Sugar (17 page)

Jonathan brightened. “I was, wasn’t I?”

“Thanks for a lovely afternoon,” Liz put in.

“I had a great time,” Cole insisted. Lowering his gaze back to Jonathan, he added, “I’ll take a rain check on that ice cream.”

Jonathan’s big brown eyes met his. “Promise?”

Cole nodded solemnly. “How’s next Saturday sound?”

Jonathan beamed up at him. “That’d be
awesome
!” He edged his gaze over to his mom’s. “If it’s okay with my mom?”

Liz hesitated. “Actually, your taking Jonathan that day would be a huge help. I have a . . . doctor’s appointment at noon that will take a couple of hours.” She looked over at Sarah.

The appointment was another chemo treatment, and Liz was guaranteed to be wiped out afterward, as well as possibly puking. “I’m going with Liz that day, so if you’re free—”

“Sarah can message me your address,” Cole broke in, stepping back from Jonathan and swiveling to Sarah. “Or better yet, we’ll come over together,” he added.

Offering to keep her friend’s kid, making plans a week out, plans that involved her, he certainly acted like they were a . . . couple. Or was he just working double time to make up for his freak-out?

Rather than risk reading too much into the gesture, Sarah settled for a nod. “Sure, that’d work.”

Liz looked overwhelmed. “Wow, okay, great, we’ll look forward to seeing you both then.” Despite Cole’s and Sarah’s pleas to let them put her into a cab, she insisted on walking Jonathan the last few blocks home alone. Dividing her tired smile between them, she wrapped an arm about her son’s shoulders. “I don’t need a babysitter, not yet anyway. Besides, it’s still a beautiful day. You two should enjoy it,” she added, shooting Sarah a meaningful look.

Sarah relented. “Okay, but text me when you guys get home, otherwise I’ll worry.”

Liz nodded. “Okay . . . Mom.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Sarah persisted. “Promise?”

Liz lifted a hand to the left side of her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die . . . Actually, let’s leave it at ‘cross my heart,’” she added with a wink.

Sarah didn’t find the gallows humor at all funny, but if it helped Liz get through the next few months that was all that mattered. Hugs and handshakes made the rounds and then Liz and Jonathan were off.

She waited for them to clear the park before turning back to Cole. “What’s your deal with dogs anyway?”

Fair or not, she’d always thought of people who disliked animals as sort of soulless. Lately she’d been giving serious thought to adopting a rescue dog, not a rambunctious puppy—that would require too much work up front—but an older animal in need of a good home and a second chance. Doing so would be a big additional responsibility, as well as a powerful symbol that she was ready to put down roots again. Whether she stayed on in New York after Liz’s treatment ended or moved elsewhere remained to be seen.

His gaze shuttered. “They’re okay,” he said, and left it at that, and for once Sarah knew better than to press.

Pushing boundaries in bed was one thing, but what had just gone down here was something different entirely, something sex couldn’t begin to touch, let alone solve.

C
lancy’s in Astoria was a cop bar where the Guinness was poured with a perfect head, the Jameson shots came as a double, and the city’s ban on smoking in public places was seen as more of a misguided suggestion. Sarah found her father at the brass-railed bar, a stein of half drunk dark beer and an empty shot glass beside it.

Picking her way through the plumes of smoke mushrooming from the closely packed tables, Sarah walked up. “Hi, Pop.”

Her dad didn’t stir. “Look what the west wind blew in,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

She settled onto the empty stool beside him. “I stopped by the house, but your neighbor said you’d gone out. I figured I’d try you here.” She’d called first, but it seemed his land line was disconnected once again.

Keeping his gaze straight ahead, he asked, “To what do I owe this honor?”

“I told you I was coming back in town.” She’d left a voice message for him before leaving California, which he’d never returned. Now she wondered if he’d ever gotten it.

He snorted, stabbing his cigarette into the ash tray. “You’ve been back how many weeks is it?”

Despite the booze he regularly knocked back, he had a mind like a steel trap, as well as cop connections just about everywhere. Whether or not he’d gotten her message, he likely knew down to the hour when she’d set foot in the city.

“I’ve been . . . settling in.”

She deliberately avoided bringing up Liz. Mentioning her, any friend, would only trigger an interrogation, starting with how they knew one another. Once she admitted they’d met on a film shoot, his ears would close to everything else.

He gestured to behind the bar, the liquor shelves filled with dusty bottles and backed by mirrored glass. “You want something?”

Sarah hesitated.
I want your love
. “A Guinness, I guess.” She wasn’t much of a beer drinker, at least not anymore, but the wine at Clancy’s would come from a box, and she’d never had much of a head for liquor.

He beckoned to the bartender, the low light catching on his retirement watch. Thirty years on the force from patrol cop to detective first-grade. Unfortunately playing the ponies had blown through his pension, along with her mother’s small savings. “One Guinness, no shot, and put it on my tab.”

“So, you back for good?”

Sarah shrugged. “I’m not sure, maybe.”

He let out a sharp laugh. “A definite maybe, huh? That’s good, Sarah, real good. I can see you haven’t changed.”

Sarah stiffened. “Neither have you.”

Except that he’d grown older, a lot older. The last time she’d seen him was Christmas five years ago. His thick thatch of hair was all gray now, and his slope-shouldered posture spoke of too many days spent like this one, hunched over a bar. Seeing him again, she didn’t feel any of the anger she’d expected and only a little of the hurt. What she mostly felt was sad. He might feel she’d pissed away her life, but she felt the same about him.

The bartender set down her beer. “Thanks,” she said, dodging his goggle-eyed stare. He obviously recognized her as Sugar.

Her father’s hand tightened to a white-knuckled fist about his glass. “Don’t you got some glasses to wash or somethin’?”

“Sure thing, Marty, sorry.” He made a beeline for the other end of the bar. Her dad turned back to her, lip curled. “Occupational hazard, huh?”

“You could say that.” She took a sip of beer, and then set the glass down. “It’s good to see you, Pop.” Five years ago he’d thrown her out of the house—literally. Sitting down to a beer together showed they could be civil at least. “I thought maybe I could come by the house this weekend, make Sunday roast like mom used to.”

Bringing up her mother was a mistake. Man’s man though he was, his eyes filled with water. “You look just like her, God rest her soul.” He made the sign of the cross.

Reflexively Sarah joined him, a lump settling into the back of her throat. Raised Catholic, she wasn’t sure what she was now. Apart from attending the rare wedding, she hadn’t been to church in years, let alone taken mass. She liked to think of herself as spiritual, not religious. Practically, though, what did that mean?

“You still know how to cook?” Drying his eyes on his sleeve, he sent her a skeptical look.

Cole had expressed similar surprise the first night she’d made him dinner. What was it with men that they assumed you couldn’t act in porn and be in any way domestic? As if she and the other AE actors must be so busy doing body shots off one another that no one could pause to put on water for pasta or thaw a roast?

Determined not to take the bait, she took another sip of beer and nodded. “I still have the index box with all of mom’s recipes.”

The recipe box had been one of the few non essential personal items she’d squeezed into her suitcase ten years ago. She’d moved many times since that crazed, cross-country trek, and her mom’s recipes had gone with her everywhere.

“So what do you say?” she prompted, daring to hope.
It’s the whole olive tree, Pop. C’mon, take it
.

“Unfortunately I won’t be there.”

This was news! Even in his younger days, her dad had always considered vacations a waste of time and money. So far as he was concerned, the city had everything you could want or need. An afternoon in the stands at the old Yankee Stadium was as much of a getaway as he could stomach. Usually he’d preferred to watch the games parked in front of his TV with a cold six-pack and a can of Pringles.

A bad feeling settled into her stomach. Though she knew she would likely regret it, she asked, “Why not?”

He upended his glass, draining it of beer. “The landlord and I have a difference of opinion over the rent due.” He set the stein down hard.

He was being evicted! “Let me help you out. I have money. I won’t miss it.” Whatever he owed would be a pittance to her.

He held up both hands. “Keep your money. I don’t want a dime. From what I’ve heard about your movies, you’ve more than earned it.”

In a weird way, he was right. She had earned her wealth by being savvy and smart, proactive and strategic, by taking ownership of her brand and eventually her films. Just about anyone could take off their clothes and fuck. Making people want to watch you do it for one hundred films raised the bar from porn to performance art.

Steeling herself not to lose her temper, not this time, she said, “I was going to save this for Sunday, but I guess I’ll tell you now. I’ve retired. This latest . . . release is my last film.”

He reached over and lifted her left hand. “What, no gold watch? And no gold ring, either.”

Sarah snatched her hand away. “You haven’t seen me in five years. Would it kill you to be a little bit pleasant? If not for me, then do it for mom.”

His face hardened; his eyes bulged. He slammed his fist on the bar. The empty shot glass and bowl of peanuts jumped. “Don’t you dare bring your mother up to me! She was a good Catholic woman, a good wife and mother. I’m glad she’s in her grave, so she can’t see the shame you’ve brought on yourself and me.”

That did it! Sarah slid off the stool and onto her feet. “Yeah, well what about the shame you brought with your gambling and your women. Oh, yeah, you think I didn’t know about the perfume on your uniforms, the lipstick on your shirt collars? You think I didn’t hear mom crying late at night when she thought I was sleeping?”

“Shut your mouth and show respect. I’m your father.”

“And I’m your daughter, your only child, and respect goes both ways. You want mine, then you can earn it starting by saying you’re sorry.”

“I’m supposed to be sorry! You’re the—”

“I wasn’t the one who came home drunk, or not at all, and made Mom cry. I wasn’t the one who took what was supposed to be my tuition money for NYU and pissed it away at the track. You don’t like what I’ve become, what I’ve done to survive, to
thrive
, fair enough. But before you throw any more stones, Pop, you take a good, long look at yourself in that dusty bar mirror.” Shaking, she shoved a hand inside her purse and pulled out her wallet. She grabbed all the cash she had with her, three hundred dollars, and slapped it down on the bar. “You can use this as a partial payment to your landlord so he doesn’t toss your ass to the curb, or you can use it to get shitfaced. It’s up to you. But from here on, I’m done with you making me feel guilty and ashamed about my life. Yes, I’ve made
one hundred
porn movies—” she deliberately pitched her voice just below a shout “—and I’ve also never stolen, I’ve never cheated, and above all I’ve never once treated another person with anything close to the contempt and cruelty you’ve spent the last decade dumping on me. So have a nice life, Pop. Here’s three hundred dollars. Try not to drink it all in one day.”

Headquartered in midtown Manhattan, The Canning Foundation occupied a landmark Neo-Georgian townhouse, three stories of ponderous antiques, faded Persian carpets, and soaring plasterwork ceilings trimmed in crown molding. The air stank of must and old money, the legacy of more than a century of public service and private familial duty. Cole had always found the atmosphere oppressive but never more so than today.

Sitting behind his desk, a hideous, gilded Rococo monstrosity remaining from his mother’s regime, he surveyed his surroundings. Interspersed among the shadowboxes and oil portraits of his frowning predecessors were framed photographs of smiling kids and their smoothpated parents, the latter towing oxygen tanks and IV bags as they took part in various fantasy-come-true outings. Whether white-water rafting, zip lining, or taking in a theme park from the vantage point of a motorized scooter, the images’ moralizing message was clear. Cancer can’t keep a good parent down—and only a bad parent would let it.

Other than his computer, the color photos were the sole connection to the twenty-first century. Everything else seemed stagnant, frozen circa 1940. Cole felt like a fixture himself, leaden and hollow, with little more animation than the marble philosophers’ busts plopped upon pedestals, staring sightlessly back at him from sundry nooks and crannies.