Love Love (24 page)

$109,125.47.

Her left ankle was propped up on the chair next to her, the throbbing now mostly gone, though maybe the low-level ache had relocated itself to her brain. On her calculator, she divided the number by 4 and got back 27,281.3675. Twenty-seven thousand dollars. That was better, a number she could deal with. It was the cost of a nice, new,
semifancy car, though she'd never spent any more than ten thousand on any of her used clunkers. That time she got promoted at the ad agency before getting fired a year later, she'd made thirty-five thousand a year, and that was before taxes and rent and food and everything else in the world that conspired to make her poor. This debt would take a decade, if not more, to pay back, and from the way the finance woman at the hospital had sounded, they weren't willing to wait that long. That meant collection calls, repossession of her assets, all leading up to the empty shame of bankruptcy. Judy wiped away her tears and blew her nose. Snaps puttered up to her and laid her head on Judy's thigh.

“Your aunt is headed for the poorhouse,” she said, raking fingernails over Snaps's furry dome. The dog's eyes glazed over, but as soon as Snaps heard the slam of a car door, she ran to the back entrance and emitted her customary low growl.

That was Roger, who'd called her twice a day since she was discharged and was bringing dinner. Should she feel happier than she actually did? She was grateful he'd taken care of Snaps while she'd been hospitalized, for bringing flowers and visiting her. He'd done all the right things, and maybe that was the problem. Not that Judy was a fan of mind games or unkindness, but a little play was welcome, a little resistance to let her know that he was a person with his own specific set of wants and desires. Sparks flew when metal struck metal; if she was iron, Roger was a bowl of cotton balls, a memory foam mattress.

Snaps gave one bark, then two. Her tail wagged, which meant Roger was about to enter.

She imagined what he'd look like: his mop of black hair in a state of low dishevelment, the red knit scarf wrapped around his neck, brown leather bomber jacket zipped up halfway. He would be holding sagging yellow plastic bags from ShopRite or the twine handles of the Chinese takeout place. Dependably predictable, predictably dependable. And yet on his back was that crazy tattoo, which she'd found out on the Internet could be a sign of the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. It just didn't seem possible that he could be a gangster. What did he do to his enemies, bore them into submission?

“Hey,” Roger said. The only thing she hadn't guessed correctly was the color of the plastic bags. Instead of ShopRite yellow, it was Wegmans white.

He had no reason to do anything for her, and yet he fed her, kept her company, smiled sweetly. Was it because he loved her? But love wasn't forever. In fact, it should come with an expiration date, because then she'd know when it would spoil.

Roger placed the bags on the kitchen island and leaned over for a kiss. His lips were chapped, so she rubbed her lips over his side to side in an effort to transfer her lip gloss. It made him laugh, which delighted Snaps, who pranced around him in a tight circle.

It was the only way she could get Brian to take care of his lips, and now she was doing it to Roger, and somehow it felt wrong to hand down this particular move to another. Like an aging comedy bit, it needed to be retired. Or maybe it was she who needed to be retired from men. If only she could, but the fact was, she'd been lonely. Before Brian, there had been a steady diet of live-in boyfriends; this was the longest she'd ever been by herself, and as much as she found a relationship taxing, it trumped being alone.

“What are you up to?” he asked, looking at the calculator. She clicked on the red C button before he could get a look.

“Just squaring away some financial stuff.”

“Oh,” he said. His eyes lingered over the statement. The total was folded underneath, but the hospital logo remained visible. “You're set with everything? Insurance and stuff?”

He'd reduced her predicament into the simplest of all answers, a yes or a no. Tell the truth or continue to lie.

“Fine,” she said, “everything's good.” The same exact words she'd told her brother. Maybe later she'd have the courage, but right now, she just wanted to have a nice meal.

When she tried to help set up, Roger made her stay put, so she watched him assemble their dinner.

“I got spinach lasagna,” he said, taking the rectangular plastic containers out of the shopping bags and opening them up one by one. There was broccoli sautéed with garlic, steamed artichoke hearts, a loaf of cheese bread. Roger offered each dish over to her like a sommelier showing a bottle of wine. Everything smelled divine, and despite the cloud of financial doom hanging over her, she was glad to feel hunger, something she could satisfy.

She told him it was delicious, and it was true. The lasagna was a delightful combination of chopped tomatoes and spinach and ricotta, a touch of nutmeg, a medley of earthy flavors. Did she tell
Roger at some point that Italian was her favorite cuisine? She didn't think so. He was a thoughtful guy. Maybe she just wasn't trying hard enough to like him, though that made her feel even worse, that even her inability to fall in love with this man was somehow her fault.

Halfway through the meal, the phone rang. Roger rose to get it, but Judy told him not to bother and let the answering machine pick up.

“Ms. Lee, this is Warren Hospital, accounts receivables department, Connie speaking. This is the third time we've tried to reach you regarding the forms for payment . . .”

Judy ignored Roger's protestations and limped her way to the living room to grab the phone. So it was starting already. It was almost seven o'clock—these people never went home.

“It's in the mail,” Judy barked into the receiver. “I signed and sent the forms this afternoon, okay?”

“Thank you, Ms. Lee,” Connie answered. “I apologize for calling at this hour, but because this is a priority account, we need to keep all the steps moving along.”

There was a pause, and Judy could almost feel the question that Connie wanted to ask: When can we expect you to pay? But she didn't, because she knew as well as Judy that they were headed for something ugly down the road.

“Well, you have a good night,” Connie said.

When she doddered back to the kitchen table, Roger was reading the bill.

“That's my stuff,” she said.

He placed it back on the table.

“That's a lot of money,” he said.

She sat down and took another bite of the lasagna, but it'd gone cold, the texture turned glue-like, sticking to the roof of her mouth. She chased it down quickly with a slug of red wine, and then another. If she'd been so concerned with Roger finding out, she could've taken the bill with her. The truth was, she was in a terrible place, and there was no one else she could get mad at. She was the living definition of a bad person, somebody who took out her ills on a bystander.

“Was that them on the phone? This Connie Peterson?”

“I don't need your help,” she said, and even as she was saying it, she knew it was ridiculous. That's all Roger had done since her snake bite, help her. Had she even bothered to thank him?

Roger moved to her side, and she sank her face into his belly as he stood by and rubbed her back. It felt good to give herself wholly to her predicament, and when her tears tapered down to sniffles, Roger said something she thought she'd misheard.

“What did you say?” She blinked hard to clear away her blurry vision.

“I'll take care of this.”

“You have a hundred grand just sitting around. That's why you work at your shitty job answering customer-service calls.”

“I can get the money,” he said, and then he dialed down his voice to almost a whisper. “I can take care of you, Judy. If you'll let me.”

He was being serious. He could get the money. Meaning it was money he didn't have but somehow had access to. He could take care of her, whatever the hell that meant. She looked at him intently, so much so that she felt as if she had x-ray vision, and then she did sort of have it, or at least through her memories. Roger pulled at the collar of his powder-blue dress shirt, and she could almost see the tattoo underneath, the head of the fire-breathing dragon perched on his shoulder.

“I'm going to ask you something,” she said. “I think it's time I asked.”

Roger took his seat again.

“All right,” he said.

“Are you a member of the yakuza?”

Roger rubbed his palms together, flexed his fingers, drummed the tabletop.

“It's complicated,” he said.

“It's actually a pretty simple question.”

“I was,” he said, “but it was a mistake, and it was a long time ago, when I turned eighteen.”

“So you're not one now.”

“No. Though I suppose I always will be mistaken for one, thanks to the tattoo.” He picked up his glass of water and drank it down. “I was in the Yamaguchi-gumi family. For a month.”

“A month?”

“Like I said, it was a mistake.”

Judy didn't mean to laugh, but she couldn't help herself. “Was it a trial offer? Your satisfaction guaranteed or your money back?”

Roger said nothing, just shrugged.

“So how is it that you're offering to pay for my enormous medical debt if you aren't the Japanese Tony Soprano-san that I thought you were?”

He mashed the remaining piece of spinach lasagna on his plate with his fork, thin pillars of goo rising between the tines.

“I'm afraid to tell you,” he said. “Because if I do, I think it might ruin what we have.”

“And what is it, exactly, that we have?”

“Good,” he said. “Something good. I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” Judy said.

I
n the morning, after Roger left for work and Judy leaned into the bathroom mirror to put her face on, she thought about their conversation last night. It was, without a doubt, one of the stranger discussions she'd had with anyone. But not boring, which was good. Not that she wanted to have her life filled with drama again. In her early twenties, she'd dated a drug dealer, a strip club owner, and an ex-con, and even though those relationships had their wacky moments, she eventually found their instability tiresome. If there was a truism in life, that was it: No matter how titillating somebody or something seemed in the beginning, the newness invariably faded to an oldness, so there was little reason to go through police raids and drug overdoses when, in the end, it all devolved to the status quo.

Her favorite lipstick was almost gone, so she used a brush to dig out what she could from the wall of the plastic tube. It was twenty bucks the last time she bought it, an outrageous price for a tiny stick of makeup, but she couldn't find a cheaper knockoff that had the same deep, professional shade of red perfect for the office, which was where she was headed today, to another temp agency. As much as she'd appreciated Roger's offer, she told him no, not only because the money's origins were shrouded in mystery but also because Roger was right, it would without question ruin what they had. An action as large as that would shift the balance of any relationship, especially a new one like theirs. And besides, Judy wasn't in the panhandling business. This was her debt, and as a responsible, grown-up person, it was her problem to deal with, and she had no intention of pushing it off on anyone else.

The October morning was windy, her little Toyota jostling on Shrewsbury Avenue. The empty lot next to the STS Tire Center hosted makeshift swirls of maple leaves, tiny whorls of brown and yellow rising and falling. She pulled into the parking lot of the temp agency, a square, redbrick building that held six different businesses according to the directory bolted onto the wall in the lobby. Judy was thankful there was an elevator, because she was wearing a stability boot and the last thing she wanted to do was climb stairs with only one good foot.

Trilling Personnel Services wasn't her first choice, but after walking out on her last assignment, Judy knew she couldn't go back to her old agency, and she didn't want to trek over to Neptune or anywhere further. There was no permanent sign on the gray metal door, just a laminated card with the name of the company printed in bold black ink, and inside, a frizzy-haired secretary with a mole on her cheek greeted her. Stuck on the outer edge of her desk was a name-tag sticker, and it read:

HI! MY NAME IS

DOTTIE

“Hello, I'm Judy Lee. I called earlier?”

“Yup. What happened to your foot?”

“Bad luck,” Judy said, and when she said nothing further, Dottie looked disappointed.

“Frank will be right back from killing himself,” she said. She held her pen like a cigarette and mimed a few puffs.

Judy thanked her and sat in the only chair in the waiting area that didn't have a stain or a rent in the fabric. She picked up a dog-eared issue of
Newsweek
with Barack Obama on the cover, and as she flipped through it, she recalled her final smoke with Roger, thinking it would be the last time she'd see him. It seemed so long ago, and yet it hadn't even been a month. She tried to think of a future with Roger, tried to envision him at family gatherings, making small talk with Kevin and humoring her father and her stupid stepmother at the dinner table, sitting in the same seat that Brian sat in. It irked her to think of Roger as a replacement for her ex, though she supposed any man she'd bring home would be regarded as such.