All that had been changed by the condom. All that had been subsumed by the condom.
Here was the inescapable reality: ten years from now if she did not instantly make the synaptic leap to rubber when she thought Barbie, it would only be due to Alzheimer’s. Early-onset Alzheimer’s. Or, maybe, a traumatic brain injury. She looked around at the walls of the toy store, which were pink. She noted that the paisley swirls on the floor were pink. The lighting was a little pink. Sure, it was possible that a decade from now she might also think pink when she thought Barbie. She very likely might think plastic.
But first and forever? She was always going to think rubber.
She looked at her watch. They should probably continue on their way to Grand Central. They had to catch a train home.
…
Richard knew this was neither a vision nor a dream, and his first reaction was flight. He should continue right past his driveway. Instead of braking, he should hit the gas pedal and drive up the thin street off Pondfield Road. Drive around the block. Just take a moment and try and figure out what the hell the girl was thinking. But he didn’t. His brother might do that, but he wouldn’t. Instead he glided up his gently sloping driveway and came to a stop just before the garage doors.
The girl was sitting on the front stoop of his house, her chin resting on the knuckles of one hand, a cigarette dangling from the other. She was wearing a knit cap with the Giants’ logo—his team, a sign or a coincidence he couldn’t have said—and sunglasses, but he knew instantly it was her. He could see enough of her face. Her lips. Her posture. He recognized the leather jacket.
But he would have known it was her regardless of what she was wearing. It wouldn’t have taken a sixth sense. It took only a glimpse.
She didn’t move when he shut off the car engine and pulled the key from the ignition, but he could tell that she was watching him. He was watching her. She was wearing a miniskirt and boots, and he had one of those thoughts that was comically inappropriate in his mind, and caused his lips to quiver upward ever so slightly: What would the neighbors think? Hot girl in a miniskirt and boots, smoking a cigarette on my steps?
Well, never mind what they thought. They couldn’t possibly think less of him. He couldn’t possibly think less of himself.
Mostly, he realized, he was smiling because Alexandra was alive. That detective was wrong, all wrong. Thank God. (Had he murmured those two splendid words aloud in his seat? He thought he had.) Her decomposing body wasn’t about to wash ashore somewhere in Brooklyn or on Staten Island, or bump for hours against the stanchion of a Navy Yard dock before someone called 911 or fished it from the water. Nope. She had wound up…here. In Westchester. And she was, quite clearly, breathing. Not decapitated. Not drowned. He was so relieved that he was shivering ever so slightly when he climbed from the car. She didn’t stand until he had crossed the driveway and marched all the way up the slate walkway and front steps. When she finally did rise, she held her cigarette away from the two of them and bowed her head against his chest. He felt the wool cap against his neck and the earpiece to her sunglasses against his collarbone. He felt her whole body lean into him.
“I bet you did not expect to find courtesan back here,” she murmured.
Awkwardly he rubbed her shoulder blades. He felt simultaneously that it was morally wrong to touch her, and morally imperative that he did.
“No,” he agreed, “I didn’t. I…”
She waited.
“I was afraid something had happened to you.”
“You thought I might be dead.”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
He felt the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. “Nope. Still here.”
“I’m very glad. I was afraid for you.” He wondered if she knew her partner was dead. Sonja. He considered telling her where he had been earlier that day, but then thought better of that idea. In time. Maybe.
“I couldn’t think of anyplace else to go,” she murmured.
“Well, I might have started with the police,” he said, a suggestion born more of paternalism, he hoped, than self-preservation.
Abruptly she pushed him away with her free hand and took a step back. “No. I am not going to jail.”
He wished he could see her eyes behind the sunglasses. Was this an admission that she had shot the Russian in the front hallway?
“They showed me the Rikers Island. They told me about prisons in America,” she went on, her voice a little louder now, a little more frantic. “I know what goes on there. I know what really goes on there.”
“Whoa,” he told her, putting his hands up, palms open. He wasn’t sure who they were, but presumed it was whoever had brought her to America and then, most likely, butchered her friend. “Let’s go inside. Let’s talk, okay? I want to know who you are. Who you really are. I want to know what you need—what I can do.”
“You won’t call police guys?”
He shook his head. “I can’t promise that I never will. But I won’t right this minute.”
“Look…”