He
awoke with a jolt, his breath coming in short, violent gasps as he fought to
banish the images that still cluttered his brain. It was the dream again, in
vivid Technicolor. He swung his legs over the edge of the narrow cot and
reached for the pack of Marlboros he’d left on the floor, lighting one and
drawing the smoke deep into his lungs in an attempt to chase away the monsters
that had been his constant bedtime companions ever since Casey had thrown him
out on his ass.
He
hadn’t yet figured out how to run fast enough or far enough to elude them, so
instead of sleeping, he spent most of his nights chain smoking in this
windowless little room that smelled of stale beer and mouse droppings. Tony
was probably in violation of twenty-three different municipal ordinances,
allowing him to take up residence here in this empty storage room at the back
of the bar. But it was either this or a cheap room in some flophouse, and at
least here he wasn’t in danger of being knifed in his sleep.
He’d
had another report yesterday from Rob. Casey was driving herself without
mercy. His wife was proud and stubborn, and if she ever found out where the
extra money was coming from, she would refuse it. But Rob had sworn on his
life that he’d slip it into the kitty without telling her. Better she should think
MacKenzie had hit the jackpot than know that the money was coming from his job
as a cabbie.
It
was a crummy job, carting around businessmen to three-martini lunches and
suburban housewives to Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, but New York was full of
crummy jobs, and at least he didn’t have Emile riding his ass any more.
Whenever his job took him to lower Manhattan, he managed to find an excuse to
drive past Wong’s Tea House, slowing the yellow cab to a crawl as he craned his
neck for a glimpse of his wife in the apartment window upstairs. But all he
ever saw was the Swedish ivy Rob had rescued from a trash can on the street and
brought home to her. Casey had pampered and nurtured the damn thing until it
resembled an acre of Amazonian rain forest.
And
that, in a nutshell, was the problem between them. Casey was a nurturer, while
he was little more than a glib street hustler. He’d known it from the
beginning, but with his customary disregard for the welfare of others, he’d
taken what he wanted, ignoring the consequences. Casey belonged in a big house
in the country, with a garden outside her door and babies playing at her feet.
But he’d taken all that away from her when he made her his wife, and now he was
paying for his stupidity.
And
for what? His wife wasn’t speaking to him, and his career was in the toilet.
He’d spent two-and-a-half years making the rounds, making his face and his name
known to New York’s numerous talent agencies and record production companies.
He’d always believed that the best way to get a foot in the door was to make
friends with the secretarial staff. So he made a point of pouring on the
charm, and it worked: every receptionist in the business knew him, and most of
them lit up like Times Square at New Year’s the instant he walked through the
door.
The
problem was that he could never get past the receptionist to the people who
made the decisions. He’d left behind a pile of resumes and demo tapes tall
enough to rival the Empire State Building, but he’d had no bites. Not even a nibble.
All that creative energy inside him was building up, with no outlet, until he
thought he’d explode. On the nights he played guitar at Tony’s, he sang what
the patrons wanted to hear. When he was alone, he sang the music that stirred
his soul. He sang in the shower at the Y, in his cab when he didn’t have a
fare.
But
this was New York, where struggling singers sold watches on every street
corner, and nobody gave a rat’s ass about a blue-eyed white boy from Boston.
In New York, Danny Fiore was a nobody. And he wondered, for the first time, if
it was time to quit.
***
With the final notes of
Satisfaction
ringing in his head, Rob left the stage, worming his way between bodies in the
direction of the bar and the cold Heineken that was waiting for him. Halfway
there, an immovable object planted itself in his path. “Hey, Mac,” the
tattooed mountain said. “Some lady friend of yours come in asking for you.
Seemed real upset. I stashed her away in Jimmy’s office.”
At just over six feet, Rob was at eye
level with Rico’s Adam’s apple. “Lady friend?” he said. “I don’t have any
lady friends.”
“I dunno,” the bouncer said. “This one
would be hard to forget.”
It had to be Casey. Something must be
wrong at home. “Jimmy’s office,” he said. “Thanks.”
Rico’s massive hand caught him by the
shoulder. “Lemme give you a word of advice, MacKenzie. Jimmy don’t like no
trouble, so you might wanna keep your little domestic problems to home.”
Rob freed himself, shouldering his way
through the crowd. He took the last few steps at a trot and burst through the
door to Jimmy’s office. The woman sat on the couch, her hands clutching a
tattered tissue, her face hidden behind a curtain of dark hair. She raised her
head and her eyes were brimming. Dark eyes. Almond-shaped eyes.
Oriental eyes.
His anxiety turned to astonishment.
“Nancy,” he said.
“Hello, Rob MacKenzie,” she said in that
melodious voice that had haunted his dreams for months. Those luminous eyes
glistened, and a single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. With a small
cry, she got up from the couch, flung her arms around his neck, and pressed her
face against his shirt front.
He stood in paralyzed disbelief. Slowly,
tentatively, he closed his arms around her and allowed his fingers to touch the
shining silk of her hair. The scent of jasmine clung to her, making him
dizzy. He swallowed hard.
Jesus
, he thought. Was this love, this pain
that felt as if it would rip him apart? He wasn’t sure he was ready to handle
it. At the same time, terrified that she might be an apparition, he tightened
his hold. “Nancy,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted a tearstained face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should
not have come here.”
“No,” he said, needing desperately to reassure her. “You can’t
begin to know how happy I am to see you.”
She touched his cheek with a slender hand. “I tried to forget
you. But it was impossible.”
He kissed the palm of her hand. “What is it?” he said. “What’s
wrong?”
She wet her lips with the moist, pink tip of her tongue. “My
parents have chosen a husband for me. His name is Kim Soon Lee, and we are to
be married at the Chinese New Year.”
He tried to make sense of her words. “You mean an arranged
marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Are they nuts? Arranged marriages went out with hoop skirts!”
Nancy shook her head. “They still occur among the Chinese. My
own parents were betrothed when they were children.”
“You’re twenty-two years old,” he said, trying to tamp down his
anger. “You don’t have to do their bidding.”
She shook her head. “You do not understand.”
“You’re damn right, I don’t! This is twentieth-century America.
They can’t do this to you!”
“I cannot stop them.”
“Jesus Christ, Nancy, just say no!”
“You do not understand how I was raised. You do not know my
parents. I’m not strong enough to fight them.”
“Then we’ll fight them together.”
She pulled away from him and crossed the room, leaving an
emotional gulf the size of the Pacific Ocean between them. Toying with a pen
from Jimmy’s desk, she said, “I cannot involve you.”
“Nancy,” he said in gentle exasperation, “you already have.”
“It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.”
He crossed the space between them and took her face between his
hands. “But you did,” he said. “And I’m glad!”
“If I involve you,” she said, “it will only make things worse.
They are angry already because I told them I will not marry Kim. It would be
disastrous if they discovered I was involved with a white man.”
He tucked her dark head beneath his chin, and they swayed like
slender reeds caught in a breeze. “I love you,” he said. “More than I’ve ever
loved anybody.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“Why? Do you think it’ll be any less true if I don’t say it out
loud?”
“I cannot love you,” she said. “Don’t you understand? I cannot
allow this to happen.”
“Nancy,” he said gently, “it’s too late. It’s already happened.”
It was one-thirty in the morning when he dragged Casey out of
bed. “Nancy,” he said curtly, “this is Casey. Casey, this is Nancy. We’re
getting married.”
Both women gaped at him in astonishment. He picked up the
telephone and held it out to Nancy. “Your folks are probably worried,” he
said. “They deserve to know you’re all right.”
While she held a lengthy conversation in Chinese with her mother, he
paced the apartment. Casey cornered him in the kitchen. “I don’t suppose,”
she said, “that you’d care to enlighten me?”
“She had a big blow-out with her folks. They told her she has to
marry some Chinese guy. I’m not about to let it happen.”
She exhaled loudly. “Rob,” she said, “how long have you known
this girl?”
“Long enough,” he said grimly. “Look, I know what I’m doing.
Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“I’m not going to. On the other hand, I’d hate to see you make a
terrible mistake.”
“This is my life, babe. Let me live it.”
“You,” she said, poking him hard in the chest, “are an
insufferable ass.”
He cupped her cheek and placed a kiss on the tip of her nose.
“That’s why you love me,” he said.
***
The anteroom outside the judge’s chambers reeked with the odors of
stale cigar smoke and too many bodies crammed into too little space. Casey
shifted on the wooden bench, trying to find some position that didn’t hurt her
backside. There were two couples waiting to experience nuptial bliss ahead of
Rob and Nancy. The teenage Hispanic couple held hands with terrified
determination, and the middle-aged woman with the blond beehive slumped in her
seat with terminal boredom next to a colorless man who leafed listlessly
through a year-old issue of
Time
magazine.
Footsteps echoed down the cavernous corridor, and everybody in the
room looked up expectantly at the tall, perversely good-looking man who paused
in the doorway. At sight of him, Casey’s heart momentarily stopped, and she
saw her own surprise mirrored in those blue eyes. So Rob hadn’t told him she
would be here, either. She turned accusing eyes on Rob, but he had scrambled
to his feet and was pumping Danny’s hand. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,”
he said. Danny braced a shoulder against the doorjamb and rocked on the balls of
his feet until Rob said, “Sit down, man. It may be a while.”
With obvious reluctance, Danny took the only empty seat in the
room, the one next to his wife. Not looking at her, he said, “Hi.”
Casey crossed her arms and sat up straighter on the bench. “Hi.”
His gray hooded sweatshirt was rain-spotted. His hood had fallen,
and beads of moisture clung to his hair. He slumped, stretching those long
legs out halfway across the room. He was wearing new shoes. Three months ago,
he’d been wearing two-year-old Adidas with holes in both soles. It wasn’t fair
that he should look this good when she’d been so miserable.
The judge’s door opened, and the clerk motioned the Hispanic
couple inside. “One down, one to go,” Rob said, and Nancy smiled nervously.
Crammed together as they were, thigh to thigh, Casey could feel the heat from
Danny’s body, could smell that indescribable scent that was Danny. It had
always clung to his clothes, his hair, his bedding.
“I think I need a cup of coffee,” she said with false brightness.
“Anybody else want one?”
“I’ll come with you,” Danny said. “I saw vending machines on my
way in.”
Casey tried to pretend that walking down the corridor in step with
her estranged husband wasn’t an earth-shattering experience. She cleared her throat.
“I suppose,” she said, “he’s told you the whole story.”
“Yes.”
“This is the craziest thing he’s ever done. He’ll end up with a
broken heart.”
“Probably.”
At the canteen door she reached for her purse, but Danny was
quicker. He dropped a quarter into the vending machine and pushed a couple of
buttons, and a paper cup dropped into place. They watched as hot coffee
trickled into it. “I see you haven’t forgotten how I take my coffee,” she
said.
“Jesus Christ, Casey, it’s only been three months.”
“Really? I’ve lost track. But I must say that bachelorhood seems
to agree with you, darling. I can’t remember when I’ve seen you looking this
good.”