Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

Tina couldn't figure out what kind of idiot parents would think to dress their seven-year-old girl in pink tights and a tank top, tie a pair of pink angel's wings to her frail back, and then cover every inch with glistening sequins. You could hardly see the child from the spotlight's reflection as she pranced left and right on the stage to some dance beat with electric guitars, singing a warbling version of "I Decide," from (the principal had told everyone) "that hit Disney movie, The Princess Diaries 2." It might have been a good song, but from her seat near the center of the Berkeley Carroll School 's auditorium, Tina could only make out the thump of the bass drum and see a little glittering girl-shape shift around on that painfully bare stage.

But of course she clapped. They all did. Two stood and hooted-the idiot parents, Tina assumed. Beside her, in what should have been Milo 's seat, Patrick struck his palms together and whispered, "In-fucking-credible! I'm getting my friends at CAA to sign up this one, ASAP."

Tina hadn't wanted to call Patrick, but with Milo pulling another no-show, Stef deserved as full an audience as possible. "Be nice," she said.

Milo had left another of his curt, unapologetic messages on their home phone, saying that there'd been a delay. As usual, he didn't call the delay by any name, just "delay."

Fine, she'd thought. Miss your daughters talent show, and I'll bring her real father.

Then Milo himself had suggested calling Patrick. "For Stef. And videotape it, will you?"

That had taken some of the wind out of Tina's anger-that, and the fact that, for the last three days, Patrick had been trying to get her and Stephanie to come back to him. Milo, off on his vague, sudden business trip, had no idea.

Her reaction to Patrick's initial attempt had been to walk the phone to the kitchen so her daughter wouldn't hear her say, "Are you on drugs, Patrick?"

"Of course not," said her ex… boyfriend sounded silly, but they'd never actually married. "How could you even think that? You know how I feel about drugs."

"I bet you've put away a few scotches."

"Listen," he said, trying to sound reasonable. "I look back now-I look back over all of it. I look back decades. What do I see? Two glowing years. The only two years I was really happy. With you. That's what I want to tell you. It was never better than that."

"I like Paula," she told him as she absently rubbed a sponge around the spotted aluminum sink. "She's a smart girl. Why she married you, I'll never know…"

"Ha ha," he said, and that's when she knew he really was drunk. She heard him take a drag off of one of his stinking cigarillos. "I'm the joke of the century. But think about it. Think about me. Remember how in love we were."

"Wait a minute. Where is Paula?"

Another long cigarillo-drag. "Your guess is as good as mine."

That, then, had clarified everything. "She's walked out on you. And after six years, you're running back to me? You must be seriously drunk, Pat. Or seriously stupid."

Onstage, a boy in a Superman outfit was delivering a monologue, a heavy lisp making the words hard to decipher. Patrick leaned close: "He's gonna fly soon. I can see the string attached to his belt."

"He's not going to fly."

"If he does, I'll buy him his first martini."

Patrick's long face and graying three-day beard earned him extra clients at Berg & DeBurgh. They thought that he, unlike his over-the-hill law partners, looked vital. These days, though, with the bruised shade to his weary eyes, he looked more desperate than vital. Paula Chabon, that Lebanese-French bombshell who sold her own line of jewelry at little boutique shops positioned in many world capitals, had moved to Berlin. An ex-lover had wooed her back. More than anything, Patrick wanted to believe he could do the same thing, that he could woo Tina back. He really was pitiful.

Superboy ended his monologue by running around the stage in mock flight, but the cape hung sadly against his back, and Patrick was annoyed that his feet never left the ground. "Turn on the video," Tina told him after the obligatory applause.

Patrick tugged a small Sony video camera out of his pocket. When he turned it on, the two-inch screen glowed.

Without thinking, Tina squeezed his knee. "Here comes Little Miss!"

But the Berkeley Carroll principal came on first, squinting at the card in her hand. "Please welcome our first grader Stephanie Weaver, as she performs…" The woman frowned, trying to make out the words. "Poop-ee de sirk, poop-ee de son."

Titters rippled through the audience. Tina reddened. How could this bitch not have learned how to pronounce it first?

The principal snickered, too. "My French isn't what it used to be. But, in English, this is, 'Wax Doll, Sawdust Doll,' written by Serge Gainsbourg."

The crowd duly applauded, and as the principal left the stage Stephanie entered, walking flat but proud to the center. She was, without a doubt, the best dressed of the bunch. Milo had spent a whole weekend with Stephanie in the Village searching retro shops for the proper one-piece dress and tights. Then he'd scoured the Internet, discovering mid-sixties haircuts. Tina had found it all a bit much, and the idea of dressing their child in forty-year-old styles a little pompous-but now, seeing how the washed-out browns of the dress and the striped stockings glowed, just faintly, under the spotlights, and how her bobbed hair hung perfectly straight along the sides…

Beside her, watching their daughter, Patrick was speechless.

There was a click from the speakers, a CD spinning, and then an orchestral melody that grew into a wall of sound with a swift beat. Stephanie began to sing, those French words perfectly formed.

Je suis une poupee de cire,

Une poupee de son

When she couldn't get her daughter in focus, Tina realized she was crying. Milo had been right all along. It was beautiful. She glanced at Patrick gaping at that little screen, muttering, "Wow." Maybe this would finally convince him that Milo was A-OK, despite what he'd believed yesterday when he called her office, at Columbia 's Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.

"I don't like him."

"What?" Tina had snapped back, already irritated. "What did you say?"

" Milo." She could tell he was slipping into an afternoon buzz, maybe one of his famous five-martini lunches. "I'm talking about Milo Weaver. I never trusted him, not with you, and certainly not with my daughter."

"You never even tried to like him."

"But what do you know about him? He's just some guy you met in Italy, right? Where's he from?"

"You know all this. His parents died. He's from-"

" North Carolina," Patrick cut in. "Yeah, yeah. How come he's got no southern accent?"

"He's traveled more than you know."

"Right. A traveler. And his orphanage-he told me it was the Saint Christopher Home for Boys. That place burned to the ground in 1989. Pretty convenient, don't you think?"

"I think it's pretty convenient you know this stuff, Pat. You've been snooping."

"I'm allowed to snoop when the welfare of my daughter's at stake."

Tina tried to purge that conversation from her head, but it kept banging at her as Stephanie sang, her voice carrying crystal-clear through the auditorium. Tina didn't even know what the song meant, but it was gorgeous.

"Look, Pat. I could bitch about how you left me when I was pregnant and needed you most, but I'm not angry about that anymore. The way things ended up… I'm happy. Milo treats us well; he loves Stephanie like his own. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Stephanie's pitch rose, the music swirling around her. She nearly bellowed the last lines, then fell silent. A final few bars of music, as Stephanie rocked in the same nonchalant dance she'd seen France Gall do in that Eurovision performance Milo tracked down on YouTube. She looked so cool, so hipper-than-thou.