Sadie could, rather easily, believe it. The scene unfurled in her mind in the manner Caitlin had suggested: like a movie. Tuck peering at his face in the bathroom mirror, clearing his head, so as to form a smile for the intruders, whoever they might be. Caitlin tumbling off the couch and pulling on a stained kimono, a few strands of hair rising from her head. She wondered how much Caitlin was embellishing.
“It really seemed like they were going to break down the door, but I put my robe on, finally, and opened it and this pig flashed me his badge and said—just like on Law & Order”—here Caitlin lowered her voice and approximated a Brooklyn accent—“‘Agent Connelly.’ Irish! How cliched is that? And then the other guy—there were two of them, in normal clothing, suits—whips out his badge and says, ‘United States—’”
Sadie finished her sentence for her: “Immigration and Naturalization Service.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Caitlin said. “How did you know?”
Sadie shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
“They were here for the family downstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Jimenez. Can you believe it?” Shaking her head—the relief, apparently, was still vivid—she picked another cigarette out of the pack and contemplated it. “The weird thing is: Mr. and Mrs. Jimenez are legal. They have green cards.”
“Strange,” admitted Sadie. “Could they be fake?”
“Do you think?” asked Caitlin. “I suppose.”
“So, what happened?” asked Sadie.
“Well, at first they thought I was Mrs. Jimenez. I mean I have dark hair and I’m kind of tan right now, so it’s not such a stretch, I guess. I told them that I wasn’t, of course, and explained that they had the wrong apartment, but then, as I was talking, I realized that I wasn’t going to send these bastards to the Jimenezes’ place, either, so they could take them all out to some INS prison—those places are just, like, hotbeds of human rights violations, you know—and ship them back to Mexico. So I said I didn’t know of any Jimenez living in the building. And then they got very suspicious and asked to see my ID. I got my wallet and showed them my driver’s license, and my ID cards from Cornell and Oberlin, which I still have, and my faculty card from LaGuardia, and they seemed to believe that I was who I said I was.” She laughed. “A CUNY prof. Boring as shit.”
Yes, Sadie thought, it would be so much more exciting to be Mrs. Jimenez from Puebla, living in a three-room apartment with nine other people.
“They asked who else lived here and I said, ‘My husband,’ and they asked for his name, and I was just like, Why do they need hisname? He’s not here. So I asked them, and they got all suspicious again and said, ‘For the record.’ And I didn’t know what to do. So I told them. And two seconds later, Tuck came out of the bathroom to make sure everything was okay.” She pressed her lips together. Her cigarette, still unlit, was growing moist between her fingers. “He was worried about me.”
“I’m sure,” said Sadie.
“The first guy, the Irish guy, was such an asshole. He just kind of smirked and said, ‘I presume this isn’t your husband.’ But the other guy—he was black—just looked really uncomfortable, and he was like, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And they left.”
“Wow,” said Sadie.
“Yeah,” Caitlin sighed. She pawed, bluntly, at her eyes and yawned.
“So what happened?” asked Sadie. “With your neighbors.”
“Oh, right.” Caitlin sat up and lit her cigarette. “Nothing. They weren’t home. But the Feds are clearly watching them. There’s always a policeman on the corner now. And look out the window.” Sadie looked. In front of the hairdresser’s sat a plain, navy blue sedan. “An unmarked car,” said Caitlin, raising her brows darkly. “They come every day at noon. And they’re there when I go to bed.”
“Is it noon?” asked Sadie, alarmed.
“It’s one,” Caitlin said.
“Oh my God.” Sadie sprang up. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I actually have to work today.”
“Why don’t you stay for lunch?” Caitlin jumped up, too, a caricature of a concerned hostess. “Are you hungry?”
“No, no.” Sadie struggled to remember where she’d left her bag.
“I was going to make a big tofu scramble. It’s really great. We have fresh coriander, from our roof garden.”
“Sorry,” said Sadie. She walked to the threshold of the hallway, hoping Caitlin would stand up and follow suit. “I can’t eat tofu.” She smiled. “Had too much of it in college.”
“Oh my God,” said Caitlin. “Me, too.”
“Then why are you making it?” asked Sadie, unable to contain her impatience. Caitlin shrugged and slunk down in her chair, childlike.
“I need protein.” She shrugged. “You have to be really careful, being vegan, you know.”
“But”—Don’t, Sadie told herself, just don’t ask—“why are you vegan?”
“Rob feels really strongly about it.” Caitlin lit the cigarette. “It’s political. We’re opposed to factory farming and genetically modified food. It’s complicated. Though I ate anything before I met him. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did. I kind of lack discipline.” The ginger cat, just then, jumped off the couch with a loud thwop and ran into the kitchen, releasing a larger dose of the ammonia smell. In the spot where she’d sat, Sadie saw a dark, wet stain. She had to get out of this place immediately.
“Couldn’t you just tell him that you don’t like it?” she snapped. “Has it ever occurred to you that if you tried to make your life with Rob a little more… fun, you might not need Tuck. Or someone like Tuck.”
“What do you mean?” asked Caitlin, her brows knitting together.
Sadie looked straight at Caitlin. “Well, it’s just, if you make every single choice in your life based on how that choice affects the entire world, then you never get to have any fun.”
An odd look had taken hold of Caitlin’s face, something between an angry pout and a baleful grin. “What do you mean exactly?” She doesn’t want Tuck to leave Lil, Sadie realized. She likes her life just the way it is.
“Well, if you don’t want to eat tofu, then don’t,” said Sadie, exasperated. “Go out and eat a cheeseburger.” She paused, knowing that she sounded ridiculous, like her own mother. “Take a long bath. Get dressed up. Go out to dinner. Go to Oznot’s or go into Manhattan and go somewhere really nice. Take a walk along the river at night. Just do things for the sake of doing them together. And read a novel just because you want to. Something not from your period.”
Caitlin protested. “The problem is I don’t have time. I’m teaching freshman comp and it’s, like, all these dead white guys—”
“I know, I know, but I mean you should read something just for pleasure. Before you go to bed at night. Sentimental Education. Have you read that?” Caitlin shook her head. “You’d like it. It’s about the horrors of the bourgeois. Just go over to the library on Devoe and get a bunch of good novels: Dickens, Austen, the Brontës. The books you loved when you were a kid. Remember when you could just give yourself over to a book?” Sadie sighed. This was why she hadn’t gone into academia, so she wouldn’t become like Caitlin, dogmatic and weird.
“I do,” Caitlin admitted, offering a glimmer of a genuine smile. “I miss that. Don’t you?” Sadie nodded. “I get what you’re saying. What else would you do if you were me?”