Such a Good Girl and Other Crime Stories

Nicole

Nicole Sanders went to the nurse’s office during third hour and put on a pretty good imitation of a genteel seven-teen-year-old girl down with the flu, genteel meaning a quiet, pretty girl who was still a virgin, had never tried drugs in any form, and read Cousin Bette for relaxation.

Of course, it helped that she was a good student (usually, a four point average), and generally perceived as a reliable girl. Nobody on the staff of Woodrow Wilson High School would suspect her of faking flu so she could get off from school. She had a near-perfect attendance record. She just wasn’t the kind to lie.

But lie she did.

In the parking lot, she climbed into the sensible little forest green Toyota Gran had bought her for her seventeenth birthday last month. Gran was her best family friend now. Dad was off in California with his new wife. And Mom...

“I sure hate to see you come down with this stuff,” the nurse said sweetly.

She headed home. This late in the morning, the expressway traffic was heavy. The sometimes foggy March rain didn’t help, either.

Home was a nice Tudor in a small, upscale suburb of nice Tudors and nice Spanish styles and nice multi-level moderns. Mom had gotten the house in the divorce settlement. Dad made a lot of money at his law firm and he’d inherited quite a bit when his father died several years earlier.

Nicole didn’t stop at her house. She went down to the end of the block and parked behind a stand of pin oaks that was part of a small park-like area.

The cop-show phrase for what she was doing was “stakeout.” She’d heard her mother call in sick this morning — she was a far better actress than Nicole and had put on a breathtaking performance — and now Nicole wanted to see what her mother did all day. As she’d passed by the house, she’d seen her mother’s car in the drive. So Mom hadn’t gone anywhere. Yet. And if Mom did go somewhere, Nicole had a terrible feeling that she knew where it would be...

Mitch

“I really think Mamet sold out. You know, when he went out to La-La-Land.”

It was a good thing she had a lovely pair of breasts because otherwise Mitchell Carey would have kicked her ass out of the apartment as soon as he got done screwing her last night.

He’d picked her up at a cast party. A small theater group had put on an ancient Mamet one-act. It was the sort of theater group that attracted the worst kind of pretentious wannabes and the worst kind of cruising idle rich, the rich seeing theater groups (correctly) as being ripe with sex, drugs and just about any kind of octopus-like emotional entanglement a man or woman could want. It was from the idle rich, a few of whom were Mitch’s customers, that he’d heard about the play; so, having made the club scene earlier in the evening, having played his role as the handsome, fortyish Jay Gatsby to the disco and angel dust crowd, he decided to pop in on the theater folk. He’d stayed only long enough to meet Paula and woo her back to his den, whereupon he’d defiled her with great desperate pleasure. He hadn’t merely screwed her, he’d ravished her and it had been wonderful. Three times they’d made love before heating up the remnants of a Domino’s pizza lurking in his refrigerator. Then they’d found a great old Lawrence Tierney B-movie flick on a cable channel, “San Quentin,” and only after it was over and they were back in bed again with the lights out, only then did she start talking about herself (age 39, born in Trenton, New Jersey, three husbands, worked as a street mime and part of a comedy group a la Second City, had in fact come here to Chicago to get into Second City but so far no luck, look at Jim Belushi, she said, only reason a no-talent like him ever got in was because of his brother and everybody knew it) but by then he’d put a finger in his ear and switched the HEARING button to Off. By the time she got to voicing her plans to audition for the revival of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Ivanhoe (“I lose a little weight, and wear violet contact lenses like Liz Taylor, and learn how to talk Southern, I think I’d make a great Maggie The Cat, don’t you?”) he was blissfully asleep.

But now it was morning and she was standing naked at the sink in the bathroom while he was toweling off from his shower. And she was talking about how Mamet had sold out. Like Mamet would really give a shit about her opinion.

Then he noticed the time on the face of his Rolex that he’d set down on the tiny hutch next to the towel closet. He bought the best, man. Noticed the time and remembered his appointment. He had a customer he needed to meet at eleven-thirty. And it was now a quarter to eleven.

“I’ve got to hurry,” he said. “I just remembered an appointment.”

She was putting on her lipstick. She had remarkable lips.

“I hope we’re going to do this again,” she said, still drawing the blood tube across her mouth.

“Absolutely.”

She glanced at him skeptically in the mirror. “For real?”

“For real.”

“I hate bullshit promises. I’d rather have you say you won’t be calling again than, you know, stringing me along.”

“I’m not stringing you along.”

“We did this Cole Porter show in Denver, you know? And anyway there was this guy and that’s all he ever did. We spent one night humping like bunnies and the rest of the run, he’d call me to make a date an then call me back to break it. I guess I should be happy he at least called to tell me he was standing me up.”

“You’ve sure had an interesting life.”

She glanced at him in the mirror again to make sure that he wasn’t putting her on. “Really?”

“Really.”

She seemed satisfied. “You know, I wouldn’t mind blowing you before we trundle off.”

“That’s all right. I really am late.”

He could never figure out why he felt so good at night with them in the bed and so bad — and so sad — with them in the morning when they were getting ready to go.

What he needed was some kind of new kick. Ennui was the word he wanted. Ennui was what he was suffering from. He made a nice living, he got all the ass a reasonable man could want, and yet he was a little bored. Something new was what he needed.

But there wasn’t any time for navel-contemplation this morning.

Had to hurry. He had an eleven-forty-five customer.

Kate

Thank God she’d been smart enough to take her watch along yesterday. Over noon, she’d hocked it. Place not far from the office where she worked in Lincoln Park. Guy with a glass eye and bad b.o. appraising both the watch and Kate herself. The watch he didn’t have any problem with. Knew the exact market value. What he could pay out, what he could take in. The exact market value of the woman standing in front of him was another matter. Tall, elegant, beautiful in a nervous, vulnerable way. But going fast. Probably no more than forty-three, forty-four or so but going fast. He seemed to know why, too. Four-hundred, she got. Four-hundred.

Their house is shrinking. That’s how she thinks of it. The last time after coming out of rehab and being a good little girl, the last time she fell off she hocked the TV, the stereo, the good china and the good silver. She’d had a good run. This was in the summer, Nicole visiting her father and his teenage-bride (Gwen is twenty-three, actually) for a month. Kate started hitting the clubs again, feeling good and young again. Sleeping around a little (always safe sex, of course), even developing a quick crush or two on younger men, the kind who used to be all over her, even when she was married, giving her ultra-conservative ex-husband one more reason to treat her like a whore. She could still remember the night a year into their marriage, that she’d told him about this little habit she had, which was where a lot of her household budget was going, and how he looked so dashed and doomed. It was almost comic, the way he looked right then, so shattered but self-righteous, too, as if it was impossible that anybody he’d even associate with could possibly be a junkie. A beautiful girl, the daughter of a powerful state senator, a Radcliffe grad, a suburban siren of stunning seductiveness, a coke head? There ensued eleven years — she had to give him that, he hung in there for eleven years — of one rehab program after another, trendy clinics and experimental programs all over the country. She’d gone as long as a year-and-a-half clean and sober, as they say. So much hope, so much anger, so much fear, so much despair, so much failure, hope-anger-fear-despair-failure, the same cycle over and over again. He never quite believed that she couldn’t help herself. At least that was how she saw it. He never quite believed that she truly tried to kick once and for all. Poor sweet Nicole, she believed. That’s why she was losing weight all the time and going into these terrible depressions (she’d been twelve when she took her first Prozac) and staying in her room practically every weekend when her mother was using. She could have joined her father in LA with his new bride but she feared for her mother, feared that if she went to California, her mother would die somehow. So she stayed. “You’re such a good girl,” her mother was always saying. Kate looked pretty good. The bones were the secret. She had good bones. Killer cheeks and a mouth that was erotic and just a wee bit petulant. Not enough to put men off. Just enough to intrigue. And the bod, even twelve pounds lighter than it should have been, the bod was good, too.

Four-hundred dollars in her purse and a day free of Mr. Cosgrove, her boss at the public relations agency, an egomaniacal twit who was always broadly hinting that she should go with him on one of his business trips east.

And on top of that, she would soon be seeing her old buddy Mitch Carrey.

Life was beautiful. Life was good.

Nicole

In the daylight hours, the jazz clubs and the art galleries and the odd little shops of Lincoln Park lost some of their nocturnal allure. A wild wailing sax sounded better carried on the wings of neon than on the gritty breezes of daytime. And crumbling brick facades had no romance to offer even the dullest of tourists.

Nicole followed her mother to a restaurant called The Left Banke, the intentional misspelling too clever by half. Good student Nicole knew that the original Left Bank in Paris, home to the cubists and the impressionists, not to mention Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, had probably been pretentious but at least had spared its tourists coy restaurant names.

Mom was driving the four-year-old Buick. The last time she’d gone off, she’d been forced to sell the Mercedes-Benz station wagon to make house payments. Nicole never told her father any of these things. She got tired of his sanctimony. Her mother suffered enough. At the meetings Nicole attended a few years ago, she learned that she was probably what the social workers called an enabler; i.e., she helped her mother keep up her habit. But what was the choice? What would happen to her mother if Nicole didn’t help her? Easy enough for them to say let your mother hit bottom and find her own way back up. But what if the bottom was death? How could Nicole live with herself? She had tried everything to get her mother to stop. A year ago, she’d even cut her own wrists and been rushed to the hospital and put in the psychiatric clinic for three days of observation. Now, she was working on her own last, desperate plan, a way to force her mother to turn herself back into rehab and this time— Oh please God, please God, let it work for her this time — start on a life without cocaine. But first she had to find one thing out...

Her mother didn’t get out of the Buick.

Just sat inside as the light rain started.

Slick new cars disgorged slick new people running in their Armani suits through the rain, laughing and swearing as they reached the canopied entrance.

And her mother just sat inside the Buick.

He drove an old red MG, the steering column on the right side. He wore a tweed jacket in honor of the MG. He even had a pipe stuck jauntily in the corner of his mouth. He looked like a soap opera’s impression of a sensitive British novelist: dark, shaggy hair, and an angular face handsome but with a hint of cruelty in the eyes and mouth. He parked next to her mother and then quickly got of out the MG and hopped into the driver’s side of the Buick.

Kate

“You look tired, Mrs. Sanders,” Mitch said when he got in the Buick and looked over at her.

“I have a pusher who calls me ‘Mrs. Sanders,’ ” Kate said, a touch of desperation in your voice. “Is my life fucked up or what?”

“You know,” Mitch said, “this makes the third time I’ve had to warn you. And right now, with the rain and all, I’m in a pissy enough mood to just open this door and walk back to my car and not sell you anything at all.”

“Oh, God,” Kate said, genuinely scared. “I forgot. I used the P word, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

And he had indeed warned her before. About the P word. P for Pusher. He’d explained his circumstances. What he was: Mitchell Aaron Carey. What he hoped to be, with his looks and all, was an actor. And he’d tried hard for several years, too. All the humiliating auditions. All the even more humiliating little jobs around the various theaters (he’d actually scrubbed toilets at the Astor one weekend). Now he was just taking it easy. Doing “favors” for upscale people afraid of or put off by the usual array of street people who dealt drugs. How many pushers could give you twenty minutes on Aristotle’s theory of drama? How many pushers had ever had a two-line part in a Woody Allen picture? How many pushers had Chagall prints hanging on their walls? He was no pusher. He was just an actor temporarily between gigs making a little jack on the side, and being very, very civilized about it.

“God, I’m sorry. I really am.”

He smiled. “I guess I really don’t feel like going back out into the rain right now.”

“I brought the money.”

“You’re kind’ve strung out, huh?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

He was torturing her a little for having called him a pusher. “You thinking of maybe doing a line right here?”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

He smiled again. “You’re a good looking woman, Kate.”

“Thank you.” But it wasn’t compliments she wanted. It was the stuff.

“In fact, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.”

“You have?”

“Yeah,” he said, and reached in the pocket of his stylish leather car coat. He took the stuff out and showed it to her. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about you quite a bit lately.”

Nicole

She followed him home. Watched him park. Watched him go up to his apartment. Then went into the vestibule and checked his name on the mailbox. The only male name on the four mailboxes.

She didn’t feel quite ready for it yet. Tomorrow. She’d sleep on it. Sleep on it and think it through and kind of rough out how she’d approach him. Tomorrow was Saturday. No school. Tomorrow would be better.

When she walked in the house, her mother was dusting the living room and actually humming a song.

Nicole got tears in her eyes. This was her mother of long ago, before she’d discovered cocaine at a Los Angeles party ten years ago. She’d been there with her husband, visiting his relatives, and they’d ended up at a party in Malibu and she’d been drunk and up for just about anything — the party showing her just how much of her youth and adventurousness she’d had to give up as the wife of a neurosurgeon and so unbeknownst to Ken she’d tried it — and now she was happy only when she was stoned.

Dusting. And whistling. With the wonderful scent of a pot roast floating out of the kitchen.

She was Mom again. Nicole couldn’t help herself. She flew to her and took her in her arms and suddenly they were both crying without a single word having been said, just holding each other. And then Mom said, “You’re such a good girl, Nicole. And I love you so much.”

Nicole didn’t sleep well. She kept waking up and thinking about what she was going to say to Mitch Carey.

Her plan was simple. She would tell him that if he continued to sell her mother cocaine, she would turn him over to the police. She believed — hoped, was the more precise word — that if her mother was cut off from Mitch’s supply, then she’d panic and turn herself back to rehab. And this time it would work. This time it had to work. Absolutely had to.

Carey would be pissed but what could he do? He certainly didn’t want to go to jail.

Mom made pancakes for breakfast. Blueberry pancakes. The kind she’d made back when Nicole was a little girl, and Mom and Dad were happy.

“I guess I’ll go study at the library,” she said, after finishing breakfast and putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

“I’m going to do some more cleaning,” Mom said. Then grinned. “It’s kind of fun being a Stepford wife again. Now all I need is a Stepford husband.”

Ninety-three minutes later, Nicole pulled her car into a slot behind Carey’s apartment house. The interior stairs of the place smelled of rubber and paint. A new runner had been put on the steps and new paint on the walls. Whoever managed this place, they took care of it.

Carey answered the door out of breath and with a white nubby towel wrapped around his neck. He wore a tight white T-shirt and blue running shorts. A Stairmaster stood in the background. Classical music played. Carey had a strong, tight body.

“Yes?”

“I’m Nicole. Kate Sanders’s daughter.”

He looked surprised. “Is everything all right? Nothing happened to Kate did it?”

“No,” Nicole said. “It’s just that I’m thinking of turning you over to the police.”

This time, he looked even more surprised. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside. “Hey, we don’t have to invite the neighbors in on this, do we?” His nod indicated the three other apartment doors on this floor.

The apartment was impressive in a cold and calculated way. The furnishings were chrome and black leather, with a white and black tile floor and walls painted a brilliant flat white. The only touches of color belonged to the modernistic paintings on the walls. Nicole knew even less about painting than she did about classical music. This was the kind of room that intimidated her with her own ignorance.

Carey had quickly regained his composure. The panic and anger were gone from his eyes. He said, “Care for some wine?”

“No, thanks.”

She had let two boys get their hands down her pants and play with her sex. At a ninth grade slumber party she had taken three drags on a joint. And she had looked at a couple of porno videos her Mom and Dad used to play when they thought she was upstairs asleep. This was the extent of her licentiousness. Drinking wine at this time of day was out of the question. Or any time of day. Wine always made her dizzy, and usually made her sick.

“Why don’t you sit down over there on the couch and let me shut the machine off?”

He clipped off the Stairmaster and then wiped his face and neck again with the towel. He took the matching chair across from the couch. He sat on the edge. He kept pulling on both ends of the towel, biceps shaping as he did so. She knew this was for her benefit.

He said. “So you turn me over to the police, Nicole, and then what?”

“Then she gets so scared without her supply that she decides to try rehab again.”

“I see.”

“And this time she’ll make it.”

“So that’s the plan, huh?” There was just a hint of a smirk on his mouth.

“That’s the plan. I don’t want you to sell her any more cocaine.”

“What do I tell her when she calls?”

“Just tell her that you’re not in the business any more. That you’re scared of the police or something like that.”

He looked at her and smiled. “If I ask you a question, will you answer it honestly?”

“If you’ll turn down the music. It’s pretty loud.”

He was up and at the CD player in seconds. “Not a Debussy fan, eh?”

“Maybe some other time.”

When he was seated again, he said, “Have you ever seen her happy when she wasn’t doing coke?”

“Of course I have.”

“I realize you think you’re being honest. But think hard for a moment. And be honest with yourself.”

She saw what he was getting at. Her mother was miserable when she was clean and sober. That, Nicole had to admit. She’d look at her mother and she’d look miserable. Tense, lost, angry, anxious. And late at night, she’d hear her mother sob. And there was almost never a smile. Or any expression of joy. Her life was simply a matter of not using cocaine. And she did not share the pride or the pleasure that others seemed to take in her not doing this.

His phone rang. “Think about it, kiddo.” He reached over to a glass end table and picked up the phone. And said. “Hi. I’ve got company.” He laughed. “Actually, yes, it is somebody you know. Your daughter.” Then, “I take it you haven’t told her.” Pause. “Then that’ll be my pleasure, I guess.” Pause. “I’ll call you in a while.”

After hanging up, he said, “She said she hadn’t had time to tell you yet. She wanted to wait for the right moment, I guess.”

“Tell me what?”

“She’s taking in a boarder.”

“A what?”

“You know, a roomer.”

“Who?”

He grinned. “Me. I’m going to be living with you for a while.”

Mitch

In the first week, Nicole took all her meals in her room. She barely spoke to her mother, and she wouldn’t speak to him at all. She spent several Friday and Saturday nights staying over at her friends’ houses.

Mitch enjoyed the setup. He was tired of all the artistes and pretenders he’d hung out with the past ten years. It was enjoyable to get up in the morning and have a home-cooked meal and then spend a few hours “blocking out” a novel. That’s what he called it, blocking out. Taking notes and filling up lined pages with blue ballpoint ink. Such and so would happen in Chapter Six, such and so would happen in Chapter Ten and so on. He liked to think he was editing a film, moving this scene from here to here. The writing itself, after all this preparation, was bound to be simple. Or so he told himself. Of course, in ten years, he’d actually never written a word of text. But what the hell. That really would be the easy part.

He stayed in a basement room that was fixed up for guests. He had his own bathroom and shower and TV set. He even had his own entrance, right on the side. His MG fit nicely into the third stall of the garage. He walked around the neighborhood on the sunny days. It was like being in a sitcom, all the neighbors tending their lawns and waving to him, the sounds of friendly dogs and driveway basketball, the aromas of backyard cookouts and fresh hung laundry on outdoor lines.

This was the change he needed. No doubt about it. He had business to tend to but that took two, three hours at most a day. Had to keep his hungry little junkies hungry, and had to resupply his own stash with his own wholesaler. He always liked to tell people he was in retail, and so he was. This was the change he needed. A new kind of lifestyle. He felt invigorated, young.

He went easy on the sex, mostly for the sake of Nicole. If she found her mother in bed with him, she’d freak. Absolutely freak. She was a very pious little thing, sweet Nicole. Kate said she got the self-righteousness from her father. She said that was one reason she was so glad their marriage was over, so she didn’t have him in her face all the time dispersing rules with a ferocity that would have put Moses to shame.

One rainy Saturday night, with Nicole sleeping over at a friend’s house, he nailed her. She was as hungry for sex as she was cocaine. She was damned good: knowing, patient, clever and seemingly tireless. At one point, he rolled off the bed and lay on the floor laughing and screaming “Call 911! I can’t take it any more!” And then she’d started laughing, too, and jumped off the bed, landing right on top of him. They spent an hour on the floor violating every silky hot orifice in her body.

He kept her coked up, and she kept him sexed up. At first, the first three-four weeks, they were discreet. Wouldn’t want little Nicole to find out now, would we? They waited until she was gone before they did anything. There were a lot of nooners, Kate rushing home from the office for a line or two of coke and a ripping good time in the sack.

One night, when Nicole was upstairs in her room doing homework, they decided to do it in his room in the basement. It was like high school, the sneaking around, Nicole the stern repressed Midwestern parent, and them the fuck-happy teenagers. She didn’t catch them. The next night and the next night and the next night and the next night, they did the same thing, Nicole working on her homework and them humping in the basement. God, it was great, and the danger made it just that much more delicious.

One Saturday afternoon, she caught them.

Nicole had come home early from the library, tired from a long day’s studying. They didn’t hear her. They were having too much fun in Kate’s bedroom. But Nicole heard them. She flung the door open and stalked into the bedroom and went over to him and grabbed him by the long, dark hair. A handful came off in her grip. She pushed him off the bed and to the floor and shrieked, “I want you out of here! And I mean right now!”

Humiliated, enraged, Kate flew from the bed and slapped her daughter hard several times across the face, hard enough to draw blood.

Nicole spat at her, silver spittle hanging comically on the end of Kate’s classical nose, and then stormed out of the bedroom, and out the house.

She didn’t come home that night.

Kate started calling all her friends. None had seen her.

Mitch said that she was just punishing Kate, trying to scare her. Everything would be fine. He cooed, he cajoled, he caressed, and he finally got Kate back in bed. But the little bitch had spoiled his evening for him. Kate just wasn’t there for him that night. Oh, they had sex all right, but there was none of her usual passion or ingenuity. It was like screwing a hooker who was having an off night. The little bitch really pissed him off. He was enjoying his suburban sojourn. He didn’t want it ruined by all these mother-daughter politics.

She didn’t come home until Monday after school. By then, even stoked up on coke, Kate was a nervous mess. Pacing. Biting her nails. Jumping every time the phone rang.

The little bitch.

She pulled in just as dusk was making it a better world.

She sat in her car in the garage a long time. Kate kept wanting to go out there. Mitch wouldn’t let her. “That’s what she wants you to do.”

“I’ve been such a terrible mother to her, Mitch. I really have.” She was begging him to let her go out to the garage. But by now, Mitch was genuinely resentful of the little prig. She resented him because he’d usurped her place as head of the family. Without him here, Nicole would be giving the orders. That’s how it was in some junkie homes. The older kid took over and became the parent while the parent became a pathetic child. A power thing. Nicole had enjoyed the power. Now Mitch had the power. And he wasn’t about to give it up.

She finally came in an hour later. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at them. She just went straight up to her room and quietly closed her door. Kate spent the night fluttering around Nicole’s door like a moth around a summer night’s streetlight. But it did no good. Nicole wouldn’t acknowledge her in any way.

Kate wouldn’t come down to the basement, not this night or the next or the next. Kate pleaded with Nicole to speak to her. But Nicole came in the door at night and went straight to her room and reappeared only the next morning, in time to go to school. She wouldn’t even say goodbye.

Mitch took it for a week, feeling helpless and sorry for himself. He did not like being at the mercy of the little bitch. She was spoiling his time with middle America. But Mitch, failed artist, failed husband, failed father, failed son, was nothing if not ingenious.

Mitch had a plan.

Nicole

She finally gave in, of course. Nicole.

Mitch was out somewhere. Mom was sitting in the kitchen. Drinking coffee. She looked great. The coke was killing her but it was a trade off. While she was dying, Kate looked better than she had in a long time, and was in a much better mood, too. Nicole poured herself a cup from Mr. Coffee and then came over and sat down at the kitchen table. The sunlight was bright and lazy in the air.

Neither of them said anything for a time. For this uneasy moment, they were strangers.

“You been all right, Nicole?”

“Yes. You?”

“This would be a very happy time for me if my daughter and I were getting along.”

“Are you in love with him?”

Kate smiled. “God, no.”

“But you sleep with him, anyway?”

“I enjoy him, honey. And part of that enjoyment is sex.”

“And the drugs.”

“Have you noticed how much happier I am? I mean, until you and I had our falling out?”

Nicole nodded.

“Have you noticed how much better I look?”

“I know what you’re going to say, Mom. But you’re wrong. The coke may make you feel better right now but it’ll kill you eventually.”

“Maybe that’s not the worst thing, Nicole. To die, I mean. I enjoy the high, hon. I don’t know how else to say it. When I’m high. I’m fine. And when I have my own pusher living right in my own home—” She smiled. “A junkie’s dream.”

“You shouldn’t call yourself that, Mom.”

“Well, that’s what I am.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I’ll never go back to another rehab program, Nicole. I don’t want to be one of those zombies who just hangs on her whole life, trying to put off taking another line of coke. It’s not a way to live. Especially since Mitch is right under my own roof.”

“He doesn’t care about you, Mom.”

“And I don’t care about him. Except that he keeps me happy with his drugs, and satisfied with his sex. You’re old enough to understand that, Nicole.”

“So I just live here with you?”

“You’ll be leaving for college in California in four months. Then you won’t have to worry about it any more.” Then, “Don’t you want me to be happy, Nicole?”

“You know I do.”

“Then let me live the way I want to, hon. Then you can go away to college and not have to worry about me anymore.”

“Oh, right. I go away to college and then I magically never worry about you anymore? It doesn’t work that way, Mom. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Just be civil to him. That’s all I ask. He doesn’t like the way you and I are carrying on. Just be civil so he can enjoy himself while he’s here.”

Nicole carried her cup to the sink, washed it out, put it in the washer.

Then she went over and slid her arms around her mother and they hugged each other and they both cried and Kate said. “I just want to be happy and feel good for a little while, honey. That’s all.”

Nicole held her and kissed her. Tears filled her eyes.

A few minutes later, she was in her car and headed to the library. She had things to do.

Two nights later, the three of them ate dinner together at the long, mahogany table in the dining room. Candlelight, of course. Lasagna with fresh peaches and Caesar salad, Nicole’s favorite meal, lovingly prepared by Kate after work. Dinner was late, but the food was delicious.

“How was school today?” Mitch said.

Nicole looked at her mother. Her mother looked frightened.

“Mitch, I’m going to try and get along with you for Mom’s sake, all right? But don’t pretend you’re my father. Or that you’re interested in my life. All right? I mean, that’s really a pain in the ass.”

Mitch laughed. “I hate to disappoint you. But I’m not old enough to be your father, Nicole. I’m only fourteen years older than you are.”

“I thought you said you were thirty-nine,” Kate said.

He patted her hand. “I only said that to make you feel more comfortable. I’m thirty-two.”

“Maybe you’re lying to make Nicole feel more comfortable,” Kate said, not entirely pleased by this sudden turn in the conversation.

Mitch smiled. “Yes. Maybe I am.”

And so it went. One week, two weeks. A family. That’s what Kate pretended was happening, anyway. That the three of them were somehow bonding. Watching her like this made Nicole so sad she couldn’t even cry. She’d just sit stunned for hours staring out the window of her bedroom at the dusk birds sailing down the salmon pink sky, arcing black shapes against the dying days, beings whose freedom Nicole could only envy.

Mitch

It was during Mitch’s fourth week in the house that he cut Kate off. Unbeknownst to both Nicole and Kate, this was the plan he’d been working on for the past few weeks. He wanted to dominate his circumstances completely. And there was only one way to do that.

One afternoon, late, Kate came home from work tense and showing signs of needing her friend the white powder. Long day at work, the boss on her case, two of her co workers in particularly grumpy moods. She related all this as she stripped out of her clothes and lay down on the bed with Mitch. Ordinarily, Mitch would have been right there with the coke. But not today.

When he didn’t offer, she said, “I could really use a little boost, Mitch.” That was her coy name for it. “Boost.”

“You do for me, I do for you.”

Her head had been on his naked chest. Now she rolled away from him and looked at his face. “Is something wrong?”

“You do for me, I do for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was already getting a little shaky. “Please, Mitch, I don’t mind playing games, but give me a little boost first, all right?”

He leaned over on an elbow and looked at her. “This is a good time for you, isn’t it, Kate?”

“Yes. You know it is, Mitch.”

“Me here. You getting a ‘boost’ whenever you need it. And the sex isn’t bad, either.”

“The sex is great.”

“And you don’t want it to end, do you?”

A flutter of fear in her eyes and her voice. “Don’t want it to end? What’re you talking about, Mitch? Why would it end?”

He hesitated. Went into one of his Acting 101 routines. Looked down at the nubby bedspread, looked up at her briefly, then looked down at the nubby bedspread again. Troubled young man. Searching for the right words. Pure ham. But most of the ladies loved it. He said, in barely a whisper. “I’m going to ask you to do me a favor and you’re going to get all pissed off and self-righteous and probably throw me out.”

“I’d never throw you out, Mitch. God, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.”

Impish grin. “That’s because I haven’t asked you my favor yet.”

“Just ask me, Mitch. Just ask me.”

So he asked her.

“Oh, Mitch.” she said. “I should’ve known you were pulling one of your jokes on me. Get me all scared the way you did.”

“It isn’t a joke, Kate.”

“C’mon, now, Mitch. I know how you like to put me on.”

“No put on, Kate. I’m very serious.”

“But you can’t be serious.”

But then she saw that he was serious.

And she got all pissed off and self-righteous and demanded that he leave the house right now. And for good.

A number of the neighbors commented on the screeching, dish-throwing, foul-mouthed argument that ensued within the walls of the Sanders place but that could be heard as far as half a block away. It went on like this, grand-opera style, for at least an hour. The neighbors hadn’t heard arguments like that since the good doctor, her ex-husband, had moved out. Things must be going badly with her live-in.

Things must be going very badly.

Nicole

When Nicole got home that night, she found her mother at the kitchen table, her head down on her hands. Something was terribly wrong. She used to sense that when she was a little girl and her Dad was still living at home. She’d come home after school in the echoes of one of their arguments and her stomach would knot up and she’d feel alone and scared, scared that one of them might have killed the other, and she would start to shake and cry and say little prayers over and over again that everything would be all right.

A half-filled bottle of J&B scotch sat on the table in front of her. One glass. No ice.

Kate looked up at her wildly in the wan glow of the kitchen stove light. She was inching back toward her bag-woman demeanor, the hair wild and ratty, the eyes sunk deep and rimmed with black circles, the mouth slack with sparkling spittle collected in the corners. She’d been at work today. How had she accomplished all this just since work?

She was sitting in her bra and panties, with her long, lovely legs crossed. She was swinging her right foot to a rhythm only she could hear.

Nicole sat across from her. “Where’s Mitch?”

“You’re late.”

“I was over at Sherry’s.”

“You should’ve called.”

“I want to know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Bullshit, Mom. Bullshit.”

Kate sighed. “I kicked him out.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

“That isn’t an answer, Mom.”

“It is for me. I kicked him out because he’s an asshole. That sums it up pretty damned well, I think.”

“You’re shaking all over. He didn’t give you a boost?”

“Screw his boost. I don’t need his boost.”

Mitch’s words came back to her. About how happy her mother had been when everything was going well between her and Mitch. How he’d get all the boosts she wanted. How she kept herself looking great. How she was productive and happy. This was already like the old days. It was scary and sad. And not for the first time in her life did Nicole think of getting the gun out of her mother’s dresser drawer and putting it in her mouth and killing herself. Many, many nights during the divorce, she’d thought of doing this.

“You want me to fix you something to eat?” Kate said.

Her words, her manner put a melancholy smile on Nicole’s face. “Oh, yeah, Mom, you’re in great shape to cook. One more drink of scotch and you’ll pass out.”

“And that’s just what I intend to do, too. And don’t you try to stop me.”

Nicole sat there with her and watched her take one more drink. A good, big one. All the while muttering about how much better her life would be now that the asshole was out of it.

Nicole managed to get her to the downstairs john before she started throwing up. Then she managed to get her upstairs and in bed. Kate started snoring immediately. Nicole clipped the light off and went back to the kitchen.

She fixed herself a tuna sandwich on toast and had a few chips and a diet Pepsi. She cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed. But she didn’t sleep. She wondered what had gone wrong with Mitch and her mother.

The deterioration was pretty fast. Nicole could remember a time when it took her mother five or six days to get to the screaming, stomach-clutching, glass-smashing state in need of a boost.

This time, she made it in two days. She didn’t go to work either one: the first day, she didn’t even get out of bed.

Nicole missed another day of school.

She got in her car and drove over to a section where she was sure she could find plenty of drugs. She’d taken three hundred out of the ATM machine. She wasn’t sure how much drugs cost but she figured that three hundred would be enough to buy something.

The trouble was that the street people scared her. She was always seeing TV new stories about car-jackings. Even with her doors locked, she didn’t feel safe. She cruised the black streets but the angry curiosity of the faces — spoiled little white girl from the suburbs, what the fuck she doin’ down here, fuckin’ bitch — soon pushed her back onto the expressway.

She would have to convince her mother to go into the detox program run by one of the local hospitals.

But by the time she got back home, she found her mother drunk and belligerent. And the moment she brought up detox, her mother went into one of her violent frenzies.

Nicole stayed in her room all night.

The next morning, she called in sick to school and went to see Mitch.

He was using his Stairmaster again. Blue running shorts, white T-shirt. He didn’t bother playing the suave host this time. He invited her in. He kept working out on the machine.

“Let me guess why you’re here,” he said. His tone was sardonic.

“You were right.”

“I was? About what?” He was sweating and panting a little bit.

“My mother was very happy while you were there. The happiest I’ve seen her in a long, long time.”

He smiled icily. “And you want me to come back.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. “She tell you why I left?”

“No. Just that you’d had a fight. I thought maybe you’d tell me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’d better let your mother tell you.”

“I’m a big girl, Mitch. I can take it.”

He smiled. “You go ask your mother.”

“I want you to come back, Mitch. I’m sorry if I acted like a bitch. You made her happy.”

He came off the machine so quickly, she was hardly aware of him at first. Sliding his arms around her back and waist, finding her mouth with his tongue, easing her against the wall so that she could feel his groin pressing against her.

She pushed against him but he was too strong. She tried bringing her knee up but he knew how to block it.

Finally, she bit his tongue. He fell back from her, cursing, dabbing his tongue with the tip of his finger. Then he laughed. “I knew you were a tough one, Nicole.” He held up his finger. “Blood.”

She walked to the door. Jerked it open. Walked out into the hallway. Slammed the door behind her.

When she came in the back door, she saw several empty glasses smashed on the floor. Mom had been on a rampage again, the need getting overwhelming.

She went upstairs. Sobbing sounds came from the large bedroom.

A weariness came over her. It was odd to be this young and yet be so worn out. She felt as if she were ninety. On the way over, she’d thought about Mitch grabbing her and kissing her. Then she’d thought about the argument Mitch and Mom had had. She had a pretty good idea now what it had been about.

She stood outside the door a long moment and listened to her mother cry. Only a few days ago, Mom had looked young and vital again. And was busy and productive. True, there were peaks and valleys in her mood and addiction level, but on balance life was good and happy again.

You couldn’t beat having a live-in pusher, she thought.

She went into the bedroom. Kate peeked at her from behind a hand that lay against her face. “Go away. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I need to talk to you a minute, Mom.”

“I can’t talk now, honey. I’m sick. My whole body. Sick. You go downstairs or something.”

“I think I know what you and Mitch were arguing about.”

She sat down on the bed. Took her mother’s hand. Held it to her own face. She could feel warm tears on the hand.

“I want to thank you, Mom.”

“For what, hon?”

“For not asking me to do it.”

Kate didn’t say anything.

Nicole said, “He wanted me to sleep with him, didn’t he?”

Kate didn’t say anything.

“That’s what you had the argument about, wasn’t it?”

Kate didn’t say anything.

“If I agreed to sleep with him, then he’d stay and keep you in drugs. That way, when he got bored with you, he’d sleep with me.”

“He isn’t a bad person, sweetie. He just looks at sex different from how we do.”

“He’s a creep. He took advantage of you and now he wants to take advantage of me.” She kissed her mother’s hand. “Thanks for not asking me to do it.”

“I knew how you’d feel about it, honey.”

“I appreciate it.” She gently put her Mom’s hand back on the bed and said, “Why don’t I make you a little soup?”

“I don’t know if I could hold it down.”

“At least, let’s give it a try.” She hesitated. “Then I want to talk to you some more about rehab, Mom. You can’t go on like this.”

Kate looked beyond exhaustion. Something had died in her. The gleaming eyes, the happy voice of a few days ago were gone. “Maybe that’s what I need. Rehab, I mean.” She spoke in a dazed voice, staring tearily out the window. “Maybe I should quit fighting it.”

“Why don’t you take a little nap? I’ll bring the soup up in a half hour or so.”

Kate held her arms out. Nicole slid into her sleep-warm embrace.

Nicole was watching the MTV Top Ten countdown. Eight of the songs were rap, with sneering black guys pushing their faces into the camera. Nicole was too romantic for rap. She liked the ballads, especially by the black girl groups, who were as romantic as the boys were unromantic.

She yawned. She was exhausted and looking forward to bed. Three hours ago, she’d served her mother chicken soup and a glass of skim milk. She’d tucked her into bed and turned on the electric blanket. When Kate was in withdrawal, she got the chills bad.

She was just about to click off the TV with the remote when the gunshot exploded and echoed.

Her first impression was that something had blown up. Stove. Or water heater. Something like that.

But in the next moment, she realized what had really happened. Gunshot. The gun from Mom’s drawer. Upstairs. Mom.

Fear blinded her.

She took the steps two at a time, tripping on the last of the stairway, grabbing the banister to keep from falling over.

Mom Mom Mom, she kept thinking.

The master bedroom was empty.

The smaller bedroom was empty.

She ran into the bathroom.

Her mother, completely naked, vomit covering her chest and stomach, her head twisted drunkenly to see Nicole, sat on the edge of the bathtub, a gun in her right hand. The top of her head was dusted with plaster from the hole in the ceiling that the bullet had made. A half-full bottle of J&B lay at her feet.

Nicole could never remember her this far gone. She stared at Nicole but with no recognition whatsoever showing in her eyes. Huge goosebumps covered her arms and legs. “No more fucking detox, kiddo,” she said to no one in particular. “No more fucking detox.”

She raised the gun to her temple. Or tried to. The movement was jerky and imprecise and gave Nicole plenty of time to grab her mother’s wrist and ease the gun from her hand.

Then her mother began sobbing. She slipped to the floor, reeking of her own vomit and urine, wild-eyed and aggrieved beyond Nicole’s imagining, slumped trembling and dry-heaving and crying on the pink bathroom rug.

Nicole knelt next to her mother but it did no good. Kate wrenched herself away. “I fucking hate you, you little snotty bitch! You want to put me back in rehab! I fucking hate you!”

Nicole tried several times to console her mother but finally gave up. Her mother had slipped into a fetal position and started muttering to herself in a language and cadence only she could understand. If even she could comprehend it.

Only a few days ago, this had been a happy woman.

Nicole slipped quietly from the bathroom, and went and made a phone call.

They were in the kitchen. Nicole and her mother. At the table. Drinking coffee. This was six hours after the shower incident. Kate had showered, eaten half a sandwich, and begun drinking black coffee as fast as Mr. Coffee could turn it out.

And, most important of all, Mitch had given her a boost.

Nicole had called Mitch. He’d agreed to come over. He’d brought a large suitcase. He’d agreed to try it again, with Kate and all, for a few days.

Mitch was upstairs now, in the master bedroom, waiting for Nicole.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Kate said. “You really don’t.”

“It was my decision, mother.”

“I mean, you know how appreciative I am. And he is very good in bed, honey. And he promised me he’d be very, very gentle and take his time. You could do a lot worse, your first time.”

“I’d better get up there. He’s waiting.”

“He’s really not a bad guy, hon. He’s really not.” Then, “What’re you going to wear?”

“Just my pajamas, I guess.”

“Too bad you never liked sleeping gowns.”

“I like sloppy old pajamas, Mom. They’re comfortable to sleep in.”

“You’re so pretty.” Kate touched her daughter’s cheek. “And you’re such a good girl.”

Nicole looked upstairs. “Well, I’d better go.”

She was just leaving the kitchen when her mother said, “You really don’t have to do this, you know.”

He was in bed. Propped up against the headboard. No shirt. Glass of wine. Cigarette going in the ashtray. A PBS concert of some kind on the tube. This was a very nicely appointed bedroom.

He smiled at her. “You looked scared, Nicole. I’m not the boogeyman. I’m really not.”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

He raised his wineglass. “Well, first of all, I want you to chill out a little. You know what I mean? Relax. Believe it or not, you just might enjoy this. Kate tells me you’re a virgin. Is that true?”

“More or less.”

“Oh-oh. Was there something you never told your mother?” The smile firmly in place.

“I’ve never gone all the way, if that makes me a virgin.”

“Well, that certainly makes you a virgin in my book.” He patted the bed next to him. “Why don’t you come over and sit down next to me. I want you to like me, Nicole. I really do. We could have a very nice relationship. We really could.”

“The three of us, you mean?”

“Sure, the three of us. Or just the two of us — and me — and the three of us. You and I would have one relationship, Kate and I would have another relationship. You see what I mean? And maybe sometime—” He paused.

“Maybe sometime what?”

“Oh, we’ll talk about it later, maybe. For now, pour yourself some wine and sit down here and let’s get to know each other a little better. All right?”

He was gentle.

A couple of times, she even found herself if not exactly enjoying it then not exactly not enjoying it.

She’d had all these preconceptions. That it would hurt a lot. That there would be a good deal of blood. That she would feel deeply changed by the experience.

None of these things happened to her.

They made love twice. They started on a third time but then he asked her gently if she’d mind doing him. The doing scared her more than the actual intercourse. She hated doing him and when she sensed he was going to come, she jerked him out of her mouth. She felt angry that he came all over her mother’s bedspread.

He lay back and pulled her down to him, holding her. He lit a cigarette.

“So, do you hate me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I tried to be gentle.”

“You were gentle.”

“I tried to be nice.”

“You were nice.”

“I was hoping you’d feel a little better about me, you know, after we’d done it and everything.”

She said nothing.

“You hear what I said, Nicole?”

“I heard.”

“So, do you feel any better about me?”

She said nothing.

“Guess you don’t want to talk, huh?”

“I’d like to go to my own room now.”

“Sure, if that’s what you’d like.” Then, “You know what I’d like?”

“What?”

“You remember when I said ‘maybe sometime.’ ”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, what I was thinking about was the three of us getting together all at the same time.”

“My mom?”

“Yes.”

“And me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Having sex with you?”

“It could be a lot of fun. I mean, I admit it sounds a little over-the-top at first. But when you think about it, it isn’t all that raunchy. I mean I’m sure it’s been done before.”

She stood up. She felt sick.

It would probably happen, what he was talking about. Somehow they’d be able to convince her to get involved in it. Somehow.

“I’m going now.”

“Just think about it, Nicole, all right? What I was talking about?”

She slipped out of the dark bedroom and went into her own bedroom.

In about half an hour, her mother came in. The bedroom was all shadow and silver moonlight. Nicole was under the covers.

“Nicole?”

No answer.

Her Mom came over and knelt next to the bed. “Did it go all right?” Nicole decided to answer. “Yes.”

“Was he nice?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t hurt you or anything?”

“No.” Then, “Could we talk in the morning, Mom? I’m real tired.”

She lay there for an hour trying to get to sleep. But all she could think of was what he’d suggested, about the three of them getting together.

She slept until late into the dark night. They woke her with their noises. Her first impression was that he was hurting Mom but then she realized it was just Mom’s wild enjoyment she was hearing. Mom would go along with it when the time came. Not at first. Not without some convincing. But eventually, she’d go along.

She’d go along.

And so would Nicole.

Three different neighbors report the shots. People on the nice, quiet, respectable block are up from their beds and out the door, arriving in pajamas and nightgowns and robes and slippers just about the time the first patrol car reaches the Sanders’ driveway.

A heavyset cop knocks on the front door of the Sanders’s home, pauses, and then knocks again.

This is when the side door of the house, the one that opens on the driveway, eases open and Nicole appears.

None of the neighbors have ever seen Nicole look like this. Hair unkempt, pajamas torn and blood-soaked, hands filthy with blood. Blood everywhere. Even in her hair. Even on her feet. Blood. No mistaking what it is. Blood. She stands in the headlights of the police car, moths and gnats and mosquitoes thick around the headlights (big motor throbbing unevenly, needing points and plugs), and that is where the neighbors get their first good look at the knife she used. Butcher knife. Long wooden handle. Good but not great steel. A knife she just grabbed from the silverware drawer before going upstairs.

A second prowl car. This one dispersing two cops. Man and woman. The man starts dealing with the crowd. Pushing them back. The woman goes directly to Nicole.

“I need to know your name, miss, and what happened here.”

But Nicole is long gone.

The first cop comes down the steps. Says something to the female officer and then goes in the side door.

“What’s your name, miss?” the female cop asks in a soft voice. “I want to help you. I really do.”

The crowd has grown greatly in a few minutes. Two different TV stations are here now, one in a large van, the other in a muddy Plymouth station wagon.

The first cop is back from inside. Goes to the other male cop. “It’s a mess in there. A man and woman. The woman looks like the girl there. She stabbed the hell out of them. It’s a frigging mess.”

A few people in the crowd are close enough to hear this. A whisper like an undulating snake works its way through the crowd. Shock and sadness and yet a glee and excitement, too. The shock for the pitiful young girl standing blood-soaked in the headlights, her mind obviously gone; and yet glee and excitement, too. Every day life is so — everyday. No denying the excitement here. And didn’t Kate Sanders think she was at least a little bit better than everybody else? And exactly who was that man who’d moved in a while ago? And now look at Nicole. Poor, poor Nicole.

The reporter from the van, having heard what the cop found inside, now gets his cameraman to follow him around as he gets statements from various neighbors.

“Well, Kate, the mother, she and her husband split up a few years ago.”

“They were very quiet people, really, though I think everybody knew that Kate had quite a few personal problems.”

The cameraman angles his machine up the driveway, letting his lens linger on the lovely, crazed, blood-spattered girl standing in the headlights, Ophelia of the suburbs, which will make great fucking TV, just this lone shot of this lone heart-breaking crazy fucking girl.

And (voice over) a neighbor lady saying into the microphone: “It’s just so hard to believe. She was such a good girl; such a good girl.”