Flash Point (4 page)

The man looked up from his desktop, the surface of which shimmered with changing graphs. “What about the dancer?”

“We eliminated her.”

“Put her back in. We can have six plus Lynn.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to see the completed pilot by the twenty-first.”

She looked startled. “But that’s only—yes, Mr. Taunton. By the twenty-first.”

“And on Saturday a rough cut of the first footage.”

“We already agreed on that.”

“Fine. And Myra—this time, no legal ends dangling. No room for lawsuits, no matter what you devise for those kids.”

“There won’t be any legal issues.”

“There better not be,” the gray-haired man said, and went back to studying the graphs shimmering on his desktop like living jewels.

Four

F
RIDAY

BY THE TIME
Amy’s bus reached her neighborhood, her elation had been replaced by cunning. She was going to need a strategy. Two strategies: one for dealing with Gran and one for dealing with Kaylie.

She pondered tactics while buying bread, milk, cheese, butter, and sliced turkey at the ramshackle grocery store two blocks from her building. The store, no bigger than Gran’s apartment, was run by Mr. Fu. His name, he had told her once, meant “happiness” in Chinese, but Mr. Fu never looked happy, and neither did his wife. He gazed at her mournfully from behind his sagging counter.

“Mr. Fu, do you have any bananas?” Gran loved bananas.

“No bananas.”

“Oh. Well, just these things, then.” The Fus had emigrated from Beijing just before the Collapse. Very bad timing. America, its economy in such a shambles that many had predicted the country would not survive, had disappointed the Fus. This made Amy try extra hard to be nice to Mr. Fu, which in turn made her feel vaguely resentful at being someone bouncier and more upbeat than she actually was. Amy Pollyanna.

“Bananas no come. Times be tough man,” said Mr. Fu.

“Do you think the bananas might come tomorrow?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Banana country very far. Boats have no oil. No go, maybe never.”

Amy doubted that every boat importing bananas was completely out of fuel, or that bananas would never show up in the grocery store again. She smiled wider, felt stupid, and paid for her groceries. “Have a nice day, Mr. Fu!”

He shook his head sadly and she escaped.
Have a nice day
—she never said stuff like that. Mr. Fu had a bad effect on her by making her too sweet. Just as Kaylie had a bad effect on her by making her too sour.

Kaylie and Gran were both in Gran’s room, Gran in bed and Kaylie perched on a chair jammed in beside it. On the wall behind Kaylie hung her double: their mother’s picture, beautiful and unsmiling, her dark curls cut in an old-fashioned style. Gran gazed often at the picture, although she never spoke about her dead daughter. She was not one to dwell on the past. Amy knew little about her mother and even less about her father, a journalist kidnapped and murdered in Iraq when Amy was barely three. But she did know that she had his coloring, so much less dramatic than Kaylie’s.

Gran and Kaylie were eating lunch or maybe a late breakfast: oatmeal again. Amy said, “Wait! I brought stuff for sandwiches! I got a new job!”

They both stopped eating, spoons halfway to their mouths, looking so identically comical that Amy would have laughed if she weren’t so tense about the coming conversation. She had decided on her strategy.

“Well, actually, it’s not a great job, but it pays better than the restaurant, if only because it’s full-time. So it really doesn’t matter that it’s going to be so boring.”

“Is it at the TV station?” Kaylie demanded.

“Yes. I’m going to—”

“Are you going to be on
television
?”

“God, no. I sit in a back room, call people on the phone, and ask them questions about what TV shows they watch and do they like them, blah, blah, blah. You know, ratings surveys.”

Kaylie relaxed. Amy could
see
the jealousy leave her, the green monster subsiding behind those green eyes.

Gran, who was not so pale this morning and even seemed to be eating, still looked suspicious. “Amy, why would a TV station give a full-time job to an untried sixteen-year-old when unemployment is over twenty-seven percent?”

“Because the shows I’m calling about are aimed at teenagers. So they wanted somebody young to talk to the survey takers. You know, more relatable.”

Gran bought it. Amy saw the moment she, too, relaxed, her head sinking against the pillow. Kaylie hadn’t brushed Gran’s hair. And as Amy moved closer, she could smell the burned oatmeal.

“Don’t eat that,” she said, keeping her temper under control. “Kaylie and I will make sandwiches—I brought turkey! And Gran, I didn’t even tell you the best part—I got full family medical! As soon as I can get an appointment, I’m taking you to a real doctor!”

“Amy . . .” Gran said softly, and didn’t go on. But the single word, plus Gran’s soft, admiring gaze, was enough for Kaylie. Her eyes narrowed; she bit her lower lip.

“Kaylie,” Amy said, “come help me make sandwiches.” She dragged Kaylie to her feet and into the other room, “accidentally” bumping the bedroom door closed behind her. This would be the tricky part with Kaylie.

Her sister said, “Well, aren’t you just the little family savior. Saint Amy, swooping in to save us all.”

Amy pulled out the envelope with her advance. She had carefully divided it; the remainder stayed in her bra. “This job you’re sneering at saved your bacon. This is Mrs. Raduski’s rent, Kaylie, plus ten dollars over. They gave me an advance on salary. You’re going to take the rent downstairs and then you’re going to take the ten dollars for yourself, because we’re a family and my good luck is everybody’s good luck.”

Kaylie stared at her. Amy got what she’d hoped for: a phantom in her mind, just for a quick second, of the Kaylie that Amy remembered, the bouncy little girl who had adored her big sister. The phantom Kaylie, dressed in pink overalls with a bunny embroidered on the front, laughed and reached out her arms to Amy before vanishing.

The sulky fifteen-year-old beauty in front of Amy said, “You’d trust me with the rent?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know I won’t just spend it instead of giving it to Mrs. Raduski?”

“I know.” Was knowledge the same as hope?

“You’re right,” Kaylie said. “I’ll go now.”

“Then come back and have a sandwich.”

“OK.” But at the door Kaylie turned back. “Is there an extra ten dollars for you, too?”

“Yes,” Amy lied.

“Good. Then get yourself something to wear at the Thrift Value so you don’t have to steal my good sweater again.”

Amy didn’t answer. Kaylie took the rent downstairs. Amy opened the apartment door a crack and held her breath as she listened to Kaylie’s footsteps on the worn wooden stairs, her knock on Mrs. Raduski’s door, the frantic snarling of Buddy on his choke chain. Kaylie started back upstairs and Amy darted back to the tiny counter in the galley kitchen. Kaylie had given over the money. Of course, Amy had warned Mrs. Raduski how and when it was coming, and if Kaylie had headed out the front door instead, she would have been followed by both the landlady and her vicious dog.

Always best to hedge your bets.

“Amy?” Gran called feebly.

“Right there, Gran!” She opened the bedroom door.

“Are there any bananas?”

“No, Mr. Fu said the delivery didn’t come. But I’m making you a cheese and turkey sandwich. Here, drink this milk—just like you used to tell me to do!”

Gran said quietly, “But you were a child, and I am not. Amy, is Kayla in trouble?”

“No. She was. It’s OK now, I fixed it. Kaylie’s just . . .” What? Trouble, yes. From the time she’d outgrown those pink overalls, Kaylie had been trouble.

“Is she using?”

Looking at the intelligent old eyes in the pain-ridden face, Amy couldn’t lie anymore. “I don’t know for sure. I hope not. But she’s running with a rough crowd.”

“Tell her that anything harder than pot will eventually affect her looks.”

Amy blinked. It was a cynical piece of advice, based on a thorough knowledge of both her granddaughters. Amy nodded.

“And tell Mr. Fu,” Gran added, “that he should read the flimsies more, or however he gets his news. Agricultural imports rose half a percent last month. We’re in economic recovery. Even the president says so.”

Amy smiled uncertainly. Sometimes she couldn’t tell when Gran was being ironic and when she wasn’t. Was the country going to stop trailing behind China and India and even Europe in everything? Was Amy’s new job due to some fragile economic recovery?

It didn’t matter what it was due to. It only mattered that she had it. She and Kaylie made thick, satisfying sandwiches. Kaylie even helped Amy clean up. Then, while Gran slept and Kaylie went to spend her ten dollars, Amy went to her Friday-night shift in the restaurant kitchen, her last shift. She told Charlie she was leaving. She bussed tables and scraped dishes and loaded and unloaded the ancient, unreliable dishwasher. By eleven o’clock she was exhausted, sweaty, and stinking. She caught the bus home, got off in front of Mr. Fu’s grocery, which was closed and shuttered, and that was when she saw the dog up in the tree.

* * *

A dog? In a
tree
?

At first Amy wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The street was deserted and dark. Amy hurried along, cold in her thin old jacket, her can of pepper spray in her hand, anxious to get safely into her building. When she heard barking, she stopped and gazed around. More barking. She looked up. An animal cowered in the crotch of a March-bare maple, fifteen feet above the ground.

A cat. It had to be a cat. But then it barked again, Amy squinted and the animal slightly shifted its precarious position. It
was
a dog, high up in the tree.

Kids must have put it there. Amy’s blood roiled; she didn’t understand cruelty to animals. What did people get out of it? How could they? This was just a puppy!

It barked again, piteously. Amy called, “Just a minute, tiny dog, just a minute don’t move! It’ll be OK!”

A ladder. Whoever put that dog up there had used a ladder, and it didn’t make much sense to carry a tall ladder a long way. So it might still be around somewhere.

Pepper spray in hand, pocket flashlight turned on, she peered cautiously down a nearby alley. Three trash cans, one overturned, and something scurrying away from the flashlight. Her heart stopped until she saw that it was an alley cat, not a rat. However, no ladder. Could she stand on the trash can? No, not high enough. She saw nothing else she could climb on, either.

Back to the tree. It wasn’t full-grown; she could reach her arms around it easily. A lower branch, not very sturdy-looking, grew from the trunk about six feet above ground. Amy jumped, caught it, and tried to pull herself up onto the branch. It broke and she fell.

“Ow!”

Fortunately she’d landed on the stretch of dirt, sparsely covered with dead grass, between the street and sidewalk. She’d torn her jeans but nothing on her seemed broken. If her old gymnastics coach had seen that move, she’d have been off the team in a New York minute.

The dog shifted again and yelped sharply. Amy leaped up to catch it. “No, puppy, don’t jump! Don’t jump! I might miss you!”

The dog whimpered.

Cursing, Amy put both arms around the tree and started shinnying up it. The rough bark tore at her hands. But she reached the place where the broken branch had joined the tree, grasped the stub of branch still attached, and got herself up onto it. The palm of one hand was bleeding. By balancing carefully, she could extend the other hand to within a foot of the dog, but no farther. Now she could see it more clearly: a little mutt with curly gray fur, floppy ears, and terrified dark eyes.

“Now, come here, puppy, that’s it, come closer—come on, now, you can move—dammit, come to me, you stupid animal!”

The dog vanished.

Amy gasped and looked down. It must have . . . but no, it hadn’t fallen. Neither had it shifted to a position where she couldn’t see it. The dog was just
gone
—there one second and not there the next.

A chill ran over her, as distinct from the cold she already felt as a blizzard from a snow flurry. The dog hadn’t been there. It must have been a phantom in her mind. . . . Oh, God, what if she couldn’t tell her phantoms from reality. . . .

The chill passed. The dog had not been a phantom. She had seen it. Whatever it was, she had actually seen it. Once, in the science museum on a sixth-grade field trip, a curator had demonstrated a three-dimensional hologram. He had made a rose appear on a table, a rose so real-looking that the kids had all exclaimed and rushed forward to touch it. Amy still remembered the eerie feeling when her hand had gone through the rose. Had she just seen a hologram of a dog in a tree?

But who would do that? And
why
? This wasn’t the sort of neighborhood to host high-quality tech equipment. Also, the hologram of the rose had shimmered around the edges, especially when you got close to it. She had been a foot away from the dog, and she would have bet her life that it had been a solid, fleshy, breathing, terrified animal.

In a way, she had bet her life.

Still, getting down from the tree was easier than getting up. On the ground, Amy gazed upward. Nothing. Her left palm was bloody, her jeans had torn, the bruises on her body were beginning to ache.

“Damn you,” she said loudly, to anyone who might be listening. Then she went home to a hot shower.