Trish’s silence on the other end of the telephone punctuated her adamant disagreement with that statement, but she sensed it was useless to argue. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” she said.
Chapter 8
* * *
The telephone calls had exhausted Leigh, but they had also kept her mind occupied. However, when she turned off the lights and closed her eyes, her imagination took over, tormenting her with the horrors that might have befallen Logan. She saw him tied up in a chair being tortured by some demented stalker. . . . She saw him frozen to death in his car . . . his lips blue, eyes glazed and staring.
Unable to endure the agony of those images, Leigh tried to draw strength and hope from memories of the past. She remembered their simple wedding in front of a bored justice of the peace. Leigh had worn her best dress and a flower in her hair. Logan had stood beside her, managing to look elegant, handsome, and self-assured, despite the fact that he was wearing a threadbare suit and their combined assets amounted to eight hundred dollars.
Leigh’s grandmother hadn’t been able to scrape together the cost of an airline ticket to attend the wedding, and Logan’s mother was so opposed to the marriage that they hadn’t told her about it until the day after. But despite all that—despite their virtual poverty, the absence of friends and family, and the uncertain future ahead of them, they’d been happy and infinitely optimistic that day. They believed in each other. They believed in the power of love. For the next several years, that was all they had—each other and a great deal of love.
Images of Logan flipped through Leigh’s mind like slides in a projector . . . Logan when they met, young, too thin, but dashing, worldly, and wise beyond his years. He’d taken her to the symphony on their first date. She’d never been to the symphony, and during a pause in the music, she’d clapped too soon, thinking the piece was over. The couple in front of them had turned and given her a disdainful look that doubled her mortification, but Logan hadn’t let the incident pass. At intermission, he leaned forward and spoke to the older couple. In that polished, disarming way of his, he said congenially, “Isn’t it wonderful when we’re first introduced to something we love? Remember how good that felt?”
The couple turned in their seats, and their frowns became smiles, which they directed at Leigh. “I didn’t like the symphony at first,” the man confided to her. “My parents had season tickets and they dragged me along. It took quite a while to grow on me.” The couple spent intermission with Leigh and Logan and insisted on buying them a glass of champagne to celebrate Leigh’s first symphony.
Leigh soon discovered that Logan had a particular way of dealing with snobby, standoffish, critical people, a way that disarmed them and converted them into friends and admirers. Logan’s mother often said that “there is no substitute for good breeding,” and Logan had it in abundance—a natural, unaffected kind of good breeding.
For their second date, Logan suggested Leigh choose how they spend the evening. She decided on a little known off-Broadway play by a new young playwright named Jason Solomon. Logan closed his eyes and dozed off during the third act.
Because Leigh was a drama student at New York University, she’d been able to get backstage passes. “What did you think of the play?” Jason Solomon asked them when Leigh finished the introductions.
“I loved it,” Leigh said, partly out of courtesy and partly out of her all-encompassing love of everything related to the theater. In truth, she thought most of the writing was excellent, but the acting was only fair, and the lighting and direction were poor.
Satisfied, Jason looked to Logan for more praise. “What did you think of it?”
“I don’t know much about theater,” Logan replied. “Leigh is the expert on that. She’s the leading drama student at NYU. If my mother had been here tonight, you could have asked her opinion. It would be more meaningful than mine.”
Instantly insulted by Logan’s lack of enthusiasm, Jason lifted his chin and eyed Logan scornfully down the length of his nose. “And you think your mother’s opinion would carry weight because she’s—what? A successful playwright? A theater critic?”
“No, because among her circle of friends there are several influential patrons of the arts.”
Leigh didn’t realize it at the time, but Logan was dangling the slim possibility of a financial backer under Jason’s nose. All Leigh knew was that the playwright became slightly ingratiating, but was still resentful. “Bring your mother to my play,” he said. “Let me know when you’re planning to come, and I’ll see that you have front row tickets.”
As they left, Leigh said, “Do you think your mother would enjoy his play?”
Grinning, Logan put his arm around her shoulders. It was the first time he had touched her in a personal way. “I don’t think my mother would set foot in this theater unless the city of New York was on fire and this was the only fireproof building.”
“Then why did you let Jason Solomon think she might?”
“Because you’re a gifted actress and he’s a playwright who is badly in need of people who can actually act. I thought you might want to drop in here next week, if the play doesn’t close before then, and volunteer your services.”
Warmed by his praise and distracted by his touch, Leigh nevertheless felt compelled to point out the truth: “You have no way of knowing whether I can actually act.”
“Yes, I do. Your roommate told me you’re ‘gifted.’ In fact, she said you’re some kind of prodigy and you’re the envy of the entire drama school.”
“Even if all of that were true—which it isn’t—Jason Solomon wouldn’t hire me. I don’t have any professional credentials.”
Logan chuckled. “From the looks of this place and the quality of the acting, he can’t afford to hire anybody with professional credentials. And, I said ‘volunteer’ your services—free of charge. After that, you’ll have credentials.”
It wasn’t that easy to break into the business; it didn’t work that way; but Leigh was already falling in love with Logan Manning, and so she didn’t want to debate with him about anything that night.
Outside the theater, he hailed a taxi, and when the driver was absorbed with midtown traffic, Logan put his arm around her shoulders again, drew her close, and kissed her for the first time. It was an amazing kiss, filled with all the deep infatuation Leigh was feeling herself, an expert kiss that left her feeling not only dazed and overheated, but also uneasily aware that in this, as in most everything else, Logan Manning was a lot more experienced and worldly than she was.
He walked her to the dingy apartment building on Great Jones Street, where she shared a one-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor. Outside her apartment, he kissed her again, longer and more thoroughly this time. By the time he let her go, Leigh felt so euphoric that she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. She waited just inside her apartment, listening to him bounding down the flights of stairs to the street level; then she opened the door and dreamily walked down the same stairs he’d descended.
Logan hadn’t taken her to get anything to eat after the play, which was an omission she would wonder about later, but at that moment all she knew for certain was that she was deliriously happy and ravenously hungry. The grocery market on the corner was only a few doors away, and it was open all night, so Leigh went there.
Angelini’s Market was narrow, but very deep, with creaking linoleum floors, terrible lighting, and the pervasive smell of kosher pickles and corned beef emanating from a deli counter that occupied the entire left wall. The right wall was crammed with shelves of canned and boxed goods from floor to ceiling. Wooden crates of fresh produce and cases of soft drinks were stacked in the center, leaving only a narrow aisle on either side to reach the refrigerators and freezers at the rear of the store. Despite the market’s unprepossessing appearance, the Italian pastas and meats in the deli section were wonderful and so were the small homemade frozen pizzas.
Leigh took the last shrimp pizza from the freezer a
nd put it into the store’s microwave; then she went to the crates of produce, looking for pears.
“Did you find your shrimp pizza?” Mrs. Angelini called from behind the cash register at the deli counter.
“Yes, I’m heating some of it right now. I got the last one in the freezer,” Leigh said as she located a wooden box of pears. “I always get the last one—I guess I’m just lucky,” she added, but she was thinking of Logan, not pizza.
“Not so lucky,” Mrs. Angelini replied. “I only make one shrimp pizza at a time. I make them for you. You’re the only one who asks for them.”
Leigh looked up, a pear in each hand. “You do? That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Angelini.”
“Don’t bother looking through those pears; we got better in the back. Falco will bring them.” Raising her voice, she called to Falco in Italian.
A few moments later, Falco emerged from the storeroom, wearing a stained apron over his shirt and jeans and carrying a small bag. He walked past Leigh without a glance and gave his mother the bag, from which she extracted two large pears. “These are for you,” Mrs. Angelini told Leigh. “These are the best of all.”
Leigh retrieved her heated pizza from the microwave, slid it back onto its cardboard dish, and covered it with its original plastic wrapping; then she headed for the cash register, where she properly admired pears so shiny that they looked polished. “You’re always so nice to me, Mrs. Angelini,” she said with a smile, trying very hard to convey some sort of warmth and cheer to the long-suffering woman. Mrs. Angelini’s oldest son, Angelo, had been killed in a gang fight long before Leigh moved to the neighborhood. Her youngest son, Dominick, was a thoroughly likeable, gregarious young man who used to help out in the store all the time, but then, one day, he disappeared. Mrs. Angelini said Dominick was away at school, but Leigh’s roommate—a native New Yorker—said that in their neighborhood “away at school,” meant “away at Spofford,” New York’s Juvenile Detention Center, or away at one of the state prisons.
Soon after Dominick “left for school,” Falco started working in the store, but the only thing Falco Angelini had in common with his outgoing, younger brother was a record—and not at Spofford, either. Based on what Leigh’s roommate overheard in the store one day, Falco had spent several years in Attica for killing someone.
Even if Leigh hadn’t known that, Falco would have made her extremely uneasy. Silent and forbidding, and over six feet tall, he moved through the store like a towering specter of impending doom, his expression ice cold and distant, his powerful shoulders seeming to crowd the narrow aisles. In jarring contrast to his thick black eyebrows and full beard, his skin had a ghostly pallor that Leigh’s roommate said was from being in prison. His voice—on the rare occasions when he spoke—was hard and brusque. He made Leigh so uneasy that she actually avoided looking at him whenever possible, but there were times when she caught him watching her, and it made her even more uncomfortable.
Mrs. Angelini, however, seemed almost comically unaware of Falco’s fierce features and intimidating demeanor. She called orders to him like a drill sergeant and referred to him affectionately and possessively as “my Falco,” and “my caro” and “my nipote.” Leigh figured that since she had already lost two of her boys, it was probably natural that Mrs. Angelini would treasure the remaining one, regardless of his very obvious character flaws and social shortcomings.
As if Mrs. Angelini knew what Leigh was thinking, she smiled sadly as she counted out Leigh’s change. “If God had given me a choice,” she confessed with a nod toward the front of the store, where Falco was stocking shelves with canned goods, “I think I would have asked Him for daughters. Daughters are easier to raise.”
“I’m not sure most mothers would agree with you,” Leigh joked uneasily. She was uncomfortable with the topic, sad for Mrs. Angelini’s sadness, and eternally disconcerted by Falco Angelini’s presence. Picking up her purchases, Leigh politely said good-bye to Mrs. Angelini, then she called a hesitant good-bye to Falco—not because she wanted to speak to him, but because she was a little afraid of snubbing—and therefore offending—him. Leigh was from a quiet, small town in Ohio, and she had absolutely no experience with ex-convicts, but it seemed to her that deliberately offending an ex-convict—particularly one who’d been in prison for killing somebody—was probably an unwise, even dangerous, mistake.
She was preoccupied with those thoughts as she walked out of the market and started down the street, so she was taken completely by surprise when two menacing-looking young men materialized from the shadows and stepped purposefully into her path. “Well, well, look what came out of the market,” one of them said as he reached into his jacket pocket. “You look good enough to peel and eat.”
A knife! He had a knife! Leigh froze like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Her one idiotic thought was that she mustn’t be killed now, not now when she’d just found Logan. Suddenly, Falco Angelini erupted from the market behind her and began taunting the youth holding the long, thin blade. “Do I see a knife?” he jeered. “Do you know how to use it, shithead?” Opening his arms wide, Angelini invited Leigh’s would-be attacker to lunge at him. “You can’t earn your bones cutting up little girls. Try cutting up a grown man. Cut me up. Come on, asshole, try it!”
Mesmerized, Leigh saw the second youth pull a knife out of his pocket just as the first one lunged. Angelini sidestepped the attack, grabbed the assailant’s arm and yanked it back over his shoulder with a sickening bone-breaking sound that sent the youth stumbling backward into the alley, howling in pain. The second attacker was more skilled, less rushed, than his companion, and Leigh watched in paralyzed horror as he circled Angelini in a half-crouch, his blade flashing beneath the streetlamp. Suddenly the blade shot upward, Angelini stepped back, and the older boy screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his groin. “You sonofabitch!” he whimpered, glaring at Angelini, trying to roll onto his side and get up.
While he was trying to get to his feet, Falco grabbed Leigh’s arm and yanked her unceremoniously backward, into the doorway of the market. She stayed there, frozen, until both youths had taken off down the street and then disappeared into an alley. “We—we—we should call the police,” she stammered finally.
Angelini scowled at her and pulled off the apron he’d been wearing. “Why?”
“Be . . . because we might be able to pick out their pictures. I’m not sure I could do it alone, but between the two of us, we might be able to identify them.”
“All punks look alike to me,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t tell one from another.”
Rebuffed, Leigh leaned forward and peered apprehensively in the direction of her apartment building. “I don’t see any sign of them. They’re probably a mile away by now.” She glanced awkwardly at Angelini, trying to hide her fear of walking home alone. “Thank you for coming to my rescue,” she said, and when he didn’t reply, she stepped out of the doorway.
To her vast relief, he stepped forward, too. “I’ll walk you home.” He waited a moment for her to react and mistook her nervous silence for a dismissal. “Maybe you’d rather walk alone,” he said, turning away.
Completely unnerved, Leigh actually clutched his arm to pull him with her. “No, wait! I’d like you to walk with me! I just didn’t want to cause you any more trouble, Falco.”
Her involuntary gesture seemed to amuse him, or perhaps it was what she’d said that amused him. “You haven’t caused me any trouble.”
“Other than almost getting you killed back there.”
“I was not in any danger of being killed by those—” Whatever profanity he’d had in mind, he checked the words.
Encouraged by the communication they’d established, Leigh said, “I really think we should call the police.”
“Suit yourself, but leave me out of it. I don’t have time to waste on cops.”
“How do you expect the police to protect us if citizens won’t cooperate? Among other things, it’s every cit
izen’s duty . . .”
He shot her a look filled with such withering disdain she felt like sinking into the sidewalk. “What planet are you from?”
“I’m from Ohio,” Leigh replied, so completely off balance that she could not form a better reply.
“That explains it,” he said flatly, but for the second time in the last few minutes, she thought she heard a glimmer of amusement in his voice.
He walked her to her building, up four flights of stairs to her apartment door, and left her there.
HER NARROW ESCAPE from violence that night put a permanent end to Leigh’s solitary nocturnal trips to Angelini’s Market, but she continued to go there during the day for her groceries. On her next visit, she told Mrs. Angelini about her brush with danger, but instead of being proud of Falco, the poor woman was upset. “Ever since he was a little boy, he finds trouble and trouble finds him.”
A little taken aback, Leigh looked around for her rescuer, and spotted him just inside the storeroom at the back of the store, stacking boxes. “I wanted to thank you properly,” she announced, coming up behind him. He stiffened, as if startled; then he turned slowly and looked down at her, his black brows drawing into an impatient scowl, his thick black beard concealing the rest of his expression. “For what?” he said shortly.
He seemed somehow more distant and daunting than ever, his body taller and more massive than before, but Leigh was determined not to let any of that faze her. Ex-convict or not, he had risked his life to save hers, and then he had walked her home to make certain she got there safely. That was true gallantry, she thought, and as the word popped into her mind it crossed her lips. “For being so gallant,” she explained.
“Gallant?” he repeated ironically. “Is that what you think I am?”
Despite Leigh’s determination to stand her ground and not be thwarted in expressing her gratitude, she took a tiny, cautious step backward before she nodded emphatically. “Yes, I do.”
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