12
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teel turned the key and shut off the ignition. He yawned like a cat until his jaw hurt and shook his head until his forehead burned, shooting sharp pain down to his eyes. He squinted. Marisa smacked down the sunvisor above her and stared into the mirror attached to it. She stuck her hand in her purse and rolled her arm and knocked around the contents inside until she found her lipstick, grimacing the entire time. She craned her neck, and curled her lips inward until they almost disappeared, made it seem as though she didn’t have teeth, and peered into the mirror. She painted the lipstick over her lips with steady strokes and so much precision she could’ve been considered the Vincent Van Gough of makeup application.
“You ready?” Steel said, tossed his hands up and shook his head. “You shoulda did this before we left the house.”
She dabbed her lips together, touched a finger over her eye lashes, flipped up the sunvisor. “I didn’t have time. What’s your problem? All morning with this attitude.” She snatched her purse. “All morning with this shit.”
He fidgeted in his seat and was annoyed that he had to spend Christmas morning digging his car out of five inches of snow from the previous night and scrapping hard, stubborn ice sheets from his windshield. By the time he’d finished, his hands were red, numb and swollen, the tips like popsicles. “I don’t have a problem. I’m ready to go and you’re taking your time.”
She ignored him, spun her upper body around toward the backseat of the car, and grabbed at red and blue gift bags, each decorated with designs of snowflakes, green Christmas trees and smiling snowmen. “We don’t have time for these moods today,” she said, her voice muffled and low as she leaned over farther and tugged at the gifts.
Steel didn’t answer, instead lowered his head and stared at the slick, shiny dashboard from a fresh coat of Armor All. He knew he was in the wrong. He had a bad habit of taking out his own issues and bad moods on others, and it wasn’t fair to them. He marked a mental note, reminding himself to work on that. Self-improvement was high on Steel’s list. He believed a person had to work at developing his or her character every day, just like weightlifters have to work-out at the gym daily to build muscles. If we don’t acknowledge our weaknesses and strive for growth and change, we’ll never grow and change or develop our true potential, but remain the same, in our comfort zone, he’d always remind himself.
He turned his head and watched Marisa gather the gifts, her hands gripping the cloth handles and roughly tossing them aside. She was mad, he felt bad. What a lucky man he was, to have her, though. He felt like shit for a minute, his stomach souring and face reddening and heating his skin, and knew pride had gotten him, was a tough thing to overcome at times. He had struggled in his youth with it, held grudges that carried on for years, wanted revenge, wouldn’t listen to any advice. But he was realizing as he got older that when he satisfied his foolish pride, indulged in it, it only felt good momentarily, but hurt him in the end, ate away at his soul instead of the intended target. And shame was getting to him as well, and he knew it reminded him he’d not acted properly, that he’d done something wrong. He was getting better but still needed some work. Now was a time for practice. He squeezed his fists, lowered his head and shook it, fought through the pride and shame.
He ran a hand through Marisa’s black hair, his warm fingers gliding through the cool, soft, dangling strands.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Just with this Desiree case, and you back to work, I’m—”
“Don’t worry about it, or me,” she said and looked him directly in the eyes, her voice sympathetic and warm. “I told you I’m fine and ready to get back to work. S…t…o…p worrying, I’m fine.”
She’d forgiven him just like that, made it look so easy. He wished he could do that. But that’s why he loved her, for her humility.
Steel grinned. “You ready to go this time or you have more makeup to put on?”
He smirked.
She simpered back and pouted, shot him I’m-the-boss-eyes. “I’m gonna kick your ass today…I swear to God I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Who’s doing all the cursing today?”
“Shut up,” she said, laughed. “You’re making me.”
He chuckled and ran the back of his fingers over her warm, soft cheek and felt as close to love he’d ever get, as if God and Earth and the Universe made total sense at the moment.
Steel’s stomach bubbled with sharp gas and bulged out three inches farther than before he’d eaten dinner. He clutched his gut and poked his fingertips into his hard, bloated, warm belly, which almost popped his belt, grimaced as it rumbled and burned from the gluttonous eating he’d just done at Christmas dinner, but not just any holiday feast, but one at the Tulli’s. Marisa’s parents were Italian-American, from South Philadelphia, loved to eat, used century-old recipes from their relatives who’d taken a boat to America, and could cook them well, all of which a dangerous combination for a person who loved to eat. Steel thought he learned his lesson after going to a barbeque that past summer at their house but boy was he wrong because at this dinner he’d eaten twice as much.
The first course was fresh mozzarella cheese soaked in golden olive oil, green olives with a vinegary pepper kick, deli meats sliced so thin they melted in your mouth, roasted peppers that burned his tongue from the garlic and onion tangy seasoning, and warm, crisp homemade bread.
After that, the courses kept coming—the salad with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, steamy Italian wedding soup, meatballs and sausage dripping with marinara sauce, manicotti pasta, sliced ham with pineapples, sweet potatoes that filled the air with warm brown sugar. He lost track of the rest after he was full.
Then the desserts came—coffee, ricotta cheese cannolis, homemade cheesecake, pizzelles, rice-pudding, and other family cookie recipes passed down from generation to generation, pretty much half the pastries in an Italian bakery.
But at the moment, the house held the scent of warm, dark coffee beans and cake frosting and chocolate and cinnamon and cookie dough mixed with remnants of the ham covered in pineapple and garlic from the meatballs and oil from the roasted peppers a couple of courses before it. What a scent—like an Italian restaurant during an evening rush.
His eyelids sagged and sprung open, sagged and sprung open. He could’ve fallen asleep right there at the dinner table.
Marisa’s father, Nicholas Tulli, squeezed Steel’s forearm with his thick, leathery hand. He leaned in. “Benny boy, how was everything?”
“I’m about to pass out here, Nick.”
Nicky Tulli leaned back in his seat and smirked, his beady, intimidating eyes shining. He ran a hand across his jet-black mustache and through his slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair and over his receding hairline, a proud patriarch just watching his family enjoy themselves in his own home on Christmas day. The whole family was there. Marisa’s mother, Joanne, a spitting image of Marisa but just thirty years older, sat next to her husband as she got a free moment here and there, in between scrabbling around the kitchen for more trays of food or for a new course. Both of Marisa’s brothers seemed as if they’d added four inches to their massive biceps, shoulders and chests; each probably could’ve bench-pressed Steel with a pinky. And both of their new wives were there as well; each couple had married the previous month. One of her brothers had a newborn baby girl who slept in a crib by the table, wrapped in a pink blanket. And at least fifteen cousins, aunts and uncles circled the setup, moving their arms as they spoke and laughed, reminiscing about old memories. All the women in the family resembled Marisa and her mother, dark hair, brown eyes, olive skin, Italian look, that you’d get fooled at first glance and think they were Marisa or her mother. Throughout the night, the women repeated themselves often and said to Steel “Come on Ben, eat sum’more” and the men “Benny, where ya’at now, where they got ya stationed?” Good old-fashioned dinner, South Philly style. Steel had joked a little throughout the night to adjust, contorted his face into Bobby De Niro, nodding and fr
owning, to feel like a family member. Marisa thought he looked like an idiot whenever he did it, called it his “stupid face.” He laughed, knew Marisa’s family made him feel as though he were eating at his own family’s dinner table, some of the nicest, most genuine people he ever met.
Desiree Jones popped into Steel’s mind for a brief second, the picture of her he’d seen in her file, her straight hair and wide smile. Poor woman, he thought, and her family. What a Christmas they’ll be having. I’m gonna get the son of a bitch who is responsible for this. His stomach twisted and knotted, the gas pockets settling in and shooting pain toward his belly button. Nothing could distract his mind from an unsolved case—not even on Christmas.
“Hey Benny, you been followin’ the fights?” Nicky said, tapped his arm.
“Yeah, not as much as I would like to, but yeah.”
“Who ya like?”
Steel tipped his head. “Still think Mayweather’s on top…and that kid Danny Garcia, he’s from Philly ya’ know, North, I think. I really like Manny Pacquiao, too. Wish him and Mayweather would fight already.”
“Yeah, yeah…that Garcia, hard puncher, very hard puncher, one ta watch.” Nicky curled his arms in a boxing pose and bobbed and weaved before smirking, his mustache twitching, shadow boxing underneath a black sweater and shiny wristwatch.
Afterwards, Nicky scratched his cheek covered in a five’ o clock shadow, leaned back, and patted his small gut. He surveyed the room with those beady eyes, making sure everyone was still eating and happy. Steel figured Nicky could be intimating to look at, but was one of the nicest guys in the world.
Joanne Tulli tapped her husband’s arm, and Nicky turned toward her. Steel shifted his eyes right, at the long table he was sitting at, at the happiness and closeness of this family just laughing and talking with one another, enjoying each other’s company. He glanced over at one of Marisa’s brothers’ wives rocking her newborn in her arms by the Christmas tree, her blonde hair swaying, smiling kid-faces to the baby before tickling her. He stared at the tree, at the red skirt circling around the bottom and surrounded by unwrapped gifts, at the tinsel and yellow lights stuck onto the pine branches that poked green ruffles through the air, and at red and white shiny balls hanging and swaying.
The dim lighting and coffee and garlic aroma and John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” playing in the background ran a chill up Steel’s neck, and he didn’t know why that song did that to him, made him feel sad but happy at the same time, as if it covered both the pains and joys of humanity in three-minutes of musical perfection:
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The road is so long
(And so Happy Christmas)
His stomach twirled and a panic tugged at his heart muscles, sweat broke through his skin. He observed Marisa smiling, running a thumb over her new niece’s tiny fingers, tossing her head back and laughing the most sincere laugh he’d ever heard. She was enjoying herself, no phoniness, just realness and total appreciation for family and time spent together. If the Universe worked by giving signs, than that moment, that glimpse of that side of Marisa, couldn’t have been clearer. It was time.
Steel’s heart pounded against his chest, his breathing slowed into deep, shallow breaths, almost nonexistent. He gasped. He rose and strolled over to the CD player by the television on a wooden credenza, his legs wobbly, his hands clammy, shaky. He spun the volume knob and the music faded out into low background noise, and all thirty or so heads in the room turned in his direction, all eyes fixed on him as if he were Frank Sinatra about to perform a Christmas song live.
Steel raised his hands above his head and high in the air for attention. He walked up to Marisa, as she stood, her niece’s delicate fingers resting on her own, confused, dressed in tight dark blue jeans, black UGSS, and a black turtleneck sweater, her eyes and hair—almost the same color as the black cotton shirt fabric—stood out against her olive skin, just the way he remembered from when they first met. Her eyes twinkled and swayed like soft, calm pools of water, natural beauty without any effort.
Steel gazed at her for a moment, all eyes still on the two, and grabbed her soft, tiny, warm hand and cupped it between both his palms. He dropped down and pressed one knee into the carpet and flipped his stare upward. Her eyes welled up before he even reached into his pocket for the final gift he’d stopped off to get her. She pressed her free hand against her mouth and streams of clear tears ran into her fingers and soaked the gaps between her knuckles, streamed into her palms. Gasps, shocked laughs, applause and tears circulated throughout the previously near-silent room.
He let go of her hand and flipped open a small black box, holding a ring symbolizing the love he felt for her, a sum of the feelings he couldn’t articulate with just words, a commitment, a promise to each other.
He took a deep breath, his voice deep between rapid breathing. “Marisa…will you marry me?”
She dabbed her fingers around her red, wet eyeballs, nodded repeatedly. Black mascara leaked down her cheeks and streaked her flesh. Loud applause and whistles circled the room.
Steel’s spine tingled, and tingled, and tingled, turned ice cold, raised the hair on his neck. He pushed up off the ground and gripped her tiny waist, pulled her close and met her soft, warm lips with his own. The music kicked back on and played O Holy Night, and Steel detected Josh Groban belting out the lyrics in a deep, echoing voice.
Chills shot up his chest and expanded it, iced his heart muscles. Their warm bodies stayed connected in an embrace, arms around one another, and each smiled and turned toward her family members, Marisa holding out her hand and flashing the ring. He scooped the back of her delicate neck in his palm. The moment so right, so perfect, soulful, beyond the physical—his other half—he was now complete. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper with his handwriting on it. A note he’d written after just one week of meeting her. Marisa flipped apart the white sheet with thin blue lines and sentences in blue pen and it crackled. She lowered her eyes and read it to herself. Streams of tears soaked her cheeks more and more after each line:
All my life I’ve questioned and doubted everything. But for the first time, ever, since we first met, the questions didn’t stop me from pushing you away. There’s this energy or force that can’t be seen or rationalized in thought, just something you feel, you know, as if fate had intervened in our lives. Love is the most powerful feeling in the world, and, at first, it was scary and exciting simultaneously. The moment I met you, it seemed as though everything up until that point in my life was meaningless, pointless, save for the maturity of my soul, to live, to suffer, to learn, to grow…to prepare for you. Every other situation in my life before you I’d approached with reservations, but with you, it’s complete comfort, like we’ve known one another a lifetime, something unexplainable, enough to drive someone insane (in a good way ;)).
My entire life I’ve been wandering around, from one thing, ambition, book, experience, or idea to the next, searching for something, but directionless, sometimes hopeless…trying to find purpose through vanity, mostly accomplishments, and meaningless, short-term, selfish things, so that I could find myself, but I always came up short, until I found you. You were the hidden treasure I had been searching for. We complement one another. You gave me an education on the meaning of life in one conversation, and not with your words, those were just for casual conversation to be around one another, don’t even remember much of what we talked about, but with your presence—the feelings the presence had caused, the understanding of life it provided without words, the whisper of the Universe or God in my ear. You inspire me to strive to be a better person every day, in all aspects of life—how and why we love, to give, become selfless instead of selfish, have compassion and patience, to love unconditionally, that to love is to live…you’ve given me all the reasons to strive for the good-hearted “God qualities” of the Universe I couldn’t rec
ognize on my own; I’m a better person, more effective person—for you, with you. And I know we can both be better people together…
PART TWO
DARKNESS
13
T
he office had little movement or noise, but Steel heard the heater’s subtle, occasional clang as it pumped warm streams of air into the area. Most of the detectives in his unit were out on the job, leaving just a few working behind their cubicles. Steel sat at his desk, leaning back in an old black office chair, his lips in a whistle-position but not letting off any sound, twirling a pen between his thumb and index finger, staring at the white walls and daydreaming, lost in his thoughts. It had been two days since Christmas, and he was still high off the engagement. He couldn’t explain it. He felt at ease, calmer than usual, as if the energy he’d previously used for worrying if he’d ever find a spouse could now be focused on other areas of his life. His mind hadn’t raced that much since then. His anxiety levels hadn’t forced him to break a sweat in panic from racing thoughts, speed his heart rate, or lose sleep. And not a hint of depression showed its ugly face since he’d proposed. However, the bouts of depression were getting shorter of late. Whereas an occurrence would’ve lasted months in his younger years, they only lasted days now, sometimes hours. All of those self-help books on cognitive behavioral therapy must’ve been paying off for him. His social life was in order, mood in check, at least for the moment. But life wasn’t all peachy. Not with Desiree Jones dead and her killer still roaming the streets.
Steel stretched his arms in the air, popped open his mouth, and squeezed his eyes shut for a long yawn. He glanced at the computer monitor and froze his stare on the lower right-hand corner: 9:30 AM. Since he’d arrived at the station, over two hours before, he reviewed the file on Desiree’s case. He’d received reports from forensics, which didn’t have much value. He couldn’t believe they didn’t have anything, nothing, not a fingerprint, salvia, piece of chewed gum, nothing. These no-evidence-cases he’d been getting of late were starting to piss him off. The coroner’s office had performed an autopsy of Desiree the previous day, which confirmed a 9mm, one of the, if not the most, commonly used guns in street murders. The kill shot that ended such a promising young life had been a single bullet to the back of her skull. He’d called Bonner’s of Market, the restaurant Kevin Johnson had said he’d worked at the night of Desiree’s murder, and the manager confirmed his presence, said he had the times Kevin had clocked in and out.
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