Richard Price - The Whites

All he had known this morning was that he wanted Carmen to feel things, to experience things, give her a taste of what it feels like to have the most precious people in your life snatched away from you, to feel without any warning the ground buckle and split beneath your feet. But now that he had set things in motion, he realized that today was nothing, an unnerving incident that would be forgotten in a week or two. What was required here was evidence of a pattern, of an intelligent presence, an unseen wolf lurking just outside the perimeter of her life until… Until what?

He had no idea how or when it should end. But he did know this: if his campaign went on long enough, he would eventually get caught and that would be the end of him. And the end of them.

He would lose her.

So let it go.

Can’t.

You will lose her.

And then an exhilaratingly anarchic notion:

She’ll go to better people.

He had a half-a-half-sister in Pennsylvania who was pretty decent, and a childless cousin in Staten Island, Anita, who he liked and liked him in return. Better that Sofia go to her, but what the hell was he thinking…

Marilys came back into the den, squat and stone-faced, her torso un-indented from shoulder to hip. When the two of them stood side by side they looked like matching salt and pepper shakers.

As she slipped into her jeans, he dug four hundred dollars out of his heaped pants and passed it along to her in a tight roll. He knew four hundred was shit pay for the days and hours she put in, but she needed to be off the books, and that was all he could afford if he couldn’t deduct her come April 15.

“The toilet’s backed up on the top floor, you need to call a plumber.”

“All right,” shrugging into his own pants. “So what did she eat today?”

“Carrots, like you said,” stooping to pick up his discarded washcloth.

“Oh yeah? What else.”

“A turkey burger without the bread.”

“Uh-huh. What else.”

Marilys peeled the bath towel from the couch and replaced the pillows.

“What else.”

“She was crying for a treat.”

“What’s a treat.”

“A couple of Mint Milanos.”

“What did I tell you about that?”

“Let me ask you,” she said, “what did you eat today?”

And there was Marilys, who knew Sofia better than anyone, maybe even himself. But she was an employee with a family and problems of her own. Sofia was just her job.

Nothing you did so far was even illegal.

Milton watched Marilys stuff her pay in her purse, then get down on her knees to retrieve her sneakers from under the coffee table.

Housekeeper, stand-in mother, semi-girlfriend. If he went then she went away, and Sofia would be up for grabs.

Nothing you did so far was even illegal .

The next day Billy made sure he was back home in time to drive the kids to school, then sat in the parking lot to survey the terrain as they charged toward the building.

Nothing but the same teachers, parents, and nannies he saw every morning on the days when he dropped them off. No one even vaguely resembling the rough description given to him by the boys.

Once the lot was empty of all souls, he continued to sit for another hour before taking off for a meeting with Stacey Taylor in the city.

Release time would be better.

They met in a beer-damp neighborhood joint around the corner from Stacey’s walk-up a few blocks south of Columbia University. At nine in the morning she was sitting at the not-quite-deserted bar reading the Post and eating a hamburger.

“Hey,” Billy said, taking the neighboring stool and gesturing for a coffee. “How’s it going.”

“How’s what going.”

“I don’t know, life, the boyfriend.”

“The boyfriend’s asleep,” she said. “He gets up at three in the morning, has a cocktail or two, works on the magazine, and crawls back into bed at five. I could throw a flash grenade in there now, all it would do is scare the cats.”

Billy took one look at the coffee set before him and knew it would taste like muddled cigarette butts.

“So, Pavlicek…” sliding the cup to the side.

“Pavlicek sees a doctor there, Jacob Wells, but he’s not a cholesterol man, he’s a hematologist. Been seeing him since August.”

“Seeing him for what?”

“That I couldn’t find out,” she said. “Can’t be anything good.”

A too-tall, gaunt, middle-aged man sporting an old but expensive raincoat over pajamas came sauntering into the bar as if into the dayroom of a nuthouse. He had a long narrow face, nose big and sharp as a tomahawk, one eye brighter than the other. He could have run a brush through his tangled gray-brown hair a few times, Billy thought; that wouldn’t have hurt.

He kissed Stacey’s hair without looking at her and signaled for a beer.

“What are you doing up?” she asked.

“I have no idea.” He extended a hand to Billy, again without making eye contact. “Phil Lasker.”

“Billy Graves.”

“What would someone see a hematologist for?” Stacey asked her boyfriend.

“A million things.”

“Besides sickle-cell anemia.”

“All kinds of vitamin deficiency, B12, folic acid, iron, et cetera, thrombocytosis, that’s excess platelets, thrombocytopenia, that’s low platelets, polycythemia, excess red blood cells, anemia, pernicious or otherwise, which is low red blood cells, leukocytosis, excess white blood cells, neutropenia, low white blood cells, all kinds of coagulation disorders, blood vessel abnormalities, hemophilia, scurvy, leukemia, acute and chronic, an encyclopedia of various syndromes, genetic or otherwise…”

Billy stared at him, then looked to Stacey.

“He’s just a really good hypochondriac,” she said.

“That means I’ll live into my nineties,” he said, sipping his nine a.m. Heineken.

Stacey looked away.

Billy left a few minutes later, drove home, and called Immaculate Conception. He left a message for the school security officer, asking for a meeting to review yesterday’s footage of the parking lot, then fixed himself his usual Cape Codder, got into bed, and stared at the ceiling, his head a blender.

Early afternoon found him in a small physical therapy clinic on the banks of the Cross County Parkway, thumbing through a two-month-old People magazine as his father worked on his core strength with a young Serbian physical therapist on the other side of the mirrored room. Ferrying the old man here twice weekly for his sessions was the most stultifying chore in the world, but Billy insisted on doing it himself.

“Milan, are you old enough to remember Marshal Tito?” Billy Senior asked the therapist.

“He died when I was very young,” the kid said. “Try not to tense your neck.”

“His real name was Josip Broz.”

“Really.”

Billy stopped reading.

“I was assigned to his security detail in sixty-three when he came to the United Nations.”

“You’re still straining, Mr. Graves.”

“He was a very short guy, you know.”

“Better. Keep your shoulders back.”

“Loved the ladies, that was the biggest headache with him.”

“Dad, are you kidding me?”

“I had dealings with Khrushchev back then, too. I was on the Manhattan Bridge surveillance detail in sixty-one when he came up the East River on the SS Baltika , into, I believe, Pier 71.”

Dates names numbers, Billy’s heart rising.

“They had a floating high school docked next door at Pier 73, Food and Maritime Trades, and I had to go over and tell the principal that with the big Commie coming, he had to shut down classes for a few days and, brother, he was not too happy to hear that, but the students took it like Christmas in July.”