15

Bennie left her very satisfied client at the courthouse, grabbed a cab back to the office, and came off the elevator feeling good for the first time in days. She realized when she saw a leftover L.L. Bean box that she hadn’t thought about Alice the whole time she was in court, and she resolved not to let that unresolved situation get her down. She had won, or at least she had struck a blow, and she had to celebrate. She threaded her way through the boxes and found Marshall at the reception desk, hanging up the phone.

“Hey, lady!” Bennie called out. She dropped her briefcase at her feet. “The good guys are making a comeback!”

“I’ll say!” Marshall looked up from the reception desk with an expectant smile. Though on Marshall, every smile was expectant. “I have good news too.”

“What? Tell me.”

“You go first,” she said, so Bennie told her what had happened in court. Marshall responded with a whoop that sent the associates hurrying from their offices to the reception desk. Mary DiNunzio came running with a legal pad, Judy Carrier bore her afternoon Frappuccino in a transparent plastic cup, and Anne Murphy had wrapped her long red hair into a topknot with a pencil. They asked in happy unison what was going on and made girl noises while Bennie told the whole story for a second time. Not that she minded.

“Unreal, huh?” Bennie said, finishing. “I thought Mayer was going to fire Linette right there! He still may.”

“Fire Bull Linette?” DiNunzio’s rich brown eyes went wide. “That’s like firing God!”

Carrier looked over. “God doesn’t work for thirty percent.”

“Neither does Linette,” Murphy cracked, and they all laughed. “And Bennie, did you hear? We’re rich!”

“What?” Bennie looked puzzledly at Marshall. “What happened? Is that your news?”

“We got a check!” The receptionist bent her sleek head over her neat desk, set some correspondence aside, and found an envelope, which she handed to Bennie with a huge grin. “This just came in from PennsyBank. We’re in the money!”

“Really? So soon?” Bennie opened the envelope and pulled out a check payable to her for fifty thousand dollars. But the check wasn’t from her mortgage bank; it was from Sam, with a Post-it attached. She unstuck it and read the note: Bennie, it turns out there is no gay Mafia. Take my check and reimburse me when yours comes in next month. Love, Wascally Wabbit. Bennie felt a rush of gratitude.

“Who sent the money?” Carrier asked as the associates grouped around. “Fifty grand! Where’d that come from?”

“I borrowed it,” Bennie answered, avoiding anyone’s eye. She wasn’t about to tell them she was hocking her house and borrowing from her friend in the meantime. Marshall had probably figured it out, but the associates would have a lifetime to learn reality. And Bennie felt too good to focus on the negative. “It’ll keep us afloat until St. Amien settles. We can pay the rent and the long-distance bill, and buy a Frappuccino or two!” She looked around at their faces, alive with hope. “Ladies, we’re back in business! Carrier, I owe you for my get-out-of-jail card. DiNunzio, I’m paying for your field trip, not you. And Murphy, about your seventeen dollars—”

“Woohoo!” DiNunzio said, clapping, and Murphy brightened.

“We’re okay, and I have more good news, Bennie. You know how you asked me to see about your license, with the felony charges against you? I called the disciplinary board, and if you get the charges dropped, there are no repercussions at all. Your license is fine.”

“Yeah!” Carrier yelped, and the associates began shaking their butts and doing the butter-churn dance, their generation’s reflexive response to any bit of good news, such as Justin Timberlake was single again.

But this time, Bennie joined in.

An hour later Bennie was celebrating Rosato-style, rowing along in a single shell, letting the sights and sounds of the Schuylkill River seep into her bones and soul. She was back to her usual routine of rowing after work every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday morning, and it always felt so good being back in the groove, getting away from courtrooms, clients, and twins. She breathed in the earthy smells of the water, an organic cocktail of muck, minnows, and goose poop, and took another languid stroke, leaning back after dropping her blade into the green-gray water. The late-afternoon sun warmed her sweaty face and shoulders, bare in her white tank.

Sunlight glimmered gold on the tiny ripples of the river, making a gilt edge to the scalloped chop of the waves, as if they were the baroque frame to its glorious natural landscape. On both banks of the river, towering oaks, maples, and cherry trees showed off their new green leaves, reaching into a cobalt blue sky filled with transparent wisps of white clouds, like cotton candy pulled apart by the too-eager hands of children. The grass covering the riverbanks had sprouted a kelly hue, its slender blades weak with youth. Canada geese called in the sky, their honking echoing even in the middle of the river, conducted along the water’s smooth surface as surely as an electrical current, if not quite as scientifically.

Psshlp, splashed Bennie’s oars, cutting the water and spraying cold water onto the bow deck of her boat, a yellow Empacher. Her boat was twenty-seven feet of beautiful, weighing only thirty pounds; the German-made shell was the favorite of elite rowers, and Bennie had scored hers used. She was too skilled a rower to make such a messy splash, but she wasn’t worrying much about her technique today. She was trying to unwind. Get a good mood flowing and forget Linette and Alice. Maybe even her father. And rowing was working its magic, at least by the time she was stroking her way back to the boathouse. She had rowed the seven-mile circuit to the verdigris-colored Falls Bridge and back, but it had taken only two miles for Bennie to feel like herself again.

Psshlp. She leaned back in the hard wooden seat of the scull, pulled the oars into her lower ribs with all her might, and feathered their black rubber handles and pushed them out quickly. A breeze wafted across the water, carrying a chilly undercurrent of winter past and the fresh green gust of spring establishing itself. Bennie breathed it in, let it fill her lungs, and took another powerful stroke. Her thighs ached from the effort, and blood hardened her quads. A rush of good feeling suffused her, flowing like oxygen-rich blood, and she felt almost euphoric. Rowing wasn’t a sport, it was a religion.

Psshlp. She looked downriver, where the trees on the banks were giving way to the first edifice of the ten Victorian boathouses that lined Boathouse Row, and to the brick lighthouse known as Sedgeley. The lighthouse marked the place where Turtle Rock lurked just under the Schuylkill’s surface, a hazard in a time past, when steamboats cruised down the river. To Bennie, Sedgeley meant that it was time to leave her fugue state and pay attention. The rowing traffic could be dicey going into the boathouses. At any given time, there could be as many as fifty boats on the river, and today, singles, fours, and plenty of school eights were jockeying to get in and get the boats put away by dark. The expressway could be safer; at least if you got out of your lane there, you didn’t go over a waterfall.

Bennie stopped rowing, letting her scull coast toward Sedgeley on its own momentum, trailing the tips of her oars in the water to slow her down. There were four other boats on the water, three college eights and a crew from Father Judge High School, heading back toward the boathouses. She decided to let the eights row past her—Penn with its familiar red-and-blue oars, then Drexel and St. Joe, all with coaches shouting from skiffs alongside. She relaxed over her oar handles, dangling her callused hands and listening to her breathing return to normal.

She wiped sweat from her forehead while she waited, and looked around. The dappled grass on the riverbank was dotted now with people who’d ditched work early to take advantage of the unseasonably warm stretch of weather. Cyclists in baby hats with turned-up brims biked on the asphalt paths, their skintight jerseys vivid splotches of color, and runners trotted on the dirt jogging paths, test-driving new running shoes, in telltale white. Lovers smooched on bedspreads, and students tossed cloth Frisbees to mutts in bandannas.

Bennie liked that people liked the river, and watched the dogs as they fetched their well-loved balls and toys. One black-and-white mutt was an aerial genius, leaping to snag his Frisbee in midarc. A tiny Jack Russell shot after a Nerf football twice his size and as soon as he had captured his prey, plopped down to gnaw it to pieces. A big golden retriever chased a formerly lime green tennis ball, thrown by a man in a red Phillies cap. The dog reminded Bennie of Bear, who was a sucker for a tennis ball, especially a muddy tennis ball. The man was throwing the ball in a bad direction, though. Beyond the bike and jogging paths lay Kelly Drive, on the east side of the river, filled with rush-hour traffic. Instead of tossing the ball away from traffic like everybody else, the man in the cap was tossing it toward traffic.

Bennie frowned like a worried mother. The ball bounced short of traffic, but she would never take a chance like that, not with Kelly Drive so close. The River Drives were the fastest way out of town, and at the end of the day, as now, they were crazy. People drove way too fast, hell-bent on getting home. Still the man tossed the ball toward the street, and the dog went gamely after it, his tongue flying. Bennie shook her head. Golden retrievers were the dumb blonds of the dog world.

“Five, four, three, two, one!” a coxswain shouted through her megaphone, and the high school crew rowed past, their young heads shaved for macho effect. Bennie took up her oars to steady her scull, but she couldn’t stop watching the man in the baseball cap on the grass. She loved goldens, and the dog reminded her so much of Bear. His pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth in single-minded pursuit of the ball, and he wouldn’t drop the ball once he’d retrieved it. Like Bear, the dog danced away once he brought it back, prolonging the tease.

Psshlp. Bennie took a stroke, rowing a little closer to the bank. The man pulled the ball from the dog’s mouth and threw it toward traffic again. She rowed past on her way to the boathouse, annoyed. Why would anybody do that? Was the man an idiot? She watched the dog streak toward traffic after the ball, almost upending a jogger on the dirt path. She half considered yelling at the guy from her boat, but it wasn’t her business, and she had to get rowing. Other boats were waiting to come in. Still.

Her boat drifted closer to the bank, bobbing on the residual wake, and she rowed a steady course. Closer to the bank she could see the dog’s coat, also glossy like Bear’s. It was a cinnamon shade considered unfashionable by most golden fans, who preferred the lighter shades, but Bennie loved Bear’s coat. It caught the light like this one’s, glowing red as an Irish setter’s in the sun. The man in the cap threw the ball and the dog dashed after it, but a runner caught the tennis ball before it reached the drive. The runner tossed it back and yelled something Bennie couldn’t hear. Probably telling the idiot not to throw it that way. Good.

Psshlp. Bennie had to get going. Three more college eights were rowing toward her, heavyweight crews power-stroking in an impromptu regatta before they reached Sedgeley, their coaches urging them. She took another stroke, but she kept an eye on the jerk in the cap. No sooner had the jogger turned his back than the man threw the ball toward traffic again. But this time the force of the throw caused his baseball cap to fall off. A pile of curly blond hair tumbled to his shoulders.

Bennie did a double take. The hair was way too long for a man’s. It was a woman’s, and in the next instant, the woman turned toward the river, looked at Bennie, and waved right at her. Bennie, stricken, recognized the woman instantly.

It was Alice.

Bennie froze over her oars, then grabbed the handles before the water’s force drove them into her waist. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t process it. It was Alice, taunting her. And it was Bear. It was Bennie’s own dog racing into traffic after the ball, his pink tongue flying!

“No! Bear! No!” Bennie screamed at the top of her lungs. She dropped her oars, and stood up in the boat, pitching it violently to the right. How had Alice gotten Bear? She was going to kill him! It was impossible to stand in a single, and the boat wobbled dangerously.

“Bear! No! Come!” she yelled, making a megaphone of her hands. Alice was running away, toward the parking lot. She had thrown the tennis ball one last time and it was bouncing on the asphalt of the jogging path, then into the fast lane. Bear bolted after the ball, straight toward traffic.

Suddenly everything was happening at once. The college eights were racing toward Bennie, unable to stop. They hadn’t calculated on her stopping dead in the water. Bennie’s boat was rolling like a log. She was going to capsize. She gripped the quick release on her sneakers and plunged into the cold water just as the boat went over.

She began swimming frantically toward shore, a straight-ahead breaststroke. The water was freezing and filled with debris. It tasted like filth but she spit it out. She would never make it in time to save him. Bear would run right in front of the cars. No, please. No! She hiccuped with fright and swam as hard as she could, stroke after stroke, barely taking a breath. Her eyes stung. A stick scratched her cheek. She kicked something slimy from her ankle. She came up for air and heard people shouting. Screaming.

Bennie blinked sludge from her eyes and realized why.

She was swimming directly in the path of the college eights. And they were heading straight for her.

Oh my God.