“I was one of the lucky ones.”
She paused, butter knife in hand. “You have an Uncle Vito you
forgot to tell me about?”
“I had something better. One hell of a singing voice. I always
knew it would be my ticket out of the North End.”
“It’s what you were meant to do,” she said. “It’s in your blood,
like a virus.”
“How is it you understand me so well?” Those blue eyes were
puzzled. “You know things about me that I don’t know myself.”
“It’s easy to see other people objectively. It’s harder to see
yourself that way.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m having a devil of a time trying to
see you objectively.” The intensity of his assessment brought a hot flush to
her face. “Do you have any idea how sexy you look in my shirt?”
She looked down at her slender legs beneath his white cotton
shirt. “No,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his boldly. “But I know
exactly how sexy you look out of it.”
“Christ,” he said, just before he kissed her, “I think I’ve
created a monster.”
***
Hands tucked in the pockets of his Levi’s, Danny Fiore stood at
the window, watching the first light of dawn touch the eastern sky and
wondering when he’d stopped wanting to run away.
He’d tried to run. When running hadn’t worked, he’d decided there
was no reason they couldn’t discuss the situation like two rational adults.
But he’d been wrong again; he’d forgotten that the moment she walked into the
room, one of them regressed to a fifteen-year-old, all knees and elbows and
quavering uncertainty. So he’d done the only thing left to do: he’d given in
to the tumult inside him.
And when he touched her, he knew he was lost.
He had nothing to offer her. Eighty-seven bucks and change, a
rusted ten-year-old Chevy, and three years’ back issues of
Rolling Stone
.
It was no life for a woman, at least not for the kind of woman Casey was. But
if he did nothing, she would go home, back to Jesse, and half his insides would
go with her.
Danny rested his forehead against the window pane and closed his
eyes. What he knew about love you could put in a thimble. He was no good at
intimacy. Christ, that was a lie; he didn’t know if he was any good at it.
He’d never had a chance to find out. All he understood was singing, and the way
the music made him feel. Until now, it had been enough.
She was sleeping in a tangle of dark hair and slender limbs and
rumpled sheets. Danny sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of the
right words to say. She deserved champagne and roses, candlelight and soft
music. Not a marriage proposal from some crazy wop bastard at five in the
morning on sheets that hadn’t been changed in a week.
He touched her cheek to awaken her. She stretched like a cat
before opening sleep-studded eyes to his. When she smiled, his heart rolled
over in his chest. “Look,” he said, the words suddenly tumbling out of him so
fast he was tripping over them. “I’m not in a position to offer you anything
even faintly resembling an orthodox life. My life’s chaotic, and I don’t see
it getting any better in the foreseeable future. Right now, I don’t have the
proverbial pot to piss in or the window to throw it out of. But it won’t
always be that way.” He paused for breath. “By God,” he said, “I mean to have
it all. But there may be hard times along the way. And you have to know up
front that I won’t change, not even for you—” He stopped, suddenly aware that
he was rambling. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
Softly, she said, “You’re doing just fine.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I had all these flowery things I
wanted to say, and I’m saying this all wrong—”
“Yes,” she said.
He blinked. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He was grinning, grinning like a fool, and he couldn’t help it.
“I haven’t asked you yet.”
“If I waited for you to get to the point,” she said, “ we’d have
to spend our honeymoon at the Sleepytime Old Age Home.”
He took her hand in his and somberly studied her slender fingers.
“There’s something you have to know,” he said. “Up front. I want to make sure
you understand what you’re getting into.”
She closed her fingers around his. “Yes?” she said.
He cleared his throat. “The kind of life I lead,” he said, “is
not conducive to rearing children.”
Her steady gaze didn’t waver, nor did her grip loosen. But he
could hear it in her voice, the faint hint of a tremor. “Ever?” she said.
He felt himself weakening. God help him if she ever figured out
that he was incapable of saying no to her. “It’s not an easy life,” he said.
“I’d have to be damn settled before I’d ever consider bringing a kid into it.”
“But later,” she said, “someday—”
He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed those pale, trembling
fingers. “Someday,” he said, “when things are more settled, we’ll talk about
it again.”
Her eyes never left his as she removed the diamond engagement ring
from the third finger of her left hand and placed it on the table beside the
bed. “Are you sure?” he said hoarsely.
She smiled. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
***
At 4:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, in the clerk’s office at the city
hall in Hayesville, Maryland, while static crackled from the police radio in
the lobby and pigeons cooed from their roost along the eaves above the open
window, Danny held her trembling hand in his and promised to cherish her until
death. With the mayor’s secretary and an off-duty cop as witnesses, they
exchanged the rings they’d bought a half-hour earlier at K-mart, and the city
clerk, doubling as a notary public, pronounced them man and wife.
She signed the marriage certificate with a flourish.
Casey
Lynn Bradley Fiore.
Danny’s handwriting was small and neat as he signed
his name next to hers. The secretary returned to her typewriter and the cop
went home to dinner, and Danny slipped the clerk a twenty before taking Casey’s
arm and walking her out into late afternoon sunshine. There, on the sidewalk
in front of God and half the homebound population of Hayesville, he swept her
into his arms and kissed her until her insides turned to butter. The secretary
came out the door and gave them a benevolent smile, and Casey returned the
smile just from the sheer joy of it.
Danny cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. “So,
Mrs. Fiore,” he said, “where would you like to eat dinner?”
She straightened his collar. She couldn’t seem to keep herself
from touching him. “Some place wonderfully elegant, Mr. Fiore. Like the
Ritz.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for something a little less
elegant,” he said wryly. “Like McDonald’s.”
She kissed his chin. “I can’t think of a more elegant place.”
They spent their wedding night in a motel off the Jersey Pike,
somewhere outside of Philly. In a paneled room that smelled of mildew, they
drank supermarket champagne from disposable plastic goblets and explored together
the mysteries of love. He shared with her his fire, she shared with him her
tenderness, and they drew strength from the knowledge that nobody could tear
them apart now.
And in the morning, they went home to face the lions.
When the knock came on her apartment door, Casey had one foot on
the kitchen counter, the other braced on the back of a straight chair that
she’d weighted down with books, and she was attempting to unscrew an
uncooperative light fixture. Catching hold of the glass shade to balance
herself, she shouted, “Come in. The door’s open.”
“Casey?”
“Rob? I’m in the kitchen.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to keep the door locked?
This is Boston, not the sticks. And don’t ever say ‘come in’ until you know
who’s on the other—” He broke the corner, took one look at her, and did a
double-take. “Holy shit. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“I’m trying to get this blasted thing down. I don’t think it’s
been washed in forty years.”
“Woman, you are an accident waiting to happen. Get down from
there before you break your neck.”
She caught hold of the hand he held out to her and said, “You try
going through life only five feet tall.”
He had the fixture unscrewed within seconds. Handing it down to
her, he scowled and said, “What if you fell and nobody was here to pick up the
pieces?”
Casey waved away his concern and immersed the glass in hot, sudsy
water. “I’m as agile as a mountain goat.” She rinsed the shade and held it
up. “Look at this. I knew there was something beautiful underneath all that
grime.” She smiled up at him. “Have you had lunch? I make a mean tuna fish
sandwich.”
“You’re on, kiddo. Where does Danny keep his guitar?”
“In the bedroom closet.” She held out the light fixture. “You
put this back up for me, and I might even let you play me a song.”
He sat on the edge of the kitchen table with Danny’s guitar and
watched her prepare lunch. “I’ve seen a big difference in Danny,” he said,
“since he married you.”
She licked mayonnaise from a butter knife and dropped it in the
sink. “Good or bad?”
“He’s mellowed. You’ve somehow managed to smooth out all his
jagged edges.”
Casey opened a loaf of bread, pulled out four slices, arranged
them on the counter and began spreading tuna salad. “Maybe,” she said
philosophically, “there’s a reason why opposites attract. Maybe it’s because
we complement each other. Fill in the chinks in each other’s armor.”
He plucked absently at the guitar strings. “That’s one way of
looking at it.”
She arranged the sandwiches on a couple of plates and handed one
to him. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Ask away.”
“Why does Danny call you Wiz?”
He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “The first
time Danny heard me play, he called me a guitar wizard.” Rob shrugged his bony
shoulders. “The name just stuck.”
“I see. And are you a wizard?”
“Hell, no. I’m just an ordinary guy who sleeps with his guitar.”
After lunch, while she cleared up, he picked away at a dank,
bluesy melody. “That’s pretty,” she said. “I’ve never heard it before. What
is it?”
“You’ve never heard it before because I just wrote it this
morning.”
Eagerly, she said, “Does it have words?”
“Not yet. I thought you might like to take a shot at it.”
“Me?” she asked, inordinately pleased. “You want me to write the
lyrics?”
“Yeah, you,” he said. “Why not?”
Hours later, Danny found them huddled over his old upright piano.
He turned on the overhead light and Casey blinked, trying to focus. “Hello,
darling,” she said. “What are you doing home so early?”
Danny eyed the papers scattered about the room, the overflowing
ashtray beside Rob, the empty Coke bottles. “I’m not early,” he said. “You
were sitting here in the dark.” He dropped his jacket on a chair and stood
behind her, his hands creating a pleasant warmth on her shoulders. “What the
devil are you two doing?”
Rob’s long, bony fingers ran a quick riff on the keyboard. “I
asked Casey to add some lyrics to a tune I wrote,” he said. “We ended up
rewriting the whole thing.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Casey played it, singing harmony with Rob. When they finished,
there was a moment of silence. “Christ,” Danny said, “that’s good.” He leaned
forward, hands still on her shoulders, studying the music. “Let me hear it
again.”
Before the song was half-through, he was singing with them. She
exchanged a glance with Rob, and he shot her a quick wink.
Danny squeezed onto the piano bench between them and wrapped an
arm around her waist. “How soon can we work it into the act?”
Rob flexed long, slender fingers. “We could run it by Jake and
Travis at rehearsal on Sunday.”
Danny’s eyebrows drew together. “Not soon enough,” he said. “I
want them to hear it tonight.”
“It’s not going anywhere, Dan. Sunday’s only two days away.”
“Tonight,” he repeated, and Rob shrugged amiably. Satisfied,
Danny turned her in his arms and kissed her. “Since we have company,” he said,
“and I can’t have my way with you, how about some dinner? We have to be at
Martucci’s in a couple of hours.”
She brushed her knuckles briefly across his cheek. “You’re working
too hard,” she said. “You’ll kill yourself, working two jobs.”
“You mean I haven’t told you my philosophy?”
She eyed him skeptically. “What philosophy?”
“Live hard and fast,” he said, “and die young enough to leave a
good-looking corpse.”
A cold draft trickled down her spine and spread into her
extremities. “Stop it,” she said. “Don’t talk that way. It gives me the
willies.”