I bit.
“Well, I cannot deny that I behaved like a jerk at breakfast. I apologize.”
“I accept, but if dinner at this restaurant is payback, you can meet me at the diner tomorrow and be as big of a jerk as you want.”
“Thanks, Doc, but I can’t afford that kind of therapy.”
I grabbed my wineglass again. Cheryl reached over and gently removed it from my hand. “How much liquid courage do you need to tell me what’s bothering you?”
Say something, you idiot. Anything. You clam up and this whole night is over before you get to the good part. I had no idea which body part was giving me orders, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my brain.
“What’s bothering me,” I said slowly, “is that you’ve been spending a lot of time with Matt Smith.”
“Have you ever considered that it might be because Matt and I work together?”
“It feels like it’s more than just work.”
“It’s the same as you and Kylie. You guys are joined at the hip fourteen hours a day. You’re either knee to knee in a car, having lunch together, or camped out on an overnight stakeout. It’s called working together.”
“Kylie is different. She’s married. Matt is single.”
“And you’re upset because I gave a single guy a book and he got me great theater tickets?”
“And a soy latte,” I said.
“Which I realize in some parts of the world is considered a prelude to marriage. All I have to do to consummate the deal is ask my father to give his father six goats,” she said.
“That’s the trouble with you shrinks,” I said. “You never take us crazy people seriously.”
“Zach, I’m newly divorced, so you and I have been taking it slow. But do you really think it’s my style to bring in another guy to compete with you?”
“No. I realize you didn’t invite Matt to the party. He horned in. And like you said, you’re newly divorced, so you’re beautiful, vulnerable, and available. That combination is a total testosterone magnet.”
“Beautiful, vulnerable, and available,” Cheryl repeated. “Based on what you told me about Spence’s drug problem, that sounds like Kylie MacDonald any day now. I’m just curious. Is that tugging at your magnet?”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “You know Kylie and I broke up ten years ago.”
“Technically, Kylie did the breaking up,” Cheryl said. “She dumped you and married Spence. How ironic would it be if ten years later she left him for you?”
“Cheryl, I know you’re a trained psychologist,” I said, “but that scenario is…is…ridiculous—no, it’s downright delusional.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Kind of like the scenario you concocted about me and some guy in the next office who bought me a cup of coffee.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out.
Cheryl slid my wineglass back over to my side of the table. “At the risk of overmedicating you, drink this.”
I sucked down the last of the wine.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re incredible.”
“That’s probably the wine talking, but thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”
“And despite the fact that I’ve acted like an asshole at breakfast and dinner, please tell me that I didn’t blow the whole relationship sky-high.”
“Zach, you suffer from what we in the profession call ‘the grown-man-dumb-as-shit syndrome.’ But in your own crazy way, you were trying to save the relationship, and that makes me happy.”
“Not to press my luck here, but how happy?”
She leaned across the table and kissed me softly. “Passionately happy.”
“Then let’s get out of here in a hurry,” I said, “before some bloke shows up with a soy latte and screws everything up.”
Chapter 44
Liz O’Keefe drove down the ramp from the George Washington Bridge, rolled down the window of her Honda CR-V, and inhaled deeply.
“You smell that, kiddo?” she said.
Her sister, Rachael, wrapped in an oversized gray sweat suit, slouched lower in the passenger seat. “Liz, it’s Jersey,” she said. “Close the window. I know what it smells like.”
“Not tonight, honey. Tonight Jersey smells like freedom.”
“Great,” Rachael muttered. “Call Springsteen. Maybe he’ll write a song about it.”
“I thought that after eleven months in jail you might feel at least halfway good about getting out,” Liz said, taking the Main Street exit toward Leonia.
“What should I feel good about? That Kimi is dead? That I’m the most hated mother in America? Or that the jury found me not guilty, but if I try to walk around like a free woman, someone from the NRA or the Christian Coalition or maybe Rush Limbaugh himself will try to kill me?”