Mary Lou shrieked with laughter. "Oh, God, no! You thought he was my ... ? No, no, this is Ihbraham Rahman. He's..."
And just then she realized just how it must look, with Ihbraham holding Haley like that, with the two of them strolling down the sidewalk, as if they were—Lord save her—a couple.
If she called him her friend, Bob might well assume they were intimate friends—and wouldn't that be mortifying. Yet if she introduced him as the guy who did the neighbors' yard work, well, that wouldn't sound too good either—like she was getting it on with the pool boy.
"He's my AA sponsor," she flat-out lied, because everyone in the program knew that it was seriously frowned upon for a person to have a sexual relationship with her sponsor.
Ihbraham looked at her, and she felt her face heat in a blush. He didn't contradict her, though, thank goodness.
"Ah," Bob said. "Yeah, I was wondering what you were doing down here in my neck of the woods. My office is right around the corner. I attend this meeting pretty often because it starts at eight o'clock—I can work late if I have to."
"I didn't know you were in the program," she said.
"For just over a year now." He smiled at her. "It took the breakup of my marriage to get me in the door. Too little, too late, my ex says. I don't think I agree."
"It's never too late." Mary Lou reached over to keep Haley from grabbing Ihbraham's earring. "Sorry," she told him before turning back to Bob. "I got really tanked a few times when I was first pregnant with Haley. But then my downstairs neighbor gave me this article on FAS—fetal alcohol syndrome. She was like, 'Look what you've gone and done.' "
A car drove past, its horn blaring. It double-parked just around the corner up ahead. Ihbraham's eyes narrowed slightly as he watched it, and he handed Haley back to Mary Lou.
"That article scared the bejeezus out of me," she continued, telling her story to Bob as she settled Haley on her hip, "and you know, I could've assumed that the damage had already been done and just kept on drinking. But instead I thought, Lord, if I'm going to have a baby with all these problems, then she really better have a mother who's stone cold sober all the time."
"Excuse me," Ihbraham said. "I'll be right back."
"I went to my first meeting that very night," she told Bob as Ihbraham headed toward the double-parked car. It was brand-new, one of those enormous cars that was just one step down from a limo. A Town Car, she thought they were called.
What was Ihbraham doing?
Three men had gotten out and had come up onto the sidewalk. They were just as darkly complexioned as Ihbraham, but their hair was shorter and their clothes more expensive. Two of them wore suits; the third wore a shiny sweat suit. They all looked angry, but then again, Ihbraham always looked angry from a distance, too.
One of them pointed at Ihbraham and let loose a stream of gibberish. Well, of course it wasn't gibberish to him. And probably not to Ihbraham, either.
"I had a lot of tests done," she said to Bob, still watching Ihbraham and his friends with one eye. "Amnio and some other stuff that came back looking good—and I did a lot of praying. And I got lucky. Really lucky, thank you, Lord Jesus. Because Haley's fine. Your marriage might be over, Bob, but somewhere out there, there's good luck waiting to happen to you. I just know it."
Bob was watching Ihbraham, who was now surrounded by the three other men. "How well do you know this guy?" he asked. "I mean, you must know him pretty well if he's your sponsor, right?"
"Uh, yeah," she said. "I've known him for ..." Had it really only been a few days since she threw her keys into the Robinsons' garden? It seemed as if she'd been friends with Ihbraham for close to forever. "A while."
"Where's he from? How did you meet him?"
On the corner, one of the men gave Ihbraham a solid push, causing him to step back a few feet toward a chain-link fence that cordoned off a construction zone. Ihbraham had his hands out in front of him in a gesture of peace. It was very clear that he didn't want to fight with these men, whoever they were.
"He's a landscaper in my neighborhood," she said. "He's very good with flowers."
Bob laughed. "I bet. So what, did he just show up one day? Where did he come from?"
"You make it sound as if he's a stalker or something."
"Yeah, well, maybe he is."
She rolled her eyes. "That's silly."
"Is it?"
"Yes," she said.
"You really trust him, huh? I'm not sure I would, with a name like Ihbraham Rahman. I mean, look at him. He could be the poster boy for al-Qaeda."
"Well, he's not, and you're being racist to assume—
The man with the sweat suit shoved Ihbraham so hard that he fell back against the fence, making it rattle loudly. Dear Lord, they were going to beat him up.
"Hey!" Mary Lou started toward them. "Leave him alone!"
One of the men said something she couldn't understand, and the two others laughed.
Ihbraham launched himself at his attackers, managing to bloody one of the men's noses even as he sent another to the sidewalk with a kick to the knee and an elbow to the back of the head. It happened so fast, she would have missed it if she'd blinked. The third man quickly moved back out of range—no doubt terrified by the murderous look in Ihbraham's eyes.
He spoke to them then, in that same strange language, and they dragged themselves back to their car. But not without babbling back at him—getting in the last word, no doubt.
Ihbraham let them. But he stood there, silently glaring, as they drove away.
"Are you all right?" Mary Lou asked, hiking Haley farther up on her hip.
He was still breathing hard, and it took him a moment to pull his eyes away from the car's disappearing taillights, glowing red in the night. His face was hard, and his eyes were cold. But then he blinked, and the Ihbraham she knew was back. "I'm very sorry about that."
"Who were they?" she asked as Bob finally caught up with her, pushing the stroller she'd left farther down the sidewalk.
Ihbraham ran his hands down his face. "They were my brothers."
"What did they want?" she asked.
He just shook his head, glancing at Bob.
Mary Lou turned to Bob, holding out her hand for him to shake. "It was nice seeing you. I'm sure we'll run into each other again before too long."
He took the hint, and although he squeezed her fingers meaningfully, he started backing away. "I'm sure we will, Mary Lou. Nice meeting you, Mr. Rahman."
And then he was gone and there she was. Standing on a city sidewalk, looking up at Ihbraham, who was ruefully examining a hole torn in his shirt.
"What did they want?" she asked again.
Haley, of course, picked that exact moment to start to fuss. She went almost instantly from mildly annoyed to completely inconsolable. A sniff test and a pat to the bottom revealed that her diaper was clean and not entirely soggy.
Mary Lou knew only one way to quiet Haley down fast. But where to go for a little semi privacy? She looked around.
Back the way they had come was the church where the meeting had been held. It had a small side yard with a bench. She'd parked right next to it in the church lot. The entire area was lit with a floodlight, but at least she could sit with her back to the street.
"Grab the stroller, would you, hon?" she asked Ihbraham.
Haley was in full wail by the time Mary Lou hit the bench, and she pulled up both her shirt and bra without ceremony.
Then, oh, blissful silence. Of course, if she kept this up, this baby was never going to get weaned.
Friend.
After everything Muldoon had admitted, Joan still called him her friend.
As soon as they'd entered the ballroom, Brooke had been immediately approached by a waiter, who conjured up two scotch and sodas in record time, despite Muldoon's attempts to signal him otherwise.
"Gee, that's not really my drink," Muldoon admitted as Brooke handed him one of the glasses. Apparently keeping her from the bar was not
going to be easy.
"Good," she said. "You can hold it for me, darling."
Yes, the evening was off to a roaring start.
"You should probably slow down," he cautioned her, annoyed with himself for being Joan's mouthpiece—or at least agreeing with her about this.
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Because your father's the most powerful and important man in the world, and you owe it to him not to get tanked while you're out acting as his representative," Muldoon suggested.
"You're awfully young to be such a stick-in-the-mud."
"There are a lot of people watching you tonight," he said.
"Everything I do, every breath I take," she told him, "is watched. There is not one single moment in one single day that I can call my own. God forbid I should fart while out in public—it makes headlines. Do you know the reason it's so important that we're seen together tonight—that the White House pushed the story to the press that we've been an item for several weeks now?"
"Is there a reason?" he asked, as she finished her first drink and took her second from him.
"Don't tell," she said, "but about a month ago, I became involved with a senator who was being groomed to step into the vice president's role in about five years, after Daddy's final term is up—assuming Daddy wins a second term, of course. Anyway, this senator, John—I think it's okay if I call him that—he's a former aide of my father's whom I've known close to forever, if you'll believe that. He's even more conservative than you are, but I've been in love with him since I was, oh, I don't know. Twelve?"
Her eyes became suspiciously moist, which she tried to hide by draining her second drink. "His wife's a total bitch. They've been separated for several months but she won't give him a quiet divorce. And now Vice President Walker is about to announce that he'll be stepping down next year—he's got cancer. There's a story that's going to break big in a few days, huh? So John gets a call from the party saying he's their new man. He'll be VP on the ticket with Daddy for this next election, but he's got to patch things up with Lisa the bitch so he's got that good family values image. And they tell him that he's got to lose me.
"We were so discreet," she told him with the earnest righteousness of inebriation. "We didn't see each other half as much as we wanted to, and it was always completely clandestine. But apparently someone in the party knew. And suddenly I'm touring Texas, of all the godforsaken places, so that he'll have time to think without me around distracting him. They won't let me see him, won't let me talk to him, and then today I get a note from him. He's glad—glad—I've found someone new—like he doesn't know the news stories about me and you are total bullshit. He wishes me the best. The bastard wishes me the fucking best. It's about as personal as the note he sent me for my graduation from high school."
Muldoon didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."
Brooke laughed. "Yeah. Me, too. I actually thought he loved me. What a farce." She held out her empty glass, and that same waiter was right there, ready to take it from her. "Two more."
Again, Muldoon tried to signal the man, but he couldn't even get eye contact.
"Yes, ma'am," the waiter said, bowing slightly.
"Thanks, Tim."
"Tim?" Muldoon asked Brooke as the waiter headed for the bar.
"I've stayed at this hotel before," she explained. "I've found that if I make friends with the staff—and tip well—I can find one or two brave souls who will actually bring me drinks that aren't completely watered down. I'm always getting cut off, which can be annoying on a night like tonight when I'm trying my best to get good and drunk."
"Is getting drunk really going to help?" Muldoon asked.
"I was thinking more along the lines of getting drunk and then screwing your brains out," she said. "And that sure as hell can't hurt, darling."
"Vince. Vincent."
Vince opened his eyes to find Charlie giving him her best exasperated look.
"What?" he said.
Up on the movie screen, two very young, very beautiful people cavorted through an open-air market. No, wait. That wasn't a smile on the man's face—it was a grimace of anger or maybe concentration. It was hard to tell, exactly. Ah, yes. It was supposed to be anger. They were running from someone with a gun, who apparently wanted to kill them, hence all the bared teeth.
And yet throughout their ordeal, everyone's hair looked perfect.
"You paid five dollars; you might as well stay awake and actually watch the movie," Charlie scolded him.
"I'm awake," he whispered back.
On the screen, the scene changed. It was now night and the beautiful people with perfect hair had taken refuge in the basement of a dilapidated building. Their words to each other were snippety and sometimes even downright mean. But it was pitifully obvious that these two characters were about to explode with passion in what was to be this movie's obligatory love scene.
He snorted, winning another look and a whispered, "Hush, you!" from Charlie.
She'd be just as scornful of the bad acting in this movie after the damn thing was over. But he knew not to ask her to duck out early. No, not unless he wanted to get the "We paid good money for those tickets, so of course we're going to stay to the bitter end—besides, what if it actually had gotten better?" speech on the way home.
He reached for her hand, and she squeezed his fingers, flashing him a look of amusement that let him know that she knew exactly what he was thinking.
Although, as he stared up at the screen where two blatantly talent less, uninterested people pretended—rather badly—to give in to carnal longings, he suspected that she didn't know exactly what he was thinking.
He'd yet to see a love scene in a Hollywood movie that held a candle to his own memories of the first time Charlie came into his room and—what was that new expression?—got busy with him.
No, it wasn't the first time. The first time she came looking for a little play—another very nice euphemism; he approved of it completely—he'd actually sent her away.
It was the next night, the last night he'd planned to spend under the Fletchers' roof, that his defenses were totally overrun.
She awakened him that night from a deep sleep. An uneasy sleep.
He'd been dreaming again. About Ray. About Tarawa. They were in the water, under heavy enemy fire, working together to help move the Marines who were struggling with their heavy loads to shore.
He was disoriented at first as he stared up at her face, but she helped.
"It's me. Charlotte," she said. "Charlie Fletcher, remember?"
Oh, yeah. But what was she doing in... ? Where the hell was he?
"You're in my apartment, Vince, in Washington, D.C. You came here because you were sick, but you're much better now. No one's attacking, everyone's safe, but there is a storm approaching."
As if on cue, thunder rumbled. It was very much in the distance, yet still the sound—so much like the shelling he'd lived through—had permeated his sleep and invaded his dreams.
Even awake and knowing that it was merely thunder, he felt his palms start to sweat and his heart rate quicken.
"I thought it might be better to wake you up before it got worse," she explained. "I think the storm's coming in this direction, and I thought it might be easier for you if you were awake."
She was wearing her thick flannel robe tonight, and it was fastened clear up to her neck. She was blushing, too, no doubt remembering last night's visit. Let me try to convince you.
"Thank you," he said, pushing himself back so that he was sitting up in bed.
She looked as if she were about to return to her own room, when thunder rolled again. It was a little bit closer now, and although he managed to keep from diving underneath the bed, he couldn't stop himself from jumping, which in turn startled her.
"Sorry," he said. His palms weren't the only parts of him that were sweating now. He wiped his upper lip with the back of one hand, hoping she didn't notice.
Of course, she did.
"I'll stay with you until the storm passes," she decided, going around the room and turning on all the lights. "I better get some candles from downstairs, in case we lose power again."
"I'm okay," he lied. God, being alone with her like this was killing him. He should have left this morning, but he'd let himself get talked into staying another night. This was nobody's fault but his own. "Really, Charlie. I don't need—
"Find the playing cards," she ordered. "We can play a few hands of gin rummy."
Gin rummy.
It was pretty surreal.
Vince, clad in her dead husband's pajamas, sat on the bed with Charlie, holding a handful of cards while the room blazed with light both electric and candle-powered.
She'd pulled up the bedspread to make it lie flat so they could use the bed as a table—the way they'd played cards all those days when he was recovering from being ill.
Neither of them mentioned the fact that just last night, she'd climbed beneath those very covers with him and begged him to...
Ah, God, he still wanted her. He loved her.
But the sad truth was, she didn't love him.
Maybe it would be enough—his loving her.
Thunder boomed, closer now, and she surely couldn't help but notice the droplet of sweat that slid down past his right ear. At least his hands didn't shake. Too much. He fumbled only a card or two.
"Who's Ray?" she asked as she discarded the seven of hearts.
When he didn't answer right away, she glanced up at him.
"You called me Ray when I was trying to wake you up. You've mentioned him before."
"He was a friend of mine," Vince told her, drawing the nine of spades and discarding it immediately. "A good friend. He died at Tarawa."
"How did he die?" she asked.
"You don't want to know." Thunder. Shit, this time he dropped his entire hand.
She covered her eyes because some of the cards had fallen face up. "Maybe you should let me decide that for myself," she countered tartly. "You think you're doing me favors by keeping things from me, Vince, but you're not. How can I begin to understand why you want to go back, if you tell me these polite, censored versions of what it was like?"
Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night Page 29