Karen tugged off the boots, pulled Junie to a sitting position, stood her up, and removed her coat. She wrapped a wool scarf around Junie’s shoulders and directed her to the stairs.
“Go up. Ask Stan to set the table. Or you do it, if you want. Okay?”
“Sure.” Junie walked up the stairs slowly with her hand on the banister, for balance it seemed.
Karen went to work stripping off the sheets. She took fresh linens out of the closet, remade the bed, and covered the whole thing with a new Frette comforter she’d recently purchased. She plumped the pillows and karate chopped them, after arranging them at the headboard. Then she tackled Junie’s bathroom, wiping all the surfaces: the floor, the sink, and tub. She brushed and flushed the toilet and doused Clorox into it for good measure. The mirror needed Windex, so she sprayed that too, rubbing hard. She gathered all the soiled paper towels and dumped them and the contents of the wastebasket into one big plastic bag and placed it outside at the front vestibule. Finally, Karen grabbed a feather duster and whipped through the entire floor, making sure all surfaces were dust-free.
She lay back on the bed and punched in a call on her phone.
“What the fuck’ve you done to her!?” Karen shouted.
“Dearest. How are you?” Pickle’s voice cloyed.
“Don’t play games with me. I’m serious.”
“So am I. What’s up?”
“You know very well.”
“No idea what you’re talking about. What’s the problem?”
“Junie, that’s what. I just came down to get her for dinner, and she’s listless. She barely spoke—like she was in a coma.”
“Too generic. More details, please.”
“She was in bed under the covers with her coat and boots on.”
“Maybe she was cold. I sleep with a heavy sweater on sometimes.”
“She had her boots on, Pickle.”
“Wearing your boots to bed does not a coma make. Did she speak?
“Yes.”
“Then she’s not in a coma.”
“But she only said one word. Or maybe a few, I can’t remember.”
“Okay, what was the last word she said?”
“Um … ‘Sure.’”
“She said ‘Sure’? That’s not so bad. Sounds like an affirmative to me. A positive word. So, she was agreeing to whatever you said before?”
“Well, yes.”
“Okay, so let’s review: Junie was in bed, which in and of itself is not so unusual, because according to you, she’s been sleeping a lot since she moved in. Right?”
“That’s true, I guess.”
“Then we see that she’s in bed with her coat on, which indicates that she was cold, but the weather did drop about ten degrees today. Plus, the front door is open a lot from the renovation. So, one might surmise that the brownstone is, in fact, chilly. Am I right again?”
“Possibly.”
“Great. Then we have the issue of wearing boots in bed. Let’s just toss that out for now.”
“Fuck you.”
“So what the hell’s your problem?”
“I’ll tell you what my problem is. She was with you this morning.”
“So? We went to a museum.”
“You? A museum?”
“Yeah. The Frick, if you must know. Then we went to the café at the Neue.”
“Humph,” Karen grunted.
“Then she went home in a cab. All very innocent—and worldly. When’s the last time you went to the Frick, Karen?”
They were silent for several seconds, and Karen couldn’t recall the last time she’d been to any museum.
“Now you listen to me.” Pickle’s tone changed—like gravel. Karen rolled over to her side and pulled her knees into her chest.
“Do I have your attention?”
“Go on.” Karen wheezed out the words.
“What I do in my private life is none of your fucking business. I don’t pry into your marriage. In fact, if you think about it, I almost never inquire into that area of your life. Do I?”
“I guess not.”
“Correct. In double fact, I would characterize my restraint as so super-fucking-human, it verges on insane. Because no man in his right mind would have, or even could have, exerted the willpower I have.”
Karen closed her eyes, and tears plopped onto the new comforter. She heard Junie and Stan clomping around above. The Doodles’s claws flew across the ceiling. She felt left out. Abandoned.
Pickle’s voice lowered to a whisper and she strained to hear. “That’s right, Karen. No answer is necessary. Don’t even bother. But get this straight …”
Her eyes were at the level of the Frette logo. She inspected the ornate stitching that for some reason made this comforter worth about four thousand dollars. She wondered what the hell was so great about the stitching, and was it really so damned beautiful? And what the fuck was she thinking, spending money like that? What normal person spends four thousand dollars on a blanket?
“You’re on notice. Stay out of my private life vis-a-vis any woman, including, and most especially, Junie. Okay?”
“Right.”
“Now that we’ve dusted up that little mess, I’ll expect you at my place on Sunday at, let’s say, about four?”
“You’re really mad at me.”
“Yeah. But what the hell do you expect after that display the other night—trying to break it off.”
She tried to imagine him smiling into the phone. “Okay, Pickle. Sunday.”
“Good. And wear red.”
Karen had never cared about Pickle’s casual girlfriends. In fact, she was rarely even aware of them. Once in a while, clues were left behind: a piece of clothing—maybe a sock, or a hairbrush with long brown strands. Even a smell—unmistakably female. But he’d never, she was fairly certain, made an emotional commitment to any woman other than her. He was taken with Junie, yes, but did that really matter? She could not think of an answer.
Karen’s hands rattled a bit as she lay on the bed. Her red lipstick was now smeared all over the frighteningly expensive bedcover. She stretched out, taut, and then re-tucked herself into a ball, willing her body to settle down. Birds squawked in the back garden. She’d filled the birdbath just that morning and could imagine the critters performing their daily ablutions, flapping the day’s dust off their feathers.
She stepped out the back door and walked to the end of the yard. Lights in the kitchen shone bright, and Stan and Junie’s heads bobbed around as they worked to get dinner on the table. They lingered a few minutes at the window by the sink and had a conversation that lasted too long. Then Stan smiled at Junie. Or so Karen thought; with the distance, she couldn’t be sure.
She wanted to fill herself up with something, anything to distract her from her pain, but not her mother. She picked up a trowel and stabbed into a plastic bag of fresh soil she intended to use over the weekend to plant annuals. With a clump of dirt at the tip of the tool, she brought the earth close to her nose and smelled its musty odor. The garden loam held a perfect proportion of silt, clay, and earth—potentially delicious. The trowel found its way into her mouth, as if pushed by an invisible gardener. And maybe her mother was here—but no—she remembered that her childhood yard had been perpetually overgrown with crabgrass. Nothing of beauty survived where she grew up.
Karen bit down. She chewed hard and heard the deafening crunch against her molars, driving deep into her ear canal. She swallowed and felt each lump individually as the back of her tongue forced the earth down her throat. The soil, somehow moistened, reached her stomach.
Her eyes scaled up the back of the building and she noticed that Pickle’s two floors were faintly lit by construction bulbs left on by the workers—just a hint of yellowed tungsten. The whole house would soon glow a brilliant white and the brightest bulb, living right above her, would be Pickle. It was a catastrophic future—possibly much worse than drinking every day. Then her mother’s rules popped into her head and Kare
n took the inventory: be pretty—no—be beautiful. She had that down pat. And she was lovable. She’d made damned sure of that, too. She’d even gotten the money. But sneaky? That’s where she’d fallen short.
21
A CONSTRUCTION SITE TYPICALLY EXUDES A distinctly male smell—not exactly body odor, more an amalgam of sweat, dirt, and pheromones, or the flex of muscle against the pressure of a deadline. Karen was reminded of this the next morning when she bumped into Patrick in the foyer of the brownstone. His men filed past them, after having gathered in groups outside on the sidewalk to wolf down their last bits of egg sandwiches. Karen and Patrick followed them, and their gamey essence, up the stairs to the second floor.
“It’s going well, right?” Patrick looked around, impressed with the amount of work his men had accomplished in just a few days.
Karen pulled him to a corner, handed him a cup of espresso, and stared out the window. She could feel Patrick studying her, obviously puzzled by her quiet demeanor.
“Ya got me. What’s up?” he asked.
Karen gave a rueful smile. “How many men do we have on-site now?”
“Not including the electrician and the plumber who’re set to start Monday? Eight. A big crew, just like you asked. And they’re all here today to finish up final demo stuff and load in Sheetrock and studs. We can close up the walls as soon as the trades finish.”
Karen put her hand on his shoulder and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Okay, Patrick. I want you to hold everything off … including the plumber.”
Patrick stepped back. “Why? I pulled in every marker to even get the plumber here next week! You want the whole crew gone, too?”
“Not everyone—keep a skeleton crew. Maybe just the electrician and one other guy. But no plumber.”
“What in God’s name is going on here? I don’t like working this way.”
“It’s very complicated. I just want to slow things down. Please, Patrick. I know I threatened you, and I feel awful about that.”
“I have to be honest—I didn’t like it either. We’ve worked together a long time, Karen. You must know by now that I’d do just about anything for you.”
“Yes, and I was under terrible pressure that day. But things have changed. Just work with me on this.”
“Jesus, Karen. You seem weird. I’m a little worried about you.”
Karen’s feet itched inside her Louboutin shoes. “I’m just not sure this is the right time for Pickle to move in. I need to back him off. But we have to do it in a way that he’ll swallow. Construction delays are acts of God. Force majeure, so to speak. He’ll understand that. It’s important for him to believe that we can’t control it.”
“I don’t know, Karen. Pickle’s pretty sharp. Do you think he’ll buy that?”
“He has to. And you’ll be great. Tell him it’s a problem you’ve just discovered with the building, and that you can’t proceed until it’s resolved.”
“Me? No fucking way. The guy’s a brute. The way he practically roughed me up on Monday? No. If he asks, I’ll refer him to you.”
“Okay. That’s fair, I guess. I can’t expect you to lie for me.”
“I hope not. And to be honest, I’d prefer that he just stay off-site—away from me and my guys. I really think there’s something off there.”
“Well, he is his brother’s twin.” She laughed, trying to make light of the exchange.
“Nah. Stan’s a puppy. There’s nothing wrong with Stan … other than his obvious stuff. Once you get used to it, he’s actually pretty reasonable. Almost predictable. Pickle, though? I can honestly say I have no idea who the hell he is.”
Karen stared down at her fancy shoes, her Stella McCartney dress, and her manicured fingernails. She felt a new level of embarrassment—as if her family Ponzi scheme had just been exposed. “I’ll try to control Pickle,” she mumbled. When she looked up, Patrick was already out the door.
22
SATURDAY MORNING, PICKLE STOOD AT HIS WINDOW to the western world, scanning traffic crossing the bridge as usual, and felt the burden of his unstructured days. The hours stacked up one after the other, and, being off the job, Pickle found it increasingly difficult to keep track. Monday? Saturday? What was the difference, really? He felt adrift, without the ballast of his crew.
He’d woken up early, thinking about victims who’d need a support call, only to remember that someone else had taken over his caseload. Then he’d spent the next few minutes lying in bed, regretting taking the time off at all. Pickle loved the force of the city and the sway of people—some days turbulent, others unbearably tedious. The unpredictability required him to wear different skins based on someone else’s troubles. He was good at it. But he wasn’t there. And as a result, he felt a deflation of his power; perhaps emasculation was a more accurate term.
On an impulse, Pickle got in his car and drove onto the Queensboro Bridge, toward the land of affordable houses for cops: Douglaston. And Lance. Halfway across the bridge, Pickle considered the confusing options of roads that converged within a quarter mile of each other—the BQE, the GCP, the LIE. He cast aside those highways and, instead, took the country road for locals: Queens Boulevard.
Queens had always seemed a confounding borough to Pickle; vague borders of the small towns bled into one another. Sunnyside suddenly birthed Woodside, then Maspeth evaporated into Elmhurst. But landmarks, rather than town lines, helped to orient Pickle as he drove east. The White Castle at Fortieth Street, where he’d once picked up food poisoning, was still in business. He slowed to a crawl as he drove past Calvary Cemetery. Markers of death, lined up like stone dominos, were a sobering reminder that a few of his friends, killed in the line of duty, had been buried here. Just at the end of the graveyard, Pickle made a right turn onto Fifty-Eighth Street and headed south toward the granite factory. He looked at his watch: nine fifteen. It would be sadistic to wake Lance this early on his day off, anyway. Pickle worked his way through the streets, sniffing out the correct turns.
Life for Pickle’s family had quickly bottomed out, very near to poverty. They’d moved from working-class Nassau County to lower-class Elmhurst, Queens when the twins were about to enter high school. His mother was not an educated woman and held a string of low-wage jobs, finally landing something stable as an office helper for a granite fabrication company.
She was lucky for the steady employment with decent people, and occasionally gained some measure of pride from directing customers into the huge factory. And when she was given the responsibility to actually show the slabs—that was a very good day. Enormous riggers gripped the two-ton slices by means of rubber clamps and pulled them out for closer inspection. She’d then discuss the slabs with customers who thought she knew what she was talking about. But most days she fielded phone calls from architects and designers who purchased the product on behalf of their clients. And every evening she’d return home covered in fine silt, a by-product of the immense granite cutters. That malevolent dust was, no doubt, the cause of her emphysema and subsequent death.
In spite of their downward slide in economic status, high school in Elmhurst cemented hopeful life trajectories for both twins. Stan, not surprisingly, received full scholarships, first to college and then to architecture school. Pickle completed a year of community college before joining the police force. Yet, despite their divergent paths, the twins understood that they were forever bound together in life. By Pickle’s measure their struggles had evened out: Stan battled with his obsession demons and Pickle endured his devil of a mother.
He drove up onto the sidewalk in front of the stone yard. Hundreds of remnants stood stacked against the side of the building. He got out of the car, walked among the hunks of Mother Earth, brushed his fingers over the edges and felt the dust that had killed his mother. Pickle noticed his hands becoming moist and the silver silt clouded into a thin slurry. Rubbing them together, Pickle ground the grit further into the creases on his palms. This was the exact texture on his mother’s hands wh
en she’d return home every evening.
Entering the office, Pickle was greeted by a woman sitting in what had been his mother’s chair. It looked like the same one, anyway—very worn and ripped at the top edge of the back. He glared impatiently at her.
“Hi, Stan. We didn’t know you were coming. Marcel’s in the yard with another client. Can I offer you an espresso?”
“No thanks. I’ll wait.”
“Have a seat and I’ll tell him you’re here.”
The woman got on the intercom that blasted into the cavernous factory. It was noisy in there, with machines working continuously, even on a Saturday. He felt his chair vibrate through the floor from the rattle of the cutters.
“Marcel, Stan McArdle’s in the office.”
Pickle looked into the factory through a large window. Endless rows of stacked stone created tunneling paths that ran the length of the enormous space. In order to get around, one had to walk from front to back and make the U-turn at the very end to enter the next section. Almost like a train terminal with high stone barriers.
Once the woman saw Marcel’s fingers wave over the top of the stone as a signal that he’d heard, she turned to Pickle and smiled. “He should be in soon.”
He didn’t know what he was doing here. Just that his mother still saturated every corner of the place. And that he knew Stan and Karen used this yard exclusively for their projects. While he waited, Pickle absently fiddled with a stack of business cards on the counter and saw that this Marcel was the owner. He didn’t remember him—his name wasn’t familiar—and he wondered if Marcel had known his mother. Then, the door popped opened from the factory and a small, wiry man walked in with a couple.
“Okay, folks, I think you got some good options here. You got forty-eight hours and then the hold is released. Just let Jenny know which one you want in the next two days and she’ll take your credit card for the fifty percent deposit. That’ll secure the slab until your contractor’s ready for it. Jenny, put these three slabs on hold for the Millers.”
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