Finally, Linnea stood and placed the roses in her cousin’s lap, and the tiara on the woman’s head. She bent and kissed her.
In the parking lot, Linnea leaned against the steering wheel of her car and wept.
Then she wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and started the car.
“Rock ’n roll radio! Here’s a disco blast from the past that will take you back, baby, to nineteen seventy-eight...”
She wheeled the Porsche into the street.
...I will survive...
Inconvenience Store
a Ms. Tree story
My pregnancy was pretty much uneventful, with the exception of the hostage situation.
I was in my seventh month and still going into my office in the Loop — Tree Investigations, Inc. — and had been working more like the CEO I was supposed to be, rather than field agent I preferred to be.
“You know, Michael,” Dan Green said, one hand leaning against my desk, “you don’t have to be here. You can go home and relax... put your feet up...”
“Not without help,” I said, smiling a little.
Dan, a slender handsome blonde in his late twenties, had a hook for his left hand and one of his eyes was glass — souvenirs of a dispute with the crime family responsible for the death of my husband, whose name was also Michael Tree. When Mike died and I took over the agency, I didn’t even have to change the lettering on the office door.
“I may be big as a horse,” I said, “but I feel great. It’s this desk work that’s getting me down... all this damn peace and quiet.”
His slightly scarred face broke into a grin and he shook his head, saying, “You’re incorrigible.”
“Did you scope out the Bandag account?”
He nodded. “It’s a plumb. We can sub-contract the day-to-day security and still get rich off the deal.”
“What does Roger think?”
Roger Freemont was the third partner in Tree Investigations. My late husband’s partner on the force, Roger — balding, brawny, bespectacled, pushing fifty — was the company conservative, our voice of reason.
“I think,” Roger said, sticking his shiny head in my door, “we should add staff. Hell with sub-contracting. Let’s make all the money.”
“Spoken like a true Republican,” Dan said.
“When we do have to give Bandag our bid?” I asked.
“Monday.”
It was Friday.
“You want to hit the computer over the weekend, Roger,” I asked, “and make some money comparisons?”
“Sure,” he said, sounding almost eager.
“You are a Republican,” Dan smirked.
“Do it, then,” I said. It was four-thirty. “Me, I’m going home... well, first I’m going to pee and then I’m going home.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Roger said.
I bid a pleasant weekend to my secretary Effie and to our receptionist Diane, walking through our modern glass-and-ferns office area on surprisingly springy steps. I may have looked like I was trying to smuggle a marijuana-stuffed beach ball across the border, but I felt lighter than air.
That evening, in the masculine-looking apartment that had been my husband’s, as I sat on the couch watching a rental video of “Basic Instinct,” wondering how anything could be so supremely stupid, chewing on the crust of a Tombstone pizza courtesy of my microwave, I felt an ache in the small of my back (and my back was the only part of me that was small, these days) that might have been a bullet.
“You need exercise, lady,” I said to myself (not to Sharon Stone, who was changing her clothes for the umpteenth time on the TV screen), and hauled my butt off the cushions, and stood and held my back with my hands. And groaned.
I glanced toward a window. It was a cool, fall evening out there; even with my baggy woolen blue sweater and stretch pants, I’d need a jacket. I ran a brush through the mop of my brunette hair, and had lipstick poised for application when I sneered at myself in the mirror, slung my purse on its strap over my shoulder, and said, “Fuck it.”
When my late husband moved into this side-street two-flat a dozen years ago, Lakeview was a blue-collar neighborhood; now it was Yuppies and gays — safe, as Chicago neighborhoods go. Last year there were only nine murders.
Nonetheless, I was, of course, packing. I’m always reading that “real-life private eyes” don’t really carry a weapon. Considering that the mob murdered my husband ten years ago, and that I’ve lived through perhaps half a dozen attempts on my own life, I’m content to be armed and imaginary.
If you’re wondering how I could be pregnant when my husband died a decade ago, I assure you the conception was not immaculate. Suffice to say an old flame flared up, some satisfying if unsafe sex followed, but the relationship didn’t last. At an age closer to forty than thirty, however, my biological clock ticking like a time bomb, I decided to keep the child. Ultrasound said a girl was on the way.
The cool breeze whispering through the trees lining the narrow parked-car choked street was soothing, and Friday night or not, the world seemed deserted. It was just after ten, and too late for people to be leaving, and too early for them to be getting home. I walked quickly, getting the spring back in my step, and the kink out of my low back.
Then I had to pee.
It was closer to walk to the Ashland Mini-Mart than back home. Besides, I could use some of Jon’s baklava and maybe a can of sardines. Yeah — that sounded great...
A corner storefront on Ashland and an east-west side street, the Mini-Mart was evenly divided between groceries (including fresh fruits and vegetables — typical for Greek proprietors) and liquor. Three of their four coolers were beer and wine.
The well-lighted mart didn’t have the modern look of a 7-11; the floor was waxy wooden slats, the ceiling high with rococo trim. You could still squint and imagine the mom-and-pop corner grocery this had been in the 1950s.
“Hey, Ms. Tree,” Jon’s son Peter said; the dark young skinny handsome kid, in his early twenties, white shirt, black pants, frequently took the all-night shift in this family business. “Pop’ll be sorry he missed you. You come for your baklava and sardines fix again?”
“You bet. But can I use your employees-only john? If not, the world’s gonna think my water broke.”
He grinned and shook his head. “You’re a riot, Ms. Tree. Go for it — you know where it is.”
I walked back around the counter, saying, “Busy night?”
“So-so. Friday, you always sell plenty of beer and wine coolers. And lots of lottery tickets. Payday, and everybody wants that ten-million jackpot.”
“Me too. I never buy lottery tickets, but I figure my odds of winning are about the same.”
Then I pushed through the swinging stockroom door and shut myself in the bathroom — the lock was broken, but niceties were not a priority — and enjoyed my twelfth or maybe twentieth urination of the day. Impending motherhood is such a spiritual, uplifting experience.
I was still sitting there when the door opened and I looked up, startled, to see my wide-eyed expression reflected in the shiny badge of a potbellied blue-uniformed policeman. His metallic nametag said HALLORAN.
“Sorry, lady,” he said, and flashed a pleasant if yellow grin, and shut the door.
A minute or so later, I eased the door open and he was standing right there, staring right in my face — a patrolman in his fifties with the yellow-white hair and red-splotchy complexion of an aging Irish beat cop.
He backed up a step, chuckled gruffly. “Hey, I’m awful sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you, mother.”