by Susan Sey
“You’re what my mother left me.”
Okay, now Nixie was a little alarmed. At first she’d been strangely comforted by him. He looked like nothing so much as a Norwegian farm hand--large, blonde, perpetually sunburned--but he radiated energy in big, fat, buzzy waves. She’d spent her life in the company of men and women like this, people whose ambitions were too large to be contained in a single body and spilled over into the air around them.
She’d been tempted to move closer and warm herself, like he was a cozy fire on a cold night. It was a weakness, she knew. Back sliding. Not on her Normal Life Game Plan. The next guy she fell for was going to be an accountant with a thing for minivans and tuna noodle casserole. The kind of guy who’d pass out cold if Sloan ever flashed him the come-hither.
But Nixie didn’t have anything right now in terms of a life, normal or otherwise. It was grey and nasty out, she’d been thoroughly chastised by the closest thing she had to a father, and she’d just turned her last onion into charcoal. Surely she could be forgiven for clinging to the familiar?
But now she wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t radiating that beautiful energy any more. Now he was looking at her with a familiar speculation, the kind she’d seen on strangers’ faces her whole life. He wanted something from her.
“Listen,” she said, “I don’t know what you and your mom have cooked up here, but whatever it is, forget it. I’m retired.”
“Hey, don’t look at me. My mom works alone. I just get caught in the cross fire every now and then. But for once, I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do.”
“Yeah? Mind what?” He flashed her a grin, and she immediately revised her initial impression. This man wasn’t a farm hand. He was a Viking. Big, blonde, wide enough to sack entire villages without breaking a sweat.
“What?”
“You said you minded. Mind what?”
Nixie frowned. “Being manipulated.”
“Have you been?”
“I...” She broke off. “I don’t know. All I know so far is that I’ve been co-opted as the grand prize of a scavenger hunt my new neighbor set up for her adult son. Does that strike you as weird, or is it just me?”
“No, it’s weird.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“She’s hoping we’ll fall in love, marry, and produce gorgeous children that will be an asset to our good name when I run for president.”
Nixie’s hand rose to her throat. “Oh.”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. I have no intention of reproducing at my mother’s behest, nor in running for public office. You’re safe with me.”
“Well that’s a relief.”
“Yeah.” He tucked big hands into his pockets and studied her. “Listen, are you interested in a job?”
“A job?”
“I know you said you were retired, and from what I’ve seen on the news, it’s for good reason.”
Nixie closed her eyes and pushed a thumb into the headache starting to burrow between her brows. “Glad you approve.”
“So here you are, hunkered down in DC, trying to put a life back together, am I right?”
Nixie opened her eyes and gazed at him. He was a train wreck. Pitching was not this man’s strong suit. But what he lacked in finesse, he clearly made up for in tenacity, because he was still going.
“I have just the project to get you back on your feet, philanthropically speaking.” He grinned broadly, and that beautiful, buzzy energy was back. It filled the air around him, reached out and wrapped itself around Nixie, pulling at her in spite of her efforts to resist.
“I volunteer at a little clinic in Anacostia,” he said. “We provide free medical care for anybody who can’t afford it, of course, but our focus is on poor kids. We’re managing to keep the lights on, but barely. Nobody in this city wants to acknowledge kids going without basic medical care barely three miles from the Capitol Building. We need to raise our profile, really put our kids on the map, but it’s political suicide for an incumbent to touch something like this in an election year, even midterms.”
Nixie stared at him, her skin going abruptly cold. “You’re a doctor?” she asked. “Cripes.”
He frowned. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No.” What was wrong with her? Hadn’t James taught her anything about being seduced by doctors with political ambitions? Maybe James had been a smoother talker, and maybe he’d been a little more generically handsome, but he was the same type.
“Oh. I was just checking, because it sounded like you were kind of down on doctors.”
“No,” Nixie said again. “It’s just...” It’s just that I recently built a clinic with a hot doctor who had a crush on my mom. I’m not interested in an instant replay. She said, “My last project was very similar. A children’s clinic in Kenya. I’m not really looking to do another medical thing so soon. If you had an orphanage or something, maybe I’d be your girl. It sounds like a worthy project, though. Isn’t your mother interested?”
His face went stony. “I prefer to keep the personal and the professional separate.”
“Oh.” Nixie would bet her trust fund there was a story worth hearing behind that small, terse answer. Not her business, she reminded herself. “Well surely somebody will come along--”
“Yeah, I doubt that. We’re looking at a financial crisis in the next month, if not the next week. What do you think the chances are that another superstar humanitarian with a little time on her hands will drop into the neighborhood in time to do us any good?”
Guilt rushed over her like high tide. “Not so hot, huh?”
“Not so hot.” He shrugged. “But listen, I understand. This is small potatoes compared to what you usually deal with. These kids aren’t starving or anything. Not for food, at least.”
“Poverty is poverty,” Nixie said, stung. “It comes in all shapes and sizes. I don’t judge whose need is greater.”
“No? Somebody has to. Who does it for you?”
Nixie blinked. She’d never thought of it just that way before. “I guess that would be Karl. He’s our...my... He’s Leighton-Brace’s COO of Charitable Giving.”
“I see. And now that you’re on your own?”
On her own. Loneliness crept up and tightened her throat. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well think about it now.” He stepped toward her, stopped barely short of crowding her. “Just come see the place. Our clinic. Come see what you’re saying no to. Give us at least that much.”
She thought about another long weekend in her anonymous apartment and she heard herself say, “Fine. I’ll have a look.”
He smiled at her, and it transformed his face. The hard edges and sharp bones disappeared into a delighted grin that warmed something in her Nixie hadn’t even realized was cold. He checked his watch and winced. “We have to go. You’ll want shoes.”
“You want me to come with you? Right now?”
“Sure. Time is of the essence and all that.”
Nixie thought of her empty apartment. She didn’t have to go back there tonight. Not yet. That cold space in her soul warmed a few more degrees. “Okay. Your call, Dr. Larsen,” she said.
“Erik.” He stuck out his hand.
“Nixie,” she said and gave his hand a quick shake. It was like squeezing a brick. His patients must love that. “Pleased to meet you. I’ll go get my shoes.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Erik inched his way east on Constitution until the White House was a pale, rectangular smear through the slush on his window. The Washington Monument speared up into the hovering clouds on Nixie’s side, and she turned to him.
“So where’s this clinic of yours again?” she asked, her eyes large and green and interested.
“Anacostia.”
“Oh. Tough neighborhood?”
“One of the worst in the country. Almost half the adults don’t have jobs and more kids get shot or killed than graduate from high school. Three miles from the Capito
l Building, if you can believe it.”
“And Karl thinks I have to fly around the world to do my job.” She turned back to the view out her window. “My old job, I mean.”
She shook her head as if to reorder her thoughts and the scent of her hair crept across the car to him. He pressed his lips together. He didn’t want Nixie Leighton-Brace to smell so good. So real. So vibrant and tangy and sweet. Like lemons or something, with a little bit of char thrown in, as if she’d burned something recently. It made her far too human for his comfort. He’d rather she stayed two-dimensional, the answer to a pressing problem, nothing more.
“Your old job,” he said. “Yeah, what happened there? I mean besides what played out in the press.”
“I quit.” She stared out her window, treating him to a profile that had probably inspired sculptors the world over.
“Why? Seems like that asshole you were dating should have gone first.”
She was quiet for a minute, and Erik’s hands fisted on the wheel. He’d gone too far, as usual. He’d wanted to dial her down a little in his head, get some distance from that unsettling surge of physical awareness. He hadn’t meant to needle her into quitting before she’d even signed on. Now she’d probably get out at the next red light, catch a cab home and tell his mother that he was pushy and rude and that she’d rather not see him again.
Which would be great in one sense, because God knew he didn’t want to date a woman like Nixie Leighton-Brace. That was the Senator’s dream come true, not his. But he didn’t want to kiss the clinic goodbye, either. He was going to have to walk a very fine line here, he realized. He’d have to balance on the knife edge between providing the fawning attention she required as a celebrity without encouraging her on a more personal level. At least until she was hooked on their mission. On their kids. Then he could relax.
In the meantime, he’d have to be very careful. For a woman who’d been to every armpit the world had to offer, she had the most improbable air of innocence about her. It was like she’d been hermetically sealed and inserted into pictures of horrible suffering, so she could emerge fresh and clean and smelling like lemons. He doubted she’d ever been without a team of handlers in her life, and here he was, ready to take her across the Anacostia River and into the kind of poverty and hopelessness she’d probably only ever viewed from inside the sterile bubble of her fame.
“Why did I quit?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I was tired,” she said, and her eyes were a clear, mossy green. “I wanted to come home.”
Erik understood the impulse better than he wanted to admit. “And home is DC?”
“It’s wherever I want.” She didn’t look away from the window.
“Just that easy, huh?”
“It’s never easy. But it can be done. I’m good at building things. Why not home?”
“Because it’s more complicated than building an orphanage.”
“Have you ever built one?”
“What, an orphanage? Or a home?”
“Are they that different?”
“Yeah.” Erik shook his head. “And if I have to explain why, you wouldn’t understand.”
“If you say so.”
And with that, they hurtled across the bridge and into a whole new world.
Nixie sat in the waiting room while Erik swiped his ID badge through the reader and let himself into the receptionist’s pen. There was an enormous woman working the front desk, and even through three inches of bullet-proof glass, Nixie could see her giving him crap. She smiled. Dr. Erik probably didn’t get enough crap.
She settled into her molded plastic chair. It was profoundly ugly, the exact color of puke. Nixie looked up when a man at the end of the row started heaving with exhausted resignation into a pink plastic bucket. That, Nixie thought, explains the vomit-colored décor. A stack of paper cups sat next to the rust-streaked sink in the bathroom so she filled one with water and delivered it to the puker.
“Ah, fuck,” he mumbled. Nixie took it as thanks. She patted his shoulder and returned to her seat.
She sat down again and turned her attention to the drama unfolding in the receptionist’s pen. The woman was a full foot shorter than Erik, but she looked mean, and meanness counted more than anything in a fight. A Colombian farmer had explained this to her years ago and the ensuing cockfight had proven it. Nixie hoped she wasn’t about to see the principle in action again. Maybe he was pushy and opinionated, but Erik seemed like a decent enough human being. It would be a shame if the receptionist killed him.
But Erik had raised his palms in a gesture of surrender and backed away slowly. He said something that seemed to mollify the woman, accompanied it with a winning smile. Then he pointed toward Nixie. The woman swiveled to stare at Nixie. Nixie gave her a little finger wave. The woman’s eyes narrowed, her mouth bunched to the side with suspicion. She turned back to Dr. Erik and served up another helping of crap with renewed vigor. Nixie grinned.
She ducked her head so Erik wouldn’t see her laughing at him and caught the eye of the toddler at her feet. The kid was maybe two and a half feet tall, of indeterminate gender, with an intricate spiral of tight braids snaking over its shiny brown scalp. It was one of perhaps five kids of varying sizes and colors orbiting a thin woman in the puke-colored chair opposite her own. Nixie had seen enough really sick kids to know that this one wasn’t at death’s door, so she leaned forward, elbows on knees and smiled into the kid’s giant brown eyes.
“What are you in for?” she asked.
“Breathing machine.”
“Seriously?” Nixie lifted a skeptical brow. “A machine that breathes for you?”
The child giggled. “No, I gots to breathe into it.”
“Huh. Why?”
“Asthma. We all gots it.”
Nixie looked at the brood of children sprawled across the chairs. “All of you?”
“Yeah. Mama Mel say it the cockroach shit.”
Nixie blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah, that and the cheap-ass carpet the super put in.”
“La Toya Kennedy?” The receptionist called through a small grouping of holes drilled through the glass at mouth level.
The woman across from Nixie didn’t open her eyes, but prodded the kid with a slippered foot. “That you, child. Go on, now. We don’t gots all day.”
“Okay, Mama Mel.” La Toya bounded to her feet and barreled toward the door the receptionist was holding open.
Mama Mel cracked open one eye. “Don’t run, neither. You want to give yourself the asthma before you even gets your turn on the machine?” She settled her bony frame back into the chair, muttering, “I ain’t talking just to hear myself talk, neither. Dang.”
“All these kids yours?” Nixie asked.
“Lord, I collects them,” the woman sighed. “I don’t stand for nobody raising their hand to no child.”
“Your landlord’s okay with all the kids?”
“He gots to be, don’t he? Government gave ‘em all to me right and proper. I gots the court papers to prove it, and the social worker coming by every month to make sure they’s all taken care of.”
“How’d they all get asthma?”
She fanned a thin hand in front of her face, like the question was a pesky fly. “All the kids in our building gots it. We supposed to be in the good project, the new project. Tell you something, that place ain’t nothing but a rat trap. The paint stink, the carpet stink, the rats eat all the insulation out and fill up the walls with shit, then the cockroaches come and eat that. It ain’t no wonder my babies don’t breathe right.”
She closed her eyes again and dropped her head back against the seat. “But it worse outside. Between the shooting and the mugging and the drugs and lord knows what all, I don’t dare let them out of the apartment. They come straight home from school and stay where I can keep my eye on them. My kids is going to graduate if it’s the last thing I do.” She blew out a weary breath. “Some days I think it might be.”<
br />
The receptionist leaned toward the glass and called, “Nixie Leighton-Brace? Girl, if your famous self is gracing our building, please step forward.”
Nixie smiled at Mama Mel. “That’s my cue. Nice talking to you.”
Mama Mel finally opened both eyes and gave her a thorough once over. “You ain’t Nixie Leighton-Brace,” she finally said. “You too skinny.”
Nixie laughed. “Camera adds ten pounds, even in Somalia. Think about that.” She headed toward the startled receptionist, who bounded from her swivel chair in a blur of skin-tight white polyester. She buzzed open the door and Nixie sailed through it like she was walking the red carpet. She knew how to be Nixie Leighton-Brace when it suited her.
She had to give the woman credit--she pulled it together quickly. She drew back her chin and eyed Nixie from head to toe. “Are you really Nixie Leighton-Brace?” she asked.
Nixie relaxed the take-my-picture pose and smiled at her. “That’s what it says on my passport.”
“Girl, what are you doing here?” The woman’s wattle jiggled in reproof. “Shouldn’t you be in Darfur or something?”
Nixie gave her an apologetic shrug. “Probably.” She checked the ID badge proffered up by the woman’s impressive bosom. “Wanda?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
Nixie grinned. The woman was about five feet tall and nearly as wide, with hair an improbable shade of check-me-out red and a mouth painted to match. “You look like a Wanda. Do people tell you that all the time?”
The mouth that had been nearly hidden between fleshy cheeks widened now into a smile that changed her face like the sunrise changed the sky. “Time or two.”
“So Dr. Erik tells me times are tough here at the clinic. What’s the situation?”
Wanda’s smile died and she wagged her head. “Dr. Erik and Dr. Mary Jane, they’re doing their best, but don’t nobody care about us folks down here. Up there on the Hill, they like to pretend we don’t exist so they can pat each other on the back and take each other out to lunch. Pretend they’re all good and noble.” Her mouth twisted into a flaming curve of derision. “Dr. Erik gives ‘em new hearts, but he can’t put no love in ‘em.”
