Reunion. Therese Fowler

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СКАЧАТЬ but just once she would have liked to have the kind of powers needed to instantly transform a person like Masterson into a hormonal, love-struck teenage girl.

      Blue was pulling off her boots when Marcy joined her, looking as fresh and enthused now, at four-fifteen, as she had at eight this morning. It was more than Marcy’s white-blonde hair (“Of course it’s dyed,” she’d told a woman in the audience during a commercial break. “Nature doesn’t make this color …”), more than her flared-leg jeans and gray cashmere t-shirt. Marcy had what Blue’s mother Nancy Kucharski called “a dynamic aura,” grown even more dynamic since meeting Stephen Boyd, an industrial designer who was teaching Marcy ballroom dance. Passion created that aura, Nancy said. “It’s good for the complexion, and not bad for the rest of the body, either!” Blue had to take her word for it—and an experienced word it was.

      “Good show,” Marcy said, as though things had gone just as well as the day before, when they’d hosted four champion dog breeders and four captivating puppies.

      “Compared to what?” Blue stepped out of her pants and stripped off the substitute Escada blouse—there were two of everything, just in case—then put on gym gear and brown velour sweats. Or rather, a brown velour tracksuit, as they were being called again. The seventies were back, complete with Barry Manilow and Cat Stevens and Neil Diamond on the radio, which Blue didn’t mind so much. The songs were reminders of a time when she was young enough to believe she knew where she stood.

      “I’m serious. Except for that little … outburst, you really kept things under control.”

      Blue shook her head, still embarrassed. “I don’t know what that was about.”

      “Empathy, maybe.”

      “Is Peter having a fit?”

      “He’s too busy working on a spin strategy. Stacey’s still a mess though, poor thing.”

      “I suspect she’s going to need therapy.”

      “You didn’t.”

      “I did. I just didn’t get any.”

      Marcy reached behind Blue to straighten her hood. “Speaking of misguided youths, your mother called. She’s not coming to the Keys with us after all; she says she met someone and he wants her all to himself this weekend.”

      “Someone named Calvin,” Blue said, more curious than surprised. “She apprised me the other day. He owns a bookstore—not the ‘adult’ type, a real one, but that’s all I know. Did she tell you anything about him?”

      “Only that they’ll be by your place for drinks at eight tonight. She said to tell you don’t worry, they won’t stay long.”

      Calvin was Nancy Kucharski’s third “boyfriend” since New Year’s. He’d been there at her mother’s place when Blue called last Monday night. The call had been brief, with Calvin waiting and Joni Mitchell crooning loudly in the background. Blue had a strong suspicion that Joni wasn’t her mother’s only throwback indulgence; the last time she’d visited her mother’s apartment, the place had smelled vaguely of marijuana.

      Her mother hadn’t waited for the seventies retro movement to catch up with her; she’d continued to march as its poster child these three decades since. Her hair, left alone to evolve to a natural silver-gray, was past her shoulders and often braided. Her favorite earrings were small silver peace signs. She wore vegetable-dyed t-shirts to work in her organic rooftop garden, and she had recently pierced her nose. Probably she’d been smoking pot all along—maybe even grew it, organic and therefore wholesome—and where Blue was concerned was simply following their mutual and long-established policy of Don’t ask, Don’t tell.

      Marcy dropped a manila folder onto the countertop in front of Blue. “This has your itinerary and Peter’s final notes for next week. With spring break in progress, we’re sure to have some great crowds. Oh, the first scuba class is set for Sunday at nine. I know you said you’re not planning to dive, but I think you should. Key West has some of the best reefs in the northern hemisphere and you can’t see them if you don’t do the course.”

      Blue removed her makeup with pre-soaked pads—the sort of single-use product her mother hated—while skimming the itinerary. They’d leave Chicago early tomorrow, arriving in Key West at about ten. The whole crew would stay at the Ocean Key Resort, where, for her, a spacious oceanfront suite would make a nice home-away-from-home for the week.

      She said, “I’m afraid I’ll get the bends,” a cover for the truth, that she was a lousy swimmer.

      “Do you even know what the bends is?”

      “Hey,” Blue said, still reading, “now that my mom has bailed, why don’t you bunk with me in my suite? It’s two bedrooms. We can stay up late watching Owen Wilson DVDs. I was so embarrassed when we had him on last time and I had to admit I hadn’t seen Shanghai Noon.”

      “I would … but I invited Stephen along, and …”

      “Say no more,” Blue said, closing the folder.

      “Besides, you should really get out some, while we’re there. I hear the nightlife is crazy good.”

      “Sure. I’ll just hang out in bars and, I don’t know, take home whoever’s willing.”

      “If you did a little more of that, then—”

      “Then what?” Her own answers: Then she might have had multiple fatherless children, as her mother did. A career of cleaning motel rooms and checking groceries and selling fruit baskets by phone every holiday season.

      Then she wouldn’t be cloistered in this building, in this life.

      Marcy said, “Nothing, forget it. You should just have more fun, that’s all. Life is short, and you’ve paid your dues.”

      Blue leaned over and took longer than she needed to tie her sneakers. “So, I’m off to the gym. Guess I’ll see you—and Stephen—at Midway, six forty-five a.m. sharp.”

      “Blue?”

      She sat up. “Yeah?”

      “What were you doing out there, on the fire escape?”

      “The fire escape?” She looked out the window. The snow was still falling with vigor.

      “Yeah,” Marcy said, “you know, that steel thing, used for egress in the event of an emergency. Was there some emergency I should know about?”

      “Branford called.” The private detective she’d had on retainer for almost four years now.

      “And?”

      “And he has a lead. I don’t have any details yet.” She looked at Marcy and saw her at nineteen, saw her as Bat, heard her saying even back then, days and weeks afterward, that it wasn’t too late to find the child. She could change her mind, she could track him down.

      Now Marcy said, “Ah.” That was all there was to say, so many fruitless years into the search.

      “So, see you at sunrise.”

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