KATHRYN HAD BEEN living in London for years, along with their son. Hers and Richie’s. Richard Felix Burke, I knew, was six now. She’d left for London before his first birthday. And once she had left, she’d done everything possible to keep Richie from the boy, especially after she’d moved in with a rich new boyfriend in Knightsbridge.
Now she was back. Developing story, as they said on the news shows.
I didn’t call Richie back. I called Spike instead.
“The bitch is back,” I said.
“Elton John’s?” he said. “That bitch?”
“Richie’s.”
“The fair Kathryn?”
“Her.”
“Fuck,” he said.
“And, sometimes because there is bad news everywhere, I am considering doing some work for Tony Marcus,” I said.
“I hope you’re not driving,” Spike said. “Because you’re obviously drunk.”
“Not yet,” I said, “but perhaps soon,” and I asked where he was.
He told me he was walking up Boylston, had just passed Trinity Church, and asked where I was. I told him. He said he’d meet me at the Bristol bar at the Four Seasons in half an hour. I told him not to start without me. He made no promises.
I fed Rosie, walked up Charles and across the Public Garden to the Four Seasons. I still didn’t call Richie back. I wanted some time to think. And have a drink with Spike, which sometimes could be more therapeutic than a spa day.
We sat at a table near one of the windows. Outside, in what little was left of the afternoon light, snow had begun to fall. We were working on martinis. My plan was to stick with one, not just because of the hour, but because I didn’t want to be half-drunk when I finally did speak with Richie.
When we sat down, Spike asked whether I wanted to talk about Tony first or Kathryn first. I said Tony. He said, “In the whole cockeyed grand scheme of things, wouldn’t that be burying the lede?”
“Maybe it’s simply avoidance,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “But only until our second drink.”
“I can’t believe she’s back,” I said.
“That bitch,” he said.
We drank to that.
“Okay, first things first,” Spike said. “Why would you possibly think you can trust Tony?”
“He said it himself today,” I said. “For a fancified thug, his word has mostly been good in the past. And the more he talked about Lisa Morneau, the more he made me curious about her.”
“He’s still a goddamn thug, and killer when he has to be,” Spike said.
“Crazy world,” I said.
“His or yours?” Spike said.
“Ours,” I said. “But all things considered, I’d rather not be on his bad side until the end of days.”
“When he wants something,” Spike said, “that’s his only side.”
“I think that a lot of this might simply involve male ego,” I said.
“That disgusting thing.”
“He’s getting older. Now he’s been left by a younger woman, and a younger guy is making a move on him, in his own backyard.”
Spike plucked an olive with his fingers, ate it, and finished his martini. As he waved at our waiter, he asked if I wanted another. I told him I was good.
“Our waiter’s upper body looks rather well developed.”
“Does it ever end?” I said.
“Rhetorical question?” he said.
He was wearing his new black cashmere jacket and a powder-blue shirt. There was, I noticed, and not for the first time, more gray in his beard than on top of his head. But then who was I to talk about coloring hair?
The waiter brought Spike his second martini. He said it was his last one, and then he was headed from here over to his place, Spike’s, on Marshall Street, to get ready for the evening’s festivities.
“A lot can go wrong between you and Tony,” he said.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to make my own way in a man’s world,” I said. “Well, guess what? The world in which this missing woman has somehow survived is a whole lot tougher than mine. Now she’s knocked Tony back, at least a little bit. Come on. You’d want to meet her, too.”
“But you’re going to be taking his money.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, and explained the deal Tony had offered me.
“So it’s pro bono work?”
“Might be,” I said.
“I don’t like that look,” Spike said.
“What look?” I said, trying to sound innocent.
“The look that says you’re already working on some kind of backup plan before you even tell him ‘yes,’” Spike said.
“More like an exit ramp,” I said, and sipped my drink. “And if something does go wrong, I have the same old backup plan as always.”
Spike raised an eyebrow.
“You,” I said.
“Shit!” he said. “I was afraid of that.”
“You aren’t afraid of anything,” I said.
“Neither are you,” Spike said. “So, if I might now change the subject, what has you so spooked about Kathryn?”
“Rhetorical question?” I said.
There was piped-in music now at the Bristol bar. I liked things better when they still had a piano player. It joined a long list of things, and places, I liked better the way they used to be. I sighed.
“What a day,” I said.
“Not yet over,” Spike said.
“Tony’s woman left him,” I said, “and the one Richie was married to after me comes back.”
“Richie likes you better.”
“She gave him a child.”
“Not like it was family planning,” Spike said.
“Still.”
“She’s also the woman in his life who moved to London with their son because Richie liked you better,” Spike said.
That was exactly what she had done. Spike knew the story. Kathryn had gotten pregnant as a way of trying to save her marriage to Richie, certain that he would never leave her if she did present him with a child. I felt the same way when I found out she was pregnant, and when Richard Felix Burke was born. We both turned out to be wrong. It was about all Kathryn and I had in common, other than both of us loving Richie.
Richie told her that he always wanted to be a part of the boy’s life, that he knew he could be a good father to Richard even after the divorce.
“I thought you loved me,” Kathryn said at the time.
“I did,” Richie said. “And I always will. And I will love my son the best way I know how. But I can’t stay with you while loving Sunny more.”
Spike had always said it was amazing, Kathryn being a bad sport about something like that.
So she had moved back to London, where her mother still lived. Maybe she was still holding out hope that he would leave Boston and follow her there and the three of them could become one big, happy family. I could have told her there was as much chance of the Prudential Center moving over there.
More likely, or so I’d always thought, she just wanted to make it as difficult as possible for Richie to see his son, out of spite. Or all-around, world-class bitchiness.
At first Richie had tried, flying frequently over to London the first year after Kathryn had left. He always took a room at The Milestone, a boutique hotel where he and I had stayed once when I decided I needed to see Princess Diana’s dresses. But the year after that, and after her mother had died, Kathryn had moved in with the richer, older boyfriend, one who was a big deal in the restaurant business.
Kathryn then informed Richie that the boyfriend would now become the primary father figure in the boy’s life, at which point Richie asked her why, to learn how to make a proper kale salad?
Richie would still fly over occasionally. But Kathryn, with the boyfriend’s help, would sometimes make him wait days to even see his son.
When Richie complained about that, to both of them, the boyfriend had said, “Maybe you should take us to family court, dear boy.”
“Or just go fuck myself?” Richie said.
“Or that.”
Richie had flown back to Boston the next day. That was eight months ago.
Lately Richie had talked about being a father about as often as he spoke of the Kardashians. And we were back together, or as together as two people living apart could be. Still, I knew him well enough to know that the distance between him and his son was a lingering, constant, profound sadness in his life.
Except now his son was back. Along with his mother.
“We don’t know why she decided to come back,” Spike said.
“We do not.”
“I’m assuming she has the boy with her,” he said.
“Same,” I said.
“But until you speak with Richie, we don’t know how long they might be back for,” Spike said. “Or if she might be back for good.”
“Fuckety fuck,” I said.
“You stole that from me.”
“It seemed to fit the moment.”
“You have clearly delayed speaking to Richie about all of this,” Spike said.
“I wanted to organize my thoughts,” I said.
“With old Dr. Spike.”
“What does that say about me?”
“I’m afraid you and Dr. Silverman will have to sort that out,” he said.
Susan Silverman was my therapist.
There was still a little bit left of my martini. I drank it. The vodka wasn’t making me feel any better. But I had to admit, it hadn’t made me feel any worse, either.
“I’ll find out more when Richie and I do speak.”
“No point in putting it off much longer.”
“I know,” I said. “You think it might help my thought organization to have a second martini?”
“If you have to ask that,” Spike said, “I don’t even know you anymore.”
He reached over and picked up my right hand and kissed the back of it. He was my best friend in the world if you didn’t count Rosie the dog. He was handsome in a rugged way, more ripped than he’d ever been, big and fearless and loyal and dangerous as hell when he needed to be. I’d always told him that if he weren’t gay, I’d marry him.
He said he’d rather I adopted him.
“Maybe she got dumped,” I said. “Kathryn.”
“Ever hopeful,” Spike said.
“You know what’s crazy?” I said.
“Do tell.”
“That I really might be more worried about Richie’s ex-wife being back in my life, even temporarily, than I am about Tony Marcus,” I said.
Spike paid the check. It was snowing harder when we got outside. Spike said he’d walk me home. I said he didn’t have to. He said he wanted to, and he liked walking across the park in the snow, it made him feel young and gay instead of old and gay.
When we got to my door he said, “This probably doesn’t mean anything.”
“Nope,” I said.
“Probably just a visit,” he said.
“Yup,” I said.
“Talked out for now?” he said.
“Yup,” I said.
He said I should call him in the morning, or later tonight, if I felt the urge. Then he put his arms around me. I told him he was almost the perfect man. He said, “Why almost?” I told him it might have something to do with his new scent.
“What kind of cologne is that?” I said.
“Not cologne,” he said, trying to sound offended. “Tom Ford all-over body spray.”
I told him that was way too much information.
“I might wait until tomorrow to call Richie,” I said.
“That ought to show him,” Spike said.
He kissed the top of my head and walked back toward Charles Street in the snow, and I went inside, where I was greeted exuberantly by Rosie. I had checked my phone before leaving the Bristol bar. There had been no further messages from Richie. I checked it again now. Still no messages. Were they having a family dinner? Where was she staying? Were Kathryn and Richard staying with him?
All I had to do was call. I always wanted to be the finder-out of things, smartest girl in the class. Just not at this moment. I took Rosie out, then fixed myself some pasta, melted some butter over it, added some Parmesan. I watched the Nightly News with Lester Holt, absorbed hardly any of it, except another story about legalized marijuana. Eventually they were going to be selling it at Stop & Shop. I went upstairs and took a long bath, came back down and built a fire, and put Ben Webster on Melanie Joan’s world-class sound system. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. I fixed myself a small Jameson and took up one end of the couch. Rosie had the other. I had developed a taste for jazz long after a taste for Irish whiskey, but they seemed to fit together perfectly.
The way Richie and I had lately fit together, perhaps as well as we ever had, including when we were married and living together.
There was no reason for me to think things wouldn’t continue to go well for us, perhaps to infinity and beyond, whether Kathryn was back in Boston or not. Richie and I had teamed up when he’d been shot and his family had come under threat. We were as close as we had ever been, even without any current discussion about ever moving back in together, or remarrying.
Where was he?
Where were they?
I picked up a book I’d been reading by Joni Mitchell that included song lyrics and poetry and sketches and oil paintings that I thought were quite good, wondering all over again how one woman could have that much art in her.
I read for a while and studied some of that art and then closed the book and said out loud, “How come he hasn’t called again?”
Rosie instantly became alert, thinking a surprise treat might be in play. Even after establishing there wasn’t, she continued to stare at me. There were a few similarities between her and the original Rosie, whom Richie and I had shared custody of after our divorce. The big one was this:
She seemed to have the ability to stare all the way into my soul.
“Okay, okay,” I said to her. “I get it. I’m acting like a wife.”
I knew I had no right to act like a wife wondering why hubby wasn’t home from the office yet. I had no reason to be jealous. I told myself again that none of this was his doing. Since his divorce from Kathryn, their relationship had been about as amicable as the Israelis and Palestinians.
The snow was blowing sideways by now. The fire began to die out. I put on my coat, slipped into my new UGGs, took Rosie out one last time, cleaned up after her once she’d completed her nightly duties, locked the door when we were back inside, set the alarm, carried her up with me to the master bedroom, and set her down at her end of Melanie Joan’s bed, which was big enough on which to land Air Force One.
I brushed my teeth, applied some moisturizer, checked my bedside table to make sure that my Glock was where it was supposed to be. I checked my phone again. Still nothing more from Richie. It was only ten o’clock. But it had been a long day. I felt myself smiling, thinking that hanging with Tony Marcus might have been the highlight of it, and how crazy was that?
I had also decided that under the guise of working for him, I might actually be working for Lisa Morneau, if I could find her. Some kind of sisterhood thing. Just from different sides of the street, so to speak.
Still no calls or texts from Richie.
I shut off the light.
Then my phone.
That would show him.