Read Online Rubbed Out by Barbara Block - Free Book Online Page B

milk for Mrs. Goldstein,” she said, indicating that I should follow her inside.
    I skirted a woman in a camel-hair coat and business suit balancing a screaming six-month-old on one hip and a bag of groceries on the other. Lines of exhaustion creased her face. Maybe my grandmother was right. Maybe you can’t have it all.
    â€œSo what do you want to tell me?” I asked the au pair.
    She looked away. “I wouldn’t ordinarily do this, but there’s this concert I want to go to, and Mrs. Goldstein doesn’t. . . well, she doesn’t give me any money. I mean, she gives me a little, but taking care of the twins all day . . . It’s not that I don’t like them. I do. They’re adorable. But I feel as if I’m going crazy. I have to get out. And Don’t Go There are playing in Buffalo and my friend has a car. . . .”
    I put up my hand to stop the flow of rationalizations. “First off, tell me your name.”
    â€œIt’s Kira. Kira Brown.”
    â€œOkay, Kira Brown. What you’re doing is a good thing.”
    Kira fingered her nose ring. “I guess you’re right” She brightened. “I mean, Mrs. Wilcox could be in trouble.”
    â€œYes, she could.”
    â€œThis is just. . . it feels dirty somehow. Like Judas and the twelve pieces of gold.”
    â€œI think it was thirty pieces of silver.”
    â€œWhatever.”
    She dropped her hand and began fiddling with the zipper on her jacket.
    We were standing in front of the produce stand while people eddied around us. Berries from Chile. Peaches from Argentina. Apples from Upstate. Twenty years ago you’d be lucky to get oranges in the winter.
    â€œThis isn’t really about her,” Kira continued. “I mean, it is but it isn’t.”
    â€œThen what?”
    â€œI think I know why she left.”
    Kira paused again. I waited.
    â€œHer husband. He has a girlfriend.”
    â€œHow do you know?” I will not think about George. I will not think about George, I repeated to myself.
    â€œBecause she’s a friend of mine. She works down at Le Bijou.”
    Le Bijou is an all-nude bar that opened up fairly recently.
    â€œWhat’s your friend’s name?”
    â€œDo I have to tell you?”
    â€œIf you want your money, you do.”
    Kira bit her lip. “She’s going to kill me.”
    â€œShe doesn’t have to know how I found out.”
    â€œYou won’t tell her?”
    I put my hand up. “Swear. You’ll be doing a good deed.”
    Kira took a deep breath. “Alima. Her name is Alima.”
    â€œDoes she have a last name?”
    â€œMatterson. Wilcox, he’s really nuts about her. Last week he gave her a diamond ring. A big one.”
    â€œHow old is she?”
    â€œMy age. Nineteen. He’s come on to me too. But that was before he hooked up with Alima.” She wrinkled her nose at the idea. “Don’t tell her that, though.”
    â€œI won’t,” I assured her. Cute.
    I thought of Wilcox’s daughter. She was—what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight? I wondered what she would say. Then I wondered if she knew. Given her attitude toward her father, something told me that she might.
    â€œHow do you know Alima?”
    â€œWe went to high school together. Actually, she was the one that got me my job with the Goldsteins. She used to baby-sit for them when the twins were younger.”
    â€œSo what got her into her present line of work?”
    â€œHer boyfriend suggested it. She’s got a really good body, and she was short tuition for vet tech school.”
    â€œWhatever happened to student loans?”
    â€œShe doesn’t like to be in debt.” Kira leaned into the dairy case and reached for a gallon of milk. “It’s not like it’s a big deal,” she added.
    â€œIf you thought that, you wouldn’t care if she knew that you told me.”
    â€œIt’s not that.