Steering the BMW out of the parking garage conveniently located just across the street from Tequila Sam’s, Alex gives a friendly wave to the attendant.
The kid, who has oversized bushy sideburns, perhaps in an unsuccessful effort to mask the acne scars on his cheeks, can’t be more than nineteen or twenty. He nods and smiles back, undoubtedly pleased with the extralarge tip he just pocketed for lending a helping hand with the passenger’s-side door—not to mention the passenger.
“My date had a little too much to drink, unfortunately,” Alex had explained while fishing for the receipt. “Right, sweetie?”
The response was too slurred to make out.
“Yo, want to sit down?” the attendant had asked, and offered a chair before disappearing up the ramp to retrieve the car. By the time he came back, Alex had no choice but to ask for a helping hand.
“Looks like your friend here is down for the count, huh?”
“Looks that way.”
“How about you? Are you all right to drive?”
“Me? I’m fine. All I’ve had is seltzer.” Seltzer with a wedge of lime—masquerading as a vodka tonic.
Now, heading north up Tenth Avenue, then making a left toward the West Side Highway, Alex glances over.
Still out cold.
That’s fine.
Better than fine.
“You can rest all the way home,” Alex says, reaching for the radio knob. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you.”
Electric guitar fills the car. AC/DC’s Back in Black. Nice.
“How’s that? Good? You did write on your profile that you enjoy classic rock,” Alex tells her passenger, with a small smile. “We have so much in common, don’t we?”
Nick Santana, passed out in the passenger seat courtesy of the Rohypnol she dumped into his Maker’s Mark before he got there, doesn’t respond.
Chapter 4
June heat shimmers in waves on the pavement this evening as Gabriela steps out of her building’s lobby. It’s not even summer yet, according to the calendar, but already the city is in the throes of its first official heat wave.
Upstairs in the refrigerated air of her office, she needed a cardigan all day. Now, as the full impact of the sidewalk steam bath hits her, she hastily takes it off and tucks it into her tote bag, wondering if she should run back up and leave it on the back of her door. There’s no way she’s going to need it at Yankee Stadium tonight.
But, checking her watch, she realizes she doesn’t have time to go back up. She’s meeting Ryan in ten minutes.
As she heads down the block and turns south on Madison Avenue toward Grand Central Terminal, she finds that she’s looking forward to spending this June evening—hot or not—at the ballpark with Ryan.
She really wasn’t even sure she’d ever see him again after her skittish exit from their first date. But he texted her to make sure she’d gotten home all right, and called a few days later. He waited just long enough for her to assume she’d heard the last of him; just long enough for her to be too caught off guard to come up with a reason why she couldn’t go out with him again.
They’ve had a couple of dates since. First, he took her out to dinner again; the second time, to a Broadway play. The more time she spent with him, the more she found herself forgetting the past—at least for a few hours. He was fun, and funny—not to mention sweet, and sexy.
Realizing he was about to kiss her good-night after their second date, she forced herself to close her eyes and let it happen.
She’d expected it to feel all wrong: kissing someone other than Ben. But somehow it didn’t.
Maybe because it’s been so long since she and Ben had actually even kissed in a romantic way.
They’d tried—and failed—to regain their passion after Josh died.
Well, Ben had tried. Semblances of normalcy were important to him. That felt wrong to her, but her therapist told her that everyone’s journey through grief and healing is individual. It’s not fair to judge. And their marriage counselor had encouraged her to open herself up to her husband not just emotionally, but physically. She found it impossible to do either.
Looking back, Gaby sometimes wonders if she’d made any real effort at all. Maybe not. Numb with grief, she never imagined her heart could be capable of feeling anything ever again—for Ben or anyone else.
But Ryan kissed her and it was okay. More than okay. The second time he leaned in, she didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around him and kiss him back.
Since then, slowly but surely, she’s been coming alive again.
Sleeping Beauty stirring back to life. That’s the analogy Jaz chose to use.
“You and your fairy tales.” Gaby rolled her eyes at her cousin.
“You’re the one who got me into them in the first place, when we were little kids, remember?”
She remembers. Jaz was a reluctant reader, Gaby an avid bookworm. She started reading stories aloud to her cousin from a book of fairy tales, drawing her into the story and then leaving off at a pivotal point. Thus, a curious Jaz was forced to keep reading herself if she wanted to find out what happened.
“You’re Sleeping Beauty,” Jaz insisted, “and Ryan is your handsome prince, and now you’re alive again.”
When she saw Dr. Milford yesterday, the therapist noticed right away that her mood had brightened.
“I’ve never seen you this chipper, Gabriela,” she said. “What’s changed?”
“Not much, really,” she said, but as she began to talk about what had gone on since her last appointment, she realized that quite a bit had changed. Good things had been happening for her.
Last week, a debut novel she acquired—against the executive editor’s better judgment, albeit with her eventual blessing—hit the New York Times best-seller list. Anne and a couple of the other editors—Kasey not included—took her out to dinner to celebrate.
Another day, heading to the subway after work, she spontaneously ducked into Saks Fifth Avenue to get out of a sudden thunderstorm and found the store in the midst of a tremendous clearance sale. She bought three designer dresses she’d never have been able to afford otherwise.
“Amazing what a new outfit can do to improve your outlook,” Dr. Milford said with a smile.
Gaby told her that her allergies have improved lately, too, now that spring is finally giving way to summer. No more daily sinus headaches. After two weeks of endless rain that served to wash away all that pollen, the sun has been shining against a brilliant blue sky for the last few days.
And then there was Ryan. When she told Dr. Milford she’d met someone and gone out on a couple of dates, the woman nodded her approval.
“I’m not jumping into another full-blown relationship or anything, though,” Gaby hastened to tell her.
“No, of course you’re not. You’re just having fun.”
“I am,” she realized. “I’m having fun.”
“It’s about time. And you deserve it, Gabriela.”
Yes, she does.
And so later last night, when Ryan texted her to ask if she was busy tonight—a weeknight—she almost breezily wrote back I’m free!
Great! Just got 2 seats behind home plate—Red Sox/Yankees.
Maybe she did have an uncomfortable little twinge when she saw that, thinking of Ben. He’d never call it the Red Sox/Yankees game; it would be the other way around.
Yankees/Red Sox.
How well she remembers his enthusiasm for the century-old archrivalry, remembers how much he loved to hate the Sox.
He’d probably hate Ryan as well.
Too bad. She’s happy for a change. Maybe just fleetingly; maybe she doesn’t know where they’re headed, but she won’t let herself worry about that. For the first time in ages, she’s living in the present.
Naturally, Jaz has been thrilled with this turn of events. It seems like every other sentence out of her mouth is a variation of “I told you so” or “Does he have a friend for me?”
Never marr
ied, with her thirtieth birthday looming in August, Jaz has been even more determined lately to find Mr. Right.
Or maybe determined isn’t quite the right word. Desperate seems more accurate. At her most dramatic, Jaz is convinced she’ll wind up a jamona like their spinster great-aunt Ula.
Gaby told her she couldn’t possibly fix her up with one of Ryan’s friends. Not at this stage, anyway.
“Why not?”
“Because . . . it’s not like we’re a couple.”
“Maybe not yet. But you’re on your way. And there’s nothing wrong with sniffing around to see if maybe he has someone nice for your favorite cousin.”
“I thought you were into meeting guys the old-fashioned way—online.”
“Hey, I’m open to anything, mami. Aren’t you glad you were, too?”
Yes. She’s glad. Yes, it’s nice to be dating someone, but really, it’s about having turned a corner at last—a sharp
corner—on the road to healing.
Having reached 47th Street, she falls in with the throng of commuters streaming into Grand Central Terminal’s northern passage entrance.
There was a time, after Josh was born, when she couldn’t imagine herself ever being a part of the professional rat race again. She’d negotiated a part-time work-at-home editorial consulting schedule after her maternity leave ended, and she and Ben had discussed her eventually phasing out her career altogether in favor of full-time motherhood. Instead . . .
Instead.
After the unthinkable happened, she got her job back. Full-time. In the office. Her boss offered her the option of continuing to work at home: Whatever you need, Gabriela. Whatever makes it easier.
Being at home didn’t make it easier. Nothing made it easier. And she couldn’t bear to be in that apartment any longer.
Stop. Don’t think about that.
At the bottom of the long escalator, she makes her way quickly through the air-conditioned network of tunnels to the main concourse.
The vast open area is a sea of striding New Yorkers and gawking, photo-snapping tourists who—oblivious to the rhythms of rush-hour Manhattan—wander into the purposeful paths of impatient, exhausted commuters rushing for trains home to their Westchester or Connecticut suburbs. Tonight there are baseball fans in the mix as well, most of them wearing Yankees gear and heading for the Metro North and subway lines that will carry them to the stadium in the Bronx, just a stone’s throw from Abuela’s apartment where Gaby had grown up.
When Ryan texted Gaby to meet him here “by the clock,” she didn’t have to ask for clarification. The information booth, topped by an enormous brass clock, is the quintessential meeting place for New Yorkers. She used to meet friends here back in high school and college, and later she’d meet Ben . . .
But it’s Ryan, not Ben, who’s waiting for her by the clock tonight. Still in his suit and tie, he’s intently typing on his phone as she walks toward him, and doesn’t see her.
She wonders whether he’s catching up on work e-mail or maybe just texting with a friend. She touches his arm and he looks up.
“Hey!” He smiles, quickly tucking his phone away without bothering to finish what he was doing, and gives her a hug. “How are you?”
“I’m great,” she says truthfully, and together they head for the train.
“You owe me big for this,” Ben’s brother, Luis, tells him as they settle into their prime seats—courtesy of Luis’s boss—to watch batting practice.
“What? You owed me big for helping you carry that old TV down three flights of stairs last month.”
“No, you did that because I helped you move last fall, remember?”
“After I walked Budgie and Paris for a week in September while you and Ada went to Vieques for a second honeymoon.” Ben doesn’t bother to remind him that Budgie and Paris are the yappiest, crappiest—literally—dogs in New York. Luis knows that better than anyone. The family pets have been a bone of marital contention between him and Ada for years.
Then again, so have their twin daughters—and just about everything else.
His brother’s marriage has always been volatile, though things improved after Bettina and Marisol went off to college last August—ironically, right around the time Ben’s own marriage was dying a final death.
“It wasn’t a second honeymoon,” Luis points out. “It was our only honeymoon. We couldn’t afford one twenty years ago. We couldn’t afford it now, but I always promised Ada we’d do it as soon as the girls left. Too bad she’s not a baseball fan. I could have promised her a game in these seats instead.”
“They probably cost more than your week in Vieques. Here’s to your boss.” Ben lifts his plastic cupful of beer in a toast. “Anyway, looks like you and I are even now, so—”
“What? Bro, field level corporate seats behind home plate for the Yankees/Red Sox doesn’t make us even. It makes you—” Luis breaks off, staring wide-eyed at something other than the players on the field.
“What?” Ben follows his gaze to the crowd filing into the rows ahead of theirs, down to the right.
“Nothing, I just thought . . .” Luis shakes his head. “Never mind. What was I saying?”
“You were saying we need some better pitching, same thing you say every game, every season.”
“Because it’s true. It’s always true. But I mean after I said that— Oh, yeah. I was saying you owe me, big-time, for inviting you to come tonight.”
“Yeah, guess I do. Thanks, Luis.” Ben grins, takes a sip of cold beer, and settles back to watch batting practice.
Nick Santana’s real name is Carlos Diaz.
Alex discovered that—among other things—when she went through his wallet that first night, while he was still passed out in the front seat of her car.
Carlos—three letters away from Carmen. A very good sign. Maybe an omen.
Carlos Diaz. There must be dozens—maybe hundreds—of other guys with that name in New York alone.
Is that why he decided to change it to Nick Santana? Was he merely trying to be unique? He could have done a better job with that.
Or was it a discretionary move, covering his tracks on the dating site?
Alex wondered at first whether he might be married.
It doesn’t really matter in the long run. But things would certainly be easier if he were single. That way, there was less chance anyone would be waiting for him to come home that night.
After going through his wallet, she carefully replaced it in his pocket and turned her attention to the other belongings he was carrying.
There was a small prescription medication vial containing a couple of pills she later identified as SSRNs—antidepressants. She confiscated those. The only medication she wants him taking is what she gives him—with or without his knowledge.
And then there was his cell phone.
A little targeted snooping through his texts, e-mails, and contact lists told her that he was most likely single, as he’d claimed. But you never know.
She also figured out that he’s no architect, doesn’t live on the Upper West Side, and isn’t a mere thirty-one years old—though he might have been when he posed for that photo he used on his InTune profile, the one where he’s standing in front of the Christmas tree wearing a red sweater.
He lied on his profile. Does it matter?
If she were looking for a romantic hero, it might. But the love of her life has already come and gone.
Now she needs a man for only one thing. A man with very specific qualifications.
Nick—Carlos—may not be an architect, as he’d claimed, but he does work for a construction company. She doesn’t know exactly what he does there. But when they met that night in the bar, he told her that building is in his blood, and she believed him. She could hear the passion in his voice. That’s what counts.
I’ll bet you used to love to play with Legos when you were a little boy, she wrote in one of their message exchanges before they met.
How did you k
now?
Wild guess.
Yet another thing she could check off her list.
She brought up music in another online exchange, and he warmed to that subject, too. He’d been to many of the same classic rock festivals she’d attended; even plays the electric guitar.
Are you good? she asked.
I could have been. Didn’t have the money for lessons. But I played in a band for a while. I wasn’t bad. Had some groupies, he claimed.
Perfect. He was—is—perfect.
As for the details that don’t match up, now that she’s met him in person . . .
Minor business. Who cares that he really lives in Queens and is much closer to forty years old than he is to thirty?
What counts is that he has the right look, the right interests, the right blood.
It’s all about the blood.
When she asked about his family background, he wrote that his mother is Costa Rican, his father Dominican.
Where are they now? she asked, hoping they’re not too close—or that he doesn’t, God forbid, live with them.
Costa Rica, was the reply.
On vacation?
No, they’ve been living there since they retired.
Good. Realizing he fit the bill, she arranged to meet him for a date.
From there, everything went according to plan.
Before Carlos regained consciousness, Alex used his phone to check out the last few people he’d contacted.
He’d exchanged texts with someone named Roberto—his brother, most likely, because Roberto wrote to say that Carlos should: give Mom a call or text her—she keeps saying she hasn’t heard from u lately.
Carlos had responded simply: Ok, I will.
Then came a text dutifully sent to “Mom” and written in Spanish: Te extraño. Cómo estás?
Alex, having picked up enough Spanish over the years, was able to translate: I miss you. How are you?
Mom wrote back promptly: Somos grandes! Tan contento de tener noticias de usted. Cómo es su trabajo?
Translation: We are great! So happy to hear from you. How is work?
Carlos responded: He estado ocupado. Son los dos que te diviertas en CR?
The Black Widow Page 6