a field trip to the Bronx Zoo on my own and lived to tell the tale. I’m not worried.”
Mimi ran her hand across her mouth while she pondered all this. I noticed her nails were gnawed to the quick. “Frank and I used to go on adventures all the time,” she said finally. “He was the cutest little boy you’ve ever seen. I was so worried somebody would kidnap him that I thought about hiring a bodyguard. But Xander was around more then.”
“Xander?” I asked. “Who’s Xander?”
As if she hadn’t heard my question, she continued, “Somehow Frank’s pediatrician got wind that I was worried some lunatic might snatch Frank, so she gave me a card for a psychiatrist who deals in anxiety issues. For me! Like I was crazy to think somebody would want to kidnap my son. I gather she’s not much of a reader, that one. Not familiar with my book. Too busy saving lives.”
“I haven’t read your book,” I said. I don’t know what possessed me to say that.
She must have stared at me for a full minute before she responded. “Did it occur to you to read it before you came to work for me?”
“Bad enough to have me underfoot,” I said. “I thought you might not want me inside your brain.” Dear god, I prayed, keep Mimi out of my bedside table drawer. If she opened it, she’d find the dog-eared, food-stained copy of Pitched I’d bought in the New York airport and had read twice on the flight out and had dipped into many times since, when writing in my notebook left me too rattled to sleep.
Mimi, who usually avoided looking at me at all, eyed me like my mother had after I presented my pajama-clad self to her, claiming I’d bathed when I’d only run water in the tub and stood at the sink making fashion-model faces in the mirror until I thought enough time had passed for her to believe I’d soaked and scrubbed. Mimi had to know I was fibbing. My mother always did.
“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.
I shrugged. “I majored in accounting. I guess I’m not much of a reader, either.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would Isaac hire an assistant who doesn’t read?”
“I’m good with computers.”
“Good with computers. That’s all that matters now, isn’t it?” The funny thing was that she seemed more pleased than angry. “The car keys are on the hook by the door. Bring Frank home right away if he bites anyone or pulls his hair out or bangs his head against anything.” She went to the counter and scribbled some things on a pad of paper there, frowning intensely as she wrote. When she’d finished writing she tore the paper from the pad and handed it to me. “Take this with you.”
She’d written out Dr. Abrams’s phone number at her beach house, along with the names and numbers of her emergency room of choice and Frank’s pediatrician, Dr. Not-a-Reader. “Frank doesn’t swim well, so if you stop at the beach, stay in the car.” She thrust her cell phone at me. “Here. Take my phone, too, in case you lose the paper. All the numbers are in there.”
“I don’t lose things,” I said. “What if you need to call somebody?”
“Who would I call?” she asked. “Take it.”
I was halfway down the hall to gather Frank when Mimi called after me, “Alice. Thank you.” Alice, not Penny.
AFTER FRANK GOT the tape off his eyebrows, he’d refreshed himself with a pass through Wardrobe. Now he was wearing an outfit more suited to an afternoon’s motoring: white canvas duster over chinos and a white shirt, leather aviator’s cap and goggles, a silk scarf and old-school binoculars around his neck. He had his plastic machete stuck in his belt and his pith helmet under his arm. “Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked.
“What’s wrong with it?” I had on a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and tennis shoes, my New York-via-Nebraska idea of standard Southern California daywear.
“Everything,” Frank said. “I know just what you need. Tartan! Let me get you my plaid cravat.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not big on plaids.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He launched into a brief-for-Frank disquisition on the importance of tartans as clan signifiers in Great Britain from ancient times forward, which segued into a history of the evolution of the striped necktie as a means of differentiating university rowing teams from afar. He paused to take a breath and I