Breaking the Bank Read online

  When she saw that smile, Mia actually began to relax a little. Or rather, she shifted her worrying to another sphere entirely. Now that she was no longer convinced everyone in the subway car knew what she was carrying on her back, she allowed herself to think about what in the world she was going to tell Solly Phelps.

  She had rehearsed any number of different lies in her mind. The bill had been found among the papers of an elderly, deceased uncle; the bill had been sewn into the cushions of a sofa belonging to that same uncle; the bill had been secreted between the back of a frame and a watercolor landscape she had purchased at a flea market in New Jersey. No, Maine—Maine was even farther away, harder to substantiate. But whom was she kidding? These were all, as her mother would have said,

  bubbemeisers, obviously bogus explanations that he would see through in a nanosecond.

  Someone knocked against the backpack from behind, and Mia’s worry gears immediately shifted again. Had the bill been somehow jostled, tampered with, touched, or, God forbid, stolen? She snapped her head around; it was just an old Hasidic man, with a long white beard and a black brimmed hat. His big hazel eyes were meek and harmless. “Sorry,” he said. Mia nodded, heartbeat slowing only gradually. At Canal Street, the subway car emptied out, and she was able to sink gratefully into a vacated seat.

  Finally, the train pulled into the station at Thirty-fourth Street. Mia practically did a grand jeté out of the doors, and strode purposefully along the platform, up the stairs, and westward. She was wearing all black again—jeans, boots, jacket, and a plush cashmere scarf Stuart had brought her as a gift from a business trip to Scotland—and she imagined the pink, white, and cherry-red backpack glowing like a beacon behind her.

  The address Solly Phelps had given her was almost at the Hudson River; the wind was appreciably sharper here, and she stood for a moment before the building, watching the trash blow around the street. An empty coffee cup swirled; greasy wrappers from Burger King fluttered with an unexpected delicacy. She checked the intercom system— a series of worn brass buttons, relics of an older, more gracious New

  York lined up in a neat column—before she located the one she sought. Solomon Phelps, Suite 912. She pressed it and was startled by the alacrity of the reply.

  “Yes?”

  “We have an appointment? Nine o’clock?” Damn, why was she making a simple statement sound like Oliver Twist asking for more?

  “Come right up.” His voice was even more melt-you-into-puddles than she remembered.

  There was no doorman or security guard of any kind, and the small lobby was empty except for a stack of cardboard boxes piled rather precariously on top of one another in a corner. The elevator—another relic, with a lighted dial and black arrow to denote the floor—opened immediately in response to the touch of a button. The ninth floor was a warren of doors, some numbered, others not. She followed the hall in one direction and then another before finding 912. There was no bell or buzzer, so she knocked.

  The door flew open, as if the wind that was blowing around outside had penetrated both elevator and corridor.

  “Phelps,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.” She took the proffered hand and looked up. He was huge. Not just tall, like Lloyd, but wide and solid, a veritable mountain of a man. He wore a crisp white shirt, baggy corduroy pants, a black-and-white polka-dot bow tie, and a pair of black suspenders. His hair was that kind of soft, almost shimmery white that sometimes reads as blond, and it grazed his shirt collar; his eyes—small, grayish-blue, fixed on her face—had a shrewd and unsettling look.

  “Come in,” he said, even though there was not much in to speak of. The office was cluttered with file cabinets and shelves disgorging books and stacks of papers, but also with several items of a less expected nature: a grandfather clock, a royal blue unicycle, an ornately curved wooden hat rack, and, mounted on the wall, the head of a stuffed moose whose thick, spreading antlers nearly grazed Solly’s face. On the battered desk were more papers, a laptop, and a round glass bowl containing a solitary black fish swimming around and around. Mia felt almost hypnotized by the fish’s lyrical circling, and she was glad when Solly broke the spell by dragging over a chair—throne-sized, claw-footed, and covered in disintegrating aubergine brocade—so that she could sit down.

  “So you say you have a big bill?” Solly said, not wasting any time. “I do.”

  “Well, let’s have a look, shall we?” He moved aside some of the desk’s clutter and unfurled a length of white paper to cover the torn, dingy blotter. There was something dignified, even grand about the gesture.

  Mia sat down gingerly, and eased Hello Kitty off her back. She took out the envelope containing the bill, and when she had freed it from its various layers of protection, she placed it, faceup, on the white paper.

  Solly’s head swooped down like a hawk’s. She saw his shrewd, small eyes widen ever so slightly; he compressed his lips, and his nostrils flared. Mia waited, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he extracted a pair of latex gloves from a box in his drawer and picked up the bill. She watched while he looked at it, front and back. The same drawer yielded a sleek silver flashlight; he trained its laserlike beam over every centimeter of the paper. Then he actually raised it to his nose and, to Mia’s surprise, sniffed it. Would he lick it, too? She suddenly felt hot and realized she was still wearing her jacket. She took it off and unlooped the long scarf from around her neck. Solly continued to scrutinize the bill.

  “So,” she said, striving for a facsimile of control she did not feel. “Do you think it’s real?”

  “Oh, it’s real, all right,” said Solomon Phelps. He set the bill back down on the white paper and gave Mia the full force of his icy silver-blue gaze. “Now I just need to know where on earth it came from.”

  “I can’t say,” Mia replied. All the possible stories she had busily concocted seemed useless at the moment.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t,” she said. “At least not right now.”

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, peeling off the latex gloves and shoving them, along with the flashlight, back in the desk drawer. “A bill of this denomination would have a strong appeal to serious collectors. I have two, no, make that three, people I could call about it today. And that’s without even posting it on my Web site. But in order for me to sell it, I’d have to be able to say how it came to be on the market.”

  She was silent. There was no explanation she could give that he would believe. Why had she thought she could deceive him with some fairy tale? He was tapping out something on the keyboard of his laptop; when he sensed her looking at him, his cold blue glance bounced up again.

  “Yes?”

  “I just thought there might be some way we could negotiate . . .” She knew she sounded like a fool. And a desperate fool at that. She let her words trail off.

  “Haven’t I made myself clear? You either want to play ball. Or you don’t.”

  “Look, you said the bill was real. And very rare. I’m sure we could work out a deal—”

  “No deal,” Solly interrupted. “Not unless I know where it came from. No deal, and no conversation, either. So I’ll just say thanks for stopping by, and now you can be on your merry way.”

  He stood up and Mia did, too. The bill remained on the desk, framed by white. Mia reached for it, hoping the gesture would cause Solly to budge, even the slightest bit. It was real, it was rare; surely he had to be interested. She tried to think of alternative strategies as she put the bill in the backpack. The black fish continued to circle lazily in its bowl, oblivious to her distress.

  “What’s that?” Solly said. He was suddenly standing very close— too close—to her.

  “What’s what?” She stepped back.

  “That locket you’re wearing.”

  Mia’s fingers reflexively reached for it. Since buying the locket with Eden, she had not taken it off, though today the tactile pleasure of it against her skin was blunted b
y her sweater.

  “Just something I picked up recently,” she said. “May I see?”

  Reluctantly, Mia moved closer again. “Interesting,” he said, fondling it in a way that she found mildly disgusting. “Very interesting. It looks old. Victorian possibly. Or even earlier. Where did you say you got it?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. Why was he so interested? Did he deal in jewelry, too?

  “Is that also confidential information?”

  “No, but I don’t see what difference it makes. I’m not planning to sell it.”

  “Are you sure?” His eyes pinned her again, like a butterfly on a mounting board.

  “Yes, very sure.” Once more, she stepped away, and the gold circle slid from his fingers.

  “Pity,” he said coolly. “It might have been worth something to me.”

  “Well, it isn’t for sale. So I can be on my merry way and not trouble you anymore.”

  “Oh, it was no trouble,” he said. “No trouble at all. Quite to the contrary. I found this whole exchange to be . . . fascinating.”

  Mia did not want to respond, so she put on her jacket and scarf; it seemed imperative to hide the locket.

  “You know where to find me,” Solly said, escorting her to the door. “If you ever happen to change your mind.”

  Not likely, thought Mia, securing the scarf more tightly. She slipped the backpack containing the bill over her shoulders and was down the hall before the door was fully closed.

  TEN

  BY NOVEMBER, MIA had another freelance gig—this time, at a small company producing a line of children’s cookbooks. Power Pasta was the first title on the list; Power Pastry and Power Pizza would soon follow. Apart from the terminally cute titles—what was it with alliteration and kids’ book titles anyway?—the books themselves were not at all bad. No insulting language that talked down to the target audience, no saccharine illustrations, just clear, step-by-step instructions and big color photographs of the ingredients and the end result. She brought home the pasta manuscript. Eden was sufficiently engaged by it to memorize the entire list in the pasta glossary and accompany Mia through the supermarket aisles, keen to find what she considered the more arcane varieties—mostaccioli, radiatore, cavatappi—which they then cooked at home.

  The job had come at the perfect moment. Ever since she had left the cluttered office of Solomon Phelps, Mia had been wondering what she would do next. The cookbooks filled the gap. Of course, there was still the matter of the bill. It was real, she knew that much. It was real, and it was hers. Use it well, she had been told. But how? Without a market, the fabulous bill was just a piece of paper. She couldn’t spend it; she couldn’t sell it. She probably couldn’t even give it away, though she was not about to try.

  In the absence of any clear plan, she had decided to hide it under a loose floorboard that she deftly managed to pry up from her bedroom floor. How very Edgar Allan Poe, she thought, whacking the nails back into place. This thought pleased her. Just as she was finishing up, though, she whacked her thumb hard with the hammer. Almost immediately, it turned as purple as a plum and almost as big. Later, it sparked all kinds of questions from Eden—Does it hurt? Did you cry? What were you hammering, Mom?—but the pain wasn’t too bad, and after the first week, the swelling began to subside, so she figured it would be all right. In an odd way, she relished the wounded thumb; it seemed to her proof of something—her character, her resilience, her determination to cope with whatever life lobbed her way.

  THE NEXT DAY was Thanksgiving. The good news was that Betty had mercifully dropped the idea of hosting the holiday dinner at her house. The bad news was that she had strong-armed Gail and Stuart into doing it instead.

  Mia and Eden woke early so that they could go to the parade that Macy’s had sponsored for decades. Last year it had been so windy that one of the gargantuan balloons—Snoopy, maybe?—had knocked into a lamppost and terrorized the crowd below, but this year the danger of that happening was nearly nonexistent. The weather was mild, practically balmy. Eden had on the coat they had bought at Barneys, but she let it gape open, revealing her flounced, sleeveless dress splattered with big, tipsy-looking flowers, and fishnet tights and glitter-dusted sandals. Mia could only imagine the reception this getup would elicit from her sister-in-law.

  After the parade, Mia and Eden boarded a train at Grand Central Station. The ride, under an hour, didn’t give Mia enough time to steel herself. It seemed like they had just gotten on when the conductor announced, “Greenwich, next stop is Greenwich; please use all the doors.” Eden, who had been dozing against Mia’s arm, looked grumpy and disoriented when Mia woke her, but she rallied at the sight of Stuart, seated behind the wheel of his new, copper-colored Lexus. Eden liked her uncle, though she had no use for the anemic-looking tribe of off spring he had sired.

  Mia slid into the front seat and gave him a light kiss on the cheek while Eden noisily clambered into the back, pressing buttons, stroking the dove-gray upholstery, running her fingers against the sunroof—all before Stuart could even turn around to say hello.

  “So how’s Mom?” Mia asked, figuring this to be a safe opening gambit.

  “She’s fine,” Stuart said, eyes on the road ahead. “A little thinner, maybe. A lot more tan. But good.”

  “And Hank?”

  “Hank has an amazing new tattoo,” said Stuart, trying to catch Eden’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Eden, however, was too busy trying to adjust the speakers in back to pay much attention.

  “Really?” Mia was interested, even if Eden was not. Hank, with his tattoos and his biceps—still formidable for a guy his age—represented such a departure from her round-shouldered, bespectacled father.

  “It’s a scorpion. Red and black.”

  “Is it on his chest, Uncle Stuart?” Eden finally stopped playing with the gadgets and leaned forward. “Right above his heart?”

  “Actually, it’s on his left forearm. He’s been wearing his shirtsleeves conspicuously rolled so everyone can see and admire it.”

  “I’m sure Gail must love it,” Mia said, not looking at her brother, but gazing intently out the window at the passing facades of a post office, a hardware store, and a hair salon.

  “She hasn’t mentioned it,” Stuart said defensively. “She will,” muttered Mia. “Oh, come on, knock it off.”

  “What?” Mia turned to look at him then. “Knock what off?”

  “I know that you can’t stand her, Mia. But what am I supposed to do about it? She’s my wife; you’re my sister. Can’t you try to get along? Just for the day?”

  “Did you give this speech to her, too?” Mia asked. “What speech? Why are you two acting all mad at each other? Who can’t you stand, Mom?” Eden was agog in the backseat.

  Mia took a big breath and let it out; the windshield in front of her momentarily fogged.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to suck it up, at least for the day, okay?”

  “Thank you,” said Stuart, giving her that conspiratorial smile she remembered so well from their childhood.

  THE LEXUS GLIDED up to the house, a large, white-columned affair with massive windows and a slate roof. Though undeniably grand, the place had always depressed Mia; she could hardly sense Stuart’s taste or presence there at all. He was like some vase or lamp—ornamental rather than essential.

  Mia was still unbuckling her seat belt when the front door opened and Betty stepped outside. Stuart was right: Betty looked thinner and somehow smaller, all sinew and tendon. But she still moved quickly; nothing about her pace had slowed. Right behind her were three of Stuart’s four daughters. Their pale faces looked as bloodless as ever, though Mia was willing to admit that their expressions were definitely more animated this time around. Maybe someone had been spiking their rice milk or something. One of the younger twins—Mia thought it was India but couldn’t be sure—yanked the car door open wide and stared at Eden for several seconds.

  “Hi!” she said finally. “My mom says you live
in a bad neighborhood. Is that true?”

  “India, that’s not exactly what your mother said,” admonished Betty. “Anyway, honey, let them get out of the car now, please. Grandma wants to give Eden a great big hug.”

  Eden hugged her grandmother enthusiastically but was more guarded with her cousins.

  “Just ignore her,” said Cassandra. “She’s just a little tattletale anyway.”

  “I am not,” said India, whirling around to face her sister. “And I’m telling.”

  “See?” crowed Cassandra. “What did I say? Tattletale, tattletale, India’s a tattletale!”

  “Mommy!” called India, stomping into the house. “Mom-my!” This left Cassandra, her twin, Marguerite, and Eden standing there and staring at one another. Marguerite laughed first, just a snicker, but then the other two joined and the snicker turned to full-blown guffaws. Mia watched as Eden, flanked by her two velvet-clad, hair-band-sprouting cousins, moved off, still laughing, into the house.

  “They shouldn’t tease India,” murmured Betty as she kissed Mia on one cheek and then the other. Mia looked over at Stuart just in time to see his shoulders rise in a small, almost imperceptible motion they used to call a “shit-eating shrug.” Maybe, she thought, as she followed her mother and brother inside—past the marble-tiled foyer, the heavy crystal chandelier, the winding staircase with its painfully polished banister, and the real (Stuart had clued her in about this) Aubusson carpet—just maybe this day wouldn’t be such a nightmare after all.