by Jack Getze
Gianni laughs. “Okay. Now I get it. That’s the potion you made the other day?”
“Right. So instead of Luis’ new wife, now Austin Carr is in love with my son Vic’s comare.”
Gianni snorts, holding back laughter.
Mama Bones hisses at him. “What should I say, huh? He’s gonna be real mad, right?”
Gianni shakes his head. He’s grinning ear to ear. “Don’t worry about it. Vic won’t believe a word. He’s going to want his twenty thousand, though.”
“You heard about the bet?”
When Gianni nods, she pushes him out of the basement, closes the heavy steel door on his face. The son of a gun. Gianni doesn’t believe one word about Aunt Maria’s magic love spell. He thinks this is all a big joke.
She grabs the cell phone from her purse. Better to get it over.
“’Allo, Vic?”
“I’m really busy, Mama. I have two clients on hold.”
“Okay, you wanna be like that, it’s fine. It’s only your poor old mama on the phone. No reason for you to listen or take a little time to talk.”
“Ditch the accent, will you?”
“You’re a badda-bad boy, Vittorio.”
“Tell me what you want.”
Mama Bones shakes her head, her gaze on the olive oil jars. This is how Vic makes her feel all the time. Like something stored away. “Listen, so you know—I made Austin Carr fall in love with your girlfriend Patricia.”
Silence.
She imagines Vic shaking his head on the other end of the telephone, like maybe his Mama is a fool. He makes her mad sometimes. “You remember Austin Carr, right? He’s the guy who took control of your business?”
Vic sighs so loud, he sounds like the wind.
“You can’t make someone fall in love,” Vic says. “You can’t make Patricia do anything. Believe me.”
“Aunt Maria’s love potion is very famous in Napoli. It’s-a how I catch your father Domenic.”
“Ah, Ma.”
“What, huh?”
Silence, then Vic says, “So are you going to pay up the twenty thousand you owe me?”
With her right hand, Mama Bones chokes her telephone. “You owe me, smarty pants. Aunt Maria’s potion worked perfect. Austin Carr took one sniff and turned into a drooling dog over your girlfriend when she smooched him. The stuff is so strong, she fell for him, too.”
“Fine. That’s what you called to tell me? You’re welching on the bet and my girlfriend’s fallen in love with Austin Carr. Is that really why you called me, Ma? Thanks a bunch.”
Mama Bones bites a knuckle so hard, there’s blood when she stops.
SEVEN
I’m on a trading desk telephone a few days later, checking bond quotes and talking with a client when Bobby G slips alongside me. “Look at your news ticker,” he says. “Fishman.”
I tell a client to hold on, pinch the telephone between my ear and shoulder, then type in Fishman’s call letters. Immediately I see what Bobby G’s talking about: Stock Price Rise Before Merger Prompts Insider Investigation of Fishman.
My stomach suicides off a fourteen-story building. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. District Attorney for New York have agreed to jointly investigate “unusual option and stock trading” prior to the Fishman, Gene-Pak merger announcement. It appears as “person or persons unknown maybe profited from prior knowledge” of the pending merger announcement.
Oh, hell, Mr. Vic. I hope you haven’t done anything extraordinarily stupid.
I jump up and check Vic’s office. He’s not there.
On the way back to my desk, I try his cell phone and then his home. No Vic. I stop by Carmela’s seat on the trading desk.
“He was here a few minutes ago,” Vic’s daughter says. “I’m sure he’ll be right back.”
After a Mexican dinner at Luis’, most of the time spent contemplating the loss of my stockbroker’s license, prison or worse, like maybe selling used Fiats, I stalk home to my condo, preparing to turn on the television and sulk.
Vic’s my junior partner, President of Carr Securities, and he still hasn’t returned my calls. I can’t find him. I’m completely in the dark about what he has or hasn’t done about that Fishman tip, and I am so absorbed with potential disaster, I fail to notice the extra-large dead animal on my doorstep until I nearly trip over it.
What the heck is that? Looks like a pile of skinned rabbits.
Oh, hell no.
It’s my teenage daughter Beth, hiding beneath what is undoubtedly her mother’s finest winter fur coat. My heart jumps against my ribcage. Is she hurt? I touch her shoulder. Beth’s breathing is solid and rhythmic. Her color is pink, and her cheek warms the back of my fingers. She’s sleeping.
“Beth, wake up. Are you okay?”
My sixteen-year-old lifts her head. Her blue eyes droop with sleepiness. Beth’s blond hair used to be long and clean, but now it’s football-helmet short, and dyed midnight. Her eyes and lips are also painted black—like a Goth rock star. I taste a whiff of beer in the air.
Her eyes focus slowly. “Daddy?”
“What happened to hoodies and the ponytail?” I say.
She staggers to her feet and gives me a hug. At least some things haven’t changed.
“I’m sixteen now,” she says.
In the porch light, a sparkle blinks at me from her nose. A piercing? What the heck is going on with Miss Goody Two Shoes, the straight-A student? From sophomore class vice president to Queen Glitter Rock in a week?
“I thought you went to Hilton Head with your mom and Bob,” I say.
“They’re leaving tomorrow, but I’m not going. I need a break from Mother, not Jersey.”
I can relate. In fact, that line would make a good slogan for the entire state, except not everyone’s Mom or ex-wife is Susan the Succubus. I slip my key into my condo’s lock.
Beth has her own bedroom here anyway, although when she and Ryan aren’t visiting, I use the desk in her room as my home office. I put fresh towels in the smaller bath and clean sheets on her bed, then write down my new password for the desktop. When she’s busy on my computer, allegedly doing homework, I call Beth’s mother. Bob the Dentist answers with a distinctly pissed off tone.
“Sorry to bother you,” I say, “but I need to talk to Susan. It’s important.”
“I will not bother Susan,” Bob says. “She has not been well.”
Susan hasn’t been well since 2005. “It’s about Beth,” I say.
“I do not care what it’s about,” Bob says. “You can tell Susan in the morning. Before we go to Hilton Head.”
Bob is such a dope. A few years ago I might have gotten angry, driven over there and chased him around the house. But you have to be jealous to get that kind of angry, and I’m not jealous anymore. Like lust, anger and the soft flesh of youth, everything I ever felt for Susan has faded with time.
“Fine,” I say. “When Susan’s looking for her daughter tomorrow, tell her to call me.”
“What? Okay, okay, wait.” I hear a bang, like the phone hitting a table. But there’s no dial tone, so I hang on. Thirty seconds later, Susan’s buzz-saw voice shows up.
“Is Beth with you?” Susan says.
“Yes. I found her on my doorstep when I came home tonight.”
“Is she hurt?”
“She’s fine. Doing her homework.”
“Are you going to bring her home?”
I take a breath. “She wants to stay here tonight.”
“We’re going to Hilton Head tomorrow right after school. She has to pack.”
“I’ll bring her over in the morning. Before school.”
It’s two or three beats before Susan says, “She complained about me, didn’t she? She called me a bitch right to my face yesterday.”
“She’s a teenager,” I say.
“Oh, aren’t we understanding. I suppose you agreed with her?”
“Actually, I didn’t. I told her how—”
; “You know what, Austin. Why don’t you just keep that little snot for the rest of her miserable life.”
Whoa. “Little snot?”
“I don’t believe I have one working gene in that screwed up pool of hers.”
“Beth needs a family atmosphere,” I say. “She should be with you, her brother. Not with her single father.”
“I’m serious, Austin. You’re so understanding of her condition, you take her for a while.”
“But I—”
The line goes dead.
The next morning at seven, I knock on Beth’s bedroom door.
“Wake up, honey. Time to get up.”
Silence.
“I talked to your mother last night. You don’t have to go to Hilton Head. But I thought you might want to go by your house this morning and pick up fresh clothes before school.”
Nothing. Her room is dead quiet, even with my ear pressed to the door.
“Beth?”
I knock again, then try the door. Locked.
I’m done talking to wood. I lope through my condo, out the front door, then down through the narrow garden of palm trees and elephant-ear philodendrons along the west side of my building. Crows squawk and fight over something in the neighbor’s privet hedge.
Near the back of my ground-floor two-bedroom, a redwood stake fence curtains off every condo’s small but private patio—more like horse stalls, each with its own garden gate. The areas are good for barbecuing. Mine is located outside my office, or Beth’s room. I open my gate and see the sliding glass door to Beth’s room is wide open. I run inside the room and spot a handwritten note on a stack of her school books.
Daddy. Got a ride to school. See you tonight.
My heart rate slows, but not all the way. She went to school without her Math, English, or Science books and a notebook of homework assignments.
There’s writing on the back of the notebook. A few doodles, some phone numbers, and what looks like two lines of free verse.
Kneel before the devil
She has accessed your soul
Nice. Beth’s writing satanic poetry. Probably about her mother Susan.
I take comfort in my routine of shower, dress, and the short drive to work, but my head reels with new responsibilities and the certain knowledge that familiar pastimes are marked for change. A teenage daughter is one thing. A live-in teenage daughter is quite another.
Instinct tells me Beth needs my under-appreciated parenting skills, but instinct also tells me it’s an assignment fraught with trouble. I feel like a middle-aged Army reservist being called up to the front lines in Afghanistan.
At my desk, first thing to do is call Beth’s school. After an odd exchange, in which I’m forced to reveal my Social Security number, driver’s license, my mother’s maiden name and the variety of my ex-wife’s sexual appetites, I discover my daughter indeed arrived safely at school. And on time, too.
Good. I can put aside my worries for the next half-dozen hours and concentrate on earning a living.
Wrong. Patricia Willis ruins work shortly after ten o’clock. I know my day is over as soon as I hear her voice, too, because in my mind, the noisy salesroom goes dead silent and the light in the big room shifts brighter: Like after that second stiff martini, the world has been altered, and the next few hours can only hold adventure.
“Meet me at the beach for lunch,” she says. “I think we have something to talk about.”
“Like you being Vic’s girlfriend?” I say.
“Like that kiss.”
I pull the receiver away from my ear and stare at the plastic. Did she feel something special when our lips touched—like me? My office telephone looks like it always did. Black. Oblong. Little holes for the Austin Carr Gift of Gab to flow through. But nothing else seems the same. The air is moving strangely. I need to talk to Patricia.
The phone gets back against my ear in time to hear the redhead say, “One-thirty at Clooney’s. I’ll meet you at the outside beach bar.”
EIGHT
The strip of Branchtown Municipal Beach directly in front of Clooney’s restaurant consists of crushed rock and broken white shells, a crunchy, gritty bleached soup of stone and dead sea creatures. Pelicans cruise above the rolling surf, a low, single-file line flying south. I am so excited to be with Patricia I can hardly breathe. We’ve been walking without speaking for ten minutes when she accidentally-on-purpose bumps my hip with her own.
“What would you say happened when we kissed at Luis’ wedding?” Patricia says. She’s wearing tan shorts and a black sweater rising and falling like the ocean when she breathes. She obviously didn’t come here from a job. “What did you feel?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “An odd kind of heat on my lips.”
She stares at me. “Sex you mean?”
“No. More like chili peppers.”
She laughs. “I like the sound of that.”
Her earthy giggle makes me want to grab her. Her voice is like a magnet. “And I’ve dreamed about you every night since.”
Patricia touches my arm and we stop walking. A wave crashes on our left and washes against our bare feet. The ocean water freezes my toes. Patricia’s fingers heat my skin. I reach and gently turn her shoulder. We kiss.
Consuming fire breaks out wherever our bodies touch. There are more kisses, an agonizing two-minute sensation of burning alive, awkward words about my car, her coming in a taxi, and where. We haven’t been together thirty minutes before we’re driving to my place, trying not to touch each other in the Camry. It’s impossible.
As soon as my condo door snaps closed behind us, Patricia clutches for me, her hands and arms demanding, circling my waist like boa constrictors. Her body presses against me, melting into me, soft and entrapping. When she lifts her face toward mine, parting her lips, I worry I will be devoured. The passion I feel is unknown to me, the electric silk touch of her skin like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
The rapping at my front door is polite, not urgent or rude, but highly intrusive, although I’m not going to describe exactly what I’m doing. In my quickly donned boxer shorts, I crack open the front door of my condo and greet a man and woman in their mid-thirties, neither one much to look at, but both stylishly dressed and clean-cut. Smart looking. New York, I’m guessing.
Both of them hold up badges and New York U.S. District Attorney identification cards. Jeez. It’s the Feds from Manhattan after a poor Jersey boy.
The man says, “Austin Carr?”
“Yes.”
“We’re with the U.S. District Attorney’s Office for New York. We’d like to talk to you about your purchase of Fishman Corp. stock options.”
My face hardens into a package of frozen peas. Wind plays with the yellow-leafed maples behind my front-porch guests and brings a buzz of traffic from the nearby intersection. Whatever romantic sensations had been flowing through me—body, heart and soul—are now blown away or shrunken. There’s a taste of auto exhaust and federal prison on the breeze.
“I thought you were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Patricia says.
Whoa. Patricia scares me, sneaking up behind. She’s wearing the couch blanket draped over her shoulder like a Roman senator.
The female agent says, “May we come in and talk?”
My heart thuds, the rhythm double-timing the tick-tock of my living room clock. My palms ooze like a crushed carton of eggs. My purchase of Fishman Corp. stock options. I can only manage a half-boat Carr grin. “There’s been a mistake of some sort. I didn’t buy Fishman options.”
“Nothing official yet, Mr. Carr, but lying to us later will be a crime,” the woman says. Her hair is dull brown, the pageboy too short for her ears. Her thick lobes look like double-wheels on a truck. “We’ve already subpoenaed and examined your accounts. The record shows you bought Fishman call options three days before the announcement and sold the day of the news. You turned fifty thousand dollars into more than three hundred thousand.”
I’m shaking my head in p
rotest when everything hits. The truth shines. The light goes on. The bell rings. The poop hits the fan: Mr. Vic inviting me to hear Patricia’s story; him refusing to discuss the merger after it was announced; and the clincher, Vic knowing I rarely trade or check my personal account.
“Let us come in and talk about it, Mr. Carr,” the young man says. “I really need to use the restroom.”
I shake my head. “No. Wait here.”
Turning my back on the Feds, leaving Patricia to keep them outside, I check my laptop on the kitchen counter. The ticking of my mantle clock becomes the soundtrack of a Hitchcock thriller, a menacing echo when I see my account. Crap. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has my butt, all right. Austin Carr’s net worth has jumped by three hundred and fifteen grand. The cash is located in my money-market fund now, but by clicking HISTORY, I see the Fed’s version of my alleged Fishman option trading is indeed the accurate record.
Vic must have used his partner’s master account code to trade in my account, set me up. He sold my mutual funds I have for the kids, put everything in Fishman options.
I check Patricia. From my new angle at the kitchen counter, I notice her makeshift toga doesn’t hide her entire left buttocks. Well, at least she’s got the federales covered. My fingers fumble inside my wallet for something I need desperately. There.
Striding back to my would-be interrogators, I hand the woman a business card. “I’d rather not speak to you without my attorney present,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to set up an appointment for us all to talk.”
The young woman stares at the slick business card of Randall Zimmer III, my highly competent attorney. Her partner leans over to read it as well.
“You’ve already hired a lawyer in this matter?” he says.
“I’m a Jersey stockbroker, pal. I keep one on retainer.”