“Will, I’m sorry, but we were talking about Aaron, and Maisie, and Star, and we started to worry,” Corey explained. “Look, is it alright with you if I talk with Aaron and Maisie? I want to check out this Star person, make sure she’s okay.”
“I’d guess they’re long gone, mom.” He sighed, frustrated. “They split.”
“Right. Stupid of me. Billy, do you have Star’s address?”
“Mom, back off, okay? Just leave me alone.” He went toward the door, two steps, then turned back. “And call me Will.”
Maisie had her hand stuck in the back pocket of Aaron’s jeans and his arm hung over her shoulders. Aaron’s fingers lightly brushed across her left breast as he walked her to her front door. Across the street, in the shadows, Teaser was watching, invisible. He liked the big, old wooden house on Federal, liked it more than the rutty Chinaboy’s shiny, new one. He chewed on a plastic toothpick, the kind he used because it didn’t break up into little splinters. When Aaron and Maisie kissed on the doorstep, he turned away. He looked back at them, and they were still doing it. He felt the dryness in his throat. Teaser ran his tongue between his teeth. When he watched Maisie, he thought he could actually feel his scar.
“Dinner,” Maisie’s mother, Amber, called out, pressing the intercom button to Maisie’s room. “In the garden room, honey.” Their house was grey, with white trim and a white porch. It sat back from the street, on Federal, several blocks north of Aloha. Maisie could walk to Olympic—down to Tenth then north to the campus. Their home was built in 1921, and it had six bedrooms. Maisie’s was on the third floor, as far as possible from everything.
“Gotta go,” Maisie said to Aaron. “I’m going to find out tonight. Whatever it takes. Think about tomorrow. You and me at Star’s, all afternoon. Think about that.” She punched off her phone.
The garden room was named after the perennial garden that swept around the southeast corner of the house. The room had a country feel: pine farmhouse table, exposed beams, walls of windows with small panes separated by freshly painted white mullions. Tonight Amber was serving coq au vin. She was forty-eight, and plainly the source of Maisie’s sexual allure. Amber was a classic, Jewish beauty: full-breasts, black hair, fine features. When she relaxed, Amber was radiant. She wore a long denim skirt and a colorful peasant blouse. Verlaine had been Amber’s mentor, almost nine years ago, when she came from Stanford’s Symbolic Systems program to manage a project at Microsoft. They were married in 2008.
“How was school today?” Verlaine asked. He was young-looking for sixty-three, with a rower’s muscular upper body, wire-rimmed glasses and curly, grey hair. Verlaine wore a grey herringbone jacket over a black cashmere turtleneck sweater.
“Fine,” Maisie muttered, caught herself, and thinking of her mission, took a friendlier tack. “We’re reading Oedipus, maybe we can talk about it later?”
“Oedipus, yes. Anytime, Maisie.”
“That’d be great. Listen is it okay if I stay out late with Aaron Wednesday? Thursday’s a holiday, we’re going to a party and—”
“No problem,” Verlaine said, putting a hand on Maisie’s forearm as he turned toward her. “Just remember how we roll, babe—a designated driver and safe sex.”
Maisie winced, barely keeping her tongue in her mouth. He was such a scuz. “Do we have to talk about that?”
“Your responsibility?”
Maisie nodded.
“Do Aaron’s parents approve?” Amber asked.
“Isn’t that between Aaron and his parents?” Maisie asked, a little too sharply. Since her mom had started on the psycho meds, as Maisie called them, Amber’s ideas sometimes popped out before she thought about them. Maisie hurried a smile.
Verlaine smiled back. “I’m sure they’ve worked it out.” He tasted the coq au vin. “It’s wonderful.” He bowed his head toward his wife.
Maisie saw her moment. “Mom, I’ve got a question.” She hesitated. “I need you to help me with something.”
“Of course.”
“Could you tell me more about dad?”
Verlaine set down his fork. “Sure.”
“My real dad.” Maisie felt the adrenaline kick in, just saying it.
Amber put a finger in the air before Verlaine could speak. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“I see,” Amber said, folding her napkin, working to slow down.
Verlaine sat back, crossed his legs.
“How about who he is? What he does?”
“I don’t know that, Maisie.” She looked at her daughter. “I’ll tell you what I can. A lot of it you know already. All of it is ancient history.” Amber’s face softened then reformed in an earnest expression. “I met Dave in San Francisco. I was a graduate student at Berkeley studying computer systems and theory. Dave was a gifted computer programmer working at the computer science center. He was, well, a charmer, in a bad boy sort of way. Smart, good looking, and sensitive when he wanted to be. Dave was a risk-taker. He, well, he just swept this aging Jewish intellectual right off her feet. I was already thirty and, at the time, Dave was pretty much irresistible.” Amber shrugged.
She looked over at Verlaine, who was watching Maisie, his steepled forefingers touching his upper lip, before continuing, “Anyway, over time, Dave grew more and more frustrated with his work. He wasn’t well-paid to begin with, and when he developed an early pattern recognition program, he deserved a bonus and at least some kind of an acknowledgement for his accomplishment. Instead, his boss took the credit. He got into a fight with his boss, they were shouting at each other in the hall. His boss threw a punch, then Dave broke his boss’s nose. His boss swore that Dave threw the first and only punch. They fired him from the school, which made him virtually unhireable. He taught martial arts off and on—Dave was big, and good at karate—but he couldn’t make a go of it. Then he drifted from job to job. Before you turned four, he was dealing drugs. At first it was just marijuana, but soon he was dealing whatever he could get his hands on.”
“Whoa. You never told me this.” She thought about it, gently pulling at the ring in her eyebrow, a thing she knew irritated Verlaine. At least it explained why Verlaine wanted her head shrunk. He was afraid she was a bad seed. Nice.
Verlaine uncrossed his legs, pulled his chair forward. “Perhaps we should have,” he offered.
Amber frowned. She wasn’t sure. “In any case, it gets worse,” she said. “Dave was arrested. He was in jail for more than a year. When he came out, he was cynical and mean. He went back to dealing, with a vengeance. We started fighting a lot, and somewhere along the way, he developed a drug habit. I took you and moved out. Less than a year later, I took the job in Seattle. We lost touch after that. When I got the divorce, I made contact through a friend. Dave was hiding from the police. That’s all I can tell you. I haven’t heard from Dave in, oh, it’s at least nine years.”
“Do you have any idea where he lives?”
“No. He could be anywhere. Why, honey?”
Maisie looked at Verlaine. He needed stroking. “It must have something to do with reading Oedipus, don’t you think?”
“I was wondering that myself,” Verlaine said, smiling at his step-daughter.
On Sunday mornings Corey often cooked pancakes