“You do? How?”
She sat back in the chair and propped her feet on the edge of the sofa. The Doodles looked back and forth, apparently confused as to whose feet he should now occupy. Junie nudged his belly with her toes and he fell back onto Pickle’s feet.
“How can I explain this? The last few weeks, I’ve stayed to myself. Down here. But I knew Stan and Karen were up there. Even when they went somewhere, I knew they’d return—that was enough. I didn’t need contact, didn’t want it for the most part. The idea of it was good enough.”
“But what about Karen? You’ve gotten close?” He couldn’t help himself.
“Oh sure. Karen’s a really special person. We talk occasionally. And in a way, I do feel close to her. But, I see her and Stan as a unit. I’m the third wheel.”
This immediately eased Pickle’s fears; it was satisfying to know Karen’s status.
“The odd thing is that I wasn’t aware until just this moment, when you said you couldn’t be alone, that I had been wanting some contact. I guess I was looking forward to seeing you.” She hesitated, and then looked down into her lap. “My time with Jacob—we didn’t see anyone. It was always just the two of us. And the isolation felt normal. But now that he’s gone, I see that even as we lived together, I was very lonely.”
The Doodles scrambled up the length of Pickle’s legs and stuck his nose in his crotch. “And this one?” Pickled asked, pushing the dog’s snout away.
She reached over and scratched The Doodles’s ears. “This dog has just about saved my life.”
“Junie … I’m glad you didn’t go over that night.” Pickle, embarrassed, rubbed his eyes.
She nodded once.
He started to say more, then thought better of it. He wasn’t sure if she should, or even could, hear the things that were on his mind. He pulled his arm over his eyes to dissipate the moment.
“What?” Junie asked.
He aimed his voice toward the ceiling; it was easier that way. “I’ve seen a lot as a cop. You can’t imagine. Human cruelty is just too much. And what a bullet can do to a body is indescribable. Even when you see it again and again, it’s new and fresh and awful each time. But for me, the most painful deaths are the suicides. It’s one thing to come upon a murder—gruesome as it is. But that’s a death inflicted on another, so the victim retains a certain dignity. I see it as the soul staying intact, for lack of a better way to put it. But a suicide? Well, that person did it to himself. It’s the most violent expression of self-hatred imaginable. And that soul was destroyed a long, long time before the actual act.”
Pickle turned to her. “They know that about me at the precinct—that I’m good with the suicides. I always catch those cases.”
Her body was now close to his. She’d leaned in to listen as he spoke, because his voice had diminished in volume. He realized he was treading on private ground, but he had nothing to be sorry for, and nothing to lose.
“Most people don’t see death very often. But you have. You’re an expert,” she said.
He could smell her breath: mint. “No. I’m no expert—not nearly. It’s just that I’ve understood that witnessing people at their saddest is a privilege. It’s the only way I can do my job.”
Junie stood up and reached behind him to pull out the cushions at the back of the sofa. She shoved him back and snuggled herself alongside him, in front. Then she wrapped the blanket over them both and grabbed a throw pillow for her head. The Doodles jumped on top and straddled them.
He’d never told Karen much about his job, which was typical for cops. But the odd thing was that Karen had rarely asked. He’d revealed more to Junie in the last half hour than in all the time he’d been with Karen. And though Junie’s body was similar to Karen’s in size and contour, and conformed perfectly to his, the real difference seemed to be his penis. It remained disinterested, even as her butt pressed against his groin. He pushed Junie’s hair down and flopped his arm across her waist.
“I’m very tired. Can you sleep, Junie?”
“I could sleep forever,” she murmured.
26
KAREN SAT ACROSS FROM HER BANKER, WILLIAM, who reviewed her accounts. She was the money honcho in the family; she monitored all transactions and also decided when and how much they’d put into investments, and any planning for the short and long haul. Stan sniffed around occasionally, but for the most part, he ceded control to Karen. His trust in her was part of her con, like three-card monte on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street—in front of Tiffany.
William swiveled the computer screen toward Karen. “See? I can move sixty grand from the savings account to cover the credit card expense you mentioned. That’s not a problem.”
“But I’m going to need more available cash …” Karen, talking more to herself, paused. “William. Let’s look at the Zed account.”
William leaned back, tapping his fingers on the desk. “Are you sure? You told me that account was never, under any circumstances, to be touched. I’m just reminding you.”
Karen felt her face burn with embarrassment. She’d asked William to fight her tooth and nail if she even mentioned the Zed account. Play dumb, she’d begged him. Throw me out of the office, she’d pleaded. Well, he was just doing his job.
“That’s true. But I just want to see how much I’ve got now. See, Stan and I are pulling reduced salaries from the business because we’ve taken on new staff. We’re in an expansion phase. I just want to peek at it …” She let her voice trail off with her bullshit reasoning, none of which was actually true. As William nodded with banker-like concern throughout her little speech, Karen then wondered why she felt the need to make excuses to yet another man. It was her money. Sort of.
William closed out the current screen and opened up a new one. Karen stepped behind him and leaned down as the screen appeared. Just under five million. The aggressive investments she’d asked for and a generally inflated market had yielded more profit than she’d expected. She smiled. “Wow. Okay, William. That’s it for now.”
“Always a pleasure, Karen.”
When Karen left the bank, it was past one o’clock and she was hungry. Rain had begun to fall, and she didn’t have an umbrella, so she stepped into a nearby Le Pain Quotidien for lunch and an espresso. After ordering, she dumped her purse on the floor at her feet and pulled out her phone and a notebook to take notes on incoming emails and texts. The communal-table seating suited her, and listening to other conversations came as a welcomed distraction. She let her eyes drift all over the crowded room and became engrossed in the minutiae of strangers’ lives: one having a fight with her mother; a straight-up networking meeting right across the table—the two people obviously having just met, gripping their coffee cups.
Karen remembered the fingers clearly. Her father had allowed Betsy to go to bed at midnight, but Karen stayed up into the morning to refresh the drinks and keep the men happy, loose, the way her father wanted them. In the early hours, when the TV programs no longer interested her, Karen stared at the men’s hands from the distance of the den—the way they rubbed the green bills. She saw beauty in how they tossed those bills to the center of the polished table, and the way the bills eventually piled high like the gentlest of mountains with springlike green growth. One man would win, and his fingers would spread wide and extend over the mountain of green as he raked in his winnings. The talking ceased; there were losers. Then the men would start over, the jokes and slim chatter resuming into a renewed point of neutrality: no winners, no losers. There was now a fresh set of potential winners hovering over a naive hope. Luck always had a reset button.
Eventually the sun blasted in through the living-room windows, whose shades had been raised on the second night, as nature’s marker for the end of the games. The men meandered to the front door. As her father shepherded them out, Karen considered what the pile of bills meant to her father. He usually won big. And as he stood outside their front door, stretching his legs, getting ready to
nap through Sunday ball games, Karen tentatively touched the bills. They didn’t belong to anyone. Not yet—not until they actually nestled themselves inside her father’s wallet. This money was still the universe’s bank account. She stood in front of the green pile and worked it all out in her head. No, it really didn’t belong to her father. Karen grabbed a few bills—just enough to make her fingers tingle and her hands feel full, but not enough that her father would notice the dent in the pile. The idea emerged from her own imagination, and this pleased her. But she sensed her mother nearby, nodding with approval.
Karen’s phone buzzed with an incoming text: Lance.
Where is Pickle?
No idea
Calling u now pick up
She immediately cut Lance off. “Why are you calling me? I’m not Pickle’s babysitter.”
“Where the hell is he? I’ve been calling him on and off since Saturday.”
“Isn’t he at work with you?”
“You don’t know. Seriously?”
“Know what? Shit, Lance, I’m not a mind reader. And I’m in a meeting!” She looked around the restaurant. People were beginning to stare.
“Pickle took six weeks off.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Yeah, he asked for the time off right after that jumper incident on the bridge. I shouldn’t mention this, but he was also talking about retiring. Then I got a weird call from him on Saturday morning. He was near my house. In Queens. He didn’t sound like himself. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him ever since. He won’t answer my calls, my texts. Nothing. Obviously, you’re a last resort …”
“Fuck you.”
“Just answer me, Karen. Have you seen him?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“He seems fine. What do you want from me?”
“But you didn’t know he’d taken time off?”
She hesitated, not eager to admit being in the dark. “No … I didn’t. But Pickle doesn’t run every tiny detail of his life past me.”
“Karen, cut the bullshit. Taking off six weeks and contemplating retirement is not a detail. Look, just tell him to call me. At least now I know he’s alive.”
“You’re making too much of this. He’s fine.”
She hung up before Lance could shoot back a rejoinder, and saw that she had a new voice message from Pickle. Twenty guys at the brownstone? The plumber?
The waitress placed her food on the table. Karen shoved two crisp twenty-dollar bills into her hand and walked out.
27
PICKLE AND JUNIE LEFT THE BROWNSTONE AFTER their nap and strolled down Broadway toward Columbus Circle and the Time Warner buildings. The monolithic glass façades reflected cumulus clouds lumbering across the sky. Walking the full circumference of the towers, Pickle pointed out the perfect site planning: no matter the vantage point, angles of the buildings aligned with elegant precision. As he observed the structure with Junie, he couldn’t help but smile to himself—maybe he was his brother’s twin, after all.
Arm in arm they continued south, drifting yet steady, like a deep ocean current. During the course of an hour they bumped into much of New York City. Carriage horses on the perimeter of Central Park munching oats from buckets strapped to their noses. Single merchants wedged into one-room import shops selling crystal beads by the plastic bag. They sidled through the theatre district, shoulder to shoulder with tourists. Then Penn Station appeared, still slightly seedy and reminiscent of earlier days, but buoyed by the adjacent neon glow of Madison Square Garden.
At Twenty-Fourth Street, they hung a right and eventually found themselves near the West Side Highway. The stairway to the High Line appeared and on impulse they climbed to take in a view of the Hudson River. Pickle and Junie avoided the northern aspect and the bridge. Instead, they headed south toward the New Whitney Museum.
Simultaneously, they became ravenous and gorged on falafels sold from a pop-up cart. Then, reeking of garlic, they feigned offense at each other’s breath. Pickle pulled out his trusty breath spray and doused them both liberally. He pressed an extra tube into Junie’s hand for future such dilemmas and she stuffed it into her pocket, giggling.
They needed few words. More like grunts of acknowledgement when they saw some indigenous plant of mutual interest or spied a speck of a sailboat far off on the water. Junie peeked at him at intervals and they both laughed for no plausible reason. To laugh guilelessly; to walk with insouciance; to simply breathe the air and see without terrible, yet necessary, blinders—this was a peace Pickle had not felt for some time. Yet within the safety of their intimacy, slivers of memories pierced Pickle’s mind. He tightened his grip on Junie’s arm.
Pickle and Karen had quickly grown serious and a dinner had been arranged for Karen to meet his family. She’d pressed him for this next step as a formal indication of their commitment to one another and future together. As they sat on the bed and finished up a meal of Chinese cold noodles, they had discussed how the McArdle family might impact their love.
“So? I knew you had a brother, and now I know he’s a twin. What’s the big deal?” Karen asked with indifference.
Pickle stared into his clasped hands and wondered how to explain the impossible. “You have to understand that Stan and I really are identical.”
She laughed. “Do you also have a psychic connection? That kind of thing?”
“Don’t make fun of this—I’m serious. Most people can’t tell us apart. That’s rare when identical twins reach adulthood. They usually gain weight at different rates … or one goes bald sooner. Stuff like that. But with me and Stan … I’m just saying … some people find it unnerving.”
“I’ll brace myself.” She poked him in the belly.
“I know it sounds like I’m overblowing it …”
“Are you? Maybe you are.”
Pickle got up and walked to the window. He’d needed the view to give his mind the space to gather the right words. She’d brushed it off, too easily. But how could she know, really?
“What the hell is this about, Pickle?”
He couldn’t look at her. “What if you’re attracted to him? We look the same.”
“Pickle, love doesn’t work that way. I love you. I’ll meet your brother and that’ll be that.”
He tried to control the quiver in his voice. “I’m white-knuckling this.”
“No, not my he-man of a cop, the biggest badass on the New York City police force. I’m with you. Now. Forever.”
He felt Karen’s arms surround his waist from behind and they didn’t talk about it again.
Junie slipped her fingers into Pickle’s hand as they approached Gansevoort Street and the end of the High Line. Pickle jumped. “Your hand is freezing!”
He grabbed both her hands and blew his hot breath onto her palms.
She scrunched her nose. “Yuk! Your breath is still garlicky!”
“Those falafels were lethal. But at least we both had them. Okay. New rule: if one of us eats garlic, the other has to also. Deal?”
“Sure.” She pushed both her hands into his coat pockets, now facing him.
As much as he wanted to, Pickle wouldn’t put his arms around her. Instead, he looked down into her face. “Don’t move. I wanna stare at you for a while.”
Junie waited several seconds, then crossed her eyes. “Had enough?”
“Never.”
They left the High Line and started back uptown on Ninth Avenue. As they walked, Pickle’s phone buzzed in his back pocket. Someone had been ringing him over and over. He gave in and took a look: ten hang-up calls from Karen.
That first family gathering had been benign enough, though Pickle saw that Karen was, initially at least, unhinged by their identical looks. But he was used to that reaction and was then relieved that she seemed to recover quickly and relax. The meal went well, mostly because Karen was a great conversationalist and had a knack for making every single person in a room feel that they were the one. Even his mother took
to her and was obviously proud that she’d met Karen first at the granite yard, insisting that she was the matchmaker.
When Karen and Stan discovered that they worked in the same field, Pickle couldn’t help but notice that they’d put their heads together over coffee and dessert. The old feelings of exclusion surfaced and he feared the worst. But afterwards, when they were alone again in Karen’s apartment, Pickle was relieved that he still felt loved, and he was not aware of any shift at all from her. Except that in the coming weeks, their sex life ramped up: more frequent, more experimental. Karen became an aggressive instigator with a new desperation in her physical attraction to him. But he loved it; he was the luckiest man he knew—for a change.
A few months later, when their mother was finally dying from the gifts of the granite yard, Pickle and Stan went out to Queens for what would end up being their last time together as a family. She was drifting in and out of consciousness as they sat bedside. Realizing that she probably had less than a week left, the twins went to a diner on Queens Boulevard to discuss the logistics of their mother’s impending funeral.
Slipping into a booth, they’d ordered burgers and fries. Before the food came, though, Stan had several straight shots of whiskey. The diner, oddly, had a liquor license—probably a grandfathered holdover from a mob occupation years ago. They’d eaten slowly, and quietly agreed on some basic plans. It was simple really, because she had nothing and the brothers were the only survivors. Simple enough.
Pickle had noticed the booze that night. “Easy does it, Stan. That’s your sixth shot. Remember, I’m the law. I shouldn’t let you drive like this.”
“It helps, that’s all.”
“You mean with Mom?”
“Yeah, there’s that. But other things, too …”
Pickle let that comment sit on the table. Stan usually came out with personal disclosures in his own time; he couldn’t be pushed. But he became suspicious when Stan began arranging dozens of napkins he’d pulled out of the holder, making a complicated pinwheel design. Stan was usually able to control his tics in public, but there he was, organizing the angles, then redoing it when he detected an unacceptable flaw. Something was off.
Pickle’s Progress Page 18