him I haven’t packed away. I keep it on my makeup shelf in the bathroom. It’s a private place that only I can see, every morning.
But it’s not on the makeup shelf tonight. It’s on the floor. Shattered.
“No!” I climb out of the bathtub and pick up the frame. It lies in pieces in my hand as I stand dripping on the tile floor. The porcelain has cracked into separate shards, and the glass over Mike’s face is a network of tiny slivers.
How did this happen? I don’t want to think what I’m thinking.
I check the makeup shelf frantically. A tube of Lancome foundation. A glass of eye pencils and mascara. A couple of lipsticks and a bottle of contact lens solution. None of the makeup has been disturbed. If it was Alice who knocked over the picture frame, she was pretty choosy.
I look down at my hand. I can’t see Mike at all. It’s as if a storm cloud has passed over his features.
If someone is trying to hurt me, they sure know how to do it.
14
Itake a cab to work at the ungodly hour that Jameson gets in. My nerves feel taut, my stomach queasy. I’m losing weight, but it’s not worth it.
I get off the elevator on Jameson’s floor, Lust. When I reach his office, his secretary, Stella, tells me he went to the bathroom. I suggest to Stella, mypaisana, that if Jameson didn’t come to work so early, he could take his morning poopie at home like everybody else. This makes Stella laugh, so she tells me a joke too raunchy to repeat. It’s for her jokes that Judy calls her The Amazing Stella.
I go into Jameson’s office and sit down. The office is vaguely nautical in theme, a place for Jameson to pretend he’s the captain of something. For Jameson is short, and has the complex in spades. Suddenly he runs in like a pug off the leash and slams the door behind him. “Well, Mary, I guess what I’ve been hearing is true.”
“What do you mean?”
Jameson remains standing, dipping his fingers into the pockets of a navy blue blazer. “What I am about to tell you is for your own good, Mary. I’m telling it to you because I know you are very interested in becoming a partner here at Stalling.”
“What is it?” He’s making me even more paranoid than I am already.
“I’ve been hearing that you’re Berkowitz’s girl now and that you do your best work only for him.”
“But I-”
Jameson holds up a tiny paw, like a doggie pope. “At first, I thought it wasn’t true. It didn’t sound like the Mary DiNunzio I know. But I got theNoone brief yesterday and I was extremely disappointed in it.”
“I-”
The paw again. “I know you can do better, Mary, because you have in the past, and for me. But if you think you can make partner in this firm just by keeping Sam Berkowitz happy, you are in error. I should not have to
