In damp socks he padded over a lemon-carpeted living room to a bathroom of old black tile. He peeled off his jacket and draped it over the curtain rod, the pale pink shower curtain billowing, the sash of the frosted-glass window raised a few inches on the rain-swept back alley.
Back out in the living room, clothes clinging, he took a good look around. Prints on the wall, the Maxell-tape guy being blown back into his chair, a couple kissing on a street in Paris. Her diplomas, high school and college. She had a decent Sony stereo set on a steel-wire hardware-store shelf unit, some CDs spilled around it. A cozy breakfast table stood outside the kitchenette, half of it taken up by mail, a checkbook, and statements in sliced envelopes, banded together. The centerpiece was a large wineglass with a small pink flower floating in it, which Doug looked at twice, believing it to be the glass from their night in and out of the Tap.
She returned from her bedroom and made to toss him a clean, mocha towel-- then pulled it back, holding it hostage. "Why haven't you called me?"
He was seeping into her carpet. "Because I'm an idiot. Because I'm a jerk."
"You
are
a jerk." She tossed him the towel.
He buried his face in it, hiding a moment, then went to work on his hair. He blotted uselessly at his pants, water running off him. "I probably shouldn't have come."
"Unannounced? Dripping rain all over my place? No, probably not. Now sit down."
"You sure?"
"Sit."
He eased down into the soft tan leather sofa, trying to minimize the damage. She sat on the coffee table opposite him, gripping its edge, bare knees facing him.
"Are you coming from a wedding or something?"
"I am."
"Yours?"
He smiled only at the thought of it. "No."
"Your date dumped you?"
"She sure would have, if I'd've brought one."
She studied his eyes, finding no lie in them, then wondering about the accuracy of her own internal polygraph. "Look at my hectic Sunday afternoon. What are you doing going to weddings alone? Why haven't you
called
?"
But before he could answer, she got to her feet and thrust out her hands, stopping everything. "You know what? Don't even answer. It doesn't matter. Because I'm past all this. I am past the dating games, the waiting games."
"I'm not playing games-- "
"I finally figured out that the reason my life feels so out of my control is because I haven't
taken
control. Of it. And that is something I have to change."
"Look, don't-- can I tell you something? This is how messed up I am. Waiting outside your door just now-- every time I'm about to see you, I tell myself, 'She's not going to be as pretty as you remember her. She's not going to be as sweet. She's not going to be as great.' And every time I'm wrong."
She looked at the floor and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I guess you're entitled to your opinion," she said, showing some game.
"I try to tear you down in my head. Nothing against you-- just reducing my expectations. Suffering through the breakup without even... is that crazy?"
"No," she said. "No, I know all about that."
He felt himself puddling on the sofa. "I'm sorry for showing up like this. It's stupid. I'll leave whenever you want me to."
She thought about that, then held out her hand for the towel as though the time to go was now-- then threw the towel over his head and went at his hair vigorously with both hands. When she was done, she dropped down onto the sofa next to him, him pulling the towel down around his neck.
She said, "I saw your picture yesterday."
That stopped him cold. The light smile on her face baffled him.
"God, you look stricken," she said. "It wasn't
that
bad of a picture. On the wall at the Boys and Girls Club. You playing hockey."
Doug had imagined mug shots, surveillance photos. "Jesus. Right."
"A local hall of fame they have there."
Now he was squirming. "Please."
"It was a Bruins uniform you had on."
"Providence Bruins. Like minor leagues."
"You were drafted? You played professional hockey?"
"There was a time, yes."
She waited. "And?"
He was feeling her air-conditioning now, his shirt and pants going cold. "It didn't work out."
She read the disappointment on his face. "Well-- you gave it your all, right?"
"Actually, it was worse than that. I got kicked out. I got into a fight with another guy on my own team."
She was almost smiling. "On your own team?"
"This guy was better than me. I can say that now. Not much better... but I had never faced that before, someone with stronger natural skills. He was a shooter, all finesse, and sort of expected me to run interference for him. Me to take the hits and the penalties, him to get the shots on goal and the glory. And the coach supported this, everything about the team geared toward grooming this guy for his pro debut. What ignited me that day, I don't remember. An accumulation of things. Both teams tried to pull me off him. I don't even think he'd ever been in a hockey fight before in his life. The only shot he got in on me was as they were dragging me back. Kicked me with his skate."
She reached for the scar that split his left eyebrow. "Is that how you got...?"
"Yeah. Marked for life."
He remembered showing up hungover for practice the next day, and the coach coming up to him in the locker room, telling him not to lace up. Then the long walk upstairs to the general manager's office, his agent waiting inside. The office windows looked down over the ice, and Doug watched the team practice as the GM waved around an unlit Tiparillo and berated him. Dollars and sense-- how much Doug had cost the franchise, how little sense he had shown. And still, they weren't shit-canning him completely.
Take some time off, get your fucking head on straight, kid. Keep up with your workouts and stay out of trouble.
They would have taken him back in a couple of months. But Doug returned home pissed off, back in the Town with a will to self-destruct. Getting loaded with Jem, pulling the nail-gun job. His agent wrote him a letter, something about the possibility of starting over in Hungary or Poland or somewhere. Doug never even called the guy back.
Good,
he thought, all this flashing through his head with Claire sitting right there next to him.
Remember it all.
Don't blow this shot too.
"You know," she said, "when I first opened the door, I thought you'd been drinking."
Doug smiled, sad but determined, thinking of the wedding toast near-miss and shaking his head. "Not drinking. Thinking."
"I thought maybe you thought you were showing up here for a booty call."
"Ha!"
he snorted. "How could you even... oh, man. No. I mean, unless you're into it."
Not even a courtesy chuckle. He was only 70 percent joking, but her eyes effectively told the other 30 percent to take a hike. "What
did
you come here for?" she asked.
The difficulty of that question sat Doug back. "This wedding reception I left? It was more like a farewell party. My own."
She nodded without understanding, needing more.
"Let me ask you this," he said. "Am I your boyfriend?"
She smiled at the word. " 'Boyfriend?' I haven't had a boyfriend since sixth grade."
"Am I your guy? Could I be?"
"I don't know." She didn't flinch, eyes near and unblinking. "Could you?"
The question hung in the air between them, her eyes inviting him to close the gap. He did-- kissing her for as long as he could hold his breath-- then he sat back, his question answered. "That's what I came here for."
24
The Surv
O
N A SURV, MURPHY'S LAW reigns: forgetting your camera is the only way to guarantee that something photo-worthy will happen.
Tailing Desmond Elden that drizzling Sunday afternoon brought them to St. Francis de Sales at the top of the real Bunker Hill (the famous monument actually stood atop Breed's Hill; Dino assured Frawley it was a long story) for a May wedding, with Magloan, the car thief, apparently the groom. Frawley decided against risking entry, waiting curbside with Dino until it was over, then falling in with the attendees making their way down to the Joseph P. Kennedy Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a stand-alone brick building located at the foot of the hill, behind the Foodmaster.
Dino stayed parked out on School Street until the last of the stragglers arrived, then crept into the parking lot, tucking his Taurus in deep next to a pale blue Escort with a photographer's name spelled out in gold stickers on the side window. From there they had a decent side view of the entrance, wipers clearing away the drizzle once every fifteen seconds or so. Beyond the VFW post, the city stood high and wide, looming like a wall.
Dino said, "They say rain is good luck for a wedding."
"You had hail, I take it."
"Worst drought in fifty years. When are you gonna get busy, get yourself some wedded bliss?"
"When I can afford it."
Frawley had spoken to Claire Keesey a few times since their pre-date, once setting plans, to meet for drinks at the Rattlesnake, but the late-afternoon robbing of an Abington bank-- a crackhead counter-jumper so junkie-sick and nervous he'd puked on his own gun-- forced Frawley to cancel on her at the last minute. Judging by her remarks, it seemed that the piano mover was out of the picture.
The wipers slicked the rain-smeared windshield clean, Frawley watching a guy in black exit the post, jogging down the front steps to the street without umbrella or coat.
"Your generation," said Dino, smiling. "So cautious. So afraid of marriage. But then somebody suggests skydiving, and everyone's fighting over parachutes."
Frawley said, "Dean, hit these wipers again."
Dino did. Frawley saw the guy in the tuxedo, now halfway across the street, turned and talking to a jacketless guy standing outside the door.
"That's MacRay," said Frawley.
"Which? On the road?"
"I think. And the other one, that's Coughlin."
Dino rolled down his window but the rain drowned out the conversation. It didn't look like an argument, but it didn't look like
See ya soon
either. MacRay continued away across the street, Coughlin watching him a few moments before ducking back inside.
"What do you think?" said Dino.
Frawley watched MacRay cut into the mall parking lot outside the 99 Restaurant, shoulders hunched against the rain. "Don't know. Home is that way." He pointed to the hill behind them.
"Could be just ducking out for a Certs. What are we doing here, anyway? It's not like they're gonna knock over their own wedding reception."
Frawley was pulling on his red rain shell. "You take off, Dean. I'll jump here."
"Sure now?"
"Navy yard's in that general direction anyway, so I'll see where he goes, then get home myself."
"No argument from me," said Dino.
Frawley stood out of the Taurus-- rain always looks harder than it feels-- and jogged toward the mall parking lot, wishing it was Coughlin he was following, reading the pale-eyed bumper as the likely ringleader. MacRay was hard to miss in his tuxedo, and Frawley stayed well back, following him across the lot to the next street, climbing a side road past the skating rink.
Near the five-street junction, Frawley felt something happening. He sensed a convergence but pushed it aside until he neared Packard Street and alarms started ringing in his head. Still it was too much to accept, even as MacRay stopped outside one of the doors. Frawley watched from the corner, unable to tell from that angle which building was Claire Keesey's.
He felt a lift when MacRay changed his mind, starting away-- but MacRay was only pacing, and Frawley watched from the corner, standing under a down-spout, roof runoff pattering his shoulders.
MacRay ran up the stoop again and pressed the bell. The door opened. Words were exchanged, MacRay was invited inside, and the door closed.
Frawley splashed up the sidewalk and climbed the same three stone steps, finding the bell buttons, noticing immediately the one that was wet. The name next to it read KEESEY, C.
He went blind for a minute, standing there. She had invited MacRay inside-- one of the thieves who had knocked over her bank and taken her for a ride. And Frawley had cleared her. He had excluded her, beyond a doubt. He had been trying to
date
her.
