having taken his card. As she hurried away with the Engelhardt children, Mr. Kidder called urgently after her, offering to summon a taxi for them or, if they walked over to his house—"Close by, a five-minute walk"—to drive them back himself. But Katya called over her shoulder, "No! No thanks! That isn't a good idea right now."
My darling, I thought then that I had lost you. Before I even knew you.
2
"A ROLL OF THE DICE . Let the dice decide."
Smiling, recalling her father's words from long ago. When she'd been a little girl who'd adored her daddy, not knowing how her daddy was a compulsive gambler, which was a bad habit in the Spivak family only when you lost big. So long as Jude Spivak's losses were reasonably small, only just interspersed with wins, maybe gambling wasn't a bad habit at all.
As Katya remembered, her mother had liked it just fine when Katya's daddy had won. No furious condemnations of "compulsive gambling" so long as he brought money home. In fact, hugs and kisses. In fact, celebrating by getting drunk.
Let the dice decide was a cool way of saying Take a chance, see what happens, why the hell not?
Not a good idea, maybe! But Katya was going to execute it.
He was an elderly man, with an eye for her. He was a rich man, and he was (shrewdly, she knew) a lonely man. In Atlantic City, such men were marks. Such men were asking to be exploited, duped.
She would return to him. Quite deliberately—consciously—shrewdly she would return to Mr. Kidder in that mansion of his.
Not the day after they'd met—that would be too soon. Let him wait a while, and worry that pretty blond sixteen-year-old Katya wasn't coming back.
Nor the day following, either (an exhausting day spent on Mr. Engelhardt's showy thirty-foot Chris-Craft powerboat bucking the waves to Cape May and back—an "outing" providing as much pleasure for the harassed nanny as being taken for a jarring ride on a lawn mower across corrugated ground). Next day was a Monday—by which day Katya reckoned that Mr. Kidder would have given up expecting visitors.
Just a roll of the dice. She was risking nothing. No danger in upscale Bayhead Harbor, which was very different from Atlantic City, fifty miles to the south, where Katya Spivak would never have been so naive as to go to a man's house, no matter how harmless he appeared, how gentlemanly or how rich.
Of course, she wasn't going alone: she wasn't that naive. She would take little Tricia with her, and the baby in his stroller. Not really risky by Spivak family standards.
So on Monday, after they'd fed the noisy waterfowl in the park, as if she'd just thought of it, Katya squatted before three-year-old Tricia and asked if she'd like to visit that "nice funny old white-haired man with the cane, who was so friendly the other day," and predictably Tricia cried Yes!, and so Katya saw no harm in taking Tricia and Tricia's little brother in his stroller to Mr. Kidder's house a few blocks away.
If Mrs. Engelhardt found out and asked about the visit, Katya might say that Tricia had wanted to return, Tricia had insisted. She could not have reasonably argued that 17 Proxmire Street was on her way back to the Engelhardts' house on New Liberty Street. For Mr. Kidder lived in the much-revered "historic"—"landmark"—section of Bayhead Harbor, near picturesque Bayhead Lighthouse and the open ocean. As the open ocean was very different from the narrow boat channels in the Engelhardts' newly developed neighborhood, so the air nearer the ocean was distinctly cooler and fresher and smelled bracingly of water, sand, sun.
Money too, Katya thought. A special kind of money-smell, which had nothing to do with grubby paper bills you might actually hold in your hand and count. Nothing to do with coins sweating in the palm of a hand. This was money that was invisible, the money of true wealth.
The Engelhardts and their friends spoke enviously of these older, spacious oceanfront properties that so
My darling, I thought then that I had lost you. Before I even knew you.
2
"A ROLL OF THE DICE . Let the dice decide."
Smiling, recalling her father's words from long ago. When she'd been a little girl who'd adored her daddy, not knowing how her daddy was a compulsive gambler, which was a bad habit in the Spivak family only when you lost big. So long as Jude Spivak's losses were reasonably small, only just interspersed with wins, maybe gambling wasn't a bad habit at all.
As Katya remembered, her mother had liked it just fine when Katya's daddy had won. No furious condemnations of "compulsive gambling" so long as he brought money home. In fact, hugs and kisses. In fact, celebrating by getting drunk.
Let the dice decide was a cool way of saying Take a chance, see what happens, why the hell not?
Not a good idea, maybe! But Katya was going to execute it.
He was an elderly man, with an eye for her. He was a rich man, and he was (shrewdly, she knew) a lonely man. In Atlantic City, such men were marks. Such men were asking to be exploited, duped.
She would return to him. Quite deliberately—consciously—shrewdly she would return to Mr. Kidder in that mansion of his.
Not the day after they'd met—that would be too soon. Let him wait a while, and worry that pretty blond sixteen-year-old Katya wasn't coming back.
Nor the day following, either (an exhausting day spent on Mr. Engelhardt's showy thirty-foot Chris-Craft powerboat bucking the waves to Cape May and back—an "outing" providing as much pleasure for the harassed nanny as being taken for a jarring ride on a lawn mower across corrugated ground). Next day was a Monday—by which day Katya reckoned that Mr. Kidder would have given up expecting visitors.
Just a roll of the dice. She was risking nothing. No danger in upscale Bayhead Harbor, which was very different from Atlantic City, fifty miles to the south, where Katya Spivak would never have been so naive as to go to a man's house, no matter how harmless he appeared, how gentlemanly or how rich.
Of course, she wasn't going alone: she wasn't that naive. She would take little Tricia with her, and the baby in his stroller. Not really risky by Spivak family standards.
So on Monday, after they'd fed the noisy waterfowl in the park, as if she'd just thought of it, Katya squatted before three-year-old Tricia and asked if she'd like to visit that "nice funny old white-haired man with the cane, who was so friendly the other day," and predictably Tricia cried Yes!, and so Katya saw no harm in taking Tricia and Tricia's little brother in his stroller to Mr. Kidder's house a few blocks away.
If Mrs. Engelhardt found out and asked about the visit, Katya might say that Tricia had wanted to return, Tricia had insisted. She could not have reasonably argued that 17 Proxmire Street was on her way back to the Engelhardts' house on New Liberty Street. For Mr. Kidder lived in the much-revered "historic"—"landmark"—section of Bayhead Harbor, near picturesque Bayhead Lighthouse and the open ocean. As the open ocean was very different from the narrow boat channels in the Engelhardts' newly developed neighborhood, so the air nearer the ocean was distinctly cooler and fresher and smelled bracingly of water, sand, sun.
Money too, Katya thought. A special kind of money-smell, which had nothing to do with grubby paper bills you might actually hold in your hand and count. Nothing to do with coins sweating in the palm of a hand. This was money that was invisible, the money of true wealth.
The Engelhardts and their friends spoke enviously of these older, spacious oceanfront properties that so
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