“The other interesting fact about the UN Headquarters is that the Secretariat Building—that’s the tall one—was the first skyscraper in North America to use a curtain wall. It was—”
“I got my period yesterday.”
Wait. What?
He was drowning. Plunged into dark, swirling, freezing water. His body might appear to be sitting placidly in the driver’s seat of his cab, but he, his real, inner self, was a block over, sinking like a stone in the East River.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints—what?
He started sweating—like, his body just started shoving perspiration out of his pores—and Max started yapping. Probably because he could sense Leo’s panic. Leo couldn’t think through all the racket. He was going to die, and the last thing he was going to hear would be that glorified rat.
But no. He couldn’t die. He was all Gabby had left.
Okay. Think. Gabby got her period. She was too young for that. Wasn’t she?
Well, obviously not, Einstein.
Also, his sister liked to give him shit, but he found it hard to imagine her joking about something like this.
So, he needed to acknowledge her news. To say something.
He cleared his throat. “You mean like your first one?”
“Yeah.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t known this was coming. But Gabby was eleven.
Oh god, maybe there was something wrong with her.
He rolled his neck to try to work out some knots that had taken up residence in it and made an effort to sound casual. “So I guess we should go to the doctor?”
The doctor for which the copay was four hundred dollars.
“I don’t need a doctor, Leo. I’m not sick.”
But what if you are? What if you have some terrible disease that causes little girls to—
“I just need some money to buy supplies.”
Right. Supplies. Right.
Oh, fuck, he wished Mom were here.
“Yeah, of course. No problem. We can stop on the way home.”
And then they would have to talk, right? About her feelings on the matter, if not the mechanics of things? They had already covered the mechanics during various excruciating versions of the birds and the bees talk in the past two years, Leo reading robotically from a script he’d modified from library books on how to talk to your kids about this shit—because the library had no books about how to talk to your much younger sister about this shit.
Was he supposed to say something here? Something profound and speechlike? Congratulations, Gabby; you’ve become a woman today.
But not today. Yesterday. She said she got her period yesterday.
“So, uh, this happened yesterday? What have you been . . . doing?”
Using? Wearing?
“I went to the school nurse, and she gave me some maxi pads,” Gabby said matter-of-factly. “But I’m out.”
Maxi pads. Leo’s vision started to swim.
“She said I was too young for tampons.”
Oh, Jesus Christ, tampons. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go and forced himself to concentrate on the road in front of him rather than the blurry blobs congregating in his peripheral vision.
All right. They just had to get out of Manhattan. Stop at the store for . . . supplies. And maybe some takeout. They would get her favorite, pasta from Ralph’s. Which normally he hated doing, because she only ever wanted penne with marinara, which he could make at home. In theory. Not that he ever did. But their mom’s recipe was better than Ralph’s, so it bugged him to spend twelve bucks for subpar pasta from down the street.
But all he could think to do right now was figure out what would make his sister happy, and make it happen. “So, kiddo, what do you say we stop at—”
“Oh my god!”
“What? What?” Leo was already so enervated, that was all it took for his adrenaline to spike, making him white-knuckle the steering wheel so he wouldn’t fly away like an overinflated balloon. His chest hurt.
“Look at that girl! She’s trying to hail a cab! Stop for her!”
“I’m not on duty.” Also, I’m having a fucking heart attack.
“She looks like a princess!”
She did kind of look like a princess. She was even flanked by a tall, slim man looking very ill at ease in his old-timey suit, and a beefy, sunglasses-wearing bald guy looking very ill at ease in his new-timey one.
“Pick her up!”
“I’m not on duty,” he said again. Also, I’m still having a fucking heart attack.
“Then just give her a ride. She looks like she really needs one.”
She did. She was literally jumping up and down, waving her hands in the air like she was a