March thinking fast, “Only that if you do get one . . . maybe I could try just a small piece of it? Only if you could spare?”

“How long you been Jewish?” Maxine out the side of her mouth.

“Where do you think I got my eating profile?” Tallis passive-aggressively making with the fingernail. “The meals you would order in, I’d go to the door and find a small crew of delivery kids holding sacks—”

“Two. Maybe. And only that one time.”

“Obesity, cardiac issues, tra-la-la who cares, as long as the quantity’s right, eh Mother?”

This may call for some subtle intervention. “Guys,” Maxine announces, “the check, we’re gonna split it, OK? Maybe before it gets here, we could . . . March, you ordered the Sunrise Special with double beef bacon and sausage, plus the latkes and applesauce, plus the extra side of latkes and—”

“That’s mine,” sez Tallis.

“OK, and you have the rolled beef . . . the potato salad on the sandwich is another 50¢ . . .”

“But you ordered that extra pickle, so call that an offset . . .” Degenerating, as Maxine hoped it might, into the old bookkeepers-at-lunch exercise, God forbid there should be real cash on a real table, which, while consuming energy useful elsewhere, is still worth it if it keeps everybody grounded, somehow, in reality. The downside, she admits, is that neither of these two is above playing this lunch strategically, trying to create anxiety enough to dampen or destroy somebody’s appetite, which better not be Maxine’s is all, as she herself is expecting the Turkey Pastrami Health Combo, whose menu copy promises alfalfa sprouts, portobello mushrooms, avocados, low-fat mayo, and more, in the way of redemptive add-ons. This has drawn looks of distaste from the other two, so good, good, they agree on something at least, it’s a start.

Competitive math, mistakes real and tactical, figuring out the tip and how to divide up the sales tax, go on till Rigoberto buzzes up. It turns out to be only one delivery kid, but he does seem to be wheeling the food down the hall on a dolly of some kind.

Presently the entire surface of the table in the dining room is covered with containers, soda cans, waxed paper, plastic wrap, and sandwiches and side orders, and everybody is intensely fressing without regard to where, besides into mouths, it’s all going. Maxine takes a short break to observe March. “What happened to ‘corrupt artifact of . . .’ whatever it was?”

“Yaycchhh gwaahhihucchihnggg,” March nods, removing the lid from another container of coleslaw.

When face-stuffing activities slow down a bit, Maxine is thinking of how to bring up the topic of young Kennedy Ice, when the mother and grandma beat her to it. According to Tallis, her husband is now looking for custody.

“OH, no,” March detonates. “No way, who’s your lawyer?”

“Glick Mountainson?”

“They got me off from a libel beef once. Good saloon fighters basically. How’s it looking so far?”

“They say the one bright spot is I’m not contesting the money.”

“It doesn’t, uh, interest you, the money?” Maxine curious more than shocked.

“Not as much as it does them—they’re working on contingency. Sorry, but all I can think about is Kennedy.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” sez March.

“Actually I should, Mom . . . keeping you guys apart all that time . . .”

“Well, full disclosure, actually we’ve been sneaking a couple minutes together when we can.”

“Oh, he told me about that. Afraid I’d be angry.”

“You weren’t?”

“Gabe’s problem, not mine. So we kept quiet about it.”

“Sure. Wouldn’t do to provoke any patriarchal anger.” Maxine, seeing the further but not always useful phrase “fucking doormat” taking shape, preemptively grabs a somehow overlooked pickle and inserts it into March’s mouth.

On through lunch and the fall of the afternoon, through a daylight-saving’s evening too bright for the winter most NYers still think they’re in. Maxine, Tallis, and March move into the kitchen, then out of the house, out onto the street, through slowly deepening streetlight over to March’s place.

At some point Maxine remembers to call Horst. “This is all girls tonight, by the way.”

“Did I ask?”

“OK, you’re improving. I might need the Impala also.”

“Will you be taking it out of state, by any chance?”

“There’s some, what, federal situation?”

“Li’l risk assessment is all.”

“May not come to that, just asking.”

•   •   •

TALLIS HAPPENS TO look out the window into the street. “Shit. It’s Gabe.”

Maxine sees a snow-white stretch limo pulling up in front. “Looks familiar, but how do you know it’s—” then she spots the well-known iterated diagonals of the hashslingrz logo, painted on the roof.

“His own personal satellite link,” Tallis explains.

“The staff here are all related, sort of emeritus members of the Mara Salvatrucha,” March sez, “so there shouldn’t be any problem.”

“If they’re acquainted with the appearance of $100 bills in quantity,” Tallis mutters, “Gabe will be up here before you know it.”

Maxine grabs her purse, which she’s happy to feel is as heavy today as it should be. “There’s another way out, March?”

Service elevator to the basement, fire door out into the courtyard in back. “You guys wait down here,” sez Maxine, “I’ll be back with the car soon as I can.”

Her local, Warpspeed Parking, is just around the corner. While they’re bringing up the Impala, she runs a quick Roth IRA tutorial for Hector, the guy on the gate, whom somebody has misinformed about the virtues of converting from traditional.

“Without a penalty? Not right away, they make you wait five years, Hector, sorry.”

She gets back to March’s building to find everybody somehow out on the sidewalk in front, in the middle of a screaming match. Ice’s chauffeur, Gunther, is waiting at the wheel of the idling limo. Far from the massive Nazi ape that Maxine was expecting, he turns out to be a perhaps overgroomed Rikers alumnus who’s wearing his shades down on his nose to accommodate the extra eyelash length.

Grumbling, Maxine double-parks and joins the merriment. “March, come here.”

“Soon as I kill this motherfucker.”

“Don’t put in,” Maxine advises, “her life is her business.”

Reluctantly March gets in the car while Tallis, surprisingly calm, continues her adult discussion with Ice.

“It isn’t a lawyer you need, Gabe, it’s a doctor.”

She means mentally, but at this point Gabe isn’t looking too fit either, his face all red and swollen, some trembling he can’t control. “Listen to me, bitch, I’ll buy as many judges as I need to, but you’ll never see my son again. Fuckin never.”

OK, Maxine thinks, he raises a hand, time for the Beretta.

He raises a hand. Tallis avoids it easily, but the Tomcat is now in the equation.

“It doesn’t happen,” Ice carefully watching the muzzle.

“How’s that, Gabe.”

“I don’t die. There’s no scenario where I die.”

“Batshit fuckin insane,” March out the car window.

“Better hop on in there with your mom, Tallis. Gabe, that’s good to hear,” Maxine calm and upbeat, “and the reason you don’t die? is that you come to your senses. Start thinking about this on a longer time scale and, most important, walk away.”

“That’s—”

“That’s the scenario.”

The odd thing about March’s street is that it would be rejected by any movie-location scout, regardless of genre, as too well behaved. In this fold of space-time, women accessorized like Maxine do not point sidearms at people. It must be something else in her hand. She’s offering him something, something of value he doesn’t want to take, wants to pay him back a debt maybe, which he’s pretending to forgive and will eventually accept.

“She forgot the part,” March can’t help hollering out the window, “where you don’t get to be master of the universe, you go on being a schmuck, all kinds of competition starts coming out of the woodwork and you have to scramble to not lose market share, and your life stops being your own and belongs to the overlords you always worshipped.”