by Neil Plakcy
“Oh,” Owen said. “Good evening, sir.”
Mark blushed, and I wondered if there was something more than an employee relationship between him and Owen. That wasn’t my business, though, and I was glad that they both seemed happy.
“I’m afraid I recruited Owen to help with my nefarious deeds,” Mark said. He turned to Owen. “That one looks great, Owen. Thanks.” He handed a plastic grocery bag to Owen, and they both began wrapping the roots.
“We should get moving,” I said. “I’ll see you Tuesday at Friar Lake, right, Mark?”
“You bet.”
I waved goodbye to both of them, hooked Rochester’s leash, and led him back down the towpath. I liked Mark, and I knew from casual conversations that he’d had a rocky couple of relationships with guys who it seemed didn’t treat him well. I worried if Owen, with his war-related trauma and his drug problems, was a drama waiting to happen.
Maybe it was because I’d found so much happiness with Lili that I wanted the same for my friends. But I was afraid that both Mark and Rick hadn’t found the right match yet. Paula Madden was too high-strung, in my opinion. And I’d never gotten a gay vibe from Owen, though I knew of course there were plenty of straight-acting gay men.
I reminded myself once again, as Rochester and I turned back onto Sarajevo Court, that the love lives of others were not my concern. When we got home, I went back to The Hunger Games, and read for a couple of hours. I finished just before bedtime, but I was so intrigued with the story that I pulled out my Kindle and immediately bought the next book in the series.
Then I took Rochester for his last walk of the evening. “Don’t go finding anyone hiding in the bushes,” I said, as we walked outside. “No dead bodies, and no live ones, either. All right?”
He didn’t pay me any attention, just scrambled forward in pursuit of an interesting smell.
The next morning I puttered around the house, trying to repair the damage caused when my over-exuberant golden retriever leapt up against the curtains in front of the sliding glass door in pursuit of some outdoor creature. My cell phone rang while I was up on the stepladder, and I had to jump down to grab it before the call was lost.
“Hey, Tony,” I said. “You’re working on a Saturday?”
“Shenetta Levy changed her schedule,” he said. “I picked her and her son up this morning in Trenton, and we’re up here at Friar Lake. But she won’t talk to me. Everything I ask, I just get an ‘I don’t know’ or a shrug.”
“You think she’d talk to me?” I asked.
“Jamarcus keeps talking about your dog,” Tony said.
I looked at my half-finished project, and my dog lying on the tile floor, watching me. “Tell you what. Bring them to the Cafette, and I’ll meet you there with Rochester. I need a half-hour, though.”
“Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it.”
I scrambled into a pair of khaki shorts and a bright green polo shirt, and loaded Rochester into the BMW. When we got to the Cafette, we found Tony, Shenetta and Jamarcus just getting settled outside. Shenetta’s blouse was the same bright blue as the beads in her hair, and she wore a khaki skirt and sneakers. Jamarcus wore little blue jeans and a yellow polo-type shirt.
Jamarcus and Rochester greeted each other like old friends. I said hi to Shenetta and Tony, then went inside for a lemonade and a dish of cold water for Rochester.
When I came back out Tony and Shenetta were sitting silently at a picnic table, watching Jamarcus tickle Rochester and laugh. The big goofy dog rolled on his back and waved his paws in the air.
“That means he wants you to rub his belly,” I said to Jamarcus. He sat down on the slate next to the dog and did Rochester’s bidding. As we all did.
“Is this your first time out here?” I asked Shenetta, sitting across from her.
She nodded.
“Does it look the way DeAndre described it?”
“Look, I keep telling this policeman, I don’t know anything about what DeAndre was doing. I only came out here so Jamarcus could see what it’s like in the country.”
“I used to live in Manhattan,” I said. “I went to graduate school at Columbia, and lived up there. Then a friend and I lived in this little walk-up on Delancey Street for a while. We used to climb up to the roof sometimes, just to feel like we were getting away from the city.”
Shenetta nodded. “It gets so hot there, and Jamarcus wants to go out and play. But I don’t like him out there without me to watch him.”
Tony sat by quietly, sipping his iced coffee. I focused on getting Shenetta to talk. “How much longer til you finish nursing school?”
“I’ll have my LPN at the end of the summer. I’m going to have to work for a while, though, before I can keep on going.”
“You ever think about moving down here?” Tony asked. “My wife works for the college student health department,” he said. “They use LPNs to take student medical histories, give shots and things like that. I could see if she knows of any jobs.”
She turned to him. “Why would you do that? You don’t know me or anything about me.”
“I know Jamarcus lost his father,” Tony said. “And that you cared about DeAndre, and that maybe both of you could use a new start.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Want me to make a call?”
She looked over at Jamarcus, now lying on his back on the grass with Rochester licking his face.
“Leighville’s a good place,” I said. “You could do a lot worse.”
“Already have,” she said. “Go on, make that call.” She turned to me again. “You have something I could write on?”
Tony handed her a small spiral-topped pad from his pocket, and a pen, and she started writing. He stood up and walked in the opposite direction from Jamarcus to call his wife.
My admiration for Tony kept growing. I had seen him in cop mode and knew that he was smart and dedicated. But I hadn’t realized what a genuinely nice guy he was until then.
While Tony spoke, and Jamarcus played, Shenetta wrote, then put the end of the pen in her mouth while she thought, then wrote some more.
Tony returned as she was writing. “Tanya will be over in a few minutes,” he said. “You know, I have a boy about Jamarcus’s age. She’s going to bring him, too.”
Shenetta smiled.
Tony and I sat there quietly while she did.
I’d never met Tony’s wife or son, though I’d heard about them. As they approached across the lawn, I was surprised to see that she had skin the color of cinnamon, because I’d always assumed his wife was Italian, like he was. She had frizzy black hair tamed with a scrunchie, and wore black tights and a brightly patterned blouse. She leaned down and said something to the boy, who ran over to Jamarcus and joined in the Rochester Adoration Society.
“Tanya, meet Shenetta,” Tony said. “And that’s Frankie, over there.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Tanya said. Her New York accent shone through. “I’m a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, and if I can fit in down here you sure can, too. Come on, let’s talk.”
Shenetta handed the notebook back to Tony. “These are the friends of DeAndre’s I met. There’s another guy, a white guy, he hung out with some, but I never heard his name.”
“Thanks, Shenetta.” He took the notebook from her. “I’ll get onto these on Monday.”
Tanya and Shenetta moved to another picnic table to talk about nursing. “I hope Tanya can help her out,” Tony said. He looked over to where his son and Jamarcus had jumped up and started chasing each other around. Frankie looked a lot like his dad, with skin a few shades lighter than his mom.
Rochester had rolled over and gone back to sleep. “Looks like Frankie and Jamarcus are getting along.” He reached out to shake my hand. “Thanks, Steve. I appreciate the help.”
I shook his hand, then collected Rochester. I waved goodbye to Shenetta and Jamarcus, and then called Lili. “Hey, the mutt and I are in Leighville. You busy?”
“Just playing around with Photoshop,�
�� she said. “Come on over. Though don’t let Rochester hear you call him a mutt. I understand he’s very proud of his pedigree.”
I hung up and looked at my dog. “Have you been having private conversations with Lili, boy?”
He just looked at me, and kept his secrets.
19 – Consenting Adults
I had my Kindle with me, and so Lili and I spent the afternoon lying around together—her on a big easy chair with her feet curled underneath her, me stretched out on the sofa, both of us reading. Rochester was on the floor between us.
Lili finished the first book of The Hunger Games trilogy just before we had to get ready for dinner. Like me, she wanted to keep right on reading—but she was a traditionalist when it came to books. “I have to have the physical object,” she said, when I suggested we could just share my Kindle. “I like to hold a book in my hands. If we get moving we can stop at the campus bookstore on our way to New Hope for dinner.”
I didn’t want to leave Rochester alone in Lili’s apartment, so we had to leave early in order to drive down to Stewart’s Crossing and feed and walk him. Before we left Leighville, though, we detoured past the college bookstore, which takes up half a block on Main Street, just below the wrought-iron entrance gates to the college.
It was just a few minutes before closing, and Rochester and I waited in the car while Lili darted in and bought the next two volumes in the series. Then we drove down to River Bend and saw to the bossy golden’s every need. I ushered him into his crate, which he wasn’t happy about—but I remembered that black glove he’d chewed up and I resisted the sad look on his doggy face. Then we drove back up river.
We met Rick and Paula outside Le Canal in New Hope, a French restaurant with big glass windows that looked out on the Delaware Canal. “You’re wearing the palacios!” Paula exclaimed as soon as she saw Lili. “Don’t you just love them?”
“I do,” Lili said. Rick and I both looked down at her shoes, which looked like nothing special to me—dark brown leather over a cork sole. But the two of them chatted about the merits of the shoes while I held the door open and Rick spoke to the hostess.
I didn’t see Lush, but I assumed the teacup Chihuahua was inside Paula’s big shoulder bag. Once we were seated, though, he poked his little head out, sniffed the air, then went back inside, like a groundhog who expects a long winter.
Lili and Paula carried the conversation, talking about shoes and Paris and Paula’s forthcoming buying trip to Buenos Aires. While Lili was giving Paula tips about the Recoleta neighborhood, near Eva Peron’s tomb, I turned to Rick. “I met Tony Rinaldi’s wife today, and his little boy.”
“Tanya? She’s a looker. Where’d you run into them?”
I told him about Tony’s phone call, and how Rochester and I had met him and Shenetta at the Cafette. “You are such a yenta,” Rick said.
“You aren’t supposed to know words like that,” I said. “You’re not even Jewish.”
“You don’t to have to be Jewish to recognize somebody who can’t help sticking his big nose into other people’s lives,” he said. “And I don’t mean Rochester, though his nose is pretty big.”
“If DeAndre’s death becomes a big deal, and gets a lot of unwelcome attention for the college, then that could screw up my new job.” I explained how Babson still had to get authorization from the Board of Trustees for the Friar Lake project.
“Well, that sucks,” Rick said.
Paula wanted to know what was going on, so I gave her a quick recap. “But I don’t understand how one more dead black guy could be a problem,” she said, when I finished. “I mean, they kill each other all the time.” She lowered her voice and said, “But that just shows you what kind of people they are.”
I looked at Lili, and she raised her eyebrows. I said, “What do you…” and Lili cut me off before I could ask what kind of people she was talking about.
“I think it’s wonderful that something good can come out of this whole situation,” she said. “Paula, have I told you about the photographs I’ve been taking up at Friar Lake? I’m happy with the way some of them are turning out.”
“You’ve been up there since we went the first time?” I asked. I hadn’t realized that, and wondered if it was a secret Lili was keeping from me, or just a symptom of how little time we’d been spending together.
Lili nodded. “Just a couple of quick visits, trying to see the place in different light. I was up there for a while yesterday afternoon and saw Manuel from the maintenance department installing a new lock on the chapel door.”
“You know the maintenance people by name?” Paula asked.
“Lili speaks fluent Spanish,” I said. “You should hear her. I’m amazed.”
“It’s America,” Paula said. “You shouldn’t have to speak a foreign language just to live here. I can’t tell you how many times people come into the store and they can barely speak English. We have to use hand gestures and hold up fingers.”
I looked over at Rick. He was a pretty easy-going, liberal guy and I wondered how long he’d put up with Paula’s attitudes before the sex stopped being worth it.
We kept chatting through the meal, and every now and then Lili and I would exchange glances at something Paula said, and we’d attempt to steer the conversation onto safer ground. Rick said nothing, but I could tell he was relieved not to have to manage the conversation.
Paula ordered a steak, and proceeded to feed most of it to Lush, in little tiny pieces that he nipped from her fingers. She was a real chatterbox, and by the time we left them in the parking lot, I was exhausted.
“How can he stand that woman!” I said to Lili as we drove back to Stewart’s Crossing. “She’s awful.”
“No, she’s not,” Lili said. “I’ve run across a lot of awful people in this world, and as long as she’s not killing small children with a machete, I’m willing to cut her some slack. She has some narrow opinions, but it’s nothing she can’t grow out of. Rick could be a good influence on her.”
Every now and then Lili said something that reminded me of the life she’d had before coming to Eastern, and made me admire her even more. “If you say so. The first thing she needs to grow out of is needing to carry that little dog around with her everywhere, like he’s some kind of child’s teddy bear.”
“You’re one to talk. If you could fit Rochester into a shoulder bag you would.” She jabbed me lightly in the shoulder.
“I only take him with me to work because he gets so upset when I leave him alone,” I said defensively, though I knew she was right. “Like tonight—you watch, he’ll go crazy when we get home.”
“Only because you enable him. I’ll bet he’s sleeping peacefully right now.”
I turned into the long access road to River Bend, I said, “All right, let’s test out your hypothesis. We’ll see if Rochester is sleeping or worrying.”
I pulled into a guest parking space down the street from my townhouse. “If he’s sleeping, and he hears the car pull up, he’ll get up and start barking,” I said. “If you’re right and he’s fine on his own, I don’t want to disturb him.”
We walked down Sarajevo Court and then quietly up the driveway. I didn’t hear any barking. Lili and I stepped up together and peered over the courtyard gate.
He was lying on his side in the crate, asleep, his head toward the doors. “Busted!” I said, banging the gate. It was comical to watch him come to life, scrambling up and sticking his head against the metal. He began barking and yelping.
“You’re mean,” Lili said, laughing.
“Well, you were right,” I said, unlocking the front door. “He was sleeping.”
I let him out of the crate and he raced around the downstairs, skidding on the tile floor and barking non-stop. I grabbed him and hooked up his leash, and as we walked down the street, Lili got to observe first-hand his new trick of putting his paws up on tree trunks. “It’s too bad the light is so low,” she said. There was only a crescent moon, and low clouds blocked m
ost of the stars. “He’s just so adorable.”
“He’ll do it for you in daylight, too,” I said. “If you want, we can take him over to the towpath tomorrow morning.”
“I’d love that. I’ll bet there are tons of flowers in bloom, too.”
That reminded me of my encounter with Mark Figueroa and Owen Keely, and I described it to her. “It just got me wondering if they were doing something more back there than just looking for plants,” I said.
“They’re both consenting adults,” she said. “Though if I were them I’d watch out for poison ivy.”
She spent the night at my house. In addition to being a kind, compassionate person she was also lots of fun, and we laughed almost as much as we did other things.
The next morning I took the dog for his early walk while she made us scrambled eggs and bacon. When Rochester and I returned, he went wild at the smell of the fresh bacon frying, nearly tearing my arm off in his eagerness to get to the kitchen.
“Let me get your leash off, dog!” I said, stumbling behind him. He didn’t stop until he was right next to Lili at the stove, where he planted his butt and looked up at her with those adoring puppy eyes.
“You can have the burnt piece,” she said, dropping it into his open mouth. He chewed noisily, then followed us to the table, going back and forth from Lili to me hoping desperately for more bacon.
“I only have my little digital with me,” she said. “I brought it to dinner in case I wanted to get a shot of the four of us. If Rochester’s a good model, we’ll have to schedule something else when I have all my cameras.”
“So you thought about taking pictures last night, but you didn’t,” I said. “So does that mean you think Paula’s not long for Rick?”
“Paula is very high-maintenance,” she said. “And Rick is a low-maintenance kind of guy.”
“They say opposites attract,” I said, as I stood up to clear the table. I was still wearing my typical dog-walking clothes—a pair of nylon shorts, a T-shirt (in this case a relic from a long ago trip to Oxford, England, with a skyline of colleges and the legend ‘the dreaming spires’) and running shoes.