Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“Wow, that’s really amazing, you’re totally multitalented,” I said.

“That’s not all she’s good at,” John said. He and Areea dissolved into giggles.

“Honestly don’t know what she sees in you, she can’t even get a green card off you,” I said to him.

Areea asked Pat if he wanted a massage too. Pat refused out of politeness because his feet were in a bad way, but Saint Areea insisted, ignored his calluses and an open sore and gave him a gentler massage than me, but still effective nonetheless.

My watch said twelve and, sadly, it was time to leave this scene of domestic tranquillity. Pat begged me to have at least one martini before I went, but I couldn’t. I’d had a weird high this morning, inverted and almost a bad trip, and I wanted to stay off the booze. It turned out that the heroin supply in this town was very patchy and you never really knew what you were getting. Manuelito, my dealer, always complained about it. Around here the crack cocaine was of the finest quality but the smack could be dodgy. Smackheads were all in New York: singers, starving artists, Goth girls, anorexic fashion models.

I was reluctant to go, though. I was tired and this was the best part of the day, hanging out in the morning with John, Pat, and Areea, chatting, messing about, sharing the fire escape with Pat, looking down on the world.

Of course, last night I hadn’t been able to sleep. Two nights of that now. Ever since Amber.

Amber. Hypocritical me telling John off.

For it was all about her.

It’s an old trope, the peeler who falls for one of his suspects or a witness or a victim. It’s a cliché. They even tell you about it in the police academy, apparently it’s very common in domestic abuse cases.

I should have had more sense, anyway. After seeing Redhorse, I should have scarpered. Smart thing to do. But Amber was the magnet. She had caught me. Something about her that could not be denied. Smart, beautiful, sexy. Maybe if I’d been older I would have been immune. I should have run. But I didn’t want to. And there was that feeling I’d had that she was somehow Victoria Patawasti’s polar opposite. A looking-glass version of her, a Victoria in the parallel world. WASP, blonde, prim as a counterpoint to Victoria. Both incredibly clever, but Amber lacked Victoria’s wit and Amber did not have Victoria’s sense of humor, how could she? Victoria, who had been the only Paki in the whole school, darker even than her brothers, she needed a defense mechanism right from the start. She’d verbally taken apart anyone who’d screwed with her. Sarcastic, ironic, cool, in fact. I shouldn’t have let her go. And this was before ketch and Mum’s illness — no excuses. I suppose I was too immature, too caught up in my own universe.

Too clever by half, the teachers used to say about me, and they said the same about her. But she went on to be head girl. I wasn’t subtle, that was my trouble, how could I be, growing up in that crazy house with those pseudo-hippie parents and aloof siblings — subtle would have gone unnoticed. And also, she was out of my league, destined to go to Oxford University, graduate with a first, and eventually be head-hunted by a nonprofit who would offer her a green card, free rent, a good salary, responsibilities, rapid advancement, and a chance to live in the USA. Aye. Fucked up then, fucking up now.

I sighed, went out.

Colfax Avenue. Heat, light, pollution, three Mexican guys being questioned by a motorcycle cop. A protester outside Planned Parenthood wearing a fetus billboard. Bikers in the park dealing pot.

The CAW building.

The Haitian concierge sitting at his desk and reading a green pamphlet, which was the latest security briefing from the Denver Police Department. He looked at me, smiled.

“Ça va?” he asked.

“Ok,” I said, hoping there wasn’t a description of me in there.

I pushed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator dinged. I got on. The day began.

That night, for the second time that week, I was paired with Amber Mulholland. We were soliciting in a town called Evergreen right up in the foothills. Big houses, lawns, American flags, kids on bicycles. It was odd that Amber and I would be together, for a couple of reasons. First, I had been working at CAW sufficiently long now that I didn’t need training or a partner anymore. Second, Amber told me when she did go out she did it only to keep Charles company. And yet here we were again. I wasn’t complaining. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days, not since the night she’d caught me in a lie and I’d seen her steal and we’d rescued the kids and had hard, crazy sex up against a wall. I wanted to see her, I needed to see her.

She was wearing a white crew neck over khaki slacks. A little cooler here in the foothills. Needless to say, she looked stunning. We walked away from the van, and when the others were behind us, she turned to me. Her face flushed, rosy, biting her lip.

“Alex, listen to me, I lost my head the other night. I love Charles, I don’t know what happened, but it can’t ever happen again. I blame myself, the fire, the excitement, I don’t know, I was overcome, if you value my friendship you won’t mention it, please.”

I didn’t know what I was expecting her to say. But not this. Not the brush-off.

“Ok,” I said.

“Friends?” she asked, and offered me her hand.

“Friends,” I said, concealing my amazement at her behavior. It seemed so wrong, so immature, so silly. And yet maybe that’s what adults did. We walked in silence for a half minute and took out our maps.

“I think we’ll do better tonight. Tonight we have the Glengarry leads,” Amber said with a little smile….

She proved correct. A short night, but good work. Two hours, ten members each. A hundred and fifty bucks for me.

It was only on the way back to the van that we managed a real conversation. I tried to be lighthearted.

“You know what this neighborhood reminds me of?” I asked her.

“What?”

“It’s the sort of place a lot of Spielberg movies begin in, you know, picket fences and kids playing and stuff and then something ominous happens, aliens come, or a poltergeist, or government agents, something like that.”

“I don’t really go to the movies,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s right. You said you like the theater,” I said.

She nodded and the conversation died. With annoyance, she brushed the hair away from her face. How dare one strand of hair be out of place again. She knocked her hair clip to the ground. I picked it up, gave it to her. Our fingers touched. She smiled at me. I swallowed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Look, about the other night, I’m glad you didn’t say anything to the police,” I said.

“It’s ok, I understand. You’re from Ireland, you want to work, and you don’t have all the papers, nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, sympathetically.

“Not every American takes that attitude,” I said.

“Well, I do, I come from pretty straitened circumstances myself,” she said.

“Your parents weren’t well off? Thought you went to Harvard?”

“I worked hard,” she said firmly.

“Tell me about your background, if you don’t mind,” I said, and again she returned my smile.

“It’s very complicated,” she said carefully. She blinked a couple of times, angled her head away from me.

“I’d like to know,” I said.

“Well, my parents were divorced, you know,” she said.

“That can be very hard on a kid, did you have brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“What did your parents do for a living?” I asked.

“Dad was a mechanic, he went to college part-time, and he became a union rep and did well. Mom worked in a place called Dairy Queen, which you probably haven’t heard of, I haven’t seen any in Denver.”