“The apartment,” Freddy muttered to my feet. “She’s interested.” Sandra Oh’s clone smiled tightly from above her perfectly tailored suit, indicating that we had already wasted too much of her time on introductions. She gave a little shake of her black mane and looked behind me up the stairs. I stood aside and gestured for them to go in.
“I can answer any questions you might have …” I said to their receding backs in a tardy effort to appear professional. At least I was still wearing my responsible, impartial juror’s outfit.
I turned back to Gregory and said nothing, not trusting my voice. The pain of his rejection on that very stoop just two days earlier made it hard for me to do more than glance at him every few seconds, like a Tourettic mouse.
“Zephyr,” he said, spreading his arms pleadingly. My throat tightened. “I need to explain something to you. Can I come up? Can we talk inside?” I wanted to throw my arms around him, nuzzle his neck, and feel his palms press into my back, but instead I had to shake my head.
Gregory looked stricken.
“Zephyr,” Hayden crooned from somewhere above us, “I’m wai-aiting!”
I ran both hands through my hair, pulling at it as if I could trigger a trapdoor to fall through. My breathing grew shallow and I realized that, for the second time that day, I was at risk of passing out. Then my eyelid started twitching, the way it had when Tag and I got caught at the St. Regis. I had to get Gregory out of here.
“Who was that?” Gregory asked.
“The broker,” I gulped.
“Him?” Gregory said doubtfully.
I looked up and there was Freddy following Sandra down the stairs, with something vaguely related to a smile plastered on his face.
“I’ll take it,” she said breezily, waving her hand in the general vicinity of the building and starting down the stoop.
“It’s not ready to be rented,” Gregory said suddenly.
I looked at him, surprised. Sandra froze on the step, one gym- toned calf in mid-plunge. She turned her head slowly and fixed Freddy with a deadly glare.
“Make it ready,” she intoned.
Perhaps there was more to consider in a potential tenant than the size of her Marc Jacobs purse.
“Who is this guy?” Freddy muttered in Gregory’s direction, as Sandra marched toward the corner in full taxi- hail stance.
“Yeah, Zephyr, who are these guys?” Hayden cheerfully padded down the stairs and leaned against the wall of the vestibule, nursing another beer.
Gregory looked back and forth between Hayden’s shoeless feet and mine, then turned to me, betrayal flashing in his eyes.
“It’s not ready to be rented,” he repeated slowly, but of course what he meant was, You whore.
“Zephyr?” Freddy whined.
“There are still some things that need to be fixed,” Gregory said pointedly to me.
The staircase. Was he holding on to the chance that we could have another escapade within its rosy confines? Did I mean that much to him? Did he mean as much to me as four thousand dollars a month?
“Anyone want a beer?” Hayden offered.
“Oh my God!” I exploded. “Hayden, you have to leave. Now.”
Hayden didn’t budge.
“Freddy, the apartment is ready to rent,” I said, looking at Gregory. It was a stupid staircase, and whatever runty relationship Gregory and I might have been starting was already over. He was sullen, judgmental, unpredictable, interfering, and unsocialized. I’d wall over the door or solder it shut, and if Sandra Oh or some variation of her rented the place and asked about it, I’d tell them it was a relic from another age, that it went nowhere. Not unlike my life at that moment, which felt as if it might actually be moving backward.
“It’s ready,” I said firmly “When does she want to move in?”
Gregory roughly cupped the back of his neck with both hands and pulled, as though he was displacing a desire to strangle me.
“Is this your boyfriend?” Hayden asked nonchalantly, slugging back the rest of his lager.
Freddy looked up, possibly for the first time in his life.
“Not you. Him.” Hayden gestured to Gregory with his bottle.
“No,” Gregory spat. “I’m just the exterminator.”
Without giving me another glance, Gregory turned and left. I braced myself against the smooth oak door. How could I be dumped by the same man twice in the space of two days? And how could it hurt just as much? Wasn’t there some law of physics that prevailed here?
“The exterminator?” Freddy said, his gaze having returned to its comfort zone near my knees. “Is there a pest problem in this building?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at Hayden, who smiled and did a Charlie Chaplin eyebrow dance.
“Fix it,” Freddy muttered, and galumphed down the steps to the street.
Wordlessly, Hayden slipped past me, letting his chest graze mine, and locked the door behind Freddy. He took my hands and pulled me to him.
“Hey, you,” he whispered, his lips fluttering against my ear.
“What’s my name?” I couldn’t resist whispering back to him.
He leaned back and regarded me with amused confusion.
“What?”
I shook my head and looked into his green eyes. I waited for my lust to overpower me again, but all I could think of was Gregory. Gregory on the front steps, licking custard off his fingers. Gregory’s sweet breath on my cheek in the dark of Roxana’s closet. Gregory teaching me more about myself in an hour than Hayden could in a lifetime.
I squeezed Hayden’s hands, willing myself to go back upstairs and pick up where we left off. The Zephyr of the past two years demanded it. God knows I wanted to keep wanting Hayden. Gregory was gone—again—and here was the man I’d been obsessing about, offering himself to me.
Hayden started up the stairs, pulling me behind him. I walked slowly up the steps, counting them while I hashed it out with the devil homunculus.
I came to my decision with two steps left to go.
“Hayden,” I said, stopping short.
He turned and looked at me, giving me a soft smile.
“That was your boyfriend, wasn’t it?” he said almost wistfully, exhibiting more insight in that one question than he had in nearly five months of dating. I wavered.
“I don’t know what he is,” I told Hayden apologetically, feeling like I was jumping off a cliff, “but he’s … he’s on my mind,” I finished lamely.
“So should I go?” He encircled my wrist with his thumb and forefinger. My knees almost buckled, but I clenched my jaw and nodded.
He nodded back, with a hint of self- pity, and dropped my wrist. I sucked in my breath. Oh, God, I was never going to see him again. I’d been given my second chance and I was chucking it away, as if I were a rich woman tossing pennies. It took all my willpower not to push him inside the apartment and tell him I was just kidding. I studied him hard. This was it.
“Okay just gotta get my shoes,” he said, suddenly jovial again. He winked at me and pushed open the apartment door.
I shook my head, pitying him. Poor deluded guy. This is really it, Hayden, I told both of us silently. It’s Over.
I watched him slip his shoes on and sling his red Manhattan Portage over his shoulder.
“See you in court tomorrow!” He kissed me on the nose and bounced down the stairs.
HE READ MY BOOK, ZEPHY? REALLY?”
I lay on my parents’ couch that night with one arm flung over my eyes, slumped against my father. It had started to rain right after Hayden left, and the sound of the water splattering on the skylight perfectly matched the drowning sensation I’d labored under all day.
My dad was supposed to be giving me a neck rub, but he couldn’t resist tugging at my ears as he thought aloud.
“Ow! Dad, no ears.”
“Sorry. What did he say? Did he like it?” my dad persisted, pulling at one lobe again.
“Daddy, ow, I don’t know. He was out to get me.
He used it as a weapon against me.” I knew I was being melodramatic, but I didn’t care. My heart was broken and my dad only cared about what some over- zealous defense lawyer thought of his book.
“What do you think of Anne?” he said, referring to Langley the blond prosecutor. “She’s a superstar. Did you like her? What did she ask you?”
“Dad,” I muttered somewhere toward my armpit. “This is why I’m never going to get picked for a jury. Stop asking!”
I heard ice rattling and peered out from under my arm to see my mother conveying their nightly sherry and whitefish salad ritual out on a small brushed aluminum tray.
My dad took a sip of sherry and smacked his lips.
“Ah, Zephy, it’s too bad you don’t like to drink. Times like this, it would do you good.”
I groaned and closed my eyes again.
I felt my mother sit down beside me. She started stroking my hair and I squirmed away from my father and closer to her. I intended to soak up every ounce of coddling before my brother the auteur arrived the following week.
“Zephy, honey, I’m not sure I understand,” she said gently. “You’ve only known this boy—”
“He’s a man,” I said grumpily. “I date men.”
“This man for two weeks, and you’re already fighting? Maybe he’s not worth the trouble.”
“You’re just saying that because you don’t want me to date an exterminator,” I said accusingly, knowing even as I said it that I was getting myself in trouble. Her hands stopped moving and she tapped one nail lightly on my scalp.
“Zephyr,” she said sternly.
“Sorry,” I muttered, pushing myself up into a sitting position.
“Why are you having trouble with the idea of dating an exterminator?” she asked.
“I’m not,” I said, trying to figure out whether that was true. “I mean, do I wish he had a more exciting career, like, say, I don’t know, a … a homicide reporter for a major newspaper? Yeah, I guess I do.”
My parents looked at me quizzically—I’d successfully kept Hayden a secret from them.
“You’re the ones with these important, successful careers,” I whined, hating the sound of my own voice, but unable to resist the tantalizing allure of regression. “You’ve sent me subliminal messages about who’s right for me to date and who isn’t. You’re afraid I’m never going to succeed at anything.”
“Whoa,” my dad said, raising his eyebrows.
“Two different things,” my mom said.
“You can date whomever you want, as long as he’s kind and good to you.”
“That’s different from what we hope you’ll make of your life.”
Hope. She said “hope.” Gregory had said a parent’s responsibility was to distinguish between their hopes and their expectations for their kids. Mine actually knew the difference. A sob sprang up from my throat. I tried to gulp it back, but it exploded and I flung myself against my mother’s shoulder.
I felt her hand her drink to my dad and then wrap both arms around me. I watched the footprints on their Greek dancing instructions bounce up and down as I shook. I cried because I didn’t want to be a super; because I was trying to make cosmic lemonade out of lemons and it wasn’t working; because I couldn’t understand how I could be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time; because Gregory knew I thought he wasn’t good enough for me and I hated myself for that. I couldn’t blame LinguaFrank for Gregory’s desertion. Gregory kept trying to come back and I kept sending the message that I had better options. I hated myself for the way I’d treated him.
My dad patted my ankle. “You know, Zephy,” he began gently, “what so many people don’t understand is that true love, if you’re lucky, means in- laws, mortgages, and diapers. If you look for constant excitement, you’re going to wind up alone. Either because you won’t find it, or because your true love will run out of oxygen climbing Everest.” He gave a halfhearted chortle.
I sat up and my mother wiped my tears away with the length of her thumb. “I’m not looking for constant excitement,” I whimpered. “I just want…”
My parents looked at me expectantly, as if they were on the brink of hearing an answer to a question they’d asked themselves repeatedly. Perhaps they wanted to hear that I was ready to resume law school, or pick up a stethoscope again, or sit for the Foreign Service exam. I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but at least now I knew who I wanted to be with.
“I want the exterminator,” I said plaintively. “And I missed my chance.”
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, I SLUMPED IN MY SEAT BESIDE THE BEEFY orthodontist and bided my time until I was kicked back into the jury pool with the rest of the untouchables. I wound and unwound a loose thread on my black sweater—the only item of Tag’s I’d ever successfully fit into—hoping that the next case wouldn’t have such industrious attorneys. While Commando Suarez interrogated the doggie spa owner behind me, I tried to keep my gaze from straying to the mop of red hair in the audience. The energy it took not to look toward the fourth seat of the third row made my neck ache, and I wondered, statistically, how many times per minute I’d otherwise be inclined to look there.
The room was packed again, but now the sight of Maria Anna Mariza in an electric blue suit, whispering to her seat-mate—I still couldn’t remember which Pelarose underling he was—only depressed me. Sitting in the jury box just made me wish I was back on Twelfth Street sweeping cigarette butts out of the alley.
A court officer who’d been conferring with two of the thick- necked buzz- cuts—today they had squeezed themselves into pigeon- gray suits—straightened up and pushed his way through the swinging door into the well. He whispered to the clerk, who stood up, tottering on heels that looked like engineering impossibilities. She slipped a note to the poker- faced assistant sitting in the box adjacent to the judge’s bench. He read it and whispered to the judge, who looked, I swear, straight at me. I sat up in my seat, resisting a nervous urge to rearrange my hair.
“Mr. Suarez, excuse me,” the judge said, interrupting Clarence Darrow mid- spittle- spray. “Gentlemen, is this really necessary right now?” She addressed the buzz- cuts, who stood up from their seats in the audience to answer her.
“Yer Ahna,” the rounder one said in heavy Bronxese, “we apologize for the disruption, but we do feel that it is necessary at this time.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hayden’s head swivel between the men and the judge.
“In the future, I suggest you do your job while the court is in recess instead of disrupting my jury selection.” She looked at them sternly.
“Yes, Your Honor,” the taller one said respectfully. “We don’t foresee that we’ll need to do this again anytime soon.”
The judge sighed and looked at me again.
“Ms. Zuckerman, would you please follow these two gentlemen? I apologize to all parties for the disruption.”
I swallowed hard and felt my ears grow hot. I’d never heard of anything like this happening. Had they decided I’d lied on the stand about my living situation? But I really did live alone! Were they going to take me downtown and book me for perjury? They can’t take me downtown, I already am downtown, I thought wildly, gathering up my backpack.
I caught a glimpse of Suarez, his eyebrows raised in surprise. The blond prosecutor frowned and scribbled something on her notepad. She had wanted me. I knew it! Oh, it would have been a beautiful trial.
I trembled slightly as I made my way past the knees of my former fellow jurors. The entire courtroom was silent except for the sound of my footsteps and the rustle of the buzz- cuts’ suits. I kept my head down as I followed them toward a side door, but at the last moment, I glanced up. Hayden was looking right at me. Instead of his usual sexy, mischievous, infuriating grin, he looked genuinely curious. Intrigued. So this is what he looked like on the job, picking up the scent of a story.
This, I defended myself to my demons, this is why I fell for him. In fact, Hayden l
ooked more interested in me at that moment than he ever had when we were alone together in bed. The thought was tantalizing—finally, I had his attention—but mostly, it was breathtakingly depressing.
Goon Number One held the door for me and Goon Number Two gestured for me to go first. The tops of their heads might have looked like freshly mowed lawns, but they were gentlemen.
“Am I in trouble?” I blurted out the moment the door shut behind us. We stood in a narrow, fluorescently lit hallway with tiles peeling from the ceiling.
“Not at awl,” said Number One, the rounder one. Number Two said nothing. Good cop, bad cop. My fingers were white against the strap of my backpack, where I clutched it to my shoulder. I relaxed my hand and wiped the palm on my pant leg.
“I’m Agent Mulrooney, and this is Agent Underhill. Just come this way,” Mulrooney continued soothingly. “We got a few questions.”
Agents? FBI? They really were going to get me for fudging on “Do you live alone?” I felt a new quiver in my right eyelid. We turned a corner and started along an identical hallway.
But what if they weren’t who they said they were? I thought frantically. What if they were tied to the Pelarose family, but posing as law enforcement, and they had fooled the judge and everyone else and now they were going to dump me in the East River? Maybe, I thought, my heart pounding in time with my eyelid, the Pelarose family and the Sanchez family were allies, and they were all out to avenge my father’s prosecution of Tommy “The Manhole” Sanchez.
“Good thing that rain let up, huh?” said Mulrooney
“Yeah, I got tickets at Shea tonight,” said Underhill.
At least I knew they weren’t planning to keep me all night. Or it meant they were going to dispose of my body somewhere in Queens in time to fortify themselves with knishes before the first pitch.
We turned another corner and passed a door with a sign announcing: “Jury Deliberating. Do Not Enter.” A court officer of bouncer- like proportions was tilting back in his overtaxed chair, holding a dented phone to his ear, and squinting at a scrap of paper.
“Take duh casserole outta duh fridge. Turn duh oven tuh tree- fifty. Stickitina oven.” He paused and listened for a moment. “I dunno, half ow- ah? What am I, some kine uhva chef?” He hung up, letting the legs of his chair thunk forward, and rolled his eyes at us.
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