The Third Child (20 page)

“Because you’re brilliant.”

“Long as you think so, I’ve got it made.” He stretched. Her fingers traced his biceps through his black tee. He liked to wear black, and he looked good in it. It brought out the warmth, the hidden sun in his skin.

ROGER’S FIRST ARTICLE
appeared within a week. She did not hear from Rosemary with any pointed exhortations to dump Blake that week, and the Friday e-mail was marked by brevity:

Melissa went online and checked the
Philadelphia Inquirer
web site. There was Roger’s piece with the information they had fed him through Phil and more besides he must have found himself. We did that, she thought, and felt a quiver of triumph. It was a strange new sensation. She was playing a chess game against Rosemary and, for once, she was winning. It was an extraordinary rush. This must be what power felt like,
Rosemary and Dick’s true high, their vice. She had never understood it. What she had wanted was love, to be held in a shimmer of affection. She had that now, but not from them. Having love, for the first time she tasted power. She had the capacity to rivet their attention on something. She had the capacity to hurt them, as they had so often hurt her. She felt large and strong. She was becoming herself, not the weak, wobbly, sorry little girl she had been. She was turning into someone to be reckoned with. If she had to proceed in secrecy, well, Rosemary always worked behind the scenes. That was how things got done. But she was actually making things happen, and that was a new sensation, one she rather liked.

“You’ll never guess where we’re going this weekend,” Blake said over lunch, a private lunch for once outside on the grass. Now that they were sophomores, they could eat sometimes out of Mocon, could use one of the fast-food places in the student center.

“To New York?”

“Not nearly that far.”

“What’s closer than New York? Boston!”

“Not that far, and that’s the wrong direction.”

“Hartford? Why would we want to go to Hartford?”

“We wouldn’t. Ever.”

“New Haven? Like, Yale?”

“Nothing like Yale. Not New Haven.”

“Providence?” She had never been there, but she knew Brown was there.

“Wrong, again. You’re never going to win a prize this way. But you get one anyhow.”

“So where are we going?” She loved him teasing her, she loved the mystery. This was the kind of day they had first hooked up last year, a bright blue day when the sun made everything shimmer as if lit from within, the golden trees, the red vines. They had been together for a year and they were tighter than ever. She tossed her hair, feeling special, feeling attractive and joined. Maybe he meant he was taking her up to the ledge where they’d first made it.

“To Foxwoods.”

“The gambling place? What for?” Disappointment swamped her.

“We’re gambling that the guy we’re meeting will give us some good documentation.”

“But why there?”

“Hard to find a more anonymous place. Nobody is surprised when you go there. We’ll be among crowds of people who don’t know each other, aren’t interested in each other, never will see each other again. He suggested it.”

“Who is he?”

He took her face between his hands and smiled into her eyes, very pleased with himself. “A disgruntled ex-staffer of King Richard’s. Through some old connection, Karen told me about him—”

“When did you talk with Karen?”

“We talk maybe every couple weeks. I told you, I like her. She has good politics.”

She should be happy that Karen and Blake liked each other, but she felt left out. That was oftener than she talked with her aunt. “So what’s with this guy?”

“Might have information. We talked and finally set up a meet.”

“Why can’t we just go see him?”

“He’s afraid of your father. He doesn’t want any link to us or to Roger. He doesn’t know who you are, so don’t tip him. That would scare him off.”

“But maybe I know him.”

Blake shrugged, a graceful shiver of his shoulders. “I doubt it. He never met the family, far as I can tell, except for Rosemary. He doesn’t want trouble, but I suspect he wants payback.”

“And we’re his tool?” That made her feel queasy. She did not like the idea of being anybody’s shortcut to revenge against her father.

“He has information, and we want to understand Dick. So Saturday, we go on a date to a casino. Don’t say I never take you anyplace.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll like it and become addicted gamblers and waste our lives.”

“I so don’t think that!”

“Me neither. We’re serious types, Lissa mine.” He radiated a beam of pure joy that made her happy against her will. But she still felt dubious about this ex-staffer who might actually recognize her. What kind of devious turd would turn against someone they worked for? She did not like that. It felt unclean. But then she quizzed herself. If any dirt on the place she worked last summer had come into her hands, would she have felt loyalty to them? Not likely. This guy had probably held down some menial job in her father’s organization. Someone incompetent who had a grudge because he didn’t feel his talents had been sufficiently recognized or recompensed. Rosemary and Dick were clever at using people, and their staff members were passionately loyal. Probably he had been far down the hierarchy and thus bereft of that eye-beam of approval that so enchanted most underlings. Loyalty was important to her parents, and generally they commanded it successfully. She did not look forward to meeting this little worm who had turned, but it would be fun to go off with Blake. She was still furious with Rosemary. Anything that happened served them right.

“Do you believe in loyalty to an employer?” she asked Fern and Emily over breakfast. They were sharing a table in Mocon, where the roar around them even this early would cover their conversation. Even though Melissa did not intend to tip anything about what she and Blake were doing, she felt safer if no one else listened.

“No!” Fern said immediately. “When I think of all the crappy jobs my mother has held down or that have held her down, I’d like to throttle her bosses. The restaurant she works in now, the guy is always juggling their hours and cutting back on help so she has to work more tables and then gets less tips because she can’t give as good service. It’s backbreaking work.”

Melissa was glad Tammy wasn’t along. She often skipped breakfast, providing Melissa an opportunity to see Fern without her. Melissa felt as if Tammy disapproved of her in some undefined way. She was a big girl, as tall as Fern but blockier, pretty features or maybe she should say handsome. When Tammy was around, Fern was paying attention to her and not to Melissa.

Emily, whose parents didn’t believe in her wasting time on menial jobs, just nodded at Fern. “My parents’ receptionists come and go every year. It isn’t like a relationship. It’s just a convenience on both sides.”

“But if you believed in what they were doing,” Melissa said tentatively.

Both of them looked at her blankly. “You mean, like believe in Italian food? I don’t get it, I hereby swear allegiance to overcooked lasagna.” Fern had more confidence these days. She stood straighter and her voice was firmer. She and Tammy had quickly moved into a relationship.

“I mean, I believe in chiropractic, if like your back is out,” Em said. “My parents get into fads, like this month it’s heat and next month it’s cold, and all sorts of extracts of bark and weird herbs, but if you’re in pain, they can help you, for sure. I don’t get where you’re going with this? Does this have something to do with Rosemary dumping on you?”

“Indirectly,” Melissa said. “Forget it. I wasn’t going anywhere with it.” But she was. To Foxwoods on Saturday. Even Emily felt some loyalty to her parents. As the day approached, she was increasingly nervous about what they were doing. It felt like a silly game, the way she used to play with Billy. It was all unreal, she told herself, but she remembered how real that article on the internet
Inquirer
site had felt. She no longer felt powerful; she felt out of her depth. She wished she could just tell Blake to cool it and forget about her parents. She wished she could just run away with him and come back in five years with two kids, say, and her parents would have to accept them. Somehow everything was tied into knots and she felt coerced and tangled. My bad, she thought, my bad and things are just getting worse.

N
ow Melissa had a leather jacket she’d bought to break the wind as she clung to him on his Honda. The trip was along back roads. The leaves were beginning to turn. By the bank of a creek, aspens rustled golden, leaves like bright pirates’ coins. One lone red maple stood in a field of stubbled corn. The poison ivy and Virginia creeper twined scarlet. Big puffy clouds scudded over them. He braked abruptly as a flock of red-winged blackbirds stormed just a few feet above the road, thousands of them passing for two minutes going south. She was happy, a high plateau she had never before visited. They belonged together. They were a conspiracy, a good family of two. Her cheek rested against his shoulder, the engine roared into her, the sun beat on her head and arm in the cool whoosh of the wind of their riding. The machine thrummed up into her body. She did not really care where they were going and whether the mysterious contact was worth the bother. It was going off together that mattered, not their arrival anyplace. She had the sense as she clung to him that never again in her entire life would she, could she, be as happy. It was an uncanny nostalgia for something still occurring, as if she were in the moment and yet high above it, looking down and back and already missing the intensity and the joy. That pumped a vein of melancholy through the joy, making it even more intense.

She had seen the ads for the casino on TV—who in New England hadn’t?—but she considered that image an artist’s sketch. The reality was as much a fantasy as the ads, mammoth structures rising out of a forest. However, they did not go directly to the casino. “We’re not meeting our contact till four,” he said, chaining the bike.

“So why are we here at one? Like, you don’t expect me to gamble. Do you gamble?” She wondered suddenly if he had a secret vice. Ever since he had suggested going to Foxwoods, she had been a little apprehensive.

“This is the museum. Come on. State-of-the-art archeology.”

It was modern, sleek and very light, a pleasant, even elegant building, as opposed to the huge casino and hotel complex. He acted giddy as they roamed through the Ice Age past a giant beaver and an outsize wolf, both extinct but looking quite real, and cases of artifacts. “You like that wolf,” she said. “I didn’t know you were so interested in archeology.”

“I was really into paleontology when I was a kid. I loved dinosaurs. I had all these models and I could tell you everything known about each of them.”

“How come?” She’d never seen the appeal. Just big nasty lizards who would probably try to eat you.

“I guess because they were so big. I felt if I was a dino, nobody could bother me. I’d be able to defend anyone I loved. Kids like me dig those horny hides and scales and big teeth.”

They strolled into the 1600 village. All around the room were representative groups of figures in daily activities, while the sound boxes they’d picked up on the way in told them what they were looking at. If she wanted to know more about any of the exhibits, she simply pressed a button for details. The figures were well done, not as stiff as most mannequins and very individual. She commented on that to Blake.

“Yeah, they’re each modeled after someone in the tribe. I read that.”

“You think you might be part Native American?”

“Could be…. But isn’t it great? Imagine soaking all that money from gambling and setting up a museum. I love it.”

One of the figures in the village did look something like Blake. If she could see the guy it was modeled after, would he resemble Blake? She tried to decide how she would feel if Blake were Native American. Actually it would be kind of cool. A couple were setting up housekeeping together, building a wigwam. “Imagine, we could build something like that in the woods….”

“Doesn’t look that hard.” He slipped his arm around her waist. “Want to? The hell with dormitories.”

It looked cozy, just the round space and most time spent outside. The couple had been given blissful expressions. Instead of classes and grades and her parents ranting at her, there they’d be in the woods fishing and hunting and growing their food. “No housework. And I bet their weddings didn’t require making plans a year in advance and spending forty thousand dollars.”

“Is that what your brother’s wedding cost?”

“I just made up that number. The bride’s family paid.”

“Do you have fantasies about your wedding?”

“Only that it be over clean and quick, with just a couple of friends.”

“You know, my sister, Sara, she ran off with this guy and eloped. He was a client of my dad’s, a con man who was facing heavy charges. Dad got him off and he ran away with Sara. By the time my parents found her, in South Carolina, she was already sorry she’d done it. They had the marriage annulled. Dad was furious at the guy. Let’s see, Sara was eighteen. I was just thirteen when it all came down. Turned out he planned to use Sara in some scam that had to do with bilking older men. She always falls for these abysmal losers.”

They wandered through the museum holding hands, finding an occasional deserted corner where they could kiss. Finally it was three thirty and time to go.

He was less ecstatic when they entered the casino, where the air was heavy with smoke even in the elevators. It was jammed everywhere, the rows of stores, the gambling halls, the restaurants, the entertainment, the benches set up at regular intervals. Aunt Karen had described Las Vegas to her years before, flyers on whorehouses and call girls handed out on every corner. Here there were no visible hookers, although she assumed they must be around. Suburban people with kids in tow passed in droves. Everything was indoors, clean, neat, well tended, brightly lit. Buses disgorged the elderly with their fanny packs as Karen had described, but there were just as many kids on dates—like them. They didn’t stand out.
Families ambled along as if in a mall, couples strolling past the huge rooms of intent gamblers parked at their machines. Even in the no-smoking casino, smoke hung heavy in the air, and there were ashtrays on the poker tables. Blake, who had asthma and suffered smoke badly, began to labor in his breathing. She hoped their contact, whoever he was, would be on time. Blake could get sick if they hung in here too long. He used his inhaler, but it wasn’t enough.

It was better when they sat on a bench in the concourse in front of a shop selling Native American artifacts, watching people surge by in an endless procession. They had ice cream, then set out to find the location their contact had specified. Thousands of people were milling about, but the most interesting to her were those stuck in front of every slot machine grimly pushing in coins. Adrenaline hung in the air like sharp perfume. She was appalled and fascinated. “Do you understand gambling?” she asked him. “To me it’s like throwing money down the toilet.”

“It’s a rush, obviously. Look at the people. They pull a lever and it presses a button in their head. I don’t have that button, you don’t—but some folks would say we’re addicted to each other. That we have to have each other. That the pleasure we give each other is our weakness.”

“You don’t make me feel weak. You make me strong.”

“He told me where to meet him, but I’m not figuring it out yet. Let me see that map they gave you.” He frowned at it. She could feel anxiety coming off him in waves. “Okay, I think we’re on the wrong level. Let’s try going downstairs. Like it would be entirely stupid to come all this way and hang around and then miss him because we can’t find where he meant for us to be.”

They made their way to the high-limit slots and took up a position against one wall. She wondered if she would recognize this supposedly former assistant to her father. Blake had told her to say her name was Mary Jo. She had no idea where he’d plucked that name from, but she said it over to herself four or five times to get used to the sound. By ten after four, no one had approached them.

“We may have come all this way for nothing. Do you think he got
scared?” She kept staring around them, hoping to find someone who looked likely.

“Could be. Or he’s not as punctual as you are. You’re the only person I know who says they will be ready in two minutes and means two minutes. Who says they will meet you at four, and is there at four exactly.”

“Rosemary couldn’t endure for us to be late. She runs on a tight schedule. I learned to have a precise sense of time. I can’t help it now. I’m trained.”

“I’m not that housebroken, and I don’t want to be.” He was forcing himself to look around as if idly. They were both wound tight.

“I think there’s nothing I hate so much as just waiting. Maybe Rosemary feels that way and so she makes us run by the second hand.” She remembered again that it was Karen who had put Blake in touch with this guy. “What do you talk about with Karen?”

“We’re both interested in some of the same political problems. I really like her. I trust her instincts.”

She knew she should be happy that someone in her family liked Blake, but she felt disregarded and jealous that they were communicating separately, making her unimportant. She knew she must not show that. “How does Karen know this guy? She was locked up for five years.”

“She’s in touch with people she knew when she was with Eve. People in Pennsylvania working to defeat King Richard. An old contact told her about him.”

It was partly tedious standing against the wall, leaning on him. Yet it was also fascinating to watch the people. She discovered she could stare at individuals, the woman with the bright orange sweater and thin yellowish white hair and oversize plastic earrings in the form of tropical fish; the man with a trim goatee, sweating heavily in his tweed jacket, his tie askew; the tiny bald man who kept figuring something on the calculator he tried to hide. She could stare freely because they looked only at their machines and did not feel her gaze. There was an intensity to them she almost envied. If she could study like that, she would have a 4 point average instead of a 3.6. She would no longer be a B plus type but A all the
way. She imagined that she could do a striptease where she stood, and they would never break their concentration to look up.

It was four thirty. “How long should we wait?”

“Till five. Then we’ll get something to eat and take off. But we have to give him that long, because suppose he got stuck in traffic. Or had car trouble. Got lost.”

“An idiot could find this place. You can see it for miles.”

“Maybe he had to wait for a parking place. The lots are huge, but they’re full. Just relax. You liked the museum, right?”

It felt stupid leaning against the wall in a room full of people all intent, passionately involved. Time oozed by. She kept looking at her watch and finding that only a minute had passed. She began to hope the guy would not turn up and they could just clear out.

Finally, twenty minutes later, a man who had been sitting at a machine came toward them. “Are you interested in politics?”

“Very much so,” Blake said, and they shook hands.

“Sam? You’re just a kid.”

“I’m twenty-two. I look younger than I am.”

“Who’s she?”

“My girlfriend, Mary Jo. She’s studying journalism. She does power structure research.”

The guy was of middling height and weight with dark blond hair cut bristly short. His chin came almost to a point and his ears were like handles on a cookie jar. He wore a navy blazer with a striped blue and white shirt, khakis, tassel mocs. He was obviously uneasy, keeping his head and voice down. “I saved this stuff for two years. The bastard fired me.”

“How come?”

“I worked like a dog for him. Nothing was too hard or too dirty for me. I worked for him from before his second gubernatorial run. Well into the Senate race. Then I had a situation with an undercover cop in a john. It didn’t even hit the papers, it was so minor. But he fired me on the spot.”

“That’s terrible,” Blake said. “No gratitude.”

“Fuck gratitude. No severance pay, not even a letter of recommendation.”

He must have meant he was gay and had tried to pick someone up. Dick and Rosemary went ballistic about gay people. Melissa realized she had seen him before: in Harrisburg, at the mansion. It was while she was at Miss Porter’s. She was home for Christmas vacation and he had come in with the secretary of transportation and the attorney general. She was sitting on the steps waiting for a friend. She had her ice skates with her, yes. Hank, the oldest man, who was now secretary of commerce, asked if she was going skating outside or inside, and she had thought for a moment he meant was she going skating in the mansion. She felt foolish then. He meant in a rink or on a pond. Yes, this man had been with them, had stood uneasily while Hank teased her about skating down the steps, stood shifting from foot to foot carrying a leather attaché case and wearing a blue muffler wound around his neck, a muffler he had not removed any more than he had taken off his coat. Impatient? Nervous? His ears had stood out just as they did now, like handles.

She glanced at him uneasily, waiting for him to recognize her, but his gaze was fixed on Blake. He did not remember her, or maybe she just looked too different. She liked the latter explanation. She wanted to believe she had blossomed out of that chubby awkward miserable child into someone far more attractive.

“I’ve held on to this stuff since I was thrown out. Just kept it in a safe-deposit box.”

“Now it’s time to give it to someone who can use it, don’t you think? It does no good sitting in a lockbox.”

The man slipped a fat envelope from inside his blazer, but he seemed reluctant to hand it over. She could feel the tension in Blake’s arm, his desire to grab the envelope and bolt before the man had time to change his mind. “What are you going to do with it?”

“We have contacts with investigative reporters on good newspapers. You let us worry about what to do with the information.” Again Blake extended his hand, waiting.

Slowly the man put the envelope into Blake’s hand, but he still did not let go. Melissa could feel her body clenching. Was he going to hand over whatever it was? Blake tried gently to pry the envelope loose. The man
kept glancing around, looking in every direction including up, as if fearing surveillance. Finally the man released his grip and let Blake take the packet.