Breaking the Bank

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Saul,” said Roy. Mia saw him glance at Eden, tucked in her fetal curl on the floor, and in that second, she hated him just a shade less. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.”

  “So don’t go anywhere,” added Costello. “You mean I can’t go to work? Or take my daughter to school?”

  “I meant like out of state,” Costello said, shaking her head slightly, as if she couldn’t believe Mia was so naïve. Not a single hair moved with the motion.

  Well fine, thought Mia. Who’s planning to go out of state? Not me. Except the next minute she remembered that she had told her mother that she would be coming out west after Christmas. It was this new wrinkle that Mia was trying, mentally, to smooth as she walked the three of them to the door.

  FOURTEEN

  MIA, I’M REALLY sorry,” Fred said for about the tenth time in the five minutes they had been on the phone. “I’ve known Weed for years; I had no idea he was dealing. Using, yeah. But a lot of people use. And as for the police being on to him, I swear didn’t have a clue.”

  “That’s okay, Fred. I know you didn’t know. You were only trying to help.” Mia unbuttoned her coat and set down the bag of groceries she had toted home from Whole Foods. Eden was sitting in front of the television, and Mia had just started to consider the dinner options— pasta or eggs, eggs or pasta—when Fred called. She had called him earlier in the day, but a wine merchant from California had beeped in and they hadn’t had a chance to finish.

  “So there were three of them.”

  “Uh-huh.” She peered into the bag and discovered that she hadn’t bought eggs after all. How could she have forgotten?

  “And they searched the entire apartment?”

  “They did.”

  “You must have been pretty freaked out.”

  “I was.” This was driving her nuts; didn’t he get it? She was not free to discuss this, not with Eden sitting right there. While her daughter seemed to be engrossed by whatever twaddle she had on, Mia knew that if she so much as uttered the word police, the television program, in all its compelling inanity, would be instantly abandoned in favor of rehashing the real-live drama that had played out in their apartment last night.

  “I guess you can’t talk,” Fred said.

  Bingo! But she said, in the most off hand, conversational tone she could summon, “That’s right.”

  “How about if I ask questions that only require a yes or no answer,” offered Fred. “Here goes—do you have a lawyer lined up?”

  “Not yet,” said Mia. “I’m working on it.”

  “Guess you don’t want a recommendation from me.”

  “No, Fred.” She had to control herself, because this comment made her feel like shrieking or hurling the eggs she wished she had remembered to buy. “I really don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  He was quiet for a moment; she could hear him breathing. “What are you doing?”

  “Now?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Not much. Making dinner, for a start.”

  “Let me take care of dinner. It’s the least I can do.”

  “That’s very sweet, but I don’t feel up to going anywhere. And I don’t want to ask Luisa’s mother to watch Eden again.”

  “I’ll get takeout and bring it over. You like Thai?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Great. I’ll be there in an hour. Kyra will be with me; is that okay?”

  “That’s fine,” she said. Fred’s daughter was what—sixteen? Seventeen? Eden would like hanging out with a teenager. “I really appreciate it. But Fred”—she marched into the bathroom with the phone and shut the door firmly—”I don’t want to hear one single thing about last night in front of Eden. Not a word, okay?”

  “Not a word,” Fred repeated before clicking off.

  He’d better be trustworthy, Mia thought. She had spent the entire day fixated on her one and only brush with the law, ducking into the ladies’ room at the office to make furtive phone calls, completely unable to focus on the manuscript or any other aspect of her job. There was nothing more she could do about it tonight, and she needed, in a major way, to give it a rest. Plus, she was guilty about having told Eden an out-and-out lie: she had said that the police were in their apartment because of its proximity to Manny’s; they were trying to find out more about him and mistakenly thought Mia might somehow be involved. Eden was not convinced and kept asking questions. But Mia was able to stave them off—barely, temporarily—and she most emphatically did not want the topic reopened again tonight.

  FRED SHOWED UP forty-five minutes later; he had motorcycle helmets, plastic shopping bags filled with food, and his daughter. Kyra was tall—almost as tall as Fred, who must have been six feet. She wore her brown hair in two slightly goofy-looking pigtails that spurted out from either side of her head and was dressed in a confusing amalgam of layers: lace-trimmed baby-doll dress over jeans, two pairs of leg warmers bunched over the jeans, a long, tight sweater, and a cropped vest over that. Her bag, one of those canvas messenger affairs with all kinds of pockets and compartments, was bulging painfully with the essential contents of her young life. Mia imagined her lugging it everywhere with her, the teenage version of a security blanket. But she seemed sweet and not at all condescending toward Mia, Eden, or even, amazingly, Fred. After they had eaten—or, in Eden’s case, nibbled— the glass noodles, spring rolls, and pad thai that Fred brought over, she asked Eden if she wanted to watch a DVD.

  “We don’t have a DVD player,” Eden said, clearly disappointed. “I do,” Kyra said, opening up her bag and rooting around inside. Mia spied a bottle of hair gel, a makeup case, and a cell phone, and that was just the first layer. Sure enough, after a minute or so of digging, Kyra came up with a small portable player. “I just need a place to plug it in.”

  “If you want, we can go into my room,” Eden said shyly. “Sure. I want to see your room, anyway.”

  The two girls left the table, where Mia and Fred sat facing each other over a field of empty takeout containers.

  “She’s a nice girl,” said Mia as she began to gather up the trash. “About ninety-eight percent of the time, that’s true,” said Fred. “And the other two percent?”

  “Ah, you know. Typical teenage stuff. Plus, sometimes she gets mad at me because I split up with her mother. She blames me for the divorce even though it was my ex-wife’s idea. She was the one who started sleeping with her Pilates instructor.”

  “Eden’s the same way,” Mia said. “Lloyd left, but she blames me.”

  “You said he’s been traveling a lot lately?”

  “In Asia. For a while, he was living with his girlfriend—the one he left me for—in Queens. But she’s given up the apartment, and God only knows where he’s going to land. Sometimes I wish it were far away; then I wouldn’t have to see him.”

  Was this true? She didn’t even know anymore. What she did know was that she was not up for exploring the nuances of her present feelings for Lloyd with Fred. “For Eden’s sake, though, I hope it’s somewhere close. This business of his swooping down and then disappearing is tearing her up.”

  A burst of laughter from the other room distracted Mia for a moment; she looked at Fred and smiled. If Eden was happy, how bad could anything be?

  “She’s good with younger kids,” Fred said. “She wants to be a camp counselor this summer.” He walked over to Mia, who was standing by the sink. “Hey, let me do that.”

  “I’ll dry then,” she said, stepping aside.

  After the dishes were done, Mia suddenly felt awkward and unsure of what to offer next in the way of entertainment. Fred already knew she didn’t have a DVD player, and her VCR had broken months ago. The reception on the television was erratic, but unless they wanted to join the girls in Eden’s room, that was pretty much it.

  “Do you want to see if there’s a movie on?” she asked Fred.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” Fred searched the pocket of his jacket and hel
d up his prize—a five-inch transistor radio with a titanium finish—so that Mia could see it. Then he turned it on and adjusted the frequency. In seconds, there was the sound of big-band music— shades of Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington—filling the room. “Care to dance?”

  “You do think of everything, don’t you?” Mia was actually charmed. “I try,” said Fred. “Though I mostly use it for listening to the game.”

  “Baseball?”

  “Baseball, football, basketball, tennis, soccer—if there’s a ball, I’m there. Oh, and hockey. I follow hockey, too.”

  “That’s a puck, not a ball.”

  “Close enough,” said Fred, and then he reached for her.

  Fred was what once would have been called a smooth dancer. He knew how to lead, but he was not overbearing, and he had a nimble way of moving that made her feel graceful, even though she knew that she was only a mediocre dancer at best. She had taken a bunch of les-sons once, while in college, because at the time it had seemed like a cool, retro thing to do. It was a cool, retro thing to do, Mia decided, as Fred spun her around. And it was fun, besides. Like sex, without all the attendant complications.

  “You’re good,” she said, letting herself lean into him just a little bit more.

  “You’re not bad yourself.”

  “Liar.”

  “Well, okay. Maybe you are bad. But I don’t care.”

  “Well, you should. I might step on your foot.”

  “Step, stomp, do anything you like,” he said, dipping his head so that his lips tickled her ear. “I can take it.”

  She lifted her face and kissed him, quick and light, on the mouth. He didn’t respond, so she tried again—a little harder, a little deeper.

  This time he kissed her back, a long, juicy, Hollywood close-up kind of kiss. She ran the tip of her tongue over his chipped tooth, testing the sharpness, the delicately defined edge. It was only when they heard the cheering, a great swell of noise, that they pulled apart. Mia was momentarily confused until she realized it was the sound track from the DVD. “Maybe we should go and check on them,” she said.

  The door to Eden’s room was closed. Mia knocked, but there was no answer, so she cautiously turned the knob and peered in.

  “Everything okay?” asked Fred. “Take a look.” She stepped away so he could see. The two girls had fallen asleep on the bed, Petunia wedged in between them. Eden’s face had been dabbed with color—sparkly blue on her eyelids, pink on her cheeks, a deeper shade of rose on her lips. The contents of Kyra’s makeup bag—a jumble of brushes, pencils, wands, and tubes of shimmering pigment—were strewn around them. The DVD was still playing, and Fred turned it off.

  “Kyra’s down for the count,” Fred said. “She’s up by six for swim practice, and she tends to conk out pretty early.”

  “What time is it, anyway?” Mia asked. “Ten past ten.”

  “Then Eden’s probably out for the night, too. I guess we could just leave them there. Like they’re at a slumber party.”

  “We could,” said Fred. “We certainly could.”

  Mia didn’t look at Fred until he was standing beside her again. “That leaves you and me . . .” he began. The music from the radio in the other room filled the silence. Mia didn’t know what she wanted. She did kiss him after all. But a kiss was just a kiss, right? That was what the song said anyway.

  “You okay?” Fred asked. When she didn’t answer, he added, “I told you I’d wait. No pressure, all right?”

  She looked at him then. He was so earnest it pained her. He hadprobably been a Boy Scout when he was a kid. So now he was a Boy Scout turned bartender. She giggled.

  “Are you laughing at me?” he asked. “No,” she said. Actually, she had been, but immediately stopped. “I’m not.” She touched his hair. His buzz cut was plush under her fingertips; it felt good. “You really think they’ll stay asleep?”

  “I do,” Fred said. He pulled her closer and started to nuzzle her neck.

  “I didn’t make my bed today,” she said. “Do I look like I care?”

  FRED WAS RIGHT: the girls remained asleep for so long that they got to do it twice. The first time was frenzied and awkward; in his haste to get Mia’s panties off, he ripped them, which was actually kind of funny but annoying, too. He accidentally slammed her head against the wall, causing him to pull out so he could cover the nascent, just-blooming bump with kisses. And his hand caught in the braided chain that Mia wore all the time now; the chain snapped and the locket slithered deep into the bedclothes. Ruefully, Mia dug it out and set it aside to deal with later.

  The second time was better—slower, less rushed. He had a nice smell to him, she decided. Still, when it was over, Mia had the powerful urge to cry. She didn’t give in to it though; it would only hurt him, and she wouldn’t feel any better.

  “Hey,” Fred said, tracing a finger down her spine. “Where’d you go?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Everything’s catching up with me, I guess.” She raked her hands through her hair. “What a night.”

  “It must have been creepy to have them going over all your stuff.”

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “They found everything, and I do mean everything.” Abruptly, she got up, pawed through a drawer, and handed Fred the blue velvet bag.

  “What’s this?”

  “Go on, have a look.”

  When he pulled out the vibrator, he grinned. “This, too, huh?”

  She nodded. “You’re funny, you know?”

  “Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?”

  “Both.”

  “Should I be insulted?”

  “No,” said Fred, and he leaned over to kiss her nose. “Not at all.”

  “Okay, then. I won’t.” She sat up. “We’d better get dressed.” He pulled on his pants while she put on an oversized T-shirt and gathered the clothes she had been wearing earlier. The ruined panties went into the trash. Then she picked up the locket and let it dangle, momentarily, from the broken chain.

  “I’m really sorry about that,” Fred said. “Can it be repaired?”

  “I’m not sure. I might have to get a new one.”

  “Would you let me take a look? Maybe I can fix it.”

  Mia placed it in his waiting palm. He examined the break and pulled out his Swiss army knife, the one with a hardware store’s worth of tools concealed along with its blade. He tried several of the small, sharp implements, but none seemed to do the trick.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll spring for a replacement.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Maybe I can take it back to the store where I bought it.” She popped it open, revealing the two blond children. “Maybe you could help me with this though; I’ve been meaning to take those pictures out.”

  “That should be easy.” Fred used the knife’s tip to pry the photos out. “Hey, there’s an inscription in here.”

  “Really? Let me see.”

  “The writing is so tiny,” Fred complained. “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

  She did and she knew just where to find it. Together, they examinedthe engraved script that filled both sides of the locket’s interior. To FB from JK. A gift from one whose name is writ in water. Use it well.

  “Sounds sort of poetic,” Fred said. “I wonder who FB and JK were.”

  “He called it Keats’s locket,” Mia said softly, disbelievingly, as she stared at the words through the lens. “But I didn’t think he meant it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man who sold it to me. He said that the locket could have belonged to Keats.”

  “I still don’t get it,” said Fred. “JK would be John Keats. FB would be Fanny Brawne. The line about his name being writ in water—that’s his epitaph. He wrote it before he died.” But what about the words Use it well? They weren’t part of the epitaph; she was sure of it.

  “So you think the locket really did belong to this poet?”

  “I really don’t know,” Mia said. “I
f it did, it would be worth of lot of money, right?”

  “A lot of money,” Mia echoed. “But the inscription doesn’t really prove anything. I’d have to find out more about it.”

  WHILE FRED WAS in the bathroom, Mia put the chain in the shoe box with the magic money. She ran her thumb over the circle of gold before closing the lid. John and Fanny? Could it be real? Not likely. But still . . .

  “Maybe I should sleep on the love seat,” said Fred when he came back into the room.

  “It’s pretty small; you won’t be very comfortable.” Then she remembered. “I still have Julie’s air mattress. That’ll work.”

  “‘Night,” she said when the bed was all made up. “See you in the morning.”

  “Good night.”

  She was on her way back to her room when he said, “So really, Mia, what are you going to do?”

  She stopped and turned. “I’m not sure.”

  “I know you don’t want any more recommendations from me, but you’ve really got to find yourself a lawyer. Soon.”

  “That’s what I’ve been working on. All day long. While I was supposed to be focusing on my job.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing yet. I don’t want just anyone.”

  “Of course not. But you’re going to have to tell a lawyer—any lawyer—the truth about where you got that bill,” said Fred. “No more secrets.”

  “Fred!” She hurled a pillow in his general direction. “You promised you wouldn’t badger me.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I made you mine.”

  Made you mine? Was he kidding? Insane? Mia had to stifle the sound— a cross between a snort and a yelp—that desperately wanted to pop, gremlinlike, out of her mouth. Did he really think that a roll in the hay, or even two, automatically entitled him to some sort of claim on her? She was ready to say all this, too, until she looked at that earnest Boy Scout face of his and realized, yes, that was exactly what he thought.

  “I’ll deal with that when I have to,” was all she said. And then added, “I was even considering”—she paused—”calling my brother.”