With Friends Like These: A Novel by Sally Koslow Read Free Book Online Page B

container from the shelf. “It’s fragrance and dye free.” I moved on to nontoxic, hypoallergenic, and biodegradable. Jamyang offered a nod, which made her hair sway, its shine catching the light filtering through the window. “Have you ever used one of these?” I pointed to the washing machine, whose porthole appeared to have escaped from an ocean liner.
    “Yes, ma’am.” Her voice was faint, her expression inscrutable. I hoped she meant what she said, because I wouldn’t have known how to operate that particular appliance, not to mention four out of five cycles in the top-of-the-line German dishwasher or the rotisserie in our restaurant-worthy oven. Why I’d once thought we needed it was its own mystery, since I can’t see myself roasting a lamb on a spit anytime soon. I prefer to admire our home technology from a safe distance. Two of my worst days of the year are when our eleven digital clocks need to be reset.
    “The floors are bamboo.” Did they even grow bamboo in Tibet? Where was her native land, exactly—near China? No, India. No, China. Should Ihave hired the Irish girl who jabbered during the interview, wee lass this, wee lass that? “I think we’re finished here,” I announced. Jamyang had already seen and seemed to approve of her room. Decorated with chintz, a small flat-screen TV, and walls painted apple green, it was located on the semisubterranean floor that the previous owner had proudly called an English basement. “Let’s see if Dash’s awake.”
    We took the back staircase, bypassing the parlor floor with its formidable living room and dining room, and peeked in on Dash, whose tiny chest was rising and falling as if set to a metronome. I brushed away a strand of blond hair, but he didn’t stir. I’d kept him up late with the hope that his father might arrive in time to see him. Last night Xander had missed him by twenty minutes.
    “Pity baby,” Jamyang said. “Very pity.”
    “P
r
etty,” I said, softly rolling the
r
. “Thank you very much.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Jamyang said. “Pity.”
    We tiptoed into Dash’s bathroom, where Jamyang scrutinized the flotilla of rubber ducklings and stacks of monogrammed towels—
DMcK
for Dashiel McKenzie Keaton—walked through the playroom, and U-turned into a corridor that led to Xander’s literary Fort Knox. I hesitated before I opened one of its double doors. How should I explain that my husband could detect at twenty paces if a visitor had misshelved
Tender Is the Night
with the Henry James collection? Then again, what were the chances that Jamyang would want to cozy up with an early-twentieth-century first edition? “This is the library,” I said as we entered the mahogany-paneled room and spread my arms wide. “Many, many books!” Jamyang pinched her nose. “Sorry, Mr. Keaton smokes cigars.”
    “Febreze,” she announced, in our most promising exchange of the day.
    I walked across the room to open a window. When I turned around, Jamyang had bent down to trace the intricate leaf pattern of the rug’s rich ochre weave. “Pity,” she said.
    “From your country.” I seriously hoped that we hadn’t flung a sanctified prayer rug across the lesser nirvana of our Brooklyn Heights floor,where Xander would occasionally flick cigar ashes and spill single-malt Scotch. Jamyang responded with a spatter of words. I smiled, vacantly, I’m sure. She arched her eyebrows in a grimace and resumed a placid expression as she got up to review the rows of leather-bound books.
    This was going to be the first of what I had just realized would be at least several endless days. “Excuse me,” I said, pointing to my watch, and bolted to the master bedroom suite on the top floor. My desk and computer were tucked into a dormer window across from our dressing room. “I may have made a huge mistake,” I whispered when Talia answered her phone. “I forgot to hire a translator.”
    “Sure she’s not just shy?”
    You’d think one shy person