"You can't hurt it." She pressed Eve's hand to her belly.
"Solid baby." "That's good, Mavis." Her palm was going to go damp any second. "Really good. You're feeling okay?" "At the summit. Everything is totally uptown." "You look beautiful," Roarke told her. "And cliche or not, you glow." "I feel like I'm sending off waves." She laughed and bounced to a chair. "I still get the weepies sometimes, but they're happy weepies mostly. Like Leonardo and I were talking a couple days ago about how Peabody and McNab are moving into the building soon, and we're going to be neighbors, at least until we get a bigger place, and I just flooded." She took the plate Leonardo brought her and cuddled up with him on the padded love seat. "So what do you think they want for, like, a housewarming?" "Don't they have regulation temp control?" "Jeez, Dallas." With a giggle, Mavis popped something else in her mouth. "Housewarming. You know, where people move into a new place and you get them a gift." "Hold on. You have to give them a gift for moving?" "Uh-huh. Plus they're shacking, so it should be a couple thing." She ate another canape, fed one to Leonardo.
"Why does there have to be a gift for every damn thing?" Eve complained.
"Retail conspiracy." Roarke patted her knee.
"I bet it is," Eve said darkly. "I just bet it is." "Anyway." Mavis waved it all away. "We really came by and we're all pumped that you're both here because we wanted to talk to you about the baby." "Mavis, since you got pregnant, when haven't you wanted to talk about the baby?" Eve leaned over, took a canape from her plate. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"Yeah, but this is a specific thing, that involves you." The?" Eve licked her thumb and decided to steal another loaded cracker from Mavis's plate.
"Uh-huh. We want you to be my backup coach." "You're taking up baseball?" Eve bit into the salmon thingy with the stuff, and decided it wasn't half bad. "Shouldn't you wait until you get the kid out of there?" "No. Labor and delivery coach. You'd back up Leonardo when I have the baby." Eve choked on the canape and turned white.
"Take a drink, darling," Roarke said with a laugh in his voice. "Put your head between your knees if you feel dizzy." "Shut up. Are you talking about… like, being there? In the actual place at the actual time? In the same room as… it." "You can't coach me through it if you're in Queens, Dallas.
You gotta have a backup coach, somebody who takes the class, learns about the breathing and the positions and the… stuff. Daddy Bear's first string, but you have to have one on the bench." "Can I just stay on the bench? Outside?" "I need you there." Tears swam into her eyes until they shimmered brighter than her boots. "You're my best friend in the whole universe. I need you with me." "Oh man. Okay, okay. Don't flood. I'll do it." "We feel," Leonardo said, and offered Mavis a green cloth to dab at her eyes, "that first for friendship there's no one who we want to share this miracle with more. Added to that, you're the most steady and solid people we know. In a crisis, you'd keep your heads." "Our heads?" Eve repeated.
"We want Roarke there, too." Mavis sniffed into her cloth.
The? There?"
Eve turned her head, and saw with pleasure the rare sight of utter panic on his face. "Not so damn funny now, is it, ace?" "We're permitted, even encouraged, to have family present," Leonardo explained. "You're our family." "Ah, I'm not sure it's quite proper for me to be… to see Mavis in that condition. Under those… circumstances." "Get out." Sniffles forgotten, Mavis giggled and tapped Roarke playfully on the arm. "Anybody with a vid player's seen me mostly naked. And this isn't about the proper. It's about family. We know we can count on you. Both of you." "Of course." Roarke swallowed a great deal of wine. "Of course, you can."
When they were alone, sitting in the soft light of dusk with the candles Summerset had lit flickering, Roarke reached out, gripped Eve's hands in his.
"They could change their minds. It's still months away, and they could easily change their minds and want this… event to be a private one between them." She looked at him as if he'd sprouted a second head.
"Private? Private? This is Mavis we're dealing with." He shut his eyes. "God pity us." "And it's just going to get… more." She pulled away, sprang up. "Before you know it, before you know it she's going to want us to deliver the thing. They'll want to do it here, in our bedroom or something, with cameras live feed to her fans. And us pulling the thing out of her." Utter and genuine horror leaped into his eyes. "Stop it, Eve. Stop it now." "Yeah, live feed, that's Mavis to the ground. And we'll do it." She spun back to him. "We'll do it because she's just sucking us in. Sucking us in like some…" She windmilled her arms. "Like some big sucking thing. Some big pregnant sucking thing." "Let's just calm down." With the images Eve painted playing in his head, Roarke took out a cigarette. Lighting it, he ordered himself to think rationally. "Surely you've done this sort of thing before. You're a cop. You must have at least been on hand during a birthing." "Uh-uh. Nope. No. Once, when I was still on patrol, we had to take this woman into a health center. Jesus, she was screaming like somebody was ramming steel spikes into her crotch." "Merciful Jesus, Eve, could you dispense with some of the imagery?" But she was wound up now. "And something gives way in there, and stuff's pouring out of her. Fluids, you know?" "I don't, no. And I don't care to." "Made a hell of a mess in the cruiser. But at least she had the decency the common courtesy to wait until she was inside, with the doctor or midwife or whoever the hell before she pushed it out." For a moment, Roarke pressed his fingers to his temples.
"We can't think about this anymore. We'll go mad if we do.
We have to think about something else." He stabbed the cigarette out. "Entirely." She drew one long, shaky breath. "You're right. I've got work." "Murder. Much better. Let me help. I beg you." She had to laugh. "Sure. It's the least I can do. Step into my office." She took his hand, filling him in as they went inside and up.
"How much do you intend to use this Celina Sanchez?" "I'd like to keep it minimal." She sat at her desk, kicked back to prop her feet on the edge. "She's got the Dimatto seal of approval, and she's even likable enough. I'd even call her steady. But it's not a good fit for me. Still, she's cued in to this, so I can't ignore what she can give me." "I knew a man who kept a sensitive on staff and wouldn't make a decision without her. Worked well enough for him, as it happened." "You got any?" "I do. Precogs, clairvoyants, sensitives. I don't dismiss what they've been given, or what they can offer. But I prefer making my own decisions in the final run. You'll do the same." "So far, her let's call it intel isn't adding much to my basic, nonsensitive cop work. But it matches it." She frowned, mentally picking her way through the data and speculation. "Impressions we could pick up at the kill site, and the ones we got leading to the dump site indicate a size fifteen shoe. We may be able to make the tread, or at least a partial if Dickhead in the lab works some magic.
Ground and grass were dry, but when he added her weight, he left some impressions." "Well, that's a large foot you've got there, but not all men with big feet are big men." "Big enough to leave impressions on dry grass, strong enough to lift and carry a hundred and thirty pounds of deadweight.
You've got to speculate, do the probabilities. And when you do, you come up with a man between two hundred and seventy and eighty pounds. My guess would be a height of between six four and six eight." He nodded, imagined he was building a picture in his mind similar to the one in hers. "And if you take it further, you assume that kind of strength and body type comes from discipline and dedication." "Body sculpting procedures can give you the build, but they can't give you the strength."