Fresh Kills by Carolyn Wheat Page B

me no zingers.”
    â€œO-kay,” the proprietor of the Morning Glory Luncheonette sang as she strode to the oversized jar filled with the healing brew. She scooped ice into an old-fashioned soda glass and let the dark brown liquid flow into it. My mouth watered just looking at it; Dorinda, for all her pretenses to running a health food restaurant, had invested in a nice blend of Colombian, Javanese, and French Roast that stood up to ice very well. Of course, she had me as her consultant on what she loftily referred to as “stimulants.”
    â€œSure, the Greenspans will feel terrible for right now,” I went on, “but they’ll get over it. They’ll find another baby, and maybe the next Adam won’t come with a cloud on the title.”
    The flippancy in my tone reminded me forcibly of Marla; I took a long swallow of the cold coffee to cover my sudden embarrassment.
    Dorinda’s gray eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you’re doing the Greenspans a favor?”
    I addressed my next remarks to the Formica counter. “The law’s the law. All I’m doing is my job.”
    Why did I feel like a used car dealer?
    â€œCass, I can’t believe you.” Dorinda’s normally soft voice was raised, and she shook her head. “It’s not that easy. Here’s a woman who wants a child so badly it hurts. She finally holds this baby in her arms, feeds it, smells it—and you think she can just give him up because the law says she should?”
    â€œHey, adoption is about taking chances,” I countered. “Everybody who adopts has to face the possibility of the birth parents changing their minds. Thirty days isn’t a long time in the law. Once that’s over—”
    My old friend came back with a one-liner I couldn’t argue with, couldn’t explain away, couldn’t top.
    â€œThirty days is a long time if you’re only a month old.”
    in Just-
    spring      when the world is mud-
    luscious
    I said the words to myself as I stepped back from the curb to let a passing car splash the area where I’d been walking a second earlier. The rain had stopped, but there was water everywhere, dirty, muddy, ugly New York snow-melt on top of April showers.
    Mud-luscious, my——! The man was a fool, I decided, as I surveyed the huge puddle separating sidewalk from street in the crosswalk at Court and Atlantic. How was I going to get around this without damaging my Italian leather shoes?
    Puddle-wonderful. What was so wonderful about puddles?
    Of course the man who wrote those words wasn’t trying to propel himself over great brown puddles of probably toxic mud without dirtying his new pumps. The man was talking about childhood, when mud really was fun and puddles were wonderful and you ran out to play in new red galoshes and floated paper boats on the high-flooded streets of your small town.
    He wasn’t talking about making your way to court to take a baby away from parents who’d already had a bris for their son, who’d held him and rocked him and sung to him and taken thousands upon thousands of pictures.
    I walked into the courthouse at 360 Adams Street the back way, through the County Clerk’s office and into the corridor leading to the single courtroom used by the Surrogate. Marla was already there, her possessions strewn on the front bench as though she’d spread out a picnic lunch. Her lavender briefcase was open; her butter-soft teal-colored leather bag sat next to her, its open top a gaping mouth, inviting pickpockets; papers sat in piles on the empty bench around her.
    She looked up as I entered, staring at me with her game face. Hard, closed, prepared for battle.
    I had expected as much. Whatever friendship we had shared was over now; we each had a client to represent, a job to do. And Marla couldn’t be blamed for resenting my role in Amber’s change of heart. Just as I couldn’t blame her