not our time yet.”
George Orbach pushed his way into the room, clutching a handful of paper packets. “No milk. Just this powder.”
Janet Simmons seemed disgusted by the news. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, crossing her arms. “Mr. Weaver is leaving now. He’s in need of a good shower. I think we’ll have to talk to Mr. Grainger instead.”
Milo rapped the table with his knuckles and got up. “Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do me.”
The morning storm had left as soon as it had arrived, leaving behind damp roads and moist, clean air. As he drove, Milo lit a Davidoff from the pack he’d broken down and bought when he filled up the tank. The smoke felt good, but then it didn’t, and he coughed hard, but kept smoking. Anything to cut the edge off the stink of death.
He hadn’t had his cell phone long enough to figure out how to change the ring tone, so when it woke up somewhere along Route 18 to Jackson, it played a stupid corporate melody. He checked to see if it was his wife, but it was Grainger. “Yeah?”
“Is what that bitch from Homeland says true? He’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. “Will I see you at the office today?”
“No.”
“I’ll catch you at the airport, then. We’ve got things to discuss.”
Milo hung up and turned on the radio, flipping through staticky country stations until, inevitably, he gave up and pulled out his iPod, which he’d listened to half this trip. He slipped in the earbuds, clicked the French playlist, and skipped to track five.
His head was filled with the quick, swirling melody of “Poupée de cire, poupée de son,” sung by France Gall, Luxembourg’s 1965 Eurovision winner, penned by Serge Gainsbourg. The very tune he’d taught Stephanie for her talent show, the performance he was missing.
He dialed Tina. Her voice mail picked up, and he listened to her story about not being in and the promise of a call if he left a message. He knew she was already at the show, next to an empty chair, watching their daughter sing Gainsbourg’s phenomenal hit. He didn’t leave a message. He’d just wanted to hear her voice.
Tina couldn’t figure out what kind of idiot parents would think to dress their seven-year-old girl in pink tights and a tank top, tie a pair of pink angel’s wings to her frail back, and then cover every inch with glistening sequins. You could hardly see the child from the spotlight’s reflection as she pranced left and right on the stage to some dance beat with electric guitars, singing a warbling version of “I Decide,” from (the principal had told everyone) “that hit Disney movie, The Princess Diaries 2.” It might have been a good song, but from her seat near the center of the Berkeley Carroll School’s auditorium, Tina could only make out the thump of the bass drum and see a little glittering girl-shape shift around on that painfully bare stage.
But of course she clapped. They all did. Two stood and hooted—the idiot parents, Tina assumed. Beside her, in what should have been Milo’s seat, Patrick struck his palms together and whispered, “In-fucking-credible! I’m getting my friends at CAA to sign up this one, ASAP.”
Tina hadn’t wanted to call Patrick, but with Milo pulling another no-show, Stef deserved as full an audience as possible. “Be nice,” she said.
Milo had left another of his curt, unapologetic messages on their home phone, saying that there’d been a delay. As usual, he didn’t call the delay by any name, just “delay.”
Fine, she’d thought. Miss your daughter’s talent show, and I’ll bring her real father.
Then Milo himself had suggested calling Patrick. “For Stef. And videotape it, will you?”
That had taken some of the wind out of Tina’s anger—that, and the fact that, for the last three days, Patrick had been trying to get her and Stephanie to come back to him. Milo, off on his vague, sudden business trip, had no idea.
Her reaction to Patrick’s initial attempt had been to walk the phone to the kitchen so her daughter wouldn’t hear her say, “Are you on drugs, Patrick?”
“Of course not,” said her ex … boyfriend sounded silly, but they’d never actually married. “How could you even think that? You know how I feel about drugs.”
“I bet you’ve put away a few scotches.”
“Listen,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “I look back now—I look back over all of it. I look back decades. What do I see? Two glowing years. The only two years I was really happy. With you. That’s what I want to tell you. It was never better than that.”
“I like Paula,” she told him as she absently rubbed a sponge around the spotted aluminum sink. “She’s a smart girl. Why she married you, I’ll never know…”
“Ha ha,” he said, and that’s when she knew he really was drunk. She heard him take a drag off of one of his stinking cigarillos. “I’m the joke of the century. But think about it. Think about me. Remember how in love we were.”
“Wait a minute. Where is Paula?”
Another long cigarillo-drag. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
That, then, had clarified everything. “She’s walked out on you. And after six years, you’re running back to me? You must be seriously drunk, Pat. Or seriously stupid.”
Onstage, a boy in a Superman outfit was delivering a monologue, a heavy lisp making the words hard to decipher. Patrick leaned close: “He’s gonna fly soon. I can see the string attached to his belt.”
“He’s not going to fly.”
“If he does, I’ll buy him his first martini.”
Patrick’s long face and graying three-day beard earned him extra clients at Berg & DeBurgh. They thought that he, unlike his over-the-hill law partners, looked vital. These days, though, with the bruised shade to his weary eyes, he looked more desperate than vital. Paula Chabon, that Lebanese-French bombshell who sold her own line of jewelry at little boutique shops positioned in many world capitals, had moved to Berlin. An ex-lover had wooed her back. More than anything, Patrick wanted to believe he could do the same thing, that he could woo Tina back. He really was pitiful.
Superboy ended his monologue by running around the stage in mock flight, but the cape hung sadly against his back, and Patrick was annoyed that his feet never left the ground. “Turn on the video,” Tina told him after the obligatory applause.
Patrick tugged a small Sony video camera out of his pocket. When he turned it on, the two-inch screen glowed.
Without thinking, Tina squeezed his knee. “Here comes Little Miss!”
But the Berkeley Carroll principal came on first, squinting at the card in her hand. “Please welcome our first grader
