by Parker
"Is she still with the other guy?" Brian laughed.
"She's gone through three more men of her dreams," he said.
"Since then. I don't know how many of them she married."
"Has there been anyone since?" I said.
"For me?"
"Yes."
"One every Saturday night," Brian said. "None serious before now."
"Now?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know how serious this one ought to be," I said. "You're not available?"
"I'm divorced," I said. "I'm available for this. But I don't know if I'm available for more than this."
"Why not?"
"I don't know if I'm really free of my ex-husband."
"I could help you get free," Brian said. "If he's giving you trouble."
"No. Richie is very decent about things. I don't know if I'm emotionally free of him. I don't even know if I want to be."
"So why'd you get divorced? His idea?"
"No. I left him."
"Because?"
"Do you know who my ex-husband is?"
"I know who his father is, and his uncles. That the reason?"
"One of them."
"He wouldn't give it up for you?"
"No."
"I would have."
"Would you?"
"Absolutely."
"Would you stop being a cop?"
"Yes."
"And be what?"
Brian started to speak and stopped and thought about it. As he thought about it he began to nod slowly.
"That's the question, isn't it," he said finally.
"Richie was never able to answer it," I said. "I'm not sure I gave him enough time."
"And be what," Brian said softly. "That your only issue?"
"No. I always felt as if I were being squeezed to death."
"That's never fun," Brian said. "My ploy would be probably not to do that."
I smiled and put my head on his chest again.
"Yes. That would be the right ploy," I said.
We were quiet. Brian smelled of soap and cologne, and a hint of new perspiration after a vigorous evening. The fire was quiet in the narrow fireplace. I stared at it. All of a sudden I found myself saying something that I hadn't known until I said it.
"If I can work it out so that I can be with Richie," I murmured, "I will."
I felt Brian stiffen a little. But he didn't pull away. I felt his hand pat my shoulder lightly.
"We'll see," he said as he patted. "We'll have to see."
CHAPTER 48
Rosie and I were in one of Rosie's favorite spots, a bench beside the swan boat lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. It was kind of late in the fall for sitting on a bench outside, but they hadn't drained the lagoon for winter yet, or put the swan boats away. Rosie could make eye contact with a dozen squirrels, and at least that many ducks, and not have to risk actually attacking them because she was on her leash. I liked to sit there when I felt stifled by things, as I did today. There was something about being outside in the sunlight with the dog that made my head clear. Rosie sat beside me. I had her leash looped over my wrist, but she seemed perfectly content leaning against me and focusing on the wildlife, her head moving fractionally as the squirrels hopped and the ducks glided, through whatever field of vision her black watermelon-seed eyes provided. Brian was no more. He hadn't said it, and I hadn't. But I knew. He might be around for a time, if 1 changed my mind, but Brian's interests would be directed elsewhere. Which was healthy of him. I remembered the moment with Richie, too.
It was Julie's night out every Thursday. Michael took the kids, and Julie and I and sometimes Spike, on the rare occasion when our plans appealed to him, would go to an art exhibit or a book signing or maybe a musical evening at the Longy School in Cambridge, stuff that I found mostly boring, and Spike usually found insufferable, but stuff which reassured Julie that she was still an intellectual who had not been lobotomizzed by marriage and children. It was Spike's view that this grim dedication to what he called intellectual boot camp would lobotomize us all, but though less often than I, he went with her because, less intensely than I, he loved Julie. This night, after a particularly grueling poetry reading in the basement of a church in the Back Bay, the three of us went to the Ritz bar and ordered martinis as an antidote to the stale cheese and warm white wine we had desperately ingested at the church. The relief we all felt was nearly tactile, though Julie wouldn't admit it, and we didn't press the point because we were kind. But the martinis went down really well, and the sum of it was that I came home to find Richie standing in the driveway with the dog's leash in has hands. The dog was inside. To this day I don't remember why he had it.
"Where have you been, " Richie said.
As he spoke, he snapped the dog's leash tight between his hands and let it loose and snapped it tight.
"Out with my friends, " I said.
"You're supposed to be home here with me, " he said.
The leash snapped tight and loosened. I doubt that Richie was even aware of what he was doing. He was ferociously contained and when he was very angry it squee{ed out around his containment in odd ways.
"Every minute?" I said.
Snap.
"I've been waiting for three hours. "
The leash snapped. Did he want to snap it around my neck? No. Richie would never hurt me.
"I have the right, " I said, in the dignified way that you can achieve only if you're drunk, "to be with my friends when I want to be."
"And I have the right to have you come home when you're expected and not make me think about whether it's time to call the cops or not.
"Oh, don't be so silly, " I said.
"To worry about you is silly?"
"I can take care of myself."
"To want you with me is silly?"
"No. But if you do it too much it's. .." I couldn't think of a word ... then it came ... "suffocating."
Richie stretched the leash as tight as he could, as if he were trying to pull it apart.
"Suffocating? Loving you and wanting you with me is suffocating."
Had I been sober, maybe I would have modified it. It wasn't quite what I meant. But it never is in fights like that. And I wasn't sober. "Yes!"
Richie shook his head like a horse beset by flies.
"All I ask is that I may love you and you love me back. "
"And you define love, and you judge the terms in which I love you back? And if I don't love you in the same way you think you love me, I get yelled at?"
"I'm talking about the way I, feel," Richie said.
"And I'm talking about the way I feel. Why do we have to feel exactly alike? Why can't you feel your way, and I feel my way?"
"All I want is to be loved the way I love," Richie said. He was snapping the leash again.
"Well, maybe you can't have that."
"That's what marriage is, " he said.
"Maybe you married the wrong woman, then."
"Yeah," Richie said, "maybe I did. "
Still holding the leash he walked away from me down the driveway and disappeared into the dark. When he came back I was in bed, and I pretended to be asleep.
Beside me, Rosie spotted another dog on the other side of the lagoon, and jumped down barking and snarling and gargling, just as if she would really attack it if I let her, which she wouldn't. But it was a dazzling display, and several pedestrians stepped hurriedly out of her way as she strained on the leash.
"At least I know you don't want to strangle me with it," I said, and got up and steered her back toward Boylston Street.
CHAPTER 49
Richie and Spike had never been easy with each other. The only thing they had in common was me. So it was a little strained around Spike's kitchen table a little after midnight. Millicent was in the den watching television. Rosie was on the floor between me and Richie, with her head resting on my left foot. There was fruit and cheese and some crackers and some wine on the table. "You keep some tough hour
s, Sunny," Richie said.
He put a small wedge of blue cheese on each of two crackers, fed one to Rosie and ate the other.
"It's the only time I could get us all together," I said.
"Why do you want to?" Spike said.
"Because I need help."
"What've you been getting?" Spike said, "We've gone to the mattresses in my house, we're baby-sitting your client."
"I know. I'm grateful."
"Good," Spike said.
"What do you need?" Richie said.
"There's a man named Cathal Kragan," I said. "You know about him."
They both nodded.
"There's a man named Albert Antonioni. Do you know about him?"
"Not the Italian director," Spike said.
"No."
"From Providence?" Richie said.
"Yes."
"We know him."
"What's that," Spike said, "the royal we?"
Almost everybody who meets Richie is intimidated by him. It isn't size, though he's big enough; it's something in his eyes, and his voice, and how still he is when there's no reason to move. But Richie didn't intimidate Spike. As far as I knew nothing intimidated Spike, including things that should have.
"We always means his father and his uncle," I said.
Richie grinned. "Thank you for interpreting," he said. "Tell me about Antonioni."
I did. When I was through Richie and Spike were both silent for a time. Richie poured a little wine into my glass, and a little into his own. He started to put the wine bottle down when Spike said,
"Hey."
Richie grinned and poured some into Spike's glass. Spike nodded and raised the glass half an inch in Richie's direction and drank some wine.
"You're right," Spike said to me when he put the glass down. "You need help."
"And I don't know if I have the right to ask for it," I said.
"Because?"
"Well, how much can you ask a friend to do?" I said.
"You and I are more than friends," Richie said.
"I know, that's an even bigger problem. How can I ask you to help me, when we're ... when I'm not..."
Richie glanced briefly at Spike, and then took in a little air. "Sunny," he said. "There's nothing about rights here. You need something from me, you get it, whether you're sleeping with me or not."
My eyes stung. Horror of horrors, was I going to cry? I breathed slowly.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome," Richie said.
A slow smile developed as he looked at me.
"Of course, afterwards," he said, "if you were grateful ..."
I sighed and looked at Spike.
"I'll help, too," he said, "and you won't have to sleep with me either."
"Easy for you. . ." Richie murmured. Spike grinned.
"Just going along with the program," he said.
Richie cut a wedge from a Granny Smith apple and ate it and drank some wine.
"First off," Richie said, "what's your goal?"
"I've been sort of making it up as I went along," I said. "I'm not sure I've set a goal."
"Well, let's set one," Richie said.
"Saving Millicent," I said.
"From?"
"From Kragan, from Antonioni, if he's part of it, from her parents, from herself."
"The full bore, all out, hundred and ten percent save," Spike said. "Save her from everything."
"If I can."
"Would the first step be to take out the people who are trying to kill her?"
"Yes," I said, "and maybe, find out along the way if her parents are as bad as they seem."
"You assume they want to kill her because Kragan knows she overheard him and her mother planning to kill a guy."
"Yes."
"And because it would lead, if she talked, maybe to implicating Kragan and Antonioni and their participation in her father's gubernatorial ambitions," Richie said.
"Yes."
"So if we remove the motive, we remove the threat to the kid," Spike said.
"What would you like to do, Sunny?"
"I'd like to blow the whole thing out of the water," I said. "The sex, the murder, Patton's run for governor, Antonioni, Kragan, all of it. Boom!"
Richie nodded slowly. He looked at Spike.
"How good are you," he said.
Spike grinned at him. "About as good as you," he said.
"That's very good," Richie said.
"I know."
Richie looked at him some more.
"You want him in?" Richie said to me, staring at Spike.
"I trust him like I trust you," I said.
"Well," Richie said, "he's got the build for it."
"How sweet of you to notice," Spike said.
"One rule," Richie said, and he started to grin sooner than he wanted to. "There'll be no kissing."
Spike held his look for a minute and then he, too, began to smile.
"Damn," Spike said.
Richie looked at me. Then at Spike. Than back at me. He raised his glass. We raised ours.
"Boom!" he said.
CHAPTER 50
There was an exhibit of Low Country realists at the Museum of Fine Arts, and, on the assumption that Kragan's button men didn't normally hang out there, I took Millicent to see it. "Why do I want to look at windmills and cows and people dressed funny?" Millicent said.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I mean, why would you? Why would anyone?"
"I like to look at them," I said.
"Why? Look at this picture of this woman, why is that better than a photograph?"
It was a painting by Vermeer.
"Sometimes I like to look at photographs, too," I said.
"You know what I mean."
"Yes," I said, "I do. For a minute there I was doing my grownup shtick. Avoiding the question by sounding wise."
Millicent smiled. "You didn't sound so wise to me," she said.
"But I was successfully avoiding the question."
"'Cause you don't know the answer?" I laughed.
"You know your grownups, don't you."
Millicent sensed an advantage and bored in. "So why do you like this stuff," she said. "Because you're supposed to?"
"No, I'm past doing things because I'm supposed to. I like it. I like the way the painting seems so luminescent. I like the tranquility, I like the way the thing lays out, everything so balanced space and containment. I like the expression on the woman's face, the details of the room."
"You could get that in a photograph."
"Well, not of this woman," I said. "It was done in the seventeenth century; they didn't have photographs."
"So this would be the only kinds of pictures there were."
"That's right," I said. "The only way they had to fix anything in time, so to speak."
"I don't even know what that means."
"Well, one of the reasons to look at stuff is to learn what things mean."
"I don't have to like stuff I don't like."
"No," I said, "you don't. But it's probably better to base your reaction on knowledge than on ignorance."
"What difference does it make? Whether I like it or not?"
"The more things you like, the more opportunities to be happy."
By now we were sitting on a little bench, and so intent on our conversation that we had stopped looking at the paintings.
"Okay," Millicent said, "that's what I asked you before. Why should I like that picture?"
"There's no should here. I am pleased by how well Vermeer did what he did. But if you're not, once you've looked at it thoughtfully, then you're not."
"Well, you're a painter, so maybe it means more to you."
"Probably does. But I'm also pleased when I see old films of Ray Robinson, or listen to Charlie Parker, or read Emily Dickinson."
"I don't know who any of those people are."
"Yet," I said, "but now you know who Vermeer is."
Millicent shrugged. We sat
for another moment, looking at the painting.
"You love Richie?" Millicent said.
"Jesus," I said, "what is this, your morning for impossible questions?"
"Well, either you do or you don't," Millicent said. "What's so hard about that?"
"I do," I said, "I guess."
"You act like you do," Millicent said. "You and him ever have sex?"
"Since the divorce?"
"Yeah?"
"No."
"How come?" Millicent said.
"It sends the wrong message, I think."
"But you'd like to?" I could feel myself blushing.
"I don't know why, but this is embarrassing me," I said. Millicent smiled happily.
"So you're not so perfect."
"Ain't that the truth," I said.
"You having sex with that cop?"
"Brian?" I said.
"Yeah, Brian whatsisname."
I felt myself blushing more. It was annoying. Why didn't I want to talk about this?
"I guess that's between me and Brian," I said.
"How come you won't tell me?"
"I don't know. I don't want to."
Millicent was radiant with triumph.
"You're always asking me stuff," she said. I took in some air.
"I have never slept with anyone I didn't care for," I said. "Like most adults I have sex with people I do care for."
"So you care for Brian the cop?"
"Yes, I do."
"So ... ?"
I smiled.
"You won't allow me my modesty, will you."
"You have had sex with him."
"I guess you've got me," I said.
Millicent was still intense.
"Say so," she said.
"Yes, I have," I said.
Millicent looked relieved. The tension went out of her shoulders. I felt like there had been a test. I wondered if I'd passed. Did she need to know I'd tell her everything? Was she trying to take me down a peg? I felt as if I needed another take on this conversation, as if I had botched most of my lines on the first take. But it was over, and the quality of satisfied closure in Millicent let me know that going over the same ground wouldn't do her any good. I'd noticed in the last few years that getting it said just right didn't do much for anybody but the sayer. What she had gotten was my genuine reaction. Revision wouldn't help. Help with what? I wished some sort of supershrink would leap out of a phone booth and explain to me just what the hell was going on. But none did. They never do. The bastards.