left hand. She managed to straighten up in a single movement without using her hands from her squat on the floor. Not bad for a thirty-one-year-old woman.
She turned her head. Over the back of the sofa she could see Frank’s dark hair, and the very top of Jenna’s head, leaning on his shoulder. Jenna was clutching Pinkie with her right arm. Frankie must be lying across his dad’s lap by now, lulled to sleep long ago by the bleeps and yeeps of whatever Nintendo game his dad and sister were playing. Michelle smiled. They had all had a good night; Fridays were always good nights. She and Frank had split a porterhouse and pasta while the kids had had hamburgers, their favorite. Frank had played wiffleball with Frankie for almost half an hour, then he’d suffered through a Rug Rats video, followed up by a Nintendo marathon. Jenna had let her brother play with Daddy while she helped Michelle clean up the dinner things. Her reward was getting Frank all to herself for the last hour while Michelle policed the area. Mich’s reward would be her time alone with Frank in bed. Her smile, which created a parenthesis on either side of her wide mouth, deepened.
She moved to Frank and, very gently, touched his shoulder. She’d learned a long time ago not to come up behind him and touch him too hard—it really startled him. Now Frank bent his head back against the sofa cushions and looked up at her, though neither Jenna nor Frankie made a move. Nothing moved except the dancing Zelda image on the TV screen. The kids were both sleeping and Frank was playing the idiotic game alone!
“Time for bed,” Michelle said in a throaty whisper and Frank’s smile echoed her own. “You carry Frankie. I’ll walk Jenna up,” she told her husband. Frank nodded, then reached out and took a Lego from her right hand.
“Did you bake these just for me?” he asked, his voice low.
“You don’t bake plastic,” Michelle said. “You extrude it.”
“I thought we’d do that later, upstairs.” He waggled his eyebrows. Michelle shook her head and moved her hand to Jenna’s shoulder.
“Come on, big girl,” she murmured to Jenna who, very reluctantly, came out of her doze and, propelled by Michelle, got on her feet.
“Bed time for Bonzo,” Frank added as he placed his sleeping son across his shoulder, cupping the boy’s head gently in one hand.
“Be careful with him. Most accidents happen in the home,” Michelle reminded him.
Upstairs, Michelle got Frankie out of his clothes and into his pajama top while Jenna got herself into bed. Michelle took pity on her firstborn and didn’t insist that Jenna wash her face and brush her teeth. Just for one night it would do. She knew just how tired Jenna felt. She looked forward to lying down herself.
When she entered their bedroom, Frank was already stripped and under the sheets. As usual, he hadn’t folded down the bedspread, so Michelle did it for the three-thousandth time. He was a good man and a good father. They had had a lovely night, but she still couldn’t train him to take the bedspread off before he lay down. Oh well. There were a lot worse traits.
“Come here, gorgeous,” Frank said, his voice already thick with sleep. Michelle sat down on her side of the bed, pulled off her shoes, and wriggled out of her skirt, but left on her panties and bustier. She wanted Frank to notice how nice she looked in it. Frank took a curled tendril of her hair in his hand and gently pulled her face down to his. “Hey, hot stuff. How much for the whole night?” he asked.
“A lot,” she informed him before he kissed her.
“Worth every penny,” he said. He reached for her upthrust breast. “Take that thing off,” he said. Michelle followed his order in less than sixty seconds. “That’s more like it,” Frank murmured, wrapping his arm loosely around her, resting his hand on her hip and pulling her against him.
“Better than Nintendo?” Michelle teased.
“Well, not as exciting but …” he mumbled. She poked him between two ribs. “Okay, okay. Better than Nintendo,” he admitted and kissed her on the neck. She sighed deeply and she heard her sigh echoed by him. Fridays were always long, exhausting evenings, but good ones. She was happy and tired and so was Frank. “Baby, you know I want you, but …”
Michelle kissed him on his sexy, stubbled cheek. Later perhaps, some time in the middle of the night, he would wake her up with his arm tight around her and the rest of him insistent.
But it wasn’t Frank who woke Michelle. It was a horrible, rending sound and the noise—lots of noise—of feet on the stairs. From somewhere downstairs the usually quiet Pookie was barking ferociously. Michelle barely had time to sit up before she was aware of the red light flickering round the room. My God, she thought, the house must be on fire.
“Frank!” she screamed, but his eyes had already flown open, just as the bedroom door did. And then their bed was surrounded by men, some in uniform, some not, all with guns drawn.
“Police!”
“Police!”
“Police! Don’t move! Put your hands up over your heads!” The voices were shouts, harsh as punches. Michelle turned to look at Frank, but one of the voices brayed “Don’t move!” in her ear. “Hands up! Don’t move!”
Michelle wondered, for a brief instant, if this could be a dream—a very, very bad dream. But before she could find out, one of the uniformed cops leaned over and slapped handcuffs on her. She knew, from the cold reality of the metal on her wrists, that this nightmare was real. Pookie was now in the room barking; suddenly he was interrupted mid-bark and went silent. What had they done?
“Frank,” she cried out again.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch her!” Frank yelled, and the two men holding him at the shoulders began struggling with him. The struggle pulled the top sheet and blanket down, and Michelle, paralyzed with horror, felt her left breast exposed to the cool bedroom air in front of a dozen men.
“This must be a mistake. You have the wrong house!” Michelle cried. “We’re the Russos. The Frank Russos.”
“No fuckin’ shit,” one of the men said.
“Mommy?” Michelle heard Frankie’s bleat from down the hall and, despite her nakedness, sat up. “Mommy?” The bleat now sounded more certain of being terrified and Michelle called out to her son.
“It’s okay,” she shouted, though it wasn’t. “Leave my children alone,” she cried out hoarsely. “This is some kind of mistake. Leave my children alone.”
“Tell her what kind of mistake this is, Russo,” one of the cops holding Frank down said. Frank went into a diatribe of swear words, some of which Michelle had never heard come out of his mouth. “Get your hands off her, you cocksuckers!” he screamed. “Leave my kids alone, you stupid fuckin’ bastards.”
Two of the officers had gotten her up, standing between them. She hoped her hair covered most of her. She had to get to her children. That was all she knew.
When Frank swung to hit the guy on the left with his shackled wrists and called them cocksuckers for the second time, Michelle saw the cop throw a mean knee into Frank’s groin. Frank screamed as Pookie had, then crumpled at the side of the bed.
“Mommy? Mommy?” Frankie’s now ever-more-urgent voice was joined by his sister’s, and by the terrifying noise of crashing from below. Michelle began to shake. Pookie ran past her, past all the watching men, maybe to protect her children.
“For chrissakes, collar the dog and give this woman something to put on,” a plainclothesman said, entering the bedroom, and threw a blanket at her.
“Fuck the coke whore,” another one retorted, and then Frank was on his feet, naked and screaming, fighting first one, then three of the cops.
“Frank!” Michelle yelled out to her husband as the two officers beside her began to pull her out of the room.
“Get her outta here,” the man who had given her a blanket told the police.