Hardscrabble Road(26)

Hermoine’s office was a little closetlike space near the door that led to the back alley where the garbage was taken out. Hermoine went in first, and sat behind her desk. She waved Ellen to a chair.

“If you have an emergency, we can do something for you, of course,” she said. “But it really helps if you know beforehand. I know that’s not always possible—”

Ellen hadn’t taken the chair. “It isn’t that kind of an emergency. It’s just. Things.”

Hermoine licked her lips. If Ellen hadn’t known it was impossible, she’d have said the woman was annoyed. Hermoine was never annoyed. “What things?” Hermoine said.

It was, Ellen thought, the sound of the human voice she needed. It didn’t matter if it was annoyed or not. “Things,” she said. “I was sitting in the apartment. I was showered and dressed and all done up and that was it. The whole place felt like it was pressing in on me. I don’t think I’ve been out much at all since Drew went into rehab, and it’s more than twenty days before he comes back, and I thought I was going crazy.”

“Ah.”

“And I felt—wrong. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“I felt bad. Guilty, I guess. Because except for the loneliness, I hate to say this, but except for the loneliness it’s been better with him gone than with him here. It’s not him, you understand. I like having him around. It’s all the stuff that goes on. The people who shout at him. The people who call. You wouldn’t believe the people who call. I can’t answer my own phone. They call and swear at me.”

“At you?”

“About Drew,” Ellen said. “They don’t really care about me. It’s all about Drew. It really is. The ones who stop me on the street are the same way. And of course I don’t know what they’re talking about, and then they get mad at me and call me names, and half the names I don’t know either. It’s not Drew himself, you know. It’s the show.”

“It must have calmed down some, then, since Mr. Harrigan has been … away.”

“Not really,” Ellen said. There was the chair, empty. Hermoine expected her to sit in it. Ellen usually tried to do what was expected of her, because it was easier, and it meant that fewer people got mad at her. She sat. “They come up to me and talk to me about the rehab now. They call him a hypocrite. They call me a hypocrite, although I don’t get that. How do they know what I believe in to know that I’m a hypocrite? I never say anything about anything in public. I just wear a dress and smile. And then there are the people from his office. They’re always trying to tell me things. They’re trying to tell me Drew is going to go to jail, except now they say that he won’t.”

“Now?” Hermoine sounded puzzled. Ellen was glad that she no longer sounded annoyed. “Why now?”

“Because that man has disappeared,” Ellen said. “That awful homeless man. I never get his name straight. The one who got Drew the drugs. The one who was suing him. Can you imagine that? He got Drew the drugs and he was suing Drew for ruining his life or something, and the lawyers were all taking it seriously. It’s like Drew says. The courts are out of control. They’re run by a bunch of liberal idiots who want to destroy the country and turn it over to the UN to run.”

“Ah,” Hermoine said.

Ellen shifted in the chair. It was a terrible chair. She had never been in Hermoine’s office before. She thought it was not outfitted in the expectation that Hermoine would have visitors. Or, at least, not visitors from among her clients, who were used to comfortable chairs.

“Anyway,” Ellen said, “he’s disappeared, or something. Do you want to know what woke me up this morning? My cell phone rang. The number is supposed to be a secret. It’s not under my name. The only people who know what it is are Drew and a few of his assistants at the office. But somebody got it. And it rang.”

“And?”

“And whoever it was accused me of having that terrible man killed,” Ellen said, and suddenly she was so near tears she couldn’t keep them back. It made no sense. She hadn’t felt like crying when the call had come this morning. She hadn’t felt like crying at any time since. At first, she’d merely been angry. Then she’d been afraid. Then she’d been—claustrophobic, that was the word. “They said Drew had had it done, had hired a hit man, from rehab. Can you imagine? He’s not even allowed to talk to me from rehab, and he’s supposed to be hiring hit men to chase homeless people around and have them killed. It was awful. You wouldn’t believe how awful it was. And I was afraid he’d call back. So I put the cell phone down the garbage disposal.”