Laura Lippman - The Most Dangerous Thing

“The four of us, or do we have to invite the good doctor and the grand lady?”

He misunderstands this for a second, thinks she said grandbaby. “Oh, the Robisons.”

She makes a face. “I don’t really know him. Her-”

This is the kind of woman talk he usually disdains, pure gossip, petty hurts over who said what or wore what, the kind of bullshit that Doris brings home from the altar guild, the unending chatter about so-and-so trying to get in good with Father Whosis. But there is something intriguing about Rita’s dislike of Tally Robison. Something earned.

“Just the four of us,” he says, knowing he can’t afford a night out until he finds work again, knowing Doris has no desire to go out, knowing he would be ashamed to be seen with her, the way she looks now. She would seem even more washed out and dried up alongside juicy, vivid Rita.

“Maybe,” she says. “If that no-good daughter of mine could be trusted to watch her younger brother for even an evening.”

He watches her go. She has a sweet ass, an upside-down heart in that tight skirt. He hasn’t been rejected, exactly. You can’t be rejected if you never enter the race. He’s a married guy, their kids are friends, or were. Of course they’ll never go out as couples. Too dangerous.

O ver the next few weeks, it seems the most natural thing to take the back way home, along Purnell Drive, and stare up the hill at the town houses, not that he knows which one is hers. He imagines coming upon her after dark, her car broken down, needing help. Somehow they end up at the Millrace Tavern, or back at Monaghan’s, and then they end up in the backseat of his Buick. His kids make fun of his love for Buicks, but they all have nice big backseats, as his sons will discover one day.

He allows himself these stories, then he goes home, where his house is a mess and his wife slumps on the sofa and there’s a faint smell, something dirty. Have the boys adopted a dog or a cat against his wishes? One day he’ll tear the house apart, find out what they’re hiding from him. They can’t be laying out for pet food, not now. He’s a good guy. He deserves a break. He has given his children everything- everything- and they don’t seem to know or care. He watches this new late show every night, the one about the hostages, counting off the days. He would have thought the whole thing would be over in a week, maybe two, but now the days are in the triple digits. Where’s John Wayne when you need him? Dead of cancer, going on a year now.

John Wayne, the good old Duke, is what got Tim canned at Hutzler’s last year. Tim’s stupid faggot of a boss, embarrassed by being one-upped on his knowledge of movies, joked they were going to rename the Orange County airport John Wayne Terminal . Tim honestly doesn’t remember what happened next, but his coworkers say he literally went over the desk, almost cleared it in one leap. They had to slap him in the face until he let go of that pencil dick’s pencil neck.

Spring 1980

R ita sizes up the customers left in her section. Two young lovers. A middle-aged man, alone, stretching his coffee and cigarette. Wherever he lives, he doesn’t want to go there. Three kids in surgical scrubs, too tired to eat. The man will tip well. The lovers-that can go a lot of ways. They could be a new item, and he’ll want to impress her. Or they could be a new item and she’ll be insecure, wonder aloud if he’s leaving a big tip because he thinks the waitress is cute. Most women who have put in their time waiting tables, they don’t let their boyfriends or husbands get away with undertipping, while women who have never carried a tray get all huffy if they think the tip is too big. As for the young almost doctors-they’ll do their best, and their best will probably be about 10 percent. They will rationalize that their tab is mostly beer, as if that made it any easier to transport to the table, that their food was only so-so, even if it did get there hot and fast, which is all Rita should be judged for. Besides, everyone knows the food at Connolly’s is mediocre. It’s almost a point of pride. The food sucks, yet everyone still eats here. Even the mayor comes here regular. He was in earlier this evening, with his mother. Now he’s a good tipper, but Rita didn’t have him tonight. The manager spreads him around.

Rita has been at Connolly’s only five years, but she feels as if she’s part of the fixtures, a piece of the original building, in place when it opened, whenever that was. Back in the 1930s? 1920s? A long time ago. Like a lot of things in Rita’s life, its heyday was over long before she grabbed a piece of it. Oh, it’s still crowded, still beloved, but with the development of the Inner Harbor now the big thing, the owners have been put on a month-to-month lease. A smart cookie would get out before she’s forced out.

Rita is a smart cookie, but she’s also a very tired cookie these days. She has enough on her plate, what with needing to find a new place to live, pronto. She can’t make the rent on the town house if Rick is moving out. He’s going to pay child support-Mr. Good Guy, bully for you, you’re so swell-but, man, that’s not the same as splitting all the living expenses. Based on what she’s seen so far, she’s going to be forced to take a two-bedroom, make Mickey double up with her, at least until Joey gets a little older. There’s also no way she’s going to be able to stay in the city school district.

Mickey seems okay about changing schools, almost eager for it. Rita had steeled herself for a big showdown, only it never happened. Mickey’s an okay kid most of the time, doesn’t ask for much. But when she does want something, she is ferocious in her desire for it. She argues, she screams, and, on occasion, even lashes out, trying to hit and scratch Rita. She’s a hellcat. Well, she comes by that naturally, through her mother and her father, may he rest in peace. Rest in pieces. What a loser he was. Killed in jail, in the overnight lockup on something small, but he had to go pick a fight with a little guy who beat him to death before the guards could get to them. When Mickey was young, it was too complicated to say her father was dead and not say how, so Rita said he was in the wind. She planned to kill him later, in some more civilized way. “Oh, honey, I just heard-your dad died in a car accident in Whereverthehellishe.” Or cancer. Something nice. But as Mickey gets older, it only grows harder for Rita to speak to her of her father’s death. She’s such a funny kid, always focused on who has what, very into fairness. It bugs her that Joey has a father and she doesn’t.

Man, how bugged she would be if she ever finds out that Joey has two fathers, in a sense. But even Rick hasn’t figured that out. At least she doesn’t think he knows that part.

Rita’s tables are all in lulls; she ducks outside for a cigarette. The air is nice tonight, balmy and bursting with scents, spring coming on all of a sudden, like it overslept and needs to make up time. But maybe what she’s smelling is only what’s left in the breeze from McCormick spices on the other side of the harbor. People are excited about the changes coming to the harbor, and Rita knows there will be opportunities-new restaurants, which will draw crowds if only because they’re new. But she’s skeptical. Tear down the old things, build new things, it’s still Baltimore. She should have gotten out while the getting was good, headed to San Francisco or Los Angeles, maybe Dallas. Some big city, although not New York. New York never appealed to her. It’s almost as bad as Baltimore. Crime, drugs. Dirty. She wants to go someplace clean, fresh, and warm, a place where the air never turns red with powder from the steel mill. Atlanta? Florida, although not Jacksonville, where she grew up. Real Florida, Miami or Fort Lauderdale.