I opened her door. “I guess I can force myself.”
“I’m counting on it.” When I slid in next to her, she said: “Let’s go to Coney Island.”
“Coney Island’s closed.”
“Then I guess you’re gonna have to kill some time making the boss happy.”
If I hadn’t turned the ignition key at that moment, it would have turned itself.
February 8th, 1978
IT HAD BEEN long since I’d drifted into sleep with a woman in my arms instead of a pillow. Warm bodies were never the problem. Dating is easy for cops, single or otherwise. Early on in my career I learned never to underestimate the power of the uniform. In the middle of an antiwar demonstration at Brooklyn College, a girl asked me out as I walked her back to the paddy wagon. When I declined, she called me a pig. And, of course, there was always Suzie the actress, so disappointed by my appearance out of the bag. Uniforms were makeup for men. For some reason, the uniform got your looks bumped up from coach to business to first class in the eyes of certain beholders. Rock stars aren’t the only ones with groupies.
Exhausted, sleep is all we did. By the time we got upstairs to my apartment and made our trips to the bathroom, it was past 5:00. When I came out of the bathroom dressed only in pajama bottoms, Katy was waiting for me in the living room. Nude beneath her shirt and sprawled across the couch, I saw her eyes were shut only as I reached her. She startled and, like a trooper, stood right up, pushing her body close to mine. Tilting my head down, I kissed her lightly and led her into the bedroom. I kissed her again, stroked her hair back and whispered the word “later.”
Years had passed since I’d felt comfortable enough not to force my hand, not to say yes when my disinterested heart stood by. And when those hungry moments were past, there was often too much embarrassment and self-loathing left on the sheets, poisoning the air for intimacy. For me, taking all I could get was no prescription for love. That’s what I could say later to Katy, because I had faith somehow there would be a tomorrow for Katy and me that allowed sleep to come to us without coming between us.
We woke up on opposite ends of the bed. This wasn’t TV, after all. But when we did wake up, Katy slid across the sheets to me, her back against my chest, my arms around her.
“You know that night we met at the canal,” I whispered, “you smiled at me.”
“I did?”
“You did. And when I got back to my car and closed my eyes, I could see your smile. It means a lot when I can see something with my eyes closed. Not that I closed my eyes much that night. I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
I kissed her neck and she spun around in my arms to face me. “Why does it mean so much?” she asked.
“Because I have a good memory for words, for details, not images, for names, not faces. Well, that’s not a hundred percent true. I can remember a face, but it’s hard for me to visualize a face. When my life flashes before my eyes, it’ll be in text, not pictures. Christ, am I making any sense? Just stop me before I make a complete ass of myself.”
“Ssssh,” she put her finger across my lips. “You know yourself, that’s a good thing. Not many men know who they are. I’m a little embarrassed,” she said, pulling herself so close to me her breathing sounded like the wind.
“Don’t be embarrassed, not here. What is it?”
“No one’s ever liked my smile before. My lips are too thin and my teeth—”
“I can see my father’s face with my eyes shut,” I stopped her, “but I have to look at a picture to really see my mom. And I remember Andrea Cotter’s smile. Before you, hers was the only smile to ever stick in my head.”
“An old girlfriend. I think I’m jealous.”
“Old maybe, but not a girlfriend. Andrea was a year ahead of me in high school. You know how some people aren’t beautiful to look at or anything, but there’s this energy about them or the way they carry themselves that just makes you want to be close to them?”
“I think so.”
“Andrea was like that. She was a little stocky and her legs were too thick, but she was a cheerleader. She was the lead in Sing. She was editor of the school newspaper and she wrote great poems. I was just in awe of her, not in love exactly. Don’t get me wrong, I used to imagine us together. I think every guy in school tried to imagine being with Andrea. She never made herself unapproachable or acted above it all, but I just couldn’t ever bring myself to talk to her. Then in my junior year I wrote this poem—”
“You write poetry?”
“Wrote! Wrote! One poem, and it got published in the school magazine.”
“Do you have a copy?” Katy asked excitedly. “Can I see it?”
“Someday maybe.”
She kissed my cheek. “I’m sorry. I interrupted. Tell me about Andrea.”
“There isn’t that much more to tell, really. The last week in May, the week the magazine came out, I was cutting a class and went to hang out on the boardwalk with my friends. By the time we were almost there, it got cloudy and they turned back. I went anyway and sat on a bench and stared out at the beach. ‘Excuse me,’ someone said, and I looked around. It was Andrea Cotter. ‘You’re Moses Prager, aren’t you?’ I said something stupid like, yeah, the last time I checked. ‘I love your poem,’ she said. ‘I wish I could inspire someone to write like that.’ ”
Katy covered my mouth with her hand. “The poem was about her, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Now I really want to read it. Do you think she knew?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid to ask,” I confessed.
“What happened?”
“She took a copy of the magazine out of her bag and asked me to autograph the page my poem was on. I said I would only if she would autograph her poems in my copy. We exchanged books. When we handed them back, she just smiled at me for a second. That was the smile that stuck in my head. I’d seen her smile before, you know, but never at me. I wished her good luck in college and she told me something goofy like keep on writing. When she was out of sight, I looked at the page she had signed.”
“You were hoping she left her phone number.”
“Can’t blame a guy for hoping,” I said. “But she didn’t. She just signed her name.”
“So, is she famous? Did she marry rich?” Katy actually sounded jealous.
“She died that summer in a fire in the Catskills with two other girls from school. They were up there waitressing to earn money for college. Some drunk moron was smoking in bed in the employee quarters . . .” I snapped my fingers. “Seventeen people died.”
“Oh my God, Moe, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It was a long time ago and now I have someone else’s smile to dream of.”
Katy was crying, more for Patrick, I think, than for Andrea Cotter. When she calmed down some, I kissed her mouth, her neck. Tears on a woman’s neck are intoxicating. I worked my lips down her body until I turned her crying into coos.
FOR ALL MY bravado and confidence, I kept listening for the other shoe to drop. When would she quietly get out of bed, shower—maybe not even shower—collect her clothes from the living room and dress as quickly as she could, begin her makeup job in the hallway mirror only to decide to finish in the cab or subway car and call to me as she walked out the door: “Thanks, Moe, I’ll call you,” or “Call me.” I liked it better when they said nothing at all or stayed for coffee.
And Katy did get up, walking quietly to the bathroom. I could hear the shower running. I prayed she took short showers. I hated lying silently in bed waiting for them to go. But Katy refused to buy into my history.
“For chrissakes, Moe!” she screamed above the shower, “if you don’t get in here soon, I really am going to do this by myself.”
I didn’t quite set the land speed record.
If there were any lingering doubts after our marathon shower, Katy removed them by using my toothbrush. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how two people can spend hours moving in, out, ov
er, around and through parts of each other’s body but refuse to share a toothbrush in a pinch?
“What do you want to do?”
“I’m too sore for that,” she said, looking up from her coffee. “But I do remember saying something about Coney Island.”
I pulled back the curtains and informed her that the white stuff falling past my window wasn’t ash from the building incinerator and that with most of the rides closed until Easter, Coney Island wasn’t exactly America’s garden spot.
In an eerily accurate aping of her father’s voice, Katy said: “Tough shit, son. You work for me now.”
“I surrender. I surrender. Come on, I’ll take you to Nathan’s.”
After we’d both inhaled our hot dogs and fries and washed them down with orangeade, she told me how her dad used to take the kids to Coney Island on Sundays. Her dad was from Brooklyn originally.
“He never stopped missing it,” she said. “He used to say how taking us kids to Coney Island was his duty, but I think he enjoyed it more than we did. There are plenty of amusement parks between here and Dutchess County.”
“You mean your father really is human.”
“I’ve never checked his pulse, but I love him.”
I quickly dropped that line of conversation. When I made a move to leave, Katy mentioned Marina Conseco, but not by name.
“Can you show me where you found the little girl?”
I tried to laugh it off. “Cut it out, will you? What is this, an episode of This is Your Life? Next thing you’ll want to do is meet the rabbi who circumcised me.”
“Please show me the building.”
What could I say? The snow was barely falling now and it was a short walk. I could see it was important to her. All the optimism over Hoboken had drained out of her. The weeks of false leads and unfulfilled hoping had worn her down. Maybe she just wanted to touch the bricks, to stand before a shrine to answered prayers. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t need to explain them to me.
“This is it,” I said, pointing to the dilapidated building. “They took the water tank down years ago. Good thing, too. It was a rickety old piece of shit. I’m amazed it didn’t collapse in on us.”
The snow had stopped completely. Katy stood silently, looking up at the roof, shielding her eyes from a sun that wasn’t there.
“I heard the story from my mom who heard it from my cousin Rose’s husband,” she finally said, eyes still fixed on the roof.
“Rico, yeah, he was in this precinct with me then.”
“So I heard how you found her . . . What was her name? I know you told me, Maria, Ma—”
“Marina,” I corrected.
“I’m sorry, Marina. I heard the story of how you found her,” Katy said, looking straight at me, “but maybe because I heard it third-hand, I don’t know how she disappeared in the first place.”
“No one ever asks me about that part. Everyone just assumes that because she was abused and someone left her to die up there that she was abducted,” I said, looking away from Katy.
“She wasn’t?”
“Yes and no. She was upset about her parents’ divorce and she thought if she could scare them by running away . . . you know how kids think. Then she got lost and disoriented. I guess she picked the wrong guy to ask for help.”
Katy said she was finished here. She thanked me for putting up with her insane requests. Still, something had changed. Her tone was formal, her words measured. Although part of me was panicking about the change in her, wondering what I’d done wrong, I resisted the urge to interrogate her. Saying my knee had had all the exercise it could bear, I asked if we could take the bus back to my building.
“Of course,” was all she said.
Hoping a few minutes of quiet reflection and the bus ride would shake her out of her mood, I tried coaxing Katy into staying for dinner, maybe even for breakfast. No, she said, she was tempted but there was work in the morning and a long-neglected project due by midweek. And more importantly, though she never said the words, there was guilt. I’d been a fool not see it. I’d miscalculated her reasons for wanting to visit the building where I’d found the Conseco girl. I imagined I could hear her berating herself: Patrick was out there alone somewhere, hurting or dead or, like that poor little girl, waiting for death to come. How could I have let myself enjoy myself under these circumstances? How can I want to be with a man I would have never met if . . .
Jews know guilt. We can smell it on your breath. We can read it in the lines of your face because we’ve looked at it in mirrors for thousands of years. Guilt is like a witch’s spell. Once cast it cannot be reasoned away. No, Katy would have to let the guilt rattle around in her head and heart awhile before she could remove the curse.
“This is us,” I said, pulling the chord to let the driver know we wanted to get off.
She seemed relieved to hear we didn’t have to go back up to my apartment. I’d drive her straight home if that’s what she wanted. That was what she wanted, but, as it turned out, I couldn’t keep my word.
We snaked our way through the parking lot to my assigned spot. We found the charred carcass of what used to be my ’76 Plymouth Fury surrounded by a moat of filthy water and foam. The acrid vapors of burnt tires hung in the air, tearing at our throats. The stench really seemed to get to Katy, who was turning an ugly shade of green.
“Fuckeeng keeds!” Jose, the building’s head maintenance man, said, seeming to appear out of thin air. “Dee firemen have gone fifteen minute ago, Meester Prager. Dey stop it before dee gas tank go. Cops leave a number inside for you.”
“A report number,” I mumbled, “for insurance.”
“¿Que? ”
“Forget it.”
Reluctantly, Katy came upstairs to put herself back together. I offered to call her a cab and pay her fare home, but she insisted on taking the subway. She was a big girl, she said, and needed the time to think. Though still not completely relaxed, she had softened somewhat, even managing a smile and agreeing to let me walk her to the subway.
At the station, she hugged me, kissed me on the cheek. But when she dropped her token in the slot and pushed through the turnstile, she stopped and looked back.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” she said. “Last night was unbelievable. I like you, Moe, and—”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I interrupted. “I know it’s hard for you. It must get in the way of everything, what’s going on with your brother. I’d hate for it to get between us.”
She walked back to the turnstile. “Me too,” she said and, bending over the turnstile arm, grabbed me by the collar and kissed my mouth. “Call me in a few days.”
In Jose’s office now, waiting for the maintenance man to find the police report number, he repeated his accusations about the neighborhood kids. Thanking him and taking the slip of paper from his hand, I didn’t bother arguing the point. It may have been kids like Jose thought, but I didn’t like it. My car was in an exposed spot. The kids I knew usually operated under cover of darkness. Why pick my car to torch in the middle of the afternoon?
But by the time I got to my apartment door, I’d calmed down. Jose was probably right. I was just being paranoid. I’d had too much to drink last night, didn’t get much sleep and Katy’s moods had left me a little punchy. I should be happy, I thought, slipping my key into the lock. It wasn’t a Porsche 911 they’d roasted their marshmallows over. It was a Plymouth Fury, for Christ sakes! Chrysler would probably be bankrupt in a year and the car would’ve been worthless. Take the insurance money and run.
The phone started ringing as I opened the latch. I wasn’t particularly in the mood to chat, so I let it ring. After ten rings, my wish was granted. But almost as soon as it had stopped, it started again. I surrendered and picked up.
“You’ve been warned,” an unfamiliar man’s voice droned in my ear. “The next time it won’t be your car.”
Click. He hung up before I could ask what I’d been warned about. So, Jose was
wrong. Sometimes it’s no fun being right.
February 10th, 1978
I STARED AT the phone, started to dial her number, stopped, put the receiver back in its cradle. I ached to hear her voice, but things were more complicated now. For the last two days, whether on the phone with the insurance company or at the car rental office or during dinner with Miriam and Ronnie, the threat gnawed at me: “You’ve been warned. Next time it won’t be your car.” Only fools laugh off threats and I wasn’t laughing. This threat wasn’t issued by some schmo in the schoolyard who was mad because I pitched him inside or some mutt I arrested for petty larceny. No, this guy wasn’t playing. He’d risked serious jail time and, if my gas tank had exploded, other people’s lives to make his point.
The fact he was willing to put innocent people in harm’s way is what really worried me. For even if I were inclined to call his bluff, there was no guarantee I’d be his target. As I sat across from Miriam and Ronnie at dinner on Monday night, I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. What about Aaron’s family? Would Cindy turn the ignition key one morning and blow herself and the kids all over Bay Parkway? The thing about it was, the guy on the phone had neglected to mention what it was I’d done or was doing or should stop doing to get the sword of Damocles put back in its sheath. Unfortunately, the only answers I came up with held very little appeal for me. That’s why I didn’t fear for Katy and why things were so complicated. The devil was on my shoulder and I didn’t know how to brush him off.
I finished dialing this time and was more than a little relieved to get her machine. The relief was short lived. Katy picked up when she heard my voice.
“Hey,” she said, a smile in her voice, “I was hoping it was you. I missed you yesterday.”
“Me too. What are you doing tonight?”
“Meeting you for dinner, I hope. Is everything okay? You sound—”
“I’m still in mourning for my car,” I deflected. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. I feel a little weird about how things went Sunday.”
Walking the Perfect Square Page 15