“... know what it is in a minute,” Michael said.’
“Uh-huh,” she said, and realized she hadn’t been listening to him, hadn’t heard a word of what he’d been saying for the past two or three minutes.
“So I’m thinking of a hot dog wagon instead,” he said, as if that would explain it all.
“Uh-huh.”
They were finishing their coffee and dessert. Mollie was crosstown with her friend Winona for the weekend. Andrew was in Genoa. Tomorrow he would be in Naples. And the day after that...
“... with the striped umbrellas, you know? Sabrett, whatever. Have Freddie Coulter rig it with a video camera, none of the locals’ll think it’s a detective selling knishes and pretzels down there. What do you think?”
“Down where?” she said.
“That I can’t tell you,” he said.
“This is some kind of surveillance, right?”
“Yes. The case I’m working.”
“Which you still can’t...”
“Can’t, sorry.”
“But you can tell me you’re thinking of putting a camera in a hot dog wagon.”
“Yeah. Well, one of those carts, you know?”
“Sounds like James. Bond!” she said.
“Half the things Freddie rigs are James Bond.”
“Why do you have to rig something so elaborate?”
“Because there isn’t a facility we can use in the building across the street.”
“Then I think it’s a good idea,” she said, and nodded.
“If Freddie thinks it’ll work.”
“And if you can find a detective with dirt under his fingernails,” Sarah said.
“So he’ll look like a real hot dog seller,” Michael said, and they both burst out laughing.
Michael suddenly reached across the table and took her hand in his.
“What?” she said, surprised.
“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged.
But he did not let go of her hand.
The lights were out and they were speaking Frankendrac. Winona was saying she thought it was all a conspiracy that their parents and teachers had cooked up to keep them from having a good time. She was saying she couldn’t see anything wrong with using drugs, and she couldn’t wait to be old enough to try them.
This from Winona Weingarten, her very best friend in the entire world, who had an IQ of 156, and who spoke Frankendrac like a native.
“Miekin bro stahgatten smekker pot venner hich har twofer tin,” Winona said.
Which translated loosely as “My brother started smoking pot when he was twelve.”
In English, Mollie whispered, “That was another time and place, Win.”
“Zer lingentok!” Winona warned.
Mollie immediately switched to their secret tongue, telling Winona she could not for Christ’s sake compare her brother growing up in 1972 with what was happening today, when all these dangerous drugs were on the market...
“That’s what they said about LSD, too,” Winona said in the language. “My brother tried LSD, do you see him running around like some sort of crazed freak?”
“Crack is insidious,” Mollie said, having a tough time translating “insidious” because it wasn’t a word in the secret vocabulary, but Winona seemed to catch the improvisation, because she immediately replied in letter-perfect Frankendrac, “No more lethal than pot, my dear.”
“You’re so eager to try something,” Mollie said in English, and before Winona could shoot her another warning glare, immediately said, “Tryker zin blowden jobber.”
Both, girls burst out laughing.
In bed that night, Sarah found the courage to explore what she hadn’t been able to at dinner.
Michael had been reading, and she knew from the heavy-lidded look of his eyes and his deeper breathing that he was about ready to doze off.
Out of the blue, she said, “Would you be terribly upset if I went off for a few days with the girls?”
“Mollie and Winona?” he asked.
She’d started off on the wrong foot. She never called women “girls.” She’d done so now only because she was nervous and the cliché had come so readily to mind, a night out with “the girls,” a few days off with “the girls.” She quickly said, “I meant the other teachers. Some of us. We were thinking we might get away for a weekend this summer...”
“A weekend?” he said.
“Or during the week, to discuss the fall curric—”
“When did this job get so serious all of a sudden?”
“Well, it’s always been serious, Michael, you know that.”
“Well, yeah, but Jesus, Sarah...”
“We thought we’d keep contact over the summer...”
“You’ve never done that before.”
“Well, I know, but...”
“Eight years now at Greer...”
“Yes, but...”
“All of a sudden, meetings every week...”
“Well, that’s the whole...”
“All of a sudden, a few days off with the girls...”
“That’s the whole idea, Michael. We’re trying to make this a more coordinated teaching effort. If we can get input from each other on a regular basis...”
“We’re going to France this summer, remember?”
“Well, this wouldn’t be then, Michael.”
“When would it be?”
“We haven’t set any dates yet. Three of us are married, we wanted to discuss it with our husbands first.”
“Weekends are out of the question,” he said.
“With all the weekends you’ve been working, I would have thought...”
“This is an unusual case.”
“It would seem so.”
“And I’ve worked weekends before.”
“Yes.”
“In the past.”
“Yes. So it’s okay for you to work weekends...”
“Going away with the girls isn’t working, Sarah!”
“Oh, isn’t it?”
“Where would you be going?”
“I have no idea. ‘We haven’t taken it that far yet. I told you, Michael. Jane and Edie are married, too. They have to discuss it with their husbands. We’re talking two or three days here, for Christ’s sake, not two months in the country!”
“You said a weekend.”
“Or a few days during the week, I said. I didn’t know this would be so upsetting to you, Michael.”
“It’s not upsetting.”
“You sound upset. Look, forget it, I’ll tell them I can’t...”
“Sure, make me the heavy, right?”
“Michael, what’s wrong with you?”
“The other husbands’ll say, ‘Sure, darling, go to Tokyo for a month, that’s fine with me.’ It’ll just be Michael the Shmuck who makes a big fuss.”
“It’s not that important,” she said. “Forget it. I’ll tell...”
“No, no, it’s fine with me. Just let me know in...”