Sunburn (28 page)

He'd been so nice that the Shirt felt almost bad as he dumped the rest of the flaxseed into Bo's half of the meatball mixture and worked in the oily pellets with his fingers. The arthritic chihuahua roused itself at the familiar smell and did a jointless little pirouette next to the garbage can.

———

The ceiling fan turned slowly above Joey and Sandra's dining room table; the blades sliced through the steam that wafted up from the giant bowl of fusilli and shrimp and the tails of langostinos.

Arty held out a chair for Debbi. He smelled her hair as she settled in, but his mind was not at peace.

When everyone was seated, Vincente, regal in his smoking jacket, raised his glass and said, "
Salud
." Five arms stretched across the table; glasses clinked.

Heaping bowls of pasta were handed round. Arty thought about the first time he'd eaten here. Out of nervousness, he'd had three helpings of linguine, and everyone had offered an opinion on his appetite and his physique, talked about him like he wasn't there—or as if he'd always been there.

Now salad was making its way around the table.

The ghostwriter, his insides stuffed with secrets, felt no appetite. He tonged a few leaves onto his side plate. Joey said to him, "Take more. There's avocado at the bottom. You like avocado."

Debbi shot a quick wry look at Arty; this was just the kind of thing the two of them would smile about together. Arty felt her glance but was too knotted up to return it. "How do you know I like avocado?" he said to Joey.

"Come on," the other man said. "I don't know what you like by now? I don't see? It's like family already. Family, ya know who likes avocado, who hates onions, who peppers make 'im burp. Ya just know."

So Arty dug out some avocado.

There was a silence which then phased into a rumble as the air got ready to carry sound. Vincente said softly, "Family changes. It changes. I didn't used ta think it did, I thought it was the only thing that stayed the same. I was wrong—what else is new? The feelings change, the boundaries, like, they ain't so solid like I thought. People leave. People come in. It changes, yeah."

He blinked from underneath his awning brows. He looked through the steam that wafted from the pasta bowl, saw Joey and Sandra, Arty and Debbi. They were staring at him, and only when he saw them staring did he realize he'd spoken aloud. They looked worried, they looked sad for him. It didn't do for people to be sad at table, and Vincente tried to smile. To his surprise, a small smile came easily, he felt in some way unburdened. "It changes, yeah," he said again. "I ain't sayin' that's bad."

Bo the gentlemanly thug dabbed his thick lips on a napkin and patted his distended tummy. "Terrific meatballs, Bert," he said. "Howdya make em?"

The old mobster, his own small stomach pressing lightly against the bone buttons of his shirt, got up to clear the table that was squeezed into a shadowy alcove with a hissing radiator. "Ya gonna tell me why you're keepin' me heah?" he said.

"We been tru dat," said Bo. "Ya know I can't."

"Then I ain't givin' up my recipe." He ran dishes up his arm and headed for the kitchen. His dog followed stiffly behind, paws ticking on the floor.

"Ya puttin' up coffee?" Bo asked him.

Bert put the dishes in the sink. There was a clock on the wall; it said ten after nine. With the dog, it usually took about an hour for things to happen with the flaxseed. Of course, Bo was a lot bigger than the dog. Then again he'd had a lot more meatballs. Bert didn't know if it would make a difference either way. He didn't hurry on the coffee; eleven minutes were gone by the time the brown foam dribbled out the spout of the espresso pot.

Bo had moved to the living room by then. He was sitting in front of the television, but there was no sound on, only pictures. The Shirt handed him his coffee. Bo said, "So Bert, ya like it down in Florida?"

"Love it," said the old man absently. He'd settled into a blue vinyl chair from which he could see the kitchen clock.

"Ya drive New Yawk-Miami," Bo informed him, "the state a Florida is like one-third the ride. Lotta people don't realize at."

Bert reached down for his dog, put the brittle creature in his lap. "Big state," he said.

Bo slurped espresso, pictured the maps, the mileage charts in little boxes. "Big state," he agreed.

Bert smiled blandly, peeked into the kitchen. He figured that in forty-one minutes, give or take, things would start to rearrange themselves inside his captor's belly.

———

With some difficulty, Gino Delgatto, hunkered low and squinting over the steering wheel of his rented T-Bird, found the narrow and ill-marked entrance to Nassau Lane.

By the moon and the streetlamps he recognized the cottage that the Fabretti thugs had described. There were no lights on inside. He drove to the end of the short street, turned around in the cramped cul de sac. Stray cats fled from the panning headlights that lit up garbage cans, fallen coconuts, bundled cuttings of pruned shrubbery.

He parked across the street and one house up from Arty's place. He sat quietly a moment, summoning concentration like any workman with a job to do. He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, thin and supple as condoms. He checked the pistol in his right-hand pocket, the small flashlight in his left. He got out of the car and walked past the close-together Christmas palms to his victim's door.

The screen was torn; a corner of it hung down and shook like a brittle leaf in the light breeze. The front door lock had not yet been repaired. Gino tried the knob; it turned easily.

He stepped inside, his right hand in his pocket, and closed the door behind him. He took out the little flashlight and looked around the living room. He saw the mismatched furniture with its loose strands of splintered ancient rattan. He saw the cheap table with its metal legs, the rough rug with its unraveling edges. "Place is a fuckin' dump," he murmured aloud. "Guy's a fuckin' nobody." He moved toward a low bench that held a telephone and an answering machine and casually yanked their wires out of the wall.

He poked his head into the narrow kitchen, saw two unwashed coffee mugs in the sink.

He slipped into the bedroom, let his light explore it like a doctor's shameless fingers. Drawers had been hastily slammed shut with sleeves and cuffs still poking out of them. The bed had not been made, the light quilt was ranged with hills and valleys. "A fuckin' nobody and a fuckin' slob," said Gino. He saw a rickety chair with a couple of T-shirts draped over its arms. He saw a pink scarf on the back of the chair.

He continued his circuit around the room, found a cheesy lamp, a stack of dog-eared paperbacks, then suddenly yanked his light back to the scarf. He stared at it. It gleamed a lewd and fleshy rose against the darkness all around it. No, he thought, it's impossible. Heavily, he walked around the bed. He picked up the scarf in his obscene gloved hand. He held it tight against his face and smelled it, then let it drop as though it carried some terrible contagion. "That fucking slut," he said. "That two-timing skinny-ass whore."

He scrunched his fat face into a mug of wronged trust. He started to pace but there was nowhere much to go. He moved back to the chair, picked up the guilty swatch of silk, and started tearing it to shreds. It was light cloth but it was hard to tear; Gino sweated as he ripped it. The fabric made a desolate rending sound as it was destroyed. Charged pink tatters fell from Gino's hand, he had to kick them off his pants leg.

At length, wet in his clothes and breathing hard, he sat in the dark in the bedroom chair to wait. Outside, breezes rustled the palm fronds, smells of jasmine and salted dust came through the open window. Gino's gun was in his lap, his gloved fingers stuck to it like gauze to a scab. Patiently, he waited for Arty Magnus, the nobody who had to go, and for that fucking tramp whose name he wouldn't say, if she happened to be with him.

"You like him, don't you?" Sandra said.

She and Debbi were working elbow to elbow in the kitchen, rinsing dishes, slipping them into the racks of the dishwasher. Water was running in the sink; the sound was companionable, intimate.

"I like him a lot," said Debbi.

"It shows."

Debbi flushed at this; her sunburned forehead got redder at the roots of her red hair. Like everyone with a secret, everyone with a new emotion, she wanted to probe it, tease herself with it, bring herself to the delicious cusp of going public.

Sandra put silverware into its basket. "Maybe the two of you wanna go for a ride or something. Look at the ocean, go downtown. You're welcome to the car."

Debbi looked down, her long lashes threw faint fan-shaped shadows on her cheeks. She could not hold back a cockeyed little smile. She knew she was close to spilling the beans as usual, but she couldn't help herself, it felt too good. "If we go for a ride," she said, "we'll go on Arty's bike."

"The two of you?" said Sandra. "Together?"

Debbi bit her lower lip and nodded.

Sandra dried her hands and turned off the water. In the sudden quiet, crickets and tree frogs could be heard. "That's so nice," she said. "Romantic."

Debbi glanced up at the ceiling, gave a shrug that brought her shoulders almost to her ears, a shrug so big it was almost goofy. "Romantic," she said. "Yeah, it is."

———

" 'Nother big state?" said Bo, the thug who liked geography. "Virginia. People don't realize. Plus ya got them fuckin' tolls in Richmond."

Bert nodded, stroked his dog, glanced through the kitchen doorway at the clock.

"But wait a second," Bo went on. "You flew up, didn't ya?"

Bert nodded again, plucked a short white dog hair from his trousers.

"It's abrupt, like, when ya fly," said Bo. His scarred face scrunched up in disapproval. "Da things ya miss."

Bert nodded a third time.

"So like all of a sudden, boom, you're in New Yawk. I mean like, for you, Bert, how's it feel, you're dropped all of a sudden in New Yawk again?"

Bert reached up, tugged the stringy flesh beneath his chin. He thought about the oriental guy in earmuffs shelling peas at what used to be Perretti's.

He thought about working the phone with nobody to call. "Lemme put it dis way, Bo. Y'ever seen a car up on blocks?"

Bo didn't answer right away. He made a strange face, squirmed a little bit, reached down to straighten out his pants. Bert couldn't tell if he was thinking hard or if he was uncomfortable, if maybe his tubes were starting to shift and gurgle.

———

Arty and Debbi walked across the lawn in front of Joey Goldman's house. The moment seemed to call for holding hands, but Arty's arms hung limp at his sides, and the blandness in his posture sent a small dart of disappointment through Debbi. Had her new lover already lost the habit of aimless affection? Was he in fact no more romantic than other men she'd known?

When they reached the place where the writer's old fat-tire bike leaned against a palm, Debbi thought it would be wonderful if he took her in his arms. He did not. He only dropped his spiral notebook in the basket, then steadied the bicycle for her to climb aboard. Saddened and suddenly uncertain, she did.

They crunched along the gravel driveway, headed for the beach. The bicycle's wide tires made soft sucking sounds as the treads rolled off the asphalt. Wind tossed the enormous pendant fronds of the royal palms; they billowed up like lifted skirts. Debbi shifted her thin behind on the crosspiece of the frame, leaned back against Arty as he pedaled, but no longer felt quite safe with her flank against his chest.

At County Beach, they left the road and swerved onto a narrow zigzag path that wound through shrubs and sand and picnic tables. A gibbous moon hung high above the Florida Straits, it threw a jagged beam that rose and fell with the ripples in the water and tracked them as they rode. By an ancient slatted bench, Arty stopped the bike and said, "We have to talk."

They sat, neither one at ease enough to settle back. Arty said, "I don't know where to start."

Debbi said nothing. She didn't know how to help him start and she didn't like what she imagined was coming. Would it be the no-commitment speech? The old-girl-friend-in-the-wings routine?

"I'm writing a book with Vincente," Arty blurted. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone. I haven't told anyone. But it seems like everyone's found out. Those FBI guys—that's why they're hassling me."

Debbi's eyebrows pulled together. This was not what she expected the talk to be about, and it was a lot to take in all at once. "I don't think I understand—"

"My notebook," Arty said. "They want my notebook. They seem to think it's full of things they can use against him."

"Is it?"

Arty threw his hands up, let them slap down against his thighs. "Who knows what they can use these days? He's on record that there's an organization, they make their own rules, and he's the head of it. Smart prosecutor, that might be enough to jail him till he dies."

"But they can't make you—"

Arty looked out at the water. It was placid, gorgeous. But life could turn impossible in beautiful places too. "Debbi," he said. "Debbi. They're threatening me. They're threatening you, if I don't cooperate. I don't know how much longer I can stall. This thing with your probation—"

She yanked in a quick breath, bit her lower lip, pulled her eyes away. Shame and frustration scraped at her insides. She thought about how hard it was to change a life, how tough to escape the old neighborhood. The neighborhood—she used to think it was made of buildings and street signs and fire hydrants; now she understood it was really built of old mistakes, old humiliations, everything that marked you, if only in your own mind, everything that shrank your world and held you back. "Arty, I guess I should have told you. There's been so little time—"

She reached up, grabbed her red hair in her fists. "These secrets! These fucking secrets, Arty. They're really not worth going crazy over. . . . Listen, I have a long sad history of picking Mr. Wrong. Maybe a shrink could tell me why I did it, maybe it's just the guys I met. Ya know, neighborhood guys. A year or so ago I dated a guy named Mikey. Seemed nice at first. They all do, right? Well it turns out he's a lunatic, a cokehead, a major dealer. A couple of months, I do the typical stupid thing, I try to look the other way. Then finally I've had enough, I go over to his place to break it off, and that's the day he's busted. He's away for five years.