Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

And I learned from Alyssa that Drew isn’t Daddy and that Daddy should live with us.

Which brings me back to Daddy, otherwise known as Rio the rat Gallo, standing in my place of business, chatting up the owner.

“Hey Teddi,” he says. “You see my new truck?” He points with his chin toward the bowling alley doors through which I’ve just come without noticing anything except that I have a message on my cell phone from Rita Kroll, that friend of my mother’s who is moving up to Woodbury.

Or down to Woodbury, in my mother’s eyes.

I bother looking—against my better instincts—and outside is a big white truck with the words Rio Grande Security written on the side. The O in Rio is a camera and a wire snakes its way through the words. It’s actually a nice logo. Not that I’d tell him so if my life depended on it.

I put two and two—and two—together and hope I’m not getting the right sum. There’s Rio’s name on the truck, the truck is here at L.I. Lanes and I think Steve casually mentioned something to me the other day about putting in some security cameras.

Steve asks if Rio and I know each other. I pray that Rio doesn’t answer “in the Biblical sense.”

Do I have to tell you?

I didn’t think so.

Before Steve gets ideas, I tell him that we were once married, a long, long time ago.

Rio corrects me and tells him we’ve only been divorced a couple of years.

“Rio’s putting in a system for me,” Steve says.

I bite my tongue so that “well then, I’m out of here,” can’t slip out. “Great,” I say instead, drawing out the word like I’m drowning.

“It’ll be like old times,” Rio says, throwing an arm around me and hugging me against his side. “Remember when we did Lys’s room? You doing all the painting and me wiring up her lights?”

“How could I forget?” I say with a weak smile. I doubt the fire department has forgotten either. And in the damp weather you can still faintly smell the smoke in her room.

He’s still hugging me against him when the phone on the counter rings and Steve turns to answer it.

“Please don’t blow this for me,” Rio whispers. “I gotta pay Carmine back for the truck and I’ve got—”

Carmine? He borrowed money from my mother’s old boyfriend to start his business? The old boyfriend who is so blatantly mafioso that he could give James Gandolfini lessons?

“Problem?” Steve asks, hanging up the phone.

I consider my options. I can either tell Steve how inept Rio is, how, when he tried to get naked pictures of me to sell to a girly magazine, billing me as Long Island’s Most Dangerous Decorator after poor Elise Meyers, my first client, got murdered, he didn’t know the camera had to be attached to anything. I could tell him that Rio and wires in the same vicinity can only lead to disaster, thereby lousing up his new business and any chance I might have to be free of his constant requests for financial assistance so that he can fulfill the ridiculous promises he makes to our children. And in the process come off like a bitchy, vindictive ex-wife—not unlike the one Steve is always complaining about.

Not so good. And that’s not even considering what my mother’s old boyfriend, Carmine De’Guisseppe, would have his goons do to Rio if he couldn’t make his payments.

Since I really don’t want to see my children’s father castrated…

Oh, wait.

Let me think.

No. Despite some sort of poetic justice for his misdeeds, I can see clearly that my only viable option is to oversee his job myself and simply check on his work after hours when no one else is around. Maybe with a little help from Drew, even. He knows surveillance inside and out, so to speak. And the idea of testing it with ourselves—in a pool hall, no less—just might appeal to him, too.

I GET MARK SET doing the steel squares, which I’ve tested to my satisfaction, and then attempt to convince Bobbie to spend a couple of hours helping me win Rita Kroll as a client before my appointment with the pool-table salesman.

Rita no doubt remembers me as the dumpy little girl around the corner who had no sense of style. The girl who wore black for six years running and even went goth before it had its moment in the sun.

Which is why it’s so important that Bobbie come with me. She exudes a certain air of confidence which, to be honest, I lack. It’s not that I don’t know I’m talented, professional and competent. It’s just that, from her perfectly-styled-and-colored hair (red with gold highlights this week) to her freshly-pedicured toes (with French tips, of course), Bobbie’s whole persona seems to shout that she knows what she’s doing. And if you have any desire to appear the same way, she’s who you’d hire.

Not that Bobbie knows a thing about decorating or anything beyond the right person to hire to acquire “the look.”

I’m the one with the degree.

Bobbie’s the one with panache.

We’re a good team.

While it takes me a good half hour and the promise that we can stop at DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) to look for Jimmy Choos—which I can guarantee won’t be there—on the way back, she does agree to go with me. At which point I remember that there is a message from Rita waiting for me on my cell phone.

Punching up the message, I listen to a tearful voice canceling our appointment. Great. I really can’t afford to lose clients, especially ones I don’t even have yet. Even if they are referrals from my mother and sure to be disasters.

I reach Rita to tell her that I’ve gotten her message. Okay, I admit that I thought about pretending I didn’t receive it and just showing up because it would be really hard for her to send me from her doorstep. But I don’t.

“It’s a bad time, Teddi dear,” she tells me.

I offer to rearrange my schedule and see her later in the week, if that would help.

It won’t. “It’s not that I’m avoiding you,” she says. “You know I’d do anything for your mother. It’s just…” She sniffs and I hear her blowing her nose before she continues. “I lost my brother last week. We just finished sitting shivah the day before yesterday. I really can’t think about decorating now.”

I make all the requisite noises, tell her I’m so sorry for her loss, that of course I understand, that whenever she’s ready to reschedule, just let me know.

“Call me next week,” she says, taking me by surprise. My mother must have really put the screws to her.

As for me, I’m relieved to have the extra time to put in at the alley without losing a potential customer.

And no, that does not mean I’m glad the woman’s brother died, for heaven’s sake. She’s a sweet old lady. Her brother was probably a hundred and two.

“Good,” Bobbie says when I tell her. “Then I’m off to get gorgeous shoes while the sale is still on.”

Mark clucks as Bobbie leaves. He’s up on a ladder and he asks me to hand him a few squares.

“A man is dead,” I say as I hold up the pieces of steel and he leans down to take them. “Doesn’t anybody care?”

“I don’t know, Teddi. Maybe they’re used to it. With you, there’s usually a body, beautiful.”

His eyes stray down my cleavage and because I’m reaching up and my hands are full there isn’t much I can do about it.

“Or maybe I should say, ‘With you, there’s usually a beautiful body.’”

Before I can tell him that teasing an old lady isn’t nice, someone sidles up from behind and reaches around me. “Want me to help you hold those?” a deep voice asks and I realize it’s Rio.

Ordinarily, Mark would think the remark was funny…it’s the kind he’d make. But he dislikes my ex-husband almost as much as I do, and almost as much as he dislikes Drew.