Three Fates

disinterested,” she continued. “I’m neurotic, phobic and socially inept. I sometimes imagine myself suffering from a rare, lingering disease—or being lactose intolerant. Neither of which is true, at least up till now.”
    She braced her hands on the sink because saying it out loud, hearing herself say it out loud, made it all sound so pathetic. “The last time I went to bed with a man—other than this morning—was three years ago in April. Neither of us was particularly delighted with the results. So, what are you doing here?”
    “First, I’d like to say that if it’d been over three years since I’d had sex, I’d be in therapy as well.”
    He turned her to face him, then kept his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Second, being shy isn’t being socially inept. Third, I’m here because here’s where I want to be. And finally, I’d like to ask if when we’ve got all this business done with, you’d come back to Ireland with me for a bit. I’d like you to meet my own mother, under less touchy circumstances than I met yours. Now look what you’ve done,” he said when the bottle she held slipped out of her hand and hit the floor. “You’ve got those little pills everywhere.”

Eighteen
     
     
     
     
    A NITA considered the possibility of flying to Athens and personally interrogating every antique dealer and collector in the city. Though there would have been something satisfying in this hands-on approach, she couldn’t expect another Fate to simply fall into her lap.
    Moreover, she wasn’t willing to go to quite that much trouble on the vague memory of a bumbling fool like Tia Marsh. No, as much as she craved action, it wouldn’t do.
    She needed direction, she needed leads. She needed employees who could follow both so she wasn’t required to shoot them in the head.
    She sighed over that. She’d been vaguely disappointed that her former employee’s murder had warranted no more than a few lines in the New York Post. Really, that said quite a bit about the world, didn’t it? she mused. When a dead man garnered less press than a pop singer’s second marriage.
    It only proved that fame and money ran the show. Something she’d known all her life. Those two elements had been her goal even when she’d been moldering in that lousy third-floor walk-up in Queens. When her name had been Anita Gorinsky, when she’d watched her father work himself to a nub for a stingy paycheck her mother had struggled to stretch week by week.
    She’d never belonged there, inside those dingy walls her mother had tried to brighten with flea market art and homemade curtains. She’d never been a part of that world, with its rooms that smelled forever of onions and its tacky hand-crocheted doilies. Her mother’s wide, fresh-scrubbed face and her father’s scarred workingman’s hands had been an embarrassment to her.
    She’d detested them for their ordinariness. Their pride in her, their only daughter, their joy in sacrificing so that she could have advantages, had disgusted her.
    She’d known, even as a child she’d known she was destined for so much more. But destiny, Anita thought, often needed a helping hand.
    She’d taken their money for schooling, for clothes, and had demanded more. She’d deserved it. She’d earned it, Anita thought. Every penny of it she’d earned with every day she’d lived in that horrid apartment.
    And she’d paid them back, in her way, by seeing that their investment in her produced considerable dividends.
    She hadn’t seen her parents, or her two brothers, in more than eighteen years. As far as the world she now lived in was concerned—as far as she herself was concerned—she had no family.
    She doubted anyone from the old neighborhood would recognize little Nita in the woman she’d become. She rose and walked to the giltwood pier glass that reflected the spacious sitting area of her office. Once her hair had been a long fall of mink brown her mother had spent hours brushing and curling. Her nose had been prominent and her front teeth had overlapped. Her cheeks had been soft and round.
    A few nips, a couple of tucks, some dental work and a good hairstylist had changed the outer package. Streamlined it. She’d always known how to enhance her better assets.
    Inside, she was exactly as she’d always been. Hungry, and determined to feed her appetites.
    Men, she knew, were always willing to set a full plate in front of a beautiful woman. As long as the man believed the