“That was three months ago,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “He’s still alive, and he’s still fighting.”
“Amazing,” was all I could think of saying.
“He really believes he can still beat this thing,” Carol said. “He takes short walks and exercises with his therapist. His mind and his will won’t give up.”
“He sounds like a special guy,” I said. “I hope I get the chance to meet him.”
Carol sighed again. “I hope so, too.”
“Let’s change the subject,” Lisa said, pointing at me. “Tell us what happened to you. You’re the biggest news in town.”
“The biggest news in town is going to have to wait,” Claudette Premice declared from the doorway. “Mrs. Amici, girls, Mr. Amici is awake and cranky. Mr. Perlmutter, you have nine phone messages, and I’m not taking another one.” She marched into the room and dropped a stack of pink slips on my lap. “I activated your phone. Answer it yourself.”
Carol and her daughters walked to the door. “You got off easy today,” Lisa told me. “Next time.”
“He’s probably not going to be here for a next time,” Claudette said. “He’s being released soon. Oh, and Mr. Wonderful, you have a visitor outside. I told her you weren’t seeing anyone, but she asked if I would let you know she was here.”
“She’s not a reporter, is she?”
“She doesn’t look like a reporter,” Claudette said. “Says her name’s Alicia Fine.”
“I know Alicia Fine,” Carol Amici said. “From Boca Heights.”
“That’s where I met her,” I explained.
“She’s a very nice person,” Carol noted.
“Well, do you want to see this very nice person from Boca Heights or should I send her away?” Claudette sounded impatient.
“Nurse Premice, are you jealous of all my lady visitors?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Eddie Perlmutter.” She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t care if you are a star. To me you’re just another catheter.”
“Now that hurts.” I covered Mr. Johnson with both hands.
“Now, don’t you make me do it again,” she warned with a smirk.
“You have my word,” I promised. “I’d like to see Mrs. Fine if that’s okay with you.”
Yeah, bring her on, Mr. Johnson rallied.
Carol waved from the doorway. “See you soon,” she said, and they all departed.
I heard Alicia Fine exchanging pleasantries with Carol Amici and her daughters outside my room. A moment later Alicia Fine was at my door.
Alicia Fine looked fantastic.
“Hi,” she said. Her smile was tentative. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all,” I said. “Please come in.”
I watched her walk toward me and I wished I had a pause button. She looked spectacular. Her light-brown hair was cut stylishly short, and it complemented an imperfectly beautiful face that still had its original nose and lips. Her figure was full and sensual, and Mr. Johnson stirred despite his catheter trauma. I adjusted my robe snugly over Mr. Johnson to keep him in his place.
Hey, Mr. Johnson protested, pick on someone your own size.
Behave yourself, I told him.
Mrs. Fine sat on a chair next to my bed. I smiled at her, hoping she didn’t notice what was happening under my robe.
Hey, you don’t tell me what to do, Johnson protested, still trying to stand up. I got a mind of my own.
I know. But not now, please . . .
If not now, when? Johnson had the balls to quote Rabbi Hillel. Look at her.
I’m looking, I’m looking. I tried to avert my eyes, but Johnson wouldn’t let me.
Look at those legs, look at those boobs.
I’m looking.
The thighs! Check out those thighs, man.
I looked.
I say we fuck her.
Stop talking like that.
That’s how I talk. I’m a penis. Come on, introduce me!
I will not!
Are you ashamed of me?
I’m very proud of you, I told him. But it’s not the time or place.
Sure it is! Shit!
You’re confusing me with the asshole that lives behind me.
Will you stop?
When I stop you might as well be dead.
“Are you all right?” Alicia Fine asked. “You seem lost in thought.”
Damn, she wants to talk, Mr. Johnson said, and he withdrew into his shell.
I knew the little prick would be back sooner or later. “I’m fine, Mrs. Fine,” I said. “It’s nice of you to come.”
“I tried calling you on your cell phone. Mike gave me your number.”
“He told me.”
“Did you get my message?”
“I haven’t checked my messages. I was a little busy.”
“Obviously, you were busy,” she laughed. Her teeth were perfect. Mr. Johnson stirred a little but I crossed my legs and the catheter gave him a painful tug.
Watch it, he warned me. I’m a little tied up here.
“What was your message?” I said, ignoring Mr. Johnson.
“I wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue yesterday. It was a horrible situation for me.”
“A horrible situation is living in a shack by the side of State Road 7,” I said.
She tilted her head to the side. “Excuse me.” She looked perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a little disoriented. Listen, you don’t have to thank me, I was just doing my job.”
“Well, you did a good job,” she told me. “Mike disqualified Mildred Feinberg like you said he should, and I was declared champion because I was winning when she defaulted.”
“That’s good thinking on Mike’s part. Congratulations.”
“He told me it was your idea.”
“Mike talks too much.”
“Well thank you for being there for me.”
I’m right here for you too, hot stuff. Mr. Johnson was back.
I squeezed my legs together and crushed the pest between my thighs.
“My pleasure,” I said softly, clearing my throat.
Mine, too. Mr. Johnson was muffled but still game as hell. I cut off his circulation with a hard squeeze.
Son of a bitch, he mumbled.
“I heard you quit your job at Boca Heights.”
I nodded.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I don’t belong there.”
“I thought you fit in quite nicely.” She smiled. “People liked you.”
“People hardly noticed me.”
“I noticed you,” she said, looking directly at me.
“With all due respect, Mrs. Fine, you notice everyone. You’re a very nice person.”
“I noticed you in particular.”
“That’s because I’m so tall, dark, and handsome.”
We laughed together. “Actually, it was your broken nose that first got my attention.”
“I have a broken nose?” I felt my nose. “When did that happen?”
We laughed again. “It probably happened when you were a boxer in the Golden Gloves.”
“How did you know about that?”
“It was in the paper. Everything about you was in the paper. You’ve had a very exciting life, and it seems like the excitement never stops.”
“That’s me, all right. Mr. Excitement,” I joked. “I think trouble just follows me around.”
“Or you look for trouble,” she suggested with that great smile of hers.
We were actually flirting, and Mr. Johnson knew it, but to his credit he remained calm.
“I read you lost your wife.”
I nodded. “I heard you lost your husband.”
“I didn’t lose him. He told me to get lost.”
“How long were you married?”
“Thirty years. Two kids, one married. I have two grandchildren.”
You’re kidding me! Mr. Johnson was s
tunned. I’ve been standing at attention and saluting a grandmother.
“You don’t look old enough to be a grandmother.”
“I’m fifty-two years old,” she said. “I was nineteen when I got married. I was a mother at twenty-one and again at twenty-two. My daughter is thirty, with a boy and a girl of her own. My son is still single.”
“Well, you look great. How could your husband leave you?”
“He said I lost something after all those years.”
“What?”
“My youth,” she said. “He married a woman who looks just like I did twenty years ago.”
“He married a thirty-two-year old?” I said more than asked. “He must be crazy. What will they talk about?” I paused. “Wait a minute. That’s a stupid question.”
“Actually, it’s a very perceptive question,” she said. “You’re pretty smart for a cop.”
I noticed we laughed easily. She insisted I call her Alicia.
Alicia Fine’s visit lasted long into the afternoon. I ignored several phone calls while she was there and I think she was flattered.
We talked briefly about Patty because Alicia asked. “Do you still miss her after all these years?”
I told her I did.
“Is that why you never remarried?” she asked.
I told her I hadn’t found anyone I wanted to marry.
“It must be wonderful to love someone so much,” she mused.
I assured her it was wonderful, but it was also painful.
“It’s painful when a loved one leaves under any circumstances,” she said.
I told her I thought the pain of rejection was worse than the pain of death. “Death is never personal. You’re chosen at random. Rejection is when you’re not chosen at all, and that’s very personal.”
Then I suggested we talk about something else.
She asked if I had dated many women since Patty died, and I told her I had. She asked about my relationships, and I suggested, once again, that we talk about something else. She asked if I would tell her about my career.
I talked about whatever came to mind. I talked about my boxing, my parents, my grandparents, my middle initial, my terrible temper, and my lifelong desire to be a cop. I told her about the West End and how it was destroyed by politicians. I told her how I killed Gino Montoya, even though he lived thirty years after I broke his heart. I talked about the North End and the people who lived there. I told her about the wiseguys in Boston’s Mafia and how they became made men. I told her about the first time I was shot, on the first day of forced busing in South Boston in 1974.
She seemed fascinated by my description of the rioting of white-Irish residents of “Southie” when buses carrying black students arrived in front of South Boston High on September 12, 1974. “I saw this middle-aged guy in the crowd pull a gun out of his jacket pocket. He was showing it to a friend and pointing a finger at the students. He wasn’t aiming the gun at anyone, and I decided I wasn’t going to give him the chance. I rushed into the crowd and grabbed him. In the scuffle, the gun went off and I took a bullet in my left thigh.”
She punctuated my description with an “Oh my God.”
You ain’t kidding, Mr. Johnson remembered. A few inches to the right, and I would have had my head blown off. The twins, too.
She wanted to know what happened to the man with the gun.
“Not much,” I told her. “It was an accident, and he had a license for the gun.”
“Why were they busing in Boston?” Alicia Fine asked suddenly with interest, and I got the urge to kiss her. It wasn’t a sexual urge. It was a “thank you for being here, thank you for caring, thank you for being so goddamn luscious, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Busing didn’t start in Boston,” I explained. “North Carolina was the first state to require busing, in 1970. In 71, the Supreme Court upheld North Carolina’s decision, and busing became the new thing. It didn’t come to South Boston until 1974.”
“Why South Boston?”
“Southie was about as racially imbalanced as you could get,” I explained. “The neighborhood was almost a hundred percent white and predominantly Irish. It was a very clannish, very tough neighborhood.”
“Whose idea was it to go there?”
“U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity.”
“He couldn’t have been too smart.”
“Harvard Law School graduate, appointed by Lyndon Johnson.”
“I don’t care. It sounds like he made an awful stupid choice.”
“He did,” I agreed. “Garrity ordered 17,000 kids bused away from their neighborhood schools. It was crazy. At one point, there were 500 police supervising 400 students at South Boston High. In 1974, Southie was like Selma, Alabama, in 1964.”
She asked what happened.
“It took twenty-five years for the busing program to end.”
“Why did it stop?”
“Because everyone could see it wasn’t working,” I said. “It was a big mistake. It never should have started.”
“It seemed like a well-intentioned program,” she said.
“Isn’t there an old saying about good intentions?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ “
“Exactly.” I returned her smile so she wouldn’t feel embarrassed. “I’m in favor of equal rights and civil rights. I swore to uphold these laws and I did. But busing took away as many rights as it tried to protect. Busing forced white families in Southie to take their kids out of a clannish, neighborhood school and send them across the city to a place they weren’t wanted and didn’t want to be. Then a busload of black kids arrives in Southie to replace the white kids who just left under protest. What did they think was going to happen? Busing wasn’t the answer.”
“What was the answer?”
“I’m just a cop, Alicia,” I said. “I didn’t have an answer then and I don’t have an answer now. I just knew something had to be done.”
“What happened to Judge Garrity?”
“He died in 1999, about the same time busing died,” I told her. “Dead or alive, though, the people of South Boston will never forgive him.”
She asked me about the second time I was shot and the third time just yesterday. I told her it was time to talk about her. She said there was nothing much to tell, but I insisted. It was early afternoon, and the sky had gone dark with clouds. A hard rain began to fall, and heavy drops crashed and splashed against the window. I suddenly felt tired and fought to keep my eyes open. “Mind if I get into bed again?” I asked.
“I should be going,” she volunteered. “You need your rest.”
“No. Don’t go.”
When I was settled under the covers with her help, she sat next to me on the bed. She touched my face gently with the palm of her hand. “You should sleep.”
I took her hand and held it. “Tell me a story?” I asked.
“You’re like a little boy, Eddie Perlmutter.” She smiled at me. “Okay, here goes. Once upon a time in a land far, far away from Far Rockaway - ”
“Where’s Far Rockaway?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just listen and relax.”
As I drifted away on a hydrocodone cloud, she spoke of a Long Island with giant castles on cliffs high above the Atlantic Ocean. The castles were in honor of King Benjamin (Moore) of Paints, King Harry (Guggenheim) of Cash, King Marshall (Fields) of Stores, and other “majesties” of the time.
The mansions had names: Commodore Hill, Old Westerbury Gardens, Hempstead House, Falaise, Eagle’s Nest, and Chelsea. The mythical Great Gatsby lived in the imaginary enclave of West Egg on this gold coast. Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby’s lover, lived in West Egg. Gatsby was great because he had everything but he was murdered by a man who had nothing.
Otto Kahn, the man Will Rogers called “the King of New York,” had everything except acceptance. Kahn was a German-Jewish investment banker at Kuhn Loeb in New York City at the turn of the twentieth
century. A resident of Morristown, New Jersey, Kahn was denied membership to the local exclusive golf club. Incensed by the anti-Semitism of his neighbors, Kahn moved to Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in 1914, where he built Oheka (derived from letters in his name), a 109,000-square-foot mansion. Only Vanderbilt’s Biltmore was bigger.
Years later, more Jewish potentates moved to the Gold Coast. The Long Island towns of Great Neck, Sands Point, Oyster Bay, Old Westbury, and Huntington filled with Jewish kings and queens with their princes and princesses. Princess Alicia was born to King Herbie (Cohen) and Queen Esther on December 31, 1953. Alicia was their third child and their only girl. Her oldest brother, Stuart, would one day rule the kingdom of Cadillac throughout New York State. Alicia’s other brother, Max, renounced his royalty and became a carpenter in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Alicia, of course, married a prince.
The Cohen house in Cold Spring Harbor had a name. It was called “the Cohen House” by residents and “that Big Fuckin’ House” by tourists. The Cohen house could not compare to Oheka, but it was still an outstanding example of opulence.
Princess Alicia was the fairest in the land. The people of the kingdom loved her because she was kind and thoughtful. Princess Alicia was “Queen of the Prom” her senior year in private high school. The “King of the Prom” was Aaron Fine, the equally beautiful, but not nearly as wealthy, descendant of lesser nobility. They were the perfect couple.
Princess Alicia and Prince Aaron were inseparable. They attended Yale University together. The princess was loyal only to her prince. Unfortunately, the prince was also loyal only to the prince. When they married, she gave herself to him totally. His commitment wasn’t as total. They eloped during their sophomore year at Yale when she was only nineteen. She married the love of her life. He married for the love of her lifestyle.
King Herbie and Queen Esther held a glorious wedding for the couple, even though they had eloped. Alicia was pregnant a year later, and her degree at Yale was put on hold. Aaron went to Yale Law School where he made Yale Law & Policy Review and passed the bar on the first try. By the time they had two children, he had had two affairs. She was content. He was not. They remained married for many years, but they did not live happily ever after.
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