Chapter 47 / Barbeque II

“Yes,” said Andrew, “you can think about it, if you’ll tell me what you’re thinking. Right now, tomorrow, next week, any time you have a thought.” 

He sighed. “There’s no need to look like a trapped animal, dear. Like, right now—are you really surprised?” 

“—I thought we were happy. As we were. Are. I thought, this is getting good. But nothing lasts forever.”

Andrew winced, recovered. “Glaron and Theresa. Kathleen and Doug. Jaime and George. Nick and Liza. Rosendo and Caroline.” 

Annie nodded. “There’s a divorce in about half those pictures.” 

“Right. And we’ve done that. We’re both widowed, divorced, whatever we are. The youth crap is over.

“Annie, Annie . . . ” He laced his fingers in hers. “I love you. Do you love me a little?”

“I love you, Andrew. It’s just . . . I thought we were happy.” 

“We are . . .” Andrew took a breath. “Come sit here with me.” 

“Will that chair hold us both?” 

“Yes. Stop worrying about everything. I bought the damned chair so that we could both sit in it.”

They kept their hands connected as Annie moved to sit on Andrew’s lap, her right arm around his shoulders. 

“Give me a kiss,” he said, “to celebrate that we got this far . . .  

“Now, let me tell you how it is. People don’t ask people to marry them because they find the person, or the situation, inadequate. 

They ask . . . they decide together, to get married, because  . . . they have something good, and they want to formalize it."

“Thank you for not saying, ‘they want to take it to the next level.’”

“You’re welcome. What are you afraid of? The first thing that comes to mind."

“That you will leave.” 

“I won’t leave. If I do leave, you get everything. If I die, you get everything. And you choose where to bury me. Stuart will set it up.”

“Stuart won’t do that for some nobody from Upstate New York.” 

“Yes he will. He’ll want to meet you, and he’ll be so happy that someone beautiful, intelligent, hardworking, sensible, and loveable wants to marry me that he’ll set it up in a minute.” 

“I don’t cook.” 

“Neither do I.” 

“We have to eat something!”

“We’ve been managing to eat for a year.”

“—True,” she said. “This is your second January here, you know. Your first full-time, but you were here last year too. That’s how we test people, Jaime and I. Whether they can survive winter.” 

“And I passed?”

“Yes.” 

“Well. Is there anything else you like about me?”

“. . . I love to hear you play the piano at my house. It cheers up me, and the whole house.

“Tomorrow we’ll go to your house, and I’ll play the piano for you all day.”

“Thank you. We can talk about this more tomorrow? It’s amazing to think that neither of us has to go to work for two days.” 

“Of course. I didn’t mean we’d get married tomorrow. Unless you wanted to. I was thinking we’d get engaged, talk to your priest, do the whole thing, however you want.” 

“You did that once. It didn’t work.” 

“I was drunk then. I’m not now. I’ve been sober for . . . two years. And two months! Almost.”  

“It’s a selling point.” 

“Really?”

“Really . . . But we have the same name.” 

“I’ll change my fucking name.” 

“And children. You want children.” 

“I don’t. I’ve left that.” 

“Six children at Glaron and Theresa’s for Thanksgiving dessert, and you became an uncle to them all, in six minutes.” 

“Right. Plenty of children I can be uncle to.” Andrew rubbed his cheek along Annie’s. “Were your parents that bad?”

Annie returned the rub of his cheek. “Bad enough so that I don’t want to repeat the experience.”

“Your brother did." 

"Yes. Without children . . . being proposed to is exhausting. Can we lie down?”

*   *   *   * 

They lay entwined in Andrew’s bed. She was still awake, he could tell, but not for long. 

“Just one more thing," he said, "before we go to sleep?”

“Yes?”

“Do you still like me, now that I’ve asked you to marry me?”

“Yes.”

She sounded definite, so he decided to try to relax and get some sleep. 

But Annie had woken up. “There is a difference, isn’t there.” 

“Yes.”

“What do you like about me?”

Andrew turned onto his back, stretched the full length of Annie, her arm entwined in both of his. 

“Let’s see, I love it that you love sex, I love to hear you play the piano,  . . . but like, like—you don’t ask me if you look fat.”

“—Why would I do that?”

“I rest my case. You have to marry me.” 

*   *   *   *

Andrew opened his eyes in the dark and tried to identify the sound that had woken him. He was curled on his side around Annie, who lay tucked in against him. If he got up he would wake her, and that would wake Chloe. He lay still until he heard the fire sirens, and then he began to gently disentangle himself. 

Annie turned to find him in jacket and sweatpants. “Where are you going?”

“I just want to see what’s burning. Stay here. Turn on your phone. Don’t leave the house.”

“Chloe will want to pee.” 

“Put down newspapers in the kitchen. Keep the lights off. I’ll be back.”

In her crate, Chloe shook herself. Annie put on the dog’s lead and unlocked the back door into the yard. She sat on the steps in the dark while Chloe peed. Chloe joined her on the stairs, ready for a biscuit, but Annie took another moment to sniff the air, to notice that the odor almost immediately gave her a headache. She relocked the back door carefully. 

Andrew had been gone for five minutes. How long did it take to look at a fire? He didn’t want Chloe in the bed with them, which was fine with Annie—dogs in the bed had been Ed’s idea—but Andrew wasn’t here, so she and Chloe stretched out under the comforter. 

“What do you think, Chloe? Should we become a team of three?” 

Certainly life with Andrew was interesting. On the other hand, while the risk of arrest might be exciting, actual jail time would be terrifying. She must make sure he understood this, and thinking of which, where would they live? Her house had been hers and Ed’s, but she hadn’t moved up here to live in a dump like Schuyler.  

She dozed off making a mental list, and woke to the smell of him, she and Chloe struggling to sit up under the covers, Andrew kneeling by the edge of the bed, saying gently, "Annie, I'm back," smelling like gasoline and metal, sweat and blood; this was no campfire— 

Chloe growled. “Hush, Chloe,” Annie said. He had been gone for twenty minutes.   

“What was burning?”

“Your car.”

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 46 / Barbeque I

“OK, the holidays are over. Glaron and Theresa have invited us for barbeque.” 

With the apple-processing plant closed for the winter, Andrew was either at home writing, or on the road researching, his drug-connections article. At midday he would call Annie to make sure she stopped working for ten minutes. Today his call found Annie and Chloe in their jackets, walking around the parking lot of the newspaper office in the few minutes they had before another snowstorm began. 

“Cool,” she said. “Give me their number, I’ll call her and see what we can bring.” 

“—I don’t think we can bring anything. It’s their classic barbeque dinner.”

“I’m from the country. I bring something.” 

*   *   *   *

“Thank you, honey, but remember not to bring flowers to a barbeque restaurant.” 

“This isn’t a restaurant, Theresa, it’s your home, and thank you for letting me bring Chloe.”

“She’s gonna stay in that cage?”

“Yes. I’ll walk her around your apartment, so she knows where she is, and then she pops into her cratie, out of the way.” 

“All right then. Once I get the sauce made, I work the front of the house, greeting people, seating them. Glaron’s slicing meat, in charge of the kitchen.” 

“Just the two of you?” asked Andrew.

“No, we got help. At least one in the kitchen, and a waitress. Depends on how big the place is.”

*   *   *   *   *

“What are they talking about?” 

Andrew and Glaron had gone out on the back porch after dinner for a cigarette, and finished minutes ago. Now they leaned against the porch railing in the dark, kitty-corner to each other, in jackets and hats. Their breath rose like steam, in the light cast from the kitchen. 

“Business. You liked the dinner?” Theresa asked again. 

“I loved it. But Theresa . . . I’m not a food critic. I eat anything. So does Andrew.”

Theresa chuckled. “You’re funny. Well, we want to be known for a good feed, not fine dining.” 

“Do you have a place in mind?”

A pot of coffee and a plate of sweet potato pie on the table, Theresa sat again, across from Annie. “No. Can’t decide if we should fight off the drug crap here in Schuyler, or try to find someplace else. Got any ideas?”

“—There’s a place I pass when I drive from Schuyler to East Wyndham. It used to be a restaurant, but it’s closed now. One-story with lots of parking—"

“Stop.” Theresa held up her hand. “Tell them too.” She went to the back door. “Pie’s ready. And Annie’s found a place for the restaurant.”

*   *   *   *

The routine for staying in Schuyler now was to drop off things—tonight it was Chloe’s crate and two packed barbecue dinners—inside Andrew’s front door and then park the car at a well-lit city lot one avenue over. Schuyler fascinated Chloe, who snuffled along the shoveled snow, investigating what it had turned up. Andrew and Annie walked arm in arm against the cold. 

“What were you and Glaron talking about? It seemed like some big secret.” 

“The restaurant. What did you think about the barbecue—really. Tell me.” 

“I thought it was delicious. I love barbecue. But I’m not a fussy eater.” 

“Good point. We’re both easy to please. Gustatorily.” He squeezed her arm.

“Theresa said she knew how much work it would be. But the hospital kitchen is different.” 

“Another good point. You’ll be in on the next meeting.”

“The next meeting?”

“They see me as an investor. That’s what Glaron and I talked about.”

Annie absorbed all the ramifications of this until they were inside Andrew’s house. 

“So your cover means nothing to them,” she said, giving Chloe her evening biscuit. The dog trotted off to the bedroom and hopped onto the bed to eat it.

“No. As Glaron said, he’s been around the block. And to the library. He said he’d keep a tight trap.” 

“Is he blackmailing you?” Annie sat down with this thought, at Andrew’s one table.

“No, no, he’s not that kind of guy.” Andrew sat across from her. “He figures that as a former murderer, like him, I have trouble getting a job, just as he does.” 

“What do you think? About the investment.”

“I’m interested. I have to talk to Stuart, of course. For that, they’ll need a business plan. I can help them write it.” 

Money appeared in Andrew’s checking account every month because of Stuart. Stuart’s accounting division paid Andrew’s bills, and Stuart invested Andrew’s family money. 

“It’s a great idea,” said Annie. “And unique. But they’re not young. Why don’t they bottle it and sell it? They could get a distributor, go national.”

“They want to invite people in. Feed them. Be the hosts. I like that idea. This place does need more restaurants, and this is a restaurant that could sell.”  

“Did you ever work in a restaurant? I did. It was horrible. You’re not making any money unless you’re run ragged.” 

“We’re not going to work there, Annie. We’re just the money.” 

“—We?”  

Andrew stopped, thinking.  

“It’s true, you know. I think of my money as our money.” He tapped his finger on the table. “Damn . . . do you want a glass of water? That’s all I have.” 

“OK . . .” 

Andrew brought them each a glass of water. He turned off lights until all they had was the warm glow of the lamp at the table.  

“Give me your hand.” They held left hands, across the table.

“This isn’t how I wanted to do this,” he said. “I was going to make it nice. But, since I think of you as my partner—my love, my spouse, my life—will you marry me?”

“—I just fainted . . .”

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 45 / Neighborly

“About last night . . ."

Andrew sat at Annie’s kitchen table, overlooking the deck and backyard. He had set Annie’s place across from him, with her cereal bowl and coffee in a capped mug.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked, sitting down. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, but I’ve been thinking, it wouldn’t be in Bryan’s interest to give the chief a bad tip, just to get even with me for making his hair sticky. I think he’s smarter than that. Dumb as he seems.”

Annie sipped her coffee, listening.

“So it may mean that I’m getting close to the chief. With my research. And he’s trying to—warn me off, as it were.” 

He was pleased with this idea, Annie observed, excited even. It brought a tiny smile to his face, not enough to flash the gold tooth, but a visible smile. Delusional? He had got the story on the Neanderthal, during Kathleen’s campaign, and he had come through with dozens of stories before that.

“I can’t stop now,” he was saying, matter-of-factly, as if he were concluding a report to a board meeting. “I’m connecting Schuyler to New York and Albany, and also to Montreal and Cambridge. I’m getting corroboration, I’m getting facts. It’s probably more information than the witches want, but I’ll talk to them first. Then I’ve got other contacts, at other papers.”  

Annie let Chloe in from outdoors as she listened, and gave the dog breakfast, which Andrew had put into her dish on the counter, complete with her dog vitamins. Chloe’s water was fresh. 

Annie sat down again, and Andrew cupped her chin gently to make her meet his eyes. “The question is—are you still in on this?”

She kissed his fingertips, imbued with their scent of tobacco and apples, and held his hand. “I thought about it too,” she said, “while you were wandering around in the dark last night. 

“Here’s the way I feel. If he keys my car, I’ll have to suck it up. If he slashes my tires, I’ll report it to the police, even if it’s the police that did it. 

“If he poisons my dog, I’ll have to kill him.” 

Andrew nodded. “That’s fair.” 

 *                         *                     *                       *                     *                   *              *

“Logan, get up!”  

“Sorry!” Andrew sat up, from where he had fallen asleep, on the concrete lip of a truck bay. 

“Goddammit,” said Steve, “I can’t have this place littered with bodies like a—homeless camp.” 

“Girl dropped me off early, so she could get to work on time.” Andrew looked around him. “Lucky I didn’t get rolled.” 

Steve resisted a smile. “Is that your problem, Logan? That you can’t take anything seriously?” 

Andrew hopped to the ground, wincing at his chilled bones. “No, Steve. Not to be contradict-ory, boss—I have many problems, but that isn’t one of them.” 

“Don’t call me boss.” Steve unlocked the back door of the plant. At 60 degrees, indoors felt warm. 

Andrew stood just inside Steve’s office. “More important than my problems—were you going to bail us out last night?”

“—Depends on the charge . . . maybe.” 

“What did you think the charge was?”

“Are you interrogating me?”

The best undercover identity is closest to your real one. 

“One of my problems is curiosity. You thought something.”

“Drugs, of course. Or that your lady skimmed a stop sign.” 

“She didn’t. We’re clean. And because you were sitting there, they didn’t drop anything into the car.” 

In back of them, men were arriving. Glaron must have driven Billie and JR in Ginger Lincoln. They greeted the other guys, opened and closed locker doors; a toilet flushed.   

“No comment,” said Steve. 

“Did you tell him we worked for you?” 

“I did. And that Ms. Sullivan works for the newspaper. That’s what made the difference. Not apples.” 

The phone rang, and Steve waved Andrew away. Andrew left the door ajar and leaned against the wall, out of Steve’s sight, listening. Silent, JR joined him. 

“If you don’t come in today, don’t come in again,” said Steve, on the phone. “OK . . . ,” wearily. “Ten o’clock. No later.” He hung up, and Andrew and JR moved to the locker room. 

“What do you think?” asked Andrew, putting away his jacket and lunch. “Is that boy smarter than I thought?”

JR shook his head. “Chief’s after you.”

Andrew looked at JR, who met his gaze. “Why?”

“You tell me.” 

“Who says?”

JR nodded once. “It’s the word,” he said, and moved away. 

He would miss this place, thought Andrew, if they let him out of here alive. The basketball, the rumble of apples, their sweet smell, the humming with Glaron against the rumble of apples, snatches of Johnny Cash or gospel; last week they had remembered most of the words of “Deeper Well.” Work would go smoothly this morning, till ten o’clock, without the tangle of that boy.

“You got something on for Thanksgiving?” Glaron asked him now, as they took their positions on the line, where Glaron was trusted with the final sort and Andrew filled and carted boxes. 

Andrew smiled down at the apples, wanting to hug Glaron, operating in his parallel world, in which money was tight, drugs were sold on the corner and you remembered when Thanksgiving was. 

“Annie’s brother and sister-in-law,” he said. "Come on over, we’ll have plenty of food.” 

“No thanks, we’re ten so far. Just want to make sure everybody here has a place to go. “

“Neighborly of you.”

“More the merrier. Come by for dessert, all of you. We got four pies in the freezer. So far.” 

“Maybe we’ll do that. I’m just meeting the family, you know. The brother, his wife.” 

“Mm-hmm . . . nervous?”

“The brother should be like his sister, right? And his wife should be like him, who’s like his sister, right?”

“That’s the way it should work. Don’t always.”

“Thanks.” 

“Well, you know.” 

“I know.”

“We’ll get you over one night for barbecue,” said Glaron.

“Tonight?”

“Naw . . .” Glaron’s front teeth flashed as he lifted his eyes from the apples, to make sure Andrew was joking. “Sauce takes days, and tonight there’s some other plan . . . sweet potato pie.”  

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 44 / Explorer II

Chief Miller nodded to his officers and then walked the line of perps, stopping at Annie first. 

“Nice dog,” he said quietly, with fake cheer. “Does he bite?”

That stupid question. “Yes,” said Annie. She tried to meet the chief’s eyes, but he kept his on Chloe. “If you reach for her, she will bite you.”

“And you, miss?” His eyes were still on Chloe and his voice just audible in the dark. “If I reach for you, will you bite?”

Name, rank and serial number.

“I asked you a question.” Now he raised his eyes to her face.

I will kill you, thought Andrew. 

“—You have no reason to touch me, Chief Miller. I have no answer for that question.”

“Hm!” 

The chief stopped in front of Andrew now, studying his face while Andrew compiled the chief’s genealogy and work history: dark skin, narrow nose / family in the South, New York City / wedding ring / plus larger ring, fake sapphire—

The chief had gone on to JR. Each made an effort to keep his face blank.  

“Where you staying?”  

“State Street.”

“Who’s there?”

“Cousin.”

“Going to be with us for long?”

Forever, you piss-ant. “Long as my job lasts.” 

And then Chief Miller walked back to the white Explorer and visited with Steve at the window. The chief listened with his right ear, his gaze on the perps and the cops, half-a-dozen people standing by the side of the road in flashing red light that in half an hour had never ended. The chief might have said “Hm!” again, but as far as Annie could see, he left Steve without speaking. 

“Go home,” he said, in the same quiet voice that covered them, without shouting, under the flashing red light. 

Andrew and JR immediately started putting things back into the car. 

“He has my driver’s license,” said Annie, nodding at the heaviest of the three cops. The licenses returned, the performance piece reversed, the cops danced back into their cars, and Annie was free to drive again, when all she wanted to do was wash everything—car, hair, Chloe’s bed, everything—in soap and hot water. 

“Well, shit,” sighed Andrew. 

“That’s it,” said JR from the back seat. “Black man in a nice car, they harass you.”

“Are you supposed to be somewhere tonight?” Andrew looked at Annie. 

“Lugubria.” Thirty minutes north of Schuyler. “In 45 minutes. Tina will kill me if I don’t go.” Now Annie was close to tears. 

“I’ll drive you.” Andrew put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “You were great, you know.”

“You had some fine moments there,” said JR in a voice that grinned. “Kiss her for me.”

Andrew kissed Annie again, then wiped a tear from her cheek with his sleeve. “You have to go, but not because she’ll kill you. You have to be there. As usual.”

“And we’ll take Chloe too, right?” 

“Right. Chloe and I will wait for you.” 

**********************

“So what was going on there?” They had dropped off JR and were eating pizza slices in the car before Lugubria's town board meeting. With her blood sugar inching into a positive number, Annie felt a little better. She bit off a piece of the third slice and gave it to Chloe through the grid of her crate. Chloe snatched it and chewed furiously.

“Some cop saw you pass that old lady on a double yellow line last week.” 

“An-drewwww! First, no cop saw me. Second, I’m serious.”  

“The car and the people in it—what JR said. Or, they follow this car all the time. Or—I have to look into this one—some little turd gave them a false tip. I’ll ask Steve tomorrow.” 

Often these days Andrew’s answers raised more questions. The turd was probably someone at the plant. Annie went for Steve. 

“Why did the chief talk to Steve?”

“The chief may talk to Steve a lot about his staff. I just hope he would have bailed us out.”

******************

“Where’s Chloe!”

Lugubria’s meeting had finally ended, Andrew was reclined full out in the car's front seat, sound asleep, and Chloe’s crate was empty.

Chloe stuck her head out from underneath Andrew’s jacket and wriggled in ecstatic relief. They got out of the car and stretched simultaneously. 

“She was having an anxiety attack,” said Andrew. “Can we stay at your house tonight?” 

“Fine with me. Can I get a new car?”

“I went through that in my head. It would just give them something new to explore.”

Copyright © Debby Mayer 

Chapter 43 / Explorer I

“Watch the car,” said Andrew as he opened the door.

“I got the dog.” JR slid the crate behind him and put it onto the ground, Annie’s sweater, in the dry cleaner bag, still attached to it. 

“Thank you,” she said.

“Shut up!” snapped the cop. “No talking.”

Annie gazed at him, exactly her height, five-feet eight, and in the continual circling of the red roof light, beat after beat, she glimpsed sideburns that extended to the bottom of his ear, and youth, alone in his patrol car but not alone for long; two more cars pulled up in front of her car, their red lights circling, beat after beat, and then simultaneously, one cop stepped out of each car, pulling on his hat, turning back to them, again as if in a dance, and this the chorus. 

Only Chloe “talked,” in a soft whimper, as nervous, and as hungry, as any of them. 

Each cop assigned himself to one potential perp. Annie and Andrew showed a driver’s license. The cop shone his flashlight into their faces, to make absolutely sure the photo matched, and then took the license back to his car. JR gave Sideburns a piece of paper. 

“I don’t drive. Here’s my last pay stub. Last week. New York Harvest.”  

“Worthless.” Sideburns, a head shorter than JR, crumpled it. 

“Has my address on it. Last four numbers of my social.”

JR didn’t whine. He kept his speaking tone natural and showed no signs of bolting. Andrew breathed out in relief, wishing mightily that they had stayed on the main road. Here the street was darker, running alongside a sort of wooded DMZ where the high-schoolers smoked dope.  

On the other hand, the street was narrower here, and drivers slowed to pass them. Just as a cop ordered Annie to open the car trunk, Andrew saw Steve drive by in his white Explorer; he took in Steve’s surprised frown.  

Then Andrew attended to the car, his mind working overtime as to what they would do if the cops dropped drugs into the trunk, or the interior. Annie’s record was spotless, but his cover would be blown and who knew what JR did last week.

This cop, the tallest of the three, was being cool, not touching anything, ordering Annie to empty the trunk. She took the opportunity to pull Chloe’s crate out of the street, in back of the car next to Andrew, during the instant that Sideburns ordered her not to. Too late; she was now emptying the trunk, placing each item next to the crate. 

Annie kept car stuff—Windex, paper towels, Chloe’s extra leash and plastic bags—in a framed, standup bag, which she now removed. In a second stand-up bag she kept her portable file of Observers. 

The five men stood and watched for fifteen minutes as Annie removed things from the car, and then from the bags, and Chloe from her crate so that the tall cop could turn it upside down and shake it viciously; the dog bed fell onto the ground and Chloe’s yellow tennis ball rolled into the road. 

“Stand back!” Sideburns snapped. Andrew and JR moved back exactly one step and then, within minutes, inched up again, watching, as the cop shone a huge flashlight into and onto everything. 

In her fatigue Annie observed that the cops had been transformed into theater artists, in costume, and this event a performance piece, lit by three red strobe lights, in which you took every single thing out of the car, and then out of its container, and then out of your purse and your pockets; you named it and examined it, to try to ascertain what your story was.  

And during all of it, the emptying of the glove box, the sifting through the newspapers, half of which had her byline on the front page, Annie was aware that if she were separated from Andrew she would know he could take care of himself, but they would have to rip Chloe from her arms. With that she picked up the dog and held her, resting her chin on the smooth triangle of Chloe’s head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew had been watching the traffic until he saw the white Explorer again, returning to cruise slowly by the scene and then, having turned yet again, parking in back of Sideburns’s car. 

One of the cops—they were all white, but otherwise the darkness, their hats, obscured a lot of detail—walked back to Steve and spoke with him briefly before returning. “Phone call,” he said. 

“Tell him to make it somewhere else,” said Sideburns, and at that moment another car—Car 1—pulled in neatly, between Sideburns and Steve.

Well, thought Andrew. This chief that everyone gossiped about. I haven’t finished my research, Chief, but once I do, I want to talk to you.

Well, thought Annie. This meant that half of Schuyler’s police force was assembled right here. Either Wendy will defend me to the death, or fire me. 

Shit, thought JR. Black man’s the police chief and it’s still a shithole, should put a spell on the whole damn town, but somebody already did.

Copyright (c) Debby Mayer

Chapter 42 / 21

A week after the election, on a surprisingly mild day, Andrew, Billie, and Clyde (“call me JR”), who was the tallest of the three, were playing their version of 21 at the basketball rim by the picnic tables in back of the apple-processing plant. 

Glaron sat at the table keeping score, with three piles of pennies in front of him. The two white boys—in their early twenties but still with soft, petulant faces—straddled the picnic bench across from Glaron, at once bored and jittery, casting occasional glances at the pennies. 

Two black men—friends of JR’s, hired for the month because Steve needed a full crew in November—leaned against the building in the sun, smoking, encouraging the players in low voices, tossing a penny on a pile for each basket.   

Against the sound of an 18-wheeler backing into the front of the plant with another load of apples, JR and Billie tied at 19. Andrew stepped out of the chalk-marked ring and went to the far end of the table, where he had left his bottle of Gatorade. He took a swig from it and immediately spit it out, spraying liquid in a half-circle around him. 

The basketball game stopped. “Piss in your drink?” asked JR. 

“Vodka.” In two steps Andrew stood over Bryan, who was trying to get up, one leg under the picnic table, and poured the Gatorade over the boy’s head. “Goddammit, Bryan, I told you not to be an asshole!”

“Don’t touch him,” Glaron said in a low, firm voice. 

Bryan and his sidekick were standing now. 

“Nothin’ wrong with your drink, you just want a fight—“ 

“You little turd. You think I would pick a fight with a shit like you?”

“Hold it,” said JR, next to Andrew now. “Not cool,” he said to Bryan. “The brother don’t drink. You don’t fool with that.” 

The other men gathered around, ready to separate the two before a punch landed. In front, the driver cut the truck engine. Steve opened the back door and stopped mid-word at what he saw. 

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Just a lunchtime discussion, chief,” said JR.

Steve took in Bryan’s wet hair, liquid dripping off his chin, and Andrew standing next to him. 

“Bryan, get in here.”

“I didn’t—“

“Come here! Logan, you too.” 

Andrew moved immediately toward the door, his mouth tight. 

“Thompson,” Steve said to Glaron, “check in the truck.” 

“Yes sir.” Glaron got up, scraping the pennies into his lunch bag with a cupped hand. 

Steve had created an office for himself in a windowless storage room, with one wooden table, two straight chairs, and three metal filing cabinets. It was as tidy as Steve himself, who, Andrew had observed to Annie, favored minimum-security style of denim and a buzz cut. 

The three of them stood in a triangle around the desk, Steve behind it, Bryan near the far wall, Andrew leaning alongside the door. 

“Why is your head all wet, Bryan?” Steve asked, and Andrew heard some fatigue there, as if this kind of conversation wasn’t new.

“He poured his drink on me.” 

Steve sighed. “Logan, why did you pour your drink on Bryan?”

“He put vodka in it.” 

“I—”

“Shut up, Bryan. Logan, did you see him do it?” 

“—No.” 

“Why do you think he did it?”

“Ask the little turd—”

“I’m asking you.”

Now Andrew sighed. “Because he needles me. About the meds I take to keep me from decking him twice a day. About hanging with the black guys. Jesus, don’t get me started—because he doesn’t do the job, because he doesn’t get it, because he hasn’t hit bottom yet.” 

The other two stared, Bryan with his mouth half open. 

“The rest of us have hit bottom and are on the way up. Bryan’s still clueless.” 

“Thank you, Logan, we’re not at a meeting.” 

Andrew shrugged. “Saved my life.”

“Bryan, go back to work. And this afternoon, work.” 

“My head—”

“Leave it. Let it dry, nice and sticky.” 

Bryan left. Andrew remained, waiting for dismissal. 

“Logan, one more fight and you’re out.” 

“Yes sir.”

“Sit down.” 

Andrew and Steve both sat, across from each other.  

“You’ve got a nice lady.” 

Andrew nodded. “Keeps me straight.”

“I was going to ask you if you want to stay through the winter. Help me get this place cleaned up, organized.” 

“I’m here, Steve, I’m not going anywhere. Wish I were, but I’m not.”

“But you’re as crazy as the rest of them.” 

“The little shit thought I wouldn’t taste the vodka. I’ll wind up in the paddy wagon.”

“Watch your language.” 

“He your nephew?”

Steve paused. “He told you?”

“Everybody figures it.” 

“—My sister’s only kid. Other one got drunk, wrapped his car around a tree.” 

“I’m sorry,” said Andrew, meaning it, thinking, so that’s what this is about. 

“—Thank you. Nice manners, Logan. Always.” 

“Momma. We all have manners, Steve, they’re just buried in shit.” 

“Bryan doesn’t have any manners.” 

“Thompson does, and he’s not crazy, by the way. Billie’s pretty sane too.” 

“I can’t keep the whole crew on. Thompson’s not strong enough to come back another year . . . maybe you and Thompson. Maybe. Stay out of trouble. Now get back to work.” 

“Yes sir.” 

* * * * * *

“He say how long he’ll keep this place open?” 

Andrew and JR were leaning against Steve’s Ford Explorer in the dark, smoking, waiting for Annie to pick them up. They had done overtime, unloading the truck, and were the last to clock out. 

“—Not exactly,” said Andrew. “Did say that he couldn’t keep the whole crew on all winter.” 

“Well, this crew ain’t staying in that icebox all winter.” 

“You got enough weeks for unemployment?”

“There you go, asking me something to make me think. You’re too smart for this job.” 

“Girl helps,” said Andrew, wondering, again, if JR were under cover too. 

Why do you think that? Annie had asked. 

Just a certain lack . . . of . . . detail.

Annie arrived then, and in the second before they moved, she saw the two men—tall, long hair crushed under baseball caps, one white, one quick to tell you he was “high yellow”—leaning against the white Explorer, their legs crossed at the knee in the same direction, right leg over left, as if they might, in the next second, dance away. They wouldn’t dance, of course, they would get in the car, bringing with them the smell of cigarette smoke tinged with apples.

“Don’t say anything about today.” Andrew spoke to the road as he flicked his cigarette butt to the curb.

“Not me,” JR said to the asphalt at his feet. 

“A car with four doors,” he mused, sitting in back of Annie. Next to him, half of the back seat was folded down to make room for Chloe’s crate.

“Amazing, isn’t it,” said Annie. 

“Auction,” said Andrew. “Get you something if you want.” 

"Yeah, they auction bicycles?

“A bicycle you can find.”  

“Find me a bicycle in Florida next month. That’s the thing to do.”

“I just want to stop at the dry cleaner before they close,” said Annie, turning right, away from Schuyler toward the malls.

“You’re the driver,” said Andrew. “How are the Witches?”

“Witchy. There was a fight, outside a bar in the town of Cowpoke. So we reported the fight, and the location. Today Tina called Catherine and me into her office and chewed us out for twenty minutes about reporting the location. 

“We kept saying, but that’s where the fight was, right in their parking lot. She kept saying it was unfair to them, bad for their business.” 

“Well, yeah. So they called her. Advertisers?”

“No! Not even.” Annie set the hand brake and went into the dry cleaner.

“Your girl work for a witch?” 

“Two of them.” 

“—I could put a spell on them, you know,” said JR, who claimed New Orleans as home.  

“Go for it.” 

“Start it tonight.” 

“Don’t tell her.” 

“Can’t tell her.” 

Annie hooked the dry cleaning onto Chloe’s crate, then headed to Schuyler by the back way, with fewer stoplights. 

As soon as she crossed the city line, a large red light circled in back of her. Annie pulled over, expecting an emergency vehicle to pass, but a police car pulled up in back of her. 

“Shit! What did I do?”

“Fuck,” said Andrew. “You clean, JR?”

“I’m clean,” snapped JR, “you clean?”

Andrew nodded. “Don’t say anything about the paper,” he said to Annie.

She opened her mouth, closed it. A week earlier, telling a cop, “I should know better! I work for the Observer!” had turned a speeding ticket into a warning. 

This cop was at the window. “Everybody out. With ID.” 

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 41 / Absentees

“I am pleased, and proud, and honored to have won this election!” Kathleen shouted to the fifty people packed into the one-room temporary Democratic HQ in Schuyler. 

“The vote is close! What does that mean, everybody?”

“Your! Vote! Matters!” they shouted back to her. 

Years later, Annie would be able to recall that night in an instant—the astonished joy as districts phoned in and Jaime filled in boxes on a huge grid with precise, undeniable numbers.   

“Yes!” said Kathleen. “Your. Vote. Matters. And, for those who voted on absentee ballots, your, vote, matters. My opponent has called for a recount, and in his place, I would too. Then absentee ballots will be counted. The results may change.

“But tonight, integrity won. Tonight, a candidate won who listens to the voters. A candidate won who takes a fresh look at the strengths and challenges of our region!”  

Another cheer went up, and Kathleen beamed, without a trace of the fear that had haunted her eyes for a week after the car incident on the parkway. She had been careful, riding always with someone else, but nothing more had happened—not even a weird phone call—and Kathleen had picked up her shoulders, meditated every morning and evening, and gone on.

“Does she have anxiety attacks?” Andrew had asked. 

“She’s always been the steadiest person I’ve ever known,” said Annie. 

Tonight Kathleen was also beautiful, her “TV haircut” sculpting her face, her alabaster skin flushed with the surprise—the truly amazing success—of an unofficial win by 132 votes. 

“Last night,” Kathleen was saying, “I realized that the campaign part of this autumn was over. I had done what I could do about that. So I sat down, and I documented my plans—”

Next to Annie, Andrew stiffened, and Kathleen 10 feet away, seemed to feel it—

“I wrote down, everything I plan to do—”

Andrew relaxed again.

“When I want to do it, and how.”

Annie would remember the presence of everyone. Absentees were in the distance. Here, they all touched—no, held one another. Up front, Kathleen was surrounded by her family; on her right, the little twin girls grinned, their arms around each other’s waists. They had been told to choose a dress for the evening, so Katrina looked like she was off to a dance, with a double skirt, while Katy might set out for a dinner party, in emerald velveteen. 

On Kathleen’s left, Conor, in his blue blazer, stood with his arm in Liam’s, and Doug, with his trimmed “TV beard” stretched his arm across the boys. Standing between Liam and Katrina, Kathleen sometimes touched their shoulders as she spoke. 

“I have so many to thank,” she said now, “starting with the Democratic committees of our four-county election district, who took me in and then took me out, to meet the voters. With their house parties and their road snacks, their bottled water and their gas money for the van, we, did, this.”

Another cheer. Annie and Jaime stood side by side, arms around each other, hip to hip, ribs to ribs. On Jaime’s right, George stretched his arm over them both. On Annie’s left, Andrew did the same, so that she was banked by the bodies of her two best friends, until the camera of the one local TV station that had showed up began to pan over the crowd. Annie and Jaime stood tall, ready to look unblinking into the round eye. Andrew squeezed Annie’s shoulder and slipped away. 

Glancing back after being filmed, Annie saw him standing with Glaron and Theresa, Billie and Tiaje, another black man she hadn’t met, maybe the one who liked to play basketball on their lunch break, and a shorter white guy—Steve, the boss, who had given $1,000 to Kathleen’s campaign. 

“He hates the Neanderthal,” Andrew had said as he carefully folded his voter registration form and the eight others he had extracted from his neighbors and coworkers, before he delivered them to the Board of Elections. 

Now the camera headed toward that group, to show that there actually were African Americans in this rural backwater, and they took an interest in this election. Annie turned back to Kathleen, knowing Andrew would absent himself again, moving around or slipping outdoors.

“. . . Now, let’s dance!” said Kathleen. “And if you’ll forgive my sounding like a candidate, God bless us, every one!”

The crowd cheered and clapped, whistled and yelled “woo-hoo!” George reached right to the boom box on the table, started Johnny Nash in “I can See Clearly Now,” and gathered Jaime and Annie for a three-way dance. 

Andrew returned, scooped Annie off her feet, and twirled her around, on camera. “He got us,” said Annie as they danced. 

“It’s OK. He got me outside, having a smoke, for my fifteen seconds of fame.”

In fact, the party went short because everyone wanted to watch the 11 o’clock news. There, Annie and Andrew danced, and Glaron made the audio cut, saying, “She listens to everybody,” as did Jaime: “Did we take a page from the Clinton bus tours? You bet we did! And it worked!”

By midnight in Andrew’s house, a few blocks from HQ, Annie and Chloe had fallen asleep, but Andrew couldn’t rest, getting up and coming back to bed, prowling around in the dark, trying not to wake her, always waking her. 

“She’ll lose it in absentees,” he muttered. “Nobody’s prayers are going to change that.”

Annie squeezed his hand, trying not to fully wake. She had to be at the newspaper at 8:30, and the Witches would ride hard herd on them today, for election results in the next day’s paper. 

“Should have got that story out earlier.” 

“Spokesperson,” murmured Annie, envious of Chloe, motionless in her crate. 

About three Andrew settled down, curling himself against her. “TV,” he said. “Radio.” 

At daylight he walked Chloe and returned with newspapers, coffee and hard rolls from the Pakistani bodega around the corner. He fed Chloe and made a day’s worth of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, two for Annie, four for himself. 

“Thank you,” said Annie, as he poured her coffee out of paper into ceramic, which she preferred. “Refocused?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not! You’re wonderful.”

“Really?”

“Really. You changed Kathleen’s campaign from a romp—a ride in a VW bus—to something real.” 

“We still don’t have the numbers.”

“But she did tremendously well for an unknown candidate from a low-population part of the district. And we have the Neanderthal on our side, right? In a year, he’ll be divorced. He may not even run again. You said it first.” 

“You’re right. And I did. But the question is, do you love me?”

They were standing inches apart in his galley kitchen, Annie leaning along the refrigerator, Andrew against the counter where he had packaged up the sandwiches. In three minutes, they had to leave for work.

“No gotcha questions!” Annie put down her cup and reached up for his face. He encircled her with his arms. Inside they were both laughing, giddy, almost hysterical with fatigue and release. They’d got through this. Now something else was about to begin.

“Answer the question.”

“—Is it safe?”

“Not with another question!”

“—Maybe.”

“Arrgghh! I made you two sandwiches,” he said, indicating them without letting her go. 

“You did. And for that I love you.”

Two weeks later, after the candidates and their lawyers had watched the absentee ballot count, Kathleen lost the election by 196 votes, out of 96,509 votes cast.

“Hardly a mandate for him,” Annie told Kathleen in a quick phone conversation from work, and that became their slogan for the next year.  

Kathleen used the concept in her gracious-but-firm concession speech, filmed outside the kids’ school by all three TV stations: “I wish my opponent well, as he joins the State Senate for another term,” she said with a smile. “But I would point out that his mandate comes as much from our side as his.” 

Copyright © Debby Mayer