by Paul Levine
“A loan, not a gift. If we win Barksdale, I'll pay it back quick. If we lose, I'll pay it back slow.”
“I'd like to help, but I don't have that kind of cash.”
“I figured, but I thought you might have some ideas.”
“What about your father?”
Steve shook his head. “Even if he had it, I couldn't ask.”
“You mean you wouldn't ask. Isn't it time to forgive and forget?”
“Not now, Marvin. I can't ask him, not on this.”
Marvin tugged at a fold of skin on his neck. Marvin the Thinker. “What's the money for, if you don't mind my asking?”
Steve shot a look toward the corridor to his nephew's bedroom. All quiet. The boy either was still asleep or he was beating the computer at chess. “It's for Bobby. That's all I can say.”
The old man's eyes lit up. “That's different. For Bobby, anything.” He demolished the sandwich in three bites. “Not that I know where I'm gonna get the money, but I got some friends.”
“Thanks, Marvin.”
“You sleep in a stable last night?”
“Why?”
“You got straw in your hair.”
Steve ran a hand over his head, plucked a strand from behind his ear. “Bigby's farm,” he said, and left it at that.
“What were you doing there, besides lusting after his fiancee?”
“That about sums it up.”
Steve had succeeded in not thinking about Victoria for the last few minutes, but there it was again. Just before Marvin arrived, Steve had called her cell phone, but there'd been no answer. Where was she this morning? With Bigby? Or taking a long walk through the trees, thinking of Steve?
“I don't know how I'm going to try Barksdale with her,” he said. “Or Bobby's case, either.”
“Why not? I thought the two of you were getting along these days.”
“I'll be sitting close enough to smell her shampoo. Every time she'd give me a document, our hands would touch, and…” Steve stopped. He hadn't intended to open up.
Marvin was staring at him. “Ay, gevalt. You're in love!”
Now Steve wanted to talk. If he had a closer relationship with his father, this would be the time-“Hey, Dad, what should I do?”-but with Herbert, he wouldn't get advice, he'd get criticism. “I need some advice, Marvin.”
“Got one word for you. ‘Viagra.'”
“Don't need it.”
“Neither do I, but in case you're nervous when you and that shiksa goddess do it the first time, it can help.”
Steve was silent.
“Ah! You already shtupped her?”
This wasn't going to be easy, Steve knew, but he needed to talk. “Marvin, can you be discreet?”
The old man shrugged. “Was Jesus a nice Jewish boy?”
Five minutes later, the front door opened and another Sunday morning regular walked in.
“Where are the bagels?” Cadillac said, entering the kitchen.
“Don't got any,” Marvin said. “Mr. Fancy Pants bought machetes instead.”
“Michettes,” Steve said.
“Just as well,” Cadillac said. “Poppy seeds stick in my dentures.” He looked at Steve. “What happened to your face?”
“I fell jogging.”
“I got marked up like that once,” Cadillac said. “Tripped over a windowsill.”
“How's that possible?” Steve said.
Cadillac sat down at the kitchen table, sighed, propped his feet on a chair. “A jealous husband was coming in the bedroom door with a shotgun, I was going out the window without my pants. Kansas City. Or maybe St. Louis.”
“What's with the duds?” Marvin asked. Cadillac was wearing dark blue coveralls with a patch on the chest that read: “Rockland State Hospital.”
“Doing a favor for Steve,” Cadillac said.
“Everybody he's asking favors these days.”
“Cadillac's a helluva PI,” Steve said.
“Janitor's more like it,” Cadillac said. “Your doc was there last night, by the way.”
“So you couldn't snoop?”
“Sure I could. Gimme a sandwich and lemme tell it my way.”
Steve put the finishing touches on a panino he'd been working on.
“Last couple nights, I been going through her desk,” Cadillac said. “In-box, out-box. Patient records. Test charts. Lot of mumbo-jumbo. Last night, I come into her office around eleven o'clock, pushing my broom, rolling my cart. Only this time she's still there. Big woman with a sour face.”
“She say anything to you?”
“Not to me. She was on the phone.”
Steve handed Cadillac the panino. “So you left?”
“Hell, no.” Cadillac took a bite, nodded his approval. “I emptied her wastebasket, dusted the counters, puttered around. She just kept on talking. Old black man pushing a broom. You don't get more invisible than that.”
“Who was she talking to?”
“All I know, his name was Carlos, and he was in Mexico.”
Steve's look must have asked a question because Cadillac said: “‘What time is it in Guadalajara, Carlos?' That's what she was saying when I walked in. Then she says she wants a thousand units of replen-something.”
Steve grabbed a pen and a pad. “Replen…?”
“One of those drug names they make up that don't mean nothing. Like Viagra.”
“I don't need it,” Marvin said for the second time that morning.
“So that's it?” Steve said.
“Settle down, boy,” Cadillac said. “When you write a song, you don't give away the story in the first verse.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Like all those songs Gordon Jenkins wrote for Sinatra.” He started singing softly:
“Opposites attract, the wise men claim, Still I wish that we had been a little more the same, It might have been a shorter war.”
“Sounds like Steverino and his lady partner,” Marvin said.
“Can we get back to Kranchick for a second?” Steve pleaded.
“Then the song throws you a curve.” Cadillac resumed singing:
“She knew much more than I did, But there was one thing she didn't know, That I loved her, 'cause I never told her so.”
Cadillac smiled. “There's the surprise. He never had the guts to tell the lady he loved her.”
“Just like our friend.” Marvin turned to Steve. “Unless you told her last night.”
“What happened last night?” Cadillac asked.
“What happened in the hospital last night?” Steve countered.
“Steverino shtupped his law partner,” Marvin said.
“No,” Cadillac said.
“The emmis. Right under the nose of her fiance.”
“Attaboy,” Cadillac said. “Reminds me of the time I was seeing this dancer who was married to a comic. Every night, when he went on the stage-”
“Cadillac! What the hell happened in the damn hospital?”
“All right. Keep your britches on. The doc must not have liked the price. 'Cause she says, ‘Forget it, Carlos. You're not gonna fuck me up the ass.'”
“She said that?” Marvin made a tsk-tsk sound.
“Reminded me of a foulmouthed little mama I knew in Memphis,” Cadillac said.
“Then what?” Steve demanded. “After she argued with Carlos about price?”
“She said something about calling this supplier in Argentina. But Carlos must have lowered the price because she calmed right down and said, fine, she'd wire the money first thing in the morning, and no, she didn't want a receipt. No paper trail. She hangs up and I go out and work the rest of the floor.”
“Replen-something,” Steve said, mostly to himself. “Replen what?”
“Replengren,” Cadillac said.
“How do you know?”
“Because after she left, I came back and emptied her wastebasket a second time. It's my damn job, right?” He reached into his pocket and handed Steve a slip of paper. A crumpled sh
eet from a notepad with the Rockland State Hospital logo on top, Kranchick's name on the bottom, and what had to be her handwriting in between.
80 mg Replengren X 1000 San Blas Medico
“So what is it?” Marvin asked.
Steve wrote “Replengren” on his pad followed by three question marks. “Something Kranchick doesn't want anybody to know about, and that's gotta be good. You're beautiful, Cadillac. I love you. You, too, Marvin.”
“Forget us,” Cadillac said. “Did you tell the lady that you love her?”
“He told her,” Marvin said. “She didn't say nothing back, and now the schlemiel wants some advice from the Maven.”
“Thanks for being so discreet,” Steve said, rubbing both temples. A headache was brewing.
“So what did you tell him?” Cadillac asked Marvin.
“I told him to get off his tuches. Love don't come along every day, and if you let her get away, you'll always regret it.”
Thirty-nine
SIX-LOVE
The woman is perfected, Victoria brooded.
Which meant what? Made perfect from something less so?
She herself was neither perfect nor perfected. She was, on this Sunday morning, a miserable, lying, self-loathing slut.
She lay in bed trying sort out her feelings. Bruce's bed. With Bruce snoring contentedly beside her.
The avocado crop was saved and Bruce, drained from the night's excitement and a pitcher of rum-and-Coke at dawn, had tumbled face-first into bed, still wearing his jumpsuit and combat boots. The holster and pistol, thankfully, were draped over the railing of a treadmill in the corner of the bedroom.
She woke up angry. At herself.
What have I done?
She had violated her most cherished principles. Honesty, loyalty, fidelity. But why? Did she love Steve Solomon? No, that would be preposterous.
Half the time I can't even stand him.
No way did their relationship fit her well-conceived definition of love. No way was it a rational, synergistic coupling of two people with mutual interests and similar values. This coupling was animalistic, like Judge Gridley's beagles in the barn.
It was irrational. Illogical. Insane.
So why did she do something so hurtful and self-destructive? Bruce deserved better. And Solomon? The poor guy had resisted. For a moment, she wondered if she was guilty of date rape, at least in some philosophical way.
When she left Steve in the chickee hut, she'd felt a mixture of guilt and apprehension. She feared Bruce would see it on her face. But he'd been oblivious, rambling on about the low clouds holding in the heat and the snow being a blessing in disguise. Then he grinned and said: “A blessing in the skies.” Okay, so he was a little impaired in the humor department. Could she spend an eternity with a man who couldn't make her laugh?
She slipped out of bed, dressed quietly, and left.
The morning was clear and chilly, the sun still low in the east, as she aimed the Taurus north. She would call Jackie on the cell, roust her from bed. But before she could dial the number, her cell phone rang, and she checked the readout. Solomon. What was there to say? She let it ring.
Traffic was light on South Dixie, and when she reached LeJeune Road in the Gables, she hung a right, even though that wasn't the way to Grove Isle. Why had she turned there? Did the car have a mind of its own? Then a left on Kumquat. She slowed as she approached the bungalow with the Brazilian pepper tree and Spanish dagger shrub.
What am I doing? What stable, mature decision is this?
Running from your fiance's house to your lover's.
Is that what Solomon is? My lover?
She had never liked the word. It always sounded sleazy.
She stopped the car across the street from Solomon's house. His old Cadillac was parked out front, top up. Another car, too. A Lincoln with a personalized plate: MAVEN-1. Then she remembered: Marvin was a Sunday morning regular for breakfast. As she sat there, a second car pulled up, an old Chevrolet sedan. She watched as Cadillac Johnson got out. He was wearing blue coveralls instead of his usual dashiki.
She thought about walking in, calling out: “What's cooking?”
But it would be awkward. She mustn't talk to Solomon until she decided just what the hell she was going to do with her life. And where he fit in. Which he didn't.
She put the car in gear and drove away.
Jackie hit a lazy lob that lacked height, distance, and desire. Victoria, who had been camped at the net, took two steps backward, aimed her left hand skyward as if pointing at a shooting star, then brought the racquet forward in a vicious overhead smash. The ball rocketed toward Jackie, who hopped sideways and yelped as she took a stinging hit on her calf.
“Ow! Jeez.”
“Sorry.” Victoria walked back to the baseline. They were on a green clay court at Grove Isle. Just on the other side of the windscreened fence, boats were tied up at the dock and the bay rippled with whitecaps. “That's six-love. One more set. Your serve.”
“Forget it.” Jackie was rubbing her calf. “It says ‘Wilson' on my leg. What are you mad at me about?”
“Nothing.” It wasn't something you just blurted out: “By the way, Jackie, I never told you before, but I'm really a lascivious slut.”
“So what's going on? You've been taking out your frustrations on that fuzzy ball since we started playing.” She walked to the sideline table, grabbed a fleece pullover, and slipped into it.
Victoria joined her, opened a thermos of coffee, poured for both of them. “I'm just a little tense, that's all.”
“Pre-wedding jitters.”
“That's exactly what Solomon said.”
“When's he going to call me, anyway?”
“He's kind of unpredictable, so I wouldn't be sitting by the phone.”
“If I didn't know better, I'd think you were seeing that Bad Boy on the side.”
Victoria was silent.
“Usually, this is where you say, ‘Jac-kie,' the way Sister Agnes did when I wore stretch pants in seventh grade.”
Victoria sipped her coffee.
Jackie studied her. “Fu-ck me! You and the Bad Boy?”
Victoria remained silent.
“C'mon, Vic. What's the use of getting boned if you can't tell your best bud?”
“Last night-” Victoria began, with some trepidation.
“I knew it! I knew the day you met him.”
“How? I despised Solomon.”
“Exactly. He got you so worked up, I knew something was going to happen.” Jackie lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “How was it?”
“You mean physically?”
“What other way is there?”
“Jac-kie.”
“C'mon, tell me, Vic. Did you pop more than once? Did he? Tell me, and I'll tell you about this Honduran coffee baron who can lick his own eyebrows.”
Victoria had vowed not to go into detail. She wouldn't describe how Steve pressed all the right buttons, including the button that mattered.
“I'll bet it was great,” Jackie said, pumping her.
I won't get down and dirty.
“Was it great?” Jackie said.
I'll keep the discussion on a high plane.
“Between Bruce and Steve, who's the better clit tickler? C'mon, I need play-by-play.”
“It was un-fucking-believable,” Victoria said, surprising herself with her language. “I was on fire. Burning with fever.”
Jackie made a show of fanning herself with an open hand. “Oh, my God.”
“When he was inside me, it was like he was touching me everywhere. Like an electrical current. And so intense. One volt more, I swear, I would have passed out.”
Jackie made a grunting sound that was close to being obscene.
Victoria lowered her voice. “With my eyes closed, I actually saw sparks.”
“No.”
“Like a meteor shower.”
“I think I'm getting wet.”
Victoria took a
nother sip of coffee. “Now I need to figure out why I did it.”
“What's to figure? You were horny. Solomon's hot. You got laid.”
“It's more complicated than that!”
“Then figure it out the next time he boinks you.”
“What next time?”
“C'mon, you gonna give up the greatest sex of your life?”
Victoria felt lost. She yearned for advice, but her best friend was off in sexual fantasyland.
“I'm going home and checking the batteries in Mr. Happy,” Jackie said.
Maybe she should call The Queen for advice, Victoria thought. Catch up with her in Switzerland or Rome, or wherever. The Queen had more experience with men. On second thought, Victoria knew exactly what her mother would say. “I've been unhappy rich and unhappy poor,” The Queen would say. “Unhappy rich is better.”
“Maybe I'm afraid of happiness. Maybe I'm trying to sabotage my relationship with Bruce.”
“What's the problem? Marry Bruce. Boff Solomon on the side.”
“I can't do that!”
“Then do what you lawyers do. Grab a yellow pad. Write down the pluses and minuses of each guy.” Jackie handed her a flyer for the Grove Isle Christmas party, turning it over to the blank side. “Start with Bruce. Write down a personality trait you really like, then compare him with Solomon on the same characteristic.”
“Does this come from Cosmo or did you make it up?” Victoria said, grabbing a pen from her purse and starting to write.
Jackie peered over Victoria's shoulder at the list. “No contest. The Bad Boy wins.”
“C'mon, Jackie. This is serious.”
“Okay, then give Solomon a chance. He's gotta have at least one quality you like.”
“He has wonderful parenting skills. You can see that with Bobby. Plus…”
“Hang on a sec,” Jackie said. “Aren't you beating around the bush? No pun intended.”
“You mean sex.”
“Ye-ah. What about Bruce, other than the fact he's hung like a Clydesdale?”
“He's good. But maybe a trifle mechanical…”
“Mechanical is fine for a dishwasher, but from what you said about the Bad Boy…”
“Solomon makes me laugh and he makes me lunch…”
“And he makes you come. Combo platter. Excellent. C'mon. If you had to make a decision, which by the way you do, who's it gonna be?”