***
“Postpartum depression,” the doctor said. “In a few months you’ll be fine.”
“Months?” I didn’t how I was going to get through the rest of today.
He gave me a patronizing smile. “How’s your husband handling this?”
“Matt? He’s been great. He does as much as he can.” Which, along with his relentless good cheer, sometimes made me resent him all the more.
“Can you get some outside help on a regular basis? Maybe a few hours in the afternoon?”
I shrugged. I wanted Robin back. I wanted to hear my daughter’s laughter and feel like she wasn’t mocking me. I wanted not to shrink with revulsion when Matt tried to pull me close. I wanted to wake up one morning and get dressed like a normal person and look out the window and see the sun shine.
“You need to get out of the house. Treat yourself to a movie, go to the beauty parlor. Things like that.”
I shrugged again and touched the scarf on my head, thinking the beauty parlor remark was gratuitous.
“Meanwhile,” the doctor said, “I’ll start you on antidepressants. You’ll have to stop breast-feeding, but I think it’s for the best. The medication won’t take effect immediately. A week, maybe a little longer. Check back with me in a month. If you’re still feeling blue, we’ll up the dosage.”
I felt a sudden loathing for him. Blue? No, doctor, blue would be a vast improvement. This is the total absence of color, unless you’re counting black.
Matt
For the first time I could remember, my life was a bore. The TWT task force had been disbanded about six months before Nathan was born, and Javi retired to his flower shop and limousine service. I passed the sergeant’s test and was transferred to media relations. My new job was to talk to reporters about the department’s criminal investigations. The trick was to give the press enough details to write their stories without jeopardizing the case. High-profile crimes were handled by people far above my pay grade, but Captain Antonucci assured me the position was good for my career. I worked from eight to four-thirty and could slip away from the office any time I wanted.
That proved to be a godsend in the darkest days of Lucy’s postpartum depression—six or seven months when she walked around like a zombie. She tried a number of different doctors and prescriptions, but nothing seemed to work. Everything I heard and read said the condition was chemical, hormonal, but it felt personal to me. As if she’d spun a web around herself to keep me and the children out. For months our sex life was nonexistent. I didn’t stray, but I had my share of fantasies. I had two porno tapes that I’d hid in the basement, but I’d only watched snippets a few times late at night. I didn’t want Lucy or, God forbid, Sarah to wander downstairs and catch me.
Nathan was almost a year old now, and Lucy professed to be back to normal. We’d started making love now and again, but it was perfunctory on her part. She could have doubled as one of those blow-up dolls Lenny sold at the Sweet Spot down in the Combat Zone. She may have come out of her depression, but she had not come back to me.
Marcy Feldman came through the open door of my office and asked me if I’d consider looking over a speech that the commissioner was planning to give to a group of real estate agents.
“Sure, I’ll look it over,” I said. “What kind of feedback do you want?”
“Just make sure none of the facts about the crime rate reduction are too ridiculous.” She grinned back over her shoulder as she walked out the door. “Thanks, Drobo.”
Marcy had long been one of my fantasies. About a month ago I’d run into her at a bar after my old roommate Kreider talked me into coming to the Y for a game of basketball. It was the first night I could remember being out alone in more than a year. Marcy ended up in a booth beside me. She knew I was married. Her thigh brushed against mine, and I started getting hard. She handed me a pack of matches to light her cigarette. I excused myself to go to the men’s room. There were condoms in a vending machine on the wall. I put in two quarters and slipped the foil package in my pocket.
My heart pounded as I walked toward the table. Marcy gave me a knowing smile, but I couldn’t go through with it. Maybe she was making it too easy. I’d always been good at resisting temptation. I put a ten on the table to pay for the drinks and said I was sorry, it was late, I had to go. Marcy pouted and pushed her glasses up on her nose with her middle finger. On the way to the car, I dropped the condom in a trashcan. It was the closest I had ever come to being unfaithful to Lucy. Driving home, I felt righteous and horny and glad I hadn’t gone through with it. The sad part is, I’m not certain Lucy would have cared if I strayed. Sometimes I felt as if she expected me to cheat on her—that she believed a
real
man would go off and get what he needed from someone else. I was still deeply in love with her, but how long could I wait for her to come around?
I was reading the commissioner’s speech when a familiar voice in the doorway said,
“Necesito una cita, sargento?”
Do I need an appointment, sergeant?
I looked up.
“Solamente una genuflexión, mi hijo.”
Just genuflect, my son.
I stood up and came around the desk to meet Javi. We grinned and shook hands and patted each other on the shoulders. I considered Javi one of my closest friends but couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him.
“How’s that little boy of yours?” Javi said.
“Nathan? He’s terrific. Getting bigger every day.”
“That’s great, man. And Sarah? Lucy?”
“Good. Real good.”
I could hear the hollowness in my voice. I had tried to hide Lucy’s troubles as much as possible from everyone.
We walked over to Jake Wirth’s to have lunch, best Reuben sandwich in town. Javi said his family was great. Same with his business ventures.
“What about you?” he said. “You like that desk job?”
“It’s a paycheck, Javi.”
“You could put in for a transfer. Get your ass back out on the streets.”
I shrugged. I knew I’d gotten lazy.
Javi said, “How many years you got in?”
“Almost ten.”
“Long way to a pension, man. You ever think about turning in your shield and doing something else?”
“Sometimes. I don’t know.” It wasn’t just the job; my whole life seemed governed by inertia. Except for the joy I got from the kids, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt really alive. Maybe in that bar with Marcy.
We finished our sandwiches. Javi lit a cigarillo.
“Listen, I didn’t drop by today just to chitchat. I got this new business going. A real winner, but I need somebody to run it. Somebody I can really
trust
.”
“You can’t run it yourself?”
“I’m flat out already, man. We’re opening another flower shop, adding a fourth car to the limo service.”
“So what’s the new business?”
“Escort service.”
“That
definitely
would be interesting.”
“I’m serious.”
Javi strung me along for a minute before he told me the story. “Couple months ago I get a call from a guy who tells me he’s bought a painting. Early impressionist, which didn’t mean a thing to me. The sale was private. The guy says the painting’s in Mainz, West Germany, and he needs someone to fly over there and bring it back to Boston. Right away, my wheels start turning. Sounds like money isn’t an object, but why doesn’t he just use a commercial shipper? I figured it might be something shady. One of those paintings the Nazis stole from the Jews or something.”
“How’d he get your name?”
“One of my limo drivers. Anyway, I figured it’s worth checking out.”
Javi said he arranged to meet with the man at his house in Cohasset overlooking the bay. Javi was completely up front with the guy and asked him where the painting had come from. The man had all the documentation. His lawyer had already contacted customs and everything was set for the painting to come back to the U.S. The guy told Javi there were shipping companies that routinely handled this sort of thing, but he wanted his own man on the job.
“I had a good feeling about him,” Javi said. “No airs. Completely up front. Only took about ten minutes for us to work out the details.”
“How did you decide what to charge?”
Javi chuckled. “He shouldn’t have let me see his house before he asked. I told him five hundred a day plus expenses. He said he thought that sounded fair.”
I let out a low whistle.
A week later, Javi flew first-class to Germany and checked into a hotel in Mainz. The next day, an art expert picked him up and took him to see the painting. The French countryside at twilight with a horse-drawn carriage. Javi said it was so beautiful it gave him chills. He had no idea how much his client had paid for it, which he said was probably just as well or it would have made him too nervous. He and the art expert watched workmen pack the painting in a crate, then a driver took him and the painting to the airport in Frankfurt for a nonstop flight back to Boston. Everything had been worked out with the airlines in advance. Javi stood on the tarmac while they loaded the crate into the cargo hold and waited for the ground crew to close the hatch. He was the last passenger on the plane and the first one off.
I said, “Were you carrying?”
“You bet. Little Smith and Wesson thirty-eight in a shoulder holster.”
“You think there’s a real business in this? How often does someone need an escort for a painting?”
“More than you realize. But it’s not just paintings. There’s jewelry, antiques, dogs,
children
. Rich people talk, amigo. They have this tight little club. A couple weeks after I got back from Germany, I got a call from a woman who asked me if I’m the guy who transports
valuables
around the world? Sure, I tell her, I’m your man. This time it’s a jade parrot going from Singapore to New York. I wrapped it up in an old bathroom towel all taped up with duct tape and kept it in a gym bag the entire way home.” He grinned. “I felt like I was Sam Spade in
The
Maltese
Falcon
. Except it was first-class air tickets, five-star hotel. I’m telling you, Matt, this business is
very
real.”
I started asking questions, not trying to hide my enthusiasm. Javi laid out his plan. He wanted me to manage the business and work as the primary courier. Once I learned the ropes, I could cut back my trips and concentrate on building our clientele. There wouldn’t be much overhead, just a small office with a desk and a telephone in the back of his flower shop in Brookline. We would use ex-cops as couriers and pay them on a per diem basis. Javi said he needed an answer from me ASAP. He was starting to get inquiries about more trips every week.
I said, “I’d be giving up a lot of job security if I quit the force.”
“Yes, you would.”
“In exchange for?”
“Equity. Seven percent a year till you own forty-nine percent. As far as salary goes, let’s say ten grand. You’d be paid as a regular courier for the trips you make yourself—half to you, half to the business—plus you’ll get a small commission out of every other courier run.”
“Give me a guesstimate, Javi. How much could I make?”
“Conservatively? I’d say about forty-K.” Nearly double my salary as a cop. He let me think about it for a second. “Tell you what. I’ll guarantee that figure your first two years on the job. If you can grow the business, who knows? Sky’s the limit.”
I finished my coffee. I wasn’t sure how to ask the next question, but Javi read my mind.
“We’ll have a lawyer put it all in writing,” he said. “That’s the best way to avoid any misunderstandings down the road.”
“What’s the business called?”
“Discreet Courier Service. DCS, Limited. Makes it sounds intriguing.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Definitely intriguing. I’ll need to talk things over with Lucy.”
“Of course,” Javi said, smiling. He knew I was already hooked.
***
When I went back to the office, I called home and got Brenda the babysitter. After Derek and Robin moved away and Lucy fell into her depression, I convinced her we should find someone to live in the apartment who could help out with the kids. Brenda seemed ideal. She had an easygoing disposition and had worked for another family for a year as a full-time nanny. Brenda was taking evening courses at a community college and only wanted a part-time job. We offered her free rent in exchange for caring for the kids five afternoons a week.
“I expect Lucy home about four,” Brenda said on the phone. There was some banging in the background. “Wait, hold on a sec.” She came back on the line, laughing. “Crisis averted.”
“You have school tonight?”
“Nope. You need me to watch the kids?”
“Just for a couple of hours. Say, seven to nine. I want to take Lucy out to dinner.”
“Sure, no sweat.”
I asked Brenda not to say anything to Lucy. I wanted the evening to be a surprise.
On the way home, I bought flowers. I had tried this often when she was sick. Most times she barely acknowledged them. Other times she’d look at the flowers like they were just one more thing she had to deal with, as if they came with an expectation too heavy to bear. They’d sit in a vase, wilted and rotting, until I threw them away myself. I was bewildered, wondering where she’d gone. One day in the car, the kids asleep in the backseat, I caught her eye and said,
I
miss
you
. She lit a cigarette and stared absently out the window.
I
miss
me
too
.
When I got home from work, Lucy said she was tired and didn’t feel like going out.
“Come on, honey,” I said. “Take a nice bath and lie down for a while. I’ll put the kids to bed. We’ll go see Sandor.” I kissed her forehead. “Like the old days.”
“Okay, what’s going on here?”
“What, can’t I take my beautiful wife out to dinner?”
She laughed. “Sorry, Matt, but you’re the worst liar in the universe.”
I told her about lunch with Javi and his business proposal. Lucy got excited. She told me it sounded great, that Javi was a man I could trust.
“Take the job and don’t look back,” she said. She was more animated than she had been in months. There was color in her cheeks. Her hands fluttered with excitement as she talked.
And I was thinking,
There
she is. There’s my Lucy. Her short hair accented the strong line of her jaw and made her gray-green eyes look even bigger. She was wearing a striped cotton jersey with no bra. My gaze lingered on her body, which had begun to fill out again. Until a few months ago, she had been alarmingly thin, her breasts shriveled, hipbones protruding. She would walk across the bedroom naked, indifferent to my concern or desire.
I called Brenda and told her we’d be staying in. After the kids had eaten, Lucy gave them a bath and put them to bed while I went to a local Thai restaurant for takeout. When I got back, I smelled a trace of marijuana. I didn’t know she’d started up again. I felt a pinch of anger and put it aside. We talked easily over dinner. Lucy had found a bottle of champagne in the basement, a leftover present from Nathan’s birth. She smiled gaily as she popped the cork. We toasted new ventures and happier times. The champagne made us giddy. Soon we were kissing and tugging at each other’s clothes. We stumbled into the living room, and I pulled her down onto the Persian rug. She straddled me, rocking gently, a half-smile on her lips. I touched the acorn-shaped birthmark below her collarbone with my fingertip.