Never Saw It Coming: (An eSpecial from New American Library) (24 page)

Six

Nine months earlier, Allison Fitch lifts her head an inch off the pillow on her pullout couch and looks at the digital clock readout on the DVD player on the other side of the small living room. Nearly noon. She tries to remember to close the blinds when she gets home from a late shift so the sun won’t wake her in the morning, but unless you tape black paper to the entire window, or got some of those heavy curtains that block out everything, you really can’t keep the rays out.

God, it’s a sunny day out there today. She pulls the covers up over her head.

She’s pretty sure she’s alone right now in the apartment she shares with Courtney Walmers, who has the bedroom. Unless you found some place that was rent-controlled, there was no way you could live in this city by yourself, certainly not on what a waitress made. Courtney has an office job, down on Wall Street, so she’s out of the apartment by eight. Allison usually starts her shift around five. Sometimes, if Courtney’s able to sneak home from work early, they’ll actually see each other for five minutes.

Allison hopes this isn’t one of those days. Seeing Courtney is not something she looks forward to. She knows Courtney wants to have a
talk
with her—a real,
serious
talk—and it is a conversation Allison does not want to have. Because she knows exactly what it’s about.

Money.

It’s always about money. At least, that’s all Courtney has wanted to talk about for the last couple of months. Ever since Allison hasn’t been meeting her share of the rent, and other expenses, like the cable and Internet. Courtney is threatening to cancel the service altogether, although Allison is sure she’d never follow through. Courtney lives on Facebook when she’s home. When she’s at work, too, from what Allison gathers. Why that trading company hasn’t fired her ass, Allison has no idea. At least when she goes to the bar, she
works
. She works her
ass
right off, that’s what she does, waiting tables, dealing with asshole customers, taking abuse from the kitchen who can’t get a single fucking order straight to save their lives.

Oh, she earns her money, Allison does. She just doesn’t have enough of it. She’s paid only half her share of the rent the last three months. Hasn’t replaced anything in the fridge. Tells Courtney she’ll pay her back when she can.

Courtney is all,
Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I see it
.

The bitch.

She makes way more money than Allison, and for what? Sitting on her butt in a nice cushy chair in front of a computer all day, doing trades, making money for other people. Allison doesn’t even understand half of what it is her roommate does.

Things really escalated after Allison’s call home a couple of months ago. Allison, talking to her mom back in Dayton, telling her the Big Apple wasn’t quite everything she’d hoped it would be.

“Oh, sweetheart, you should come home,” her mother said.

“Mom, I’m not coming back.”

“Well, they need people at Target. There was a thing in the paper that they’re hiring.”

“I’m not coming back to Dayton to work in Target,” Allison said.

“Have you met anyone?”

“Mom.”

“I figured, you working in a restaurant, there’d be lots of opportunities to meet some young man.”

“Please, Mom.” Why does she always come around to this? Why the hell does her Mom think she left Dayton in the first place? To get away from questions like this, that’s why.

“You can’t blame me for hoping my little girl will find a guy who’ll make her happy. Your father and I were very happy, you know. We had a good life together. You’re thirty-one, you know. You’re not getting any younger.”

She needed to throw her mother a bone. “I
have
met someone,” Allison said. It helped that it was actually true. It’s always easier to spin out a story when there’s a grain of truth in it, especially when it’s a story for her mother. She has met someone, and they’ve spent some time together. Some pretty
hot
times. The whole thing started with a single glance.

Sometimes two people looked at each other and they just
knew
.

Allison sensed her mother brightening on the other end of the line. “Who?” she asked excitedly. “Tell me all about him.”

“It’s too early,” Allison said. “I’m just going to see how it plays out. If this is the one, I’ll let you know. Okay? No third degree. Right now, I’ve got more serious things to worry about.” Setting the hook.

“Like what?”

“Well, the customers, they’re just not tipping the way they used to. And business is down. People are eating and drinking at home. And there was the whole thing with the chipped tooth.”

“Chipped tooth? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t I tell you about that?” Of course she hadn’t. She’d only just thought of it now. There was no chipped tooth.

“You never said a word. When did you chip your tooth? How’d that happen?”

“Okay, so, there’s this girl I work with, her name is Elaine? And she’s a total idiot. She’s coming through the crowd with a full tray of drinks, right? And she’s weaving in between these banker shitheads who—”

“Ally.”

“Sorry. These banker numbnuts, and she raises her tray up just as I’m coming from the other direction, and the edge of it smacks right into my mouth and the drinks go all over the place and when I go into the ladies room to look in the mirror I’ve got this little chip in my front tooth.”

“Oh my God,” Allison’s mother said. “That’s just awful.”

“It wasn’t huge, but every time I ran my tongue over it, it was like this sharp point, you know? So, anyway, I went to this dentist up on Madison and he fixed it and I swear, if you looked at it with a magnifying glass you’d never be able to tell.”

Of that, Allison was certain.

“That must have cost you a
fortune
,” her mother said.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like the waitstaff have a dental plan,” she said, and laughed. “But don’t worry about it, I’ll manage somehow. Courtney’ll understand, you know, if she has to wait a while for my share.”

“Oh, honey, you can’t do that to your roommate. That’s just not fair. I’m getting out my checkbook right now.”

She put a thousand dollars in the mail that day.

When the check arrived Allison immediately deposited it in her checking, bringing the balance to $1,421.87. Not enough to pay Courtney back everything Allison owed her, but at least she could make a start at it. But the longer Allison looked at the balance on her ATM slip, the less certain she was that she wanted to give any of that money to Courtney.

That “someone” she had mentioned to her mother was going to the Bahamas in two weeks, and had invited Allison to come along. Nothing had been said about paying her way, however, so Allison had said sorry, can’t afford it.

All that had changed with the money to fix her chipped tooth.

So she booked a week in the Bahamas.

That’s when the shit really hit the fan.

Courtney said, when she saw Allison packing her bags before grabbing a cab to JFK, “Are you kidding me? Tell me you’re fucking kidding me. You’re into me for more than two grand and somehow you’ve got enough for a vacation? You want to explain that to me?”

“It’s not
my
money,” Allison said. “My mom gave me the money for it.”

Courtney said, “Excuse me?”

“I haven’t saved up enough money from my job to pay you back yet. That’s what I’m going to pay you with.
This
money, from my
mom
, for my
vacation
, is totally
separate
.” It made perfect sense to Allison. Courtney could be so thick sometimes. Hard to believe she worked in the financial industry. You’d think she could get her head around it.

“I don’t believe you,” Courtney said. “I don’t fucking
believe
you.”

“Look, I really
need
this trip,” Allison said. “How many places you been to in the last three years? Huh? Munich, for one. And then you went on that trip to Mexico. And what about London? You were there like five months ago. In all that time, where have I been?”

“What do my trips have to do with anything?”

“It’s not fair that you’re always getting to go someplace and I’m not. I can’t believe how mean you are sometimes. I’ve gotta go. My flight leaves in like three hours.”

Courtney must have sent her at least a hundred texts and emails while she was in the Bahamas. Ranting about what a selfish, self-centered, self-consumed bitch Allison was. It nearly ruined her holiday, her phone chirping and dinging all the time.

But it was still worth it.

When Allison returned, Courtney said she was going to kick her out, but Allison said she’d have to think twice about that, because both their names were on the lease. Allison put on a huge song and dance that she really, really,
really
was going to pay her back, that she was going to ask her mother for some money, that she was sure she could come up with a pretty good story, one that would touch her mother’s heart, and there’d be a check in the mail within the week.

That was a week ago. There isn’t likely to be a check in the mail today. She hasn’t called her mother yet and asked her for money. Allison thinks it’s too soon after the tooth story. She figures, if she can come up with an equally compelling tale, she’ll try it on her mother in another week or so.

Maybe a bedbug story. Everyone’s shitting their pants about bedbugs. She’ll tell her mother she has them in her building, that she and Courtney must move to a hotel for a week while the pest control people come in and spray and kill the little bastards. And they’re telling Allison, you have to throw out all your clothes, the bugs may be hiding in them, go buy yourself some new duds.

Allison’s mother has already been e-mailing her every news item she comes across about bedbugs. This story will play very nicely into her fears.

Her mother will send money. Allison is sure of it. She just has to keep herself from spending it on something else before she gives it to Courtney.

Allison’s cell, sitting on the coffee table, rings.

She comes up from under the covers, guesses it will be Courtney, and damned if it isn’t. She wants to ignore it, but Courtney will just keep trying her, so she reaches over to the table, grabs the phone, and puts it to her ear.

“Yeah,” she says.

“It’s been a week,” Courtney says. “Did the money come from your mother?”

“Not yet. I mean, I haven’t gone down to check the mail, but I don’t think it’s going to be here.”

“Why would that be, Allison?”

“Okay, look, I haven’t called her yet. I was trying to think of a good story for her, and I’ve finally got one, so I’m going to call her today. So, like, in three or four days, the money should be here.”

“Honest to God, you are
such
a piece of work.”

“I really mean it,” she says. “I’m going to pay you everything I owe you.”

“I don’t care whether you’re on the lease. If you don’t pay your share you’re going to come home and find all your shit in the hall. I swear to God. I’m already looking around for another roommate.”

“Jesus, what the hell kind of friend
are
you?”

“What kind of friend am
I
? What would you do if you were me?”

“Okay, look, if I haven’t paid you by this time next week, you won’t have to kick me out. I’ll leave, and you can bring someone else in here.”

“A week,” Courtney says skeptically.

“I swear. Cross my heart and all that shit.”

“I’m an idiot, a total fucking idiot,” Courtney says and hangs up.

There’s no sense trying to go back to sleep now. Allison sits up in bed, reaches for the remote on the coffee table, and clicks on the television. As NY1 comes on with the latest news roundup, she grabs her phone again to see whether she has any emails or Facebook messages.

She’ll definitely call her mother this afternoon. First, though, she’ll go online and read up on bedbugs so she has plenty of convincing details to work into her story. She thinks, in a way, her mother may even know she’s being taken advantage of, but it’s not nearly as unsettling as those times in the past when Allison disappeared. Just took off for a few months. At least, when Allison hits her up for money, her mother knows where she is.

Allison glances from the phone to the TV and back again. Hears something about showers in the afternoon, clearing by evening.

She opens Safari on her phone and does a search for “bedbugs.” Holy shit, only about a million stories. She narrows the search by adding the words “New York” and just about as many results come back.

Glances back at the TV. Someone has jumped onto the subway tracks on the 6th Avenue line. Back to her phone. Thinks, maybe get the name of an actual bug-killing company that the landlord’s hiring, give the story that extra ring of authenticity.

Looks back up at the TV. Is about to look away when she thinks she catches a glimpse of a face she recognizes.

WTF?

Her mouth drops open in stunned silence as a reporter standing on the sidewalk outside some downtown office building says, “Expected to be a formidable challenger to the incumbent governor, Morris Sawchuck, seen here with his wife, Bridget, is perceived as being much stronger on law and order issues, and has made no secret that he would like to see a return to more traditional values—it’s a major plank in his campaign platform—although he has not said exactly how he could go about restoring them if he’s elected governor. He’s said to have some very powerful people working behind the scenes for him, including the former vice president of the United States. Back to you—”

She turns off the set and stares into space for a moment, trying to take it all in. She still has the image in her head, of the couple getting out of the back of a town car, waving to supporters, going into a building to give a speech or something.

“Sawchuck?” Allison whispers. “The guy’s a goddamn politician?”

She puts both hands on her head, runs her fingers out through her shoulder-length black hair, and lets out a very long breath.

“Fuck me,” she says to herself.