Page 77 of Babies for the Boss
She accepts the subject change with the relief of someone who has been handed an exit and is taking it, and she leans back in her chair and wraps her hands around her mug. “I finished my degree. Finally, officially, after the extra year and the independent study and the thesis that nearly killed me.”
“Carrie Ann, that’s huge. Why didn’t you?—”
“I was going to call, and then everything with you happened, and I didn’t want to make it about me?—”
“It should absolutely be about you, that is a massive deal?—”
“It’s a massive deal that I have a drama degree in Manhattan, Kansas,” she says, with a dry quality that she deploys when she’s making a joke out of something that is also genuinely a problem. “Where the primary theatrical venue is the high school gymnasium and the most dramatic thing that happens is the Hendersons’ dispute about the property line.”
“What’s happening with the Hendersons’ property line?”
“Oh, it’s a whole thing. Not the point.” She tilts her head. “The point is I have this degree and I’m not sure what to do with it. There’s not much call for it where I am, which I knew going in, but knowing it going in and living it going in are different experiences.”
“Have you thought about—” I stop, because the thought that has arrived is large and somewhat irregular, and I want to look at it for a moment before I send it out into the world.
“About what?”
There’s more to it than I’m about to make it sound. “Have you thought about New York?”
Carrie Ann looks at me, laughs. But then she sees I’m not joking. “No. I don’t… I can’t afford New York, Molly.”
“No. But you could afford here for a while. Until you get your feet under you.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“Not joking.”
Then she looks around the kitchen—the professional range and the six burners and the stone floors and the light coming through the windows that look out onto the Southampton grounds—and then back at me.
“This isn’t New York,” she says.
“It’s adjacent to New York.”
“Molly, there’s a man at the gate with a gun.”
“There are several men at the gate,” I confirm. “And you already knew about them. You went past them to get here. You adjusted. Which means you can in the future too.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I’d need to think about it,” she says finally.
“Of course.”
Igor passes through again, pausing briefly at the counter to collect something he left there earlier, and he says nothing further to either of us. Carrie Ann can’t take her eyes off of him, and I catch the subtle glance over his shoulder at her as he leaves the room.
Oh, it’s on. Good. They both deserve some happiness.
The burner phone buzzes on the table. I glance at it.Pushkin has learned to sit. The schoolteacher is very proud. Three photos attached.
I turn the phone to show Carrie Ann, because Carrie Ann is the kind of person who should know about Pushkin, and because sharing things with Carrie Ann is one of the great and durable pleasures of my life.
Carrie Ann looks at the photos for a long moment. “He’s very fluffy.”
“He really is.”
We finish the brownies, and I hope beyond hope that she takes me up on my offer.
28
PAVEL
