The Pretty Woman Who Lived Next Door

by Preston Pairo

  25.

  Coming into the house by the kitchen door, Miles could tell from his father’s posture that something was weighing on him, the way he leaned against the linoleum counter, shoulders rounded as if needing support. “Hey, Dad, welcome home.”

  George Peterson turned slowly into Miles’ hug, patting his inches-taller boy on the back. “Missed you, son.”

  “Missed you, too.” Miles kept his voice upbeat to try to lift his father’s mood. Smelling spice from the grocery bag by the sink, he took a closer look at the carry-out his dad had brought home for their dinner. “This from that Thai place Ms. Blakely told us about?”

  George nodded. “I thought she might join us, but she’s waiting for a phone call. She got a letter from Ian,” his dad continued, “through her lawyer. That’s who she’s waiting to hear from. He’s in a trial so she’s only been able to talk to some paralegal.”

  “Is that good? That she got a letter?”

  George shook his head. “Ian says he wants to say in Ireland with his father. He says he likes his new school there.”

  “Is that what the letter says?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well maybe his father told him what to write.”

  “Could be.”

  Miles opened the cabinet for plates, taking over dinner preparation—or what little of that would be necessary tonight.

  George checked the clock on the old kitchen stove, reading its revolving hands. “This when you’ve been getting home from your new job?”

  “Little later than usual today,” Miles replied, then changed the subject: “So how’s Mom?” He hoped for a real answer, not the rhetorical “fine” his dad gave him when they last spoke by phone Saturday morning.

  “She’s good.” The response lacked conviction.

  Miles spooned chicken in red curry sauce over rice. “She coming back?”

  His dad didn’t reply, looking out the kitchen window toward Cara’s house.

  “Is Mom coming back?” Miles repeated.

  “Of course.”

  “Soon?”

  His father didn’t answer.

  “Dad…?”

  “Hm?”

  “Is Mom coming back soon?”

  “Yes.” But he didn’t say when, and Miles let it go.

  Over dinner, they talked in more detail about what they’d discussed during their few phone calls while his father had been out of town: the insurance loss in Dover; a delayed flight out of Philadelphia; the poor condition of Aunt Kay’s house, and how George spent hours doing minor repairs, telling Miles he could have used his help because Aunt Kay didn’t even know which way to turn a screwdriver. There was no need to mention Miles’ mother hadn’t helped, as this was assumed for all home projects; Jackie Peterson’s efforts along those lines had never extended beyond making lists of what she wanted to have done, then checking them off once completed to her satisfaction.

  Nothing was mentioned about the brawl after the Germantown game.

  After dinner, Miles cleaned up the dishes, then went up to his room, leaving his father to watch a TV show about people buying houses in remote parts of Alaska. His dad sat sideways on the sofa the way he often positioned himself now, so he could look out the bay window toward Cara’s house.

  Miles hadn’t seen Cara since Saturday night except in silhouette behind her bedroom curtains. An hour later that night, her shadow again passed back and forth a few times before her bedroom light went off. Shortly thereafter, Miles heard her quietly call his name.

  Across their yards, lit by the silvery light of the moon, Cara was at her opened bedroom window, either sitting on the edge of her bed or kneeling—Miles couldn’t tell, only that she was looking toward him.

  Miles reached for his phone and held it so she could see its lit screen—a clue he was going to text her—then eased shut his door in case his father, in bed for twenty minutes now, might happen to come into the hall.

  Back on his bed, he looked at Cara at her window. Texted: Don’t want to wake my dad.

  Cara replied: Sorry. Didn’t think about that.

  U OK?

  Sean’s fighting for custody. I might have to go to Ireland to get Ian back.

  Miles texted: That can’t be right. But knew most anything was possible in the legal system. Do you know where Ian is?

  Somewhere outside Belfast.

  It’s a start, Miles texted, then: Tell yourself it will be okay. You HAVE to believe that.

  Is that what you did?

  He assumed she was referring to the time he was in jail, awaiting trial—not sure how she knew about that, except sometimes it seemed everyone knew. Yes, he texted.

  And everything turned out okay?

  Yes. That was a lie—but a necessary one.

  Then that’s what I’ll do, Cara replied.

  Miles thought that was a lie, too, because even though he couldn’t hear, he was certain she was crying.

  26.

  Thursday morning Cara Blakely arrived at work an hour early, as she’d done every day that week.

  It had been three days since the letter from Ian had been faxed to her lawyer’s office. Two days since she’d had a phone conference with that same attorney along with the international law specialist he was working with. The most critical point of those communications—seemingly from the lawyers’ standpoint—being the amount she would need to pay toward their initial—initial—billable hours: $10,000.

  Cara did not have $10,000. However, in the past 24 hours she had made arrangements to borrow about half that amount. Part was promised by a sympathetic cousin, a chiropractor in Louisville. The other was coming from her mother, who Cara hadn’t seen in four years and lived with Cara’s sister somewhere in northern California, a place Cara had never been. Of course, maybe neither would actually send the money. Maybe she’d caught her cousin in a weak moment. Maybe Cara’s sister would conveniently forget to put their mother’s check in the mail. After all, their mom was Olivia’s main source of income.

  But even assuming that promised money actually came, Cara was still five grand short, and had run out of people she could ask for help. A college friend had been willing to send $500 until Cara truthfully answered the reasonable question about when she’d pay the money back, admitting: “I don’t know. It could be a long time.”

  Once in her cubicle at work, Cara tried to put those worries aside. She didn’t know how to read office politics—which hadn’t been a factor in her last job before Ian was born—but someone new had been added to their Raleigh Team, and Cara worried that was a bad sign.

  The new hire’s name was Misumi, and like most everyone else at the firm Misumi was younger than Cara, looked smart in her designer frames, and knew all the lingo—the acronyms and slang that constantly had Cara sneaking looks at the Urban Dictionary.

  After only a few days, it seemed as if Mi—as everyone began to call her—had been there longer than Cara. She became a welcomed presence among the after-work group: the ones who didn’t need or want to get home to families or partners and were always ready for a drink or coffee or trip to the gym, running on energy shots and caffeine and cigarettes.

  Cara had done all that too when she’d started with the company, but had cut back and kept it to drinks or coffee. The exercise had made her wired and jittery with everything being extreme this or that, zumba or spinning or biking in crowded rooms with blaring music in near-total darkness or strobe lights that gave her a headache.

  Now, Cara worried that Misumi’s hire meant Jeff, the company’s hands-on owner, thought the Raleigh deal should have been finalized last week in North Carolina. Instead there were going to be more meetings, more presentations—starting tonight.

  “Don’t be deceived it’s just dinner,” Jeff stressed at their team’s morning meeting. “It’s much more. Everyone has to give whatever it takes to get these guys.” He made individual eye contact with each of the group’s now six members, but Cara felt as if he’d looked at her a few seconds
longer than the rest. As if she hadn’t been giving work her full attention, even though she’d been putting in ten-hour days, and avoided personal calls, texts, or emails except at lunch.

  “We come up short,” Jeff continued, “and it gets out we couldn’t land a client this size it’ll be all the harder to get the next one.” Wearing a starched white shirt, jeans, and impressive diver’s watch, Jeff looked to embody the successful tech CEO. “Now I know you all have the hard data down pat—you proved that last week. What this weekend is about—starting tonight—is making Denbar believe we can deliver. We have to make Denbar love us the way we’re going to make new customers love their company. You need to project confidence and competence. All right?” And with that, he reached toward the center of the conference table, an invitation for everyone else to put a hand atop his—one of those silly team-building gestures intended to rally them—and prompted, “One…two…three…”

  On which everyone cheered, “Roxanne!” the name of the company’s mascot: Jeff’s border collie, who spent her days on the retro Oriental rug alongside Jeff’s modern desk waiting for him to give the signal to load into his Range Rover and drive off to the park where she chased geese.

  Two hours after the morning meeting, Cara left the office with Wendy Jordan and Misumi. The Raleigh Team’s three women got in the back of a Lincoln Town car, heading to a recently-opened spa in Shaw, an area pegged by Washingtonian Magazine as one of D.C.’s hottest neighborhoods.

  It was to be an afternoon of primping, relaxation, and reenergizing, paid for by the company to get them ready for tonight.

  Wendy used the drive time to review the Denbar brass coming into town this weekend. “Harrison’s the one to concentrate on,” Wendy briefed. She wore another body-clinging dress with a low neckline—smooth red fabric that hugged the curve of her breasts accentuated by the push and padding of an expensive bra—attire Cara had initially thought inappropriate for an office. “Harrison is key,” Wendy stressed. “He owns seventy-five percent of the company and ultimately makes the decisions. His father started the company, so he’s grown up with it. Knows it inside and out. And knows they need to improve their marketing. He has two kids, Bradford and Erica, both family names. The kids are ten and eight. He likes dirty martinis made with Armadale vodka. And…” Wendy placed her hand lightly on Cara’s arm. “…he likes you, girlie.”

  #

  Thursday afternoon at the Concrete Palace, Miles and Juan changed into sweats and joined the others on the mats, ready to work out when Miles asked, “Dónde ha estado Diego?” It had been over a week since Miles had seen him—two days before Rusty Bremmer had his head bashed in by five guys in hoods.

  Rumors were flying around school about who’d done it and about Bremmer’s condition—that he was out of a coma but still couldn’t speak or walk. All week, the police liaison had been acting less like a “friend” and more like a cop, questioning students along with a detective named Delgado, who perhaps coincidentally was Hispanic or maybe had cause to believe Bremmer’s attackers were Latino. Miles was part of the rumors, but usually ruled out because he was too tall to have been one of the hoods and also, some said, because if Miles had done it, Bremmer would be dead like that dude in Florida.

  Inside the Palace’s concrete-block walls, Juan and his friends were yet to mention Bremmer at all. Juan had made a few comments while cleaning the food trucks, but nothing to hint he’d been involved. Only that he wasn’t sorry it happened. Pendejo had it coming, Juan claimed.

  Miles didn’t ask if they’d done it—this foursome and Diego to make five—but suspected they had. He’d watched some of the videos of the attack online and thought he recognized their body movements—the way they punched and kicked—and thought he might even be able to identify who was who under those hoods. But he wasn’t positive.

  In response to Miles’ question about their missing friend, Juan said Diego was working for his uncle’s lawn service, helping out now that some of his crew had gone back to El Salvador for the winter.

  Miles accepted the answer—didn’t show he was worried that if these guys had attacked Bremmer, Diego could be the one to give up the others, the way someone always did.

  27.

  Jennifer Gaines parked her ten-year-old Mazda 3 in the White Flint Metro lot and trotted toward the escalator through the first wave of commuters on their way home. Her long hair was tied in a loose knot with the scarf Miles had given her, part of it looped around her neck and tucked into the fake fur collar of a vintage officer’s overcoat she’d bought at a funky consignment shop.

  At the bottom of the escalator, she reached deep into her large messenger bag as if searching for her Metro card, muttered an exasperated, “Oh, man,” then took the escalator back up to street level, hurried to her car, sat inside, and waited.

  A minute later, her phone pinged with a thumbs-up emoji.

  Jennifer got out of her car, locked it, and waited for Miles, who arrived in his truck moments later. When he pushed open the passenger door, she got in and immediately leaned over to kiss him—a nice, long kiss because it had been almost a week since they’d been alone, not counting some half-serious making out in the hall behind the auditorium at school.

  “You sure we can’t go to your house?” she asked. “Or maybe your neighbor’s? I bet she’s got a really cool bedroom. And I don’t think she’d mind if we used it.”

  Miles said, “My dad’s been getting home early this week.” His hand rested at the waist of her jacket as if wanting to undo its large buttons.

  “Well…shit.” She’d been looking forward to being with him again—wanting the sensation that was so completely different from the other guys she’d been with. Thinking maybe this was the difference between having sex and making love. Even though this probably wasn’t love—well, maybe it was.

  She kissed him again, then sat back, checking the parking lot for her mother’s Audi—which was why she’d gone down to the Metro station and doubled back. Her mother had been asking far too many questions this week about where Jennifer was going after school, who she was going with, what she was doing. Which was making Jennifer a little paranoid.

  Her hand remaining on Miles’ thigh, she said, “It’s starting to feel like winter.”

  It had been cloudy all week, with temperatures dropping a few degrees each day. Today, it was barely 40, and an easterly breeze made the air feel colder.

  “Pretty soon you’re going to miss Florida. But you probably already do, don’t you?”

  “A little,” he admitted.

  “What about your dad? I bet he misses Florida, too.”

  “Maybe… But between his work and my mom and all the other stuff he worries about, I’m not even sure it really matters to him.”

  “It’ll matter the first time he has to drive on ice,” Jennifer said, then asked: “Does he look like you?”

  “My dad…? Not so much.”

  “So then you’re like me and look more like your mother?”

  “I guess.”

  “And you hate it when people tell you that,” Jennifer guessed. “Right? Although maybe not any more. But no boy wants to hear he looks like his mother.”

  Miles shrugged, his fingers still playing with the smooth edge of one of her coat buttons.

  Jennifer smiled at him. “Go for it.”

  Miles glanced at other cars. “How long until you need to be home?”

  “Two hours.”

  He withdrew his hand and shifted the truck into gear, driving them from the parking lot out onto Rockville Pike.

  Jennifer had lived in the area most of her life, but was soon on streets she didn’t recognize. The people were mostly Hispanic. Many walked, carrying grocery bags. Some rode bikes, wearing knit caps against the chill, including a man in checkered cook’s pants. Small dark-haired kids played in grassy patches by townhouse-style apartment complexes.

  Miles pulled into the gravel parking lot of a former gas station that was now a small taqueria/
convenience store. The signs were mostly in Spanish. The only English words Jennifer saw were for Western Union Money Orders.

  “Hungry?” Miles asked.

  #

  It was dark by the time Miles got home. Getting out of his truck, he heard laughter inside his house.

  His dad and Cara Blakely were in the kitchen, drinking wine as if celebrating. Cara was dressed as Miles had never seen before, wearing a tight dress of a bold coral color with a cowl neck, accessorized with a thin leather belt and inch-plus black heels. Her hair looked thicker, more lustrous, and styled to appear casual though not quite tousled.

  “She did it, son!” George Peterson raised his wine glass. “Cara landed the Raleigh client! Biggest client her company has ever had. Those people were supposed to be up here for an entire weekend of meetings but Cara closed the deal this afternoon.”

  “It wasn’t just me.” She touched George’s arm. “It wasn’t just me, Miles,” she repeated, perhaps a little drunk, her wine glass—like the bottle on the counter—half empty.

  “Tell him about the bonus!” George said.

  “Four thousand dollars!” Cara exclaimed, putting both arms above her head and doing a celebratory shimmy.

  “That’s great,” Miles said. “Can I fix you guys some dinner?”

  “Whatever you feel like eating, son. I might just drink!”

  Cara laughed.

  Miles said, “I just ate with Jennifer.”

  “Oh Jennifer is so sweet,” Cara said. “And pretty.”

  “You know Jennifer?” George was surprised.

  Cara looked at Miles as though she’d exposed a secret, then made a cartoonish face of apology and laughed. “I’m sorry, Miles, but I can’t think up a good lie.”