An Ex to Grind

by Jane Heller

  “You can’t or won’t come over?” he said as we stood in front of my door.

  “I can’t,” I said. “But I appreciate the offer. Really.”

  “Hot date?”

  Well, yes. But why mention that it was Dan’s hot date I was running off to? “Actually, it’s that project I’ve been working on,” I said. “It’s taking up all my free time, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.”

  “Sounds mysterious.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “You’re not plotting a hostile takeover, are you? You can never tell with you financial types.”

  Since a hostile takeover of Dan was exactly what I was plotting, I simply said good night to Evan and hurried inside my apartment.

  I arrived at my old building a few minutes before seven-thirty—late enough for Leah to have already fed Dan a few hors d’oeuvres but early enough for Ricardo to still be on duty. His shift ran from seven-thirty in the morning until seven-thirty in the evening, at which point the night doorman took over.

  “Hi, Melanie,” said Ricardo after he revolved me through the revolving door into the lobby. “No Buster?”

  “No Buster,” I said. “I’ll be bringing him by on Monday morning.”

  “Then you came to see Mr. Swain?” He loosened his tie and wiggled his neck around, the way men do when they’re extremely uncomfortable. “He’s already got company.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ricardo. I have no interest in going up there,” I assured him. Well, I had some interest.

  “So how can I help you tonight?”

  I linked my arm through his and walked him a few steps away from his post. “Actually, I’m here to help you.”

  Ricardo and I had never been chummy, so he was understandably puzzled.

  “I’ve been thinking about how well you do your job,” I began. “I may not live here anymore, but there’s no mistaking what a professional you are. I remember the first time I met you. I thought, Wow. This man gives his very best, day in and day out.”

  He puffed out his chest. “I try. Sometimes the people here don’t appreciate what I do for them. Signing for their FedExes. Locking up their valuables in the storage room. Sending up their Chinese takeout deliveries and getting duck sauce on myself when the bag leaks.”

  “Who wouldn’t appreciate all that?” I said with the proper outrage.

  He shrugged. “But I’ll tell you who does appreciate it: Mr. Swain. He’ll say, ‘Here, Ricardo,’ and hand me a twenty. Just to be a good guy.”

  I gritted my teeth as I pictured Dan making similar Lord Bountiful gestures all over town. What fun it must be to be generous with someone else’s money, I thought. “As I recall, you have five children to support, so every little bit counts, right?”

  “I have six now,” he said, clearly pleased to have spread his seed yet again. Never mind that he hadn’t gotten around to marrying any of the children’s mothers.

  “Six, huh? Gosh, that’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “All the more reason why it’s high time I repaid you for all the Chinese takeout deliveries you sent up for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I dipped into my wallet, pulled out five hundred dollars, and greased his palm with it. “Buy your kids some toys.”

  I thought he’d pass out when he saw the amount.

  Five hundred was a lot of money, but I figured that even if Leah was a bust, it could be applied to Dan’s adventures with Desiree’s next client. The main thing was to bond with Ricardo. “You deserve every penny,” I said.

  He looked at me with shimmering new respect and thanked me over and over. And then he uttered the magic words. “If there’s anything I can ever do for you, Melanie, name it.”

  I feigned surprise, as if the idea of reciprocity had never occurred to me. “There’s nothing I need at the moment.” I sighed, let a beat go by. Then: “Although I’m worried about Mr. Swain.”

  “Worried about him? Why?”

  “Well, ever since our divorce he’s been horribly depressed,” I said. “Okay, suicidal, if you want the truth.” Ricardo didn’t need the truth, so why bother him with it? “I can’t sleep at night, knowing he’s so down in the dumps that he might—” I instructed my lower lip to quiver.

  “Kill himself?” said Ricardo.

  I nodded, trying and failing to coax out a couple of tears. “His psychiatrist is very, very concerned.”

  Ricardo shook his head in amazement. “You could have fooled me,” he said. “He was whistling when he came in this morning, a big smile on his face.”

  I blinked through my nonexistent tears. “Part of that is the medication they’ve got him on now. It allows the depression to lift for short periods at a time.”

  “Like when he plays football in the park?”

  “There you go. But his condition is still grave. So we’ve hired a caretaker for him, a woman named Leah who’s supposed to stay with him at night, which is when he’s most vulnerable, and prevent him from harming himself.”

  “You’re talking about the babe who’s up there now?”

  The babe. So Desiree hadn’t exaggerated when she’d described Leah. “Yes. The doctor is optimistic that if Leah spends every night with Mr. Swain for three months or so, he’ll be free of his suicidal demons and begin to lead a normal life again.”

  “Man, oh man. This is wild. I had no clue. I’d hate it if something bad happened to him.”

  I resumed the lip quivering. “Nothing bad will happen if we can be sure that Leah stays up there with him at night.”

  “Why wouldn’t she stay with him? You said she’s the caretaker, so she’s getting paid for it, right?”

  “Right. But not everybody is as trustworthy as you are, Ricardo. Some people slack off on the job.”

  He looked at his watch and rolled his eyes. “Don’t I know it. Donny, my replacement, should have shown up ten minutes ago for the night shift.”

  “I have to be certain that Leah shows up for the night shift and stays until morning. That’s where you come in.”

  He nodded. “You want me to keep tabs on her?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. And Mr. Swain will be so much better for it.”

  “Anything for Traffic Dan Swain, Melanie. You too. You’re both good people.”

  I thanked him and reached into my purse again, this time pulling out the small spiral-bound notebook I’d bought on the way over.

  “I was planning to stop by here every morning, ask you if Leah had spent the night, and then enter her visitation record in this.” I held up the notebook. “It was the doctor’s idea. Apparently, Mr. Swain’s insurance company requires proof of her consecutive dates of service. Seems like a lot of paperwork for nothing, but chalk it up to the crazy health care system we have in this country.”

  I know, I know. It’s hard to believe I said all this with a straight face, but I did. I’m sorry. It’s just that you have to size up the person you’re trying to buy off and act accordingly.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you let me mark down the dates this Leah is taking care of Mr. Swain?” Ricardo offered. “I’m right here every morning. No point in you coming over.”

  I gasped, as if to show my delight at his suggestion. “Oh, Ricardo. You sure you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Mind? Nah. Like I said, Mr. Swain has always treated me real good. And now you gave me all that money for my kids. It’s the least I can do.”

  I handed him the notebook. “Then we have a deal. Nothing about this to Mr. Swain or Leah or anyone else, okay? It has to be our secret. Ours and the doctor’s. If even a whisper about this came out in the press, Mr. Swain’s career would be over.” Like it wasn’t already.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  I thanked Ricardo again, and he thanked me again, and we both reiterated our mutual hope that three months under Leah’s care would save Dan’s life. There was no point in adding that it was mine we’d be saving.

  As I wa
lked away, wearing a self-satisfied grin, he called out to me.

  “Melanie?”

  I turned. “Yes?”

  He hurried over to me, the spare change in his pocket jingling as he ran. “We forgot something,” he said. “I’m off on weekends, so you’ll have to find another way to keep an eye on the caretaker while I’m gone.”

  Damn. Damn! Ricardo had always seemed so ubiquitous that I really had forgotten he wasn’t on duty Saturdays and Sundays. Now what? I needed backup!

  “I’ll figure it out,” I said.

  So I’d have to shell out more money. The question was: to whom?

  Chapter

  13

  Buster and I spent a quiet weekend together. He whiled away the hours thinking his happy doggie thoughts about food and water and comfy places to park himself, while I whiled away the hours thinking my obsessive human thoughts about Dan and Leah and the comfy place I hoped they were parking themselves. Desiree had gone to Chicago to visit her mother and new stepfather (she’d fixed them up, she was proud to tell me, adding that she’d only charged her mother half her usual fee), so I wouldn’t be getting any feedback from her for a few days. And, of course, Ricardo wasn’t around to spy for me until Monday. I felt totally frustrated that the lovebirds might be shacking up on both Friday and Saturday nights but that I wouldn’t be able to count those days. My frustration was only heightened by a chance meeting on Sunday.

  Eager to get away from my neighborhood, where some sort of street fair was going on and it was so crowded and noisy that I couldn’t concentrate on my paperwork, I decided to take Buster uptown, to my old neighborhood. We were walking along Fifth Avenue when I bumped into Wendy Winger, a semifriend because she used to be married to Ken Winger, the Giants quarterback when Dan was with the team.

  Wendy, one of those people who not only gets too close to you when she talks and invades your personal space but who unwittingly spits on you, especially when she’s pronouncing words beginning with p, came right up to me and said, “Melanie! Just the person I was thinking about!”

  I was dying to wipe my cheek where the spit had landed, but you can’t really do that, can you? “You were thinking about me?” I said.

  She bent down to pet Buster, and even he flinched when she said to him, “Such a pretty, pretty puppy dog.” She stood back up and said to me, “I ran into Dan last night.”

  “Did you?” I said. “Was he ordering beluga caviar at some overpriced restaurant?”

  “I didn’t notice his meal, but I did notice his date.”

  I felt my pulse jump. “I’d heard he was seeing someone,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I’m not sure if it’s serious though.”

  “It sure looked serious,” said Wendy. “They were all over each other.”

  “Interesting,” I said, understating it. Part of me wanted to leap in the air and cheer. The other part was cursing the fact that they had to be shacking up over the weekend and yet I had no way to prove it. Talk about a waste.

  “He introduced me,” said Wendy. “Her name is Linda or Lana or something like that.”

  “Well, whoever she is, I hope she makes Dan happy.”

  “Wow. You’re a nicer person than I am,” she said, wetting me again. On the other cheek this time. “I wish Ken nothing but pain.”

  “You don’t mean that,” I said. I didn’t wish Dan pain, not really. I just wished he’d stop confusing me with an ATM machine.

  “As you must know, Ken left me for our children’s pediatrician,” she said, her eyes moistening. “Do you have any idea how much it hurts that they feel more comfortable in her hands than in mine?”

  “I’d be devastated if Buster felt more comfortable with Dan’s girlfriend than with me,” I commiserated.

  “Then you’d better hope this Lana isn’t a veterinarian,” she said.

  I nodded at the coincidental nature of her remark, feeling just the hint of something—a prick of concern, maybe—and then dismissed it.

  Wendy and I vowed to get together, which, of course, we both understood we’d never do. We had only been in each other’s worlds because of our husbands, and now that they were gone we had nothing in common. She was getting money from her ex. I was giving money to my ex. Old school. New school.

  When I got home I was more motivated than ever to find someone to handle the spying duties on weekends, should Dan and Leah’s romance continue at its torrid pace. I decided a good candidate would be Isa Johnson, Dan’s cleaning lady, who used to be my cleaning lady too until I no longer had an apartment worth cleaning. She worked for him six days a week—not Sundays, but Saturdays, which was better than nothing. She came in at noon and spent a couple of hours tidying up his mess, doing his laundry and ironing, making sure he didn’t trash the place. Yes, I thought. She’d be a good snitch, although she was not without her quirks.

  In her forties, Haitian-born Isa claimed she was a witch. Dan and I used to refer to her behind her back as our voodoo housekeeper, because she put spells on tough-to-clean surfaces in addition to giving them a shot of Fantastik. “You want magic? You have to use magic,” was her explanation when I once asked her why she was chanting with her head inside our oven. Yeah, she was a little bizarre, but nobody got rid of soap scum better than she did.

  She’d been married once when she was very young—he’d left her, whoever he was—and the product of their union was her terrifying son Reggie. I say “terrifying” because he was only sixteen but was nearly seven feet tall. They’d had hopes of him being a professional basketball player and had asked Dan to intervene on the kid’s behalf, but Reggie was as uncoordinated as I am and was told by NBA scouts that he needed to “grow into his legs.” In the meantime, he was a giant boy who sat around their Bronx apartment smoking crack and eating copious amounts of food. In other words, everything Isa earned either went up his nose or down his throat.

  Wait, correction: it also went to the voodoo church she belonged to near Yankee Stadium. She was devoted to the House of the Heavenly Spirits, where there was singing and praying and chanting and sacrificing of animal parts, and she was always asking Dan and me to make donations. How happy she would be, I figured, when I surprised her with a very large donation during my Sunday night visit with her.

  I wasn’t crazy about driving around in her neighborhood after dark, given that it was a known haven for car thieves. I had a Mercedes then (hang on, it was three years old and leased; I’d been forced to sell the spanking new one I used to own in order to pay Dan), and I feared for its stereo system, not to mention its hubcaps, but, as I said, I was motivated.

  Reggie answered the door of their ground-floor unit in what was a run-down, four-story brownstone building. I tried not to look scared when I saw him, but, call me old-fashioned, there’s something about dope-addled people—especially when they’re manic and can’t stay still, then suddenly their eyes roll back in their heads and they look like they might be dead—that unnerves me.

  “Hi, Reggie. Reggie.” I snapped my fingers at him. Twice. Finally, his eyes opened. “It’s Melanie Banks,” I said. “Your mom used to work for me, remember? I called earlier and she invited me to stop by.”

  He peered down at me from his great height and said, “I don’t like you now and I never did like you.”

  I laughed, guessing he was just being, you know, crackheadish. “It’s nice to see you again too. May I come in?”

  “Whatever.” He let the door hang open while he lumbered off in search of his mother.

  I stepped inside and waited. I couldn’t help noticing the smell of something cooking. Something with pungent herbs and seasonings. A cauldron of boiling chicken heads, perhaps. Isa had once told me that their steam vaporized negative spirits. I hoped she would help me vaporize the negative spirit known as my ex-husband.

  After a minute or two, she came bustling into the small sitting room, her face in a wide grin. She was very dark skinned and very pretty, and it was too bad she’d wasted her youth on some dead-bea
t husband, but I wasn’t one to talk.

  “Well, look at you,” she said in her island-flavored accent, giving me a hug. “It’s been a long time. You learn how to work a microwave yet, chérie?”

  “I can heat up my instant coffee. That’s about it.”

  “Pitiful. And how’s my little Buster? I only get to see him every other week at Dan’s these days. Last week, he told me to air out the rug in the master bathroom. He said there were ghosts in it.”

  “Dan said that?”

  “No, Buster did. You didn’t know he spoke to me?”

  “No.” Well, he spoke to me too. Just not about ghosts.

  Isa motioned for me to sit, then she joined me. “So, what brings you all the way up here? Must be important.”

  “It’s about Dan.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “You jealous?”

  “Of what?”

  “The new gal who’s been staying over the last few nights.” She winked. “Cleaning ladies know everything.”

  “I’m counting on that. You see, Isa—”

  “You don’t have to tell me. You split up with him because he lounged around on his sorry ass all day long, but now you don’t want somebody else to have him.”

  “God, no. I do want somebody else to have him. Anybody else, in fact. At the moment, it looks like he’s interested in Leah, so I want her to have him.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because—” I was about to roll out the kind of extravagant lie I’d told Ricardo, then realized it made sense to be honest with Isa. She was sort of psychic, so she would have mind-read me anyway. “When Dan and I got divorced, he decided it wasn’t enough that he ended up with the apartment. He wanted alimony too, just to spite me.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the spiteful type. He gives me nice big tips.”

  Nice big tips. Not only was my ex-husband squeezing me financially; he was sullying my reputation. By handing out my hard-earned cash to everybody on the planet, he was making me look like a cheapskate. Which I wasn’t. Look at how much I was paying people to spy on him. I’m not saying I was an angel here, but I was practicing my own brand of trickle-down economics, wasn’t I?