Monday's Lie (8 page)

This happened at the crosswalk behind Patrick. I knew the smell of cars idling in their own exhaust as they waited, tailpipe to grill, waiting to gain a few yards down the street only to stop and wait again, but the sensation felt more like catalog than actual memory—as if I'd been schooled in a laboratory to identify the throat-tickling fog of it rather than that I'd been steeped in it daily when I had worked downtown a few years earlier.

The leaves that spun on their stems in the storm-front wind looked painted on. The sun glowed hard white from behind the cloud cover. Where I fit into this alien landscape, I couldn't feel—and I couldn't recall when I'd lost track of it. The endless second of lunatic doubt that I was possibly a figment of my own imagination was an open space in my empty head, and the lightness of it was the precursor to both fear and bliss.

In these short-circuited moments, pinned between outlander and full-on Martian, I was compelled to run a full inventory of my entire life in the span of a few heartbeats in order to reclaim reality. It was Tuesday and Patrick was in the center of the picture, both in fact and in practice.

The fence of my world drew its bold line around me again, my husband at the hub. I remembered that I had made it so, and all of it very much on purpose. Relief reattached itself to me as life came back online.

I was always reborn after these little episodes, once I'd tightened the straps back down and shoved the bundle of my life firmly into its slot. All the colors were deeper, the blood in me keen and ready. It was probably epilepsy's cousin, but it came with a dump of endorphins. I felt like Joan of Arc.

Patrick must have sensed me behind him, tickled with a psychic flutter to feel me watching him. He straightened up and turned to find me in the flow of early-evening hustle. He waved me over and dragged the metal chair beside him away from the table in invitation. “Hey.”

“Hi.” I tucked my bag under the table and worked a horrible metal scream out of getting the chair, and myself in it, wedged under the table. “Simon is on his way. Hope that's okay. He was supposed to be out of town for something, but he got back early. It's his birthday. I thought we could buy him dinner.”

“Yeah. Okay. That's good.”

Simon didn't keep us waiting long.

The waitress set down a basket of bread and a plate of dipping oil in the center of the table.

Simon caught my eye as she moved out of our street view and back into the restaurant. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“Seeing what?” asked Patrick.

“Those two people, across the street.” I nodded that way, but didn't look over. “They're trying to get into that apartment building.” I dragged a hunk of bread through the oil and kept my voice low to corral the information to just our table.

“So?” asked Patrick.

“Do they look like they belong in that particular apartment building to you?” said Simon.

I was glad Simon had gone there and not me.

Patrick replied, a step friendlier to Simon than what I would likely have got, “That's kind of harsh, don't you think?”

The young guy looked like a composite, like in one of those children's books that flipped in thirds to show you a tyrannosaur swinging a bat in a baseball jersey and cowboy boots. Turn the top segment and T. rex was an otter or a duck in the same getup.

The result here had a baseball theme, too, but only up top. The guy wore a billed cap with a team logo I didn't recognize, and his too-large golf shirt had a vivid newness. A dark block of tattooed letters to the left of his Adam's apple glowered against the prim baby blue of the collar, which sported a starchy perk that wouldn't stand up to even one laundering. I looked for dangling tags, but didn't find any. His pleated work pants weren't his own. The cuffs backed up in a short fabric jam at his ankles, and the worn bends in the knees were clearly from a taller set of joints than this guy boasted. His ragged high-tops suited him just fine, though.

The young girl with him was pale, with chapped lips and dark circles under her eyes, but at least her clothes were her own.

The front entrance of the building was around the corner and had a desk just inside an elaborately etched glass door with something more than a doorman and less than a security guard manning it. The deep portico rested on granite-tiled columns that projected out into the sidewalk to serve as both decoration and as a notice that this was where the money went when it didn't feel like driving to the suburbs for grass and fireflies.

The side entry that faced our vantage point from the bistro's outdoor dining tables had a call-up access intercom and a code entry panel for residents. This pair of ragged not-quite-twentysomethings had parked themselves against the wall, fifteen feet from this side door directly across from us.

“Maybe they're waiting for someone who lives there,” Patrick offered with a stubborn shrug. “Or maybe
they
live there.”

“She's carrying stuff in a Walmart bag,” I said into my plate.

Patrick's annoyance dialed up a notch for me. “Even rich people go shopping, Dee. Sometimes even at Walmart.”

“It's not a new bag.”

The bottom of the girl's plastic bag sagged and the sides bulged, but the total weight didn't strain overmuch against the loop handles. Clothing, unfolded, was my guess. The logo and printed slogan were heat-faded as if the bags had been closed up in a hot car for a time.

“And they're both jumpy as hell,” Simon added.

Their tandem stiffness thrummed a sour note over the entire corner. They were blaring their attempt at invisibility. The boy in the ball cap was flipping a loose key through his fingers, rolling it surely over and through his knuckles in a sinuous wave of motion. The girl kept raking her long, dark blond hair down over her forehead, a limp curtain of anonymity.

“Well, maybe they get the feeling they're being watched and judged all the time,” said Patrick.

So instead, we all watched and judged our appetites through the bread and the salads. The waitress refilled our water glasses.

“Ah!” I said.

“Yep,” said Simon. “There he goes.”

It was dinnertime and a battered hatchback with a pizza-delivery prism on its roof slid to the curb and set its flashers strobing. Ball-cap boy slipped in right behind him as he was buzzed into the building.

“Damnit,” I said.

“Are you going over there?” asked Simon.

“What?” Patrick was nearly offended. “Why would she do that?”

“Look at her,” I said. “What is she, seventeen? She's pitiful.”

“What about him?” Simon asked me mildly, watching the girl, who had gone rigid with sentry duty. “Don't you feel bad for him?”

“What about him? He's toast. He's in there. He's doing it. Nobody can do anything about that now.”

Patrick abandoned his fork with a clatter against his plate. “I mean, not to point out the obvious, but none of this is our business, you know.”

“Well, it's kind of
my
business.” Simon wiped his mouth and unclipped his phone and set it beside his plate. “I can't just ignore a possible burglary in progress.”

“If that's what it is,” said Patrick.

“True,” said Simon.

“But she's stuck,” I said. “If this is what it looks like it is, and if she's just waiting for him, she'll get caught up in the net.”

“So you've decided she's completely innocent?” asked Patrick.

“I have no idea, but she's the one standing on the sidewalk while he's burglarizing some hotshot's apartment.”

“You don't know that's what he's doing.” It wasn't that Patrick didn't have a point. There were too many intangibles to explain over dinner why Simon and I saw what we did in the drama across the street.

“Maybe she drove him to it,” said Simon, needling me.

“Oh, get real,” I said.

“What, you don't think people can be driven to a life of crime?”

Patrick leaned out of our conversation, back into spectator stance in his cast-iron chair, both fascinated and horrified.

“I think everyone is responsible for his or her own actions,” I said.

“Oh, boy. That'll come back to haunt you,” said Simon.

“Simon, come on. What are you going to do?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to either go back in time and make us not know that this is happening or I want you to fix it.”

“Great. Will do,” he said. “And I'll tell the Easter bunny you said hi when the unicorn drops me off at home afterwards.”

I sucked in my cheeks. “We really should do something.”

“Then I'll knock it back over the net to you,” Simon said. “What are
you
going to do about it, Sissy? If you go over there, I definitely have to call it in.”

“I'm not going over there. That would be weird. And I know you're going to call it in anyway. I just think she should at least have a chance.”

“What about him?”

“He went in. There's nothing that can be done about that. Clearly, she doesn't want to be here.”

“Clearly.” Simon smiled at me.

“Don't mock me. There's no way they could have known they'd be right in front of a cop.”

“So I'm the bogeyman? How's that again? They were probably going to get caught one way or the other.” He stared me down, daring and teasing. “Go fix it, Sissy. I'll give her a head start, if you can get her to take it.”

“You're making fun of me. Our mother wouldn't do it. You know she wouldn't. We're not in the business of other people's business.”

“Well,” said Simon, “I kinda am.”

“Right. But you're not going to scare off a material witness to a crime, so you don't count. And I don't know enough to go barging into this situation. Patrick's right.”

Patrick nodded and uncrimped his scowl a little. “Thank you.”

“But you still want to do something.” Simon smirked at me and took his phone off the table. “If you're going to do it, whatever it is, it's gonna have to be now.”

“Hang on,” I said.

A street musician, a violinist, was setting up shop under a lamppost just in front of the restaurant. His white shirt had ruffles and his jacket was cut modern, but out of purple velveteen, so I wasn't worried that he was shy.

I actually did the
pssst
thing and waved him over to the rope barrier of the café tables. “Hey. Hi. Can I ask a favor?” I rummaged through my bag for my wallet and pulled out a bill. “Will you take this to that girl across the street? She's in trouble.”

He looked from the money in his hand to the girl. She was craning a long-range look down the street, gnawing on the cuticle of her thumb.

“Be a hero for me and I'll put some seed money in your case when you get back,” I said. It was incentive enough. He shrugged and loped to the crosswalk.

“Twenty dollars?” asked Simon. “What is twenty dollars going to do?”

“It's not twenty dollars,” I said, watching my proxy Good Samaritan.

Simon nodded his head. “I'm pretty sure it was twenty dollars.”

Patrick also nodded at me in agreement. I was a rose between two head-bobbing thorns.

“Nope,” I said. “What it is, much more than twenty dollars, is proof positive that she's being watched. Make your call, lawman. You do your thing. I'll do mine.” I smiled at my brother. “Let's see what she does with this.”

Simon dialed as the minstrel reached the tattered girl. Both of her feet cleared the ground in her startle as he touched her shoulder. He extended the money. She shook her head. A second's more conversation and she took the bill.

The girl looked up into his face, and I could read the question in her expression and posture even as it was washed vague by the distance between us. The violinist turned and the girl's gaze followed his finger pointing back to me. My heart reared up and pounded a wild drumroll. I looked away.

Simon whispered to me, “If she walks over here, do
not
tell her your name. Unless you'd like this to be the gift that never stops giving. Be the Lone Ranger, not her best friend. Got it?”

I swatted away the advice I didn't need. “She's not coming over here. Look.” The girl was reining in her retreat to a rigid walk-trot that was way more obvious than if she'd just gone ahead and sprinted down the sidewalk. I thought at her hard not to run.
Just walk,
I said under my breath. The girl tripped up and stumbled, catching on to the brick wall at her right side to steady herself. Her head swiveled, scanning the crowd to see who saw her blunder. She looked back to me. It seemed our eyes met, but I couldn't be sure. She pulled the Walmart bag in front of her body, a sad, belated shielding of her crumpled dignity. But she pulled away from the wall and set off out of sight.

The waitress brought our dinners.

“Satisfied?” asked Simon.

“I guess I'll never know,” I said.

“I meant are you satisfied with what you did? You can't control what she does with it.”

“Yes. I think so.” And I was. Mostly. I'd always do everything differently if I had the chance. “You okay with it?”

“Sure,” he said. “No skin off my nose either way.”

Patrick had been watching our tennis match, agape. “I don't even know what just happened.”

“Me neither, really,” I said. Patrick let me hold his hand. I squeezed. A beat too late, he squeezed back.

A patrol car rolled around the corner, and its roof lights lit up with a short whoop of the siren to clear the intersection. The officer lined up the car with the curb, and another cruiser followed in just behind it. One man stayed behind with the cars and an eye on the street while the other worked an officious stride through the deco-etched doors.