Nicole didn’t sleep well. She kept waking up and thinking about what she was going to say to Mitch Carey.
Her plan was simple. She would tell him that if he continued to sell her mother cocaine, she would turn him over to the police. She believed — hoped, was the more precise word — that if her mother was cut off from Mitch’s supply, then she’d panic and turn herself back to rehab. And this time it would work. This time it had to work. Absolutely had to.
Carey would be pissed but what could he do? He certainly didn’t want to go to jail.
Mom made pancakes for breakfast. Blueberry pancakes. The kind she’d made back when Nicole was a little girl, and Mom and Dad were happy.
“I guess I’ll go study at the library,” she said, after finishing breakfast and putting the dishes in the dishwasher.
“I’m going to do some more cleaning,” Mom said. Then grinned. “It’s kind of fun being a Stepford wife again. Now all I need is a Stepford husband.”
Ninety-three minutes later, Nicole pulled her car into a slot behind Carey’s apartment house. The interior stairs of the place smelled of rubber and paint. A new runner had been put on the steps and new paint on the walls. Whoever managed this place, they took care of it.
Carey answered the door out of breath and with a white nubby towel wrapped around his neck. He wore a tight white T-shirt and blue running shorts. A Stairmaster stood in the background. Classical music played. Carey had a strong, tight body.
“Yes?”
“I’m Nicole. Kate Sanders’s daughter.”
He looked surprised. “Is everything all right? Nothing happened to Kate did it?”
“No,” Nicole said. “It’s just that I’m thinking of turning you over to the police.”
This time, he looked even more surprised. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside. “Hey, we don’t have to invite the neighbors in on this, do we?” His nod indicated the three other apartment doors on this floor.
The apartment was impressive in a cold and calculated way. The furnishings were chrome and black leather, with a white and black tile floor and walls painted a brilliant flat white. The only touches of color belonged to the modernistic paintings on the walls. Nicole knew even less about painting than she did about classical music. This was the kind of room that intimidated her with her own ignorance.
Carey had quickly regained his composure. The panic and anger were gone from his eyes. He said, “Care for some wine?”
“No, thanks.”
She had let two boys get their hands down her pants and play with her sex. At a ninth grade slumber party she had taken three drags on a joint. And she had looked at a couple of porno videos her Mom and Dad used to play when they thought she was upstairs asleep. This was the extent of her licentiousness. Drinking wine at this time of day was out of the question. Or any time of day. Wine always made her dizzy, and usually made her sick.
“Why don’t you sit down over there on the couch and let me shut the machine off?”
He clipped off the Stairmaster and then wiped his face and neck again with the towel. He took the matching chair across from the couch. He sat on the edge. He kept pulling on both ends of the towel, biceps shaping as he did so. She knew this was for her benefit.
He said. “So you turn me over to the police, Nicole, and then what?”
“Then she gets so scared without her supply that she decides to try rehab again.”
“I see.”
“And this time she’ll make it.”
“So that’s the plan, huh?” There was just a hint of a smirk on his mouth.
“That’s the plan. I don’t want you to sell her any more cocaine.”
“What do I tell her when she calls?”
“Just tell her that you’re not in the business any more. That you’re scared of the police or something like that.”
He looked at her and smiled. “If I ask you a question, will you answer it honestly?”
“If you’ll turn down the music. It’s pretty loud.”
He was up and at the CD player in seconds. “Not a Debussy fan, eh?”
“Maybe some other time.”
When he was seated again, he said, “Have you ever seen her happy when she wasn’t doing coke?”
“Of course I have.”
“I realize you think you’re being honest. But think hard for a moment. And be honest with yourself.”
She saw what he was getting at. Her mother was miserable when she was clean and sober. That, Nicole had to admit. She’d look at her mother and she’d look miserable. Tense, lost, angry, anxious. And late at night, she’d hear her mother sob. And there was almost never a smile. Or any expression of joy. Her life was simply a matter of not using cocaine. And she did not share the pride or the pleasure that others seemed to take in her not doing this.
His phone rang. “Think about it, kiddo.” He reached over to a glass end table and picked up the phone. And said. “Hi. I’ve got company.” He laughed. “Actually, yes, it is somebody you know. Your daughter.” Then, “I take it you haven’t told her.” Pause. “Then that’ll be my pleasure, I guess.” Pause. “I’ll call you in a while.”
After hanging up, he said, “She said she hadn’t had time to tell you yet. She wanted to wait for the right moment, I guess.”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s taking in a boarder.”
“A what?”
“You know, a roomer.”
“Who?”
He grinned. “Me. I’m going to be living with you for a while.”
Mitch
In the first week, Nicole took all her meals in her room. She barely spoke to her mother, and she wouldn’t speak to him at all. She spent several Friday and Saturday nights staying over at her friends’ houses.
Mitch enjoyed the setup. He was tired of all the artistes and pretenders he’d hung out with the past ten years. It was enjoyable to get up in the morning and have a home-cooked meal and then spend a few hours “blocking out” a novel. That’s what he called it, blocking out. Taking notes and filling up lined pages with blue ballpoint ink. Such and so would happen in Chapter Six, such and so would happen in Chapter Ten and so on. He liked to think he was editing a film, moving this scene from here to here. The writing itself, after all this preparation, was bound to be simple. Or so he told himself. Of course, in ten years, he’d actually never written a word of text. But what the hell. That really would be the easy part.
He stayed in a basement room that was fixed up for guests. He had his own bathroom and shower and TV set. He even had his own entrance, right on the side. His MG fit nicely into the third stall of the garage. He walked around the neighborhood on the sunny days. It was like being in a sitcom, all the neighbors tending their lawns and waving to him, the sounds of friendly dogs and driveway basketball, the aromas of backyard cookouts and fresh hung laundry on outdoor lines.
This was the change he needed. No doubt about it. He had business to tend to but that took two, three hours at most a day. Had to keep his hungry little junkies hungry, and had to resupply his own stash with his own wholesaler. He always liked to tell people he was in retail, and so he was. This was the change he needed. A new kind of lifestyle. He felt invigorated, young.
He went easy on the sex, mostly for the sake of Nicole. If she found her mother in bed with him, she’d freak. Absolutely freak. She was a very pious little thing, sweet Nicole. Kate said she got the self-righteousness from her father. She said that was one reason she was so glad their marriage was over, so she didn’t have him in her face all the time dispersing rules with a ferocity that would have put Moses to shame.