“Allison was supposedly engaged. All the Italian cookbooks in her place were inscribed to her by the same no name guy. And based on what I saw in her checkbook and desk, she—”
“I saw the checkbook. Just for the record, I actually had legal permission to case her apartment. Unlike you. She was planning on going to Italy for her honeymoon. De Luca was going to dump his wife and take Allison back to meet the relatives.”
Despite seeing no less than a dozen inscriptions to “Cara,” I rejected outright the idea Antonello and Allison had been having an affair. I’d known Antonello a long time. I wasn’t ready to condemn him as an asshole and philanderer until I had positive proof. I jumped to Antonello’s defense. “There was nothing in those cookbooks to indicate who they were from.”
“Oh, please, Mary,” O’Connor scoffed. “‘Cara,’” O’Connor imitated Antonello’s Italian accent. “‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’”
“I still don’t think it was him. He’s happily married,” I protested and yawned. Where did that yawn come from? It was only 6:00 p.m.
“We’ll pass on determining De Luca’s marital bliss for now. Knowing you, you went through Allison’s purse with a fine toothcomb. What did you find?”
My neck began to feel very heavy. I propped my head up on my chin trying to focus on O’Connor’s face.
“Nothing but a North Beach jeweler’s business card with an appointment at ten o’clock Tuesday morning.”
“The same jeweler she wrote the big check to?”
“Yeah. Do you think she was murdered?” I asked, now using both hands to keep my chin up. My eyes began to close into slits, against the smoke I told myself. Although we were in the no-smoking section of the bar.
“I think so,” he admitted. “Just a hinky feeling I have. The autopsy confirmed anaphylactic shock, but there were no traces of shellfish in her stomach. All of the food from the garbage cans tested negative for fish as well. Hey, are you falling asleep on me?” he demanded.
Uh, who me? I sat up. It was getting harder and harder to sit up straight. “You tested the garbage?”
He had the grace to give me a small smile. “Routine. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t fit. You still haven’t told me why you think she was murdered.”
One more sentence and then I need to take a little nap. I yawned and arched my back against the couch back. “When I went to École this morning to get her purse, her locker looked like it had been busted open with a crowbar.”
O’Connor’s face dropped that blank, no comment, look. He metamorphed into his cop persona, the lips tight, the eyes on high-beam.
“Tell me everything,” he ordered.
I opened my mouth to speak and then gave up the ghost, embracing the gin full force. Nothing came out but yet another yawn. And gee, it was getting hot in here. Really hot. It took three tries before I actually got my sweatshirt off. I kept losing steam and taking little gin-soaked catnaps in between attempts. Once I finally got it off, I found that my eyes wouldn’t open. They were deliciously sleepy, like I hadn’t closed them properly in an entire year. Wonderful. I wadded my sweatshirt into a makeshift pillow, put it under my arms and fell forward on the table in front of me already for a nap. This felt good. When was the last time I really slept the sleep of the dead?
Memo to shelf: ssshhooulddnnn’t drink thish muccssshhh. Maaaayyyybbeee IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII sshhhhhhhouuuullldd nnnnntttttt dddrrrriiiikkk…
Even in my drunken stupor I heard the expletive.
“Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have let her have that last martini. Hey, could you get me a big cup of coffee and some french fries, please.”
Who is he talking to, I wondered? I tried to raise my index finger to ask who the coffee was for. I certainly didn’t need any coffee. It was nap time.
Three minutes into the black hole of my nap, strong fingers gripped my shoulders and began to shake me awake.
“Wake-up, Mary. I have a nice big cup of coffee for you. Time to sober up,” he ordered.
I buried my head farther and farther into the sweatshirt. It was so soft. Just one more minute, I pleaded silently.
More rough shaking and then the sweatshirt was pulled out from under me and my shoulders pinned to the back of the couch.
“Come on, Mary. I need you to tell me about the locker. Wake-up! Drink some coffee and eat these fries. They’ll soak up the gin.”
My ears perked up at the mention of drink and then promptly closed up again at the mention of coffee and fries. What a revolting combination.
Somehow I kept myself upright against the couch back, but still managed to luxuriate in the drunk. This really did feel good, and a small part of me was very much frightened at how I was chasing this numbness. The bigger part of me, however, the one normally tied up in six different kinds of stress knots, heaved a sigh of relief as those knots began to unravel in quick successive. This is how alcoholics are born.
“Please, Mary. I need to know what’s going on at École. You’re the only one who can help me,” he said.
I ignored him and tried to sleep sitting up.
“Someone else is going to get killed.” He said this quietly, but I heard it. It was enough to make me open my eyes and look at him. He was close yet far away and while the words registered, they didn’t quite get all the way inside my eardrums. They sort of floated around my ear canal.
And yet another reason why I don’t tie one on too often is that I can get incredibly selfish and mean. This is when evil Mary runs amok.
“Didn’t think you were undercover. Didn’t think you knew who I was in that room,” I sing-songed and closed my eyes again. “If you lied about the one, I bet you lied about the other. Bet you knew it was me.” I waggled my finger in his direction. At least the direction I thought he was sitting.
“Fuck it,” he said, his voice gritty with some emotion I couldn’t fathom. That penetrated. I opened my eyes and he was staring at me grim, resolute. He grabbed both my hands and squeezed them so hard that they ached for days afterwards.
“If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have clamped my hand over your mouth. I’d have traced my fingers around those beautiful lips of yours. If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have wrenched your arms above your head. I’d have kissed the white of your arm until I reached the base of your neck. I knew it was you because when I lay against your long, lovely body I smelled chocolate. You’re the only woman I know who always smells like chocolate.”
Chapter Fifteen
That confession consumed all the alcohol in my system. The drink just left me. Clearly, I had wanted to be carried away, using the flimsiest of excuses (okay, three double martinis on an empty stomach isn’t flimsy, but even so, it didn’t explain why I was so hammered). I wanted to float away on my little raft made of gin and olives and just go where the tide was taking me. I was so tired of taking care of myself. That’s the real tragedy when a relationship fails. There’s only you to pick up the pieces of, well, you. I let the gin take me because I knew O’Connor wouldn’t let me fall, let me drown. And now, because of my stupid behavior, he was placing the responsibility for drowning us both on the Titanic of betrayals on my inebriated shoulders. God, what was he thinking?
O’Connor’s face twisted with anguish, all eyebrows and lines, his hands continued to crush mine, as if I must pay physically for what unholy hell he was suffering emotionally. This confession hadn’t given him any solace.
O’Connor wanted me. And did my victory taste sweet? Were violins metaphorically serenading us as we sat facing each other, O’Connor never easing up one iota his passionate grip on my hands?
No.
My devil of pride hopped up and down on one shoulder gloating, “I told you so. It’s just like Bridie said. You found him. Hen’s teeth, Mary. As rare as hen’s teeth. Bridie knows. I told you so.” I couldn’t deny that this was true.
With a patronizing and rather stern shake of her head, the little ange
l of common sense and goodness insisted, “You mustn’t.”
Sometimes I truly hate myself. Goodness won out.
I couldn’t take what wasn’t mine. And despite the passion in his voice, once his martinis wore off he’d hate himself for betraying his wife and his children. Eventually he’d hate me. No matter how much he loved me, he never would have betrayed Moira if it hadn’t been for our intimate tussle in Allison’s apartment, my badgering, and the fatal third martini. I couldn’t confront that anguish any longer. With a nobility and strength I very much regretted I possessed, I took those proverbial hen’s teeth and scattered them to the winds.
Turning my face toward the soccer players, I told O’Connor everything I thought might support my theory that Allison had been murdered. I told him about the fight between the chefs. Allison’s horrific argument with Marilyn. The mysterious problem that would be solved by the end of the week. Marc’s petition to get Étienne fired. Allison’s uncharacteristic rage when she saw the petition. The scene in the locker room with Marc and Shelley. And, finally, Allison’s death in the dining room. I told it all in detail.
When I was done, I allowed myself to savor this last touch for five more seconds. Then I pulled my hands away. They ached as if branded by essence of O’Connor, immense strength interwoven with deep gentleness. I looked at him for the first time in twenty minutes.
“Go home, O’Connor. If you hurry you’ll be home in time to read your sons a bedtime story.” Black eyes upbraded me, hated me, chastised me, loved me, and finally seemed to thank me. “Go,” I begged to the table and then turned my attention back to the soccer players.
I heard a chair scrape, saw a blur of black sweats walk briskly by the table, and that was that.
Bringing my hands up to my face, I licked across both sets of knuckles and sighed with pleasure. So this is what decency tastes like: vanilla, salt, and gin. I didn’t care who was watching me, I licked my knuckles again and then the back of my hands in an attempt to keep that delicious flavor from dying in my mouth. When it was all gone and I could only taste the salt from my own pores, a desolation so complete almost robbed me of my ability to breath. I thought, if I don’t move, I’m going to die in this chair. I grabbed the table with both hands and heaved myself up to a standing position.
I caught the younger Foghorn watching me, a cloth in one hand, a glass in the other, embarrassment and concern on his face. He’d had a crush on me since high school. Since my divorce he’d make half-hearted passes whenever he saw me. Nothing offensive. Just a nice guy trying to get a date.
I made it over to the bar and parked myself on a barstool. “Dave, I’m going to get absolutely toasted. I want you to keep pouring martinis until closing time. Then put me in a cab and pay the cabbie to take me home. I still live over on Neilsen. Call me tomorrow and let me know what I owe you. Okay?”
“That guy you were with. He screw you over?” Dave’s shoulders began jerking in that bantam rooster, defend the womenfolk, sort of way.
“No, he’s an old friend.” I gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “Just like you. Thanks for looking after me.”
He began furiously polishing glasses, checking for non-existent spots. “You still carrying a torch for that ex-husband of yours, Mary?”
“Sorry, Dave. Maybe another time. You know what a fool I am for those Irish cops. Start pouring.”
***
There are still some gentlemen left in this world. Despite the repeated brush-offs I’d given him over the years, Dave drove me home and made sure I got in the front door. I must have been semi-conscious because I was able to tell him where I kept the Hide-a-Key, my original set of keys being hidden in the wheel-well of my car parked near Allison’s apartment.
When I woke up I was curled up in a fetal position on the entryway floor, my back pressed against the front door. I must have pretty much passed out in my entryway because there my sweatshirt was neatly folded into a square and my head was under it. He’d gone into my bedroom and removed the quilt from my bed and wrapped me up in it. I tentatively moved a leg. It hurt like hell. I got up on my knees and tried to untangle myself from the quilt. The room began to whirl so fast I felt like I was on some out-of-control merry-go-round about to take off into orbit. After a couple of minutes the spinning slowed down. Crawling across the room, I pulled myself up on the couch. Everything hurt. Even blinking hurt. The weather front had dissipated and from the angle of the winter sunlight as it streaked across my living room, I guessed it was about eleven o’clock.
Dave must have been watering down the martinis at some point, otherwise by all rights I should be dead from alcohol poisoning. The only thing I remembered past ten that night was Dave grabbing me by both shoulders, shaking me out of my alcoholic stupor, and he telling me he’d take me home. Before we got in the car, he forced me to take six Excedrin P.M. he’d stashed behind the bar for special occasions, followed by an Alka Seltzer chaser.
Inside the front door was as far as I got.
As I lay splayed on the couch trying desperately to stop the room from spinning, the phone rang. Its high-pitched chirp shattered what little equilibrium I had left. I grabbed two pillows and crushed them against my ears to blot out the noise. After a couple of minutes I gingerly removed one pillow to make sure all was quiet. The machine blinked a bright red digital 4, chastising me to pick up the phone. People needed to speak to me. I didn’t even know if I could speak. Perhaps I’d permanently fried my larynx. It would serve me right, the woman who always has to have the last word pickles her voice box.
Get a grip, Mary. First, turn off the phone. Then take a shower. Then get dressed. Then get something to eat.
By two o’clock I was dressed and sitting in my kitchen with the remains of cinnamon toast and hot chocolate in front of me. I’d scoured every pore in my body with a nail brush in a futile attempt to remove the stench of old booze, but I could still smell traces of gin. Which made eating slightly problematic; however, what few carbohydrates I’d been able to force down my throat had reduced a potentially fatal hangover to merely permanent brain damage.
Not only did I physically feel like shit, I hadn’t felt this sort of self-disgust since the night Jim had walked out on me, and I’d gone on a similar sort of bender—also, unfortunately, at Foghorns. Despite the scalding shower and the clean clothes, I felt dirty and debased, like I broken all ten of the commandments all at once.
Next I did something I hadn’t done in twenty-two years. I walked to the nearest Catholic Church and went to confession.
With Sunday services over for the day, the church was deserted. The ornately carved pews, marble statues, and a gilded altar all spoke of a time when people still believed a church’s beauty was a reflection of your love for God. A few candles still sputtered, lit earlier in the morning by parishioners in that age-old tradition of saving a soul. If anyone needed a candle lit for them it was me. As a sign of our times, the donation box for the candles was outfitted with a Schlage lock and tied to the altar with a heavy metal chain to deter theft. From a cavalcade of stained-glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross, a canopy of red and blue light arced over the nave. And like some fifteenth-century criminal frantically searching for sanctuary, I almost wept with relief, knowing I’d come to the right place to be forgiven.
Heading straight for the nearest confessional, I entered and knelt down, my knees sinking into the deep dents in the leather made by the knees of untold thousands of others seeking redemption. The grill on the other side was empty, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t need formal absolution. Both priest and penitent, I castigated myself for every scene in that bar. Motivated primarily by pride and my pathological need to always be right, step by step, I’d cajoled O’Connor into making his own confession—a declaration of love I had no right to. My only consolation was that in the end I’d done the right thing and refused him. I didn’t know how he and I were going to handle the next few weeks, but I was determined to end this dange
rous game of one-upmanship that had been our pathetic cover-up for romance. Before I left the church I lit a candle for Moira. If anyone deserved my prayers it was her. I turned to leave and, on second thought, lit a candle for myself.
By the time I walked back to my house it was six o’clock. The walk to and from the church had cleared my body of most of the poisons contaminating my system. I called a cab, got my car from Allison’s neighborhood and returned home, steeling myself for the messages on my machine.
Chapter Sixteen
Message one was from my mother. She’d called yesterday afternoon, “Just to make sure everything is okay.” I knew from the tight, high-pitched endings to all of her vowels that my behavior the previous morning had tripped those mommy-alarm bells. That she’d waited until the afternoon was a token nod to my status as an adult. “Mom” I wrote on the notepad, and added, “be chirpy,” underlined three times.
Message number two was from Dean Benson. “Mary, Benson here.” He spoke in that slow, clear diction of the drunk pretending to be sober. To compensate for blowing it on the esses, he over-enunciated every tee and dee. “I need you and Shelley to cover Allison’s classhes until we hire another chef. If the two of you rotate one day on, one day off it meanshs fourteen-hour days every other day. Shelley is unable to take the Monday night shift so the first shift is on you.” Click. “SHIT,” I wrote in capital letters. I’d gotten out of the restaurant business to end those fourteen-hour days.
Message number three was from Dave. He had called around 9:00 a.m. while I was still passed-out/asleep in my hallway. “Mary, this is Dave. You know, Dave Foghorn. You make it to bed all right?” Well, sort of. “You were pretty toasted last night. I…ah…was a little worried about you. Give me a ring at the bar will you? I’m on tonight.” “Dave” I scribbled. Nice guy. Why didn’t I find him attractive?
I hit play for the last message. Nothing. Another telephone solicitor thwarted by modern technology. Sometimes I get six hang-ups a night. It has gotten to the point where I never answered my phone after five o’clock; I let the answering machine pick it up. If by chance I pick it up and hear a human voice pleading for money for some worthy cause, I’m sunk. I can’t say no. Everyday I receive letters reminding me of my phone pledges and would I cough up the cash I’d promised?
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