The Black Widow (8 page)

He checked the concession lines, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

Now that they’re face-to-face, he still doesn’t know what to do. But he has to say something.

“I just . . . I’m surprised to see you at the game . . . I mean, you were never a big Yankees fan, so . . .”

“Yeah? How do you know I haven’t gone over to the dark side?”

“What?”

“Red Sox Nation.” She manages a weak smile. “It was a joke.”

“Oh!” He laughs. Belatedly, but with relief.

It’s been so long since he’s seen Gaby, he’s no longer accustomed to her sharp wit. Or is it that she’d lost her sense of humor long before, when he last saw her?

This person isn’t quite the old Gaby he used to know, but she isn’t the angry, brittle woman he’d last seen either.

“You look good,” she tells him.

“So do you. The same.”

The same . . . what does that even mean? The same as what? The same as when?

She doesn’t look the same as she did when he left. Nor does she look the same as she did when he fell in love with her.

Back then she was a young woman with a heavy mane of untamed curls, a quick smile, a quicker laugh, and an unlined face that he assumed had never known true heartache.

Pushing the memories away, he asks Gaby, “So how have you been?”

“Fine. You?”

“Fine.”

They stare at each other, but not uncomfortably. That surprises him as much as anything else.

After all this time, after all that’s happened, you’d think they would be cringing and making excuses to walk off in opposite directions. But he doesn’t want to move, even though something is happening down on the field—the crowd is up and cheering, organ music is playing jauntily, and a quick glance reveals that there’s a Yankee on base. “Maybe we can talk,” he suggests. “You know, not . . .”

“Here?”

“Right. Not here. Someplace . . .”

“Else?” she supplies, dark eyes smiling.

He nods. “Yeah.”

This is not the first time she’s ever had him tongue-tied.

Years ago, when they first met, he took one look at the raven-haired knockout in a bright orange-red tank suit and was infatuated. They were both in college then, undergoing the city’s rigorous lifeguard training program after having passed the initial qualifying test.

All the trainees bonded quickly during their demanding weeks at the practice facility, but there was little time for flirting. Their numbers dwindled as one waterlogged and exhausted candidate after another dropped out. Those who survived—Gaby and Ben among them—were hired. They found themselves working together at Orchard Beach in the Bronx.

The guards were a tight-knit bunch—a summer family that was occasionally dysfunctional, as most families are. They worked together by day, played together by night. Some played harder than others. Ben wasn’t that guy. Gabriela wasn’t that girl.

“You’re not a partier, huh?” she guessed when they found themselves sitting away from a decidedly rowdier bunch at the first get-together of the season.

“I don’t even like the word.”

“Party?”

“Not as a verb.”

The future editor was mildly impressed by his grammatical reference. Later, he teased her that she initially thought he was just a dim-witted beefcake type. She swore it wasn’t true.

“I liked you from the moment I first saw you,” she said. “I was hoping you’d ask me out.”

He did—finally. But his parents had taught him early on that it’s a good idea not to jump headlong into any situation.

“No hay nada tan atrevido como la ignorancia,”
his mother used to caution him.

Translation: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

“Just use your head, Benito. Watch your step and don’t be a fool.”

His college roommate had similar advice when he came to visit one weekend that first summer.

“You’ll screw up the friendship if you sleep with her,” Peter told him. “Bad idea.”

“I said I want to ask her out, not sleep with her.”

“Eventually, you’ll sleep with her and that will make her your girlfriend because that’s the kind of guy you are. And eventually you’ll break up with her.”

“Because that’s the kind of guy I am?”

“Because everyone breaks up eventually, son.”

They were in college. That was how it seemed.

“If you want to keep her in your life—don’t do it,” Peter counseled him.

Maybe he should have taken Peter’s advice, ignored his own instincts, and stuck with the friendship. If he had, Gaby might still be in his life. As a very good friend. Like some of the old lifeguard gang he stays in touch with online, touching base every once in a while with cursory updates about their lives now, or to add a nostalgic comment whenever someone posts an old photo on a social networking site . . .

No. That’s not how he wants it to be with Gaby. She wasn’t his friend. She was his wife.

In an ideal world, she’d still be both.

“How about if I text you?” he asks. “And we can set up a time to talk. Just . . . you know, to catch up. It’s been a long time.”

“It has.” Is it his imagination or does she sound—and look—wistful?

“Okay. So I’ll text. Same number?”

“Yes. Wait—no. I switched carriers when I moved, so the number changed. Maybe I gave it to you . . .”

“You didn’t.” His tone is sharper than he intended. But the fact that she changed her phone number and didn’t bother to update him doesn’t sit well with him. It means that for all these months apart, he couldn’t have even gotten in touch with her if he wanted to.

“Do you have anything to write on?” she asks him. “I left my bag at my seat.”

“No. I left mine at the office. I have my phone, though, if you want to just call it now so I’ll have the number.” He pulls his iPhone out of his pocket, glad he always has it close at hand. Not only is it his communication lifeline, but it’s replaced his iPod, camera, date book, watch . . .

“Hey—I have the same phone in the same exact case,” Gaby notices. “But it’s in my bag back at my seat. Just send me an e-mail at my work address. That hasn’t changed.”

“Or I can message you through InTune,” he says, and wishes that he hadn’t.

The light goes out of her eyes. “I don’t check that very often.”

“Me either. I’ll just send an e-mail. Okay?”

“Okay. Oh, and Ben—I still have your box.”

“What?”

“From your father’s house. Your mementos. From when you were a kid. You know . . .”

He does know. He thought he’d lost the box in the move. “I figured it accidentally got thrown away.”

“No, I have it.”

“That’s great. I thought it was gone forever. A lifetime’s worth of memories—just like that. I’ll have to come get it. Thank you for . . .”
For not throwing it away.

“No problem.” She shifts her weight. “I have to get back to . . . you know. My seat.”

Right. Her seat.

“Good seeing you, Gabriela. I’ll be in touch.”

“I hope so.” With a little wave, she walks away.

Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, Alex stares at the plastic stick for a long time, willing it to change.

Of course it doesn’t.

One stripe. Just one.

The test is negative.

Not pregnant.

With a curse, she tosses the stick blindly toward the wastebasket beside the sink and leans forward, resting her forehead against her knees.

She’d thought for sure it would happen this time. She’d thought he was the one. He looks so much like Carmen, even acts like him—the way he tilts his head, the way he narrows his dark brows when he’s angry . . .

And he’s so angry. Whenever she’s with him, even in the dim light, she can see the fury etched on his features, can feel it crackling in the air.

He hates me.

That’s pretty clear.

They all wind up hating her.

But it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to love her, or even like her. She doesn’t need their affection or their sympathy or understanding. She just needs . . .

“My baby,” she whispers. “I need my baby. My boy . . .”

Now it will be almost two weeks before she can try again. Even if it works, almost a year before she’ll hold her son in her arms again.

She can wait, though. As long as she knows it’s going to happen.

“Over my dead body,” Carlos Diaz had the nerve to say before, clearly wanting her to know that his desire for her has completely withered away.

Be that as it may . . . he won’t have much choice in the matter.

He has two more chances.

Three strikes and you’re out.

Carlos will understand that. He wrote in his online profile that he loves baseball. He’s a Yankees fan. One more thing he has in common with Carmen.

And with my baby . . .

My boy.

Dante.

It was Carmen who chose the name for their son. In Spanish, he said, it means “enduring.”

Alex lifts her head slowly, then gets to her feet and sighs heavily.

She splashes water on her face, standing at the scarred porcelain sink where she taught her son to brush his teeth and wash his face before bed, standing on a step stool. She was always so worried he was going to burn himself, because Carmen insisted on keeping the old home’s ancient hot water heater turned up high.

Memories.

How she hated this small hall bathroom—the only one in the house—when they first moved in! Hated the old-fashioned fixtures, olive-green subway tile, rectangular bathtub with the cheap glass sliding doors framed by too much sloppy, rubbery white caulking.

Carmen was going to redo it—one of the many things on the household to-do list. But he was always busy working, and when he wasn’t, he was focused on designing their dream house.

He never got around to doing much of anything to this one before—

Well, now it doesn’t matter.

Alex jerks the faucets, dries her hands on a limp towel that’s been hanging there for God knows how long, and leaves the bathroom.

Walking down the short hall that connects the two bedrooms, she glimpses a streak of black fur scooting across the threshold into Dante’s room. She’d forgotten and left the door ajar.

“No, Gato!” she calls. “Don’t you mess things up in there!”

Like the bathroom, like the rest of the house—except the basement—it’s been unchanged now for . . . how many years? Five? Seven? Ten?

She can’t be sure. Sometimes, it seems like yesterday that she last saw her son here in the house; other times, he’s part of a past so distant she can barely recall it.

All she knows for certain is that the room hasn’t been changed since the last time Dante left it: Legos on the floor, a bookmarked book on the pillow, crayons and a thick stack of drawing paper on the desk,

Calling, “ ’Bye, Mom,” as he went, he walked out the door and down the stairs.

“Tell Dad to drive carefully,” she called after him. “And be sure you buckle your seat belt!”

It was snowing like crazy that February morning. The roads were slick.

She wasn’t there to watch as her son—her baby—strapped himself into the passenger’s seat beside his father. Carmen was on his way to work; he was going to drop Dante at school. He was in kindergarten then: five years old.

That snowy morning so long ago was the same as every other weekday morning, except . . .

Except it was the last morning. There would never be another morning.

Gato is curled up on Dante’s bed when Alex steps into the room. He stares at her with unblinking green eyes, looking a bit smug.

“Good kitty! You didn’t mess it up.” Alex steps carefully around the Lego construction on the floor: a nearly completed skyscraper rises amid heaps of stray pieces on the braided rug.

“Can you help me finish it, Mom?”

“Sure I can.”

“Let’s make it skinnier at the top just like the Chrysler Building, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie. Okay . . .”

“I’m going to build the tallest building in New York when I grow up.”

When he wasn’t building something, or sorting the baseball cards that still sit in binders on the bookshelf, he was playing the electric guitar Carmen had brought back from one of his trips.

“Why electric?” she’d asked Carmen the first time that discordant music blasted through the house when they were trying to sleep. “Why not acoustic?”

“That’s cowboy music. You know we like good old rock and roll,” Carmen said with a grin.

She learned to live with it—and it wasn’t discordant for long. Her son had talent, real musical talent.

“Mom, I’m writing a song. You’ve got to hear it! Are you ready?”

“I’m listening . . .”

“I’m going to be a rock star when I grow up, Mom.”

“A rock star who plays baseball and builds skyscrapers?”

“Can I be that?”

“You can be anything, Dante. Anything you want to be.”

“I want to be everything, Mom!”

“You
are
everything. You’re everything to me . . .”

Alex sits down at the desk, careful not to let the chair bump the Lego towers. She takes a fresh sheet of paper from the stack and reaches for the box of crayons. She’ll start with the red, as always.

Gaby arrives back at her seat just as another batter comes up to the plate.

“Long line in the ladies’ room?” Ryan asks without taking his eyes off the field.

“How’d you guess?” She settles back and feigns interest in the scoreboard. “What’d I miss?”

“Yankees scored a run. Two outs. Two men on.”

She pretends to be absorbed in the ball game—cheering when the crowd cheers, groaning when the crowd groans—but her thoughts are on the past.

When she was a little girl, Abuela would warn her not to run around playing stoopball right after dinner because she’d get a cramp. She did it anyway, of course—egged on by Jaz, who never followed the rules—and learned that Abuela was right. The pain, right below her rib cage, was so sharp she could barely speak, barely breathe.

That was what it was like after Josh died. Only the pain never subsided. She couldn’t do anything—couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t think—without being aware of that all-consuming pain . . .