Little Girls(72)

Susan finished her ice pop and bounced over to him just as he was lowering the sump pump down into the hole. “Can I help?” she asked.

“In a minute.”

“What can I do?”

He could see the surface of the water roughly fifteen feet below. He fed the pump down into it by the cord, hand over hand, until it was submerged beneath the black water. He pointed to the extension cord that was coiled like a snake in the grass. “See the end of that?”

Susan scratched her head and looked blankly at the extension cord.

“The end of the cord, Susan,” he said, pointing to the tri-pronged bulb at the end.

“Yes!” She picked it up.

“Go inside and plug it into the wall. Give yourself enough slack.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Unwind the cord so you have enough of it to take with you.”

She bent, let out several feet of slack, then raced up the stairs and into the house.

“She’s getting big,” Laurie said from the porch steps, watching her go. Ted clearly heard the maudlin tone to his wife’s voice.

Down in the hole, the sump pump began humming beneath the water. Ted had one foot on the garden hose; after a few seconds, he felt the hose swell up as the water funneled through it. He gave up a few more feet of cord and let the sump pump sink to the floor of the well. Just a few feet of water. Not so deep. He estimated it would take a couple of hours for the entire well to drain.

Laurie drew up beside him and peered down into the hole. “I threw some things down there when I was a kid,” she said, a hint of melancholia still in her voice. “I wonder if they’ll still be down there.”

“I don’t see why not. Where else would they go?”

“When I was a kid, I thought they would disappear and turn into wishes.”

He liked the idea of that. “Maybe they did.”

“Some, maybe.” She smiled but did not look at him. “Sadie threw things down there, too.”

For a second, he didn’t know whom she was talking about. But then he remembered, and he wondered if she had been honest with him in her reason for wanting to drain the well.

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she turned, went up the stairs, and into the house.

I hope there’s nothing down there. The thought came at him like a pop fly to left field. Nothing but stones and mud. He didn’t know why he felt this way, and that troubled him further.

Susan bounded out onto the porch. “Did I do it?” she called to him, leaning over the porch railing. “Did it work?”

“It sure did, sugar pie.”

“Yay!” she cheered. “Now what?”

He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Now we wait.”





Steve Markham called about an hour later, and there was triumph in his voice.

“Tell me the good news,” Ted said, grinning to himself. Having just checked on the progress of the well, he was out in the front yard with the cell phone to his ear.

“Here’s the deal,” Markham said. “It’ll be a lunch meeting in the city, face-to-face, this Friday. It’ll be you, me, Fish, of course, and Fish’s agent. She’s a real ball-buster dyke, but she’s also in agreement with us on this, at least to an extent. She knows Fish is a prick and has already convinced him to hear us out.”

“So he hasn’t necessarily conceded to letting me go ahead with the original outline—”

“No, but he hasn’t told us to f*ck off, either. And considering that’s his typical modus operandi, I’d say we’re looking like a couple of sweepstakes winners right about now, my friend.”

“Brilliant. I’m sure I can convince him in person.”

“Yes, I’m sure you can, if you do it properly. Kid gloves, you know? These overblown artist types, you have to coddle them, fawn over them, tell them their shit smells like strawberries and their piss tastes like champagne.”

“Is that what you do to me?”

Steve Markham laughed. “You’re still in Maryland?”

“Yes.”

“How soon can you get up here?”

“To the city? I can leave Friday morning and be there for lunch.”

“The meeting is set for eleven-thirty at Rao’s. I suggest you come in the night before. The last thing we need is for you to drive up Friday morning, blow a flat, or if there’s f*cking construction on 95, and we both know there’s always f*cking construction on 95. . . .”

“I’ll have to check with Laurie.”

“There’s one other thing, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I took a shot in the dark here, and nothing’s set in stone yet . . .”

“Spit it out.”

“I had a meeting yesterday with the guys at the production office about this whole mess. Apparently, the producers had no idea John Fish was such an egomaniacal *, and they all agreed you were in a tough spot on this. More than that—they agreed that if you pulled this off and got this thing to work, they’d be happy to work with you again.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“No, no—hear me out. I told them about that play you’d been working on before taking the Fish project, the one about the ex-priest and the prostitute.”