Quick Study

by Maggie Barbieri

I explained to her that we weren’t leaving and that Jack wanted to move us to fifth row, center ice.

  “Can you get a decent martini down there?” Max asked, her maiden voyage to the Garden not fulfilling her original expectations. Maybe I had lied a bit and said that you could get a good martini, and maybe I had told her our seats were better than they were. And maybe I had fudged the truth a bit by telling her that more than one woman would be in a cocktail dress. Now that we were moving down to the expensive seats, that part might actually be true, since most of the people who sat there were either corporate types or models trying to marry Rangers.

  Jack assured her that he would get her a martini as soon as we were seated. He can do things like that. He took the coats from her arm and led us to the escalators, where we made the journey to the hundred-dollar seats and the land of chilled vodka, never-ending vendor service, and hockey players so close you could touch them. Which I made a mental note not to do.

  We settled into our seats just as the first period ended. Jack took our drink and food orders but stayed rooted in the aisle next to our seats, watching the Rangers skate off the ice. I noticed him give a little wave to someone and the lights went down in the rink.

  The Rangers’ announcer came on the public address system just as a giant spotlight found me in my fifth-row seat. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please join the New York Rangers organization in wishing our number-one fan, Alison Bergeron, a happy birthday!”

  Max turned to me, her eyes wide. The fans let out a giant roar, followed by thunderous applause.

  I shielded my eyes, a motion I could see depicted on the Jumbotron that hung over center ice. I looked like a deer caught in the headlights—one with dried ketchup on her right cheek. I looked at Jack, stricken. He had a huge smile on his poor-man’s-Clooney face as he leaned over to give me a hug.

  The announcer continued over the deafening din. “And now, welcome our own John Amarante!”

  John Amarante was the Rangers’ longtime anthem singer. He appeared on the ice, as he usually does before games, but instead of singing the anthem, he broke out into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  Here’s the thing: if the entire fan base at Madison Square Garden began singing to Max, she would have been thrilled. Not only that, she would have almost expected it, given her fabulousness. Me? I wanted to melt into the sticky, beer-stained floor. I had been in those seats once before, been viewed by every Ranger fan in the tristate area on my first date with Jack, and had borne the brunt of Crawford’s ire for longer than I cared to recall. I prayed that the first period’s highlights were being discussed and that my giant, petrified face wasn’t being broadcast for all of New York to see. And that Crawford was out on the hunt for some kind of homicidal maniac whose antics would keep him busy for the next decade.

  Max read my mind. “You better hope this isn’t on TV,” she said, fluffing her hair and, at the same time, exposing just enough of her spectacular breasts in case it was.

  Jack bent down and pulled a bag out from under my chair. A microphone appeared in his hand and when Amarante stopped singing and the fans quieted down, he prepared to make some kind of presentation. He put the mic in front of his mouth. His lips were moving, but I had conveniently gone deaf, just hearing the voice inside my head telling me, “You are so screwed.” When he saw that I had gone into some kind of fugue state, he opened the package and unfurled its contents.

  It was a Mark Messier jersey, identical to the one I was wearing.

  Except it was autographed by Mark Messier. To me. With love.

  Max looked at me disdainfully. “You are so screwed.”

  Two

  It took me a minute to realize that the knocking was at the door and not on my forehead.

  A piece of advice? Never have two giant Madison Square Garden beers with a martini chaser. It’s not a smart thing to do, and I consider myself a fairly smart individual.

  I opened one sleep-encrusted eye and saw that the clock read eight-thirty. Trixie, my faithful companion (of the canine variety), was standing next to the bed, looking at me with a mournful expression on her face. That could only mean one thing: I would have to tread carefully until I discovered why she looked so mournful. Something told me that it would be wet and smell really, really bad.

  The knocking continued, a polite but steady tap at the front door. I rolled out of bed and put on a fluffy terry cloth robe, one that would hide the fact that I had slept in nothing but underpants and the beautiful Messier jersey. I sincerely hoped that the knocking wasn’t being perpetrated by Crawford, who would see that I had slept with Mark’s signature close to my heart. That wouldn’t make him happy.

  I was midway down the stairs when it dawned on me who was at the door: I had hired someone to paint my dining room and he was due to start today. Thank God I had remembered to clean everything out of the room earlier in the week. When I threw open the door, the sunlight streamed into the hallway and hit me in the face. The painter looked as alarmed as I did hungover.

  “Miss Bergeron? Am I too early?” he asked, two paintbrushes in one hand and a roller in the other.

  I threw the door open wide. “No, Hernan. Come in.” I stepped aside. “And please, call me Alison.”

  Hernan entered, another man at his side, carrying paint cans filled with primer. “This is my nephew, Jose. My sister’s boy. I think you have met before?”

  Yes, we’d met. Jose regarded me warily, just as you would someone who had sixty hours of community service to perform, which is where he, and Hernan, for that matter, knew me from—my community service job at the local soup kitchen. That’s basically what you get when you have a run-in with state troopers, but I guarantee you, it was a giant misunderstanding. Yes, I was following my neighbor, who turned out to be a murderer; yes, I had flouted Crawford’s advice and taken off in my own car down the Major Deegan Expressway in a speeding car chase in the rain after aforementioned murderer; and yes, I had ignored the state trooper’s warning to exit the car slowly, carefully, and without reaching for my cell phone. The judge had been kind: serve sixty hours of community service and the whole affair would be expunged from my record. My permanent record. The one they warn you about in Catholic school. I found the easiest, most complementary-to-my-skill-set job that I could: serving dinner at a church in a town a bit north of my house to anyone who wanted to attend. I had met Hernan, his wife, Alba, his daughter, Amalia, and a host of other family members, including Jose, during my time there. After several weeks, I had found that you generally don’t attend a free dinner week after week unless you really need to.

  I don’t know how word had gotten out that I was the community service server, but Jose seemed to know my story. He smiled hesitantly and stepped into the hallway with his uncle.

  “The paint is in the dining room,” I said, walking through the living room and into my small dining room. “It’s from the Benjamin Moore Serenity Collection. It’s called Tumbled Marble,” I babbled, finally realizing that Hernan didn’t care and Jose didn’t seem to understand a whole lot of English. “It was either that or Morning Dawn. I finally settled on Tumbled Marble.” I motioned to the two unopened paint cans on the floor when I saw that they couldn’t give a rat’s behind about how I had chosen the color. “And there they are. Did you bring drop cloths?”

  Hernan put his hands on his hips and looked around the emptied room. “I have some in the car,” he said. “This shouldn’t take us too long. We’ll get started right away.” He turned to Jose and said something in Spanish that made Jose scurry from the dining room and out the front door.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Hernan. I’ve been putting this off for months. I’m really glad that you mentioned your business.”

  Hernan knelt in front of the paint cans and pulled a screwdriver from the pocket of his white painter’s pants. “Jose and I do this on the side. During the week, I drive a cab.” He mentioned a company I had never heard of and asked me if I knew it.

  I sh
ook my head. I didn’t venture up to his town often—mostly just to serve dinner at the church and drive through on my way to points north—and I had no need for a cab, having my own car. “Does Jose work for them, too?”

  “No,” he said. He kept his eyes on the paint cans. “He does some construction work.” Trixie wandered into the room and sniffed Hernan’s shoes. He tensed slightly and I assured him that Trixie was a nice dog and that she wouldn’t hurt him. I hoped she wouldn’t prove me wrong and decide to take a hunk out of his leg.

  “Does he work for a local company?” I asked. I knew that the Escalantes, by and large, were in the country illegally and I wondered how Jose could get work. I knew that a bunch of men gathered on some designated corners in the town every morning and performed odd jobs for homeowners and were often picked up by contractors looking for cheap labor. I suspected Jose fell into that category.

  “Here and there,” Hernan said. He fell silent and I realized that I had pushed the conversation as far as it would go.

  “Coffee?” I asked as I went into the adjoining kitchen.

  “No, thank you,” he called after me.

  I decided to make a full twelve cups in case he changed his mind and went about setting up the coffeepot. With the way my head was pounding, I considered drinking the whole twelve cups myself. When the drip finally stopped after what seemed like hours, I took the milk from the refrigerator and poured a generous helping in, turning the black coffee a lovely cocoa shade not too far from the color Hernan would be putting on the walls in the dining room.

  Jose came back in through the front door and Trixie ran to meet him. He dropped the drop cloths and the extra paintbrushes in his hands and fell to his knees, allowing Trixie to lick his face. He was a young guy with a chubby baby face. Hernan had told me when I hired them that Jose was twenty-six, but he didn’t look older than eighteen. Trixie liked him very much, but then again, she likes anyone who shows her any positive attention, so I wanted to tell him not to be too impressed by her display of affection. Trixie is a dog slut. She’ll go to whomever she feels will show her the most affection and love. He rolled around on the floor with her for a few minutes until Hernan called him back to the dining room, and the painting commenced.

  I asked Jose if he would like a coffee. Unlike his uncle, who was all about painting, Jose accepted a cup, laden with sugar and milk. He took a sip and smiled at me.

  “You have a beautiful house,” he said.

  “Gracias,” I said. I saw Hernan give him a look.

  Jose took my thank-you to mean that I spoke Spanish, which I don’t. He said something about my house that escaped my limited understanding. Hernan handed Jose a paintbrush and when his back was turned, Jose shot me a look followed by a smile that said my uncle is all about work. I took my cue and went back into the kitchen, where I mainlined coffee until I couldn’t tolerate any more caffeine. I went upstairs to take a shower and get ready for the day.

  I tried to enjoy the shower and not think about Crawford and his possible reaction to my birthday at the Garden the night before. Had he seen it? Had someone told him about it? I was obsessed with the whole situation and spent the entire shower going over the events of the night in my head. There was no use worrying about something that I had no control over, but that philosophy is more difficult to embody than one would think. By the time I had dried off, dressed, and pulled on my clogs, I was in a state of mild hysteria. I went back downstairs to forage in the refrigerator for the food that would comfort me enough to make me forget about thirty thousand people celebrating my birthday. Live. And televised.

  When I got back downstairs, I was surprised to find that the first coat of paint was already on the walls and Jose and Hernan were standing and admiring their work.

  Jose gave me a big smile and threw his arms out wide. “Whaddya think?” he asked.

  I put my hands on my hips and looked at the biggest wall. “I like it,” I said. “Great job.” I went into the kitchen and pulled down another coffee cup. “Come on in here, Hernan, and have a cup of coffee. You have to wait for the first coat to dry anyway.”

  Hernan appeared to be deciding whether this idea was a good one. He finally relented and followed Jose, who was ready for another cup. I motioned toward the table. “Please, sit down.” I rustled around in the refrigerator and cupboards and finally came up with some Oreos and prepackaged coffee cakes, which I unwrapped and put on a plate. Jose dug in and ate with gusto, while Hernan eyed the plate. “Come on, Hernan. It’s not much, but coffee cake and Oreos go good with coffee,” I said, putting an entire Oreo in my mouth.

  He took a coffee cake reluctantly. “My daughter is bringing us lunch,” he said by way of explanation.

  I didn’t know about him but I could eat an entire box of coffee cake and still have lunch, but I decided I didn’t know him well enough to say, “What’s your point?” I sat down at the table with my coffee, Trixie coming to my side, knowing that I was a messy eater and that her lunch was a few hours off.

  “I like the color you picked,” Hernan said in between bites of coffee cake and sips of coffee.

  “Thanks. I’m hoping that it makes me serene.”

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “The Serenity Collection? Make me serene?” I said and then, seeing that I wasn’t getting anywhere, dropped it.

  “It’s very warm,” he said.

  I got up and opened the back door to let in some air.

  “The color,” he elaborated. “The color is very warm.” He looked up at the ceiling, clearly uncomfortable with me and the situation. I decided to put him out of his misery and excuse myself.

  “If you need me, I’ll be in the office upstairs,” I said, closing the back door. Jose smiled at me and finished off another coffee cake while Hernan just nodded. I headed up to my spare bedroom and settled in at my desk, a stack of essays waiting for me next to the computer. Before I started, I sent Max an e-mail. “How are you feeling today?”

  Max’s BlackBerry never leaves her side and her response was almost instantaneous. “Great. You in trouble?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bet you are.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I wrote back, deciding that she wasn’t helping. I started in on the essays, getting through about half of them before I heard the doorbell ringing. I looked at the clock and realized that I had been working for close to three hours. The rumbling of my stomach indicated that it was time for another food break.

  I live alone and have for over a year. So to have two sets of visitors on one Saturday—even if I had paid one set to come over and paint—was out of the ordinary. I hustled downstairs, hoping that it was Crawford, and hoping that it wasn’t. I opened the door and found Amalia, Hernan’s daughter, standing there, a grocery bag in her hand. “Hi, Mrs. Bergeron,” she said. Amalia and I are very friendly, having chatted quite a bit during my stints at the Lord’s Bounty, but I hadn’t been able to convince her to call me by my first name.

  I opened the door. “Come on in, Amalia.” We exchanged a hug.

  She bent down to pet Trixie. “This is Trixie?” Trixie’s pretty famous around these parts.

  “Yep.”

  Jose came out of the dining room and smiled at Amalia. “Lunch?” he asked.

  The two of them bantered back and forth, more like brother and sister than cousins, supporting my theory that Jose was younger than Hernan let on. Amalia went into the kitchen and put the bag on the table. “Daddy, time to eat.”

  I had grown very fond of Amalia since I had started at the Lord’s Bounty; she was a bright, funny girl who went to one of the local high schools and who had confided in me that she wanted to be a nurse. I kept that piece of information in the back of my brain because St. Thomas had one of the best nursing programs in the area. She always looked for me when she arrived so that she could bring me up to speed on what she had done the week before. I was following her soccer career with interest.

  At the
last dinner, she had told me that she wanted to meet Crawford to make sure he was “good enough” for me. If she only knew—at this point, Crawford was getting the raw end of the deal.

  Something occurred to me. “How did you get here?” I asked her as I pulled sandwiches, salads, and drinks out of the bag.

  She looked at me, surprised. “I drove.”

  “You what?” I asked.

  “Drove.” She made a motion like she was turning a steering wheel. “A car? Daddy and Jose came in Jose’s car and I have my dad’s cab,” she said, making a face.

  “Oh, god, I feel old, Amalia. I knew you were seventeen but it never occurred to me that you could drive around Westchester by yourself.” I got some glasses from the cupboard and filled them with ice from the freezer. “Go look at the dining room and tell me what you think of that color.”

  She poked her head into the room, where her father was working on the window trim. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Very soothing.”

  “That’s what I was going for!” I said, delighted that someone finally got it. I pulled out a kitchen chair. “Are you staying?”

  She shook her head, her long black hair swinging back and forth. “No. I have to go to work. I work at the Wendy’s on Route 9 in Ossining.” She crumpled up the bag that the food came in and asked me where the garbage can was.

  I held out my hand. “Here. Give it to me.” I pulled out the garbage drawer and pushed it down on top of the overflowing garbage. I listened while she, her father, and her cousin exchanged some words in Spanish. I couldn’t catch what was being said, but it sounded like Jose wanted to leave with Amalia and Hernan wasn’t happy about it. I tried to busy myself so it didn’t appear that I was eavesdropping. Which I was.

  Most of the words were unfamiliar but I heard “work,” “lazy,” and “trouble,” which in combination didn’t sound very promising for Jose. He bantered back and forth with Hernan, who grew increasingly agitated. The smile never left Jose’s face, which I think made Hernan even angrier. Amalia looked nervously at both of them; she wasn’t a stranger to this kind of discussion, that was clear. Finally, seeing that I was still in the kitchen and making every effort not to listen, Hernan stopped talking and, in Spanish, told Jose to do what he wanted. That much I understood.