Company Man (26 page)

“Cassie,” Nick said. “That's not what I meant.”

Cassie was silent. When Nick turned to look at her, her eyes were wells of sorrow. He felt a wave of guilt, and longing.

“Would you like to come by for dinner?” he asked.

Cassie was subdued as the Chevy Suburban waited in a queue in front of the Fenwicke Estates gatehouse. Nick suppressed the urge to drum his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Evening, Jorge,” Nick said, as they slowly passed the gatehouse.

Cassie leaned over so she could see him. “Hi, Jorge, I'm Cassie.” She smiled and gave him a little wave.

“Evening,” Jorge said, more animatedly than usual.

Okay, Nick thought. Chalk one up for the girl's humanity. She noticed the guys in uniform. So long as it wasn't the start of some big worker's solidarity trip, that was probably a good sign.

He wondered how the kids would react to his bringing a woman home. More than wondered: he was, he had to admit, nervous about it. She was the first woman he'd been involved with in any way since Laura's death, and he had no idea how they'd react. Lucas, he could safely predict, would be hostile. Hostility was his default mode. Julia? Now, that was a question. There was the Freudian thing where the girl wants Daddy all to herself, and there was that powerful strain of unthinking loyalty to her mom: how dare Daddy date someone other than Mommy?

It could be ugly. But the one who'd really suffer the brunt
of it was Cassie. He felt bad for her, for what she was about to experience. As he drove to the house, he began to regret his impulsive invitation. He should have introduced her to the kids more gradually.

As they approached the driveway to the house, Cassie gave a low whistle.

“Sweet,” she said. “Wouldn't have guessed it was your style, I have to admit.”

“Maybe it isn't,” Nick admitted, but he felt self-conscious about saying it. Like he was putting the blame on Laura.

She squinted at the yellow Dumpster that was stationed underneath a basketball hoop. “Construction?”

“Always.”

“Portoncini dei morti,”
she said.

“You're in America now,” Nick said lightly. “About time you learned to speak English.”

“I take it you've never been to Gubbio.”

“If they don't manufacture casters there, I've probably never been.”

“It's in Umbria. Amazing place. I spent a whole year there—painting, busking, you name it. Great place, but spooky too. You go through the old part of town, and you start to notice that a lot of the houses have these areas that look oddly bricked up. Turns out that they had this old custom, like a sacrament. They bricked up the doorway where a dead person was taken out of a house. They're called
portoncini dei morti
. Doors of the dead. Ghost doors.”

“Must have kept a lot of masons busy,” Nick said.
It's the front door, Nick. That's the one place you don't cheap out
. Doors of the dead.

“This was Laura's house, wasn't it?” Cassie asked.

That wasn't how Nick would have put it, but it was more or less true. It was Laura's house.

“Sort of,” he said.

Marta was at the door when they came in. “I told you we'd be having company,” Nick said. “Well, she's the company.”

Marta didn't shake Cassie's hand, he noticed, just said,
“Nice to meet you,” and none too cordially. Same expression she reserved for telephone solicitors.

“Where's Julia?” Nick asked Marta.

“Watching TV in the family room. Emily just left a little while ago.”

“And Luke?”

“In his room. On the computer, maybe. He said he can't stay for dinner.”

“Oh, that right? Well, he's
going
to stay for dinner,” Nick said, icily. Christ. The whole suspension thing—they would have to have a Very Serious Talk. Which probably meant a Perfect Storm of an argument.

Just not tonight.

Nick took Cassie over to the family room, where Julia was engrossed in
Slime Time Live
on Nickelodeon.

“Hey, baby,” Nick said. “I want you to meet my friend Cassie.”

“Hi,” Julia said, and turned back to the show. Not rude, but not exactly friendly. A little cool, maybe.

“Cassie is going to be joining us for dinner.”

Julia turned around again. “Okay,” she said, warily. To Cassie, she said, “We usually don't have company for dinner.”

Then she turned back to the flickering screen. Someone was getting doused with green slime.

“Don't worry,” Cassie said. “I eat like a bird.”

Julia nodded.

“Two and half times my body weight in earthworms,” Cassie said.

Julia giggled.

“Are you a baseball fan?” Cassie asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Julia said. “You mean my jersey?”

“I
love
the Tigers,” Cassie said.

Julia shrugged dismissively. “The girls in school keep calling me ‘tomboy' because I wear it all the time.”

“They're just jealous of your jersey,” Nick put in, but Julia wasn't listening.

“You ever been to Comerica Park?” Cassie asked her.

Julia shook her head.

“Oh, it's amazing. You'd love it. We've got to go there some time.”

“Really?” Julia said.

“Definitely. And listen—I got called ‘tomboy' when I was a kid too,” said Cassie. “Just 'cause I wasn't into Barbie.”

“Really? I
hate
Barbie,” Julia said.

“Barbie's kind of creepy,” Cassie agreed. “I was never into dolls.”

“Me neither.”

“But I'll bet you have stuffed animals to keep you company, right?”

“Beanie Babies, mostly.”

“Do you collect them?”

“Sort of.” Julia was now looking at Cassie with interest. “They're very valuable, you know. But only if you don't use them and stuff.”

“You mean like, never take the label off, and put them on the shelf?”

Julia nodded, this time more animatedly.

“I don't get that,” Cassie said. “The whole point of Beanie Babies is to play with them, right? Do you have a lot, or just a couple of them?”

“I don't know. I guess a lot. You want to see my collection?”

“Really? I'd love to.”

“Not now,” said Nick. “Later. Right now it's suppertime, and we're having company.”

“Okay,” Julia said. Then she yelled, “Luke, supper! We have company.”

As Nick took Cassie back to the front hall, she said, “She's a sweetie, isn't she?”

“A regular Ma Barker is what she is,” Nick said. “For sweetness and light, we've got Lucas Conover.” He took her upstairs, gestured toward the hallway. There was no need to specify which was Lucas's room. From beneath the closed door, thrash music pulsed, an avalanche of noise with some
one shouting at the top of his lungs over a thudding bass beat. Something about
outta my mind,
something about
ashes to ashes,
something about
all pain, no gain
. A lot of incomprehensible screaming in between.

“As you can tell, he's a huge Lawrence Welk fan,” Nick said. He decided against knocking on the door. Let Marta get him downstairs. Lucas responded better to her anyway.

“How do you know so much about Beanie Babies?” Nick asked.

“My knowledge of Beanie Babies is limited to what I read in
Newsweek
. Am I busted?”

“You sure got Julia believing you're a Beanie Babies expert.”

“Hey, whatever works, right? Though I get a feeling your son isn't into Beanie Babies.”

“He's a hard case, my son,” Nick said, not wanting to dwell on it. “I'm going to change, meet you downstairs in a few.”

When he came back down, Cassie and Julia were deep in conversation in the family room. “And there was blood everywhere,” Julia was saying in a hushed, serious voice.

“Oh no,” Cassie breathed.

“And it was Barney.” Julia's eyes were moist.

“My God.”

“And Daddy said he would protect us. He said he'd do whatever he had to do.”

Nick cleared his throat; it wasn't a conversation he wanted to encourage. “Hey, girls,” he called. “Suppertime.”

“I've just been hearing about what happened to Barney,” Cassie said, looking up. “Sounds horrible.”

“It was rough,” Nick said. “For all of us.” He tried to sound a little brusque, to let Cassie know he didn't want the conversation to continue.

Luckily, Marta emerged from the kitchen just then and announced that dinner was ready.

“All right,” Nick said. “Let's go, girls. Marta, would you go upstairs and ask Sid Vicious to join us?”

As Marta went upstairs, Julia asked, “Who's Sid Vicious?”

“
You
know the Sex Pistols?” Cassie said to Nick, smiling.

“I think I saw part of some movie about them before I walked out,” Nick said. “I'm not a total geek, you know, no matter what my son thinks.”

“But who's Sid Vicious?” Julia asked again.

Lucas's heavy footsteps thundered as if a crate of bowling balls had been upended at the top of the stairs. At the landing he looked around, taking in Cassie's presence with an unblinking stare.

“Luke, I'd like you to meet my friend Cassie Stadler,” Nick said.

“Cassie
Stadler
?”

The way he said it made Nick's blood run cold.

“That's right,” he said quietly. “She'll be joining us for dinner.”

“I have to go out,” Lucas said.

“You have to stay here.”

“I have a homework project I need to do with some kids in class.”

Nick refrained from rolling his eyes. A science experiment, no doubt, designed to study the effect of
Cannabis sativa
on the psychophysiology of the American sixteen-year-old. “It isn't up for discussion,” he said. “Sit.”

“I like your music,” Cassie said to him.

Lucas looked at her with something just shy of hostility. “Yeah?” His tone of voice made it short for:
Yeah, what of it?

“If you call that music,” Nick said, feeling protective of Cassie. He gave her an apologetic shrug. “And when he isn't listening to this kind of noise, it's that gangsta rap stuff.”

“Gangsta rap stuff.” Cassie's mimicry was perfect, and devastating.

Lucas half snorted, half chortled.

“You'd prefer it if he listened to the Mamas and the Papas?” she asked. “Like some kind of Stepford son?”

Hey, no fair,
Nick wanted to say. “
I
didn't even listen to the Mamas and the Papas,” he said.

Cassie wasn't paying attention. She was focused on Lucas. “I'm curious. How long have you been into Slasher?”

“A few months,” Lucas said, surprised.

“Not a lot of people your age even know about Slasher. I bet you have all their albums.”

“Got downloads of some stuff they haven't released yet, and some bootleg demos, too.”

“Slasher would be a rock band,” Nick said, feeling obscurely excluded. “Tell me if I'm warm.”

“‘Slasher' is what they call Dad, you know,” Lucas said, pleased.

“I've heard. Anyway, Slasher's cool, but John Horrigan's kind of a jerk, I gotta tell you,” Cassie said, taking a step toward Lucas.

Lucas's eyes widened. “You
know
him? No fucking way.” An entirely different Lucas was making an appearance.

She nodded. “You heard about how he fell off the stage in Saratoga, during the Sudden Death tour? Well, he had some problems with his neck and back after that. Nothing helped. So I used to teach this yoga class in Chicago, where he's based. One day he shows up, and it's the first thing that really helps. Then he's asking me for extra sessions. And then…” She walked closer to Lucas and put her hand on his arm as she murmured the rest.

Lucas giggled, blushing.

“I can't believe it,” he said. “Horrigan
rocks
. So…” He glanced at Nick, at Julia, and lowered his voice. “What was he like?”

“Selfish,” Cassie said. “First I thought, bad technique. But then I realized it was just selfishness. Finally I just stopped returning his phone calls. Great guitar player, though.”

“Horrigan rocks.”

“What do you mean ‘selfish'?” Julia demanded, with a ten-year-old's unerring instinct for inappropriate subjects.

“We're just talking about who gets their guitar licks in,” Cassie said.

Lucas began to quake with silent laughter.

Julia started to laugh, too, for no particular reason. Then
Nick, too, began to laugh, and for the life of him he couldn't say why. Except that he couldn't remember when Lucas had last laughed.

Marta brought a platter of pork chops to the table, some sort of chili and cilantro thing on top. “More in the kitchen if anyone wants,” she said, sounding slightly peevish, or maybe just a little out of sorts.

“Everything smells delicious, Marta,” Nick said.

“And there's salad.” She pointed to two covered ceramic bowls. “And there's rice and there's ratatouille.”

“That's great, Marta,” said Cassie. “I think we're going to be okay.”

“I didn't make a dessert, but there's ice cream,” Marta added darkly. “And some fruit. Some bananas.”

“I make one hell of a banana flambé,” said Cassie. “Any takers?”

“Knock yourself out,” Lucas said, and grinned.

Perfect white teeth, clear blue eyes, almost perfect complexion. A beautiful kid. Nick felt a surge of paternal pride.
Three-day suspension
. They'd have to have The Talk. Just not now. It hung over him like a sword.

“All you need are bananas, some butter, brown sugar, and rum.”

“We've got all that,” Nick said.

“Oh, and a light. For a blaze of glory.” Cassie turned to Lucas. “Got a lighter, kiddo?”