Something for Nothing (16 page)

“Miriam?” Martin asked. “Down-the-street Miriam?”

She sighed, clearly a little exasperated. The postsex sweetness was quickly fading. “Yes, Martin,” she said. “Down-the-street Miriam. Is there another Miriam out there that I don't know about?”

“Miriam's my girlfriend?” he asked.

Linda got off the bed and walked into the bathroom. He heard her turn on the water at the sink, fill a glass, then take a sip. She always slurped a little when she drank water. Why was she always so thirsty?

She came back and stood in the bathroom doorway, naked and leaning against the door frame.

“Yes, Martin, she's your girlfriend,” she said. Her tone was flat. “You guys are going steady. You wrote a note to her in class, and she said ‘yes.' Don't you remember that?”

She tilted her head slightly, accentuating her exaggeration, and then took another sip of her water. She looked good standing there in the doorway. The shadows were just right—it was like a photo in a magazine.

He was negotiating a series of conflicting feelings. On the one hand, he was pleased—thrilled, even—to hear Miriam referred to as his “girlfriend.” It was like in high school, when you just wanted to hear the name of the person you were interested in or had a crush on. “I ran into Miriam Weaver at the market today.” Even this was enough to provide Martin with a brief tingle of pleasure, especially if it gave him an opening for further discussion. “Oh yeah? Was she with her asshole husband?” He could go on like this for a while, extending the conversation and teasing out references to her, carefully indulging in a sort of vicarious access to her.

But of course for Linda to refer to Miriam as his girlfriend could mean various things. It might mean that she was on to Martin—that she knew he found her attractive, and probably that he found her incredibly sexy. She herself had commented on Miriam's looks a bunch of times.

“Wow,” she'd say. “She's got the skin of a twenty-year-old. And those breasts. What a rack.”

“Yeah, definitely, she looks good for her age,” he'd say, trying to sound casual—even a little oblivious. “How old is she? I can't believe she's been married to that clown Hal Weaver for so long.”

But—and this was more interesting, a bit exciting, even—if she was calling Miriam his girlfriend, it suggested (possibly) a form of jealousy, one that could (possibly) stem from a sense that Miriam had given Martin a little extra attention, attention that Linda had noticed. Had Linda picked up on something in this regard? This was unlikely, but it was certainly titillating.

Still, you couldn't overlook the fact that Miriam had showed up at their house to talk about the break-in. He was surprised she knew something had been stolen. Wouldn't she just assume that one of the kids had taken it? Or a housekeeper? (Did they have a cleaning lady? Most of the people on Miwok seemed to have cleaning ladies. Linda had hired someone to come in once a week, but she did a lousy job, mostly just pushed the dirt around.)

Finally, though, there was the horrific possibility that this was a veiled accusation. Jesus, maybe she'd seen him. Not while he was lying on the floor in her room, of course. She'd have screamed and freaked out. No doubt about that. But maybe she'd seen him sneaking out of her yard, maybe as he was squeezing his fat-fuck stomach through the slats in the fence.

“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to sound impatient. “So come on, what happened? What sort of break-in? And why did she need gas?”

“Well,” Linda said. She picked her bra up off the floor and started putting it on, leaning forward a little bit and reaching around back to snap it. “She came over and said she was out of gas—or that she didn't have enough for a trip they were taking up to Donner Lake. They rented a cabin up there, or something. I don't know. But she needed gas, and she was freaking out because it was Saturday and there weren't any stations open.”

She leaned over again, picked up her shirt from the floor, and slipped
it on. Then she looked around under the sheets for her underwear, found it, and stepped into it. After that she got back under the covers, sat with her back against the headboard, and looked over at Martin.

“Huh,” Martin said. “So you gave her some of the gas from the tanks in the garage?”

He wasn't all that surprised. People had been stopping by asking about gas for a while now. In the closet in their carport, he had five big twenty-gallon tanks that he'd filled up one day at the airport. He'd only tapped into this supply once, but he liked knowing it was there. He liked the personal security it provided—he wasn't ever going to run out of gas. But he also liked knowing that he had it, and that he wasn't letting anyone else have any of it. It was this last component of the equation that made having the gas so pleasurable. He knew it was bad—terrible, in fact—but he couldn't help it.

“Yes, I did,” Linda said. “I know you don't want people to know we have it, but she was really upset. She said she forgot to fill up Friday evening and forgot that she wouldn't be able to fill up on the weekend. But she said Hal was going to be furious. Plus, she said she just couldn't stand the thought of how the kids would react if they couldn't go. She had some gas in the tank still, and she was hoping to drive out to the airport with me . . . or with you, I guess. I don't know how she knew you have gas out there, but she did. Anyway, then I showed her the gas tanks. She was really relieved. She really appreciated it.”

Martin nodded, thinking about Hal and what a dick he was. He was pleased to come to Miriam's rescue, no doubt about that. But he was disappointed at having missed the chance to drive all the way out to Hayward with Miriam—even in separate cars it would have been something they did together. Plus, he would have been able to show her his office. And maybe they could have had coffee or a bite to eat out there. Maybe at Nelda's, or maybe even over at Jack London Square, where he could show her his boat. She'd have been impressed by that, he was pretty sure.

“Hal Weaver is a prick,” Martin said.

Linda gave a little chuckle, and nodded. “Yep,” she said. “He is. And he's creepy. He's a drunk and a letch. And he's ugly. Disgusting, in fact.”

Now it was Martin's turn to laugh. “Jeez,” he said. “You don't have to beat around the bush, you know. Why don't you tell me how you really feel?”

They both laughed again, and then they were quiet for a minute. He liked it when Linda was straightforward like that, even a little tough sounding. None of this suburban sweetness all the women out here thought they had to perform. In fact, it was the thing that had attracted him to her in the first place—that and her looks. She wasn't quite at the level of Miriam Weaver, but still, she looked pretty damned good just the same. He took special pleasure in knowing when younger guys were checking her out—the bag boy at the supermarket, say, or the guys at the local gas stations (when they used to go to the gas stations).

“So okay,” Martin said, breaking the short silence. He wanted to hear about the other issue, the break-in, but he knew he needed to tread carefully. “She came over and got some gas. What about there being a break-in? Do you mean their car, or their house?”

Linda yawned, and let her head rest on the wall behind her. “I'm tired,” she said. She gave Martin a soft little backhanded slap on his right shoulder. “It's all your fault,” she said, and then smiled.

She was being sweet, Martin knew, trying to connect with him a little bit, so he was careful to bide his time. If he asked again she might sense that something was a bit off—but maybe not. A neighborhood break-in was actually a big deal, when you thought about it. In fact, maybe it was time to call up one of those alarm companies and hook up the house with a system. You never knew who was going to come wandering into your house.

Linda yawned again. “I don't really know what happened,” she said. “She told me she wasn't even sure there was a break-in. She said when she came home one day last week—I forget which day it was—the
outside door to their bedroom was wide open. You know those French doors they have that lead out to the patio?”

Martin nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so. I don't know.”

“They were open,” Linda said. “And she said that they never, ever leave them like that, especially when they're going to be gone during the day.”

The dog came into the room, announcing himself with a leap onto the bed. He wasn't supposed to be up there, and he knew it, so he lay there looking guiltily at them. Linda reached out and scratched him behind the ear, and he relaxed.

“And so?” Martin said, unable to not ask. Was it just him, or was she moving too slowly through this story?

“And
so,
” Linda said, “she started looking around. And it looked like someone had gone through their stuff. Through their walk-in closet, and their shelves, and drawers, and that kind of thing. And then she realized that she was missing a jewelry box. She said it had some really nice jewelry in it, and it also had some gold coins that were super valuable. Her dad had given them to her on really special occasions, she said. One was for her confirmation, another was for her wedding, and one was for when one of the kids was born. Anyway, she said it's gone. The jewelry box, I mean. She said she's upset about the jewelry, but that the coins are worth tons of money. Thousands of dollars. A couple of them are really rare, she said.”

“Holy shit,” Martin said, less to her than to himself.

“I know,” Linda said. “I asked her if she thought maybe one of the kids had taken it. You know, just playing around or something.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. “That's what I was going to say.”

Linda shrugged. “She talked to them, and she said there's no way they did it. Plus, like I said, the room was sort of ransacked. She said it was like someone had been looking for exactly that one thing. Like they knew it was there and couldn't find it at first.”

Martin thought about this, about the blind way he'd grabbed the
box off the top of Miriam's dresser. About how he hadn't even really known it was in his hand until he got out to his car and noticed he was clutching it. Maybe, he thought, he'd known all along what he was looking for in Miriam's bedroom. But he also knew that this was bullshit, and that the theory of the thief with one item in mind was off the mark.

He thought about the coins. They couldn't possibly equal the value of the stacks of bills he'd carried down to Mexico, but still, there was something about the solidity of them that made him feel as if he'd finally gotten his hands onto something of real value. It was like it was more real than regular money, somehow—the dollar bills and even the change he carried in his wallet or his pants. They were like the old coins you read about in a fairy tale, stored away in a dragon's cave or in the giant's house at the top of the beanstalk. And he was the fairytale character upon whom good fortune had smiled—who'd stumbled upon this money at the very moment he needed it most.

“Well,” Martin said. “I guess that's possible. I mean, it's a little weird that nothing else was stolen.” He caught himself with this last line, and then added, “That's what you said, right? That the jewelry case was the only thing missing?”

Linda nodded, but she had her eyes closed, and Martin could tell that she wasn't interested in talking about the Weavers any longer. She had her head back against the wall again, and he wondered if she might fall asleep like that. She could fall asleep anywhere, and in pretty much any position—standing up, practically.

“Hey,” Linda said. Her eyes were still closed and her head was still leaning against the wall.

“Yeah?” Martin responded. She had startled him a little bit.

“Thanks for getting me into bed here today,” she said. “I miss you sometimes when we don't do this for a while.”

“Hey,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I know. I miss you, too.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
, M
ARTIN
was in San Francisco. He'd driven over to take his dad out for a birthday lunch. Or a prebirthday lunch. His actual birthday, his seventy-eighth, was the following Saturday. But he and Linda were taking the kids to Tahoe that weekend, and this was what Martin was calling the beforehand makeup visit. Plus, he'd reasoned, it was poker day for his stepmother Eleanor and so this would give his dad something to do while she was out.

“You'll love it,” he'd told his dad on the phone. “It'll be better than on your actual birthday. No one likes their actual birthday, you know.”

Martin wasn't sure what his dad thought about his birthday, but Martin had begun to feel that way lately about his own birthday. He was forty-four, and it was still supposed to be a big deal. But it was too much. “Are you having a good time?” Linda would say. “It's your special day, you know. If there's anything you want, just ask!” But, of course, she didn't mean it when she said he could have anything he wanted. What he really wanted was to go out fishing or to the track, maybe up to Reno to gamble. Was that really going to happen? Not a chance.

“The kids want to celebrate with you,” Linda said when he'd actually told her his birthday wish a couple of years ago. She'd looked at him like he'd just admitted to some sort of odd sex fantasy. “Don't you want to be with your family on your birthday? What's wrong with you?”

He was thinking about this as he made his way across the lobby of his dad's building. It was down in the Embarcadero, just off North Beach. The apartment was just a little two-bedroom thing with a kitchenette, but it was in a great location. You could even see the Bay Bridge from the balcony. It would have been way out of his dad's league, moneywise, if he hadn't gotten remarried about ten years ago to Eleanor. She was the widow of a shipping magnate of some sort—some guy who'd run a lot of the import docks over in Oakland, and who'd left her a big chunk of change when his heart gave out.