BY THE TIME evening drew near, I’d stared my entire day away and not come up with any ideas of what to do next. Emily hadn’t called. And I needed to leave the apartment. I needed to speak to another human being, so I texted Ginger, Wendi, and Lily.
It was shocking news to deliver over a table of drinks at Bar Nine—that early this morning one of us had been put into a cage. But their initial reactions, across the board, weren’t what I had expected. I thought Ginger would immediately insist that she actually had nothing to do with any of this. I thought Wendi might smash a glass against the wall or break someone’s neck. And I thought Lily would just pass out. Instead, they all went still.
I’d never seen such stillness over our table at Bar Nine. The only positive element I could glean from their sincere surprise and terror was that business at Titan today had obviously gone ahead as usual. Only Emily had been taken out, and it had been kept black-ops quiet.
“How many hours has it been since they carted her away?” Ginger asked after a solid sixty seconds of no one saying anything.
“I got the runaround all day,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me talk to her and she’s not allowed visitors.”
We all stared at my taciturn cell phone on the tabletop.
“How can they not even allow her a phone call?” Lily said, her voice cracking.
“Probably because Robert has everyone in his pocket,” I said. “Everyone answers to Robert. Anything he wants.” I could hear my own paranoia regarding Robert’s superpowers, which made them no less real. Even that big book of mental disorders used by psychiatrists worldwide to call crazy as they see it stated that you could be paranoid and also be right. I’d read that in an issue of The New Yorker at my dentist’s office, mistaking it for an article on the season finale of Homeland—but it still applied here.
“I hate to be the one to ask this”—Ginger’s usually sharp eyes had dulled to cloudy sea glass—“but should the rest of us be preparing for the police to yank us out of our apartments next?”
“Is that all you can think about right now?” I fired back at Ginger. “Yourself?”
“I hate to be the one to agree with Ginger about anything ever,” Wendi said, nervously flipping her Zippo lighter on and off. “But she’s right.”
If I knew Robert—and I did know Robert—he’d taken out Emily to make a statement so loud and clear that he wouldn’t have to be bothered going after everyone else. “I don’t think you should be worried,” I said. “Emily’s the one he chose to sacrifice. That’s how Robert operates.”
Ginger took a sip of her vodka gimlet, a sure sign she was beginning to feel better. “I guess it makes sense that Robert would want this to end quietly. It would only make him look bad if what we accomplished got out to the public.”
Wendi nodded her sad horns, which had faded to near invisibility. “This way he still wins. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky. But I don’t feel lucky; I feel like I want him to lose.” She flipped her Zippo on and off, then threw it onto the table with a force that nearly scared Lily off her chair.
“We have to get Emily out of there,” I said. “That’s what we should be focusing on.”
“We will.” Lily gripped the edge of her chair with both hands. “As soon as they actually charge her with something and set her bail.”
“If,” I said, because, again, I was afraid of what Robert was capable of. “If they set her bail.”
“Son of a bitch,” Wendi said.
“Emily’s screwed,” Ginger said.
“Oh aah well,” Lily said.
I was just about to give up on trying to find comfort in human contact and head home when my cell phone rang. I bumbled it to my ear. “Hello? Hello?”
All I could hear was measured sociopathic breathing on the other end.
“Emily?”
“We need to meet,” a brusque voice answered. “In an hour.”
“Who is this?” I took a few steps away from our table.
“Central Park, near the statue of the giant sled dog.”
I continued farther away from our table, holding my non-phone ear closed with my pointer finger. “Margie? Margie Fischer? Is that you?”
“Be there.” She hung up.
I slipped my phone into my jeans pocket and looked around. Ginger, Wendi, and Lily were waiting for me to return to the table, perched halfway out of their seats.
“Was that Emily?” Ginger asked when I reached them.
“No.” I grabbed my jacket and messenger bag from the back of my chair without sitting back down. “Wrong number.”
“Then where are you going?” Wendi squinted at me like she wasn’t buying it.
“I just can’t sit here anymore.” I threw my bag over my body like a sash. “I need some fresh air. I need to be alone.”
They believed me, because it was a very Tina Fontana reaction to have to the scalding disappointment of a wrong number when waiting for an important call. Still, I made sure none of them tried to follow me out of the bar.
27