The Night She Got Lucky

  “Unfortunately, that approach even spreads to his friends,” Piers went on. “When Sylvie died, he didn’t even bother coming to the funeral.”

  Despite the fact that her hands were tucked under her arms, she felt them begin to shake.

  “What I need to tell you is that Lucky has taken an assignment very far away and plans to leave any day.”

  No.

  He wouldn’t do that.

  HeatherLynn suddenly jumped from her curled-up position in Ginger’s lap, letting loose with a string of high-pitched yips. Ginger’s throat tightened. She began frowning. She ripped a hand free so she could tap her brow.

  “The assignment is in Mauritius. Are you familiar with it?”

  Did it matter where the hell it was? she wondered. If the man was leaving for Sacramento it would be a deal-breaker—simply because he hadn’t told her in advance.

  HeatherLynn would not stop barking. “Shush!” Ginger hissed.

  “It’s an independent island nation off the coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean. It is famous for being the home of the dodo bird.”

  Ginger almost laughed. As Bea would say, What the fuck? Why did this guy feel compelled to give her a geography lesson when her world was falling down around her?

  But wait.

  Ginger leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. She studied Piers’s pained expression, his downturned mouth. She didn’t really know Piers Skaarsgard. But she knew Lucio, and she loved him with everything in her. There was no way she would think the worst of Lucio simply because a near stranger told her to.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. Ginger pointed her finger at him. “Look, Piers, I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but Lucio wouldn’t do that to me. I’m sure of it. I can only assume that you’re trying to get back at him for something, but it’s not going to work.” Ginger adjusted the direction of her point, gesturing to the backyard gate that would take him to the driveway. “You need to leave now.”

  Piers cast his eyes down and shook his head. He reached in his jacket pocket. “Look at this first,” he said, pulling out a folded document.

  Ginger didn’t reach for it. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

  Piers sighed. He unfolded the legal-size sheets of paper and held them in front of her. Ginger couldn’t help it. She looked. It was a contract between Nature magazine and Lucio. She grabbed it, flipped through pages, and found where Lucio had signed and dated it. She threw it at Piers.

  Lucio was leaving her. Just as she feared. And she was pregnant with his child.

  HeatherLynn wouldn’t shut up.

  Inadvertently, Ginger let out a tiny mewl of agony. Piers did not miss it.

  “I am so sorry to cause you pain by telling you.” He reached out, stroking her cheek with his long, cool fingers. HeatherLynn growled and then snapped at Piers’s hand. He pulled away quickly but not quickly enough—Ginger saw a flash of red blood on his knuckle.

  “I need to go lie down,” Ginger said, putting Heather-Lynn on the patio. She didn’t apologize for her dog’s behavior. Part of her was glad HeatherLynn bit the messenger.

  Piers briefly scowled at the dog before he returned his attention to Ginger. “You have no idea how I debated whether to tell you. It has been eating me alive for days. I have been lost.”

  “You knew about this last night?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Ginger thought of how sweet Lucio had been the night before, offering to get her sweater, clearing the table, holding her in his arms before he left, telling her he worried about her health, that he loved her with all his soul.

  Ha! No wonder Piers had stared at them when they’d kissed at this very table last night. No wonder he’d looked surprised! Piers knew! He knew Lucio was about to break her heart, the way he’d broken Sylvie’s heart and the hearts of who knew how many others?

  Ginger felt as if she were going to be sick.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, bringing a hand up to her shaking lips. What had Roxie told her last month? The only thing worse than a man abandoning you is a man abandoning you when you’re carrying his baby …

  And just that morning, Roxie had called Lucio a low-down, dirty, no-good, chicken-shit mother fucker. And Ginger had defended him!

  “Perhaps I’ve made a mistake telling you.”

  Ginger snapped to, noticing Piers sitting next to her. She’d almost forgotten he was there. “No. I needed to know.”

  “Maybe I should show Jason my work some other time.”

  Just then, Jason poked his head out of the patio doors. “We going?” he asked.

  Piers looked to Ginger, his eyes full of sorrow.

  “No. Go ahead and take him. Can you bring him back by nine?”

  “Sure.”

  Ginger got up from the chair. She nearly tripped over HeatherLynn, the dog was sticking so close to her feet.

  “Have a good time, Jase,” Ginger said, trying to pretend as if her world had not just spun off its axis as she walked them to the door. Next, she poked her head into the family room to see Joshua watching TV. She went up to her room and collapsed on the edge of the bed. HeatherLynn leaned against her ankle, looking nervous. Ginger picked up the phone and called Bea.

  “I need you guys.” Ginger began to cry. “I need help.”

  “Seven at Starbucks,” Bea said, not even asking what had happened.

  “Great,” Ginger said, knowing that it wasn’t great. Nothing was great. And she knew there was no way she’d be able to keep it together until seven.

  “Fuck that,” Bea said abruptly. “I’ll pick you up in a half hour. Hang on, Ginger. I’m on my way.”

  She smiled, the relief flooding over her. Mrs. Needleman had been right about Bea. She was something else.

  “You’ve got a cool apartment,” Jason said, looking around at Piers’s place. He’d seen it before, when he was here with Lucio getting the equipment, but he thought it was the polite thing to say. Besides, he hadn’t really had much time to wander around while he was here with Lucio—they just got the stuff and left.

  Jason’s eyes scanned all the large photographs on the walls.

  “Your pictures are totally ridonkulous!” Jason said. “All of these are yours, right, man?”

  “Every one of them,” Piers said, following Jason as he went from picture to picture. “This is the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster. These are sandhill cranes on the Butte River here in California. This a juvenile Kodiak bear on the Kenai River of Alaska.”

  “God! That fish is flying right into his mouth!” Jason said, amazed.

  “It’s a salmon.”

  “That is the coolest picture I’ve ever seen. How did you get it?”

  Piers laughed. “By lying on my belly in the muck for six hours, waiting for the sun to rise and for a bear to show up.”

  “No way.” Jason couldn’t believe it.

  “That is half the job of being a photographer—waiting around, getting filthy, and staying awake for that second that makes it all worth it.”

  “Dude,” Jason said. His eyes scanned the dozens of other photos in the room. “Hey, that’s Lucio!” Jason walked over to the framed photograph on a ledge that separated the kitchen from the living room.

  “This must have been right around the time you guys did that documentary together. We saw it on YouTube.”

  “Really?”

  Jason bent to look closer. He looked up at Piers. “Is that your wife?”

  Piers blinked. He shoved his hands in his pockets. Jason stood up straight, knowing he’d said something wrong. Piers’s face had gone completely weird. It looked like he’d turned to stone.

  “Yes. That’s Sylvie.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Jason felt awkward. “Does she live here, too?”

  Piers looked directly into Jason’s eyes. “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Jason took a step back, then turned on his heel to pretend to be looking at other stuff. He felt really
stupid asking that because now he had a vague memory of Lucio telling him that Piers’s wife had died of cancer or something.

  “Have you eaten?” Piers asked, suddenly cheerful again, already in the kitchen.

  “Uh, no. Not really. I mean, I had some leftover pie from dinner last night and a bunch of bagel pizzas and some Doritos and stuff after school, but no meal or anything. What you got?”

  Jason could hear Piers laugh, and that made him relax a little.

  “I thought I’d make us some chicken and dumplings. Have you ever had that?”

  “Not sure. Is it good?”

  Piers smiled at him. “One of my favorites.”

  “Great. Yeah. That’s cool.” Jason wandered around a few more minutes in silence, looking at Piers’s photographs. As Jason strolled around, he noticed how the pictures would make him feel sad, or happy, or excited, or angry—and he figured that’s what Lucio meant when he’d talked about Piers’s talent. Lucio said Piers’s pictures always managed to tell a story while they captured an image. Jason had nodded, figuring this Piers dude might be kind of nuts but he was a great photographer.

  “You can go look around in the spare room if you want. Remember where you got the equipment?”

  “Oh, yeah. The place was a mess.”

  Piers laughed again, cutting chicken into pieces on a cutting board. “There are a bunch of portfolios of my work lying around and some loose prints on the desk in there. I’ll join you once I get the chicken going.”

  “Cool.”

  Jason opened the door and giggled to himself—there was more crap in there than in his dad’s garage. He ran a hand over the tripod stands, a whole pile of lighting equipment, packing crates, and what looked like the kind of trunks a roadie for a rock band would wheel around. There were stacks of photos leaning against the wall and even more hanging. Jason opened the closet and laughed—it was worse than his.

  He peeked into boxes that held camera bodies and lenses and little gadgets he had no idea of the name of. Piers had a bunch of papers jammed in there, loose and in files. Jason noticed the telltale blue of a U.S. passport sticking out from a stack of stuff.

  He yanked on it. That’s when half the stack of crap fell off the shelf. When he reached down to gather up all the paper he saw something that didn’t make sense—Lucio’s signature. On a Geographica expense report. Jason felt a stab of fear go through his body, followed by a slow and sickening understanding.

  The smart girl didn’t set Lucio up—his friend did.

  Jason got out his cell phone and sent a quick message to Lucio. Then, as fast as he could, he sorted through the other papers—there were a whole lot of forms with Lucio’s signature. Jason’s hands began to shake.

  He grabbed the passport and started thumbing through to the last pages. It was hard to think straight, but he tried his best to figure out exactly when Lucio was in China. He’d been in San Francisco for about six months, and six months ago would have been late March or early April. So if he saw that Piers was in China at that time, they had a situation.

  And there it was—the immigration stamp showed that Piers entered China on March 15 and left the country on April 3.

  Jason was so nervous his fingers could hardly hit the buttons of his phone. He sent another text and prayed Lucio would get it right away.

  “What are you doing in there?” he heard Piers ask. “You’re awful quiet.”

  Jason threw the passport back on the stack and texted Lucio one last time. “HELP” was all he had time for.

  “Hey, Lucio, what’s up?”

  Lucio strolled into the foyer, giving Josh a high five and then a hug. “It is a beautiful day, yes? Where is your lovely mother?”

  “I think she went upstairs.”

  “Where’s Jason?”

  “Piers just picked him up.”

  “Oh? That’s great.”

  Both Lucio and Josh looked to the stairs, hearing the skittering sound of small paws racing down plush carpet. HeatherLynn bounded up to Lucio, barking, pawing his leg, her tail spinning around over her back.

  “What is all this, nena?” Lucio leaned down to pick her up. She licked his face desperately, whining, wiggling in his grasp. Lucio looked at Josh. “Is there something wrong with little Miss Bichon today?”

  Josh shrugged, then his head turned toward the door. He chuckled. “Maybe she’s just excited ’cause Dad’s here!”

  That’s when Lucio heard the unmistakable sound of a Porsche turbo engine winding down in the driveway. He sighed, not really prepared for a heart-to-heart with Larry, but knowing it was inevitable.

  HeatherLynn squirmed and barked until Lucio put her down, but instead of running to the door she ran back upstairs. She sat on the landing, her dark little marble eyes looking down on the foyer.

  The front door flew open. Larry sneered at Lucio.

  “Hello,” Lucio said.

  Larry laughed. “Oh, so this is your place now? You’re doing the meet-and-greet duties around here, big man?”

  Joshua took a few steps toward his father. “Give it a rest, okay, Dad? Please.”

  Larry put his hands on his hips and tightened his mouth. “Where do you get off disrespecting me like that in front of a stranger?”

  Josh stepped back. His eyes flashed and he shook his head. “Lucio is not a stranger. I see him more than I see you. And if you were someone I respected, then maybe I’d treat you that way.”

  Larry’s face went scarlet with rage.

  “Hey, hey,” Lucio said, putting himself between Josh and his father. “Listen, Josh, that was no good. You need to apologize to your father.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Why don’t you take a breather in the family room?” He walked the teenager to the kitchen and whispered, “This is more about me than you, so give me a few minutes to calm him down, yes?”

  Josh’s eyes were big with uncertainty, but he nodded and headed toward the family room.

  Lucio took a deep breath, turned, and found Larry inches behind him.

  “You really think you’re the shit, don’t you?” Larry laughed sarcastically.

  “Why don’t we sit down and have a talk,” Lucio suggested.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You’re my wife’s Eurotrash boy toy—her last desperate attempt to prove to herself that she’s still attractive—and you’re trying to turn my boys against me. End of discussion.”

  Lucio could not believe this man. He did not appear to be drunk and he could not smell alcohol on his breath, but he was behaving the way he had the night of the refried-beans incident. Lucio said, “She is no longer your wife, Dr. Garrison. And the reason she is now your ex -wife is because you regularly belittled her, and after you committed adultery here in your home, she divorced you.”

  Larry looked offended. “Nothing happened in this house. It was outside in the driveway.”

  Lucio could not contain his laughter. “What do you want, Larry?” he asked, still laughing. “Why did you come here tonight?”

  “Oh, so I need to book an appointment to come talk to my own children now?”

  “Of course not, but each time they see erratic behavior like this they trust you a little less. You confuse them.”

  “Excuse-fucking-me?”

  “All I am saying is you need to examine how you have chosen to live your life and ask yourself how it is affecting your sons.”

  Larry took a step closer, his eyes menacing. “And you are their hero now? You are their good example?” He laughed in Lucio’s face. “Come on, now. I found out a little bit about you. It wasn’t hard. You’re a notorious no-good horn dog with a checkered professional reputation, and that’s putting it kindly.”

  The text message alert went off on Lucio’s new cell phone again, the second time in the last minute. He wanted to take it from his pocket and make sure all was well with Jason, but he didn’t have that luxury, not with Larry breathing like an angry bull, puffing up his body in preparation for attack.


  “I do not wish to fight you, Larry,” Lucio said. “If you are smart, you do not wish to fight me, either.”

  “Ha! You think I can’t take you down, big man? Is that what you think?”

  Lucio bit his tongue. It was not easy when he would rather give the idiota a tongue-lashing.

  “Answer me. Is that what you think?”

  Genevieve’s former husband was a schoolyard bully in a middle-aged man’s body—not an attractive combination. “I refuse to play this game,” Lucio said, his voice calm and soft. “You should go.”

  Larry’s eyes burned. “You think you’re a badass, don’t you? Don’t you, punk? ”

  Lucio sighed, knowing it was time for Larry to hear the truth. “What I think, Dr. Garrison, is that you are having the midlife crisis from hell. I think you are setting a terrible example for your sons, who are on the verge of becoming men with only you as their guide—a man who fucks anything that moves, flies off into rages, and cares more about his car than his children. Having a father like this does not bode well for them, I am afraid.”

  Larry’s jaw dropped.

  “I think you are an egomaniac,” Lucio continued. “And I think you are a coward and a brute for treating Genevieve the way you have through the years, not to mention being the world’s biggest idiot for letting her go—though I do thank you for your idiocy.”

  After the stunned silence continued a moment more, Larry tilted his head back and let go with a roar of laughter. He wiped his eyes and sighed when he was done. “And you have become an expert in marriage and child rearing … how, exactly?” Larry balled his fists at his sides. “How many diapers have you changed, Ricky Ricardo? How many five-hour T-ball games have you sat through? How many god-awful elementary-school band concerts have you videotaped? How many boys have you taught how to catch a pop-up, or drive, or shave?”

  When Lucio did not answer, Larry felt free to continue. “And how many women have you been married to for seventeen years? How many times have you had that gem of a life experience? Because from where I stand, it looks like you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about, and you sure as hell don’t have the right to tell me how to do any of it.”

  Lucio nodded, about out of patience. “It is true. I may not be a parent, but I was a boy once, and I had a father much like you, whom I have not spoken to in twenty years. Is that the kind of relationship you want with Josh and Jason?”