Keeper

by Greg Rucka

  I radioed Rubin, told him we were fifteen minutes out. He said he’d be ready.

  After a moment, Romero said, “I’m melting, I’m melting.”

  “Mommy, my mommy’s home,” Katie said, taking the stairs as fast as she could. It wasn’t very fast, honestly, but it was endearing as all get-out to watch. She jumped off the last step and flung her arms around Felice’s waist. “I missed you, come sit with me, I missed you.”

  The Romero apartment was a halfhearted trilevel, and we entered at the bottom, the short flight of carpeted stairs Katie had descended from the main level off to our right, beyond the closet. To the left was a small bathroom, the door open and the light on. Rubin locked the front door behind us and headed back up the stairs with Dale and Natalie while I stood with Dr. Romero.

  Felice kissed Katie on the forehead and said, “In a moment, sweetie. Your mother wants to change first.” She gently stepped out of Katie’s grasp and took off her coat, then the vest. She hung both on the coatrack.

  Katie put her arms around my waist and said, “ ’Cus! I missed you, too, I did.” It was a tight squeeze, and I wasn’t ready for it.

  “Thanks,” I said hoarsely.

  Just as abruptly, Katie released me and followed her mother up the stairs. I went up after them onto the main floor, basically a large open cube that served as mostly living room, with couch, table, chairs, and television, and a little bit of kitchen, defined by a counter that jutted out from the wall perpendicular to the stairs. The living room was carpeted the same as the stairs, a lush green, the kitchen tiled white.

  Katie had finished hugging Natalie, and now moved to Dale, who looked damned silly with her clutching his thick waist. Dr. Romero thought so, too, and laughed, before saying to me, “I’m going to change. Give me ten minutes before you leave.”

  “Fine,” I told her.

  Rubin handed her the day’s mail, saying, “All yours.”

  She nodded and took it with her into the bedroom.

  Together, Katie and Dale moved to the couch in front of the television and sat down. Katie released him, quickly shifting her attention to the screen, then began talking, perhaps to Dale, about her day. I heard her mention David.

  I checked that the curtains were drawn tight over the sliding glass door that led to the patio. The patio overlooked Fulton Street. Through the fabric, I could make out the sparks of light that shone from apartments in the building across the way.

  Rubin was already packing up his art supplies, with Natalie’s assistance.

  “Where do you want to go?” he was asking her.

  “I don’t know, I was thinking seafood.”

  “Whoa, kids,” I said. “He’s off, you’re not. You work tonight.”

  “I worked last night,” Natalie said.

  “I know. But it’s you and Dale tonight, Natalie. You’re off tomorrow.”

  Rubin gave me the I’m-not-going-to-get-laid-tonight-and-it’s-your-fault look. I shrugged. He turned to look at Dale, making his ponytail whip around as he did so.

  Dale said, “Not on your fucking life, Rubin.”

  Without looking away from the television, Katie said, “Don’t swear it’s not nice, Dale. David, he swore, that’s bad.”

  Dale said, “Sorry, Katie.” He looked back at Rubin and shook his head.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Katie told Dale.

  Rubin transferred his gaze to me.

  “I’ve got plans,” I said.

  “I hate you,” he said. “So I get the night off, and I don’t get to spend it with my sweetie?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re a cruel, cruel man, Mr. Kodiak,” Natalie said. She gave Rubin a brief kiss and murmured, “Later.”

  Rubin savored the kiss, then groaned when Natalie moved away to the kitchen to get herself something to drink. After a moment he opened his eyes and looked at me again. “I adore that woman. And I hate you,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, but it’s the good kind of hate, isn’t it?” I took a seat beside Katie on the couch. They were watching the news, and I came in on the tail end of a story about a body and an alley. Another pointless death. The police were saying it looked like a mugging, maybe for drug money. Dale switched the channel to MTV.

  “How was your day, Katie?” I asked.

  “It—it was fun, we had fun and we did drawings. And David helped and Rubin helped and we made pictures, good pictures. And we watched the—the Hulk and had fun, and did you have a good day?”

  “It was pretty good,” I said.

  “Melanie B died,” she said, her eyes on the set. “Nobody knows what happened to her, but she died and that’s sad.”

  Dr. Romero emerged from her bedroom, wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt and looking better for the change of clothes and the brief shower she’d grabbed. She lit a cigarette and went into the kitchenette, motioning me after her.

  “Who do I get tonight?”

  “Dale and Natalie. Rubin and I will be by tomorrow around seven, same as before.”

  Dr. Romero nodded, then began searching the freezer for something to defrost for dinner. “I’ll see you then,” she said. “Katie? You want enchiladas for dinner?”

  “Enchiladas!” Katie shouted. “I adore enchiladas!”

  Felice smiled the way only a mother can smile at her child, then said to Natalie and Dale, “Is that all right with you two?”

  They both said that enchiladas sounded grand.

  Rubin and I said good night to everyone, then caught the number six train back up to Bleecker. We stopped at the Grand Union a block from our place for some soda, then walked to our apartment on Thompson.

  We had a railroad apartment that we paid far too much for. My room was immediately right off the hall as you entered. The kitchen was beyond it, then the bathroom, and then finally the hall opened into one large living room. Rubin’s room was at the far end of the apartment, in what was still technically the living room. We had installed a folding wall partition a year or so back to provide the illusion of privacy, but it didn’t really work. If he had company for the night, and I ventured further than the kitchen, I heard far more than I needed to.

  I put the soda in the fridge while Rubin continued to his room. We had a few bottles of Anchor Steam left, so I opened one for each of us and brought his to him. He had dumped his bag and was already pulling on a pair of cutoffs. I sat on the chair, looking out across the courtyard, and he took up position on the futon with a hairbrush and a couple of comic books. He put the beer on the little table by the television, out of the way of the comics, and began to brush his hair. Rubin is Puerto Rican, and his hair is almost the same light brown as his skin and eyes. We’ve known each other since we were kids, we went through Basic Training together, and he hasn’t had a haircut since we left the service. He’s been collecting his comics twice that long.

  “You’re a hippie artist freak,” I said.

  “I’m not the one who’s got holes in his ear.”

  “Earrings are cool.”

  “On pirates,” Rubin said. “Not on bodyguards. Makes you look like a . . . wimp.”

  “I’d rather look like a wimp than a . . . girl.”

  He laughed, setting the hairbrush down and taking up his beer. “You know, you talk like that, and I know you want me.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “This is the nineties. Homoeroticism is hip.”

  “Except in certain states.”

  “And those don’t count,” he said. “You’re going to see Alison tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “You’re going to see Alison and I am going to stay home alone.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is that fair?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you admit it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He drank from his bottle, then opened his first comic book. “Have a nice time, you bastard.”

  “I will,” I said, and left hoping th
at I was telling the truth.

  We went for Chinese at a small restaurant off Broadway near her place. We’d eaten there a couple times before and it was beginning to feel familiar. The manager gave us a wave before we were led to a table.

  Alison looked good, her color back in her skin and her eyes clear. She was wearing her hair untied, and kept having to brush it back out of her face each time she bent to the plate with her chopsticks. I told her about my day, and she told me about hers. She was working at Oxford University Press that summer, but she didn’t think of that as her job. Her job was her band.

  “We got a gig,” Alison said. “Brownie’s, Wednesday after this one.”

  “Is that good?”

  “You don’t remember going to Brownie’s?”

  “Come on, you know me. I don’t know from clubs,” I said.

  “We went last month, saw C Is For Coyote.”

  “Okay, yeah. They were good.”

  She poured herself some more tea. “It’s a good gig. You going to be able to make it?”

  “It’ll depend on the job. I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “All things being equal, well. Today was a little out of the ordinary, but I think we’re doing all right.”

  “Good.”

  I looked at her, realized that she was watching me closely.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “What’s wrong? You feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine with the abortion,” Alison said.

  “That’s not what I was asking.”

  “Oh,” she said. She drank her tea, then leaned back in her chair as the waiter dropped our bill and two fortune cookies on the table. We divided the check, then she took one cookie and I took the other.

  “ ‘Long life and happiness will be yours,’ ” she read. “Mine’s ‘The strongest mind does not dissemble.’ More an aphorism than a fortune, I think.”

  She laughed and said, “At Vassar I had a friend who always tacked on the phrase ‘in bed’ at the end of her fortunes. The strongest mind does not dissemble in bed.”

  “Cute.”

  “Long life and happiness will be yours—”

  “In bed,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  We went out onto Broadway, enjoying the night. It was still warm, but the humidity had fallen, and it was good weather for walking. I took her hand and we went like that for a while.

  “My mother called,” Alison told me. “Sends her best.”

  “I do the same.”

  “She wanted to know how we’re doing.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her that we were fine. Not great, not bad.”

  I nodded, then said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to spend more time with you.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “It’s not avoidance.”

  “I know,” Alison said. “You’re busy. I am, too.” We were quiet for nearly another block. Then she said, “Atticus? Do you wonder?”

  I knew exactly what she meant. “Once in a while.”

  “Me, too. More than I thought I would.” She squeezed my hand. “Not second thoughts, exactly. But it sort of puts things in perspective. Makes me wonder what exactly I’m doing with my life, that sort of thing.”

  “And what are you doing with your life, Alison?”

  “Right now? Taking a walk.”

  ——

  I dropped her off with a good-night kiss and headed back downtown, getting home a little before midnight. Rubin was in his room, and I could hear his voice, low, and knew he was talking to Natalie on the phone.

  I went to sleep after thinking about Katie and Felice, and then Alison, and wondering what sort of father I’d have made.

  “Katie and I are going to the movies,” Felice informed me the following evening.

  I was sitting on the couch in their apartment, Katie beside me with her head on my arm more than my shoulder, totally focused on the early-evening MTV lineup. Natalie and Rubin had been granted their much-coveted night off together, leaving Dale and me to provide coverage. Currently, Dale was showering in the downstairs bathroom. It had been a quiet day, and I had been expecting a quiet night.

  “You are going to what?” I asked.

  “I promised her we’d go to the movies tonight.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  Felice adjusted her glasses and frowned at me. “I told her I would take her to the movies,” she said.

  Katie lifted her head to look at her mother. “Is it the movie? Are we going to see the movie?”

  “That’s right, honey. Go get your coat.”

  Katie slid off the couch, cast a last glance at the video in progress, then headed toward the stairs up to her room. She pumped her arms as if jogging, moving as fast as she could.

  Wonderful, I thought. Now I get to be the bad guy. “When did you decide you were going to do this?” I asked Felice.

  “Last night.”

  “But you didn’t tell me until now.”

  She lit a cigarette, then crossed out of the kitchen to pick up her windbreaker draped over the back of a chair. The windbreaker was light blue with navy blue piping. She checked her purse before saying, “You would have forbidden it.”

  “I don’t have the power to forbid anything, Doctor. But you’re right, I would have advised against it.”

  “She wants to see a movie, Atticus. It’s summer, she’s out of school, and she’s bored.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t the first time my principal had decided to exert some passive/aggressive resistance to my presence. Nobody likes being told what to do, even if they are paying someone to do so. The situation would be different if we were going directly from the clinic. The apartment still seemed secure, and so far nobody had been following us.

  “I’m going to have to call Rubin and Natalie,” I said.

  Relief washed her features like a breeze lifting a kite. “Thank you.”

  “If nothing happens, then you can thank me,” I said, and headed for the phone.

  Natalie and Rubin were at the movie theater in Murray Hill, around Thirty-second Street, when we arrived. Rubin had grumbled when he answered the phone, but both he and Natalie had smiles on as we walked up, and Katie let go of her mother’s and my hands to run and give them both hugs, saying, “We’re at a movie, we’re seeing a movie.”

  They led her back to us, and then Natalie extended a hand, showing six tickets. “They’re seating already,” she told me. “We should go on in.”

  Katie put her hand back in mine, and we stepped up to the line, Natalie leading, and the usher took our tickets and directed us to the appropriate theater. The appropriate theater was down a flight of stairs, and Katie had trouble with the steps. She refused all assistance, saying, “I can do it, I can.”

  Felice stayed right beside her on the way down, and I could see her resisting the urge to reach out and steady her daughter when she faltered. When Katie made it to the bottom, both of them looked proud enough to burst. “See? I did it, by myself, I did it,” Katie said loudly. Felice gave her a hug.

  The film was an animated Disney feature, one of the new releases, full of color and music, and fairly distracting. Felice was really the only person who paid full attention to it; Katie fell asleep halfway into the movie, snoring gently, her chin pressed to her chest. A subway tunnel had been burrowed through the ground close by, and every ten minutes or so the theater would fill with the rumbling of a train, loud enough to defeat the soundtrack. Katie didn’t wake up.

  Dale, Natalie, Rubin, and I devoted our time to watching the house, keeping a bead on the audience. There weren’t a lot of people at the show, but we did our jobs, and consequently I don’t have the first idea what the movie was about.

  When the film ended, Felice woke Katie, saying, “Honey? We’re going home now. Time to get up.”

  Katie opened and closed her mout
h a couple of times, tasting sleep, then rubbed her eyes and opened them. “It was a good movie,” she announced.

  “It was a wonderful movie,” her mother confirmed. Katie nodded, then reached for my hand, and I helped her out of the seat. We started back up the aisle.

  “Did you like your movie, ’Cus?” Katie asked.

  “I liked it a lot.”

  “Does your girl-girlfriend, does she like movies?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Alison likes movies.”

  “Did she like this movie?”

  “I don’t think she’s seen this movie, Katie.”

  We had to stop at the stairs again, Katie once more refusing any help, and it took five minutes to get to the top, with plenty of people casting sidelong glances or just plain old-fashioned stares our way. At the top of the stairs, behind the railing, three pack-boys watched our progress. They looked to be in their late teens at most, decked out to look tough. We were three-quarters up when I heard the Alpha of the pack mutter, “God, what’s that retard doing?”

  He hadn’t said it loudly, but the pack snickered. Katie froze on the stairs. Her shoulders rounded in as if to shield her chest, and she lowered her eyes to her feet. Then she held out a hand to her mother, saying, “I need help, Mommy. Help me.”

  Dale was leading up, and he swiveled his head to catch the Alpha, then turned and started to offer Katie his hand, but Felice stopped him by shaking her head. “You can do it, sweetie,” she told Katie.

  “Fucking retard,” the Alpha said louder.

  Katie rocked from her right foot to her left and back, one hand gripping the railing. Over her, Dale made eye contact with me, and I gave him a slight nod. He climbed the rest of the way and positioned himself at the top, maybe ten feet from the pack. His presence was enough to silence them, but the Alpha was now in trouble, looking from Dale to his two pals, then back at us; if he backed down, he lost face, and in front of his pack, it wasn’t something he could afford to do.

  Katie restarted, one foot carefully placed before the next, and we climbed steadily to the top without stopping. At the landing Felice gave Katie a hug, but she didn’t respond, still staring at her sneakers, too aware of the ignorant, mocking eyes on her.