The Martini Shot Read Online Free PDF Page A

into Maryland and arrive at the close-in neighborhood where the Lucas family made their home. Van and Eleni were in their early thirties. They had four children, ages seven, six, two, and one. All but the oldest had been adopted. It seemed to have happened very fast.
    Van Lucas was a big man of Greek descent with the kind of open, honest facial expressions that could be read with ease. The Reagan generation baffled him, and he did not feel he was a part of it. His black curly hair was unfashionably long at a time when the hard-chargers kept theirs short and spiked. He wore a heavy black beard when most went clean shaven and some reached for androgynous. He had the beginnings of a gut inching over the belt line of his Levi’s. His appearance suggested casual good nature and a lack of vanity. He was as advertised.
    Eleni reached across the buckets and squeezed Van’s right hand, which rested on the console between them.
    â€œYou are good,” she said.
    â€œAh,” said Van, “knock it off, Eleni.”
    He felt electricity when she touched him like that. They’d been together many years and it had never subsided. For a moment he thought he might get lucky that night. But it was false optimism. There was little spontaneous lovemaking between them these days, what with all the commotion around their house. What with all those kids.
    When he was single, he had never looked forward to a family. He had no daydreams of watching his children play sports, reading to them at night, helping them with their homework, or kissing the tops of their heads before they left the house. Van Lucas didn’t have a great need for fatherhood, and he didn’t think he would be particularly good at it. But when it happened, he took to it. It was chaotic at times, but it was manageable. He liked being a father, and he loved his kids. Later, he would look back on that time of his life and think: It was easy when they were young.
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    Within a year of their wedding, Eleni gave birth to a girl they named Irene. “It means ‘peace,’” said Van, selling the name to Eleni. The baby was born after a very difficult pregnancy during which Eleni was required to lie in bed for most of her third trimester. Even with this precaution, Irene arrived prematurely and her survival was in doubt for the first week of her life. But she did fine and progressed without complications. Eleni’s doctor suggested that a subsequent pregnancy would be just as problematic, if not worse, and that Irene should be looked upon as a single blessing and not the first of many blessings to come. Or something like that. Eleni got the convoluted message: Do not tempt fate and try to have another child.
    Van was fine with having only one child, but Eleni was not. When Irene got to walking a year later, Eleni decided that a child was not “whole” without a companion. Van said, “We could get a dog,” and Eleni said, “I was thinking along the lines of something on two legs,” to which Van replied, “A monkey, then.” She didn’t smile, so he knew she was serious. He also knew where this was going. Eleni wanted to adopt.
    On the subject of adoption, Van suspected he was in the camp of many other men who were not quite sure. Will I truly love a child who did not come from me? Would I be as good a father to an adopted child? Do I want a kid who doesn’t at least look a little like me? He kept these questions to himself for the most part. But they were there.
    The one objection a man could legitimately raise was the cost, but Van couldn’t belch about money with a straight face or a clear conscience. He had the dough. A high school friend, Ted Leibovitz, an ambitious renovation man turned builder, had invited Van into his venture when both were right out of college, and they had bought properties in the U Street corridor at fire-sale prices while the Metro was being built, the street was torn up,