Alex had been in his new job for two weeks now and he hadn’t done a bit of cooking yet. He’d made some baby food at home just for the sake of having done it, and having it on hand, but he hadn’t cooked anything on camera. He didn’t feel like he’d earned his keep yet. Mostly they’d sat around a table with a bunch of guys and shot the shit, bouncing ideas off of each other to see if one would stick. Alex and Buddy had needed to shoot down a few, because seriously no one in the Bronx ate anything that cost a hundred and fifty bucks a pound or more.

That hadn’t pissed them off. They treated Alex and Buddy like freaking geniuses, just for saying what anyone with two brain cells to rub together would say if they were sitting around watching this show. Well, if they wanted to pay them for this kind of stuff Alex guessed they would take it, but it seemed like an awful lot of money under the circumstances.

And then—and then! A throwaway comment Alex had made got him a visit from the senior honcho at Valor Television, Woodham. He wanted to take Alex out to lunch to bounce even more ideas off of him. Alex felt weird about going off with Woodham without Buddy, and he wondered if Woodham was going to hit on him again.

Woodham didn’t. It had been years, and no had meant no for Woodham ever since that one time. This meeting was a business meeting, and Alex had been brought along to talk about yet another show. Apparently that throwaway comment had gotten the wheels turning in Woodham’s brain, and now they wanted Alex to do a solo show during the hiatus when the show he did with Buddy was off the air.

Woodham gave him a little grin. “It’ll pay about the same as the show you’re working on now, of course. And it won’t be any extra work, because you’ll be filming when you’d normally just be resting. So you’ll still be able to spend just as much time with your daughter as you normally would.”

Alex still felt that little thrill of joy when someone referred to Maya as his daughter, right alongside the guilt for Pauline and now the worry about his own condition. “It sounds, er, lucrative. Ridiculous, really.” Alex managed to grin. “I mean, I’m not turning money down, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still me. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you.”

“Absolutely.” Woodham gestured with his hand, and Alex almost believed him.

“The thing is,” Alex continued, “I have a couple of concerns. One is Buddy. I don’t want to profit at Buddy’s expense, you know? He’s my best friend, my father figure really. He’s been here for me since I was a teenager, and this whole TV thing was his idea anyway. I don’t want to leave him in the dust.”

“We don’t see a lot of that kind of loyalty in this business. It’s kind of refreshing, really. I’m fairly confident that Buddy will find his own opportunities, but I can promise you I’ll keep an eye out for anything that would be a good fit for him.”

Alex wasn’t sure if he should trust Woodham that far, but he was going to have to try. “I have another concern.”

“You did mention two.” Woodham swirled his water in his glass.

“It’s. Um. I seem to be slightly pregnant.”

“Oh.” Woodham blinked, and then he pulled out his phone.

Alex swayed and gripped the table as a wave of dizziness overtook him. “Okay, wait. What’s going on here? Who are you calling? I haven’t told anyone yet!”

Woodham chuckled. “It’s okay, Alex. I’m not calling anyone. I’m just checking my calendar. I’m trying to figure out production schedules. Do you know about how far along you are?”

“I know exactly how far along I am.” Alex rubbed at his arm and lowered his gaze. “I’m four weeks along.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s something we can definitely work with. It’s not the fifties anymore, for one thing. People are allowed to be on screen while pregnant, although it might be a little iffy since you’re not married. We’ll be long since done with filming before you start showing, though. And we can start filming for the other show after you’re back from giving birth. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, if you don’t want it to be.”

Alex blinked. “I can’t have heard that right.”

Woodham laughed. His whole body got in on the act, so he must have found it truly hilarious. “Alex, Valor Entertainment makes a point of being as accommodating to families as we can. We have an early childhood center on site. We don’t even charge for health insurance.”

“Valor offers health insurance?”

Woodham covered his eyes. “No one sent you the HR packet yet?”

“Er, no.”

“Okay. I’ll make that a priority, for both of you. Buddy’s healthy, but he’s not young. He’s going to get to a point where he’s going to need medical care at some point, he should have that available to him. And because I know this is important to you, Alex, all of our employees get the same plan, at no cost. So Sol Delaney and I get the same health plan you do, and the janitors do.”

“That’s…that’s unusual. It’s generous.” Alex didn’t know what else to say to that. He hadn’t heard of another company offering something like that. “Why?”

“The fans are the ones who pay us, but we don’t have anything to sell them if the talent takes a powder. So we need you all to be happy, and we need you all to be healthy. It’s pretty simple, really.” He leaned back. “Now, what you tell the father of the baby, and when, that’s up to you. It’s not my business. My guess is, he’s going to figure it out before long. Say, three months from now.”

Alex couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Yeah. He’s not exactly Captain Oblivious. I just—he doesn’t need the headache, and things are so wild and crazy right now for both of us that I just don’t want to mess around. Does that make sense? I want to do it when the time is right and we’re both in the right headspace to cope.”

Woodham nodded. “That makes sense. I can respect that. If it makes you feel any better, my husband was pregnant before we got married. And he didn’t tell me until I figured it out for myself. I caught him throwing up in a potted plant. He thought I’d be mad. I was mad, because I caught him throwing up in a potted plant.”

Alex chuckled. It was hard to reconcile this guy in front of him with the alpha homeowner who’d made every effort to be unfaithful with the help—but maybe there were other strains in the marriage, issues he couldn’t begin to understand. It wasn’t his problem to solve. “That must have been a good time.”

“We got over it. But you knew that. Try not to let your guy catch you puking in a potted plant, though. There are better ways of making an announcement.”

They headed back to the studio building. Alex had a copy of the HR welcome packet in his hands before he left work that night.

They moved forward with detailed scripts for individual episodes as the next week wore on. The set construction crew wasn’t quite ready for them to start filming, but Alex and Buddy wanted to be ready for them once they were. They knew they were on a clock, after all. They planned out episodes about pizza, about meatballs and sauce, about pasta. They talked about Dominican food and drink too, and about Puerto Rican food. The Bronx was home to people from all over the world, and Alex and Buddy wanted to make sure they talked at least a little bit about as many groups as they could. They couldn’t get away with skipping the largest groups of people now living in their hometown.

There were so many different foodways they could talk about, and they kept notes on all of them. The Bronx had always been a kind of gateway, and they wanted to honor that about their hometown. They didn’t want to turn the show into an international cooking show or some kind of culturally appropriative nightmare. They just wanted to showcase the Bronx, so they had to space out their episodes about the different ethnic groups in the area.

When the set was finally finished, it bore little resemblance to the one where they auditioned. They had two “rooms,” the kitchen and the bar. Both had red brick walls and stainless steel fixtures, which made the place look more upscale than most Bronx apartments. Alex wasn’t going to complain. He and Buddy familiarized themselves with the space, played around a little, and got ready to film.

The very next day, they spent time in hair and makeup while the producer and director explained to them how food was prepared for the camera. “Okay, guys. We’ve had the kitchen staff prepare the food to certain stages of doneness. You’ll do very little actual cooking on the set, because fire is bad and there’s enough product on your hair to send flames up to the rafters.” The producer’s name was Mary, and she was tougher than ten nails. “You’ll follow the script and show the dish where it is at that point. Got it?”

Alex nodded. He got it. They didn’t have time to sit around for hours, waiting for bread to rise. They might be able to stagger prep and cooking time on a few different projects, the way Alex had when he was working for clients, but that might raise questions about sanitation and how often he changed his clothes.

They flubbed their first take, because both Alex and Buddy collapsed giggling when they got a pizza fresh from the oven that hadn’t been baked at all. Once that happened they learned fast why they didn’t want to do that again. Setting up to shoot the scene again was a pain in the ass.

They finished shooting their first episode, got cleaned up, and moved on to the next one. Their format was simple. They met in the bar to start out with and talked a bit about the day’s topic and the traditions behind it. Alex led the food portion of the show, with Buddy playing sous chef. Then they adjourned to snack on the food and mix drinks, with Alex playing the role of bar back while Buddy talked and told bar stories.

It was simple, and all Alex could do was hope it worked. It was more fun to do than he would have thought possible from all of the planning. After work, he headed back over to Sol’s place to pick up Maya, and the spring in his step made him almost overlook the chill in the air.

It almost made him overlook the creeper in the trench coat following him, too. His heartbeat sped up, but he couldn’t let on that he knew. He couldn’t engage. Engaging with someone like Lena just encouraged them to keep doing their crazy thing. He needed to keep his wits about him, especially now that he had a baby on the way.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Detective Staley was on speed dial, option four. He called the cop and explained what was happening as he quickened his pace just a little bit. “I probably shouldn’t have decided to walk over there,” he guessed as he slid between two speed-walking businessmen. “It probably wasn’t my brightest moment.”

“No, probably not,” Staley agreed. “But I’ll meet you at Sol’s building. We’ll see if they come with you.”

Alex hoped he made it that far.

He’d never had a mile take so long to walk in his life. It was only a twenty minute walk, but it felt like a year. Every stranger’s face seemed misshapen and monstrous, and he couldn’t imagine how he was supposed to be able to keep his pace even and matched. He didn’t know what Stuart looked like, so that didn’t help him.

He finally made it into the lobby, where he found Detective Staley waiting for him. A man a little bit taller than Alex, wearing a trench coat, walked in after him, but saw Staley and walked out again.

Staley escorted Alex up to Sol’s place. It raised a few eyebrows, especially from Sol. Sol paled when he heard why Staley was there, and he stepped between the two. “Alex, I’m so sorry this is happening to you. Do you maybe want to sit down and have dinner with us? Hopefully whoever’s following you will get bored and leave.”

Alex considered his options. He shouldn’t stay. If he stayed, he’d want to stay past dinner. He’d start to get expectations, and he couldn’t afford those. At the same time, he didn’t want to have to go downstairs with Stuart—or whoever—lurking around down there.

And maybe, just maybe, he wanted to spend a little time with Sol. It was stupid, of course. If Sol knew about the baby, he’d go ballistic. Alex could let himself enjoy this for a moment, though. Right? He could do that? “Yeah,” he said, and held Maya close. “If it’s okay, I’d like that.”

Carsten cheered and clapped his hands, latching onto Alex tight enough it almost hurt. “Will you sit next to me?” he asked, naked hope dripping from his voice.

“Absolutely, Carsten. We’ll sit next to each other, and maybe after dinner your dad will let me put you to bed.”

“Yay!” Carsten did a little dance.

Sol politely extended his invitation to Detective Staley, who declined. “Just remember what we spoke about, Sol.” He waved as he left. “I’ve got me a stalker to catch up to.”

Alex helped to set the table. His replacement had done an okay job with the dinner, although he hadn’t been all that great about labeling things with reheating instructions. Ah, well. Sol would educate him soon enough, or else Jenny would. It wasn’t Alex’s job anymore.

They sat around the table and dug into the meal, and Alex found himself relaxing against his will. This was what a family was supposed to be like. They had the parents, in him and Sol. Inge was like the aunt, a cheerful and loving presence at the table. The kids sat happily and tucked into their meals, Carsten more successfully than Maya but unable to match the baby’s enthusiasm.

And, of course, Alex’s secret. The new baby, on the way, hiding in his belly.

The holiday season lurked only a few weeks away, and Alex could feel the home and family vibes in the air. This was the ideal, what everyone strove for. And right now, if only as an illusion, it was his.

* * *

Sol looked over Woodham’s project plan for Alex’s second show. He’d snagged Woodham from NBC after meeting him in the Hellion Club once, and to say he’d been an excellent investment would be the understatement of the century. His projections for revenue were never wrong, and considering that they had advertisers lined up to throw money into the Bronx project Sol had no problem green lighting this one. “So it’s basically just Alex, looking at some ‘chef-y’ recipes and saying, ‘Okay, this is how normal people living in normal kitchens make something like this without breaking the bank.’”

“That’s it, in a nutshell. It’s an hour show, the folks making the originals get some awesome exposure, and then Alex gets to help people feel confident about trying something similar without stepping on anyone’s toes. And the best part is Alex came up with it himself.” Woodham grinned, baring his teeth. “Give him a little time and a little nurturing, a chance to get used to all of this, and we could build him into a producer in his own right, Sol.”

Sol scoffed. “Anything’s possible. I mean he’s a bright guy, and if he sets his mind to it there’s nothing he’s not capable of. But Alex is…well, he’s not someone who’s ever seen himself as the executive type. You want to know the kind of apartments he’s looking to buy now that he’s got that little girl at home?”

“What kind?” Woodham leaned back and smirked.

“Same neighborhood, two beds instead of a studio, one bath. He has about as much interest in leaving the Bronx as he does in becoming a nuclear chemist.” Sol shook his head. “He doesn’t want to be that guy.”

“I guess you know him better than I do.”

Sol picked his head up. “Did he say something to you?”

“No, Sol, don’t be silly. He wouldn’t. I do, however, have eyes. I figured it out for myself.” He tugged at his collar. “So you don’t have much interest in bringing him down to your place, huh?”

Sol looked away. This wasn’t the kind of conversation he should be having with Woodham. He liked the guy, but he was still a subordinate. “It’s complicated. And like I said, he wouldn’t ever leave the Bronx. It’s his home. He’s talking about taking Carsten on a field trip, though.”

“A field trip.” Woodham lifted his eyebrows almost to his hairline, or where his hairline should have been before it receded like a glacier. “Okay then. What kind of a ‘field trip’ would he take a kid on?”

“Ah, he’s making all kinds of noise. He wants to take him to play soccer in the same fields where he played when he was a kid. It’s giving me a heart attack, you know? He lives in a high crime neighborhood, he’d be taking the train through a high crime neighborhood to get there—but I’ve got to relax a little. I know for a fact Alex wouldn’t let anything happen to Carsten.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Woodham smiled softly, the kind of smile a guy gives when he knows something the other guy doesn’t.

“So, there’s a pretty big gap between film schedules here.” Sol glanced back at his screen. Thank God for work. It gave him so many opportunities to change the subject. “It’s a little weird, don’t you think? Why is there such a gap?”

“Well, we’ve got post-production on the Bronx show, and then we’ve got schedules to work out. There’s a finite number of qualified crew out there, Sol. I’m confident about both shows, and I’m excited about both shows, but I’m not overtime excited about both shows, if you know what I mean. Crew members have vacations scheduled and all that. He’s going to need some down time too, to rest and recover and stuff. Filming is hard work, and he deserves a little time off.”

“We’re paying him enough that he can rest on the weekends.” Sol stretched his neck and winced when he heard the crack. “But I guess it’s not a big deal. You’re the TV expert. If you think it works, then it works.”

“I’m absolutely positive that this is the best solution.” Woodham sat up a little bit straighter.

“Then that’s what we’ll do. Let’s see what we can do about generating some buzz, okay?” Sol smiled at Woodham in a subtle hint that the meeting was over.

Woodham, clever as always, took the hint. “We’ll regroup in a little bit and see where we’re at, but filming’s going faster than expected, and we should be able to wrap early. I’ll check in soon.” He rose and left the office, leaving Sol to consider his employee’s words.

Did he honestly see Alex as executive material? Sol didn’t, but Sol was used to looking at Alex in a certain way. He had trouble separating the personal and professional sometimes, which was why he was trying to keep a certain distance from Alex’s show. Alex’s shows, for crying out loud.

He stared at the gap in the production schedule for a long moment. Summer wasn’t an unusual time for a hiatus, but something still seemed off. Maybe Alex would be more forthcoming than Woodham. He had a low bullshit threshold.

He was reaching for his phone when shouting outside his office door made him pause. He stood up and headed for the outer office, just in time for the door to fly inward. Lena Fletcher marched into his office, a sneer of triumph on her stretched-tight face. “Are you happy now? You’ve screwed things up so bad this time you’re going to need the whole Army Corps of Engineers to dig you out of this one.” She brandished a plastic shopping bag from Fairways that had seen better days.

Sol rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Guess who’s going back to jail for violating a restraining order?” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Hi, Detective Staley? It’s Sol Delaney. Lena’s here. Yeah, at my office.” He waited for Staley’s inevitable question, and answered it when he asked. “Right now she seems to be waving trash around, but if I have to physically remove her from the building it’s going to get ugly.”

Staley laughed and promised to have someone there to arrest her as soon as possible, and Sol hung up. “You might want to make it a little easier on yourself and mosey on back to Greenwich. No one wants you here.”

She curled her lip at him. “You’ll be talking out of the other side of your mouth when you know what I know.” She opened up her dirty grocery bag on his desk, on top of his nice and clean blotter.

Inside was a pile of bathroom trash. Most of it was just what Sol would expect from someone’s bathroom garbage—toilet paper rolls, tissues, old tubes of toothpaste. Right there in the middle of the pile, though, was a pregnancy test. Even though it had been a while since the test had been taken, the results were still as clear as day. Whoever had owned the bathroom where the trash had been taken from had been pregnant.

Sol looked up at her. “Mazel Tov. At your age, having another child is a risky proposition, but for love it’s probably worth it. Who’s the father?” He pretended to pull back in disgust. “Oh, God. Tell me it’s not my dad.”

Lena curled her lip at him. “Your father’s tastes run exclusively toward men, and you know it. Otherwise we’d probably have found another way to cement our relationship. But this isn’t my trash. This particular sack of filth belongs to the sack of human waste you’ve been frolicking with instead of your husband.”

“I’m divorced. The legalities are ironclad. And I’m not frolicking with anyone.” Sol set his jaw.

“Oh? Then you don’t care about the baby growing in his wretched little belly.” She jabbed at the spent pregnancy test with one stubby finger. “It must not be yours then.”

Sol’s brain finally caught up with the words his former mother-in-law had just uttered. “Wait. Are you telling me you somehow got hold of Alex’s trash? You went dumpster diving to find Alex Cary’s garbage, but you’re seriously going to sit around and call him a sack of human waste?”

She spat at him. “I am doing everything I need to do to protect my family. Alex Cary is a tramp, a gold digger, and a homewrecker. He needs to be stopped. He’s using you for your money. He’s on his second child in two years and you somehow think what you have is gold?”

Alex is pregnant. The words made Sol’s chest hurt. He couldn’t react to the news at all. He’d deal with it later, much later. His hands trembled, so he stuffed them into his pockets. “Alex wasn’t pregnant before. The child he’s caring for now is the daughter of a murdered friend.”

“And you think that’s admirable? He spends his time around violent people! His mother’s a killer, his father died violently, now his friend died violently—”

“Oh, and you made the choice to have his mother murdered.” Sol lifted his eyebrow at her. He had to be cool, he had to be ice cold. “Alex hasn’t hurt anyone.”

“He broke my arm!”

“When you were stabbing my nanny!” Sol roared his words, finally losing his temper. “You’re a violent, sociopathic lunatic who shouldn’t be allowed out in public! I told you not to come anywhere near me, you have multiple court orders telling you to keep away, and yet here you are. What in God’s name told you this was a good idea?”

“I thought you’d be grateful to know your whore went and got himself pregnant. You Hellion Club types like to know these things. It’s still early enough you can make him get rid of it.” She smiled, cold and evil. “It’s not like either of you could possibly want the baby, right? It’s nothing but a little complication. You’ll never get back together with Stuart, or any other respectable man, if you have some little bastard with a Bronx slum rat running around.”

Sol pointed to the door. “Alex might be pregnant and might not. I have only your word to go on that this is his trash, or that this test came from his trash and wasn’t put in there by you. But assuming you’re not the same bag of lies you’ve been since the day I met you, any issues between me and Alex are between me and Alex. They’re none of your business at all. I wouldn’t have Stuart back if you paid me. And you’d have to pay me a lot of money, let me tell you.”

Lena slapped him. “My son is a sweet and innocent boy. You will speak about him with the respect he deserves!”

“That’s funny. I’m pretty sure he just did.” Two uniformed cops burst into the room, followed by Detective Staley. “It’s time for you to go now. Enjoy Riker’s. I hear they’re going to be closing it down soon. Be sure to send a postcard.”

The uniformed officers dragged her away, kicking and screaming, while Staley looked over Sol’s desk. “Ah, hell, we’re going to have to get crime scene techs to look this over. Is this what I think it is?”

“If by ‘what you think it is’ you mean Alex’s garbage, fresh from the dumpster, you’d be correct Detective.” Sol gave a manic smile to Staley just before his knees buckled. He staggered over to the couch near the window before he fell over. “There’s a pregnancy test in there.”

“I can see that.” Staley sent a text on his phone, and then came to sit beside him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“The person I should be talking to about it is Alex, but he’s not here.” Sol swallowed. “He’s pregnant.”

“Or a friend of his took a pregnancy test at his house. We don’t know. It doesn’t pay to jump to conclusions.” He took off his hat and scratched at his gray hair. “I have to admit the evidence does look a little damning.”

Damning. Because of course it was damning, something to be condemned. Alex hadn’t seen fit to tell Sol, after all. He’d just thrown away the test and gone about his business. “Damn it.” He slammed his fist down on the lamp table beside him, making the lamp clang uncomfortably. “He told Woodham. That’s why there’s such a gap in the production schedule. Woodham moved it around to accommodate Alex’s pregnancy.”

Staley stilled. “I see. Do you think there’s something going on there?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not the way Alex talked about Woodham. I don’t know what to do here. I know it’s mine.”

“Does it change the way you feel about Alex?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want it to. I made the baby with him, so I can’t exactly blame him for it. I still do, though. Kind of. I think that’s something I’ll just have to get over though, right? I’m worried about his future.”

“And I’m not sure how I feel about more kids. We’d have had a boy and a girl, between us. Do we need more than that? The apartment can’t handle more than that. I don’t know. Plus, it’s kind of soon, you know? There’s a lot of bad blood, at least on his part. It’s a little much for him to just put that aside and jump straight from resenting me for leaving him to starting a family with me.” Sol pinched the bridge of his nose. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to feel right now.”

“Well, you’re going to have to go talk to him about it. If it makes you feel any better, you have to go home soon anyway. I’m going to have to have some guys tackle that evidence. I’m sure as hell not putting my hands all over someone else’s trash. That’s a job for rookies.” Staley patted him on the back and went to wait for the forensic team.

Sol walked back to his place, hands stuffed into his pockets. He couldn’t do anything else. He could call Woodham, and he did call Woodham as soon as he got home. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Woodham sighed. “Not my place. I’m not about to go inserting myself into anyone else’s relationship. That’s just gross. Did he finally tell you?”

“No. My ex mother-in-law went through his trash and emptied it onto my desk, thanks for asking.”

“Ouch.” Woodham winced. “That’s kind of the opposite of the way he wanted you to find out. But it’s also kind of the reason he wanted to wait for you to find out.”

Sol screwed his face up. “What are you talking about?”

“He said he figured you had enough on your plate with everything else going on. I can only assume he meant your ex in-laws, because it’s been all over the news. For what it’s worth, he seemed really nervous. Try to go easy on him, okay, Sol? He’s a good kid, and this is supposed to be a happy occasion.”

“I’ll try to keep it in mind.” Sol would try to keep his friend’s words in mind, too. He just couldn’t forget that Alex had tried to keep his pregnancy a secret.