I’m an asshole,” Jack said. “Fair enough. I’ll stake tomorrow’s lunch money that I’m also the first one who’s taken the time to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Which is just about everything.”
He ignored the tacit “Go fuck yourself” radiating from the passenger’s seat. “Don’t ambush a prospective employer when he’s working. Don’t background-check him, either. It screams zero scruples about running anybody and everybody through the mill just because you can.”
The seat belt latch clicked open. Blankenship pushed himself through the door with considerably more grace and speed than he’d entered.
Jack called, “Hey, I’m just trying to—” a slam juddered the window glass, then reverberated through the chassis “—help,” he finished, watching Blankenship jaywalk around an adjacent delivery truck.
Gee, that went well, he thought. Evidently honesty really wasn’t always the best policy. It had, however, shored up the contention that mentoring wasn’t one of his specialties.
On the other hand, the kid’s eight-block hoof to his car wouldn’t hurt him. Maybe allow pause for thought, not to mention counteract his six-thousand-calorie lunch. Or would, if Blankenship didn’t salve a wounded ego with a banana split at the diner next door to Jack’s office.
The pedestrian crossing light flashed “Hurry up or die.” Blankenship materialized in the intersection, seemingly oblivious to the warning and the vehicle cranking a last-minute turn on yellow. The car’s tires whinnied on the pavement; its driver saluted Blankenship with an extended middle finger.
The kid didn’t notice. Didn’t flinch when the car gunned past him, fortunate the side mirror didn’t pick his pocket as it roared by. Still walking, closing the distance to the curb, Blankenship’s eyes locked on Jack. His head turned, then tipped slightly forward when his neck craned too far for comfort.
His unblinking stare didn’t project anger, defiance, disdain or the type of pity bestowed on those who’ve cast aside a golden opportunity.
Stone-cold hate, Jack said to himself. And a promise to make good on it. He looked away, confused and a little unnerved by its intensity. Keeping his own expression impassive, he glided forward with traffic.
He put a block, then another behind him. And couldn’t shake the feeling that Brett Dean Blankenship still had him in the crosshairs.
2
Dina Wexler dropped the box of macaroni and cheese on the counter and shut the cupboard door. She stepped down from the wooden stool, then side-kicked it in front of the refrigerator.
Someday she’d have a kitchen where all the food, especially junk food, lived on her level. For her, using drawers as ladder rungs to reach the cereal and a bowl to put it in was a climbing stage you never outgrew. Not when you’d stopped at four feet ten.
Count your blessings, she reminded herself. Like the man who complained about having no shoes, until he met the man who had no…
The TV in the living room went mute. “Di-na,” her mother called. “When you get a minute, would you bring me the TV Guide? I left it in the bedroom and there’s a show on at four o’clock I want to watch. For the life of me, I can’t remember what channel it’s on.”
Dina grabbed the potato chip bag off the top of the fridge. The crackling cellophane mocked her frazzled nerves. She rested her forehead on the freezer door’s cool metal face. It was only one-thirty, for God’s sake. Lunch was a half hour late, as were her mother’s medications that must be taken with meals.
In the hallway, a fabric mountain of laundry banked the utility closet’s bifold doors. The yard needed mowing. Both bathrooms were a mess. The kitchen floor hadn’t been mopped in recent memory.
Breathe in, Dina thought, breathe out. Make yourself one with the refrigerator. Better yet, be the refrigerator and chill the hell out.
The mental image of herself standing on a kid’s alphabet step stool getting Zen with a major appliance brought a whisper of a smile. No wonder Peanuts had always been her favorite comic strip. Charlie Brown refocused his chi with his head against the wall. She bonded with freezer compartments.
“Sweetheart?” her mother called, concern in her voice. “Are you all right?”
“Sure, Mom.” Dina sighed and stepped down on the ugly starburst linoleum. “Everything’s fine.”
A Park City car dealer’s commercial now wending from the living room reinforced their unspoken bargain. Harriet Wexler could keep pretending that her daughter was a human Rock of Gibraltar; Dina wouldn’t let her mother see it was a prop made of chicken wire and papier-mâché.
She put a saucepan of water on to boil, then spread some diet saltines with sugar-free peanut butter. Laying them on a saucer, she sidled past the early-American dinette set and into the living room.
The vacant midcentury modern duplex had seemed open and airy when Dina toured it with the landlord. The narrow galley kitchen dead-ended at a window painted shut a couple of decades ago, but the dining area’s merger with the living room gave an illusion of spaciousness. Off the hallway was a full bath, a small bedroom and the larger master with a private three-quarter bath.
A security deposit and two months’ rent had been scraped together in advance, and then there’d been furniture. Truckloads of Harriet’s dog-ugly, alleged heirlooms that Dina and her younger brother wouldn’t wish on a homeless shelter. Their mother’s insistence that her circa-1978 pine-and-Herculon-plaid home furnishings would go retro any day was attributed to the side effects of digitalis.
Dina pushed back the tide of prescription bottles, moistening swabs, tissues and assorted medical paraphernalia to make room for the saucer on the metal TV tray beside Harriet’s glider rocker. On the opposite side, another tray table held a cordless phone, paperbacks, a water glass, a dish of sugarless candy, the current crochet project and the queen’s scepter, otherwise known as the remote.
The cushioned ottoman supporting Harriet’s feet was surrounded by a paper trash sack, a tripod cane, bags of yarn, her purse, a discarded pillow and a mismatched pair of terrycloth slippers.
“Gosh, Your Majesty,” Dina teased. “The throne’s getting kinda crowded, isn’t it?”
Harriet made a face, then pointed at the crackers. “I thought you bought bread at the store yesterday.”
“I did.” Dina peered into the plastic drinking glass—half full. “I’m working on lunch, but you need to take your pills.”
“I can wait.”
Dina knuckled a hip. “So can I.” The water began to bubble on the stove. She pondered the tardy renter’s insurance premium and what effect a semi-accidental kitchen fire might have on their coverage.
Harriet nibbled a corner off a cracker. Nose wrinkling, she plinked it back on the saucer. “It’s stale.”
Petulance was as wasted as the coral lipstick she swiped on to disguise her mouth’s bluish tinge. “No, it isn’t,” Dina said. “I just opened a fresh box.”
She hadn’t, but it wouldn’t matter if elves had just carted them over from the magic bakery tree. The issue was that her mother couldn’t be trusted
