Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [21]
Ruby couldn’t think of a single reason not to report her psychiatrist to the relevant governing bodies. Nor could she think of any reason to do what Jody was asking.
The mosquito was still on the magazine.
“Okay. Give me the address,” Ruby said.
Lulu, the calico cat, strolled into the living room and flopped down on the floor, exposing the spot of orange fur on her otherwise impeccably white belly.
“Just a moment,” The Psychiatrist said.
Ruby heard Jody shuffling papers. Lulu was staring at Ruby, apparently expecting a cuteness award.
Jody recited an address on Beach Seventy-ninth Street. Ruby pictured stubby buildings close to the water. Boats and couches in front yards. The kind of trashy, wild neighborhood that reminded Ruby of what New York City had been like fifteen years earlier, when it was still irreverent and untamable, before Times Square became Disney World, Manhattan a shiny plaything for Young Republicans.
“Are you there?”
“Oh. Yes,” Ruby said. Normally, this bitterness over the taming of New York would have been exactly the kind of thing she’d have discussed with her shrink. Not now though.
“You’ve never been to this Rockaway place?” Ruby asked.
“Been there? I didn’t know the bastard owned this dump.”
“It’s a dump?”
“A hundred and fifty-two thousand does not buy much in the city of New York in this day and age.”
Ruby agreed that it did not.
“Why would he buy something out there?” she asked.
“How should I know? He’s nuts,” Jody said.
“‘Nuts’ is better than ‘mental defective’?”
“Yes,” Jody said. “It’s a little less jarring.”
“Ah,” Ruby said.
“Shouldn’t you be at work now?”
“I should. But I’m not. It’s a long story.”
“You didn’t do anything rash, I hope.”
“No,” she said, “I didn’t.” She saw no point in telling Jody about what had happened with Bob.
Ruby wrote down the address in Rockaway and told Jody she would go over there.
“And you’ll have your cell phone?” Jody asked.
“I’ll have it. I’ll call you when I get there.”
“Thank you,” Jody said.
“Yeah,” Ruby said, “you’re welcome.”
She hung the phone up. Lulu was still lying there exposing the spot on her belly, but when Ruby tried to rub the belly, Lulu hissed, got up, and ran away to the shoe closet. Lulu had been a stray who’d come in Ruby’s window a few years earlier. For months Lulu wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She’d eventually gotten more trusting, especially of Ruby, but still wouldn’t stand for humans taking liberties like touching her stomach.
Ruby went into the bedroom to put on clothes she could bike in. She loved the ride over to Rockaway, even if, in this instance, it was under peculiar circumstances. Ruby owned full-on bike-geek gear, including bike shorts, space-age stiff-soled biking shoes, a helmet that made her head look like a red acorn, and several brightly colored bike jerseys, but she only wore it when she was going for an all-out training session on her racing bike. For short-distance commutes and pleasure rides, she wore normal human clothing. She put on a pair of cutoffs and some sneakers.
Twenty minutes later, Ruby was about to roll the bike to the door when something made her pause. There was a bad feeling down her spine not unlike the one she’d had moments before finding Tobias’s leg in the fish tank.
Ruby went to the living room window and glanced out to the street below. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but nothing unusual was going on down there. Some kids were skateboarding across the street. A man and his pit bull walked by.
Ruby took a deep breath, then hoisted the bike onto her shoulder and carried it down the stairs.
It was a lovely blue day for a bike ride, and within a few miles Ruby had almost forgotten this was no ordinary bike ride. She was focusing on keeping a steady cadence while avoiding potholes and rogue pedestrians crossing against the light. The car and noise levels intensified when she reached Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay. She glanced peripherally at fishing boats bobbing on the water, old people walking hand in hand. She pedaled.