Chapter 19
My voice was shot, but my day wasn't done.
I went back to the deli to do
some
work, at least, spotting Thom after the lunch rush so she could get a break. Whatever the murder had done to me personallyâand also to Joeâit had drawn customers. The staff was either energized or dragging, depending on who it was. Dani seemed to have recovered from her hangover: she was one of the perky ones. So was Luke. So was A.J. Two. Raylene, Newt on the grill, and Thom were shot.
I didn't tell Thom where I'd been. Maybe she'd guessed. She had a beatific look about her, as if she'd been praying between money changing, offering silent words to God for my safe conduct. Or hers, depending on how she thought I might react.
How had I reacted? It wasn't like a symphony of emotions. It was more like grand opera, complete with intermissions, curtain calls, and themes, most of which I couldn't recall. But I remembered the big one: my half sister needed me, and I had offered to help her.
After I'd paid for our lunch, I'd walked her back to Blinn's, where she gave me a full body hug that was all warmth this time. Warmth and gratitude. I wished there was someone I could tell, with whom I could share what I felt. It was then I realized that what I had said was true: it was not enough to have a lover or a buddy. You needed both.
The afternoon was slow until about three o'clock, when a small entourage arrived. They were three men and a woman, all well dressed, clearly not tourists, though I didn't recognize a single one of them. I looked at Thom, who was handing them menus; she shrugged.
Dani waited on the table. One of the men kept looking at me. He was about forty, with slicked-back black hair, smoldering eyes, and a square jaw. His suit was not off the rack at Marshalls.
I didn't really pay them any attention until they were leaving. The man who had noticed me paid the bill. He was a big man, six-three, with the kind of confidence that made women look over their shoulders and men insecure.
“Would you be Gwen Katz?” he asked. His voice had the slight sound of Appalachia: the natural slur from genetically passed-down moonshine combined with the informality of the mountain folk. He sounded like a hillbilly Dean Martin.
“I am she,” I said.
I realized who he was a moment before he said it. “I am Stephen Hatfield.”
He didn't make me swoon; he made me frightened. The man didn't look like a gangster; he looked like a successful businessman who fancied himself a fashion model. Yet there was something about him that made me uneasy. The shoulders? There was something about those shoulders that reminded me of a puma on its haunches, not that I'd ever seen a puma.
“Hello,” I replied. I had intended to add his name to the greeting, but it stuck in my gullet.
“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
“About?”
He repeated the question with his insistent silence. I looked around the nearly empty dining room. “How about the corner table?”
He rotated his shoulders in that direction; his stiff neck took his head with it. “That's fine.”
“Thom!” I said, motioning her over.
The other three members of the party had gone outside. They were waiting by a black limousine. If I'd seen that first, I might have figured out who he was and what was probably coming.
I asked A.J. Two to bring me a Diet Coke as we made our way to the table. I went to sit. He held my chair for me.
A gentleman mountain lion,
thought I.
He sat after I had, sweeping his knee-length black coat under him. He checked his cell phone messages while A.J. Two brought my drink. She gave me a worried little look. My look back told her it was okay. I hoped it was.
He looked around. “So this is where Joe Silvio met his maker.”
“Well, not in here, exactly.”
“He was a decent man,” Hatfield said. “Not a proper way for a man to die.”
That surprised me. I didn't expect him to spit on the man's grave, when he had one, but he was still kin to the McCoys.
Hatfield set the Sprint Evo in front of me. “Read this, if you please.”
I looked at the cell phone screen. There was a text from Stacie. It was dated today, sent a few minutes after I'd left her.
I wld like 2 talk 2 u 2night abt us. I think I need 2 end it. I saw my new sister today. I have 2 chng my life. xo
You are, I believe, Stacie's
new
sister,” Hatfield said.
“We each just discovered we exist, if that's what you mean.”
“That is exactly what I mean. May I ask what you told her?”
“Isn't that between me and Stacie?” I asked, sounding bolder than I felt.
“It would be, and I would respect that, if it did not involve me,” he said. “I will make this simple. Did you tell her not to see me anymore?”
“I did not,” I assured him. “What I told her was that whether it was you or Scott or her mother, she should say what's on her mind.”
“Speak up for herself, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
“Be an independent woman.”
“That would misrepresent my advice,” I said.
Misrepresent my advice? Who am I? Mr. Spock?
“Perhaps you can clarify it for me,” Hatfield said with a smile. He was now a puma who had spotted a hare. “Please,” he added insincerely, a bone throw to my obvious reluctance.
“I told her not to keep things inside. I told her to trust the people close to her. If they cared about her, they would listen.”
He nodded. “I go along with that. After all, it's how I conduct myself.”
I had felt a moment of relief followed by apprehension. If I were parsing those sentences, I'd have said, “Good start. Now duck.”
“The problem I have with that, as it pertains to Stacie, is she's a
spectacular
lay,” Hatfield said. “Best I ever had. And way too fine for that busboy
jerk
she's engaged to.” He said that last part loud enough for everyone to hear. “So here's my honest, from-the-heart question to you, new sister. Who's going to take her place?”
He lost me at
spectacular lay
and made me angrier with every new word he said. He could have been Michael Corleone at that moment, and it wouldn't have mattered.
“I'm sure you can find some suitable piece of ass,” I said. “Might have to pay a little more, but what's a couple hundred bucks to Stephen Hatfield?”
I expected him to slap me. I didn't expect him to laugh and slap the table.
“That's rich!” he said. “I'll tell you what, Gwen Katz. I'm going to continue to take your advice and speak my heart.” The laughter stopped. “I do not pay for sex. I do not lie with prostitutes. I bring a girl into my home and treat her like no one has ever treated her or ever will. That is part of what makes them so good in bed. Their gratitude.” He looked around at the staff, who were standing behind the counter, like it was standing room at a hit show. “That one over there,” he said. “The one with the nose and lip rings.”
Dani was standing at the end of the counter, Luke to her right. They switched places like she'd been castled.
“You want to be my new girlfriend?” he asked. “Spend nights with me in my mansion, drink fine wine instead of Manischewitz?”
Dammit, was it me, or was everyone down here a closet anti-Semite?
Hatfield regarded me suddenly, as though my thoughts had penetrated his thick skull. “I'm sorry,” he said. “That was a comment about quality, not any kind of ethnic disrespect.”
“I'm comforted, considering all the bullshit you just said about women.”
“Is it bullshit, Gwen? I've been with Stacie about six months. Never forced her to come. Never threatened her. Before that I was with Sammi Blinn for a year.”
He could not miss my surprise.
“Does that shock you? Proper, child-loving Sammi holing up with me for sex?”
“It's none of my business,” I said.
He touched his nose. “Bull's-eye, Gwen Katz! That's none of your business. Just like this is none of your business. Just like if I decide to invite that little blonde behind the counter up to my place for Iranian caviar, that, too, is none of your business!”
It happened so fast that no one could stop him. Luke ran from behind the counter with a stainless-steel soup ladle. He crossed the dining room with the kitchen implement raised high and a cry of outrage rising even higher. All I could do was get up and put myself between him and his intended victim. I took the bowl of the ladle square on the bean, seeing red as I fell forward across Stephen Hatfield. By that time Thomasina had come from behind the counter, along with the only patron who had remained after Hatfield started shouting, our mail carrier, Nicolette.
They wrested Luke back as Dani ran over and got between him and me. But her eyes never left Hatfield, as though she were afraid he would grab her tiny frame and run her off to the Lonely Mountain.
Instead, Hatfield stood and lifted me gently and sat me in a chair and gave me some of my untouched Diet Coke. He was very gentle about it, very attentive.
“I'm all right,” I said, gently pushing his sleeve from my face.
“Are you certain?”
“Very.”
He stepped back. It was then that I noticed his entourage standing in the open door of the deli, ready to jump in if necessary.
“I am sorry I've upset some of your staff,” Hatfield said.
“They'll survive.”
I could hear Luke shouting in the kitchen and Thom shouting right back. They fell quiet a moment later.
“You see, Gwen, words, even honest wordsâor maybe
especially
honest wordsâhave consequences. I will reply to this text that there is no reason for Stacie to trouble herself with another visit. I will tell her I do not wish to see her anymore.” He leaned close and said in a whisper, “You may not realize this, but I gave her stability. I gave her dignity. We will see how long she survives with Mr. Scott Ferguson.”
“Dignity . . . on her back?”
He stood, smiling again. “Your comments reveal more about yourself, Gwen, than they do about Stacie.”
“You don't know anything about me.”
“There you are wrong,” he said. “I know that sex is not the sheer joy for you that it is for so many women. It comes with riders and codicils.” He touched my face as he walked away. “A waste.”
I shuddered, but not with fear. It was worse. It was excitement.
Hatfield had made a point of putting his personal card under my hand. I crushed it slowly as he walked off. He looked around as he rejoined his companions. “I beg all of your pardons for disrupting the afternoon. We will return when things have settled somewhat.” He looked back at Thomasina. “The potato pancakes were very, very good.”
Thom stood still and tall, like a statue of herself.
Not Dani. The young woman leaned forward and snarled, “They're latkes,” just before the door closed.
Hearing her little voice, proud and assured, I actually felt tears fill my eyes.
Score one for our sideâfor our
sides.
The women, the Jews, and the kids who loved each other enough to risk a beating.