Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

The house was modest, not more than fifteen years old, the first edge of the wild housing boom that had hit Vegas and environs like a whirling dervish and had not stopped until the mortgage bust. Now the Strip was booming with obscenely priced high-rise condominiums, like Miami Beach, and sales had nearly stopped.

Rafi’s house was distinctly low-rise. Still, it was as respectable as her twenties bungalow in Our Lady of Guadalupe parish. She could have afforded something modern and sleek in the suburbs, but she’d wanted Mariah to know her Hispanic roots, to be part of a real community that only church, school, and home within walking distance can provide. Call it old-fashioned . . . being a single mother gave her the opportunity to do what she believed in, no questions asked. By nobody.

She walked up to the door, facing north, smart in this climate. On the other hand, when you barbecued supper in the backyard, you broiled too. The idea of Rafi barbecuing was so funny, she smiled.

Unfortunately, she was caught in the act when he opened the door before she could ring the bell.

“So this is a social visit,” he said, raising dark, heavy eyebrows.

“Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”

“And that makes you smile. Come in, anyway.”

She entered like a cat, slowly, sniffing out the atmosphere. Also, she didn’t move that fast with eighty-some stitch scabs still pulling at her side and stomach.

The new carpet was a pale sunset color, beige-peach. Developers and people who wanted to sell their homes loved those blah neutrals. The walls were off-white. They were in a cathedral-ceilinged main room-den with an eating bar dividing it from the small kitchen.

Everything was tidy. Tidier than Casa Molina. No kid, no cats, no working mother in residence.

Rafi was wearing khakis and a black T-shirt. There were dark circles around his eyes—swarthy skin was prone to that—but he looked trimmer, tauter. Funny, he was looking better and she was looking worse.

“You still like calorie-free Dr Pepper?” he asked.

“I can drink it.”

He popped two cans and brought her one.

After eyeing the seating pieces, low, beige, and cushy, she opted to hike one hip on one of the three barstools drawn up to the den side of the eating bar. She wasn’t about to mire herself in upholstered furniture when she couldn’t be sure of pushing herself up again without a slight struggle or a grunt of pain.

Rafi leaned on the counter behind the raised eating surface like a bartender.

“So what do I owe—?”

“We need to talk, I told you. I don’t want to do this right now. About you meeting Mariah. It’s not a good time for me.”

“And Mariah, when would it be a good time for her?”

“In my book? Never.”

He just watched her. That was different. He’d never been wary before.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in denying anything,” she said after a bracing sip of Dr Pepper. She hadn’t had one since . . . well, since the day she’d decamped without warning, without word. Leaving L.A. fourteen years ago.

He sighed. “Why’d you do it, Carmen? It was bad enough what we were both going through in the department. Then, bang. You’re gone. Most of your things are gone. No reason. No message. No way to trace you. A cop knows how to disappear.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“The kid? But you didn’t run home. I didn’t think so, but I checked. Why run? You thought I’d want you to get rid of it? You, pregnant? That’s one possibility I never even dreamed about. You made plain from the first no kids, no accidents. I can see that a pregnancy would shake you up, but you could have at least consulted me. That’s all I can think of. You didn’t ask. Maybe I would have said have an abortion then. I don’t know. That’s the problem. I had a right to know.”

Her forefinger pulled a drop of condensation from the soft drink can into a long tail on the eating bar Formica. “That’s the thing. I didn’t think you’d want me to abort. I thought you’d fixed it so I got pregnant without my knowledge and cooperation.”

“Me. Got you pregnant? How? Sure, foam and condoms have failure rates. That’s why you used a diaphragm too. God, it was like having sex in a bubble bath every time. Sure, we hadn’t talked about it. But . . . man, I had enough problems on the job, like you did. Baby was the furthest thing from my mind. You were escaping the tension starting up your singing gig, and I was helping you. Don’t you remember? We’d comb those funky L.A. vintage shops, trolling for movie star leavings. We invented ‘Carmen.’”

It was his turn to write an invisible word in a drop of cold water. “Yeah, we were stressed. The brass was loading us with shitwork, the Anglos were on both our tails. Why would I want a baby in a situation like that! I don’t want a baby now.”

“You do. You want access to my baby!”

“She’s a kid. Not a baby. Very fast getting not to be a baby, Carmen. And she’s my kid. She’s got my eyes. Freaked me when I first saw her. Maybe some chin too. You got pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“Baby pictures.”

“Yes. But I didn’t think to bring them. Sorry, daddy dearest.”

“So why did you think I made you pregnant deliberately?”

“I couldn’t believe it when it happened. You know we weren’t ready. I sure wasn’t. I couldn’t believe my diaphragm had failed. I examined it up against the bathroom fluorescent. There was a minute pinhole in it.”

Silence.

Rafi slammed his pop can off the counter. It clattered to the cheap vinyl floor and rolled, spewing brown fluid like tobacco juice.

“And that’s it? Convicted without trial, without an interrogation even? You think I was running around with a needle sticking holes in your diaphragm? Are you crazy, woman? We didn’t need that. I didn’t need that. Why the hell would you even think that?”

Suddenly her reasoning seemed weak, stupid, insulting even.

“I was doing better with the force. They were getting the message that they needed some token women, and I wasn’t buckling on the ‘hood patrol like they’d thought. Hoped.”

She looked up from drawing in her new water blob. “I knew I was in line for a promotion. And you weren’t. I knew you wouldn’t be happy about that. I figured you had figured it out too, and wanted to put me out of the running.”

He took all that in, ignoring the still rocking pop can.

“You knew and you figured. Wrong. No, I wouldn’t like the gender card dealing me out. Yeah, I’d be mad. But I wouldn’t have sabotaged you. Some of my Anglo ‘peers,’ maybe, if I’d have a chance. But not you. That’s it? Our whole lives off track because you assumed I’d trick you. Usually it’s the woman who pulls that ‘Gee, I’m pregnant’ stuff.”

“That was the last thing I’d wanted, and I was really pissed, because I couldn’t ditch all that Catholic upbringing. I couldn’t do an abortion.”

“Sorry now?”

“No.”

“I’m not either.”

She caught her breath, which hurt like Hades.

“Yes, I’d like to meet my daughter besides on a crime scene. I got to know her a little at that Teen Idol reality TV show. I’d decided she was an okay kid even before I figured it out. Yes, you can break it to her gently. Doesn’t she wonder about her father, for crissakes?”

“No. I told her he was a policeman who’d been hit and killed by a drunk driver while helping a stranded motorist.”

“At least that’s a likely story. And what’d you do for photos of the hero dead dad?”

“I clipped a newspaper story, told all about it. The funeral, everything. I told her that was the only memento I could bear to keep.”

“At least you told her that he was a cop.” Rafi laughed in disbelief. “Written out of my own life. You did a good job.”