Five Fortunes (27 page)

Five Fortunes / 207

he didn’t know that. Snorting with anger and pain, he got up. He didn’t look as if he felt very comfortable in the midsection.

“Undo your belt and hand it to me.”

He protested. She roared, “HURRY UP!” She knew he could barely see, and she wanted him secured before he felt in the mood to try kick boxing.

He took off his belt, and she took it from him.

“Undo the fly.”

“Maa-an…” he yelled.

She clicked open the switchblade beside his ear, so he’d be sure to hear it. Swearing, he unsnapped and pulled down the zipper.

With the belt she swiftly and harshly tied his hands together behind his back. She pulled his pants down so that they shackled his ankles. He yelled a string of obscenities unflattering to women. There was a keening note to his rage, the raw edge of humiliation.

Jerking the bound hands upward as a warning, Carter ordered,

“Take off a shoe.”

“Can’t take off my fucking shoe if you got my hands—”

She jerked upward again, harder. With another string of blue language, he used the toe of one shoe against the heel of the other to take a shoe off. She kicked it away.

She could tell by his breathing that the agony from the tear gas was beginning to abate. His eyes were probably tearing less, and vision returning.

She pricked the point of the switchblade against the exposed butt of his briefs. “Into the street, stud,” she ordered. Feeling the knife point, he started shuffling.

She made him walk down the middle of the street under the brightest arc of the streetlights to protect herself from anything coming at her from the darkness between the houses. He shuffled and cursed. She held the knife with one hand and with the other reached for her cell phone. This she found in two pieces in her pocket. She swore. But up near the corner she saw the shade in a lighted second-story window go up a little. Her watcher had seen it all.

208 / Beth Gutcheon

By the time she got her guy down the street and around the corner onto Shanti’s block, she could hear the sirens rolling toward them.

“That will be your ride,” she said. Her guy called her a string of very unpleasant names. “By the way,” she replied as the police car sped into the street, “nice underpants.” They were Ralph Lauren.

The police were both white, both male. They leaped out with nightsticks ready, although it was fairly clear that the suspect was not presenting any danger. Please guys, Carter thought, no Mark Fuhrman stuff.

“Not bad,” said the first one, looking at the overall picture presented by her captive.

“You got a license for this shit?” the second one asked, rather aggressively. He was pointing to the purple stains the tear gas had left on the guy’s shirt, dye that shows up under light so that if an attacker is sprayed, but escapes, he is marked.

Carter had her PI and tear gas licenses ready.

“What happened?”

“Assault with a deadly weapon,” she said, handing over the switchblade. “I’ll be glad to press charges.”

“I kind of like this rig,” said the first cop, who was looking over the prisoner.

“Will you let me pull my fucking pants up?!” roared the object of their attention.

They took their time getting him re-dressed and putting the cuffs on him as they asked Carter questions.

“What about my shoe?” asked the guy.

“Oh,” said Carter, “did you lose a shoe?”

“Guess he lost a shoe,” said the cops, and opened the door to the backseat. As they drove away, Carter looked up and saw Shanti smiling at her from the darkened front window of her house. She didn’t want to direct attention to Shanti, since she hoped and expected that there were plenty of witnesses to that last performance, both friendly and not. But she certainly hoped Shanti had enjoyed it.

She sat down under a streetlight to wait for DeeAnne. Somehow she wasn’t worried that anyone else would mess with her tonight.

A
my had experienced this month of December as a set of thumbscrews, clamping down tighter and tighter. First, Christmas. It was the most frantic time for her business, and she added to that an unwillingness to give up the family traditions of the holiday. She insisted on doing elaborate stockings for Jill and Noah, filling them with presents she used to buy and hide throughout the year but now seemed to have to do all in one week.

There was the holiday wassail party she had given every year since Jill’s first Christmas. It got bigger and bigger, because everyone who had ever been invited was on the list, and they came with their now huge children, people she once had seen almost daily at school plays, or on crossing-guard duty, or serving hot lunch, whom now she saw only this one time in the year. Every year she said to Noah, “This is the last time, this is ridiculous,” and every year people were so appreciative and effusive about it that she told them all to save the date, of course they’d be back next year.

There were the Christmas cards to send. She and Noah used to divide the list and sit in the den for a couple of evenings side by side, addressing envelopes and writing notes on the cards to absent friends. But Noah never had time anymore to help. He barely had time this year to look at the cards that came to them. She stuck them up all over the mantelpiece and bookcases in the living room and den and figured he could read them in January before she threw them out.

And this year there was this man whom Jill believed was stalking her. Amy hadn’t seen him, but really, the whole thing was too much to

209

210 / Beth Gutcheon

bear. Just when Jill seemed to be turning the corner. She was getting out more, she was still losing weight, and she didn’t spend nearly as much time holed up with that damn computer. Amy had talked to the police about the stalker, but even she could see there was nothing they could do. The man didn’t threaten. He didn’t even speak to Jill. He just watched her.

Still, this litany of pressures being loaded onto her shoulders explained everything and nothing. She loved Christmas. She complained every year and then thrived on it, the cooking, the news from old friends, the parties, the sight of the little boys she had pushed on swings now wearing blue blazers and experimenting with eggnog. The little girls Jill had played dress up with now in slinky black dresses and makeup, saying “like” and “actually” four times in every sentence and running off to Jill’s room to giggle and gossip.

Something else was wrong. Noah’s uneven temper, his angina, the excruciating pressure of his job. Sometimes he’d be in surgery at seven A.M., not get home until eight o’clock that night, and go straight into the bedroom to read medical journals for two hours. It was too much for a man almost sixty. He insisted he was deeply happy, and certainly they’d had times in the last month when she felt they’d never been so close. But they needed a real rest, a real break from work, from cold, from New York, from everything that had been so hard for the past five years. They needed a month alone together in some part of Tuscany where no one else spoke English and the phones didn’t work.

Ten days in Mexico with Jill and the Kneodlers would have to do.

The bedroom was covered with suitcases and tissue paper in prepar-ation for the departure when the phone rang. Amy needed a suitcase for her own clothes, another for Noah’s, a carry-on bag with some extra underwear and a bathing suit for when the airlines lost the rest of the luggage, and a whole separate case for the Christmas presents.

Amy could hear Noah in the den, his voice low and tired. She heard him hang up and trudge toward their room. Now what?

Noah stood in the doorway, and Amy stood in the middle of the room holding her new filmy nightgown. Suitcase or carry-on? Carry-on.

“Joe Casey’s mother had a stroke this morning,” said Noah. Joe
Five Fortunes / 211

Casey was one of Noah’s partners. His mother was eighty-eight, in a nursing home in Florida.

“I’m so sorry,” said Amy. “How bad is it?”

“Bad.”

“Poor thing. I’ll put her on my prayer list.”

“You’re not understanding me. Joe Casey was going to be on call for the practice this week. It was all arranged six months ago. Instead he’s going to Florida. I can’t go to Mexico.”

Amy dropped the nightgown onto the bed. “Noah—no! We’ve planned this for months!”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mad at
you
, but…. Can’t anyone else do this? You need the time off, Noah. We
need
it.”

“Everyone else is already gone. I’ll find someone to cover for me.

Rod Greene owes me a favor; he’s divorced and I think he was staying in the city…”

Amy sat down on the bed and struggled to adjust to the disappointment.

“Why don’t we all just stay here, then? We’ll have a quiet Christmas at home, and maybe get away together the second week.”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve paid the deposit. Freddy and Dagmar are counting on us. You and Jill go ahead, and I’ll be there in a day or so.”

“The airlines are booked solid. And how do you know you can get someone to cover for you?”

“Amy, please. Just keep your voice down. I’ll do the best I can, all right?”

They took off in a snow squall and landed in bright heat in central Mexico after an endless layover in Fort Worth. Dagmar and Freddy were feeling very festive after having had several margaritas on the plane. Amy was at least reading a good book, and Jill seemed happy.

All four of them stretched in the heat like lizards and took off their sweaters and winter socks while they waited for the luggage.

Only the suitcase full of Christmas presents had been lost. After a lot of palaver in Spanish with the airline people, and more with the

212 / Beth Gutcheon

rental company that didn’t have the car they’d reserved, they piled into taxis and were off to the Cancun Royale.

“It’s lovely,” Amy said to Noah on the phone that night. “Jill has a tennis lesson in the morning, and the food is wonderful. We have our own little cottage thing overlooking the beach.” Noah said it sounded perfect and that he hoped to arrive tomorrow night. If not, the day before Christmas without fail.

“We’ve arranged to go see the Mayan ruins that day—do you want me to put it off? In case you get delayed?”

“No. I’ll get there. I’ve always wanted to see them.”

All the next day they lay in the sun, walked on the beach, waited for word of Noah’s arrival. The airline called periodically to say they were tracking down the Christmas presents. Then again to say they had found them; they’d gone to Australia. Then again to say they would deliver the case to the hotel by morning. Which they did not.

There was bad news on the Mrs. Casey front. She was in a coma, but holding her own. It didn’t look like Joe would be back before New Year’s. No luck tracking down Rod Greene. “How will you ever get on a plane at this time of year?” Amy asked, depressed.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stand-by. If worse comes to worse, I’ll charter one.”

The next day they did a lot of sight-seeing, and Freddy took a windsurfing lesson from a gorgeous young German named Hans.

“‘Keep still da feet, Fritz! Iss not a discotheque!’ he kept yelling at me,” said Freddy. He had enjoyed himself and gotten a hell of a sunburn.

“Remember not to put ice in your drink, sweetie,” Amy said to Jill.

“I think it’s margarita time,” Dagmar said, and she swam off to the bar, which sat in a thatched hut on a Disneyesque island in the middle of the pool. Dagmar wore a large straw hat and sunglasses even while swimming.

There was no word from Noah and no answer at home when Amy called. She expected him to walk in the door any minute throughout the night, but he hadn’t.

Five Fortunes / 213

The trip to the ruins was disappointing. Amy was upset that Noah was missing it, and kept thinking she should have stayed back at the hotel to be there to greet him. Their guide had arranged a lunch stop for them in a place that seemed less restaurant than private home, a slatternly tin-roofed affair that Jill enjoyed because there were monkeys in the yard, but which worried all the hygiene-minded grown-ups. The ruins themselves were magnificent and so was the number of tourists issuing from vast silver buses, and the riot of languages in which people were crying either “Hold still” or “Smile!”

When they finally got back to the hotel, the suitcase full of Christmas presents had arrived, but not Noah. Amy learned at the desk that there was a snowstorm in the Northeast.

Noah finally called after dinner. He sounded worn out.

“The airports are a mess. People are sleeping on the floors at La-Guardia. I think I’ll take the train out to Greenwich in the morning and spend the day with Louie and the children.”

“Yes,” said Amy, “do that. I don’t want to think of you traveling on Christmas Day.”

At Christmas lunch the hotel featured green and red salsas and candy cane swizzle sticks in the margaritas. Dagmar pronounced this a disgusting taste sensation. Conversation was rendered impossible by the mariachi bands that cruised through the rooms ser-enading each table no matter how earnestly you begged them to stop.

“Why
did
Noah choose oncology?” Dagmar demanded as they lay beside the pool in the late afternoon. Midday tequila had made her cross, and she’d run out of patience with Amy’s temporizing about how dedicated Noah was and how hard it was on him.

“He said that when he was starting out, it was the field that seemed to be making the most progress,” Amy said.

“Does he still feel that way?”

Amy sighed. “I don’t know. So many other things have changed since then.”

“I just can’t imagine taking a knife and cutting into a living human being,” said Dagmar peevishly.

214 / Beth Gutcheon

Noah finally reached them by lunchtime on the twenty-sixth. He had brought presents for everyone, and seemed to be in a wonderful mood. Amy began finally to relax. She watched Noah’s color deepen in the sun and the tension lines disappear. The nicest thing of all was his present for Jill—a beautiful winter coat of silvery faux fur, said to be made of recycled Coke bottles.