As he drove to Rite Aid, Steve wondered if the two agents were following him. He even wondered if they were watching him buy Afrin, pay for it, drive back. A hot sense of paranoia settled over him, like a flu.
He’d only been involved with feds once before and hated every part of the experience. Especially their sense of entitlement, their unspoken expectation that all should bow before their mighty authority. But they still put their pants on one leg at a time, unless Quantico was teaching them new tricks.
So having a couple of agents show up at his sanctum sanctorum was not his idea of a great way to finish the night.
Mrs. Stanky was waiting for him at her open door, arms folding over her oxygen tubes. “What took you so long?” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Stanky. I had something come up.”
“You mean those men? Who were they?”
“Oh, just some gentlemen with questions.”
“Questions? What kind of questions?”
“Mrs. Stanky, let’s get you sitting down.” Steve had done this several times before. The excitable old woman, a former grade-school teacher, needed to keep her blood pressure down.
He took her arm and guided her into the apartment, which smelled of hard-boiled eggs and walnuts. She resisted only slightly.
“I have a right to know what’s been going on outside my door,” she insisted. “Were they police?”
“No, not police. Now why don’t — ”
“FBI?”
“You’re a curious one, aren’t you?”
“What did they have questions about?”
“Feeding stray cats. I guess you were right to make a federal case out of it.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Not the first time,” Steve said. He got her settled on the brown sofa with red throw pillows, then opened the Afrin spray for her, putting the bottle on the coffee table.
“There,” Steve said. “You need anything else?”
“How come you have the FBI after you? What have you been doing?”
Resigned to his fate, Steve said. “Now don’t you worry. You know I’m a lawyer, right? It’s just a business call. I may be able to help those gentlemen on a case.” Or not.
“Why did a nice young man like you become a lawyer?”
“Oh, well, I guess it’s the only profession that would have me.”
“You could have been something respectable.”
“Like a teacher maybe?”
“That’s right. Molding the young. Setting an example. Instead of trying to bend the rules.”
Steve cleared his throat. “I better get back. Are you all right?”
“Turn on the TV for me, will you?”
“Sure.” Steve looked for a remote, found the tail end of it sticking out from under one of the throw pillows. He clicked the tube on.
“Anything you want to watch?” he asked.
“See if you can find a Matlock. I haven’t seen Matlock in a long time.”
“Uh, I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Can you find anything close?”
He did the best he could, which was an old Law & Order. That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Stanky.
He thought about his mother just then. She’d been a TV watcher near the end. Couldn’t do much else as the cancer ate away at her. But whenever he would visit her at hospice, after school, she’d always want him to read to her.
Her favorite was Dickens. Steve read her David Copperfield. She’d smile and close her eyes and drift off to sleep. Maybe dreaming of Peggotty and Barkis, whom she loved. “Barkis is willin’ ” made her laugh.
The last time he’d read to her, the night she died, her eyes never opened. He was reading the part where Aunt Betsey faces down the Murdstones. A good scene to end on, he thought. He cried for three hours after he left, before Mr. Casey, his first foster father, told him to shut up or he’d do the job himself.
So a little Law & Order to comfort an old woman hooked up to a tank. Not much, but maybe not so bad when you got right down to it.
She asked if he’d like to stay and watch. He waited until Jerry Orbach started grilling a witness. Always good, that Orbach. At the commercial Steve patted Mrs. Stanky’s hand and said, “I think they can win this one without me.”
Mrs. Stanky smiled, and that was a good note on which to let himself out the door.