“I think so. I hope so,” Kelly said.
Miyamoto turned back to Colin. “So you celebrate tonight, do you?”
“We sure do,” he agreed.
“And you choose to do it here? Dinner on the house!”
It was kindly meant. Colin knew that. Back when he was starting out, he would have thanked Stan and enjoyed it. But the world had changed. For better? For worse? For different, anyhow.
“Stan, I can’t,” he said. “I’d like to, but I just can’t. Too darn many regulations about police officers and gratuities. You’re gonna have to take my money whether you like it or not.” Now there was a sentence you didn’t get to trot out every day.
“I am not doing this for Lieutenant Ferguson,” the owner said stiffly. “I am doing this for Colin Ferguson, who is my friend. I hope he is my friend.”
“I hope so, too. But if you want to put your friend’s behind in a sling, you’ll feed him a free dinner. The city council and the accountants would land on me like a ton of bricks.”
“They should get in an uproar about things that need uproar. Heaven knows there are enough of them in this town.” By the way Stan Miyamoto said it, he could think of three or four himself. But he didn’t try to insist any more. Shaking his head, he went back to the kitchens.
Quietly, Kelly said, “I bet a lot of cops would have taken him up on that. I bet they would have got away with it, too.”
“I bet you’re right.” Colin shrugged. “If it doesn’t bother them, it doesn’t, that’s all. It bothers me. If I keep my nose clean all the time, I never need to worry about remembering which lies I told to which people. And if I don’t give an inch, I don’t have to worry about giving a mile, either.”
“Makes sense to me.” She quirked an eyebrow at him, though. “If I get a ticket, I guess you won’t fix it for me.”
“Good guess.” Colin had never fixed any for Louise or the kids. Nobody in his family was a bad driver, so he hadn’t had to worry about it much. Once or twice, a cop might have decided not to write them up when he realized who they were, but that was something he didn’t officially have to know about. He found a more interesting topic: “Here comes dinner.” s all. It was enough food for at least half a dozen people. Leftovers in styrofoam boxes would make lunches and dinners for days. Stan Miyamoto had his own kind of stubbornness. He was going to be generous, by God, whether Colin liked it or not. Sensibly, Colin decided he might as well like it.
Louise Ferguson yawned. She’d been doing that all morning, and she couldn’t figure out why. She’d had a good night’s sleep the night before, but she kept wanting to nod off anyhow.
Mr. Nobashi started to yawn, too. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it today, either. Yawns were as contagious as the common cold. This time, he caught himself in the middle, and almost dislocated his jaw trying to stop. He frowned at Louise as if that were her fault.
“You okay, Mrs. Ferguson?” he asked in his heavily accented English. What he did to her last name was a caution, but she’d been deciphering Japanese accents for as long as she’d lived in San Atanasio-the town had always had a sizable Asian population. The ramen company hadn’t put its American headquarters here by accident.
“I’m fine, Mr. Nobashi, thanks. I really am,” Louise answered, and then made a liar of herself by yawning again.
“You need more coffee,” he declared. He ran on the stuff the way a car ran on gasoline. If Louise guzzled it the way he did, she didn’t think she’d ever go to bed. He poured himself a fresh cup now. He also poured one for her, and set it on her desk.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Nobashi,” she said in amazement. Subordinates took care of small things for superiors here. It rarely worked the other way around.
With him watching her, she took a sip. She smiled and nodded and thanked him again. She didn’t yawn, even if she wanted to. He nodded back and took his own refill into his sanctum. He got on the phone there and started barking at someone in Japanese laced with English profanity.
Louise… yawned yet again. She started to drink some more coffee, but set the cup down. It didn’t taste right somehow; it seemed harsh and metallic. The trouble wasn’t in the brew. She was sure of that. She’d made it herself. Neither Mr. Nobashi nor anyone else noticed anything out of the ordinary.
If it wasn’t the coffee, it was her. She wondered if she needed to go to the doctor. She hoped like hell she didn’t. She had medical coverage because she worked here, but it wasn’t nearly as good as what she’d got through Colin. You didn’t think about such things when you’d just fallen in love. Unfortunately, they didn’t go away just because you weren’t thinking about them. Deductibles, copays… Seeing Dr. DiVicenzo would cost her more than it had in the old days, dammit.
What could make her sleepy all the time-and tired, too, because she had been the past few days-and make coffee taste lousy, too? Whatever it was, it seemed unfair. Coffee was the best legal weapon when you got worn out.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this. And then, all of a sudden, she could. She let out a startled squawk of laughter. She hadn’t even thought about that in twenty-odd years. Yes, her period was a few days late, but so what? Her cycle was getting erratic anyway. Pretty soon, it would stop. She wouldn’t miss tampons and pads and cramps, not even a little bit.
“It’s nutso,” she said out loud. Had she worn her diaphragm every single time she’d gone to bed with Teo? She knew damn well she hadn’t. When you started making love, pausing to go into the john and smear the contraption (Colin had called it a manhole cover-the kind of thing he thought was funny) with contraceptive goop was a great way to break the mood. She hadn’t thought she was taking a chance, or much of one.
She still couldn’t believe it. The rabbit died-laughing. That was what the gal on the ’70s TV show said when she found out she was going to have a change-of-life baby. She hadn’t wanted her life to change that way, so she got an abortion instead.
“Ridiculous,” Louise said. This had to be something, anything, else. Dr. DiVicenzo would tell her she’d come down with a virus. Or he’d tell her it was all her imagination. His fee would be real, though.
Not long before the lunch break, Louise did nod off. It was only for a couple of minutes, and she was sure she woke up again before anybody saw her, but even so… Sometimes you felt refreshed after a little nap. Louise felt she needed another little nap. A big one would be even better.
In lieu of coffee, she went into the ladies’ room and splashed cold water on her face. That did help, some. She had to repair her makeup afterwards. No one walked in on her. Sometimes lucky was better than good: one more notion she’d heard from her ex. You could wash a man right out of your hair, but washing him out of your brain was a hell of a lot harder.
She gulped her brown-bag sandwich (Swiss and turkey ham on rye) and apple at her desk. Then she drove to the Walgreens a few blocks from the ramen works. Half a dozen brands to choose from. The supervolcano hadn’t kept them from getting here, or maybe they were made locally. When she went to the register, she started to pull out her Visa, then thought better of it and paid cash instead.
You didn’t have to kill a rabbit nowadays, or mess around with frogs, or anything icky like that. Louise went back into the ladies’ room. In the privacy of a stall, she peed on the Clearblue test strip. She supposed she’d bought that one because this whole thing came out of the Clearblue sky.
She didn’t wear a watch any more. She used the clock in her cell phone to count off the minutes till the result that showed was reliable. She didn’t, she wouldn’t, she flat-out refused to, look at the strip till then.
Time. “Ready or not, here I come,” she muttered, as if at hide-and-seek. She looked.