All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1)(8)

I was pretty sure I had, but whatever.

‘Jacks told me you wouldn’t mind,’ Leo continued. ‘He said he was family, and you wouldn’t mind.’

‘I bet he did. Is that the only person you were with?’

‘Fats was there, too. We went to his place.’

Sergei ‘Fats’ Medovukha was my father’s cousin and the owner of the speakeasy Gable and I had been at the night before. Fats was fat, which was less common in those days. I liked Fats as much as I liked anyone in my extended family, but I’d told him that I didn’t want Leo hanging out at his bar.

‘What did they want with you, Leo?’

‘We got ice cream. Fats closed his place, and we went out for it. Jacks had . . . What do you call it, Annie?’

‘Vouchers.’

‘Yeah, that’s it!’

And if I knew my cousin, he’d probably made those vouchers himself.

‘I had strawberry,’ Leo continued.

‘Hmmph.’

‘Don’t be mad, Annie.’

Leo looked like he might cry. I took a deep breath and tried to control myself. It was one thing to lose my temper with Gable Arsley but behaving that way around Leo was completely unacceptable. ‘Was the ice cream good?’

Leo nodded. ‘Then we went . . . Promise you won’t be mad.’

I nodded.

‘Then we went to the Pool.’

The Pool was in the nineties on West End Avenue. It used to be a women’s swimming club back before the first water crisis, when all the pools and fountains had been drained. Now, the family (by which I mean the semya, or the Balanchine Family crime syndicate) used it as their primary meeting place. I guess they got the space on the cheap.

‘Leo!’ I yelled.

‘You said you wouldn’t be mad!’

‘But you know you’re not supposed to go to the West Side without telling someone.’

‘I know, I know. But Jacks said that a lot of people wanted to meet me there. And he said they were family so you wouldn’t mind.’

I was so angry I couldn’t speak. The macaroni had cooled enough to be eaten and I began to serve it into bowls. ‘Wash your hands, and tell Natty that dinner is ready.’

‘Please don’t be mad, Annie.’

‘I’m not mad at you,’ I said.

I was about to make Leo promise that he would never go back there when he said, ‘Jacks said maybe I could get a job working at the Pool. You know, in the family business.’

It was all I could manage not to throw the macaroni against the wall. Still, I knew it was no good getting mad at my brother. Not to mention, it seemed excessive to commit two violent acts with pasta on the same day. ‘Why would you want to do that? You love working at the clinic.’

‘Yeah, but Jacks thought it might be good if I worked with the family’ – he paused – ‘like Daddy.’

I nodded tightly. ‘I don’t know about that, Leo. They don’t have animals to pet at the Pool. Now, go get Natty, OK?’

I watched my brother as he left the kitchen. To look at him, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him. And maybe we made too much of his handicaps. It couldn’t be denied that Leo was handsome, strong and, to all intents and purposes, a grown-up. The last part terrified me, of course. Grown-ups could get themselves in trouble. They could get taken advantage of. They could get sent to Rikers Island, or worse: they could end up dead.

As I filled glasses with water, I wondered what my padonki half-cousin was up to and how much of a problem this was going to be for me.

I I. i am punished; define recidivism; tend to family matters

THE WORST PART OF LUNCH duty was the smock. It was red and tent-like and made me look fat and had a dry-erase sign Velcroed to the back that read ANYA BALANCHINE MUST LEARN TO CONTROL HER TEMPER. At first, you couldn’t see the sign because of my hair, but then they made me wear a hairnet. I didn’t protest. The ensemble would have seemed incomplete without the hairnet.

While I collected my classmates’ trays and glasses, Scarlet kept shooting me sympathetic looks which almost made the whole thing worse. I would rather have just served my time in a completely zoned-out state.

For obvious reasons, I saved Gable Arsley’s table for last.

‘I can’t believe I ever went out with that,’ he said in a low voice that was still loud enough for me to hear.

Though several replies did occur to me, I smiled and said nothing. You weren’t supposed to talk when you had lunch duty.

I pushed the cart with the trays to the kitchen, then I went back out to eat my own lunch in the two minutes I had left. Scarlet had moved and was now sitting with Win. She was leaning towards him across the table, and laughing at something he said. Poor Scarlet. Her flirting technique could hardly be called subtle, and I had a sense that this approach wouldn’t work with Win.

I didn’t really want to sit down with them. I smelt like cafeteria fumes and garbage. Scarlet beckoned to me. ‘Annie! Over here!’

I trudged across to her.

‘Love the hairnet!’ Scarlet said.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I was considering wearing it full-time. The smock, too.’ I set down my tray and put my hands on my hips. ‘Probably needs a belt, though.’ I took off the smock and set it on the bench next to me.