Divided in Death

There would be payment, she promised herself. She couldn’t get it for the battered, terrified child in Dallas, she would do everything in her power to ensure Roarke didn’t, but she would, she damn well would get it for Reva Ewing and Chloe McCoy.

She ignored the tension at the base of her skull as she drove out of the garage. She resigned herself to the iron grip of it as she battled traffic.

Ad blimps blasted out their evening siren song of SALES, SALES, SALES. Fall blow-out in EVERY store at The Sky Mall. One hundred lucky customers would receive an In-Touch palm ‘link ABSOLUTELY FREE. While supplies lasted.

The noise of it rolled down over her, punctuated by the whispering clack of traffic copter blades, horns blasting against the pollution codes.

The tension began to sneak its way up, squeeze around her temples. When the headache kicked in full, she knew it would be a bitch.

All through the noise of New York, the throb of its violent heart, she heard the cool, composed voice of Sparrow speaking of disposal.

We are not disposable, she told herself when her hands gripped the wheel like iron. No matter how many bodies she’d stood over, no matter how many she’d ordered bagged, none of them, none of them, none of them were disposable.

She punched through the open gates of home, and prayed for ten minutes of silence, for ten minutes without the noise screaming in her head.

She rushed into the house, hoping to circumvent her nightly confrontation with Summerset, and was halfway up the stairs when she heard her name called.

She looked around and saw Mavis at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey. Didn’t know you were here.” Absently, she rubbed at the ache in her temple. “I was bolting, hoping to miss my nightly treat of Ugly Guy.”

“I told Summerset I wanted a few minutes. You look like you’re pretty busy, and tired. It’s probably a bad time.”

“No, that’s okay.” A dose of Mavis was a better cure than any blocker.

Just one more reminder of who she was, Eve thought. Of who she was now.

She assumed Mavis was in a conservative mood, as she was wearing nothing that glowed. The fact was, she didn’t know the last time she’d seen Mavis in something as ordinary as jeans and a T-shirt. Even if the T-shirt stopped a couple inches above the waist and was covered with red and yellow fringe, it was pretty tame on the Mavis Freestone scale of fashion.

Her hair was quietly brown, with only one red and yellow tuft poofed at the crown to liven it up.

She looked a little pale, Eve noticed as she started down, then realized Mavis was wearing no lip dye or eye enhancements.

“You been to church or something?” Eve asked.

“No.”

With a frown, Eve took another survey. “Wow, you’re sort of starting to poke out. I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and-”

She broke off in horror when Mavis burst into tears.

“Oh shit. Oh damn. What did I say? Am I not supposed to say you’re poking out?” Frantic, she patted Mavis’s shoulder. “I thought you wanted to poke out with the baby and all. Oh boy.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is something wrong with the… thing? The baby?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong,” she wailed. “Nothing. Everything. Dallas.” On a pathetic sob, she threw herself into Eve’s arms. “I’m so scared.”

“We should call a doctor.” She looked desperately around the foyer as if a medic would magically appear. In her panic, she actually wished, fiercely, for Summerset. “Or something.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” Mavis wept on Eve’s shoulder in great, gulping sobs. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“Sitting down’s good. You should sit down.” Lie down? Eve wondered. Be sedated? Oh, help me. “Maybe I should see if Roarke’s back yet.”

“I don’t want Roarke. I don’t want a man. I want you.”

“Okay, okay.” She eased Mavis onto a couch, tried not to be freaked when her friend all but crawled into her lap. “You’ve got me. Um… I was thinking about you today.”

“You were?”

“I had lunch at the Blue Squirrel, and… Oh, Mother of God,” she muttered when Mavis’s sobs increased. “Give me a hint, give me a clue. I don’t know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”

“No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.

“Ah… you and Leonardo have a fight?”

Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”

“Oh, that’s just crap.”

“It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”

“I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”

“If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”

If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.

“What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons-short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”

“Look at you now. You’ve got the most perfect human being in the universe crazy about you, you’ve got a mag career, and this baby thing going. Oh God, oh God, please don’t cry like that anymore,” she begged when Mavis dissolved again.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Yeah, you do. You know… stuff. Music stuff.” Such as it was. “Fashion stuff. And you know about people. Maybe you learned it on the grift, Mavis, but you know about people. How to make them feel good about themselves.”

“Dallas.” Mavis swiped her hands over her face. “I don’t know anything about babies.”

“Oh. Ah… but you’re listening to all those discs, right? And didn’t you say you were going to go to some class about it? Something?”

Not my area, she thought frantically. Definitely out of my orbit. Why the hell had she sent Peabody to Jamaica?

“What good’s any of that?” Exhausted from the crying jag, Mavis flopped back, resting her head on the pillows on the end of the couch. “All that’s just how to feed a baby, or change one, or pick them up so you don’t break them. Like that. How to do things. They can’t tell you how to know, how to feel. They can’t tell you how to be a mom, Dallas. I don’t know how to do it.”

“Maybe it just comes to you. You know, when you finally push it out, it just happens. And you know.”

“I’m scared I’m going to mess it up. That I’m not going to be able to do it right. Leonardo’s so happy and excited. He wants this so much.”

“Mavis, if you don’t-”

“I do. I want it more than anything in the world and beyond. That’s what’s so scary. Dallas, I don’t think I could stand it if I messed this up. If I have this baby and I don’t feel what I’m supposed to, don’t know what it needs-the real needs, not the food and the diapers. How will I know how to love it when nobody ever loved me?”

“I love you, Mavis.”

Mavis’s eyes filled again. “I know you do. And Leonardo. But it’s not the same. This…” She laid a hand on her belly. “It’s supposed to be different. I know it is, but I just don’t know how. I guess I panicked,” she said on a long sigh. “I couldn’t talk about it to Leonardo. I just needed you.”

She reached for Eve’s hand. “Some stuff you can only tell your best pal. I’m better now. Probably just hormones weirding me out.”

“You’re the first real friend I ever had,” Eve said slowly. “You had it stuck in your head to get close to me, and I just couldn’t shake you off. Before I knew it, there we were. We’ve seen each other through some rough spots.”

“Yeah.” Mavis sniffed, and the first hint of a watery smile touched her lips. “We have.”

“And because you’re my first real friend, I’d tell you if you were stupid. I’d tell you if I thought you’d make a crappy mother. I’d tell you if I thought you were making a mistake having the baby.”