Park Lane South, Queens (27 page)

“Ah!”

“The end of summer tournament.”

“Right. How could I have forgotten?”

“And you know your mom. She didn't like to go off and leave you, what with all the shenanigans going on …”

“Gee, you shouldn't have bothered. I'm fine.”

Mrs. Dixon looked hurt.

“I really do appreciate your stopping off, though.”

Mrs. Dixon shielded her eyes from the sun. “Perhaps you're not alone?”

Nosy old biddy, thought Claire. “Well, I do have the Mayor here. Ha, ha.” They laughed together through the screen.

“Well then. I'll be on my way …”

“I'm just leaving, too,” Claire assured her.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Claire watched her sturdy frame in sturdy summer shoes retreat through the yard and past the rabbits. “Five minutes with a woman like that,” Claire said to the Mayor, “reinforces one's belief in making hay while the sun shines.”

The Mayor grinned.

“Now listen. I'm going to take my shower and get going up to Kew Gardens or Forest Hills or wherever this garage is. I know you're going to be annoyed at me but you can't come with me this time. Now don't look at me like that. Someone's got to stay and watch the house.”

Certainly, thought the Mayor. But he could do it just as well from across the street at Natasha's.

“You remember what happened last time,” she poked him in his tender, portly ribs. “Oh, come on. Don't look like that. I'll be back this afternoon.”

But four-thirty found her sitting slumped and even somewhat content over some fabulous white coffee and a peach-kiwi tart. She was up in the Gardens, right across the square from the Forest Hills Inn. It was as green and lush as only old money could make it. Ivy climbed white trellises and mauve stucco walls encased old lead paned windows. The cobblestone road encircled a caretaker's island. On one side were the steep yellow steps of the Long Island Railroad Station and on the other the sleepy Tudor shops. You really thought you were in Nymphenbürg or Bogenhausen.

Claire gazed morosely into her empty cup. The last time she'd had a cappuccino had been with Johnny, down in Sheepshead Bay. “What is it you're looking for?” he'd asked her. Kindly he'd said it, but directly, grazing her fingertips with his own the minute Red had left the table. He'd caught her off guard. “Plenty,” she'd said just for something to say. “Oh,” he'd sighed. “You see, with me it's different. I don't want too much. Just a boring, old-fashioned life if I can swing it. Like a family,” he'd sniffed casually. “But then I don't have the kind of opportunities in life like you've got.”

“No,” she'd grinned back at him, tit for tat, “I guess you don't.” What a pompous ass she'd been. He'd been trying to be straight with her and all she could give him was a snippy answer like that. How much time she'd wasted worrying that he was just a cop when she should have been wondering if she were good enough for him. And now it was probably too late. “Quite honestly, your majesty,” she addressed her higher power, “if you give me another chance here, I'll do my best to live up to it.” She thought of the pile of laundry on Johnny's porch floor. “On the other hand,” she added, “if you're saving me for something else, well, you certainly know best.” Claire eyed her watch suspiciously. She'd parked the car over on Austin Street, the only place
to
park around here, and she'd been happy to find that, even if it was a meter. If they caught you parking in here, not only would they tow you, but they'd plaster your car windows with impossible-to-remove rebukes. Claire took a bite of the buttery-crusted tart. This was so good that she was going to have to have another. The rain-drenched vines hanging down the arcade shimmered prettily with sunlight and the start of a breeze. When she got herself a camera she was going to come back and photograph those houses along there toward the tennis club. Where the little red Porsche was coming down the lane. Good Heavens! That was Stefan! “Hello! Yoo-hoo! Hello!” she stood up tall and flagged him down. He didn't see her at first, but he had to come around the island to turn and then he did see her, guffawed right away, pulled the car right up to the café (gliding right through the red light) and hopped out without opening a door. He was wearing (what else?) his tennis whites.

“Now this is a pleasure,” he shook her hand warmly and kissed her cheek. “May I join you?”

“Yes, of course. I was just sitting here dreaming.”

“It is a delightful spot. Especially in this
chaleur
!”

Claire scurried her ice-cream chair over to make room for him. Vanished were the eerie feelings she'd had about him in the dark. He was so clean, the way the rich so often were. Right out of the locker room shower. A dental cleaning and gum massage every seven weeks. Ensembles that wouldn't dare pill. For one enraptured moment Claire saw herself waking up in a sunlit room in Stefan's house. She was swaddled in cashmere. A breakfast tray was on her lap. An Ida Lupino telephone jingled.

“Claire?”

“Huh?”

“I just asked you if you'd like another tart.”

“Oh. Me? I couldn't! One of those is plenty. You go ahead.”

When the waiter left with Stefan's order, Stefan whisked a dove gray suede packet onto the table. Out came a spotless mirror rimmed in jade and a cloisonné box. With all the finesse of a surgeon he poured out a perfect little mountain and divvied it up into several neat rows. Then he handed her a sterling silver straw. She shook her head no. He sniffed two lines up with wild, professional snorts and winked at her as he returned the paraphernalia to its purse.

“Don't look so disappointed,” he said. “It doesn't become you.”

“It's my dreams that don't become me, Stefan. And now that I think about it, they do tend to be becoming too much like perfume commercials. I keep telling myself I have to stop watching television but I just go on watching it. Maybe this will teach me. There are worse things than laundry after all.”

“I don't get it. You're just too quick for me.”

“I doubt that. You're way ahead of everyone.” She sighed. “It's me. I still expect other people to step in and change my life.”

“If you'd give me half a chance …”

“I mean like with a magic wand or … or …”

“Or what?”

“Stefan? Don't turn around now but do you see that guy over—no, don't turn around, I said!”

“Well, where then?”

“Just hang on. Because I think he's going over to the railroad steps. And then you won't have to turn.”

“The one with the red hair? With the crossword puzzle book?”

“That's him. That's the one. Is he following me, do you think?”

“A bit young for you, wouldn't you say?”

“I'm serious, Stefan. I keep running into him.”

“Well, you keep running into me, too. And I can assure you, you're not following me.”

“Y'know Stefan, you're so frigging glib. You're really starting to make me sick. You act like I have no right to think someone might be following me. As though nothing horrible had happened to me. I mean, someone might want me dead. Actually dead and all you do—”

“I know where I know him from! Here let me light that for you. He's the bartender at Freddy's.”

“You're joking.”

“No. And I ought to know. I've tipped him enough.”

“This is really weird. He's the same guy I saw outside the church at the funeral of the first victim.”

“Are you sure?”

“I looked right at him through my lens. I remember like it was yesterday because he started to come toward me and I thought he was a relative of the dead kid and was going to ask me not to take any more pictures. Because he couldn't have known that I hadn't taken any to begin with.…”

Enthralled with each other's news, they turned together to look directly at their subject. He was sprawled on the steps, eyes closed, his upturned face inhaling the late yellow sun. Any American tourist collapsed upon the Spanish Steps in Rome. His crossword puzzle book lay open on his lap.

“And you want to know the best part of all?”

“What?”

“He's Freddy's boyfriend.”

“Freddy's gay?!”

“Well, bi. He's also my brother-in-law. Or was.”

“Now let me get this straight …”

“No, Stefan, it's all too complicated right now. Call the police.”

“The what? The police? Why? Because someone you saw in two different places turns out to be the same person?”

Claire gnawed at her thumb cuticle. “Of course, you're right. Maybe I'm losing my marbles. Maybe Richmond Hill was the wrong idea for me altogether. Except that Iris mentioned a redhead spying on me. Well, she didn't say that exactly, but that's what she meant. I'm sure of it. Jesus. You try and get your life together and you do everything you can to do the right thing and then there are so many things that can go wrong. Not can. Do. That just
do
go wrong, you know? I know I shouldn't be thinking of life that way but there you go, I was born a pessimist. And an optimist. Back and forth, back and forth, my worlds play off each other. And always back to a guaranteed certainty that whatever can go wrong, will. A Murphy's lawyer, as it were. And then my childlike, superstitious, olley olley oxen free, if furtive, belief that if I keep that elephant trunk facing the doorway there … or if I pray from Grandma Maheggany's funeral parlor holy picture … or if the clouds up there are mackerel … then today will go well. You see what I mean?”

“Now Claire. Calm down.”

“Oh, you don't get what I mean at all, do you? You and I might as well live on different planets. It's not just Park Lane South that separates our worlds. And another thing. Have you noticed that there isn't one single spider's web up here? Or anywhere near Metropolitan? But they're all over my neighborhood. Why?”

“Spiders?”

“I'll tell you why. Because there's something sinister approaching my family. I can feel it.”

“I think you need a drink.”

“You mean you think
you
need a drink.”

He watched her warily. She was teetering toward the edge. He was wondering how he could remove himself without risking a scene. Fortunately, Claire seemed to be getting ready to go herself. She pulled a ten dollar bill out, slipped it under her saucer, and snapped her wallet shut.

“That should take care of it,” she said.

“Please, let me invite you,” he said, magnanimous with relief.

“Thank you, no.”

“Well, then take back five. A cup of coffee and a tart are not ten dollars.”

“I've had two tarts and two coffees,” Claire sniffed with dignity.

“Ah,” said Stefan, not knowing what else to say.

“My meter,” Claire stood.

“Marvelous running into you,” he gave her his most radiant smile and she wiggled her fingers at him.

Creep, thought Claire.

Bitch, thought Stefan.

The redhead across the way scissored his lips between two fingers and wondered, What's a four-letter word for
contradict
?

By the time she got home the breeze had turned to wind and the Mayor lay in the middle of it out on the lawn. This is the beginning of the end, is what he thought. It won't get any more summery after this. It will only get less. Before you could run around the johnny pump autumn would be close enough to bite you. That was the thing about summer. It started up slow, taking its fine time getting established, and then once it was there and you just figured out how to cope with it, it would hurry along all willy-nilly right before your very eyes. Rather, he pondered, like life.

Claire commandeered the boat of a car into the drive and pulled it up alongside the house, the way she'd seen Carmela do it. She got a little too close though, and had to disembark on the passenger side. Sliding over, she felt something sticky under her fingers. “Yuck!” she said out loud. It was Freddy's blood. She spit on her hanky then changed her mind and went into the glove compartment to find some tissues. They were crumpled but she used them, scrubbing with short, disgusted strokes. When she raised the vinyl backrest a crack to get the rest clean, she noticed something in there glitter. Sure enough, it was some sort of gadget—no, it was a cufflink. A cufflink in the shape of a roulette wheel! The Erie Lackawanna freight train roared through the neighborhood, obliterating everything but the green, green leaves on the trees.

Claire sank to the ground beside the Mayor. Her fingers, he noticed when she touched him, were clammy and trembling. “What does it mean?” she asked him, burying her face in his fur. “What on earth does it mean?” She didn't want to go on into the house just yet. She had to think. It meant, she supposed, one of two things: Carmela or Freddy. Carmela was out. She might not be in her right mind but she was not crazy. At least not that crazy. Was she? Good Lord, of course not. Claire remembered Carmela as a very little girl. She would wheel Michael and herself around the neighborhood in their broken-down stroller. She'd hated them fiercely but she'd kept a good eye on them. It could never have been Carmela. Freddy. Claire put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes around and around. Who knew what he was capable of. She was going to have to tell Zinnie about this. The Mayor barked. She opened her eyes. There was Johnny Benedetto looking at her from his car. He was pulled up on the wrong side of the road, one fine dark arm crooked handsomely out the window.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Still hanging out with your rich friend?”

“Oh, boy. I'm not in the mood for this.”

Johnny made a sour, disgruntled face and pretended he was feeling his chin for stubble. He wasn't always, she noticed, the handsomest of dons. It didn't make her like him less, it made her like him more. At least he wasn't continually intimidating. He could be occasionally vulnerable.