“Well, from now on, don’t try to expect or not expect anything,” her father had told her. “Then there won’t be any surprises, and you’ll never be sad.”
Simone had tried to follow that advice, but as a detective, she had to make guesses, assumptions, figure people out—what they would do and why. He had taught her that, too, but he told her that making a guess and expecting to be right were two different things. It was a clear distinction: mind and heart. Your heart wanted to believe a guess would be right. The mind just wondered if it would be. A mind was never disappointed, always curious. It was what made a good detective: no expectations, no surprises, the ability to guess without getting so caught up in one guess that she didn’t see any other options. Open mind, closed everything else.
It’s why she’d never had many friends, it’s why she tended to stop seeing a guy after they’d had sex, it’s why she’d left Peter after he’d told her he thought maybe they should get married. She thought she had been doing a good job. She hadn’t realized how she’d come to assume so much about Caroline—that she would always have Simone’s back, that she kept her nose clean, and that her hands were only dirty from cleaning up other people’s messes.
Simone let the cigarette fall into the water. Her earpiece buzzed, telling her there was an incoming call from deCostas. She ignored it. Instead she walked closer to the Khan townhouse. She walked slowly, her hands in her pockets, not quite creeping. The fog was a little thinner here, and she could see farther. All the lights on the top floor were on, and she could see someone’s shadow walking back and forth. After a moment, the figure stopped and leaned out the window. Simone stared up at her, at Caroline, wearing only a white bra, her hair streaming around her like shadows. She looked out the window at the city, not below at Simone. She took a deep breath. Was she worried? Satisfied?
Simone walked farther away, out of earshot but where she could still see Caroline, leaning out the window. She told her phone to call Caroline. It rang twice, and Caroline left the window, then came back to it and touched her ear.
“Hey,” Caroline said. “It has been a long week.”
“Yeah. Look, Caroline—”
“You’re not going to cancel on me for tomorrow, are you? ’Cause I really need to blow off some steam.” In the window, Caroline rolled her shoulders, and her hair shimmered with the motion. She sounded tired.
“No,” Simone said. “Still on. I told you I invited Danny too, right?”
“Oh? Okay. I gotta grill him about what he’s been telling the mayor’s wife, anyway.”
“No ambushes,” Simone said, forcing a chuckle. “He’s airtight.” She marveled at how easy it was to talk to Caroline as though everything were normal, at how quickly she forgot and trusted her again.
“Fine, fine. But I can make sly insinuations that make him nervous, can’t I?”
“I would never take that away from you.”
Caroline laughed, then took a deep breath. In the window, Simone saw her stretch.
“Everything okay by you? I’ve been reading some stuff in the police reports that have me a little worried.”
“I can handle it. Just the usual nonsense, plus Kluren and all the delights that come with her.”
“Okay. But if you feel a drop, I’m your umbrella, right?”
“Right.” Simone smiled.
“Good. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow. And be prepared to lose, ’cause I am going to strike those motherfucking pins every time.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Don’t need to remind myself of something I know is true. ’Night. Sweet dreams.”
“Good night.”
Simone clicked her phone off and watched Caroline stare out the window a moment longer, then relax her body over the windowsill, head down, hair pouring off her like water. Then she straightened up and went back into the house. The lights went out. Simone stayed, watching the house for a while longer. The water under her got choppier as the moon rose, and soon there was the feeling of spray hitting her in the face and the sound of waves crashing around her.
EIGHT
DRIFTER’S ALLEY OPERATED OUT of an old building so far downtown that Simone was pretty sure it had been in Brooklyn, back when there were boroughs. It used to be a product-testing facility and still looked like it; the hallways branched off into small rooms that had once been used for focus groups and now contained private lanes. The lobby was small and worn looking, with walls painted a rough black and a vinyl floor. Besides the desk, the only decoration was a neon sign of a bowling ball knocking down pins, the pins returning upright, and then the ball knocking them down again, over and over. The man behind the desk was tall, scruffy, and tired. He looked up at Simone with undisguised boredom. Simone hesitated. She could walk out, come up with an excuse to cancel. She didn’t want to see Caroline, didn’t want to have to smile to her face while wondering if Caroline was faking her smile, too. But how could she ask if her friend was mixed up in this trouble without making it sound like an accusation?
“I have a lane reservation under the name Pierce,” she said. He looked down at the tablet in his hand, typed in the name Pierce, and nodded.
“Lane twenty-six. Gloves are in the room. You need me to show you how to use it?” He asked this in a way that made it clear he hoped she would say no.
“We’ll be able to figure it out,” she said. He handed her a keycard and looked back at the tablet, done with her.
“My friends will show up soon,” she said. The man didn’t look up, and Simone glanced down the hallway. It was poorly lit and marked with bright yellow signs showing lane numbers. The doors themselves were blank, except for the occasional no-smoking sign. From behind the doors, she could hear the sounds of pins striking and people cheering. Lane twenty-six was a small, windowless black room with a pile of gloves on a shelf next to the door. Simone flipped a switch, thinking it was the lights, and there was a sudden humming as the room changed. One wall zoomed backwards into a long lane, pins all set up, and another wall became an empty scoreboard. A panel next to the switch glowed, asking her to choose from a variety of lane options. She scrolled through them, from “Arctic,” where the pins were penguins that shuffled around and the room became chilly and windy, to “Blackout,” where the room was totally dark and the pins just neon outlines. She settled on “Classic,” which was clean nostalgia with red-and-white pins and Elvis playing from a jukebox that materialized on the far wall.
She was looking for a mute button when Danny came in. He smiled at her, his eyes not quite focused, his head cocked to one side. She waited a few seconds more for his hello.
“Hello to you, too,” Simone said. “This lane okay for you?”
Danny shrugged. “Old, but cute. Sure. Do you know how this works?”
Simone motioned at the row of gloves. “I think we put those on.” She picked one up and pulled it over her right hand, almost to the elbow. It was comfortable, despite being coated in something like white plastic, and her fingers flexed easily. The scoreboard flashed, “Player One.” The glove flashed on the forearm, turning into a screen. She entered her name, and “Pierce” appeared on the scoreboard over the lanes. “Danny-Boy” quickly popped up below it as Danny got the hang of his glove. Next it asked her to choose a ball, and suddenly her hand was so heavy that she let it fall. It actually felt like she was holding a bowling ball. She looked down. It looked like she was holding a bowling ball. The screen on the now downward-facing forearm asked her to adjust her ball’s weight and color. She lightened it slightly but kept it black. Danny’s ball was changing color from neon green to pink to purple to blue and back again. It seemed decidedly out of place in the vintage lane.