7/18
Kathy is eight months pregnant, and I’m not sure how I didn’t notice—how no one noticed. She is swollen and glowing, the happiest I have ever seen her. We are at brunch with some other friends.
“How did this happen?” someone asks, rubbing her belly a bit.
“Well,” she laughs. “My mother wanted another child, and she offered me money to carry it. So I thought, why not? I need the cash. And now I’m going to have a little brother!” She looks down at herself and grins. She is acting so completely out of character, but the unbridled quality to her bliss is refreshing. Everyone seems happy, if conflicted over the moral implications of her pregnancy. I am surprising myself, looking at my hands, uncomfortable.
Her expression is suddenly serious. “So, um, I kind of have a concern. The baby’s due the 12th, and I’m leaving the 16th for Africa…”
We’re all shocked. “You’re still going on study abroad? You’re having a baby! Do you really think you’ll be ready to leave in four days? And isn’t your mother going to be in China?”
She fidgets. “Well, yes. Do you think I can just leave the baby in the hospital until my mom can pick him up? Or do you think Claire would be willing to babysit until my mom gets back? It’s like, ten days.”
No one can think of what to say.
Later, that night, I leave my office and get a drink at the bar downstairs. It is all brown and the bar is made of stone. I have an assignment, but I’m not concentrating on it right now. I have an hour or two to kill before the people I’m waiting for show up, and maybe forty minutes before my client saddles up beside me. I order a vodka tonic.
The bartender puts the drink in front of me and meets my eyes. “So what’s the assignment? Serial cheater? Secret family?” I sip delicately, and shake my head.
“Can’t say yet. Not sure what I’m going to find,” I lie. I know what I am looking for, and am not looking forward to how I have to act. I flick a fifty-dollar bill down on the bar. “Just back me up tonight, okay?” I turn to go find a booth, but he kisses me quickly on the cheek. I am pleased, and cannot remember why we broke up, and ask him so.
“Oh god, don’t be drunk already,” he jokes, and helps out an older man at the end of the bar. I find my booth, and get comfortable.
My client shows up. She is married, much older, unhappy homemaker. “How did you get into this?” she asks me, as we sit together, uncomfortable. “You don’t meet many young lady detectives.”
I wince at her terminology. “Eh, it’s a job.” We nurse our drinks for a few minutes. “What do you give the pregnant teenager?” I ask her, trying to make conversation. “One of my friend is having a baby.”
She stares at me for a minute, but I see familiar faces at the door. “Shit, they’re here.”
We’ve been waiting on two guys I knew from grade school, one of whom I had a mutual, long-standing crush on in the third grade. I asked them to dress the part, and they have done well enough. “This just might work,” I say to the wife. I wave them over, and then hand my client a scarf and sunglasses. “Okay, we’re just waiting for him now.” My client shudders a little. This whole thing was her idea, and I feel it’s much too obvious. I don’t want to do it. I glance over at my bartender, and he is flirting with an obviously drunk birthday girl and her friends. I push down my jealousy.
And then, the mark arrives. The client stiffens, and I say to her quietly, “Don’t say anything. Just follow me when we leave.”
The guys start the conversation, and I am not paying attention. I am just waiting for the husband to get his drink, and then I will read my lines and make my dramatic exit. My bartender has noticed our table’s sudden camaraderie and makes a face at me. I give him a look, and he straightens a bit. I smile, despite myself—he’s never been a good actor for these situations. I remember, when we dated, telling him to plow the people I needed to get with alcohol, but he never could do it.
The mark turns around, looking out on the bar. I know my cue.
“What is wrong with you guys?” I shout suddenly, angrily, or as angrily as I can muster. I make sure to wobble a little as I stand at the booth, doing my best to seem like I’ve had one drink too many. “Don’t like these?” and I cup myself. “Something wrong with these tits? But you don’t like tits, do you? Couple of fags,” I spit.
To his benefit, the grade-school boyfriend is really selling his role. “We’re not fags,” he says unconvincingly, looking tentatively at his companion.
“Come on,” I say to the client, and grab her unsteadily. She is stone-faced throughout this, wooden, dead-weight. “Let’s go,” I add and pull her out of the booth, and then I stomp my way to the door, slamming it behind us. And then, just as we leave, I race to the other side of the place, and lean against the window with my camera. The client is behind me, and I know that telling her to go back to the car now won’t accomplish anything. She will watch this just as I do.
Slowly, her husband saunters over to our boys, joins them at the table. They smile at him, resume drinking. My bartender sees me at the window, as he has so many times, and makes sure all three men get more drinks. And then, after a half hour or so, just as my hands are beginning to cramp, I see the grade-school boyfriend lean in to the mark, whisper something in his ear. I can hear the wife behind me, drawing in shallow breaths. And then, under the table, I see the husband pass a few bills over to my friends, and they get up to leave together.
The wife is sobbing behind me, and I grab her quickly in a hug. I can’t have her run after him and ruin it. My bartender looks at me forlornly, and I wonder when I lost the ability to feel for other people.
