The car dipped out of the parking lot exit, throwing its headlights on Maureen, blinding her. She blinked at the phone, trying to read the screen. She was at the door. She pounded on it.
“Maureen.”
She refused to turn, kept beating on the door, shouting Dennis’s name.
“Maureen,” the voice said again, firm, calm. “It’s just me.”
She turned, shielding her eyes from the headlights’ glare. A figure, a large one, too big to be Dennis but not big enough to be Clarence, stood in the street a few paces down the block. Who was left around who knew her name? The politician? Dennis had said the guy wanted to talk to her, though she’d figured he’d wait. Maybe not. The figure held out his hand. “It’s Frank Sebastian, from inside. You remember. I saw you talking about me earlier, with Dennis. C’mere for a second. You got nothing to worry about.”
The car turned out of the lot and onto the street, throwing its lights toward the corner. Maureen blinked, trying to focus, waiting for the spots before her eyes to fade. As her vision adjusted to the muted glow of the streetlights, she recognized him.
“I gotta get back inside,” Maureen said. “I forgot my money.” She realized it was true as she spoke.
“Dennis’s a good guy,” Sebastian said. “Me and him, we go back. He’ll lock your tips in the safe for the night. You pick them up next shift.” He set his open hand over his chest. “I need your attention for a few minutes.” He reached into his front pocket. “You need some cash overnight? I can tide you over. Get it back to me when you can, no questions asked. I understand the need to have cash on hand.”
“No, thanks,” Maureen said.
She glanced at the car, idling now in the middle of the street. She couldn’t see inside through the tinted windows. Who did Sebastian have with him, just a driver? Bodyguards? Maureen wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Don’t worry about the car,” Sebastian said. “You don’t think I drive myself home after drinking, do you? I’m a responsible man. I’m running for office.” He smiled. “You might’ve heard.” He raised his hands. “Hey, listen. Come over here and talk to me a minute, and I’ll give you a ride home. Save yourself the wait and the cab fare. You work hard; keep your dough.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Maureen said, “but I know what you wanna discuss and I’ve got nothing to say. I didn’t see a thing.”
Sebastian took a step closer to her. “You may have nothing to say, but I do. You should expect that I have concerns. So come over here. Three minutes. Tops.” He grinned. “And then we all go home happy.”
“I’m working tomorrow night,” Maureen said. “Come back then. My shift starts at five. Meet me here before five and we can talk.”
Sebastian raised his hands at his sides, looking over the empty street. “I got plans for tomorrow night. Commitments. I’m busy. Let’s do this now. Now is better.”
Maureen stared over Sebastian’s shoulder. He stood only a few yards from where the street dead-ended at the chain-link fence and the train tracks. Why were men so ignorant? She understood why Sebastian didn’t want to talk in front of his driver, but did he really expect Maureen to follow him down a dark dead-end street in the latest hours of the night? Of course he did, she thought. Because he thinks like a six-foot-three two-hundred-pound man who gets his way, not like a vulnerable hundred-pound woman. Maureen realized she still held her phone open in her hand.
“I’m calling a cab,” she said. “If we have to, we can talk on the corner while I wait. Or we can have this conversation another time. Or not at all. I don’t know what there is to talk about. But if you wanna stand on the corner with me, it’s a free country.”
She turned her back on Sebastian and headed for the corner with the phone at her ear. She gave her location to the taxi dispatcher. Her stomach seized when she heard Sebastian trotting up beside her but she kept walking, suppressing the urge to run. Sebastian caught up to her but he walked in the street, leaving a couple of feet between them. The car crawled up the street beside them.
These boys, she thought. It’s just sex. Let it go.
Maureen closed her phone, slipped it into her coat pocket. Guilt tickled the inside of her throat like a finger. She didn’t want to be a bitch and didn’t want Vic hearing she’d pissed off someone important. On the other hand, if the choice was between aggravating Vic and getting in this guy’s car, everyone was gonna have to live with her attitude. When your girl-on-a-dark-street alarm goes off, Maureen thought, you listen. Every damn time. And when those headlights appeared, that alarm rang like it was three o’clock on the last day of school. If Vic couldn’t understand that, Maureen decided she’d have to rethink working for the man.
Maureen dug her smokes from her bag and lit up. She offered one to Sebastian. He refused. They reached the corner. Sebastian stayed in the gutter. Maureen watched the muscles twitch along the edge of his jaw.
“So this is how it is,” he said. “You’d rather pay hard-earned money for a ride with some towel-headed Taliban than let me, a respectable citizen, drive you home.”
“Towel-headed Taliban. Your speechwriter invent that gem or did you write it yourself?”
Sebastian straightened his tie, rolled his shoulders. “Forgive me, Miss Bleeding Heart. When I think about what they’ve done to this country, I get upset.”
“By they,” Maureen said, “you mean men?” When no response came from Sebastian, she pulled hard on her smoke and turned her attention back to the empty street. “For your information, I get the same cabdriver almost every weekend night. We work the same shifts. He’s a perfectly nice guy.”
“That’s what everyone says about terrorists and serial killers right before they start counting the bodies.” He loosened his tie, popped open the top button on his shirt. “I can see I won’t be getting your vote. Anyway, I’m not out here campaigning.” He plucked the SEBASTIAN FOR SENATE pin off his overcoat lapel and slipped it into his coat pocket. “I don’t hafta tell you what we need to talk about.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. All I know is I’m tired and I want to go home and go to bed.”
Sebastian stepped closer, setting one foot on the curb, grinding his foot as though he’d trapped a roach beneath it. The leather sole scratching on the concrete was the only sound on the block. Even standing in the gutter, he towered over her. That soft laugh came again, the one she’d heard inside. Goose bumps ran up the backs of Maureen’s arms. Whatever the politician side of him said, she thought, that laugh, that laugh is the real him, inside. She hated it.
“We’re both tired,” Sebastian said. “It’s hard work, peddling your ass for money all night, am I right?” When Maureen glared at him, Sebastian smiled. “What? Don’t act all offended, I’m talking about you and me both. We’re both playing the same game, right? Throw me a couple of bucks and I’ll get you what you want. We’re birds of a feather, Maureen.”
“Birds of a feather? I don’t think so. I get the feeling you’re leaving here with a little more money tonight than I am.”
“I’m also delivering a lot more than a round of whiskey sours.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Maureen said. “Do me a favor, Mr. Senator. You’re twice my age, more than twice my weight, and you’ll be helping run the state of New York. Don’t try to relate to me. It embarrasses the both of us.”
“Then I’ll come to the point. What you saw inside, maybe it gave you some ideas, ideas about gaining certain opportunities, certain advantages. It wouldn’t be unreasonable. I’m in politics; I would understand it. Because of who I am, you might think information of a private nature about me is valuable. But acting on those ideas would be unacceptable.”
“I’ve been trying to forget what I saw inside since the moment I saw it.”
“Right, good,” Sebastian said. “I figured that about you. But continuing with the train of thought, maybe Dennis has similar ideas. Maybe he comes to you in the near future with these ideas, with a plan.
” He paused, waiting, Maureen figured, for her to give away whether or not he was right. “You see where I’m going with this?”
In her head, Maureen heard Dennis’s voice: You and me. Next shift maybe? Goose bumps on her arms again. This guy was quick. He was already a step ahead of Dennis. Sorry, D, Maureen thought. Whatever dirty business you’re into with Sebastian or anyone else, no way I’m getting mixed up in it. Not now, not later.
“I have plans, Maureen, for the future,” Sebastian said. “I have commitments to other people and their plans, to their futures.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Maureen said. “And neither do your people. Nothing happened tonight, for any of us. I never saw you again after you went upstairs for the fund-raiser.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Sebastian said. “Was that so hard?” He let loose a long, false sigh. “I’m just looking out for you.”
“You’re a real man of the people.” She could see her cab coming up Bay Street. The enormity of her relief at the sight of it surprised her.
“I don’t think I like you very much,” Sebastian said.
“I’m too honest for you,” Maureen said.
The cab rolled up to the curb. Before she could even move toward the car, Sebastian had the passenger door open. Smiling, he stood behind the door, his hands across the top of the frame. Maureen slipped by Sebastian and slid across the seat, behind the driver and as far away from Sebastian as she could get.
Sebastian leaned into the car, bending over the front seat. “You the regular guy?” The cabdriver, confused, half turned to Maureen, then looked back at the big man twisted halfway into his cab. “Are you or are you not the regular guy on this shift?”
The driver stammered.
“English, motherfucker. Do you speak it?”
“Can I just go home?” Maureen asked.
“No, I’m not him,” the cabbie said. “I picked up the shift. One of his kids got sick or something. Do I know you? I think I seen you on TV.”
“Bullshit,” Sebastian said. He stuffed something in the cabbie’s shirt. “Anywhere she wants to go.”
Maureen leaned forward and watched the stunned cabbie pull a fifty from between the buttons of his shirt. “Give that back,” she said. “I got my own money.”
“Keep the money, Abdul, or I break your fucking arm.” He grabbed the small flag hanging from the rearview mirror, tore it down, and waved it in the cabbie’s face. “What the fuck is this?”
Maureen could see the red and green bars at the top and bottom, a crowned lion seated in the white band across the middle. What country was that? Iran? Iraq? “This tough-guy bullshit supposed to impress me, Sebastian?”
He ignored her again. “You can keep the change, Abdul. Get yourself a goddamn American flag with it.”
Sebastian wound his way out of the car like a fat serpent, leaning over the door to look at Maureen. “See you around, sweetheart.” He slammed the door.
Muttering, the cabbie pulled the car from the curb. Maureen recited her address, slumped, closed her eyes, and settled her head against the seat. At the first red light, the cabbie said, “So what your boyfriend has money? That doesn’t mean he can be mean to everyone. You’re lucky I don’t tell dispatch to ban your number.”
“Put that money in your pocket,” Maureen said, not opening her eyes, not moving. She was so tired that just speaking was a strain. “I’m paying my own fare, and the tip, too. He’s not paying my way and he is not my fucking boyfriend.”
The cold wind stung Maureen’s hot face and her bare, thin legs as she stood on the sidewalk outside her apartment, watching the cab cruise away. Out on the bay, she heard the ghost-groan horn of a ferry pulling off the pier. She wished she were riding that boat. If so, it would mean she’d had a very different night, that she was living a very different life. But she wasn’t. When the last echo of the horn had faded, she turned her back to the boat, to the water, and hurried inside.
After a long hot shower, lying in bed, the rising sun bleeding into her room around the edges of the curtains, Maureen felt herself slide from fear into anger. What was this Sebastian guy’s problem? Did he really think he needed to threaten her so she would keep his secret? Like she gave a shit who sucked whose dick. She worked in a bar: somebody was doing something nasty to someone else, or themselves, pretty much all the damn time. She rolled over, away from the window, pulling the blankets to her shoulder. But what was Dennis into, she wondered, that he wanted to discuss getting caught giving blow jobs? And one of them had lied to her. Dennis had said they were strangers; Sebastian told her they weren’t. Why? Eyes open, staring into the dark, Maureen decided she didn’t care about the answer. She had her own life to worry about.
She sat up and dragged her legs over the edge of the bed, her bare toes touching the cold wood floor. She rubbed her fingertips into her temples. Her eyes, even closed, ached and burned. She was so exhausted that just breathing required conscious effort, but she was too tired and too wired to sleep. Yawning hurt. This, she thought, this scratchy limbo, this is the worst feeling in the world. Can’t sleep, my body’s too tired to move, and my brain won’t stop running like a psycho hamster in a squeaky wheel. This state of agonizing suspended animation snared her more and more often these days. Was this what happened, she wondered, when you finally wore out? Good Christ, I’m not even thirty and I’m dead in the water.
She hauled herself upright and trudged into the kitchen.
Hanging on the open door, she stared into the fridge, trying to decide between the OJ and the wine, her whole body one big, throbbing ache. She chose the wine. She filled a coffee mug with cold chardonnay and downed it. Just something to grease the hamster wheel, to make it turn more quietly.
4
Straight out of bed Saturday afternoon, Maureen tried purging the previous night’s indulgences with push-ups. The shooting pains in her right wrist forced her to stop after ten. One too many heavy trays last night. Lying on her back and rubbing her wrist, the hardwood floor cool against her bare skin, she studied the fine cracks in the low plaster ceiling and considered the gym. The cheap travel alarm clock on her nightstand counted off the seconds. A long run on the treadmill would sweat out the chemicals lingering in her blood. Her body hurt—her head from the booze and drugs, her arms and back and legs from the busy night at work—and she wanted to fight back; the pain let everything from the night before bully its way into the new day. Maureen needed to slam that door closed, to put something solid between her and the Narrows and Sebastian and Dennis. But work was calling.
She’d slept away the time she had for the gym. Running the neighborhood streets meant dodging potholes while sucking down clouds of car exhaust. Coffee and a hot shower would have to do. She remembered the coke in her dresser. She certainly needed it more for the night ahead than she had for last night. Probably wasn’t enough left for more than one more night anyway. Not enough to sell at work, that was for sure. See that? That right there? That’s the kind of thinking that gets you in trouble, that gets you discussing things you shouldn’t see in conversations you should never have.
Maureen did her crunches, then sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, her arms tight across her shins. The apartment was chilly. The heat had conked out overnight. Either that or in her stupor she’d forgotten to turn it on before bed. Music played in the apartment upstairs. Something mournful and bluesy, the words unintelligible. Two soft voices, a man’s and a woman’s, mixed in with the music. One of them laughed and then both went silent. The music kept on.
Maureen pulled the comforter off the bed and wrapped it around her bare shoulders. The heat from her sleeping body long gone, the blanket, already cool, smelled like smoke and vanilla, her cigarettes and her soap. Calling in sick, she thought, even if she could afford it, would worry Dennis. And what if Sebastian asked about her or came around looking for her? She had never called in sick. She couldn’t risk giving anyone cause for concern. Things had to stay norma
l. Or appear normal, anyway. Rhythmic moans now from upstairs. Things were normal up there, at least.
Maureen struggled to her feet. She kicked the thermostat up to seventy. She pulled on sweats and thick socks. Moving felt good, even if it wasn’t the exercise that she needed or the sex she was being forced to listen to. Again. Maureen snapped the comforter over the bed, watched it float down and settle. Still going upstairs. Had to give John props, the boy had some self-control. No wonder Molly was forever knocking at John’s door, always smiling when Maureen passed her on the stairs. Actually, thinking about it, Molly was kind of stuck up. Like she knew how good she had it while Maureen wasn’t getting any. Like not only did Molly not mind Maureen hearing it, but like she was proud of it, too.
Sliding open her closet, Maureen started planning her work outfit. Saturday night or not, the goal tonight was comfort, not sex appeal. What was the big deal about sex, anyway? It wasn’t something important, like rent money or tuition. The high didn’t last. Giving yourself up guaranteed you nothing. Money mattered. It was a lot harder to get and it did a lot more for you, although, Maureen had to admit, sex and money did have one thing in common. Getting enough of either without degrading yourself was hard goddamn work.
Maureen raised her eyes to the ceiling, half expecting chips of plaster to start raining down on her face. Those two upstairs: they seemed to get enough of both with their pride intact. Teamwork. Mutual satisfaction. Respect. She’d heard rumors about such things. And you know what else, Maureen? she thought. Molly is not stuck up, and she’s not weird—you’re just bitter. Bitter like an old woman, thinking bitter old-woman thoughts.
Go down to the animal shelter right now, get your seven cats, and get it over with.
The Devil She Knows Page 4