Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

picture my brother in cutoffs, no shoes, chasing after a naked little boy named Cody while Izzy, his pregnant wife, laughs at him. “I don’t think so.”

      “E-mail?” Max asks. “I got a new computer last week. First one. Gotta keep up, you know?”

      “I do.” I look at my watch and gesture toward the wrapped package of corned beef that is still on his side of the glass. “You know what? I think I’ll just take the corned beef,” I say.

      “No, no. I’ll get your salads.” He waves his hand like filling my order isn’t important, like it’s not why he’s here, never mind why I’m here. “So are you working over there? At the alley, I mean?”

      I explain how I’ve taken over the job of decorating the place while a woman pushes me out of the way on the pretense of reaching for a package of rugelach.

      “Remind me nevah to go thayh,” the woman behind me says in a loud gravelly voice thick with Long Island.

      I tell Max that I’m in kind of a rush and that maybe I’ll see him next week at the bowling alley.

      “Isn’t it next week already?” the same woman asks in an even louder voice.

      “You don’t like my service?” Max asks her. He squints his eyes at her like he could burn her with them. “Go to King Kullen.”

      I want to warn her that King Kullen’s a bad idea, but she’s off looking for a manager.

      “I won’t miss her,” Max says, handing me my corned beef, my potato salad, my coleslaw and a loose piece of halvah. “You, I’m gonna miss.”

      “When you buy your island?” I ask, happy to feed the fantasy now that I’m backing away from the counter.

      “Exactly,” he says as he listens to someone else’s order and nods. “A pound of pastrami. Got it. You want it should be lean? Sliced thin?”

      

      “MO-OM!” Dana whines in response to my innocently mentioning at dinner in Pastaeria (the local pizza joint no one is sure how to pronounce), that Max was acting strangely and that I think I should tell Drew about his pie-in-the-sky plans. “You don’t know what kind of money he has stashed away. He could be a millionaire. He could be Donald Trump’s long-lost father and—”

      I remind her that Max is around my age, which makes him way too young to be The Donald’s father. Dana seems skeptical, like maybe I don’t know just how old I really am. Remember when everyone who’d graduated from high school more than two years before you did was old? That’s what my kids think.

      They may be right.

      Jesse thinks it’s a great idea and I should pull out my cell phone and call Drew immediately. This, of course, has nothing to do with his fondness for Drew and his fervent wish that I marry the handsome detective.

      Dana, picking all the cheese off her pizza and giving me a look which implies I should be doing the same, tells Jesse that he—and I—are just using Max as an excuse to call Drew. But, unlike her usual carping tone that implies I’m leading Drew on and ruining her life, she sounds like she’s actually teasing me. Could she be growing up? Adjusting to the fact that her father and I will not get back together in this lifetime?

      “If it was murder, then maybe you and he would, you know, get together again,” she says. “At least, you hope.”

      Unfortunately, she may have me dead to rights.

      In the meantime, little Alyssa ate so many garlic knots before the pizza showed up that she can’t even pretend to eat her slice. That doesn’t mean she isn’t interested in dessert and she asks whether Max sent her anything.

      I avoid answering because then I’d have to admit that on my way home I ate the Jell Rings meant for her.

      I’ve got to go back to work if I’ve any hope of getting done before the grand opening, so I beg them to pass on dessert, remind everyone there is ice cream in the freezer, prevail and head for home. I arrive in my driveway at the same time my father pulls up at the curb. He’s there to watch the Mets game with Jesse, who doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s gone over to the dark side. He’s now a Yankees fan.

      “Once a week I can root for the Mets for Grandpa,” he tells me, reminding me why it is I still like the kid. “Sometimes you have to bend the truth a little for someone you love.”

      It’s taken me years to learn what he already knows at eleven.

      I kiss the kids and Dad goodbye and I’m back at the alley, knee-deep in lighting wires when Drew and his partner, Hal Nelson, saunter in.

      Saying that Hal and I don’t care for each other is like saying there may be a little traffic on the Long Island Expressway at rush hour. I don’t know what I ever did to him—except maybe show up the police department once or twice.

      And I didn’t really do that, even.

      Newsday just made it sound that way.

      There are only about a half-dozen patrons left in the place, only a couple still bowling. The others are taking off their shoes, packing up their bags, reliving a frame or two and sharing a joke. I see Drew take note of each and every one as he makes his way over to where I’m waiting for the glue to cure on a section of wall.

      “You wanted to tell me something?” Drew asks. I stare at him blankly for a minute, unable to believe he’d bring Hal with him to talk about us. I guess he sees my confusion, because he offers a hint. “About the guy in the cooler? You called the precinct?”

      “Oh, right,” I say, looking like the dolt Hal has me pegged for. Maybe I can blame it on the glue fumes. “I just wanted to tell you about a conversation I had with Max. He’s one of The Spare Slices—”

      “Oh hell,” Hal says, blowing a balloon of air out toward his thinning hairline and addressing Drew. “She’s not suggesting this was a murder or that we need her help, is she? That’s not why we came all the way over here, is it, Scoones?”

      It’s his way of daring me to say I think I’m smarter than the police. I tell him that first of all, he can talk to me directly. He doesn’t have to do it through Drew, who’s leaning back against the wall looking thoroughly amused.

      In fact, he appears so amused that I decide not to tell him about the adhesive for the brushed steel sheets.

      The police don’t screw up investigations, Hal tells me, snicker, snicker, snicker. “At least, I don’t.”

      I’m hoping he leans up against the same wall Drew is going to find himself stuck to.

      “Not that I’m implying Detective Scoones over here screws up, either,” he says, gesturing at Drew with his thumb and adding a few more gratuitous snickers. “He just screws. Right, honey?” He looks at me to drive the point home. When Drew says nothing, any guilt I was harboring about his ruined jacket dissolves.

      So, fine. I get to the point. “One of the other Spare Slices is talking about buying an island,” I say. “Could be wishful thinking, could be a pipe dream. On the other hand, it could mean something.”

      “An island?” Hal says. Actually, he sneers. Hal always sneers. In my presence, anyway. Drew maintains he’s really a nice guy. I’ve seen no evidence. Not that the police seem to rely on little things like evidence all that much, in my experience. “What was he smoking at the time?”

      “Salmon,” I say.

      Drew licks his pointer finger and draws an imaginary one in my air column.

      “Been determined to be an accident,” Hal says, and he leans right up against the wall beside Drew. “Familiar territory for you.”

      I run the scenario, perhaps a tad contemptuously. “So he goes into the cooler, for whatever reason, and he brings in a pitcher of water, because, hey, he might get thirsty in there, right? And he pours it