A knock at the front door interrupted their talk. Royce turned to answer it, then looked back to Maven. “Oh, and one more thing. Danny doesn’t know anything. And that’s how it stays. For your safety, for everyone’s safety. Understood?”
“Sure. No problem. Just one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s Danny?”
Royce smiled and opened the door. Danielle Vetti stepped inside. “Are we still going out tonight?”
Royce turned and said, “Danny, this is Neal Maven, the guy from the parking lot. He’s with us now.”
She showed Maven a flat smile of supreme disinterest, then went right back to Royce. “I need a new dress.”
“Of course you do. The ones in your closet upstairs, it would be ridiculous of me to even consider suggesting you wear one of those twice.”
She wore a fitted shirt that was very fitted, a snug, military-style jacket over it, and shimmery black slacks. “Maybe, if we went to a different club for a change, then I could wear the same dress more than once. But since we always go to the same club, and sit in the same exact booth, and do the exact same fucking thing, I need something new.” She drew a nail across his cheek. “I have to look good for you, don’t I?”
“Ah. It’s for me you do this.”
“Always, baby.”
“Tell you what.” Royce thumbed over at Maven. “Maven here’s recently come into some money. He’ll need some fresh duds for tonight also, but if I turn him loose on his own, he’ll go raid the military surplus store. Why don’t you let him accompany you over to Newbury Street, help him pick out something competent to wear, and as a thank-you, I’m sure Maven will buy you your dress.”
Royce looked over at Maven.
Maven said, “Uh... sure.”
Danielle looked at Royce doubtfully, then over at Maven. “Any dress?”
Maven shrugged. “Why not?”
“Fine,” she decided, turning to leave. “Come on.”
He wasn’t even sure the store they were in was a store. It was more like walking around some stranger’s huge, dramatically lit walk-in closet.
No circular racks. The clothes hung on angled rails or else lay folded on white shelves. Nothing had a price tag.
Danielle went around feeling fabrics with a practiced hand. She eased a striped jacket off a padded mannequin and held it to his chest. She had been quiet and a little sulky on the way over, but moving around the store seemed to lift her mood.
She grabbed two pairs of pants for him and led Maven to the back.
“So,” she said, “you’re getting into the real estate game?”
She said this with a smile, as though she knew more, or perhaps wanted him to believe she did.
Maven was in way over his head, and the adrenaline fizzle coupled with the beer-and-vodka buzz didn’t help.
“I guess I am,” he said.
The fitting rooms were open stalls, no doors, facing a carpeted walkway ending at a three-paneled mirror. Maven stepped into the farthest stall and pulled off his jeans, a wad of twenties and hundreds bulging the left front pocket. He came out to the mirror in the first pair of pants, and Danielle hated them immediately, pinching the fabric at his thigh, then tugging on the crotch.
“No. Off. I’ll be back.”
He was standing in his underwear when she reappeared. She held two more pairs up to his waist, then took away one and waited outside for him to pull on the other.
Now he was getting chub. Wouldn’t be good if she came yanking down on his inseam again. He needed to distract himself. Start talking.
“Uh, so you grew up around here, right?”
“I guess,” came her voice.
“You went to Gridley High School, right?”
He received no answer. He zipped up, figuring she had walked off to find a matching belt or something. He pulled on the shirt and jacket and stepped out, and there she was, standing in front of the mirror, facing her three selves. She looked at him in the reflection. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t,” said Maven. “I was a couple of years behind you. My sister, she was in your grade.”
Danielle squinted, unsure of this whole thing now.
“Alexis. Alexis Maven. My half sister, actually.”
“Alex Maven?” said Danielle, her squint relaxing just a bit. “Holy shit. We used to smoke together sometimes. Out at the ‘lounge.’ The woods behind the north wing?”
Maven nodded as though he had ever been there.
Danielle turned, looking Maven up and down. She hadn’t really looked at him since they’d arrived, only his clothes. “So you’re Alex’s younger brother.”
He nodded. “Half brother.”
“Small world.” She stepped behind him, plucking at the shoulders of his jacket. “She was a party girl, wasn’t she? What’s Alex doing now?”
“She’s dead.”
The tugging stopped. Danielle’s eyes flared as though he’d said something embarrassing, not her. “Sorry.”
“She never left town,” he said. “Kind of dug her own grave there. I remember, I saw you once, after you graduated. At the South Shore Plaza, spraying perfume on women walking into Filene’s.”
Danielle hissed out a laugh. “I was saving up. For New York. Modeling.”
Maven nodded. “That figures.”
She resumed with his jacket, feeling it under his arms, ignoring what he had intended as a compliment. “I had everything but the height, they said.”
He nodded. “So how’d you wind up back...?”
“Here? Long, boring story.” She came around in front of him. “You getting all this down, or what?” She got out of his way, and Maven looked at himself in the three-way mirror. “So what do you think?”
He barely recognized himself.
“You feel good, right?” she said. “You feel different, don’t you?”
He turned to one side, then the other. “Actually, I kind of do, yeah.”
“Bolder. Sexier. Isn’t that what you want, Gridley?”
She was studying the fit of his clothes, while he was studying her.
“Yeah,” he said.
Four Months Later
The Thaw
A prolonged cold snap had iced the surface of the Charles River, the body of water separating Cambridge from Boston, since before the first of the year. Beneath the Boston University Bridge, and the lower Grand Junction Railroad bridge that ran below it, a northward bend narrowed the river, and well-worn paths in the snow showed where pedestrians, mostly students, had exploited this seasonal quirk by crossing the frozen moat on foot.
Not until mid-March did a few consecutive afternoons of sunshine start melting the snow. At noontime one day, a life-sciences major crossing the river toward MIT noticed something in the ice beneath her feet. It was a body, curled up and facedown, as though embarrassed by its own mortality. The student plucked out her earbuds and dialed 911, standing there in the middle of the Charles. State police answered the mobile call, and after a few moments working out her exact location — the geographical middle of the river was the borderline between Suffolk and Middle sex counties — determined that she was closer to the north and so transferred her call to Cambridge PD.
A patrolman met her there, leaving his car and his spinning blues blocking one inbound lane on Memorial Drive as he made his way down to the bank. She couldn’t stay, she had a class to get to, an exam to take, but she left her name and number with the officer and directed him to the body. When the patrolman walked out to look, the ice gave way and he dropped right through.