Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  The check paid, with Kit’s gold card, the two women rose in silky unison. As they angled between tables, the heavy man quivered inside the fine cloth of his suit, as if in disguise he were Bacchus, god of the grape answering to the flesh. Neither gave him a glance.

  Outside the heat of the morning rushed over them. Each sought her dark glasses against the blinding circle of sun. They descended into the small basin of the parking lot, where their cars squatted in the glare. They halted near Louise’s and faced each other, their eyes hidden behind their glasses. Something remained on Kit’s mind.

  “Make it fast,” Louise said.

  “I think Barney and I would be good for each other, but I have something else at stake. You wouldn’t hurt the marriage, Lou, I would see to that, but you could jeopardize my career. Any breath of scandal on Barney would taint me.”

  Louise’s smile was slow, the irony returning to it. “You’re not worried about me, only the business you think I might be in.”

  “It comes down to that.”

  Hot sunlight slanted through trees majestic and dauntless against the brilliant sky. In some ways the two women seemed miniatures of the trees. Louise said, “I’ll put your mind at rest. Whether I’m in the business or not won’t matter much longer. I’ve had enough. I’ve also got enough.”

  Kit extended a hand. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Louise gripped the hand. “Have a long marriage and a spectacular career.”

  It was three in the afternoon. The heat was brutal, swarming over John Rozzi like bees as soon as he stepped out of his cool car, attacking him as he huffed up the graded walk toward a house that, to his mind, had too much glass and glare, no protection against people peeking in. He rang the bell and was surprised by the young man in the open shirt and tight poplin pants who let him in with a smile. John glanced around quickly and said, “I’m expected.”

  “You John?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Mario,” the young man said in precise tones. “Hot out there, huh?”

  “Yeah, hot. Cool in here.” John ran a voluminous handkerchief over the fat of his neck, which cascaded over his wilted collar. Mario fluttered a hand.

  “You come, OK?”

  John followed him over hardwood floors and sheepskin rugs, up some steps to another level, and into a skylit room shadowed by the overhang of trees. A mammoth television was tuned to a soap. Rita O’Dea sat deep in the sag of a canvas chair that looked on the verge of collapse.

  “He is here,” Mario said in stilted English, and retreated.

  John started to speak but Rita put a finger to her lips and continued to watch the soap until it surrendered to a commercial. She killed the picture with a click of the remote-control device and stared up at him with mild curiosity, her sleeveless frock revealing the shapely heft of her arms and legs. “You’re John.”

  “Yes.” He had phoned her earlier from the motel where he was staying. She did not ask him to sit down, so he remained standing. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

  “You’re Rozzi from Springfield.”

  “Yes. You probably don’t remember me, but I went to your brother’s funeral.”

  “Did you know Tony?”

  “I didn’t have the privilege.”

  “That’s what it was, John, exactly what it was. A privilege. Sit down.”

  He pulled up a bulky hassock and came down on it with a squishing of air. He placed his hands gravely on his knees. “I don’t want to step on toes, Mrs. O’Dea. I don’t want to do anything out of line.”

  “Nobody if he’s smart wants to do that. Suppose you tell me the problem, John.”

  He glanced around to reassure himself that Mario had left and then leaned forward with his large face sprung out, though a part of it seemed to hang back in deference. In a voice low and raspy, his throat in need of clearing, he explained his problem. Afterward, he drew his hands from his knees and laced his fingers together.

  For too many moments, her eyes resting upon him, Rita did not respond, which disquieted him. Finally she said, “You remind me of somebody, same face, same big build. He worked for my brother and then for me. Ralph Roselli.”

  “I know the name,” John said. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “He died of a heart attack shoveling snow off my walk. Good man.” She clicked the television back on. “About the other thing, John, some things have to be done. So I got no objections.”

  He nodded and rose.

  “But,” she said, her attention on the screen, “you were smart to ask.”

  He drove back to his motel, which was a few miles outside of Lawrence on Route 114. The manager sold beer from a cooler, and John bought a six-pack. In his room he ripped open a can and took a long swig, belching when he lowered the can. The room was air conditioned, yet seemed unaired. He was sweating. After stripping down to his underwear and burying his weapon beneath a pillow, he finished off the can of beer and stretched out on the bed.

  An hour later the telephone woke him, the ring reverberating in his ear, his bladder in need of relief. He fumbled for the receiver.

  The voice said, “John?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We on?”

  “We’re on.”

  FIFTEEN

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD was noisy, tenement houses full of commotion, too many families stuffed inside, hanging out of unscreened windows, overloading rickety porches. Graffiti blazed from a concrete abutment, blubbery block letters of red and gold, painted one-word shouts of defiance in Spanish. The humidity hung heavy in the darkening air. A woman crossing the street looked as if she would relinquish her soul for a breeze. A boy of four or five opened his short pants and relieved himself on the sidewalk. Louise Baker said, “How long do we have to wait?”

  “I told him eight-thirty,” Chick Ryan said. “I don’t want to surprise him.”

  They were seated in Chick’s car, which was parked in front of a boarded-up superette, the back of which was burned out. The neighborhood was a block or so away from the one in which she had grown up, a fact that pressed upon her.

  Chick said, “Could you live here today, Lou? Could you survive?”

  “If I were Hispanic, yes,” she said with certainty. “I’d work, I’d learn, I’d get out.”

  Chick disagreed with a dark look. “You were a spic, you wouldn’t have the values we had. We had pride. We had morals, for Christ’s sake. These people got nothing. There’re women on this street grandmothers before they’re thirty. Gives you an idea what’s going on here, no upbringing, no nothing. Did you see the kid piss on the sidewalk?”

  Louise said, “Sugar O’Toole used to take dumps in the hallway, remember? Hot weather like this, his mother Millie sat on the stoop in her slip, and the guys would come around to look at her. Your father was one of them. And your sister, I remember, got pregnant in high school.”

  “You trying to make me mad?”

  “No, just trying to remember how it was.”

  “Not like this. Can you smell that coming into the car? These people aren’t clean.”

  “That’s the Spickett River, Chick. It blows rank every summer.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” he said. “You want to believe these people are like us, that’s your business. I deal with them every night, so I know better.” He shoved a hand inside his shirt and scratched his stomach. “I’ll tell you what I think of spics. I got more respect for the real niggers, I mean the ones born here.”

  “You’re right, Chick. You shouldn’t argue.”

  “And now that I think about it, your father never held a steady job in his life.” He laughed. “You people were on handouts.”

  “You got it, Chick.”

  He checked his watch.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Time,” he said.

  He started up the car, flicked on the headlights, and cruised down the street through opposing blasts of stereo music, the tires crunching broken gl
ass, which produced a music more tonal than the other. Faint hues of silver glinting through the ripening darkness proved to be the shirts of youths contemptuously handsome. Spindles of light became the legs of girls.

  “Dopers,” Chick told her with satisfaction.

  “We live off them,” Louise replied carelessly.

  “You maybe, not me.”

  “You don’t take a cut along the line?”

  “Only what’s due me.”

  He took a turn onto a side street, the buildings low-lying and commercial, windowless and roughcast, a solemn loneliness about them all. Turning the wheel with a light finger, he nosed the car into an alley that led to an auto-repair garage with a bare bulb burning over the door next to a stall. Graffiti of the filthy variety marked the facade. Louise said, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “You’re putting your life in my hands,” Chick said smugly. “You want to change your mind, now’s the time.”

  “I trust you,” she said. “Up to a point, of course.”

  He drew up in front of the garage, killed the motor and the lights, and listened to vague sounds in the sultry uneasy air. “You know, it’d be better you weren’t here. Something goes wrong I could say I was apprehending him in the commission of a crime.”

  “What could go wrong?” she said flatly.

  “OK, we’ll do it your way.” He yanked the keys from the ignition. When he started to push open his door, Louise dropped a hand on his arm.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Rafael? What’s there to tell? He’s a degenerate. He was younger, he was a hitter, street-gang stuff in New York. He came to Lawrence, became a pusher. I busted him two, three years ago, but made a deal with him when I found out how much business he was doing. What I didn’t know till recently is he was using.”

  “Was he high when he came at me?”

  “He must’ve been.”

  “He’s scared, you said. He ran, right?”

  “Yeah, he’s scared,” Chick said. “That’t why we’re meeting on his ground.”

  “What makes you think he’ll be alone?” she asked suspiciously.

  “He’s got no friends, I’ve seen to that.”

  “How’d you get him to agree to meet with you?”

  “I told him I want him back in business. I miss the money.”

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

  Now it was he who held her arm, gripping it tight enough to hurt. His eyes seemed to advance beyond their lids. “This is over, you going to send somebody after me, Lou? I mean, one thing could easily follow another, right?”

  “I explained myself once. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “You’re a cool lady.” His grin was all over her. “It’s why I’ve always had a thing for you.”

  “This is over, I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

  They opened their doors. He was still grinning. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “How many heavyweights can you find like me?”

  It was a small garage, without cars, without a lift or a pit, with a few workbenches but no tools. Tires, worn out or blown out, had been thrown into corners. Odors of motor oil, rubbish, and cats permeated the shadows. The light came from a fluorescent fixture dangling precariously from the ceiling, illuminating an old overstuffed chair that might have been rescued from a dump. Magazine photographs of naked women clung to the far wall, sexless against the dank concrete, resembling inmates more than models. Louise, hanging back, murmured, “He’s not here.”

  “He’s here. He’s in the toilet.” Chick laughed. “Come on out, Rafael.”

  The toilet was a cubicle without a door. The man who emerged surprised her. She had expected somebody shabby and shaped like a frog, pop-eyed and cold-blooded, but he was as slender as she, clean-shaven, sinewy in an immaculate white T-shirt, his full mustache worn with formality. His neat nappy hair was African, his face Indian, and his nose, thin-walled, was Spanish. He was almost beautiful.

  He said, singsong, “You s’posed to come alone.”

  Chick slung a glance back at Louise. “He’s dancing on a cloud.”

  “What you say?”

  “Look at the lady, Rafael. Smile your prettiest.”

  Brilliant teeth made the smile audacious. “What you bring her for? Fun?”

  Louise had been gazing at him without emotion, but suddenly the moment outside the funeral home spun back at her, not Rafael’s hypnotic face, for she had failed to freeze it in her mind, but the scrape of his shoe, the sound and stink of the gunshots, the chill in her soul as Barney Cole rushed to hold her up.

  She advanced with a shaky step. “Remember me?”

  He did not, but something seemed to alert him. His glazed eyes leaped from her to Chick. “We s’posed to talk business. What we doing this for?”

  “Tell him, Louise.”

  “You tell him,” she said.

  Rafael said, “What she want? A snort? I got crack, that’s all.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell her,” Chick said, and drew a small-caliber pistol from the back of his pants under his shirt. He fired it. Louise staggered backward, and Rafael dropped to his knees, a spot bubbling up on his T-shirt. It was as if a tick with blood had burst. No more than that. Then Chick shot him in the head.

  Louise stood with a hand over her mouth and sweat cooling on her forehead. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “I thought you were tough,” Chick said with cold disdain, every line in his face mocking her. “Why the fuck have I been scared of you? All you got are connections.” His eyes glued to her, he seemed to mull something over. Then he tucked the pistol away. “Go on, get out of here. I got to spread some crack around, make it look like a dope deal gone bad.”

  She wheeled around. The plock of her heels rang louder than the reports of the pistol had, the stench of which she carried with her. He called after her, “Hey, Lou. Barney Cole could see us now, wonder what he’d think of you.”

  She made it to the door, her heart in her throat.

  “Hey, Lou, you know what’s one step from a spic? A Lawrence wop. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

  She stepped out into the heated night air, letting the door fall shut behind her. With a hand pressed to her chest, she took a deep breath. From the shadows a raspy voice said, “You all right?”

  “Perfectly all right,” she replied, straightening her shoulders. “Where’s your car?”

  “On the street.”

  I’ll wait for you there,” she said.

  John Rozzi reached up through a blizzard of moths and extinguished the burning bulb above the door.

  “Don’t miss,” she said.

  “I never do,” he answered.

  • • •

  Edith Shea rose early, the first tentacles of sun stealing through watery mists, the morning a gift not yet unwrapped. Her hands on the sill of the open window, she breathed in air not yet tainted by the heaves of the city. The lilac bush stood empty, the great clumps of blossoms gone, either snipped off or withered away, but her mind retained the ghost of the scent. Gone from the dirt driveway was Daisy’s clunker, sold for fifty dollars, which paid for shifting the plates to the new car already scratched by children in the neighborhood and anointed by pigeons. With a twinge, she looked back at Daisy, sprawled on the bed with the top sheet snagged between his naked legs, and hoped that he would sleep late, for the heat had kept him tossing. The small fan, still whirring, had not helped much. She bent over the bed, listened to his heavy breathing, and drew the tortured sheet over his sunken chest. Then, purposely allowing no time for feelings, she tiptoed out.

  She tapped lightly on the bathroom door. “Are you going to be long?”

  Her second daughter, who had a summer job at Raytheon and an unexpected scholarship to Merrimack, came out wrapped in a rose robe. She had Edith’s eyes, bones, cap of curly hair, even Edith’s voice, and little of Daisy. Of all the children she was the closest to him. “How’s Dad?” she asked.


  Edith gave a little shrug. “Sleeping. Try not to wake him.”

  “I was talking with him last night.”

  “I heard you.”

  The girl pulled at her robe, drew the top tight around her throat. “I wish he wouldn’t joke about it. You know what I mean.”

  “It’s his way of dealing with it,” Edith said simply.

  “He told me a story about a man who was given only weeks to live but found a way to delay his death indefinitely. He boarded airplanes and constantly shifted through the world’s time zones, so it was always yesterday, never today, which is how he avoided tomorrow.”

  Edith said nothing.

  The girl said, “He’s worse, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not better,” Edith said simply. The girl’s narrow face was glum, and Edith slipped an arm around her, which was partly a way to confirm her own existence. “Don’t let yourself think about it too much, honey.”

  “How can anybody be happy in the house? Knowing?”

  “Happiness isn’t important right not. Later maybe.”

  “If there was just something I could do, Ma, but there isn’t. I can’t even laugh at his jokes.”

  “That’s the injustice of it,” Edith said with sympathy. “That’s what the dying do to us. They make us helpless, then they flatten us with guilt. We have to pick it up and carry it, worst baggage of all. Three years after my mother died, my father told me the grief had eased, but not the guilt.”

  The girl, silent, suddenly squirmed free. “He won’t even be serious about the new car. Where did he get it?”

  “It’s his secret. He deserves one.”

  “He wants me to believe he bought it himself. Why?”

  Edith said gently, “Why do you think?”

  Her waitress’s uniform, which she had washed out last night, was hanging in the bathroom. She felt it to make sure it was dry and then took a fast shower, time pressing upon her. She needed to be at the coffee shop within the hour and was running late. In the kitchen, gulping instant coffee, she heard the tail end of a news report on the radio, which was tuned to the local station. “Double shooting” were the only words she caught. She placed her coffee cup in the sink, threw a pack of cigarettes into her bag, and then, for some reason feeling more protective than usual, looked in on Daisy.