Don't You Forget About Me: Pam of Babylon Book #2

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “Don’t give me that horseshit,” he replied unsympathetically. “We’re the same age, and I have never been in better shape.”

  “The only reason you’re still alive is because I took Paxil when you had your mid-life crisis,” she yelled back to him.

  He just laughed at her. “I know I gave you a rough way to go there for a while. Forgive me?” he asked, kissing her on her forehead.

  It was true that he was a miserable prick just a few years ago, mean to her, more critical than he had ever been. And now the reward she got was to see him looking so handsome and fit that she hardly recognized him at times, and she was never more miserable.

  “I guess so,” she replied. “It’s pretty tough to stay mad at such a good-looking guy.”

  “Stop acting like such a dimwit, and figure out a way to fit the exercise in with your responsibilities here.” He waited for her response; sure he had hit a nerve.

  “You didn’t think I was a dimwit when I was sucking your penis last night, now did you?” The words slipped out of her mouth, surprising both of them. He was a good man, just a jerk at times. She had taken him by surprise, and he grabbed her and held her in a passionate embrace, dipping her over. “Yeah, now you want me to kiss you!” she said. They had been married all of their life, and although they didn’t always show the respect to each other that they should, he’d never been unfaithful, that she knew of.

  The icing on the cake was finding out that the company she was vested in, where she had spent twenty-five years giving everything she had, was going to be sold. She was the oldest woman there. She imagined she would be the first person to be fired when they finally found a buyer. She wasn’t going to just lie down and die, however. She stopped eating sweets, started walking during lunch every day, and made time for a haircut, a dye job, and a facial. She felt better about herself, and that was half the battle. Of course, her husband didn’t notice, but she wasn’t doing it for him anyway.

  The office they assigned her had a window, which looked out on a parking garage. Does every building in this neighborhood look out on a garage? But beyond the garage was the Empire State Building. She called her mother to tell her she could see the iconic structure from her office, and she had a project that her boss’s brother-in-law had generated. It had been a while since Carolyn felt so good about her life. She actually felt…hopeful.

  Marie knocked on Carolyn’s door and then opened it without waiting for a reply.

  So there would be a warning of sorts…

  “Well, what did you think?” she asked.

  “I think it will be a challenge, but one I’m up for,” Carolyn replied. “I can’t thank you enough for trusting me with your brother-in-law’s project.” She made eye contact with the young woman and wasn’t sure if her comment was well received or not. It was okay. She was going to like it here.

  Chapter 17

  Tom Adams lived in Brooklyn, where all good New York cops come from. When he left Sandra’s apartment on Sunday night, his partner, Jim, took over, parking the unmarked car in the alley. When Jim got there to relieve Tom, they walked the perimeter of the building together, making sure that the basement windows were secure and that the other apartments on the ground floor had locked windows. Jim brought flyers that he had typed up, and they slid one under the door of each apartment. The flyer said simply that the building was under surveillance because of increased robbery in the area and to make sure windows and doors were locked and that any suspicious persons were to be reported. If that didn’t scare the hell out of the tenants, nothing would.

  Now on the way home to Brooklyn, Tom felt anxiety he had not felt before. Always conscientious about the citizens of the city and protective of them, the feeling was beyond duty. He was worried about Sandra. Obsessive thought and behavior was foreign to him, and he knew this bordered on the irrational. He didn’t even know her. They had been in each other’s company a total of less than twelve hours. She was beautiful, smart, and pregnant. Beyond that, he knew very little. He was slowly learning her personality; she was somewhat of a smartass, but kind. Her concern about the old lady who lived in the mansion was evidence of her caring. He didn’t know who Bernice was yet. Sandra was also part owner of some kind of business. He’d have to investigate what it did. The more he knew about Sandra, the easier it would be to protect her from whatever threat Bill Smith was.

  His commute from the precinct was usually about a fifteen-minute trip to his apartment in Williamsburg. It would take at least twice as long to make the trip from the Upper West Side. Traffic was horrible, bumper to bumper on the Henry Hudson Parkway. He’d go through Central Park next time.

  As he finally drove over the Williamsburg Bridge, he remembered his recent concern about his life. He was in a comfort zone that he didn’t think possible. Compared to his friends and family and for a guy his age, he was way ahead of the game. He had a great apartment in a cool neighborhood, had reached a place in his job that he would be happy with for a long, long time and had hobbies and friends to keep him busy when he wasn’t working. Everything was perfect, except for one thing: He was lacking a relationship. He was the favorite guy in his crowd to fix up with single cousins and friends of girlfriends. He could have blind dates twice a week, if he were interested. His sister bugged him constantly about internet dating sites. Wasn’t he curious to find out who he’d be matched with? Not having anyone important in his life bothered everyone else more than it bothered him. And now he thought he knew why he had been alone. The timing wasn’t right, because Sandra hadn’t needed him until now.

  Her office was close to the downtown precinct; he knew right where it was. She said she could see Trinity Church from her office window. They probably walked past each other all the time. It was tantalizing to think they’d been that close together everyday.

  When he reached his apartment, there was a parking space in front of his building. The apartment was one of the best things he had done for himself. It was in an ancient building, but completely renovated. There was a great grocery store in the neighborhood, a laundry, restaurants, and a view if he looked between buildings. He could see Lower Manhattan lit up at night; it was breathtaking. His mother was about six blocks away, so he could see her and take advantage of her cooking as often as she would tolerate him. She had been praying for his wife since he was born, she told him. She begged him to take his sisters’ offer of fixing him up with a date.

  “Oh, Tommy, how long must I wait for a baby from you? I’m no spring chicken! Get moving, will you, kid?” She would lower her eyes and look at him out of a slit at the bottom. “Is there anything you want to tell me?” she would whisper.

  “Ma, give me a break, will you? Ellie, you been filling Ma’s head with lies about me?” He’d look over at his sister, make a fist, and shake it at her. It was all in good fun. However, he couldn’t see Sandra in that milieu. She belonged uptown in the mansion he took her to that morning. He didn’t know yet about her parents, who raised their two daughters in the center of Manhattan, in a tiny apartment near the Lincoln Tunnel.

  Tom didn’t turn the lights on as he entered the apartment. He liked seeing the lights of the city before him. The computer was in a small alcove off the kitchen, and he turned the coffee pot on as he made his way to turn on his computer. He was going to do some investigative work on his new friend, Sandra Benson. There wasn’t much he could do from home short of Googling her, which didn’t turn up much. She had stayed below the radar until her late boyfriend gave her his half of the very lucrative real estate development firm. He didn’t want to go there, looking at the business. If she ever found out, she might think he was pursuing a relationship with her because she was wealthy—or going to be. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he walked to the expanse of windows and looked over the rooftops to the lights of the city. She was right there, uptown. He picked up his phone and dialed her number.

  She answered on the first ring. “What are you doing? Are you home already?”

&n
bsp; “Got in a while ago. What’s Jim doing?”

  “He’s in the alley,” she answered. “I’m going to leave the bedroom shade up a little after I get into bed tonight so I can see him.”

  “Can you talk?” Tom asked. He wanted to begin to get to know her, even if it was just over the phone.

  “Sure! I’m getting ready for work tomorrow—ready or not, here I come! We have a new client, a builder from Riverdale who wants to do something in my neighborhood.”

  If ever there was a segue into a conversation, this was it. He asked her about the project and what it would entail, and then about the company itself. It turned out it wasn’t much of a development company after all, but a demographic research firm that found property for investors to develop. She willingly talked about the value of it and then the shock that it was left to her as part of her boyfriend’s will. Knowing that Bill would be a pest for the rest of his life, the wisdom of leaving the business to Sandra instead of the man’s wife was clear if Sandra’s safety wasn’t an issue. Tom began to wonder about the boyfriend, this Jack Smith. Was he trying to make life difficult for Sandra? Maybe leaving her the business wasn’t such a generous act after all.

  Tom fixed his dinner and ate it while they chatted; Sandra got her clothes ready for the next day and packed a lunch. He found out that her father had died at her mother’s funeral. She found out that he came from a long line of New York cops, but that his father had made the unforgiveable mistake of being the first Adams to get a divorce when he left his mother for another woman. No one in the family would speak to him except for Tom, and he had to do it on the sly. Even his own mother and father—still alive, but pushing ninety—refused to take calls from their only son.

  When his dad left Tom’s mother, a tiny Scottish woman, she fell into a deep depression—for about a week. She said later that she had allowed herself that amount of time to find out if she really minded that he was leaving. And it only took a week to discover that it was a huge relief, a blessing, a gift. She had at least twenty years to make it up to herself, God willing, twenty years to redeem the pure boredom of being married to a drunk for the previous twenty.

  “Why’d you stay, Ma?” her son and daughters asked her.

  Her daughter Faith confessed to her, “I used to lie in bed at night and hear him talk down to you, and I would pray that he’d leave.”

  “I stayed because that is what you do where we come from. If the man wants to leave, you hope the door will hit him in the behind. But you don’t leave if you are the wife.” He was a drinker, and both policeman and drinker make a tough husband to deal with. She grew tired of the Al-Anon meetings, making excuses for his bad behavior, his drunken fights, and his absence in his children’s lives.

  It was a mystery to all of them why Tommy wanted to become a policeman. He would tell them that he wanted to show everyone that there was a different way to act as a man and a cop. He didn’t drink, didn’t let the stuff touch his lips, and had no desire whatsoever to try. When a group of his friends went out, he would order a coffee. He knew where to get the best in town, which bars served the freshest coffee or ground their own beans. He was a fanatic about it. When Sandra had offered him a cup, and he saw it was instant, he swallowed the gag and took tea instead. He could get into tea drinking; it had huge possibilities for becoming an obsession. But he would let that be her thing; he liked coffee best.

  So Tom knew that falling for a pregnant woman was the act of a child of an alcoholic; here was someone who needed his care. He was immediately attracted to her, and he knew he had to find a way into her heart. He was going to ignore all the warning signs and fall in love with her. They talked until the news came on at eleven.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Tom got back into his unmarked car and pulled away from the front of Sandra’s building, Bill hid behind the Sunday paper as he sat at the bagel store counter. He’d been there for almost two hours, waiting for the guy to leave. Once Tom was out of sight, Bill left, walking down Sandra’s street. When he got to her building, he saw what was obviously a cop car parked in the alley before he turned to walk up to the building. He kept walking straight, head down, resisting the urge to run. What the hell is that? Are they waiting for me? Walking around the block, he found a place on the next street where he could look between buildings to get a better idea of what was going on, and sure enough, there was a policeman there in the car, reading. Bill wouldn’t be making any visits to Sandra’s after all.

  Chapter 18

  For the second time that week, Pam woke up confused, this time thinking it was early morning when it was nighttime. She groped for the clock to see that it was after nine Sunday night, dark, and she was alone. She started to cry. What is wrong with me? She felt around on the table for her glasses, hoping the reorientation of her room would help sort out the confusion of her life.

  No one had told her that this would happen; there were no widow police, no grief experts standing outside her door ready to guide her. She went to one grief support meeting, and it was horrible. The whining and complaining drove her patience into the ground. She lost her compassion within the first several minutes. Every story was different, but no one had a story like hers, and she wasn’t about to divulge the ugly details. No, she would try to work through it alone. Sandra and Marie appeared to have moved on with their lives already, not struggling like Pam was. She stifled a tiny bit of anger when she thought of those two. This was not the time to deal with what could end up being a shattering encounter if she confronted them.

  She missed Jack; it was as simple as that. No matter what he had done, the sins he had committed had nothing to do with her. It didn’t assuage the love she had for him or that she believed he had for her. It was flawed for sure, maybe not even real. But it had been her life. It had occupied every breath she took, the life she made with him. There was nothing else. And now, outside of her children, there was a void. She had no desire to start over. No pressing need to save the world during her free time. Her empty life didn’t fill her with guilt. It made her angry. She wanted to die herself. Knowing full well that she was probably depressed, she made the conscious decision not to end her life because of the pain it would bring her children. For them, she would carry on. But until they returned home, she would suffer miserably.

  Seeing Andy wouldn’t help; she had made the decision as she lay in bed earlier that she would not see him again until she was able to resolve her heartache. She didn’t want him as a sounding board; he couldn’t help her because his own relationship had been vibrant and forward moving. She didn’t want anyone to critique her relationship with Jack; her sister and Sandra probably did that on a minute-by-minute basis.

  Even the baby coming was no longer enough to keep her engaged. As the days stretched away from the funeral, the baby’s importance in her life was diminishing. She might even decide not to tell her children or, if she did, to minimize what its impact would be on their lives. It might mean the end of her relationship with Sandra, but she was so exhausted mentally and emotionally that she couldn’t benefit Sandra anyway. Sandra and the policeman made a nice couple. She could sense that Tom liked her. She wondered when the truth about the baby would be revealed to him.

  She got up from the bed and went into the bathroom to get ready, once again, for bed. After showering, she put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, an outfit she rarely wore, and the clothes hung on her. Digging in the bottom of the bathroom linen closet, she found Jack’s scale. He had become a fanatic about his weight the past year, weighing himself each morning and adjusting his diet. She had always been a stickler about her body and didn’t need to weigh herself that often. At five foot four, one hundred eighteen pounds was about as perfect as it got. She got on the scale and gasped. She’d lost almost ten pounds. No one had mentioned her appearance. Her mother, usually a pest about such things, hadn’t said a word. Were they worried that I would resent it if they commented? She would have to ask when she saw her family again.

  Sh
e left the safety of her bedroom and went into the kitchen. Although it was just after ten, she got an open bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and poured herself a full glass. She could afford the calories. She was so tired all the time lately that she hadn’t been drinking like she had in the past. Could that have attributed to my weight loss? But I didn’t drink that much, for God’s sake! She walked to the sliders that led to the veranda and opened them. The effort took her breath away. She wondered if she wasn’t coming down with something. Just what I need, she thought. The flu or a cold. Abandoning her wine glass, she walked back into the house, leaving the sliders open, and got into bed again. The minute her head hit the pillow, she was asleep.

  Chapter 19

  When Marie finally got home from work on Monday night, she felt revitalized and refreshed. She immediately thought of her sister, who she had never called back when she got home from Jeff’s on Sunday night. Submitting to the tyranny of trying to find something to eat, she pulled a can of SpaghettiOs out of the pantry and worked on opening it and getting it heated. While it was on the stove, she went to her bedroom and changed out of her work clothes into sweatpants. She picked up her phone and keyed in Pam’s number. After about six rings, she finally picked up with a weak hello.

  “My God, what is wrong with you?” Marie asked. “You sound horrible.”

  “I am,” Pam admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me; I’ve been in bed all day. Glad Mom isn’t here.” She pulled the covers up to her chin.