Three

SASHA’S APARTMENT IS NEAR THE RIVER, ON THE FRINGE OF SOCIETY HILL’S smartly restored Colonial streets. I could and would have walked there if the weather, my sinuses, or my spirits had been in better shape.

Which is to say I drove, and which isn’t to say I was thereby warm or insulated. I have a ’65 Mustang. Wine-red burgundy. Convertible. Classic. Once upon a time, it was a part of my brother-in-law Sam’s brief youth. When he mutated into corporate lawyerhood, a secondhand sporty car no longer fit his image, but there I was, without an image and with tongue hanging out.

That was many years and payments ago. Both the buggy and I had aged considerably in the interim. In the case of the car, it was most obvious in the cracked and gaping plastic rear window, which I could not afford to repair, and which turned the car into a mobile wind tunnel as I drove. The only reason I kept the top up was to fool pedestrians into thinking I was sane and snug.

I didn’t lock up when I parked. Why irritate thieves too dumb to notice that they could stroll in through the back window?

The foyer of Sasha’s building was marvelously overheated, and I bathed in the hot dry air. With one hand I pushed the Berg button. With the other and a tissue, I ministered to my nose.

“It’s me,” I said into the little grill.

“Bea who?”

“Mandy! Remember? From third grade on?”

“Your ridiculous ailment is getting boring,” she said, but she took pity and buzzed me in.

As my head warmed up, it attempted to function again, which wasn’t good news. I didn’t want to think about the book and the questions that had brought me here.

“Mulled wine,” Sasha said as she opened the door. She wore a hooded robe Merlin would have coveted. Her jet-black hair was pulled to the side and held with silver spirals of ribbon.

“Is that the secret password?” I asked.

“It’ll cure what ails you.” I followed her into her kitchen and watched her pour wine and spices into a pot. Almost instantly, the long narrow room was perfumed with lemon and cinnamon. The scents were its only decor. The rest of Sasha’s apartment was a lush confusion of art deco, Victorian whatnots, poufs, jukeboxes, and anything else that caught her fancy. But the kitchen doubled as her darkroom, a Spartan and utilitarian laboratory. You could roll up the blackout shades and perform an emergency appendectomy on the counters any time they didn’t sport trays of developer.

“Do you always have mulling spices on hand?” I asked. Another reason the kitchen was generally pristine was that Sasha was as domesticated as an aardvark.

“Doesn’t everybody?” We hovered around the little caldron. “So. What brings you to my door on such a miserable evening? Don’t you have anything better to do? Where’s Eliot Ness?”

“He’s, um, expecting company. A friend from out of town.”

“What kind of friend?”

“The goes-way-back kind.” I cleared my throat. “You know, I was sorting for that stupid Not-a-Garage Sale and—”

“I dropped off a ton of things,” she said.

“Actually, that’s what I—”

“I don’t work there or have kids there, but I did it for the greater good of Philly Prep. Is that unselfish or what?”

“Very impressive, and since you mentioned it, there was a donation I wanted to ask about, but it’s a little awkward.”

It’s hard for a six foot tall, voluptuous woman dressed in a medieval sweep of embroidered velvet to look embarrassed, but Sasha managed. “Look,” she said, “I was going to say…you know how much I brought in, but there was one thing…”

“Yes?”

“Oh, it’s too…never mind.” She bent over the saucepan and inhaled. “Do this,” she said. “The steam will cure you. Hot air’s the secret. Honestly.”

I complied. It wasn’t possible to imitate Sasha’s deep breath. It also wasn’t possible to say much in that position. I stood up. Sasha was setting out glass mugs and rooting in her pantry. “I met a plant man today,” she said. “Not the kind who comes to your house and waters things. The kind who studies them.”

“We were talking about your donation,” I reminded her.

“It’ll wait. Inhale again.” She’d found an open box of Oreos. I hoped they were soggy or ant-ridden. I swore that even if they were in perfect crunchy condition, I wouldn’t so much as open one to lick the filling. I had to be bikini-ready for that beach next month. I bent over and let more warm fragrance work on me.

“This guy’s field is safe sex for plants,” Sasha said.

I stood back up again. “It’s hard to imagine a daisy playing around. What do they do about those roots?”

“No, no—it’s the birds and the bees. Or the birds and the moths. They spread anther smut—is that a great name or what? Can you imagine a mother daisy warning her daughter about anther smut? You keep your petals closed, you hear? You want to be an anther smut slut like that gladiola nobody talks to anymore?”

“Why aren’t we talking about the thing you brought for the Not-a-Garage Sale?”

“Because it’s too stupid and I’m really embarrassed. Forget it.”

“Look, Sasha, I know.”

“You do?” Her eyes widened.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“How on earth did you find out?”

“Didn’t you expect me to? Or somebody?”

She fiddled with a silver earring. “I’m sorry I did it.”

“Don’t be. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I didn’t say ashamed. I said sorry.”

“I…” This was new and frightening turf I was trodding. No matter what the book said, people I knew didn’t get involved with lowlife woman-beaters, certainly not a smart Amazon like Sasha.

I watched her unearth a tarnished silver tray, a souvenir of one of her marriages. She filled the mugs and put them and the Oreo box on the tray, then regally carried it into the living room, where we settled on opposite ends of a forest-green sofa covered with enormous down pillows.

I was suddenly suspicious of my old friend’s long, draped sleeves. I had thought of the velvet caftan as eccentric, as was most of her wardrobe, but now I realized it hid every bit of her except hands, face, and the bare feet she tucked under her.

“So, how did you find out so quickly?” she asked.

“I, er…” My tongue felt as large as the sofa pillows, and, too late, I remembered that you weren’t to mix antihistamines, even of the non-drowsy-making variety, and alcohol, even of the quasi-medicinal sort.

“Looks like I’m in real trouble.”

I credited her jokey tone to nervousness. “I’m here to help,” I said.

She stood up. “Okay, I confess and repent. I’ll turn it over. I have it here.”

Alcoholic antihistamine toxicity had rotted my mind. What it could she turn over? The it was in my briefcase.

Sasha went to a draped table near the window and lifted something. “I swear I was going to tell you and give a donation. It’s not like I’m stealing.”

It was a carved wooden picture frame burdened with cherubs and grape leaves and tiny birds with open beaks, all so diminutive they blurred into lumps, like mahogany acne.

“That’s what you’re talking about?”

“Mrs. O’Roarke upstairs donated it, but I couldn’t resist.”

“You could have said you wanted it, Sash.”

“You said teachers got first pick. I’m not a teacher.”

“Honestly, who on earth besides you would want the thing?”

She sat back down. “Are you kidding?” She eyed the frame lovingly.

“It’s yours,” I said. “Consider it a gift from Mrs. O’Roarke.” With that nonissue resolved, the unspoken topic again loomed. Just because she’d lifted a picture frame didn’t mean she hadn’t also donated a frightening book. I risked further pharmaceutical danger by downing more spicy wine for courage. Then I made my voice as casual as I could manage. “Still seeing Mr. Marvelous?” Her latest reminded me of Bluto, with pecs larger than his IQ.

“You are insufferably prejudiced,” she said.

A real bruiser, she’d called him a while back. Only an expression, of course, but suddenly an ominous and perverse way to describe a man.

“And the answer is no.”

“Why? What did he do to you?” It blurted out. Stupid, I silently shouted at myself.

Sasha looked understandably confused. “He did a lot of extremely interesting things to me,” she said. “You want lascivious details?”

“I meant…why aren’t you still seeing him?”

“Because I’m not farsighted enough. He went home to Wisconsin. To study nursing. Easy come, easy go.”

“Sasha, tell the truth. Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “He always said he was going to leave. I expected it.”

“I don’t mean your feelings. I mean you. Your body.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes. Did he ever hold a gun to your head?”

“Are you nuts? He’s studying to be a nurse, Mandy. Besides, no man ever lifted a—” Her eyes narrowed over the rim of her cup. “What’s really eating you? You’ve been edgy since you walked in. I thought it was your cold, but honestly—” She stopped for a second. “Oh, Mandy,” she moaned. “Oh, my. I had no idea. But I’ve read about it. They get desensitized. You can understand, after what they see. But my God, to put his gun to your head!”

“My head? Who?”

“You can’t let him push you around. He’s used to criminals. I see movies. I know. Good cop, bad cop, all that business; but you aren’t one of his—”

“I’m not talking about Mackenzie!”

“Who else are you seeing? I thought—”

“Stop thinking. Nobody’s hurting me.” Even though I’d assumed that Sasha might be the victim, I was, in truth, insulted that she thought I could be. Even though the book had specified that violent men were in every walk of life and in every profession, I had added a small footnote that exempted any man I’d date. “I asked a question,” I said. “My class read Taming of the Shrew and it led to a discussion of that kind of behavior.”

“Abuse?”

I nodded. “But only in general. I don’t know anybody like that, do you?”

“How would I know? It’s not something people discuss. I remember a cousin of the second or third or once-removed type.” She poured us more glog. “She showed up at a family wedding with a black eye. I was about nine and I asked her what happened. She said she’d fallen, and I couldn’t figure out how she’d hit her eye, so I asked more questions and everybody shushed me, said I was rude. The family considered her a clumsy woman, always tripping and banging herself up. She looked so sad all the time and her husband was an angry, mean guy.”

“Did she—what happened to her?”

“I don’t know. They moved away and we never heard from them again and nobody tried to find out. I think we not only had a family skeleton, but we had one with bruises. But who knows what’s really happening to anybody?” She looked at me intently. “So okay, Mackenzie doesn’t beat up on you. What does he do? And by the way, who’s this gal enjoying his Southern hospitality?”

“How did you know it was a—”

“Who is she?”

I refilled my cup until it nearly did runneth over. The more I drank, the less either Mackenzie’s guest or my cold symptoms troubled me. “Old friend of the family.”

“Not nearly old enough, I bet. You look miserable.”

“I’m sick.”

“Just barely. You’re man-miserable.”

“Well, okay, they were involved in college.”

Sasha sat up straighter. “An item?”

“Fifteen years ago. Long since and completely over.” I was parroting his words, trying to make them believable.

“Why’s she visiting after a decade and a half?”

I shook my head. “Just got divorced. They’ve stayed in touch. Families know each other, or something.”

“I don’t like the sound of it,” Sasha said. “Not that you couldn’t do better than a homicide cop who is never around when you need him but who makes time for a Southern belle. Is she? Southern?”

I nodded.

“So Scarlett—” Sasha said.

“Her name’s Jinx. As in bad luck.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s undoubtedly a fluttery dimwit who gets the vapors.”

“She’s an MBA management consultant.” Mention of Jinx’s résumé had the same effect on my system as a germ. My throat burned raw and painfully.

“Oh, then she’s the hard-as-nails type.” I admired Sasha’s loyalty, particularly given her disapproval of Mackenzie, or more accurately, of what she saw as my overattachment to him. “A bitch,” said Sasha. “A shrew.”

Shrew. The word started a headache all over my skull. I didn’t want to think beyond this warm overstuffed room, the pleasant haze of wine. But part of me had defected back to the conversation after school, the research project, and then inevitably, the book. My entire head, even my nose, felt arthritic.

Sasha wasn’t the woman crying for help, but that didn’t make everything sugar and spice. “There’s a book in my briefcase,” I said just before I sneezed again. I pulled tissues out of my pocket.

Sasha extracted a volume. “What on earth?” Her voice was heavy with scorn. “A Million Ways to Meet Men?”

I blew my nose. “Not that book!” I said, but she was already engrossed, eyes wide, voice astonished.

“‘Smile a lot,’” she read out loud. “‘Try to get on The Dating Game.’ Honest to God, Mandy! Just because the fuzz has a female visitor, there’s no need to be this desperate!”

“I didn’t mean that b—”

She shrieked. “‘Go to funerals and pretend to know the deceased. There are lots of cute mourners.’ This is the most disgusting, pornographic—”

My cheeks were on fire, and not from mulled wine. I rummaged in my briefcase. “That wasn’t the book I meant,” I said. “My mother sent that one. I brought it along as a joke.”

“Confess. You carry it with you at all times for inspiration and guidance.” Then she looked at her watch and nearly jumped. “Have to rush,” she said. “Company’s coming in fifteen minutes.”

“Mr. Anther Smut?”

“Dr. Anther Smut to you.” She fluffed the sofa pillow she’d abandoned. “And nope. Not him. Somebody very un-Bluto. No pecs. No personality. A genuine business degree, like Jinx. Straight job. Even your mother would approve.” She started fluffing sofa pillows while I was still on them, unsubtly indicating that I should head for the door.

I put the dating primer back in my briefcase and looked for my coat. “I need to be clear on something,” I said. “The items you dropped off weren’t all yours, then, were they?”

She picked up the ugly picture frame and looked a little sheepish. “Obviously not.”

“There was a carton with your name. It was filled with books. Do you remember where it came from?” The question ached, like a verbal sore throat.

She interrupted her frenetic housekeeping to direct a peculiar look my way. “I didn’t filch any books.”

“I didn’t say you did. I just need to know where the books came from.”

“But you do know. Remember?”

I was determined not to.

“Sure you do. I told you all about it. For my photo essay on greed, when I went to the baby birthday party? Those five-year-old buggers were terrific. Absolute monsters. Got unbelievable shots.”

I wished I had never asked.

“You look weird,” she said. “Are there books missing, too? Or do you think I illegally procured the carton for the sale?” She laughed. “Mom was right. One misstep and your reputation’s ruined. I should never have touched that picture frame. But check it out yourself.” She herded me toward the door. “When your own sister tells you she gave me those books—”

Your own sister. Precisely what I’d been determined not to hear. My own sister.

“Ask her, ask Beth,” Sasha said.

My degree of not wanting to hear, not wanting to know, was tenfold what it had been an hour ago. Outside Sasha’s window the last light of day gasped and dissolved into the gritty sidewalk. The landscape inside her bright apartment felt just as bleak. So did the one inside my brain.

“Ask her,” Sasha repeated with a tolerant, if patronizing smile for her friend the worrier. “It’ll set your mind at ease.”

I wished I could let her know how incredibly wrong she was.