Valley of Ashes (6 page)

I got it by the fifth ring.

“Hey Bunny,” said my husband, “how’re the girls?”

“Very happy and slathered with melting ice cream and crumbs,” I replied. “How are you? How’s New Orleans?”

“Exhausting. Sorry I haven’t called before this, but they’ve been running me ragged. I’m just back up in the room for a quick shower and then we’ve got another dinner with clients.”

“Anywhere good?”

“Some Cajun place. Which doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

Perry knocked Hadley over and she started to wail, so I stretched the cord of the kitchen phone as far as it could go out onto the back porch and shut the door behind me.

“I miss you, Intrepid Spouse,” I said.

“Listen, the car’s gonna be downstairs in a second. Did the girls like their presents? What’d we get them, anyway?”

“We” my ass.

“Parrish shoved
Where the Wild Things Are
into the middle of the birthday cake. I think that’s a thumbs-up.”

He laughed. “I have something great for you. Saw it in the airport and knew you had to have it.”

“Can’t wait.”

“I gotta run, kiss the girls for me?”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Have a great time tonight. Knock ’em dead.”

I was talking to the dial tone.

Just as I was walking back into the living room, our doorbell chimed.

I went to answer it, discovering a colleague of Dean’s on our front porch. Nice guy called Cary. We’d had him over to dinner a few times—our first pal in town, really. He and this chick Setsuko, the receptionist, were the only people at Jim’s office I dealt with at all regularly.

Cary and my husband had quickly become biking partners, on the commute to work most days and often recreationally on weekends. Maybe because they were both six-five, evenly matched for racing each other up and down the canyons.

“Hey there,” I said, stepping back from the doorway and waving him inside.

He shook his head, the motion making a hank of dark hair fall across his left eye. “I gotta run home in a minute, just wanted to stop by and wish the girls happy birthday.”

“How come you’re not in New Orleans with the rest of the gang?”

“Someone had to keep the home fires burning.”

“By which you mean Bittler’s being a vindictive asshole again?”

Bittler was Cary’s boss but not, thank God, Dean’s. Nasty little man.

“Exactly,” he said, laughing. “Left me behind with stacks of bullshit paperwork.”

“He’s just jealous… And for chrissake, Cary, it’s cold with this door open. Come inside and meet my mom and my best pal from college. Have a slice of birthday cake.”

“Well, if there’s
cake
,” he said, stepping into the front hall.

I closed the door. “Let me take your coat.”

“Take these, instead,” he said, producing two presents from behind his back.

They were wrapped in tinfoil, bachelor-style, but he’d sketched a pretty decent Elmo on one package and Big Bird on the other with a black Sharpie.

I took them out of his hands, complimented his artwork, and then stood on tiptoe to give him a peck on the cheek. “You are an
awesome
friend. Thank you.”

“And you told me you didn’t know
anyone
here yet,” said Ellis, waving good-bye to Cary from the front porch after he’d wolfed down both his slice of cake and the beer she’d insisted he split with her after that, paperwork or no paperwork.

I laughed. “Fold your tongue back into your mouth, you unrepentant slut.”

“Oh, like
you
don’t think he’s a hottie.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Well then,” she said, nodding, “no wonder you’re friends.”

“Mostly he goes biking with Dean.”

“Biking: the new golf,” she said. “Our generation’s excuse to leave your wife alone with the children all weekend.”

“Exactly.”

M
om and I stood on the front porch the next morning, kissing Ellis and brood good-bye before they headed out for the airport.

“
Ciao
, my darling—keep those cards and letters coming!” I said as we all broke free and Ellis started down the steps.

She paused, looking back up at me. “Speaking of, madwoman, I think you should try figuring out how to use email. You guys have an account, right?”

“Dean does, I think.”

“I mean, it’s great that you’ve finally started writing letters, but if you upgrade to the cutting-edge technology available to us in the late twentieth century, we could alleviate each other’s suburban angst and alienation without having to buy stamps.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

She blew me a kiss. “That’s all I ask.”

Mom and I kept up our farewell waving until she’d lurched away from the curb in her rented mini-van, homeward-bound.

“That one won’t stay married,” said Mom.

“Oh, come on. Not even for the health insurance?”

Mom laughed. “No way in hell. She’s too much like me.”

Parrish made a strange little noise and I was suddenly enveloped in a rather foul diaper-centric miasma.

“Good God,” said Mom. “What
have
you been feeding that poor child… liver and kimchee?”

Breathing through my mouth, I swung Parrish up onto the changing table’s squishy white-vinyl-sheathed mat, cooing “pop-pop-pop
pop
” as I tugged open the inseam snaps on her overalls.

“Pop!” she agreed.

I peeled back her diaper’s tape squares, gripping her crossed ankles in my left hand. “Bottoms up.”

Her Pamper brimmed with khaki-avocado gruel, rank as a Tangiers latrine.

“We may need to go ix-nay on the occoli-bray,
ma petite
.”

I’d just flipped said offending diaper into the step-bucket and grabbed a thick wad of butt-wipes when the goddamn phone rang.

Doing an expert swab of my daughter’s lower decks, I re-toed the garbage open while yanking the receiver up off the hook, then held it pressed between my left ear and shoulder. “Hello?”

“Is Madeline Dare available?” A man’s voice, Midwestern.

“This is she,” I said, keeping Parrish’s ass aloft as I groped blind for a fresh diaper.

“We want your eyeteeth,” said the guy.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your eyeteeth,” he said. “We want them.”

“What’re you, like, a fetishist? Jesus, I’m changing my kid’s
diaper
here, trying not to goddamn inhale.”

The guy laughed. “This is Jon McNally at the
Boulder New Times
. Your cover letter claimed you’d give your eyeteeth to write for us?”

Fuck me.

With a chain saw. Not gently.

I’d written that four months ago. But still…

“Wow,” I said, sliding the fresh dipe under Parrish’s ass. “I am now hugely deluged with an abject dump-truck-load of embarrassment.”

“Your writing clips are stellar, though.” He sounded amused.

“Um. Thank you.”

“We need a restaurant critic, maybe some local art coverage. Any way you could swing by this afternoon?”

Thank God for Mom.
“You bet.”

“Threeish?”

“Awesome,” I said, before hanging up.

I snapped Parrish’s overalls shut and swooped her off the changing table, twirling us both around three times with a giant grin on my face before plopping her down in the playpen.

The paper’s small gray building was flat-topped and rectilinear as soot-besmirched sugar cubes, precisely stacked. Things were sparser, this far south of downtown: My neighborhood’s stately trees were testimony to the nineteenth-century East Coast diaspora’s arboreal homesickness.

Someone panted “on your right!” and a fish-school of stringy marathon types jostled me hard on the sidewalk, tropical in their Day-Glo Lycra.

I checked myself for errant chunks of toddler spoodge in the
New Times
’s shiny glass front doors and hustled inside.

“I’m here to meet with Jon McNally?” I said to the chick behind the bullpen desk nearest the top of the entry stairs.

She was a bit older than me, whole-grain buxom with thick dark braids wrapped around her head.

“He’s in that corner cubicle, over by the windows.” She smiled, pointing. “I think he’s still on the phone, but if he’s expecting you just go in and grab a chair.”

“Cool. Thank you so much.”

I felt ridiculous in my Manhattan-interview pearl earrings and black blazer. The indigenous dress code was grunge flannel and high-tech hiking sneakers, like they were all just back from a group-bonding rappel off the roof of the Hotel Boulderado. I pictured GORP-and-Gatorade office parties, with Secret Santas exchanging pitons, carabiners, and foil hiking-trip packets of freeze-dried beef Stroganoff.

I poked my head around the corner cubicle’s doorway. McNally had his feet up on the desk, a phone to his ear, and his beat-to-crap leather chair tilted as far back as it could conceivably go.

Any self-respecting wife or girlfriend would’ve long since barbered the man’s loose gray curls while he slept, with poultry shears.

“Benny, come
on
,” he was saying.

His was face sun-browned as oiled teak except around the eyes: the old reverse-panda ski tan. He caught sight of me and smiled, palm across the receiver’s mouthpiece as he silently mouthed
Madeline?

I nodded and he held up an index finger to say he’d be just another minute, then pointed toward two chairs alongside his desk.

I took the one near the window, checking out a picture of him hanging by an all-too-thin rope off this crazy-vertical rock formation south of Boulder: the Devil’s Thumb.

Death-wish mountain-climber dude. Perfect.

“
Three
fires last week and you’re telling me there’s no connection?” He shook his head, raggedy locks bouncing. “Don’t fuck with me here, Benny. You never could lie for shit.”

I laughed, McNally smiled at me, and the voice on the other end of the line got a whole lot louder.

He tilted his chair farther back, eliciting a creak of protest. “Of course I wouldn’t jeopardize any ongoing investigation. You know me better than that, for chrissake.”

He leaned forward, grasping for a notepad and pen that were just out of reach.

I pushed them closer, and he smiled his thanks.

“
Fine
, Benny… off the record. But you’re gonna tell me everything in the end. You always do.”

I stifled a second laugh and McNally shot me a conspiratorial smirk.

He covered the mouthpiece again, looked at me. “You want coffee or anything?”

I shook my head. “I’d rather just listen, if that’s cool.”

That got me a wink.

He bit the cap off his felt-tip, spiral pad flipped open against one
raised knee. “So you’ve got a garage, two cars out on Baseline, and now the gas station.”

He started jotting. “Right… right… Any link to those brush fires last month?”

A squeal of protest from the other end of the line.

“Don’t get your panties in a knot, Benjamin…”

Rapid chatter in response to that.

“Come on, it’s the classic pattern—start with a couple of fields… shove burning cardboard under a few doors, see if anything catches… but we both know he’s fucking with you.”

Benny sighed, loud and clear from wherever he was in real life.

“What do you have on accelerants?”

Silence.

“Benny,” said McNally, “the goddamn cars were serious escalation. And that gas station would’ve been a nightmare if you hadn’t caught it so fast. Kudos by the way, seriously.”

Another sigh as he looked up at me, his expression telegraphing gratitude for my patience.

“Look,” he told Benny, “you and me both know where this train’s headed. We’re not talking about some teenage stoner playing Ring-Around-the-Dumpster with a fistful of matchbooks.”

His pal’s Charlie-Brown-grown-up
wah-wah
grew stentorian at that. Downright affronted.

“
Benny
… He’s already tipped his hand, this guy. There’s gonna be a history. Not here, but somewhere. This isn’t after-school fledgling angst, it’s a grown-up getting the lay of the land, checking to see who’s paying attention.”

More phone noise.

“Right… right…”

A question.

“Of
course
not. Come on, how long we known each other?”

McNally tilted back again, tucking the pen behind his ear. “But I find out you gave those smug
Daily Camera
pricks a damn thing before me, you’re blackballed straight out of poker night.”

That got him a good laugh from Benny.

“Yeah, yeah… kiss Ellen for me. Tell her I’m still waiting to sweep her off into the sunset the minute she realizes how little you deserve her.”

He sat up straight and dropped the phone in its cradle. “Sorry about that, Madeline.”

I shrugged. “Hey, permission to eavesdrop on talent is always a treat.”

I could tell he liked me for that.

“You’ve known this guy awhile,” I said.

“Benny? We were smoke-jumpers together, summers back in college.”

“Leaping out of a plane when the ground’s on fire? Now, there’s a job requiring
serious
balls.”

“Benny stuck with it, went through the academy. Now he’s a muckety-muck here. Just made chief.”