He’s unaware that in contrast to her, he has succeeded in forming words and that he’s spoken them under his breath, so quietly, so quickly that she can’t hear them, though she can read his lips.
Please help her.
Those words, spoken to no one in particular, have their effect. They will get through this together, the two of them. “Mr. Baranowski,” she says, “you do understand that the actions you engaged in were both legally and morally wrong. Is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The penalty for harassment of tenants can be anywhere from three months to one year in jail. Has your attorney explained this to you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Has he also explained that failure to cooperate in the investigation—refusing, for instance, to divulge the names of others who might have been involved in this activity—is likely to result in the maximum sentence?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is there anything you’d like to tell the court before I pass judgment?”
He came prepared to say several things. First, that he’s sorry. Then, that he’ll do nothing like this again. That in the future, he’ll work hard to make up for the harm he’s caused. But the only one of these statements that would be true is the first. He can’t say what he might do in five years, because he doesn’t know what troubles might be headed his way. And his worst crimes can’t be atoned for.
What’s about to emerge from his mouth will appall his sister.
Upon hearing his statement, the prosecutor will marvel that people like the defendant can’t even imagine how a contrite individual might behave.
The defense attorney will wish, as he so often does, that he’d studied corporate law or intellectual property law or maritime law, anything that would keep him from having to sit at the table, day after day, with sociopaths.
“When I’m released from jail,” Bogdan says, “I’m going to get a dog. That’s one thing I can promise.”
The only people in the courtroom who find this a reasonable response are Roman and the judge. Each of them, on more than one occasion, has considered getting a dog too, though the judge eventually opted for a cat. A few days from now, after her leaking blood vessel finally bursts, triggering a hemorrhagic stroke, it will be the cat’s persistent yowling that alerts the building superintendent, who will enter her flat and find her naked body.
Right now the judge has only a mild headache. She pronounces Bogdan guilty, sentences him to a year in prison, rises, and retires to her chambers, where she lingers alone until well past dark.
The coals have turned white. Sitting on the back steps, Richard tells Franek how each spring, when he took the grill out for the first time since the previous fall, he used to burn dinner. “It never failed,” he says. “Anna dubbed it ‘Pizza Night.’ I’d burn whatever I put on, and then we’d call for carry-out. After a few years, your aunt learned not to let me start with steaks, because they’re expensive. She’d hand me a plate of hamburger patties, say, ‘Go ahead and get it over with,’ and I’d burn ’em to a crisp. It’s harder to do it right than you might think. I guess it’s like anything else. It takes practice, and doing it right one time doesn’t mean you’ll do it right the next.” He pauses. “I haven’t grilled in ages. Nevertheless, we’re having steaks. How would you prefer yours?”
An objective witness would probably conclude from looking at his nephew’s face that he knows something is up and is waiting to find out what, it being a given that the adult is not going to enlighten him quickly. His uncle has already handed him a beer. He’s never done that before without being asked, and in all but a couple of instances, when he was asked, he said no, pleading the necessity for Franek to do his schoolwork with a clear head or making a joke about not wanting to participate in the corruption of a minor. Speculation has led to the suspicion that despite the affability Sandy’s parents displayed while driving back yesterday, they’ve learned the entire story: about the porn film he watched with their daughter, the joints they smoked, what happened between them Saturday morning around four o’clock. “Thank God I’m still just seventeen,” she remarked before slipping down the hallway to their suite. “Otherwise, I’d be guilty of statutory crime.”
He tells his uncle he would like his steak medium.
“Which side of medium?”
“Rare.”
“Good. That’s the safer side for me to aim at.”
He goes into the house, picks up the platter with the steaks on it, and grabs himself a second beer. He’ll be driving later this evening, but he needs another drink.
He throws the steaks on. “You know,” he says as they sizzle, “when I think about it, my dad was inept with a grill too. I believe maybe I inherited a little bit of his attitude toward cooking and food in general. That’s almost always the case with fathers and sons. You take on aspects of their personality without realizing it until you get to be a certain age yourself. The way my dad looks at it, eating’s something you have to do, so he does it. But I don’t think he’s ever viewed it as a source of pleasure. As long as he can get a piece of meat down his throat, he doesn’t care if it’s burned.”
Franek recognizes this as the sort of verbal foreplay an adult engages in before moving on to serious business. You have to put up with it when you’re a child. You mostly have to put up with it when you’re an adolescent. But he’s entered the magic kingdom. In this elevated state, it seems important, even necessary, to adopt a proactive attitude.
Be a man, Francis X.
Switching to Polish, he says, “Uncle Richard, why don’t we cut to the chase?”
He’s a sensitive boy—Richard has always understood that. God knows what he thinks they’re about to discuss. The likeliest possibility would be weed, which he’s almost certainly found a source for. If so, he may fear that a search has been conducted, his stash located. Another strong possibility would be Sandy. Yesterday, when the two of them said good-bye after returning from Disneyland, they exchanged a glance the likes of which Richard hadn’t seen before, and this morning, without explanation, Franek climbed into the backseat beside her rather than riding up front like he used to.
He leans over and flips the steaks, then says, “After dinner, there’s something I need to go do. It’s probably going to take a while. It may even . . . I may not make it home till really late. It’s possible I might not be here by the time you wake. So if that happens, go next door, and Mrs. Lyons will fix you breakfast. And then either she or Mr. Lyons will take you and Sandy to school. I already checked with them. So I hope it’s okay with you.”
His nephew says nothing, just stares at the smoke rising from the grate. Richard suspects he’s upset. Who knows what he’s learned about his father, what he thinks Stefan does all those nights he’s away from home, when he leaves Franek’s mother alone.
In fact, Franek has never felt more manly. It’s as if, over the past three days, the contract the adult world dictated between itself and him has somehow been altered to his own advantage. How this came to be is mysterious, if not miraculous. He understands that along with new privileges, certain additional responsibilities have been conferred upon him and that one of these is the necessity to suspend childish needs. Who gives a shit who prepares his breakfast as long as he eats? Even if nobody fixed it, he’d survive.
He turns his beer up and finishes it off. Then sets the bottle down, rises from the stoop, and, grinning, chucks his uncle on the shoulder. “Go for it,” he advises. “I believe I’ll get myself another beer.”
She answers the door in warm-ups and furry pink slippers. Her hair’s back in the ponytail. She looks at the bottle he’s carrying—Black Bush—then turns and walks into the living room without bothering to say hello, leaving it up to him whether to follow or go home.
He steps inside, shuts the door, and heads for the kitchen, where he has to open three cabinets before finding a set of rocks glasses. They’ve got the Flying Elvis logo on them. “Hey,” he calls, �
��did you buy these Pats glasses at Gillette?”
She doesn’t answer.
He carries them into the living room. She’s seated on the couch, one leg crossed over the other in a pose he’s never seen her strike before. A fake log lies on the grate in its wrapper, but it hasn’t been lit.
He stands the bottle and the glasses on the coffee table. “It’s crisp out,” he says. “You mind if I start a fire?”
“Suit yourself.”
He takes the box of matches off the mantel, pulls the screen aside, strikes one, and lights the log.
“How was San Francisco?” she asks. “Or was it Berkeley? Or someplace else up there?”
“I told you I was going to L.A.”
Yeah, I know you did. But that was a lie.
“What’d you do? Stake out my house and tail me?”
“I drove by a few times. Finally saw you pulling away from the curb. I only followed you as far as 99 North.”
He twists the cap off the bottle. “You’re really something. You know that?”
“What makes you think I like Black Bush?”
“Just a guess.”
She picks up one of the glasses and holds it out. He pours about an inch into it.
“More.”
So he pours another inch, then the same for himself. “Cheers,” he says.
“Fuck you.”
He takes a sip, sits down next to her, and waits.
She watches the fireplace for a while. Then she uncrosses her legs and draws them onto the couch, squirming sideways to face him. “Why’d you lie to me?”
“I needed a little time to think.”
“About what?”
“Several things.”
“So why didn’t you just say so?”
“Would you have accepted it?”
“Not for a minute.”
“Well. See my point?”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” she asks, “that you don’t actually like me?”
He lifts the glass, starts to down the whiskey but thinks better of it. He has a small sip, then returns his glass to the table. “No, Maria, it hasn’t. I like you enormously.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamn!” she cries, her face bright with joy that he figures is not entirely feigned. “Truly? You’re not shittin’ me, are you?
“No, I’m not shitting you, Maria. You’re attractive, smart, full of energy, you’re on the right side and determined to make things happen. You bring a lot to the table. Much more than I do. All I’m bringing, I’m afraid, is that Black Bush. And this.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the memory stick, and lays it next to the bottle.
Idly, she scratches her shoulder through the fabric of her sweatshirt, then shoves her hand inside and scratches harder. He can see her collarbone.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asks.
“Everything that was on her phone the night she died.”
“And you got it from that last guy you talked to the other day?”
“Let’s just say I got it from somebody.”
He takes her through it, starting with the photos of Jacinta and her children, then offering a lengthy summary of the phone calls and text exchanges, sometimes quoting the latter word for word, referencing dates and times. Once or twice, she asks a question, but otherwise she just listens. A couple of times he refills their glasses. A couple of times she does.
He leaves the information about the final message and the attached video for last. He hasn’t forgotten how to craft a narrative or how much satisfaction lies in telling a good story, no matter how sad or disturbing the outcome. The more trouble, the better the tale. That’s one of two rules you live by when you do what he does. The other is that you don’t make things up. She lives by those rules too.
“Major filmed her face while he was having sex with her,” he says, then relates the coach’s line about Jacinta being his own personal porn star. “The chronology makes it all but certain that when the text and the attachment came, Andres Aguilera was already at home. My guess is he saw the message and the video and then lost it. How he could do what he did, I don’t pretend to understand. It’d take my brother-in-law to tell that part of the story.”
“Why your brother-in-law?”
“He’s a novelist. I’m not. And neither are you.”
She tosses back the last of her whiskey and holds out her glass. He finishes his, reaches for the bottle, and pours the remainder, giving her a little less than he gives himself.
She takes a good-sized swallow. “So our friend Joe Garcia carried Jacinta’s phone over to . . . Well, let’s say he carried her phone somewhere, to somebody, who downloaded what was on it and saved it on a memory stick like this one, which he handed to Garcia—for a nice fee, of course. But Garcia didn’t realize the guy had also copied the info onto his hard drive, because he’s a sleaze too. And then this somebody reads the newspaper or turns on the TV and realizes that the phone belonged to a murder victim—at which point it dawns on him that he’s got a little time bomb on his hands.”
“That’s about the size of it,” he says. “Except for one important discrepancy.”
“What’s that?”
“The person who carried the phone to him?”
“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t Joe Garcia.”
Steam clouds rise from the Jacuzzi. She’s been using it every night, she tells him. “Stress, backache, whatever. I just kind of like hot water. I may have thrown a little too much chlorine in it the other day, though, because I’ve been itching a good bit.” She’s standing on the other side of the tub as she says this.
She turns her back, pulls the sweatshirt over her head, and tosses it onto the glass-topped table. When she starts to lower the warm-up bottoms, he turns his back to her, bends, and unlaces his shoes. He pulls them off and sets them on the deck, then unbuttons his shirt. He hears her step into the water. He tosses the shirt onto the table near her warm-ups, steps out of his jeans and briefs, and throws them on the table. Then he turns and steps into the water, still without looking at her.
“Feels good,” he says, his gaze settling on her face. She’s turned her hair loose, letting it fall to her shoulders. “As much alcohol as we’ve got in us,” he observes, “we better not sit here too long. You’re not old enough to have a heart attack. But I might be.”
“Anybody with a heart,” she says, “can have an attack. And boy, have I got one.” She picks up the whiskey glass, which is filled now with cheap brandy, and raises it for a toast. “To our aortas,” she says. “Long may they remain unclogged.”
“I left mine on the table.”
“Your aorta? That’s a new one.”
He smiles. “My glass.”
“No prob. I’ll fetch.”
Before he can protest, she stands, water streaming over her small, perfectly shaped breasts. He doesn’t even try to look away. When she turns to climb out, he admires her smooth back, her white hips. She picks his glass up, steps back into the water, and hands it to him. Then she reaches for her own glass and, when she has it, sits down beside him. Her leg and hip are touching his.
He puts his arm around her shoulders, which feel thinner than he expected.
“You can’t drive,” she says. “You’ve had too much Irish.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“All right.” She rests her head against his chest. “So, Ricardo. Tell me. What do you think?”
He hadn’t planned to drink any more, but he buys time with a sip of brandy. After the whiskey, it tastes like cough syrup. “About what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The moon. The stars. Nick Major. Joe Garcia. You. Me.”
He knows the moon and the stars are up there somewhere, hidden by a layer of smog. About them he has no opinion, other than relief that tonight they aren’t providing a whole lot of light. What he thinks about Nick Major is unprintable. But this is okay because, though he hasn’t yet said so, he will not be committing the coach’s name to the printed
page. What he thinks of Joe Garcia would be more complicated to express. But this is okay too, since he won’t be writing his name anywhere either.
So that leaves her. And him. “I said what I think about you in the living room. You’re really something.”
“Well, so are you. Any chance you might possibly, just maybe, like to kiss me? On a strictly voluntary basis, understand.”
“I’d love to.”
Everything blurs: her face meeting his, the taste of a mouth other than his own for the first time in so long, her hand stroking his cheek, then grasping his own hand and pulling it toward her breast. He leaves it there for a moment, then runs it over her neck and face and into her hair.
How long their kiss lasts, he wouldn’t be able to say. He likes how it feels to hold her, to feel her heart beating, not racing, just maintaining a strong, steady rhythm as her chest presses against him. He doesn’t protest when she slides her leg over his, then straddles him, the water rolling off her shoulders.
She cups her right breast and leans closer. He takes her nipple in his mouth. She tastes of salt and chlorine.
“Oh, man,” she murmurs. “Man alive.” She shudders, tosses her hair, and tilts her head back. Her desire is palpable and rich, and he wishes he could meet it with a full measure of his own.
Gradually, a whirring sound intrudes. It’s coming from above. He looks into the sky. She does the same.
It’s the FPD helicopter, flying a tight circle a couple of blocks south of them. “Must be a wreck,” he says.
“Either that, or somebody done somebody else wrong.”
“One doesn’t preclude the other.”
She leans over and kisses him again. “Let’s go inside,” she says. “I’m itching pretty bad.”
The Unmade World Page 22