Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

While she still has her arms around me, I start in again. “I just thought that maybe you could stay home tonight and we could enjoy an evening together.”

“I know, but I already made plans to go out with Jenny.” She gives me a final squeeze, slides her arms from around my shoulders, and looks at her watch. “She should be here any minute. You’ve never met Jenny.”

“No.”

“She’s really nice. You’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I will. Listen, I’ve got an idea. I could order out, get a movie, whatever you girls want to watch. If there’s someone else you want to invite, call ’ em up. Now that you’re back in town, I’d like to meet all your friends. And you know me, by ten o’clock I’ll hit the sack and you guys can have the run of the house.”

“Gee, we could put on our pajamas and have a sleepover.” She rolls her big brown eyes toward the ceiling and laughs. “Dad, please…”

She turns and glances through the double-glazed window in the front door, then checks her watch again. “Late as usual. Jenny’s a lot of fun, but she needs a clock.”

“You can do whatever you want. Have a party. Drink. Bring in guys. I don’t care. But why not do it here?” I tell her.

Sarah turns back and looks at me. “What is this? What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” I give her a look of innocence.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she says.

“No. Why?”

“Dad! I mean it.” She folds her arms again and looks at me straight on-the brown-eyed truth machine.

“I swear. There’s nothing.” My voice rises half an octave in denial.

“Are you sure?” She puts the same female glare on me that Joselyn Cole used to unravel me in the office. Where they learn this I don’t know. You could bottle it and dispense with trials by jury. “I don’t believe you.” She comes to the same conclusion Cole did. The woman was right. Children and dogs, they’ll get you every time.

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “There’s nothing,” I tell her. I raise my right hand, three fingers held tightly together.

“What’s that?”

“Boy Scout sign,” I tell her.

“When were you in the Scouts?”

“You don’t have to belong to know the sign.”

“Exactly, and stop trying to change the subject.” Sarah studies me for a couple of seconds. “Dad, I’m worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a basket case. I know we’ve both been through a lot. The last several months haven’t been easy for either of us. But it’s over. Look out there.” She points toward the front window in the living room. “The cameras are gone. Those people are off our front lawn. And unless we’ve moved to hell, they won’t be coming back. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

“I know.”

She glances down toward the floor for a moment and collects her thoughts. “You know, Dad, I’ve been thinking. It might be good if you got some help,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m talking about professional help,” she says. “Since what happened at North Island you’re not the same person anymore. You’re never happy. You’re always worried. It seems like you’re constantly looking over your shoulder, as if something bad is about to happen. Is there some reason for this?”

“No…I guess I’m just…well, you know…”

“No, I don’t!”

“A little jumpy!” I snap at her.

“That’s what I mean. You need help,” she says. “I know you don’t want to talk to me about what happened that day. And if it makes you uncomfortable, I understand. But you need to talk to somebody.”

She stands there looking at me.

At first I don’t say anything. When the words finally come out, it’s as if they are emitted from some feeble golem-like ghost buried in the depths of my soul-“I’m all right.”

“I don’t know everything that happened that day, only what I read in the papers. But I know it must have been awful. It had to be-the noise, the violence, people being shot and killed like that. I am guessing that you saw a lot of it.”

“You know what they say: ‘As long as the right people get shot.’” I try to make light of it.

“Don’t even joke,” she says. “It doesn’t matter whether they were good or bad or what they were doing. They still died and you had to watch it. There’s no shame in seeing a therapist,” says Sarah. “There is such a thing as post-traumatic stress.” She pauses for a moment and looks away. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I found the pistol in your nightstand.”

Whoops!

“When did that start?” she asks. “We’ve never had a gun in the house before. Not that I know of.”

“No. You’re right.” A set of headlights flash as a car turns into the driveway out in front.

“I should have told you. Thorpe, you remember, the man from the FBI. He told Harry and me and Herman that there’s probably nothing to worry about, but until they tie up all the loose ends, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep some form of self-protection in the house.”

“What kind of loose ends?” says Sarah.

“Nothing you need to worry about. Go ahead and have a good time with your friend. Do you have your cell phone?”

She nods.

“Do you mind telling me where you’re going tonight? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

She shakes her head. “No, no, it’s all right,” she says. “I think we’re doing Café Coyote for dinner. It’s a Mexican place in Old Town.”

“I know it,” I tell her.

“And then I think we’re going to a club somewhere in the Gaslamp area. I don’t know the name. Jenny’s been there before.”

“That’s okay.”

“If you want me to stay home, I will,” she says.

“No. That’s all right. You go and have fun. And don’t worry about anything. It’s fine.”

The doorbell rings. Sarah grabs her coat and opens the door.

“How are you?”

“Sorry I’m late.” There is a lot of chatter and giggling at the door.

“Come in. I want you to meet my dad.”

A second later a tall, blond young woman, nicely dressed, long legged and a little ungainly, steps through the door and under the lights in the entry hall. She looks well scrubbed, blue eyes and rosy cheeks, wearing a nervous smile and high heels that make me think of a newborn fawn trying to find its footing. She is gripping a tiny sequined bag to her stomach with both hands so tightly that the little glass beads are about to pop off.

“Jenny, I’d like you to meet my dad. Dad, this is Jen.”

“Is it Jen or Jenny?”

“Either one,” she says.

“Well, it’s good to finally meet. Sarah’s told me so much about you I feel I already know you.” I reach out. She releases the death grip on her purse and gives me a fleeting fingertip shake.

“Same here.” She nods and smiles and does a little nervous genuflection on the tall stiletto heels.

Take off the makeup, put her in tennis shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt, shrink her down ten years, and Jenny could pass for any in the battalion of Sarah’s “little friends.” This was the legion of noise, the siege of laughter and yelling that rampaged through the neighborhood with light sabers and squirt guns a decade ago. Even now sometimes when I see one of them, grown and tall, and I have to look at them to say hello, if someone asks me who they are, I will slip and refer to them as “one of Sarah’s little friends.” My daughter gets angry. She tells me not to say it, especially in front of them; her dad, the loose cannon. Of course I would not. But if I live to be a hundred and see them with grandchildren, in the crevices of whatever is left of memory, to me they will always be part of that lost and noisy brigade-“Sarah’s little friends.”