Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  You can share my bagel . . .

  Rick, barging into her head again, dammit.

  “No, thanks,” she tells Jake abruptly. “You have to get the Cavatelli a la Mama.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what you do. It’s what we do. We don’t share.”

  He starts to laugh, then takes a closer look at her face. “Wait—­are you serious?”

  “Yes! No. I mean . . . I don’t know.”

  “Ro? What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just . . .” She’s just exhausted and emotional and terrified that everything is going to change; that she’s going to lose Jake.

  “Hey.” He reaches across the table, finds her hand, grasps it. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I’m just . . .” She forces herself to look up at him. His face, viewed through the reading glasses, is a blur. “I’m just so tired, and . . . it’s hormones, I guess. I told you. You’re married to a middle-­aged lady. This is what you get. Isn’t it fun?”

  She manages a laugh, and he squeezes her hand.

  “I love my middle-­aged lady,” he says, “and someday I’ll love my little old lady, too.”

  She swallows hard, unable to find her voice. She’s grateful when the waitress, the owners’ daughter, Gina, comes over to take their order: the usual for Jake, eggplant rollatini for Rowan. She notices that Jake doesn’t call Gina by her first name, even though he’s known her all his life and it’s printed right there on her name tag in case he can’t remember what it is.

  Back when she was regularly eating lunch in diners with Rick and the kids, she got it into her head that Jake was a little standoffish. Now she decides that Jake is appropriately unobtrusive and Rick a little too presumptuous.

  Left alone with Jake again, she finds him watching her intently.

  “What? I should have shaved this morning?” she quips, rubbing her chin, and he laughs.

  She asks him about his dinner last night, and whether Mick had done any schoolwork this afternoon, and if he heard from Braden or Katie today. He volleys back questions of his own—­perhaps too many questions?

  He’s just asking about your day. There’s nothing unusual about that.

  She resists the impulse to change the subject, telling him about her hours spent shopping, stores she visited, gifts she bought. Maybe it’s just her imagination, but he seems to be watching her more closely than usual as he sips his wine and nibbles a roll from the bread basket, almost as if he’s . . . suspicious?

  Or is it something else?

  A new and frightening possibility flutters at the edges of her consciousness, but she pushes it away, unwilling to let it in.

  At the high school hockey game with a ­couple of his friends from the basketball team, Mick is surprised—­and relieved—­when Brianna Armbruster climbs into the stands just as the team skates onto the ice. She’s with a group of female friends, all fellow seniors, all really pretty. But not nearly as pretty as Brianna.

  If she really were seeing a college guy, as Zach had claimed, then shouldn’t she be with him on a Saturday night?

  Mick decides that she should and would, choosing to ignore the little voice inside his head pointing out that unless the college guy lives on a nearby campus, he’s probably away again until Christmas break like Mick’s older siblings are.

  It’s much more appealing to assume that Brianna has since broken up with the guy, or that Zach got it wrong in the first place, tormenting Mick with some stupid rumor that isn’t even true.

  He’s at the game, too, sitting a few rows ahead with two girls from the drama club. They’re both seniors and halfway decent-­looking, but nowhere near as pretty as Brianna’s friends and nowhere near as beautiful as Brianna herself.

  Mick finds himself growing annoyed, watching Zach and the two girls keep up a steady stream of chatter, barely paying attention to the action on the rink. It’s one thing for a drama girl to do that, he decided, but Zach is a guy and should know better, even if he’s never played a sport in his life. Not that that’s why he’s getting on Mick’s nerves tonight. And it’s not because he’s here with senior girls, or because Zach is the one who told him about Brianna dating a college guy, which he never should have done, regardless of whether it’s true or they’ve broken up.

  They probably haven’t, Mick speculates glumly. He can’t help but notice that she spends most of the first period typing on her phone. A few times, she nudges her friends and shows it to them. Watching them all lean in to exclaim over whatever was so fascinating on the screen in her hand, Mick is pretty sure it’s not Brianna’s latest moves in Words with Friends. There’s just something specific about the way girls talk and giggle when they’re discussing a guy, as opposed to some other random thing.

  When Brianna finally looks up from her phone and turns around to talk to someone behind her, she spots Mick. His heart soars when she waves and gives him a big smile. At least he’s pretty sure she’s looking at him.

  All right, there’s a small chance that she might be smiling and waving at someone behind him. But he doubts it. Especially since he would look like a real idiot, smiling and waving back so enthusiastically.

  Right before the end of the first period, Brianna and her friends head for the door, probably headed for the ladies’ room along with a million other girls. Either that, or they’re going out to sneak cigarettes in the gazebo, which Mick doubts. She’s not that kind of girl.

  Zach is also on the move, but Mick avoids making eye contact with him as the crowd heads en masse toward the student council concessions table.

  “Hey, can I borrow five bucks?” asks his friend Van—­short for Chris­tian Wilhelm Vandergraaf III.

  “For what? An apple and a box of raisins?” Mick asks moodily. The school is no longer allowed to sell candy thanks to some health fanatic mom who pushed them into enforcing a new district wellness policy.

  “For whatever. I’m broke and I’m starved.”

  “Well, so am I.” Mick spent his last dollar on admission to the game, after blowing the rest of his money on Brianna’s gifts.

  She’s nowhere to be seen in the crowd milling around the lobby, but here comes Zach with his senior female friends.

  “Hey, Lou, how’s it goin’?” he asks in his Goodfellas dialect.

  “It’s going,” Mick responds in his regular voice.

  “Good game, right?”

  “How would you know?”

  Zach frowns. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”

  Taking the hint, Zach shrugs and drifts away.

  “How come you’re being such a douche?” Van asks. “I thought you liked that kid.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “How come he calls you Lou?”

  “How come you call me a douche?” Mick returns, keeping an eye out for Brianna.

  He finds her back in the bleachers, texting away on her phone, with her friends watching over her shoulder.

  Mick settles in to watch the rest of the game, keeping an eye on her and wondering why his life is suddenly so depressing.

  When her cell phone rings just past midnight, Julia Sexton is curled up on her futon wearing yoga pants, eating stale microwave popcorn, and drinking a bottle of Bud Light from the fridge—­the most inexpensive Saturday night she’s had in months.

  She’s a hundred dollars short and five days late on the December rent for this studio apartment on the westernmost fringes of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

  She mailed a check this afternoon to the absentee landlord, accompanied by an apologetic note explaining she’d send the rest of the money as soon as she has it. She came home from the post office to a nasty voice mail he’d left her.

  She didn’t listen to the whole thing, but she got the gist: pay up or get out
.

  Luckily, he doesn’t have her cell phone number. The incoming call is from Dana, her former roommate and the reason Julia is in this mess in the first place, having moved in with her boyfriend in Brooklyn last month.

  “Dude,” Dana says, “what are you doing?”

  “The only thing I can afford to do since you stuck me for the December rent on this place: nothing.”

  “I gave you notice!”

  “A month.”

  “That’s long enough to find a new roommate.”

  “In a tiny studio? No one I know was looking to move, and I’m not about to share three hundred square feet with a total stranger,” Julia reminds her. They’ve been over this before. “Nothing against Alex, but I’m kind of hoping you’re calling to tell me that you guys broke up and you’re moving back in with me?”

  “I’m calling to tell you that Alex’s band just got a last-­minute gig at this club in Williamsburg. They go on at around one-­fifteen. They’re getting paid in free drinks, me included, and you can come as my guest.”

  “I don’t know . . . the weather’s crappy.” She goes to the window and looks out.

  Her fourth-­floor walkup overlooks the Con Edison facility directly across the street, with its barbed wire–topped chain link fence. Rain is coming down in sheets, splashing into a gutter river, and the block is deserted.

  “Don’t be lame, Jules,” Dana says. “Come on.”

  “It’s a fifteen-­minute walk to the subway from here.”

  “So take a cab.”

  “There are no cabs, and I’m broke, remember?”

  “Okay, but you have a MetroCard, so grab an umbrella and get your ass moving. Alex’s friend Marc will be there. Remember him from the Halloween party?”

  Julia remembers him. Tall, dark-­haired, bearded, tattooed. Her type—­unlike her ex-­boyfriend, a pasty banker who considered her songwriting career a little hobby.

  Mind made up, she arranges to meet Dana. She hangs up and quickly changes into jeans, boots, and a V-­necked black sweater that just barely reveals the top of her own tattoo. It’s a ladybug. As soon as she saves up enough money, she’s going to get another, maybe a butterfly with polka-dotted wings this time. She likes polka dots. They mingle nicely with her freckles.

  She puts on lipstick and a raincoat, brushes her long red hair, and takes one last look out the window, hoping to find that the deluge has miraculously ended or that 28th Street is suddenly teeming with available taxis . . .

  Which you can’t afford anyway, she reminds herself.

  Good thing there are no cabs there to tempt her. It’s still pouring out; the street is still deserted.

  Or is it?

  Frowning, she leans closer to the window, spotting a figure across the street wearing a hooded slicker.

  Whoever it is isn’t smoking or walking a dog or even walking at all. Just . . . standing. In the rain.

  Must be a security guard for Con Ed. They usually hang out on the other side of the chain link fence, but the lot there is probably flooded. It happens sometimes.

  It’s good to know someone is out there keeping a watchful eye on the block. She usually doesn’t worry about her safety in this neighborhood, even this late at night, but you never know.

  Julia grabs her umbrella and wallet, containing only a MetroCard, her ID, and a five-­dollar bill that has to last her until payday next week.

  Then she turns off the light and heads out the door.

  Mick was really hoping he’d get to talk to Brianna before the crowd dispersed after the hockey game, but she and her friends took off the minute it ended.

  He thought she might rematerialize at the Dunkin’ Donuts across from the rink, always mobbed with high school kids on weekend nights. He even hung out long after his friends left. But Brianna never came, and his cell phone battery died, because of course he’d forgotten to charge it. He was forced to walk all the way home alone in the dark and pouring rain.

  A local cop, there getting coffee, did offer him a ride as he left. “You’re Braden Mundy’s brother, right?” he said.

  “Yeah. How do you know him?”

  “We were Eagle Scouts together. I graduated a year ahead of him. And I had your mom as a teacher, too. Come on, I’ll give you a lift home.”

  Mick had momentarily hoped his perfect brother might have had a run-­in with local law enforcement at some point in his otherwise charmed hometown life. He turned down the offer.

  He regrets it now.

  It’s not that he isn’t perfectly capable of making the walk. He’s jogged it a million times. But that’s always during the day. Even plugged into familiar music on his iPod—­which wouldn’t make Mom happy—­he’s a little unnerved now that he’s left the brightly lit village streets behind. He jogs up the last stretch of Riverview Road toward home, past the scattering of neighboring houses, all of them set back from the road, windows darkened at this hour.

  It must be nice to live in town, closer to the school and civilization, not to mention the Armbrusters’ house on Prospect Street.

  Not that he’s afraid, isolated out here in the middle of the night, but still . . .

  Okay, maybe he’s a little afraid.

  When Mom texted him on the way home from dinner earlier, he assured her he’d have a ride home later. It hadn’t been a lie—­not then. He was planning to leave with his friends. He still could have called home and his parents would have come to get him, but if Brianna showed up late after all, he didn’t want her to see him getting into the family minivan on a Saturday night.

  He told his parents not to wait up. Dad will anyway—­or at least he’ll be dozing in the living room in front of the television. Mick is hoping that’s the case tonight.

  This isn’t the first time he’s gotten home late, and he knows from experience exactly how to get away with it.

  He turns off the music and removes his headphones. Now he can hear the rain dripping and the accelerated rhythm of his own breathing and his feet crunching through the last of the fallen leaves, and . . .

  And something rustling in the bushes.

  Spooked, he’s tempted to dart up onto the porch. The light is on there, and that’s the door he’s supposed to use when he comes in at night.

  But if he does, Dad will hear him and he’ll be in trouble.

  Reminding himself that the rustling is probably just a raccoon or maybe a deer, as opposed to a bear or a psycho killer, he slips around to the back. Even if that door is locked—­it usually isn’t—­it’s far enough from the living room, where his father and Doofus are undoubtedly snoozing, that they won’t be awakened by the sound of a key turning, the creaky door, and footsteps.

  Tonight, he finds the door locked. It has been all week, he’s noticed, ever since Mom got that weird package. He’s barely given that a passing thought, but now he realizes that she hasn’t been her usual talkative self when he’s seen her—­which, granted, hasn’t been much.

  Having forgotten to carry his key tonight, Mick retrieves the one they keep hidden under a planter on the back step.

  He unlocks the door, puts the key back, and steps inside out of the wet chill at last. He carries his sopping sneakers as he tiptoes across the floor. The house is hushed and dark, other than the glow and volume of the television spilling into the foyer. No snoring, but he does hear a momentary jingle of Doofus’s tags.

  Ordinarily on a night like this, Mick would be glad that Doofus lacks even the slightest canine instinct to investigate the fact that someone has just entered the house. Still skittish from the desolate walk home, though, he finds himself wondering . . .

  What if that someone wasn’t me?

  Yeah? Who else would it be? A psycho killer? A bear?

  Mick reminds himself that Brianna’s supposed college boyfriend probably wouldn’t be worrying about stuff like
that. Nor would he have to worry about letting his parents know he’s made it safely home.

  Well, tonight, Mick’s not going to be doing that, either. He quietly slides the dead bolt on the front door and flips the porch light switch. He leaves his down jacket hanging over the newel post.

  When Dad wakes up, he’ll know Mick is inside and assume that he just didn’t hear him come in.

  “I tried to wake you up when I got home,” Mick will tell him tomorrow. “You didn’t budge.”

  It’s not far-­fetched. Dad is a sound sleeper and a loud snorer, even though he’s not snoring tonight.

  Mick stays close to the wall as he climbs the wide stairs. The treads don’t creak as much when you place your feet all the way to the right. Safely on the second floor at last, he goes past the bathroom to his room without bothering to brush his teeth and wash his face, again aware that his parents wouldn’t approve. Nor would Mom be happy that he’s tossed his wet clothes onto the hardwood floor by his hamper, or that he’s changed into a short-­sleeved T-­shirt and basketball shorts instead of the flannel pajamas she keeps buying for him.

  They have so many rules. You’d think they’d loosen up by the time they got to the third kid, but it seems to Mick that he gets extra attention—­unless, of course, he actually wants attention.

  As he reaches past a stack of textbooks to plug his phone into the charger on his desk, he remembers that he was supposed to work on a social studies paper this afternoon. Mom is going to ask him about it first thing tomorrow.

  But it can wait, he decides, sitting down with a notebook and pen.

  Right now, he has to compose the Secret Santa note he’s going to leave for Brianna on Monday, along with the first gift. Each day, he’ll give her a little bead charm bearing a stick figure that represents something they have in common. On the fifth day, she’ll get the silver Trinkettes bracelet that holds all the beads and has room for lots more, as the lady in the gift shop pointed out.

  “See that? You can give your girlfriend a new bead on every special occasion.”

  Mick didn’t bother to tell her that the bracelet’s recipient isn’t exactly his girlfriend.