Kiss of the Wolf

by Jim Shepard

  She searched his expression, but he was watching the road. “I been all right. How good’re you gonna be?”

  “I don’t know. It’d drive me crazy.”

  She pulled her eyes to her lap. “What would?”

  He looked at her. “What do you think? Your husband takin’ off.”

  A police car went by the opposite way, its lights going.

  “Lemme ask you something,” Bruno said. “He leave you fixed at all for money? It’s none of my business, I know.”

  She shook her head.

  He made an exasperated noise. “Joanie, you gotta get after him. The man owes you a little bit here.”

  She nodded.

  A Yardbirds song came on. Joanie turned it off.

  “You hear from him at all? You think he’s comin’ back?”

  She put her face in her hands. She was suddenly near tears.

  “Hey. Whoa. Ho. Sorry. I’m sorry,” he said.

  She was crying. “This whole thing is so bad,” she said.

  He flipped his turn signal and threw a look over his shoulder and cut across the right lane to the exit. They bumped down the ramp and pulled over once they reached the stop sign. Someone behind them leaned on the horn and swerved by.

  “Hey,” he said, and he put his hand to her hair. “I’m here.”

  She leaned over to him, her head on his shoulder, and cried. “It’s all right,” he said. He cleared his throat. “It’s okay.”

  She sniffed noisily and got hold of herself. She sat up and straightened her back and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” he said, meaning, It was nothing.

  She was looking at him. It was as if with that “Hey,” he had touched a finger to her feelings for him. He kissed her. She put a hand to his throat. She moved her lips, trying to communicate tenderness. He pulled back from the kiss, and his fingers were on her cheek.

  She smiled, and thanked him for being sweet. She wiped her face.

  “I’m not sweet,” he said.

  “We should get going.” She ran her spread hands down her thighs like she needed to dry them. “We gonna eat?” She sniffled again and wished for a Kleenex.

  He pulled across the street and up the entrance ramp. He said he figured they’d get into Hartford first, get situated. Eat ginzo on Franklin Avenue, a nice place called Carbone’s.

  When she didn’t say anything, he added that the concert wasn’t until nine.

  “I didn’t think that was gonna happen,” he said a little while later.

  She thought maybe she could press this as an advantage. You are one cold bitch, she thought. She put a hand to her hair, as if to remind him where his hand had been. “So tell me about Joey Distefano,” she said.

  He made squeaking sounds with his cheek. “He talk to you yet?” he asked.

  “Wednesday night,” she said. “You were there when we worked it out.”

  “Ah,” Bruno said.

  “Bruno,” she said. “What is the mystery here? I mean, what is the big deal? You guys all work for the CIA? What?”

  “We’re fuckin’ Russian agents,” he said tiredly. “We want Milford’s secrets.”

  “He shows up everywhere. I mean, like today I went to the mall, he was at the mall.”

  “Stop the presses. Joey Distefano’s at the mall. What was he doing at the mall?”

  She looked out her window. “How should I know? Eating ice cream,” she said.

  “Ho, boy,” Bruno said.

  She rubbed her face and settled farther down into her seat. She turned on the radio.

  She counted exits. After three she asked, “How long did he know Tommy?”

  “Look. Me and him and Tommy, we worked together, okay? We had some things going on the side.”

  Again they were quiet. But every time she wanted to let it go she pushed herself: what had she come for in the first place?

  “You said some money was stolen,” she said. “From Tommy. How’d you know that?”

  “Joanie,” he said. “This is not a fucking joke. This is not gossip. You don’t need to know this stuff. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

  She smoothed each of her eyebrows with her index finger and gave up.

  “You been talking to people about this?” he asked. “Hey.”

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t been talking to anybody. Not a soul.”

  They ate at Carbone’s. Bruno was preoccupied through all three courses, watching the waiters across the room like they’d already cheated him. She worked her way unhappily through her fettucine abbacchio, surprised at herself, because she was still thinking about their kiss and not focused enough on her disappointment at having found out almost nothing.

  Bruno left a ten-percent tip. “The guy slopped coffee around like he had Parkinson’s,” he said when she noticed.

  The concert turned out to be outside, at Bushnell Park. Bruno didn’t seem to have known that and was unhappy about standing around on a lawn. He kept sneaking looks up at the sky and shaking his head. There were about a thousand people crammed into a space that she figured should hold fifty. Half of them annoyed Bruno. A guy next to her had a baby that kept taking off his Orioles cap and hitting Bruno with it, and a little red puppy on a leash that kept winding and unwinding around their legs. In the crush, they were pressed together. Bruno made a jerky motion and the dog yelped.

  Another guy pushed into them holding a little black dog up high, like the dog needed to see. The guy was calling for B.B. It had to be forty-five minutes before the warm-up act.

  “Hey. Dan Blocker,” Bruno finally said. “He can’t hear you, pal.” When the guy looked at him he added, “Somebody’s lookin’ for you over that side of the park,” and pointed.

  They stayed like that, shoved back and forth by the crowd. She saw Bruno gauging the distance to the street, to see if it was worth the fight to just leave.

  Finally there was cheering, and a kid with long blond hair got up onstage and announced the opening act: Alberto.

  “What the Christ is Alberto?” Bruno muttered.

  Alberto climbed up onstage in black tights and white pancake makeup. He had a red dot rouged on each cheek and black eyebrows painted in a mournful expression. He was carrying an easel and an armful of placards.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Bruno said.

  Alberto stood up the easel and set a placard on it. The placard read: THE PICNIC. Alberto sat cross-legged onstage and began pulling things from an imaginary box. A flute began to play.

  “A mime,” Bruno said. “They’re opening for B.B. King with a mime.”

  An old black man twenty feet away stood open-mouthed. “What’re you doin’, fool?” he called.

  Joey Distefano was right behind the old man. He turned when he saw her and disappeared.

  “There ain’t nothin’ in your hands, fool,” the old man called out.

  “Whatchu doin’?” a black woman behind him called. “You at a picnic? You gonna go hungry.”

  “Bruno,” Joanie said. She had his arm. “He’s here. Distefano.”

  He looked where she was pointing and pushed a guy aside to see more clearly.

  She couldn’t tell if he was faking shock or not. “Bruno, what’s goin’ on?” she demanded.

  “Where was he? You sure it was him?” He was right in her face.

  “This sucks,” someone next to her called. “You suck.”

  “Pal,” Bruno said to him. “I’m trying to talk here.”

  The guy gestured to the mime onstage. “What, is he drownin’ you out?”

  “It was him,” Joanie said. “I know it.”

  He turned without saying anything and pulled her through the crowd.

  She excused herself and said she was sorry whenever she could to the people who got shoved as he yanked her along. They were both looking, but with the size of the crowd and the fading light, it was hopeless.

  He stopped so that she bumped into him, halfway to th
e street.

  “No big deal,” he announced. “You wanta stay? See the concert?”

  She gaped at him.

  “Or let’s go,” he said. “We’ll grab a movie.”

  He looked back and forth casually, giving the search one last shot. “What?” he said. He mimicked her open mouth.

  She put her hands on her hips, trying to look like she was tired of this nonsense. She had no idea what to make of his actions.

  “Has nothing to do with him,” Bruno said. “You like it out there?”

  The crowd roared, and Joanie looked back toward the stage. Alberto’s easel had collapsed. He was trying to pick it up, and placards were fanning out from under his arm like an oversized hand of cards. People were shouting out guesses, as if he were still doing mime.

  She turned and headed out of the crowd. She had no notion of whether it was toward the car—it probably wasn’t—but she couldn’t put up with this anymore and was tired of letting Bruno lead.

  He caught up with her at the edge of the grass, near a Polish-sausage vendor. He asked if she knew where she was going, and she said she wanted out of Hartford, now. She led him around the park, back to the car. “Nice-lookin’ Polish sausage,” he said from behind her. Otherwise they didn’t talk.

  In Meriden she said, “You’re not gonna explain anything about what’s going on.”

  That stretch of 91 was dark, and the dashboard lights weren’t much help in reading his expression. Every now and then, oncoming headlights swept over him. “I didn’t expect to see him up there,” he said. “He didn’t tell me he was going up there.”

  “So? What, does he tell you everywhere he goes?”

  “Apparently not,” Bruno said.

  “Is he following me?” Joanie asked.

  “Following you?” Bruno said. The car lifted and pancaked slightly over a rise, the sensation unpleasant. That sense she’d been suppressing that Bruno already knew what she’d done was coming back.

  “You work together,” she repeated glumly, as if she couldn’t believe he’d saddle her with such a lame story. When he didn’t answer, she got frustrated. “When does he work as a cop? Every time I see him he’s wanderin’ around doin’ nothing.”

  “He’s workin’ Wednesday night,” Bruno said.

  It shut her up. She gave the lights outside her window great attention and tried to systematically run down the ways in which he or they could have possibly guessed what happened. They’d seen her there. They’d seen her near there. He’d seen the damage to the car.

  She was trying to calm herself. She pinched her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger.

  “We’ll go down to New Haven,” he said. “They got some nice bars there. Sedate.”

  She released her lower lip and gave him a single, flat wave, as if to say, Whatever.

  But as they approached the New Haven exit she roused herself.

  “I’m not sure this baseball game with Todd is a good idea,” she said.

  “And why is that?” Bruno asked. He sounded bored.

  “Because I don’t know what you’re involved in,” she said. “I don’t want Todd mixed up in anything.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Don’t get off here,” she said when he slowed for the exit. “I don’t wanna go to a bar. Just take me home.”

  The car accelerated so smoothly she wasn’t sure it had slowed down. “You don’t want Todd getting mixed up in anything,” he repeated softly. The way he said it chilled her.

  She watched the tall highway lights roll by as yellow cones and ovals on the hood.

  “Am I gonna have to tell him he can’t go?” she asked.

  Bruno seemed to be just driving. He opened his mouth wide, stuck his tongue out, and closed it again. She shifted her weight and pulled at the armhole seams of her top.

  An image came to her of Gary hiking some trail out west, with the sun on his hair. It made her miserable and angry.

  No warning, she thought. How clueless do you have to be to have no warning your husband’s about to walk out on you?

  I shoulda had more fun, she thought sadly, as if looking back on a life that was over.

  The rest of the way home, Bruno sat there like he was alone in the car and she stared morosely out her window.

  A block from her house, he pulled into the back of a Laundromat and parked. He rolled down his window a little and the breeze came in and lifted his hair. It was pretty where they were. The streetlight spread the shadows of leaves across the car.

  He shifted so his back was against the door and he was facing her. She couldn’t see him very well. Her stomach had that unsettled caffeine-y feeling. She waited for him to say something. She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip.

  Something prowled across the parking lot, in the distance. She guessed raccoon.

  “Lean forward,” he said. “I wanna show you something.”

  When she did he touched his finger to her bottom lip. She opened her mouth slightly.

  He took her hair between his fingers and turned them gently and pulled her farther forward. Their noses grazed. She could smell a faint scent she hadn’t noticed before, his shaving cream, maybe. He turned his head slowly to hers and kissed her. She was conscious of the awkwardness of her pose and of breathing very slightly. Late in the kiss, he outlined her upper and lower lips with his tongue.

  She kissed the side of his mouth, and then his cheek, and eased back.

  They sat there, a foot or so apart. Because of the brightness of some areas under the streetlight, her eyes weren’t getting very used to the dark. “Come over my house,” he said.

  She kissed him again, a little kiss.

  “You don’t wanta come over my house,” he said quietly.

  She looked down and shrugged, and then looked back at him, unsure if he could even see her.

  He put his hands on both sides of her head, pulling her hair outward. She could feel it fall to her ears. “Tell me if you want to. Open up to me only if you want to. You don’t want to open up, don’t open up,” he said.

  “Like you open up to me,” she said.

  “Hey. This is business. This is what business is. People taking care of themselves. The freedom of the individual to fuckin’ make somethin’ of himself. Am I out of line on this?”

  She eased sideways against the seat, a more comfortable position.

  He ran his hands over his face. “Whaddyou think time it is?” he asked.

  She didn’t know. A car turned around in the parking lot and its headlights blinded them.

  He sighed. “Knowing what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s rare, Joanie. So rare.”

  She put her hand to her mouth. She wanted to kiss him again. Do you have any idea what you’re doing? she thought. She shifted all the way around and sat back against her door.

  “How’re you doin’ for money, really?” he said out of the darkness.

  She pulled a leg up onto the seat between them and folded it under her. “We’re all right,” she said warily.

  “I think you got a little more ready cash than you think you do,” he said.

  She felt saliva in her mouth, and she swallowed so that he could probably hear it. Something ticked in the dashboard. “Where?” she said. “You know something I don’t?” She tried to sound jaunty.

  Some kids rode by on bikes, circling and screeching. They swerved near the car, and one of them lost his balance and thumped it with his hand. The sound seemed to come from her chest. They cut through the parking lot to the street. Each of them banged the dumpster on the other side of the lot on the way past.

  “Where?” Bruno said. “I’m talkin’ about Mr. Gary. Who’s probably got a steady job, a little something stashed away, a coupla bucks nobody’s touched?”

  She didn’t know what to say, or if that was what he was really getting at.

  He held up one finger. “We never know until we ask. What’s the worst that can happen when we ask? What’s the worst that can happen?
”

  He seemed to be waiting for an answer. She cleared her throat and swallowed again.

  “You know what the hard part is?” he asked. He waited. “Am I coming through out there?”

  “What’s the hard part?” she said. She sounded scared.

  “The hard part is doing it. Doing anything.”

  She sniffed. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously my ass. My ass, obviously.”

  “I don’t even know what we’re talking about here,” she said.

  His head leaned forward in the darkness. “You say, I am going to do this. That’s what we’re talking about. Otherwise you wander around—you know what you do? You wander around in thrall to somebody. That’s what you do. You’re in somebody else’s fucking thrall.”

  Her face and stomach felt as if she were going down in an elevator. Her neck prickled. “What if he’s not willing to do what I want?” she asked.

  “Then you know what you do? You do something to hurt him,” Bruno said softly. “Where he lives.”

  PART THREE

  TODD

  Last night I watched a movie called I’ll Take Sweden with Bob Hope and then one called Boeing Boeing with Tony Curtis. They were both terrible.

  Audrey got sick again and I cleaned it up, but you can still see the spot. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.

  I tried calling my Dad by using Information in these cities: Spokane, Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma, Yakima, Walla Walla, Sacramento, Redding, Chico, Eureka, Santa Rosa, Yuba City, Crescent City, Denver, Durango, Boulder, Buena Vista, Fort Collins, Greeley, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Steamboat Springs, Pagosa Springs. A lot of them I found in an atlas of his called These United States. If you call the regular operator and give the city and state, they’ll give you the area code.

  I have a map where I put a pin in the city after I call.

  When my father was still here, one of the things he liked to do was go to Yankee and Met games. We went like twice a year. He went to the World Series in 1986, when the Mets played the Red Sox, and saw the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs. I don’t know how he got tickets. He had friends. He said he wanted to take me, but I was only four and my mother thought I was too young. She said she didn’t think I would have even remembered going. I would have remembered.