It was the fact that I hadn’t been honest with her. I hadn’t told Sarah what Trixie had asked of me. I hadn’t told her I’d agreed to at least meet with Trixie and Martin Benson.
The way Sarah must have seen it was, if I hadn’t disclosed the details of that conversation with Trixie, what other conversations with her had I failed to fill her in on?
Once, a couple of years ago, when I’d made a joke that I was not having an affair with someone, Sarah had laughed. It was the one thing she knew she’d never have to worry about, she said. I could never pull it off, I’d have too guilty a conscience, my face would betray me when I attempted a lie.
Plus there was the part about my loving Sarah more than any other woman in the world.
But I’d crossed a line somewhere, and was over it before I’d realized it. My marriage to Sarah meant a lot more to me than my friendship with Trixie. And if that meant distancing myself from her, then that’s what I’d have to—
My phone rang.
Did the Metropolitan switchboard already know I was here, and not out in the newsroom?
“Walker,” I said, picking up.
“It’s happened,” Trixie said.
“What?”
“My picture. It’s in the paper. Fucking amazing picture too. Must have been shot with a telephoto. No camera phone shot.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Maybe you could tell me why your paper shot it?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“There’s this little line, under the picture.”
“A photo credit,” I said.
“Whatever. It says, ‘Special to the Suburban by Lesley Carroll, slash, The Metropolitan.’ She must have been parked up the street from the house, took my picture as I was going from the car to the house. I’m fucked.”
Lesley Carroll took the picture? One of our photogs? I thought about it for a moment, and it started to make sense. Magnuson tells his old buddy Blair, Hey, our Walker guy messed with your guy over a picture of this woman? Leave it with us. We’ll get you a picture. We’ll send one of our people. We’ve got shooters who’ve been to Iraq and back. Think we can’t get a shot of this, what’s her name? Trixie Snelling? We’ve got this young intern, eager to make a name for herself as a photographer. You can bet she’ll get you your picture. Consider it our way of saying we’re sorry.
That’s how it must have gone.
“I’m sorry, Trixie. I really am.”
“This couldn’t happen at a worse time. With those guys in town, trying to sell stun guns.”
“Trixie, I have to go.”
“Didn’t you check those guys out? Didn’t I tell you to?”
“Trixie, I’m sorry.”
And I ended the call.
For a while, Miranda was your basic street kid. Stopped going to school, gravitated to the big city, hung around teen drop-in shelters, slept someplace different every night, got a bucket and a squeegee and tried to make some money cleaning people’s windshields. Most of them, they pretended not to see you when you tried to make eye contact. If you could catch their eye, wave the squeegee, smile nice, make them realize you weren’t some crazy crackhead or something, they might give you the nod, let you clean their window, they’d give you a couple quarters, maybe a buck if you were lucky. But mostly they ignored you, or waved you away, or told you “Fuck off, you miserable cocksucking whore, go get a real job like everybody else.”
But she still made a good buck. She got to where she could guess who’d let her squeegee and who wouldn’t. She did better with men, not so good with lady drivers. She figured, maybe the men are less intimidated. “You dumb ass,” one of her coworkers said. “You wonder why you do okay with the guys? Look at you. Leaning over their window with those knockers? That one guy, he drove around the block, didn’t you notice you did his window twice in five minutes? Shit, you look like that, what are you cleaning fucking windshields for? You could be making a fortune doing something else.”
“I’m not hooking,” Miranda said.
“Who said anything about hooking? You’re like a dancer, leaping between those cars. Go on stage, dance around, shake ’em. Beats cleaning somebody’s windshield when it’s ten below.”
Miranda had never really thought of herself as good-looking. Compliments weren’t exactly handed out back home. Somebody told her there was a bar up in Canborough where they were looking for strippers. She should check it out, they said.