“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said. His hand, which was warm and dry, was still on her arm. With a sheepish look, he slowly released his grip.
“You’re sure?” he said. “Nothing happened to you inside that house?”
“No, I was just visiting someone,” she said, smiling, though she wasn’t sure why.
“You looked a little upset when you emerged from the building,” he said, furrowing his brow.
Was this some sort of Fed lingo, emerged from the building, she wondered, like a state trooper saying Step away from the vehicle. “Well,” she said, drawing out the word, “I was. It’s a long story.”
“I have time,” said the man, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants.
“Okay,” said Sadie. “But I’m not sure it’s going to interest you.”
“Try me,” he said, with a shrug.
“Okay,” repeated Sadie, suddenly nervous. “Well, I found out that this woman—the woman I was visiting, she asked me to come over, I don’t really like her, though really, she’s just a sad, sad person and I should feel sorry for her. Anyway, she’s having an affair with my best friend’s husband.” She smiled again, this time self-consciously. “Right. That’s more than you needed to know.”
A grimace overtook the man’s open face. It was his eyes, Sadie thought, that gave him such a—what was it?—receptive look. They were a deep, unusual shade of blue, almost turquoise and, this was the thing, spaced wide—too wide, really—on his face. He was older than she by at least ten years, and he’d spent time in the sun. “Eh,” he said, shaking his head. “That is not good.”
“No,” Sadie agreed. Shouldn’t he be showing me his badge or something? she thought. Aren’t there laws about that? Could it be that he wasn’t the INS guy? And she was talking to some random guy in a suit? No one in Williamsburg wore suits.
Cocking his head, he seemed to consider her anew. “Why did you run off down the street?” he asked.
Sadie laughed. “I don’t know. I was so happy to be out of that apartment, that building. It smelled like cat pee. It’s a long story.” She paused. “Why?”
The agent shrugged, then looked Sadie straight in the eye. “There’s some bad stuff going on in that building. Your friend should get out of there.”
“She’s not my friend,” Sadie told him.
“Yeah, well then, forget her.” He smiled. “The evil seductress.”
Sadie laughed. “Vile fornicator,” she said.
“Jezebel,” he said. He reached into his left-hand jacket pocket and crisply extracted a black leather case, which he flipped open to reveal a large badge. “I’m Agent Michael Connelly,” he said, sticking out his right hand and, again, meeting her gaze directly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Sadie Peregine,” she said, shaking his hand, a firm, quick grasp. “Just a normal civilian. I don’t actually even have a driver’s license to show you. Would you like to see my library card?”
“That’s okay,” he said, flipping his little case closed with a snap and returning it to his pocket. Her vision, she realized, couldn’t be so bad, as she’d read the initials on the badge clearly: not INS, as she’d expected, but, in clear black ink, FBI.
seven
The following Sunday, Sadie rose early and gave her father quite a shock by appearing on his doorstep at eight o’clock, just as he was leaving to pick up food for breakfast. Amiably, they walked over to Lex, selected their fish, and returned home to prepare the house for their guests. At ten, as they sat in the kitchen, reading the movie reviews from the Friday paper—having given Rose the Sunday paper—Rose called downstairs in the stentorian voice she reserved for situations she considered emergencies, “Sadie?” Father and daughter shared a frowning glance. It was rare for Rose to emerge before eleven. “Sadie,” Rose called again. “Can you hear me?” Sadie skipped up the stairs, by way of responding. Like her father, she was almost constitutionally incapable of raising her voice.
Reaching the third floor, she found the door to her parents’ bedroom partially open. “Mom?” she said, rapping on the door and poking her head in the room.
“Oh, Sadie,” came Rose’s voice. She was in the bathroom, an entirely white chamber, en suite, and nearly unchanged since the 1930s, with a massive pedestal sink, chrome towel bars, matte subway tile, scalloped deco sconces, and an enormous claw-foot tub, in which Rose took her evening bath. As a child, Sadie found this chalky vessel a bit too similar to the Egyptian sarcophagi at the Met and refused to bathe in it, though she’d loved her parents’ bedroom, which, too, had changed little over the years: the walls painted Wedgwood blue, the trim white, the floorboards, which were plain and wide as in a country house, stained amber and covered partially with what Rose embarrassingly referred to as “an Oriental,” in muted tones of blue and peach and yellow. The room faced the back, looking out over the little garden plot, and through its two tall windows received fragile southern light, mostly blocked by full silk curtains, sweeping from ceiling to floor, in the color Rose called “bone.” A chaise longue covered in heavy silk patterned in green and white (or perhaps bone again; Sadie had trouble differentiating between the two) stretched against the far wall, under the windows, and next to a short three-legged table, holding a telephone and a hardback library book (Rose considered new books an unnecessary expense). On the wall by the hall door stood a sweet old sleigh bed, topped with a down coverlet (also in bone) and the many pillows Rose favored (with her predilection for reading while propped up against the headboard). The bed, as yet, was unmade—the coverlet on Rose’s side turned down and the paper spread neatly out across it. Sadie picked up the magazine section—bearing a close-up photo of an African boy—and sat down on the chaise.
“I just read the funniest thing in the paper,” Rose called. “Lil’s husband, he’s called Tuck, but his real name is William, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” confirmed Sadie.
“I thought so. Well, it seems that he’s been arrested.” Rose appeared delighted by this development.
“William Hayes has got to be a pretty common name,” said Sadie. “Are you sure it’s him, Mom?” Sadie was sure it was, and sure it had something to do with whatever had transpired at Caitlin and Rob’s the previous week. It was too much of a coincidence: Federal officers barge in on a man having sex. Within ten days, he’s arrested. Clearly, it was Rob who was under surveillance, right? Not the Jimenez family? She was, perhaps, in a position to find out. Agent Connelly had called her on Monday. She’d blanched when she heard his voice on the line—why, why had she given him her card?—and yet, she’d also been uncomfortably, blush-inducingly thrilled, and stunned into silence, when he’d said, in that resonant voice, his diction oddly precise, without any introductory chatter, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you.” Oh my God, she’d thought. “I should tell you,” she’d near stammered, curiously choked with emotion (Caitlin’s words, and their implication, floating back at her: You’ve never really felt anything; You’ve never really been in love), “I’m involved with someone right now.” And then, as if in a dream, she heard herself say, “But I’ve been thinking about you, too.” She had, as yet, said nothing to Lil about Caitlin and Tuck—nor had she mentioned anything to Tal, though she told herself she would, if only so she wouldn’t be the sole bearer of this awful secret—but after this hushed conversation, her arms pricking with sweat as she hung up her heavy office phone, she felt that she couldn’t, not yet.