No surprise there.
Trixie had been a friend—and just a friend—for a few years now. We’d lived a couple of doors down from her when we still had our house in suburban Oakwood. I was working from home back then, and Trixie was operating a home-based business as well. I was naive enough, at first, to think it was accounting. I was not, at the time, a person who was very good at picking up the signals, and there were plenty of them—think of immense, flashing billboards—to indicate that Trixie was not making a living doing people’s tax returns.
We’d already established a friendship when I learned the true nature of Trixie’s business, and for reasons I can’t totally explain, we remained friends. I’m not exactly the kind of person who befriends people who live on the edge of the law.
It’s not that I think I’m better than them. It’s just that I’m the kind of guy who panics if he hasn’t paid his parking ticket on time. Or I would be, if I weren’t the kind of person who runs back to the meter five minutes ahead of time to plug in a few more nickels.
Trixie tried to smile as she reached for the phone, but she had to know that this was more than a social visit. There had been some frantic calls in the last hour to allow this face-to-face meeting.
“Zack, Jesus, what are you doing here?”
“Hi, Trixie,” I said.
“I get this message, my lawyer’s setting up a meeting with you, very urgent. What’s going on?”
Her lawyer wouldn’t have been able to tell her. I hadn’t been able to tell him. I’d had to convince him that he had to let me see his client without revealing why. If Trixie wanted to tell him what I’d had to say, afterwards, that was her call.
It couldn’t be mine.
“I have some things to tell you,” I said, “but I need you to remain cool when I do.”
“What?”
“Are you listening? You have to stay calm and listen to what I have to say.”
Her eyes were darting nervously about. No matter how bad she might think what I was going to tell her was, it was going to be worse.
“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s bad,” I said, lowering my voice as I spoke into the receiver. “They’ve got her.”
The look in Trixie’s eyes told me there was no need to be more specific. She knew exactly who I was talking about.
Of course, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. There were a whole lot of things that led up to this point.
And a whole lot that happened after.
Maybe I should back up a bit.
2
“I NEED TWENTY BUCKS,” said Paul, our seventeen-year-old.
Sarah and I were at the kitchen table, the dirty dinner dishes cleared but still sitting next to the sink, waiting to be dealt with. We had poured ourselves some wine. Sarah had brought home a bottle of Beringer and we had filled our glasses to the top when our son popped his head in.
“What for?” Sarah asked after a large slurp of white zinfandel.
“Just stuff,” Paul said. “We might go to the movies or something.”
“A movie isn’t twenty bucks,” I said. “Yet.”
Paul sighed. “Popcorn? You want me to watch a movie without popcorn?”
I looked at Sarah. She said, “I wouldn’t be able to sleep if that happened.”
I said, “Didn’t I give you twenty bucks a couple of days ago?”
Another sigh. “It was three days ago.”
“Okay,” I said. “So it was three days ago. Where did that twenty dollars go?”
“Screw it, never mind,” Paul said, and withdrew.
“Hang on a second, pal,” I said, and was starting to get up from my chair when Sarah reached over and grabbed my arm.
“Sit down,” she said. “Let him go.” I settled back into the chair. “Have some more wine.” She topped up my glass. “He’s just being a D.H.” Parental shorthand for dickhead.
“No kidding,” I said. Paul’s in his last year of high school, and he’s a pretty good kid, all things considered. But sometimes, I just wanted to ground him for a month or two, only at someone else’s house.
I sipped my wine.
“Not like that,” Sarah said. “You’re drinking like a girl. Here, watch me.” She tipped back her nearly full glass, polished it off in four swallows. She put the glass back down, said, “Hit me.”
I filled it.
“We need to do this more often,” Sarah said. “It’s been kind of stressful around here lately, in case you hadn’t noticed.”