style="font-size:15px;"> Corey didn’t respond. Talking about her mother-in-law was like touching a tar baby.
“So have Abe call her.” Jason rubbed his ear lobe between thumb and forefinger. “Make something up.”
“Soccer? Allergies?” Corey took a candy from a bowl on his desk. “She checks. I swear to God.”
“She—” Jason stopped. He raised his palms. Jesse was, well, Jesse. “The court order you wanted for Luther Emerson. Done.” Jason handed her an envelope.
“Thank you.”
“Be careful,” Jason added, then he touched her arm. “So…brunch. Pick a Sunday. She’s been in therapy—over a year. She’s getting better…” He nodded, solemn. And finally, when she didn’t respond, “Abe’s dad…” He raised his eyebrows. “My best friend…since childhood.”
Corey made a funny noise—part laugh, part aagh! Jason was incorrigible, and, she knew, a rare friend.
Jason rubbed his earlobe again. “You know what it is, a mitzvah?” And before she could answer, “It’s a good deed.”
Corey pursed her lips. Her freckles bunched on her nose. “I have to talk with her?”
When Billy was six he’d taught his mother to skip a stone over the water. He’d worked with her every day until she skipped one five times. Then another. Two years later Billy dragged Corey to her first Sonics game. It was love at first sight. And he’d taught her about basketball in the same deliberate way. When the Sonics left for Oklahoma City after the 2007-08 season, Corey and Billy started following the Seattle women’s team, the Storm. Corey liked the women’s games more than the men’s. When Billy asked why, she thought about it before saying, “they share the basketball.”
It was a thing they did together, just the two of them. They’d asked Abe to come but as he put it, “Basketball makes me nervous. I can’t run, I can’t jump. In high school, I had the lowest vertical leap in King County.”
Now, whenever Corey went inside the Key Arena she felt old. Espresso, fajitas, sushi, frozen yogurt. The plush upholstered seats sparkled under bright, white TV lights. Where were the greasy burgers, the beer-stained wooden seats, the smoky yellow lights? Gone the way of the cheap seats, she supposed.
Corey sat back. Billy was already screaming about a bad call. At halftime, New York’s Lady Liberty was leading by three.
“I found Aaron,” Billy offered at the half, between bites of Mexican pizza.
“Where was he?”
“Some girl’s apartment. Off Broadway.”
Corey’s antenna went up. “What about Maisie?” Aaron and his girlfriend had been together almost nine months, a long time for Aaron.
“She was there, too. I mean Maisie and Aaron were there together. You see, Maisie met this girl a while back and they got friendly. She and Aaron have been cutting classes, hanging at the girl’s apartment. I think they go at night sometimes.”
Corey turned to face him.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s only weed.”
“Only weed? Have Aaron and Maisie done other drugs?”
“Not Aaron. I don’t know about Maisie.”
“What’s your guess?” Corey asked.
“Chill, mom, just let me talk to you.”
“Chill?” She bit her tongue. He was talking to her, even though his friends thought talking to your mom was really weird. She and her mother had talked—she remembered wild, wonderful late-night conversations, mostly at sea. Had it been so complicated? Probably. Certainly. She touched Billy’s arm. “Okay. Tell me about Maisie.”
“Her mom and dad, they have like, I dunno, this agenda for her—flute, poetry readings, she dances in the Nutcracker every Christmas, she feeds the homeless Sunday dinner. Maisie’s always tired, and whenever she breaks loose, she parties. I mean she smokes at breaks because it’s a break, you see what I mean?”
“Yeah. I’m surprised. People seem to like her parents.”
“That’s part of her problem. They’re like poster parents for Olympic—Microsoft millionaires who still talk the sixties. Verlaine even has sixties cred—Woodstock, the Yale student strike committee…” He sighed. She noted his resigned, that’s-my-world face.
“I didn’t get that.” She watched her son. “What’s worrying you?”
“This girl, Star, they called her, because of this tattoo on her thigh. She stopped by to see them at Blue City. She’s twenty, at least, and she’s weird. You know, cool, on—always moving, high energy—but, at the same time, a little off.” Billy made a puzzled face that reminded her of Abe working on some idea. “If you know what I mean.”
Corey nodded, unsure what he meant, but aware that, like Abe, Billy would get there in his own way.
“And I think she has tracks on her arm. I mean there’s a tattoo there now—some kind of flower thing—but the little knots are there on the vein, underneath. I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t told me what to look for.”
There it was. “Can I ask around about Star?”
“Alright, yeah. But, you know, stay out of it, okay?”
“I’ll try.” This was a thing she was getting good at: being “in it” and “out of it” at the same time. “Stay away from her place, will you?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Corey touched his hand for just a second. “Thank you, Billy, for coming to the game with your mom.”
The halftime was over, and they were on their feet for the fast break.
“Mom, from now on, could you call me Will?”
“Will?” She read the look on his face. He wasn’t kidding. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
The front door of Luther’s apartment building was gated, the kind of accordian gate often seen covering pawn shop doors and windows. It was almost 11:00 p.m. when Corey and Abe went around back, past several men smoking on the back door stoop.
The apartment was in a seedy four-story building on Bentley, several blocks north of Pine. Pine ran parallel to Pike, and the Pike-Pine Corridor, as it was called, was attracting artists, night-life, small businesses, and real estate developers. The Bentley Building was a single-room-occupancy building that still rented to sex offenders.
They took the stairs two at a time. Corey gently guided Abe around a hole in the third floor landing, then banged on Luther’s door. She was tense, bracing herself for god-only-knew-what. The door swung open. The air inside was stale, somehow fouled. Abe shone a flashlight across the
