She'd listened quietly, somberly agreeing to it all—except the part about getting a dog. She'd asked questions, but never personal ones, not even vaguely personal ones like "What's so funny?"
He was going to take the fact that she'd asked one now to mean she wanted to talk.
"I was thinking about George," he said. That was not entirely untrue. "He would be really proud of the way you've been sticking with your disguise."
Alessandra made a vague sound, focusing her attention on the scenery zipping past the window.
Oooh-kay. Hell, even if she didn't want to talk, he did. He was completely bored, the radio was bringing in only static, and this silent treatment thing was getting old.
"You know, I've been meaning to ask you, Al. Where'd you learn first aid? Not everyone would've known what to do when the person they were standing next to suddenly had blood pouring from a major vein."
She glanced at him. "Artery."
"Vein. Artery. Close enough."
"Arteries carry blood away from the heart. It's more life threatening to open an artery than a vein."
Harry glanced at her, but she was already staring back out the window. "So. Where'd you learn that? And if you tell me you went to medical school, I may faint. I'm not sure I can take many more surprises from you."
"Medical school?" She snorted. "Not in this lifetime."
"So where, then?"
She didn't answer right away. "I took a first-aid class in tenth grade and I really liked it, so I paid attention."
"And the fact that you liked it so much didn't make you think about studying medicine in college?"
Another pause and a long cool look. Harry watched the road, but he could feel her studying him, as if deciding whether to answer his question.
"It never even crossed my mind," she finally said. "My mother would've been ecstatic if I'd married a doctor, but be one myself? Not a chance. But then again, I knew by the time I hit high school that I wasn't going to college. There wasn't any money. And there was no way I was getting a scholarship with my grades. They weren't really that bad, just relentlessly average."
Harry scratched the back of his hand with the three days of stubble on his chin. "I thought your father was in banking."
"That was only his day job," Alessandra told him. "In the evenings and on weekends—and probably on his lunch hour—he was a gambler. And that job didn't pay quite so well."
"Christ. I'm sorry. That must've sucked."
"Yes," she said. "It did." She laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "That's how I met Griffin, you know."
"What, at the racetrack?"
She gazed at him again for several long moments. "You must be really bored."
"I'm… interested in…" He took a deep breath. "The truth is, you've been handling all this shit really well, and I'm, well, curious about you. You're tougher than I thought—smarter, too. Frankly, I just don't get how someone like you got hooked up with Lamont and Trotta in the first place."
"Ah," she said. "There's that refreshing honesty again. It's very appealing, Harry, the way you put all the cards out on the table for everyone to see." Her voice hardened. "Except the last time you did that, you had an entire deck still up your sleeve. You can't blame me for wondering what you're hiding from me this time."
Alessandra was staring out the window again, her chin held self-righteously high. But it was just an act. She was working hard to hide her hurt. He could see it trembling in the corner of her mouth. It was there, too, lurking in her eyes.
I thought you were special.
"Jesus," Harry said, hating the guilt that pressed down on him. "You want complete honesty? Sweetheart, I'm more than happy to give it to you. No secrets, no tactful white lies, just the hard truth—is that really what you want?"
"Yes."
"Great," he said. "Let's see. We can start with the fact that I'm scared shitless about seeing my kids again. I don't know if Emily's going to recognize me—or worse, if I'm going to recognize her. I'm dreading talking to Marge, and I'm still worried about George. I knew a cop who was recovering nicely from a gunshot wound. One day he seemed fine. The next day he was back in the ICU with an infection. Day after, we were sitting shivah at his house. But I digress.
"When you sit that way, you look kind of like a beach ball with a head," he continued. "Your haircut is really, really bad, I'm probably going to lose my job for helping you this way, and I'm dying to fuck you."
He glanced at her. "That honest enough for you?"
Alessandra emerged from the bathroom in McDonalds to find Harry leaning against the wall, waiting for her. He straightened up, no expression on his face as he saw her, and she resisted the urge to touch her hair, to somehow try to fix the disaster that had looked back at her from the ladies' room mirror.
If she'd succeeded, it would have forever been known as the miracle of the McDonalds, because, quite frankly, nothing short of a miracle would make her look anything besides awful.
But that was the point. Looking awful was her disguise. It was her way of taking charge of her own destiny.
Some people might've gone out and bought a gun, learned to defend themselves. But Alessandra wasn't going to kid herself. No way would she ever be able to outshoot a mob hit man, even with years of training.
No, she was going to stay alive the way Harry suggested—by becoming invisible.
The biggest problem—aside from the fact that she was completely broke—was in figuring out exactly who she was now. Take away the beautiful face and hide the body, and what exactly was left?
Someone scared. Someone completely untrained to do anything useful. Someone who no longer knew how to communicate with other people.
Back when she was Alessandra, she knew how to respond to a statement such as "I'm dying to fuck you." While it was rarely said quite so bluntly, it was a message that she'd received more often than not, usually intimated with body language and subtle looks. As Alessandra, she might have dismissed it with little more than a pointed look. Or, she might've subtly flirted back, if there was something she wanted or needed.
But as Alice Plotkin, she simply did not know how to respond. First of all, she was uncertain how to read the statement. Did Harry actually mean what he said, or was there another underlying message? Did he mean "Wow, you are so completely unattractive, no other man could possibly be interested in you, so I'll take advantage of you by pretending to desire you. And maybe I'll get lucky and get laid while having a big laugh at your expense?"
Or did he mean "I'll tell you this to make you feel better because, even though it's not completely true, you don't repulse me, and if we do end up having sex, I'll just make sure all the lights are off."
"Look, Allie, I didn't mean to freak you out or anything," Harry said. "I mean, by saying what I said back in the car…"
Alessandra realized that she had blindly followed him and they were standing on one of the lines, waiting to order their daily indigestion. She had been staring sightlessly up at the menu.
"It's just… You wanted honesty," he continued, "and I…" He shrugged. "I took it a little too far, as usual. Some things probably just shouldn't be said."
"I don't know how to do this," Alessandra admitted. "Talking to men was easy when I was beautiful. But now…"
Harry was looking at her, studying her very naked, very plain face, his dark brown eyes so intense. It was as if the crowd around them had ceased to exist, as if they were the only two people standing in that fast-food lobby. He touched her hair, pushing a limp lock back behind her ear.
"The haircut really sucks," he told her.
She closed her eyes. "Yes, I believe you mentioned that once already today."
"But it's just hair."
"Spoken by the reigning king of bad hair days." She reached up and took off his baseball cap. His hair, as usual, was standing up in all directions.
He shrugged. "Maybe we should just get matching Mohawks."
Alessandra had to laugh.
He touched her again, his fingers warm and slightly rough against her cheek. "You're still beautiful," he said softly. "Too beautiful. It scares me, 'cause if someone looks at you too closely…" He shook his head.
And again, Alessandra didn't know how to respond. "And you're saying this," she finally said, "because you're dying to fuck me?"
Harry shouted with laughter. "Oh man," he gasped. "I have got to watch my mouth. If I have you saying the f-word, I must be using it far too often."
"I can't figure out what you want."
"Well, if you do figure it out, tell me. I'd love to find out myself."
"Friends," Alessandra said about a hundred miles west of the Mickey Ds where they'd stopped to get lunch. She turned to face him as he drove. "That's what I want, Harry. I want us to be friends."
Harry glanced at her. She was looking at him so intently, her face so serious—as if she were afraid he'd tell her no, no he didn't want to be her friend. "I thought, you know, that was kind of what we are. I mean, aside from the fact you still haven't forgiven me for using you as bait to catch Trotta."
She nodded, still so serious. "I'll forgive you, if you promise it won't happen again. Ever."
He held out his hand. "Deal."
She tentatively slipped her fingers into his, barely even shaking his hand before she pulled hers free.
She took a deep breath. "About what you said before," she started.
Harry knew exactly what she was talking about. "Al, I was way out of line. I'm really sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
"It would just be a lot easier for me right now, if we didn't make this too confusing. I'd like to—"
"I'm a grown-up," Harry told her. "You don't have to worry, I can—"
"Keep sex out of the picture."
"Keep my pants zipped."
"Good," she said.
"Good," he said, trying to find one single reason why the complete absence of sex in their relationship was, indeed, a good thing. Because Allie wanted it that way was the best he could come up with. And oddly enough, that was a good enough reason.
George swore softly and switched off the TV in disgust. "Figures the one week I'm in the hospital is the week before the baseball season starts. There's nothing on but stupid talk shows and dirt-bike racing. If I wanted to watch thirteen-year-olds ride dirt bikes, I'd have had a family of my own."
Kim looked up from the magazine she was flipping through. "Poor baby, you're bored."
"Bored and cranky and dying for a cigarette." He'd been weaned almost entirely from the pain medicine that had made him float comfortably above both the bed and his body. His leg alternately ached and stung. He was sick of hospital food and completely worn out by Stan coming in all hours of the night to take his blood pressure and check his bandage. Dude.
"Poor George." Kim put down her magazine and leaned forward, giving him a sympathetic smile and unobstructed view down the front of her blouse.
George felt a flash of guilt. She'd been nothing but sweet to him, spending every minute of the allotted visitors' hours by his side for three days straight. She'd gotten a motel room near the hospital, paying a price she probably couldn't afford just to be near him. And yet every time he looked at her, he wished she were Nicki.
Nicki—who didn't even care enough to call him on the phone.
"I know what I like to do when I'm bored," Kim told him with a devilish smile. She pulled her chair closer, slipped her hand beneath the light cotton spread that covered him.
"Um," George said. Her fingers were cool against his thigh. He reached down to catch her hand before she found the edge of his hospital gown. "These doors don't have locks."
"So?"
"So these doors don't have locks."
"That makes it more exciting," she whispered. "Just think, we could be walked in on any minute."
"My point exactly."
"That wouldn't be boring."
"That's a good point, as well, but it's just… perhaps a little too nonboring for me."
Kim stood up and pulled the curtain around the bed. "How's that?"
She was serious. George laughed. "Kim! God, this is crazy."
"So I'm a little crazy. I thought you knew that about me already."
She sat down, this time on the edge of his bed. She pulled aside the blanket, careful of his injured leg.
"Kim…"
"You're not really going to tell me to stop, are you?" She leaned forward to kiss him, softly, lingeringly on his mouth, as she slowly pulled up his hospital gown.
She kissed him again. On the chin. On the throat. On the chest. On his stomach. She smiled up at him before she lowered her head once more.
George drew in a breath and closed his eyes. Kim had been right about one thing. He was definitely no longer bored.
Nicole went into the hospital, trepidation churning in her stomach.
George was going to live. She knew that. According to his doctors, he was doing remarkably well, healing nicely, no signs of infection, prognosis positive.
Still, she knew until she walked into his room, until she looked into his eyes and saw for herself that he really was okay, she wasn't going to be able to concentrate.
The past few days had been awful. It had taken her five times longer than usual to accomplish the mundane little tasks she had to get done. During her meetings in D.C., her concentration had been way off. Her mind had been several hundred miles north, in upstate New York.
Nicole forced herself not to pace as she got onto the elevator that would take her up to George's floor.
"Are you telling me that Griffin first came to your house as some kind of knee breaker?" Harry was eating Cheetos from the bag, and the tips of his fingers were bright orange. "Christ, would you look at this? Forget dye packs. They should just throw these things in with the money during a bank heist. I'm marked for life."
"He wasn't exactly a knee breaker," Alessandra gave him a crooked smile. "More like, you know, a ball breaker."
"Griffin?" He shook his head. "I still can't see it."
"He was working for a law firm that assisted some of their clients in debt collection. When I first met him—I was still in high school—he was delivering papers for my father to sign, some kind of application for a second mortgage. The interest rate was a joke, it was so high, but it would pay off the people who wanted to break his knees. My father didn't have to sign, but if he didn't, the next man who came to the door would be carrying a baseball bat instead of a briefcase."
Harry looked almost as bad as she did. His chin was covered with more than stubble but far less than a beard, and his eyes were bloodshot. It had been more than twenty-four hours since they'd made their only motel stop, and while Alessandra had slept off and on since then, Harry hadn't. As they drew nearer to Colorado, she wondered if he intended to drive straight through.
"So Griffin set up a second mortgage," Harry guessed, "probably taking a percentage from both the mortgage company and the bookie, and ended up dating and then marrying the poor bastard's underage daughter. What a deal."
"Actually, my father didn't get the mortgage."
Harry glanced up from the road. "He didn't?"
"And Griffin didn't even ask me out until I was eighteen, even though I knew he wanted to. He was infatuated with me." She sighed. "At least he was at the start."
"We don't have to talk about this, if you don't want."
She looked over into Harry's eyes. "Really," he added. "If it's going to make you feel bad, let's not go there."
For a man whose default mode was irreverent humor, he could be remarkably sensitive, uncharacteristically gentle.
"There's not that much to tell," she told him. "Griffin paid off my father's debt. He signed me up for elocution lessons, enrolled me in a finishing school—"
"A finishing school?" Harry laughed. "God, I didn't know they still had those. You must've been bored out of your mind."
"I was flattered by Griffin's attention. He clearly though
t highly of me."
"He was turning you into his little creation," Harry countered. "Pouring you into the trophy-wife mold."
"I didn't mind. At least not at the time. The day I turned eighteen, Griffin took me to dinner and asked me to marry him."
"Did you, like…" He started again. "Did you have to marry him? I mean, Christ, the pressure had to be intense, if he'd spent all that money on you and your family."
"No," she said quickly. "No, I wanted to. I really did." At least that's what she'd managed to convince herself. "He was everything my mother had been telling me—for years—that I'd wanted. You hear something often enough, Harry, and you believe it. I'd been hearing that the only way I would get ahead in life was to use my looks. Marry a wealthy man. Be a perfect wife so he wouldn't ditch me when I got older. I wasn't smart enough to do anything else—I heard that enough times, too."
"You know now that they were wrong, right?" Harry asked. "You're one of the smartest people I know. You spend all your time reading. I've never met anyone who can read as fast as you."
Alessandra smiled. "It's funny how good that makes me feel—you know, hearing you say that. When I was in high school, if a teacher complimented me on a project that I'd done well, I was like 'Whatever, but hey, what do you think of this new color eyeshadow I'm wearing?' " She laughed. "I was stupid—because I didn't realize that I had other options, other choices. It never even occurred to me to go for this creative writing class at school, even though I loved to write—because only the kids who had straight As got into it. So I didn't even try. It never occurred to me to say, 'Wait, I don't want to marry Griffin,' not because I had anything against Griffin, but because I didn't want to get married. I'd just always assumed I would get married—I didn't think I had a choice about that. And he seemed so perfect—handsome, rich, connected… And I really did think I loved him. Of course, I was a child."
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