He took a sip of coffee. “How’d it go?” he asked.
Danny looked at him blankly. “The studio gig?” he prompted.
“Backup vocals? Ring a bell yet?”
Danny ran a hand through his wet hair. “It went fine,” he said.
“I appreciate you giving them my name.” He broke off a portion of his bagel
and concentrated on covering it with orange marmalade.
Rob rapped his knuckles on the table top. “Okay, Fiore,” he said,
“what’s eating you? You’re acting like your favorite dog just got run over by
a sanitation truck.”
Danny set down his knife and looked at him. “Three nights ago,”
he said, “I cheated on my wife.”
It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, and even
then, Rob thought he was joking. “Right,” he said. “And I’m the Prince of
Wales.”
Danny continued as though he hadn’t heard. “I made it with some
blond bimbo upstairs at the Montpelier.”
He realized then that Danny wasn’t kidding. “Jesus Christ,” he
said.
Danny looked at his bagel. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he said.
“I’m still not sure how it happened.”
Rob’s stomach had gone sour. “Maybe I should draw you a picture,”
he said. “Listen, Dan, I really don’t think I want to hear this.”
“You’re my goddamn best friend! Who the hell else can I tell?”
“What the hell do you want from me? Absolution?”
“I love her, Wiz. I don’t know what to do.”
Rob shredded a piece of bagel. “You should have thought of that a
little sooner.”
“If I don’t tell her,” Danny said, “I’ll be lying, and that
compounds my sin. If I do tell her, she’ll throw me out.”
Rob leaned over the table. “If you tell her, Fiore, I’ll drag you
down to the bus station and shove your head in the toilet and hold it there
until you stop kicking.”
“I’m glad,” Danny said dryly, “that we’ve clarified whose side
you’re on.”
“What do you expect? That woman worships the ground you walk on.”
“She’ll know anyway,” Danny said. “Even if I don’t tell her,
she’ll know.”
“How the hell will she know if you don’t tell her?”
“Be serious, MacKenzie. This is my wife we’re talking about.
Casey knows everything. She knows it by fucking osmosis!” They glared at each
other, but he didn’t dispute Danny’s claim, because it was the truth. “She’s
too good for me,” Danny said. “I don’t deserve her.”
“No, Dan,” he said, “you don’t.”
Something irreplaceable was slipping away from him. He’d always
been slightly in awe of Danny Fiore, had always seen him as larger than life.
But today, in a single instant, Danny had become bloodily, maddeningly human,
and his sudden transformation shattered every one of Rob MacKenzie’s illusions.
He cleared his throat. “I thought you and Casey were okay.” He’d
never seen so much as a ripple on the surface of their relationship. If
there’d been any problem, he of all people should have noticed.
“So did I. Christ, Wiz, what am I going to do?”
“What you’re going to do is forget this ever happened. For some
unfathomable reason, she loves you. If you tell her what you did, it’ll kill
her. And then I’ll kill you.”
Danny looked at him silently. “Are you in love with my wife?” he finally
said.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” Rob buried his face in his hands.
“No!” he snapped. “Are you?”
“You know damn well I am!”
“Then stop acting like a nineteen-year-old stud. Keep it in your
pants, for Christ’s sake!”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t come on to her. It was her game
all the way.”
“There’s a word you need to learn, Fiore:
no
.”
Danny looked at him in disgust. “Why did I bother to confide in
you?”
“Because I’m your goddamn best friend, that’s why!”
“Yeah,” Danny said softly, “you are.”
And there it was, the truth of it, laid out on the table between
them. “Fiore,” he said miserably, “you’re a real shit.”
Danny
saluted him with his coffee cup. “I’m glad to see,” he said dryly, “that we
agree on something.”
Something was rotten in Denmark.
She’d lived with Danny for four years, and Casey knew his moods,
knew his quicksilver lights and darks, as well as any woman could know a man.
Something was troubling him. She could feel it in the unspoken messages that
leaped between them when they touched, could see it in his remoteness, could
sense it in the purple aura he’d surrounded himself with. Something was
terribly wrong, something that manifested itself in bizarre behaviors like his
sudden coolness towards Rob. And his sudden rejection of her.
Their relationship had always been intensely physical, and to be
abruptly cut off with no explanation was, to put it mildly, mystifying. He
went out of his way to avoid intimacy. He’d begun locking the bathroom door.
Sleeping in an old pair of sweat pants. Erecting walls where there had been
none. And she wondered, frantically, if he were having an affair.
But it didn’t add up. His body still responded to her touch.
Asleep, he still held her in his arms. The chemistry was still there between
them, strong as ever. Danny hadn’t fallen out of love with her. Something
else was wrong, something she hadn’t yet figured out.
But Rob knew.
She recognized it with the same certainty. After all, she’d known
Rob for those same four years. Both men were hiding something from her, and
that explained the coolness between them. Danny was in some kind of trouble,
and Rob knew about it. And he wasn’t happy about the knowing.
She cornered him one afternoon in the kitchen. He was bent over
the sink, shirtless, spray nozzle in hand, his vertebrae standing out in stark
relief beneath his skin. “Let me do that,” she said, and took the sprayer from
him. She poured shampoo into her hand and began working it through his hair.
She’d never washed a man’s hair before, and it was a surprisingly sensual
experience. Rob had beautiful hair, thick and wavy and full of body, and she
massaged it with gentle fingertips until she’d worked up a rich lather. “Watch
your eyes,” she said, adjusting the water temperature.
“Jesus, woman,” he said, “be careful. You’ll drown me.”
“If I drowned you, who would I eat fudge ripple ice cream with at
three in the morning?” She worked her way slowly through his mop of hair until
the soap was rinsed out, then poured a dollop of conditioner into her palm.
“Brace yourself,” she said, “this is cold.” She plunged her hands back into
his hair and worked the conditioner, strand by strand, from the roots down to
the tips. Casually, she said, “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what’s
wrong with Danny?”
He hesitated for just a moment too long. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” he said.
“Oh, Rob,” she said, disappointed. “Don’t lie to me. You of all
people.”
His silence was eloquent.
“He’s hardly spoken a civil word to you in weeks,” she said.
Sprayer in hand, she combed her fingers through his curls to remove the
conditioner. “He’s so remote,” she added, “it’s like he’s living on another
planet. And he hasn’t—I mean, we haven’t—” She floundered, uncertain of the
propriety of discussing her sex life with him.
But he saved her. “I think I get the picture, kiddo,” he said.
“Gimme a towel.”
She watched him dry his hair. Rob wasn’t an unattractive man. He
had well-developed biceps and a dark triangle of hair on his chest that some
women would find quite sexy. He just needed to fill out, to get some meat on
his bones. She’d spent the better part of two years trying to fatten him up,
but he was still lanky as an old mule.
He tossed all that hair back over his shoulders. “Listen, babe,”
he said. “If you think Danny doesn’t love you, you’re wrong. He’s crazy about
you.” He slung the towel over his shoulder and busied himself gathering up the
shampoo and conditioner.
“Don’t patronize me, MacKenzie. Tell me the truth.”
His eyes, when they met hers, were clear and deep and green. And
miserable. “Don’t drag me into this,” he said. “Don’t make me take sides.”
She knew then that it was more serious than she’d feared.
It was the worst summer of Casey’s life. Danny was unreachable,
New York was hot and stuffy and dirty, and for the first time since her
marriage, she found herself longing for the cool pine forests of home. As the
wealthy escaped the city for the summer, business at the Montpelier dropped
off, and her hours were cut. June dragged on into July and July into August,
bringing with it a heat wave that had sidewalks steaming and air conditioners
working overtime.
She was bent over the old slate sink one hot afternoon, sweat
trickling down her back, her knuckles scrubbed raw as she washed clothes with a
bar of Ivory soap. Danny was down to twenty hours a week at the Montpelier, and
it had been two months since Rob had picked up a studio job. Today’s mail had
brought a disconnect notice from the electric company, and she’d just used her
last package of hamburger.
They’d been in New York for two years, and this was the lowest
they’d sunk. She thought about the five hundred dollars that was sitting in a
secret bank account. She hadn’t touched a penny of it. It was there for a
real emergency, and she’d never yet had justification for dipping into it. The
money was her security. In a worst-case scenario, it would pay their way
home. But once it was spent, there would be nothing to fall back on.
She could have pleaded her case to city welfare, and they would
have provided her with food stamps, paid the light bill. But she’d learned at
an early age that self-reliance led to self-respect, and she was too proud to
ask for help. They’d survived other bad spells, and they would survive this
one.
Soapy water gurgled down the drain as she pulled the plug and
stepped away from the sink. Without warning, the room began to sway around
her, and she clutched at the rim of the sink for support. The summer afternoon
began to fade to black, and she struggled to hold onto consciousness. Iron
determination kept her upright. She crossed the six feet to the table, drained
and shaken, and slumped onto a chair.
It was the third time this week that she’d nearly fainted. The
first time, she’d blamed it on the heat. But the second time, it had happened
at work, in the air-conditioned luxury of the Hotel Montpelier’s dining room.
And now it had happened again.
She’d never been sick in her life. But healthy women didn’t have
fainting spells, not since they’d given up wearing corsets. She thought about
brain tumors, about incurable soap opera diseases. About her own mother, who
had died of cancer at forty-two. She thought about the empty kitty in the
kitchen and dropped her face to the tabletop in despair. She couldn’t even
afford to pay the light bill. How was she supposed to pay a doctor?
***
Rob called in a favor from a friend who worked in the Registrar’s
Office at Columbia. Armed with Nancy Chen’s class schedule, two pastrami
sandwiches, and every ounce of charm he possessed, he loitered outside the
entrance to her classroom building, waiting for her Tuesday morning class to
end.
At 12:15, Nancy emerged from the building, engrossed in
conversation with some geek in a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses. When she
saw Rob, she dismissed the geek, who shuffled off toward the bus stop. Looking
troubled, she said, “Why are you here?”
Her voice was as melodious as the tinkle of wind chimes on a
summer evening. He held up a wrinkled brown bag. “I brought you lunch.”
“How many times must I tell you, Rob MacKenzie? I won’t go out
with you.”
“Who said anything about going out?” He gave her his most
endearing smile, the one that always worked on his mother and his sisters.
“We’re just having lunch. Breaking bread. Taking sustenance.”
Those dark eyes narrowed as she pondered his words. “If I have
lunch with you,” she said, “will you leave me alone?”
“Probably not.”
He thought he saw a glint of humor in her eyes, but it was gone
before he could be sure. “I could call the police,” she said, “and have you
arrested for harassment.”
“You could,” he agreed, “but you won’t.”
“And why not?”
In a lilting brogue, tongue of his fathers, he said, “Because you
know I’m just a harmless Irish laddie who’s besotted by your beauty and your
charm and your—”
She held up a hand. “Enough. Please. I will have lunch with
you. If I must listen to any more of this, I’ll cry.”
He settled them on a grassy spot in a small park near campus. On
a red and white checked plastic tablecloth from Woolworth’s he spread out a
repast fit for a king and queen: two pastrami sandwiches and two kosher dill pickles,
a bag of potato chips, and a warm bottle of Purple Passion grape soda. To the
harmonious accompaniment of a jackhammer blasting at the end of the block and
Otis Redding wailing through the open window of a nearby apartment, Rob lay on
the grass, his chin propped on his hand, and watched Nancy eat.