Free Music of the Night by Suzy McKee Charnas Page A

and Nick and the kids were arriving. Oh, God. Next phone call. The Americana was the hotel Deb had mentioned. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Redpath were registered in room whatnot. Ring, please.
    Deb’s voice came shakily on the line. “I’ve been trying to call you.” Like Kenny.
    “You sound upset,” Floria said, steadying herself for whatever calamity had descended: illness, accident, assault in the streets of the dark, degenerate city.
    Silence, then a raggedy sob. “Nick’s not here. I didn’t phone you earlier because I thought he still might come, but I don’t think he’s coming, Mom.” Bitter weeping.
    “Oh, Debbie. Debbie, listen, you just sit tight, I’ll be right down there.”
    The cab ride took only a few minutes. Debbie was still crying when Floria stepped into the room.
    “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Deb wailed, shaking her head. “What did I do wrong? He went away a week ago, to do some research, he said, and I didn’t hear from him, and half the bank money is gone—just half, he left me half. I kept hoping . . . they say most runaways come back in a few days or call up, they get lonely . . . I haven’t told anybody—I thought since we were supposed to be here at this convention thing together, I’d better come, maybe he’d show up. But nobody’s seen him, and there are no messages, not a word, nothing.”
    “All right, all right, poor Deb,” Floria said, hugging her.
    “Oh God, I’m going to wake the kids with all this howling.” Deb pulled away, making a frantic gesture toward the door of the adjoining room. “It was so hard to get them to sleep—they were expecting Daddy to be here, I kept telling them he’d be here.” She rushed out into the hotel hallway. Floria followed, propping the door open with one of her shoes since she didn’t know whether Deb had a key with her or not. They stood out there together, ignoring passersby, huddling over Deb’s weeping.
    “What’s been going on between you and Nick?” Floria said. “Have you two been sleeping together lately?”
    Deb let out a squawk of agonized embarrassment, “Mo- ther! ” and pulled away from her. Oh, hell, wrong approach.
    “Come on, I’ll help you pack. We’ll leave word you’re at my place. Let Nick come looking for you.”
    Floria firmly squashed down the miserable inner cry, How am I going to stand this?
    “Oh, no, I can’t move till morning now that I’ve got the kids settled down. Besides, there’s one night’s deposit on the rooms. Oh, Mom, what did I do?”
    “You didn’t do anything, hon,” Floria said, patting her shoulder and thinking in some part of her mind, Oh boy, that’s great, is that the best you can come up with in a crisis with all your training and experience? Your touted professional skills are not so hot lately, but this bad? Another part answered, Shut up, stupid, only an idiot does therapy on her own family. Deb’s come to her mother, not to a shrink, so go ahead and be Mommy. If only Mommy had less pressure on her right now
    —but that was always the way: everything at once or nothing at all.
    “Look, Deb, suppose I stay the night here with you.”
    Deb shook the pale, damp-streaked hair out of her eyes with a determined, grown-up gesture. “No, thanks, Mom. I’m so tired I’m just going to fall out now. You’ll be getting a bellyful of all this when we move in on you tomorrow anyway. I can manage tonight, and besides—”
    And besides, just in case Nick showed up, Deb didn’t want Floria around complicating things; of course. Or in case the tooth fairy dropped by.
    Floria restrained an impulse to insist on staying; an impulse, she recognized, that came from her own need not to be alone tonight. That was not something to load on Deb’s already burdened shoulders.
    “Okay,” Floria said. “But look, Deb, I’ll expect you to call me up first thing in the morning, whatever happens.” And if I’m still alive, I’ll answer the phone.
    * * *
    All the way