Secrets & Surprises Read Online Free Page A

hand.
    It had been a hard day. Stephanie’s appointment at the abortion clinic had been at eight in the morning. Karen had slept in the apartment with them the night before, on the sofa. Stephanie slept in his bed, and he slept on the floor. None of them had slept much. In the morning they all went to the abortion clinic. Nick had intended to go to work in the afternoon, but when they got back to the apartment he didn’t think it was right for him to leave Stephanie. She went back to the bedroom, and he stretched out on the sofa and fell asleep. Before he slept, Karen sat on the sofa with him for a while, and he told her the story of his second mugging. When he woke up, it was four o’clock. He called his office and told them he was sick. Later they all watched the television news together. After that, he offered to go out and get some food, but nobody was hungry. That’s when he went out and called Sammy.
    Now Stephanie went back into the bedroom. She said she was tired and she was going to work on a crossword puzzle in bed. The phone rang. It was Petra. She and Nick talked a little about a new apartment she was thinking of moving into. “I’m sorry for being so cold-blooded the other night,” she said. “The reason I’m calling is to invite myself to your place for a drink, if that’s all right with you.”
    “It’s not all right,” he said. “I’m sorry. There are some people here now.”
    “I get it,” she said. “Okay. I won’t bother you any more.”
    “You don’t understand,” he said. He knew he had not explained things well, but the thought of adding Petra to the scene at his apartment was more than he could bear, and he had been too abrupt.
    She said goodbye coldly, and he went back to his chair and fell in it, exhausted.
    “A girl?” Karen said.
    He nodded.
    “Not a girl you wanted to hear from.”
    He shook his head no. He got up and pulled up the blind and looked out to the street. The boy he had said hello to was playing with a hula hoop. The hula hoop was bright blue in the twilight. The kid rotated his hips and kept the hoop spinning perfectly. Karen came to the window and stood next to him. He turned to her, wanting to say that they should go and get the Thunderbird, and as the night air cooled, drive out of the city, smell honeysuckle in the fields, feel the wind blowing.
    But the Thunderbird was sold. She had told him the news while they were sitting in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. The car had needed a valve job, and a man she met in Bermuda who knew all about cars had advised her to sell it. Coincidentally, the man—a New York architect—wanted to buy it. Even as Karen told him, he knew she had been set up. If she had been more careful, they could have been in the car now, with the key in the ignition, the radio playing. He stood at the window for a long time. She had been conned, and he was more angry than he could tell her. She had no conception—she had somehow never understood—that Thunderbirds of that year, in good condition, would someday be worth a fortune. She had told him this way: “Don’t be upset, because I’m sure I made the right decision. I sold the car as soon as I got back from Bermuda. I’m going to get a new car.” He had moved in his chair, there in the clinic. He had had an impulse to get up and hit her. He remembered the scene in New Haven outside the bar, and he understood now that it was as simple as this: he had money that the black man wanted.
    Down the street the boy picked up his hula hoop and disappeared around the corner.
    “Say you were kidding about selling the car,” Nick said.
    “When are you going to stop making such a big thing over it?” Karen said.
    “That creep cheated you. He talked you into selling it when nothing was wrong with it.”
    “Stop it,” she said. “How come your judgments are always right and my judgments are always wrong?”
    “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I’m sorry I said