212: A Novel Part 7

"You okay?" Max asked once Rogan was out of earshot.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"I know this has to be hard on you."

"Really, it's fine. I'm actually grateful that Rogan will be the one to deal with Bandon this time. I probably need some distance."

"I've got another couple hours of work at the courthouse, but meet at my place when I'm done?"

"I'm sorry, Max. I'm really tired. Last night wasn't exactly the Ritz-Carlton, you know?"

"That's fine. Why don't you go home and get some rest, and I'll come to you."

"I don't think I'll be very good company."

"That's all right. I'm used to doing all the talking while I watch you chew," he said, smiling.

Ellie knew she should be grateful for his response. She should be thankful that he wanted to support her, to comfort her, to watch her sleep the way she'd sometimes catch him in the morning. And she wanted to accept his offer. She wanted to be the kind of woman whose first instinct was to run to a man who cared about her when she was under pressure.

But one of the things she loved about Max was that he seemed to understand her, even when she had trouble understanding herself. And he was comfortable and confident and took everything in stride. Unlike other men she'd dated, she never had to worry about Max making it all about him. It was all the more reason to wish she could give him what he wanted.

"I'm sorry. Tomorrow, okay? I promise. Tonight I just need to kick the blankets, squish the pillows, drool onto the sheets, and snore like an old fat man. And I really don't want you to see me like that."

"Might kill the magic."

"Exactly." She held his gaze and brushed his forearm.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"I'm holding you to it."

"You better."

"Well, get some rest, all right? You've earned it."

Outside on Twenty-first Street, to the west, Ellie spotted a familiar figure leaning against the white stone of the building, smoking a cigarette. Jess.

She smiled at her older brother as she imagined all of the one-liners he must have come up with at her expense since she'd called him the night before from jail.

"Hey, you." She caught a whiff of smoke and wondered when she'd stop missing it.

He removed an unopened pack of Marlboros from his faded jean jacket and handed them to her.

"I quit, remember?" She had, for the most part.

"I hear they're currency where you're from."

"Funny."

"I'm serious. Anything you want. Soap. Candy. p.o.r.n. A shiv. Reefer. The white pony. These bad boys can get you anything on the inside." He shook the cigarettes for emphasis.

"Is that all you got?" she asked dryly.

"Of course not. I figured I'd go with the prop comedy first. Let the rest of my lines trickle out over the next few days. Weeks. Months, if necessary."

"Oh, good. Something to look forward to."

"Are you up for a drink, or are you too jacked up on bootleg hootch from your time in the joint?"

"Oh, I think I can stay awake long enough for a drink."

"You know I only treat at one place."

"You know the torment that awaits me in there?"

The bar in question was Plug Uglies, a cla.s.sic old watering hole around the corner on Third Avenue. Thanks to its proximity to the precinct and an absurdly cheap happy hour, one could always count on finding a row of cops drinking there at this time of day.

"C'mon. Cheap drinks. A little darts. Some shuffleboard. You've got to take your lumps from the house sometime, or it's only going to fester."

"The house. Listen to you with the cop talk."

"Jesus, I've been spending too much time with you."

Ellie and Jess had been raised in the same home, with the same intense homicide detective as a father, but had dealt with their police-dominated environment in opposite ways. Jess had rebelled, shunning any kind of hierarchy or ordered regime that might even begin to resemble a law enforcement culture. Ellie, on the other hand, had breathed it all in and had allowed it to define her.

She pulled the wrapper from the Marlboros. Just one drag. She'd earned it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

6:15 P.M.

Inside the tiny efficiency studio that Glen Forrest Communities called her mother's "apartment," Katie Battle filled a green-tinted gla.s.s with water from the sink and placed it on the small rosewood table that doubled as both nightstand and end table between the empty bed and the chair that her mother currently occupied. Once she received the e-mail about her mother's latest fall, she'd wrapped up the tour with the Jenning couple and made it to the a.s.sisted living center as quickly as she could.

Katie sat on the bed and watched as her mother slowly raised the gla.s.s to her lips with a quivering hand.

"Don't you...even..think...about grabbing...one of those...ridiculous children's toys...on top of my icebox."

Katie had purchased a box of plastic straws for her mother four months earlier, but they still sat unopened on top of the refrigerator. "Those are for children," her mother had said. "I start using one of those, and the next thing I know, you'll be trying to feed me with a miniature spoon pa.s.sed off as an airplane."

Katie noticed that her mother placed her right hand on her chest during the three-second gaps between words. She knew that the falter in her mother's usually strong voice was the byproduct of doctors tinkering with her heart medication again. They'd a.s.sured Katie that the occasional skipped beat wasn't itself a danger, but she could tell that the irregularities in something we all took for granted-our beating hearts-scared her mother, causing the pauses in her speech.

None of this was easy for Katie's mother. Phyllis Battle had always been a woman who had known what she wanted. When her first daughter, Barbara, had been killed in a car accident in 1974, she had known-and insisted to her husband-that they would adopt another, even though they had each already celebrated their fiftieth birthdays. And she had known-and insisted to her husband-that they would name the girl Katie, after the confident and independent woman who leaves Robert Redford behind in The Way We Were. And when her husband pa.s.sed away ten years ago, leaving behind debts he had never mentioned to his wife, Phyllis had known-and insisted to her daughter, Katie-that she would continue to live in the family home alone.

The highest hurdle Katie had ever faced had come a year ago when she told her mother she needed to move. For the first time, someone for once was insisting on something to Phyllis. Katie had eventually won that initial battle between the Battle women, but that didn't mean her mother was going to forfeit what might remain of the war. No plastic drinking straws. No arts and crafts in the common room with the women whom her mother called the "pathetic old biddies." None of the loose, maintenance-free cotton housedresses that were practically a uniform at Glen Forrest.

And definitely no wheelchairs.

"Mom, I know you don't want to hear this, but another fall could be really bad."

"I can...take care...of myself."

"I know. But you'd find it's a lot easier if you'd take advantage of some of the things they have here to help you, like a chair, Mom."

Katie leaned forward and rested her hand gently on top of her mother's. At eighty-two years old, her mother had maintained her full cognition and spirit, but her hand had never felt so thin and frail, her blue veins bulging beneath the loose and wrinkled skin.

"You mean...a wheelchair. I'm not...an invalid."

"We could ask for a really c.r.a.ppy one if that would make you feel better. None of this high-speed electric power stuff. You'd wheel yourself. Think of the upper-body workout you'd get. I can even request a b.u.m wheel so it would be like a bad shopping cart if you want."

Katie was happy to see her mother smiling, but then the smile turned into a laugh and her mother wheezed and then coughed. Her hand moved reflexively to her chest again.

"Shhh," Katie said soothingly.

Her heart. The stroke. The falls. Keeping track of her mother's ailments required Mensa-caliber mental juggling.

The second her mother caught her breath, she was back on message. "No wheel...chairs."

"You scare me, Mom. I know you like to think it's just a fall. But this isn't something you can play around with. Falls in the elderly-"

Her mother shot her a look of darts.

"Falls now can be fatal. Do you know how stupid it would be to survive everything you've survived, just to go out by falling down? Phyllis Battle is way too tough-and much too smart-to allow that."

Her mother set her jaw, but she at least wasn't arguing anymore.

"I've asked Marj to bring a chair up tonight." Now her mom shook her head, but still no verbal resistance. "Just for you to experiment with. She'll work with you out in the hallway when the others are listening to a music group that's coming in tonight."

"Horrible, horrible...they call themselves singers. Like someone threw...a cat...in a washing machine."

"OK, so when all the old biddies are down there clapping along with the terrible music, you be nice to Marj. I'll check in with her tomorrow about how it went, and we can go from there."

Still, her mother said nothing. Progress.

Katie rose from the bed, picked up her purse from the floor, and leaned over to place a kiss on the top of her mother's head.

"Good night, Mom."

Katie had already opened the apartment door when she heard her mother's quiet voice behind her.

"I'm...sorry, Katie. For...falling. For...being old."

"Don't you ever apologize. Just be nice to Marj tonight. I want you around for a long, long time."

On her walk to the F train, Katie retrieved her BlackBerry from the depths of her oversize black leather satchel. Pulling up a phone number, she hit the dial b.u.t.ton, only to hang up after one ring. She wanted someone to take her place tomorrow night. With Mom's latest fall, the last thing she wanted to deal with was tomorrow night.

Ironically, though, it was her mother's situation that required her to handle this appointment herself. It was only a few hours. She'd get through it, just like she always did.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

6:45 P.M.

If there was a bar in the East Twenties that epitomized the drinking side of the law enforcement culture, it was Plug Uglies. Where gla.s.s-walled martini bars soaked in ubiquitous lounge music had begun to dominate even Murray Hill, Plug Uglies was still a dark wood pub adorned with black-and-white photographs of old New York, dartboards, and a well-stocked jukebox.

The comments began the moment Ellie opened the door.

"Look alive, Officers. We've got a hardened ex-con in our midst."

"Call the probation department. Make sure she's checked in."

More jokes about the need for a shower, despite the fact that she'd cleaned up hours earlier.

Ellie took a mock bow in recognition of the attention, and someone playing shuffleboard in the back broke out in a round of "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow."

And then it was over.

"See, not so bad," Jess said, ordering a Johnnie Walker Black for her and a Jack Daniel's for himself.

Ellie took a seat on the bar stool next to his. "So how was life without me last night?"

After briefly shacking up with a self-described exotic dancer for two months last summer, Jess was back on Ellie's living room sofa again, where he always seemed to spend the largest bulk of his residency.

"Quiet."

"It's not the first time you've been trusted at home alone without a watcher."

Ellie and Max were taking things slow. Casual. Dating. No relationship talk yet. But she did spend the night with him about twice a week, enough to justify a second toothbrush at his place.

"Quieter than that," Jess said. "I was worried about you."

"I think you got our roles switched. I'm the worrier. You're the worri-ee." She smiled, picturing her usually stress-free brother alone in her apartment fretting over her.