Femme Fatale and other stories

arrived to find the house full of boxes and Mrs. Delafield flitting around with various lists, shouting into her portable phone as if the connection was bad. Yet she looked radiant, more beautiful than Terri had ever seen her, and her conversations seemed to hum with excitement. “I have so much to do,” she told Terri with obvious delight. “Lawyers, Realtors, moving companies—oh, it’s all so complicated! But a week from now, Hugo and I will be gone, and this place will be on the market. We’ll miss you!”
    She headed out, full of true purpose for once, and Terri walked through the house. It was as if some careless, heedless babysitter had been here first, for all the drawers and closets were open, their contents tumbling out helter-skelter. Yet the little silver gun was still in its place of honor, lying on a bed of emerald-green silk. Terri picked it up, intending to do nothing more than hold it one more time. It fit her hand so well, looked so right. It wasn’t her imagination: she was beautiful when she held this gun. Mr. Delafield had said as much. Take it, he had said, and she had assumed he meant the nightgown. Clearly, he meant the gun. He had been asking Terri to save him, to protect him from his crazy wife, who was capable of anything in her grief and anxiety over their damaged child. Terri had been Mr. Delafield’s last hope, and when she failed him, he had no choice but to leave.
    On what she would later claim was an impulse, Terri stuffed the gun in her knapsack, grabbing the emerald-green slip as an afterthought. After all, she needed something to muffle the sound of the metal. She couldn’t afford the possibility that the gun might rattle when Mrs. Delafield took her home later this evening, or assume that Mrs. Delafield, like Mr. Morrow, would be polite enough to pretend that a mysterious sound was nothing more than a faulty car heater. She swaddled the gun with great tenderness, placing it in the outside pocket of her beat-up bag, assuring herself all the while that when something makes you beautiful, it should be yours to keep.

HARDLY KNEW HER
    S ofia was a lean, hipless girl, the type that older men still called a tomboy in 1975, although her only hoydenish quality was a love of football. In the vacant lot behind the neighborhood tavern, the boys welcomed her into their games. This was in part because she was quick, with sure hands. But even touch football sometimes ended in pile-ups, where it was possible to steal a touch or two and claim it was accidental. She tolerated this feeble groping most of the time, punching the occasional boy who pressed too hard too long, which put the others on notice for a while. Then they forgot, and it happened again—they touched, she punched. It was a price she was more than willing to pay for the exhilaration she felt when she passed the yew berry bushes that marked the end zone, a gaggle of boys breathless in her wake.
    But for all the afternoons she spent at the vacant lot, she never made peace with the tricky plays—the faked handoffs, the double pumps, the gimmicky laterals. It seemed cowardly to her, a way for less gifted players to punish those with natural talent. It was one thing to spin and feint down the field, eluding grasping hands with a swivel of her nonhips. But to pretend the ball was somewhere it wasn’t struck her as cheating, and no one could ever persuade her otherwise.
    She figured it was the same with her father and cards. He knew the game was steeped in bluffing and lying, but he could never resign himself to the fact. He depended on good cards and good luck to get him through, and even Sofia understood that was no way to win at poker. But the only person her father could lie to with any success was himself.
    “That your dad?” Joe, one of the regular quarterbacks, asked one Friday afternoon as they sprawled in the grass, game over, their side victorious again.
    Sofia looked up to see her father slipping through the back door of the tavern, which people called Gordon’s, despite the fact that the owner’s name was Peter Papadakis. Perhaps someone named Gordon had owned it long ago, but it had been Mr. Papadakis’s place as far back as Sofia could remember.
    “Yeah.”
    “What’s he doing, going through the back door?” That was a scrawny boy, Bob, one of the grabby ones.
    Sofia shredded grass in her fingers, ignoring him. Joe said, “Poker.”
    “Poker? Poker? I hardly knew her.” Bob was so pleased with his wit