Saturday night
“IT’S NOT SMUCKER’S RASPBERRY JAM AND I PREFER CHUNK-STYLE TO smooth. But I’m thrilled you had Wonder bread,” Rannie told Tim as she polished off a second sandwich.
“Very high maintenance, aren’t you?”
Tim came in to the living room with two mugs of coffee and placed them on the glass-topped table in front of them.
“Only smart move I ever made, buying this building,” Tim had told her on their way up to the apartment. He and Chris had just moved from Plymouth when he’d spotted a “For Sale” sign and soaped windows on the ground floor. “Dumb luck. I wanted a house. One of my sisters was living with us back then, helping out with Chris while she was finishing up at Marymount. The real estate market was still pretty much in the toilet, and this block was dicey, even with the precinct so near.”
“Dumb luck is all you need.” Rannie wished she had more of it.
“I’ve got two renters on the top floor. And I’m refinancing. That’s how Chris is going to college.”
Rannie sat back against the deep cushions of the sofa, blowing on her coffee. Tim was drinking his, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up.
The living room was attractive enough, although impersonally furnished, as if one day Tim had flipped open a Crate and Barrel catalogue, called an eight hundred number and said, “Page one hundred. I’ll take everything on it.” On one of the shelves of a pale wood wall unit, she spotted a framed photograph of a young woman laughing and holding a toddler with chocolate smeared all over his face.
Tim caught her looking. “My wife and Chris, it’s the last picture I have of Deb.”
Rannie nodded but made no reply. She wiped her mouth with a napkin. It touched her that Tim had insisted on serving her sandwich on a china plate with a cloth napkin.
“I’m sorry I blew up before. Irish temper. It was worse when I drank.”
So noted, Rannie thought to herself. “Forget it. I was pumping you. We’re both sorry.” Climbing the vestibule stairs had been torture, and all she wanted now was to kick off the killer shoes. So she did. And if that was sending a signal…. Well, so be it.
“So where are you from? I’m guessing not the East Coast. Midwest, maybe?”
“Guilty. Cleveland, home of the Browns and flat vowels.” After all these years and still her accent was a dead giveaway. “I came to New York right after college.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Yale.”
Tim raised his eyebrows. “You say it like it embarrasses you.”
In a way, it did, she supposed. “People hear Yale and they expect all sorts of other impressive accomplishments in your life.”
“I got kicked out of Holy Cross for raising holy hell. Exactly what my parents and everyone else expected of me.” Tim leaned forward, his arm extended. “Hold it. You have a little peanut butter in your hair.”
Rannie’s hand flew to her hair. “You should have brought me a bib instead of a napkin.” Then Rannie stopped talking. Tim had caught her hand. He pulled gently at a strand of hair near her ear. He was looking at her. Really looking at her. She returned his gaze and swallowed hard.
He stroked her hair, saying it was as soft as a baby’s, and tucked it behind her ear. Then he traced the outline of her ear while his other hand moved to the back of her neck, drawing her closer.
They were kissing. One soft kiss and then another. Rannie closed her eyes. Tim smelled delicious, just his own freshly showered and shaved smell. The pressure of his hand at the back of her neck brought her nearer and before giving herself a chance to think twice, she opened her mouth. His tongue darted in lightly then more insistently. She ran hers over the ridge of his crooked tooth, then deeper inside the roof of his mouth. God, he tasted delicious too. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her throat.
When they pulled back for a moment, his chest was heaving. “You are a very impressive kisser.”
Rannie smiled and nodded. “Yes, Yale and kissing.” Then she leaned forward, and they kissed again. When he grazed her ear with his lips and she felt the rush of his breath, a little groan escaped from her. She ran her tongue down his throat to the bottom of the vee in his open-necked shirt and kissed him there. As he cupped her cheek with one hand and brought her mouth up to his again, his other hand went to her breast and even under a turtleneck and bra, her nipple stiffened instantly.
Are you nuts? Here you go again! A tiny little part of her brain started screaming, “You’re not in high school at some make-out party.” But another part urged her to keep on going because it felt so natural. That was the part she chose to listen to. She needed sex, pure and simple, as much as she needed a job. She let Tim push her down on the sofa and the weight of a man’s body on top of hers, the hardness of his erection, made her feel fully alive. She put both hands on his ass, a gorgeously tight ass, and pulled him as close as she could. He gasped, murmuring her name.
For a moment she thought that the faint humming sound was also coming from Tim.
No. It was the cell phone in the pocket of her raincoat. The sound of the phone was an instant reality check. Rannie pushed Tim off her and sat up, staring at her moaning raincoat. She was panting. Tim backed away to the other side of the sofa. He had the stunned look of a high-school boy who, a second ago, was sure he was going to get laid and suddenly realizes the night may end without even so much as a hand job.
The noise of the phone stopped, a ridiculous noise that sounded like the lowing of a teeny herd of cattle in the back forty. The whole scene was ridiculous. The two of them—middle-aged and horny. A combustible combination. She couldn’t help catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her hair was a wild horror. Tim was rubbing his hand over his jaw. One of his shirttails was out.
A second later the phone began pulsing again. This time Rannie picked it up. The number on the screen was unfamiliar to her. She clicked the talk button. It was Jem Marshall.
“Is Nate okay?” she asked, instantly frantic.
“What’s wrong?” Tim asked.
She ignored the question and continued listening to the headmaster and when he put Nate on the phone, she said, “I’ll be home in a minute. Of course, I believe you.”
She sprang up and grabbed her coat, her miniature purse. And the shoes. She picked them up off the floor.
“That was Jem Marshall. Nate just got busted at school. Somebody planted some pot and pills in his backpack.”
“Oh shit, no.”
“Oh shit yes. And he forgot his keys. He’s waiting in our lobby.”
She put on her shoes and Tim led her downstairs. He wanted to see her home in a cab. However, Rannie shook her head so vehemently, he relented, saying, “I’ll call tomorrow. You be careful getting home.”
Rannie swiveled into the back seat of a taxi and, before shutting the door, looked up at him. “You okay?”
“Nothing a cold shower won’t cure.”
At least he said it with a smile.
While the cab drove northward, taking advantage of the staggered lights on Amsterdam Avenue, Rannie combed her hair and reapplied lipstick. Her cheeks still were flushed. She tried to wrap her brain around what little information Jem Marshall had given her. A Ziploc bag with pot and pills that Nate said looked like roofies. Why would someone do that, plant drugs on him? Now of all times? The answer was plain: Someone was trying to frame him.
The cab made the trip in good time until it tried to turn into her block. A few feet ahead, a heavyset black man and a gypsy cabdriver had jumped out of their cars and were yelling at each other. The cabbie had sideswiped the guy’s SUV.
Some men playing canasta at a card table in front of the bodega were circling the car and inspecting the damage. One of them was yelling at the gypsy cab too. Rannie felt her heart racing. “Can you get around them?” she asked through the Plexiglas divider.
“Sorry, lady. No room.”
The S.W.A.K. killer had already hit her block. Lightning didn’t strike twice. “Here.” She stuffed a bill in the dish of the window guard.
The entrance to her building was at the end of the block, only a few steps in from Broadway. Hobbled by her shoes, she took nervous little baby steps down the dark street, passing the storefront eglesia, the parking garage, its metal grating already pulled down for the night, and the stoops of rundown tenement buildings.
The chilly night air raised goose flesh on her bare arms. She threw her raincoat over her shoulders, walking as briskly as the shoes allowed. Then, halfway down the street, just before she reached the dumpster, there was a slight movement in the shadow between two parked cars. A man darted out. An involuntary squeak leaped from her mouth. A kitchen knife was in his hand.
Oh God! She was going to be tomorrow’s headline! Panic ballooned in Rannie’s chest. She was about to throw up. Post-divorce, she’d taken self-defense classes although they never told you how fear erased everything you’d learned. “Please!” she whispered, realizing there wasn’t enough air in her lungs to scream for help.
He was Hispanic, maybe early twenties with a scraggly mustache, scrawny and jittery and definitely high. It would be easy to pick him out of a line-up, except that she was going to be dead!
He didn’t say a word, just pointed to her purse. For her lipstick! Terror made Rannie’s hand lock around the draw strings as they stood face to face. Release the fucking bag, she commanded herself. Breathe so that you can scream.
The guy said, “Hurry up. I ain’ gon’ hurt you. I ain’ that S.W.A.K. sicko.”
Did he say that to all his victims? As she handed over her bag, he said, “That, too.” He was pointing at her father’s old Rolex. Her hand was shaking too much to manage the clasp.
“Hurry up, I said!” His eyes darted to both ends of the block. He looked like he wanted to get away. Maybe he really was just a garden variety mugger!
The watch was so loose on her wrist, it hung like a bracelet; finally, squinching together her fingers, Rannie wriggled it off. Sobbing, she thrust the watch at him. Then he made her take off her shoes, which he tossed in the dumpster before taking off toward Broadway.
Shaking and sobbing harder, Rannie ran to her house barefoot, the rough concrete sidewalk biting into the soles of her feet, shredding her pantyhose. She was alive. She was unhurt.
Nate was in the vestibule by the intercom, sitting on a radiator ledge. “Ma!” he jumped up when he saw her. “Hey, don’t cry. It’ll be okay. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to me.” Then he stared at her feet. “Where are your shoes?”
“I just got mugged.”
“No!” He enveloped her in a hug. Then he pulled back and a look of bafflement came over his face. “Ma? They stole your shoes?”
The ludicrous logic of the question coupled with a surge of relief at being home safe and relatively sound made Rannie stop crying. Sniffling, she told him what happened. It wasn’t until she started to fumble for Alice’s handbag that was no longer hanging from her shoulder that she realized neither of them had keys.
The super buzzed them into the lobby, but their hall neighbor wasn’t home. The only other person with keys to their apartment was her mother-in-law.
First Rannie called 911, thankful her cell had been in her coat pocket. The tiny buttons proved too hard for her still-trembling fingers, so Nate punched in the number. An emergency operator said a patrol car would be right over. Within five minutes one was. The officer rolled down the window, then stared at her feet. “The guy stole your shoes?”
Rannie slid in the back seat.
“A woman walking alone in this neighborhood, you’re lucky you’re in one piece,” he chided.
“I know,” she said contritely while watching Nate call Mary. As the patrol car took off, she said, “Tell Grandma you’re locked out and you can’t get hold of me. Tell her my phone must be turned off or something. Nothing else. Got that?”
When she returned home an hour and a half later, in a pair of oversized Nikes borrowed from a woman cop at the precinct, Nate said, “Any luck?”
“They figure he jumped on a subway. I went and looked at about a million mug shots. No luck.” She shrugged. “At least I wasn’t carrying any credit cards…. But he took Grandpa Nat’s watch.” Instantaneously and despite every effort not to, tears sprang to her eyes.
“Aw, Ma. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what got into me. Here I’m always screaming at you and Alice to be careful at night.” She shut the door behind them and collapsed against it for a moment before heading into the kitchen. “Come. I’ll make hot chocolate. Tell me what happened at school.”
“Ma, no. Please. Come on, can’t it wait until tomorrow? I just want to chill. Mr. Marshall believes me…. Ben says there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Oh well, if Ben says that, we can all rest easy.”
“Ma! Why be bitchy?”
Rannie’s shoulders sagged and she turned to face him. “Look, Nate. I’m in a really pissy mood.” Nate was still in the foyer, both hands rammed into the pockets of his jeans. “And if there’s a prayer of me getting any sleep tonight, you have to tell me what happened…. Okay? Okay?”
She could hear Nate’s long, irritated sigh exhaling behind her; nevertheless, he followed her into the kitchen where she poured milk into a saucepan and set it on the front burner. While it was heating up, Rannie rummaged around in the cabinets for the can of Hershey’s chocolate powder and the bag of mini-marshmallows.
A few minutes later they sat at the dining room table with their mugs of hot chocolate, little blobs of marshmallow dissolving on the steaming surface. “Elliot did it, Ma. I’m sure of it. My backpack’s got my initials on it. He’d know which one was mine. And he has it in for me.”
Nate told Rannie about stuffing Elliot in the equipment shed, although that incident by itself didn’t convince her that Elliot was behind what had just happened. Bringing drugs to school? Especially now. There had to be more at stake for Elliot than merely “getting back” at Nate. Maybe Joan’s pissed-off teenager theory was right; even if Elliot was indisputably no genius, he still could have inherited a gene for caginess from his dad. If Elliot had murdered Tut, he could be trying to point the finger at Nate, a kid whom he already had a grudge against. Rannie blew on the hot chocolate that was still too scalding hot to drink.
“Nate, you think Elliot is on steroids?”
He stopped twiddling his spoon and eyed her quizzically. “Yeah, maybe. He bulked up fast. And he’s got backne.”
Rannie took a tentative sip of cocoa. So? Elliot could have waited until Nate’s meeting with Tut was over and then returned to the office, at which point Tut, before closing up shop, was pouring himself a drink. All Elliot would have needed was a narrow window of opportunity—Tut turning to the file cabinets, getting something from his couch—to slip in the GHB.
Nate’s cell phone started ringing. He checked caller ID. “Look, Ma, we done?” he asked and before she could answer, he put the phone to his ear, said, “Yo. Yeah, I’m okay,” and started toward his room, the mug in his other hand.
A second cup of hot chocolate and one hot bath later, the tension in her body still wasn’t ready to call it a night. She lay in bed with the lights out, on her back, staring at the flaking plaster on the ceiling, her shoulders hugging her ears, Ed Sullivan-style, killer cramps in both legs and a headache that reached all the way down to her toes. And, oh yeah, she’d have to remember to get the locks changed tomorrow. The little bastard not only had her keys but her address from her driver’s license.
Her big toe locked, seizing Rannie with such pain, she sat bolt upright, gasping. As she sat kneading her foot, her father’s face floated before her. He had taught her to tell time on the Rolex. When the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the five, that’s when I leave my office and come home to Mommy, you, Emily, and Betsy. Okay, it was just a watch. She’d been mugged, not murdered. Still she felt especially sorry for herself and started crying again because there was nobody around to feel sorry for her.
A Chaps phone directory lay in the drawer of her night table.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Nah,” Tim said. “Just watching TV. Your son okay?”
“Yeah. I guess. We’re supposed to see Jem Marshall first thing Monday morning. It sounds like he believed Nate.”
Tim asked her to reconstruct what happened. At one point he made her stop. “When he came and got Nate, Marshall had the bag of pills in his hand?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure. Why?”
“If he’d left it where it was, in the backpack, the cops could’ve checked the prints on it.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“The whole thing sounds fishy to me. Cops know a set-up when they see one.”
“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better.”
“No. I’m not. Honest.”
“This was a pretty horrendous night.”
“Would it make you laugh if I said you’re not the first date to tell me that?”
“I got mugged coming home.”
“Aw, Jesus, no!” It was uttered with such sincerity that Rannie started crying again, tears trickling down her cheeks into her ears as she lay back in bed and recounted what happened.
“I thought at first it was the S.W.A.K. guy.” She reached for a Kleenex and blew her nose. “I was an idiot. I should have stayed in the cab.”
“You sure should’ve.” He fired off a bunch of questions—all the same ones the cops had asked, in a very similar, cop-style way. Did the assailant have a weapon? Did he assault her? Then Tim asked, “Listen, you want company?”
“No.” Yes. “I just wanted to talk to somebody…. I wanted to talk to you.”
Rannie plumped pillows behind her and leaned back. The knots in her shoulders were loosening up a little. She tried to picture Tim in his bedroom. He’d be in a tee shirt and boxers. Or just boxers. Definitely didn’t strike her as a blue-pajamas kind of guy. “Look, if I’d slept with you tonight, that would’ve been it—at the next school meeting, as soon as I spotted you, I’d have to duck and run the other way.”
“Why? I don’t mind being used.”
“I’m serious. What I need is a friend.” Friend? What was she saying? Joan was a friend. She didn’t need more Joans. A fling. That’s what she wanted. Right? Yet Tim didn’t strike her as “fling” material.
“Fine. We take it slow.”
After she hung up and lay back down again, she did feel better, somewhat, until she automatically felt for her wristwatch to place on her night table. Tim was nice. And he was sexy. As Rannie settled back in bed, she told herself that she was not going to behave like some horny teenybopper the next time she saw him. But there was nothing wrong with a little fantasizing, especially since it always helped get her to sleep. All-natural Xanax.
Rannie closed her eyes. She imagined Tim beside her, the clean, guy smell of him, the warmth of his body so that she could almost feel his breath on her neck. Tim’s hand/her hand bunched up her nightgown and lazily, lightly began tracing ever narrowing circles around each of her breasts—first the left breast, then the right. A slow hand. Her legs spread involuntarily and the lovely throbbing increased while his hand/her hand moved down her body to the warm wet place between her legs. She drew up her knees and arched her back as his/her finger moved faster and faster. It was all for her. He wanted her to come and wouldn’t stop until she did. Rannie swallowed hard and stiffened the muscles in her back, pressing down, so that every bit of concentration was settled in that one spot. No thoughts. No worries, not right now. Just intense feeling that rose and rose; it was like swimming underwater, the pressure building inside her, becoming almost unbearable as she moved toward the surface. And then she burst free.
Five minutes later, she was asleep.