“Now, listen, you fucking Guinea. You touch that arm to me again,” I said, “and I’ll cripple you. Understand?”
“Let him go,” Joey said tiredly from the office to my right.
I looked to my left. The old man was in the doorway that led to the store, slicing me open with his watery brown eyes. I released Caruso’s shirt and straightened my overcoat, shifting my shoulders underneath. Caruso exhaled and attempted a vicious stare but didn’t say a word. I walked out into the store, sidestepping the old man. The old man followed. Finally I reached the front door.
“I’m sorry, Mr. DiGeordano,” I said. “He had that coming.”
“Not in my place, he didn’t.”
“I apologize.”
“You have your grandfather’s quick hands,” he said. “But you don’t have his class.” Lou DiGeordano looked me up and down and made sure I saw it.
I pushed on the door and walked to my car, where I slid behind the wheel. I watched my hand shake as I touched the key to the ignition. The car came alive. I swung it out on onto Georgia Avenue and ignored an angry salutation of blaring horns.
S
AY THAT AGAIN?”
Jackie Kahn said, “You heard me.”
We were seated at a four-top near the kitchen in a restaurant called Giorgaki’s on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast, a place that was decorated to approximate one of those sparse, white-stuccoed
cafenions
that are all over Greece. On the wall next to our table was a large framed photograph of the windmills of Mykonos. Waiters were hurrying through the outward swinging metal doors, and when they came out from the kitchen the excited shouts of argumentative Greeks came out with them. Jackie dipped her bread in the
tarama
that was dolloped next to the
tzaziki
on the appetizer tray and kept her eyes on mine as she tore a bit off with her teeth.
“I heard you,” I admitted. “But why me?”
“You’ve got good genes. And you’re… reasonably attractive.”
Our African waiter arrived and set down a plate of marinated
octopus just as Jackie spoke. He asked, in Greek more fluent and correctly accented than mine, if there would be anything else. I ordered an American beer and a retsina for Jackie. The waiter winked at me before he left. I squeezed some lemon over the octopus and had a taste.
“Knock it off, Jackie,” I said as I swallowed a rubbery cube of octopus.
“There’s nothing to knock off, Nick.” Jackie rearranged the silverware around her plate and folded her hands. “Listen. I’m a person who’s generally content. In that respect I’m very lucky. And I’m very comfortable with my sexual proclivity. I have a wonderful career, and I’ve found an extremely compatible person to share it with. There’s only one thing now that I’m missing, and I see no reason why I can’t have it.”
“A child.”
“Right.”
“So adopt one,” I said. “There’s laws now that prevent discrimination against gay couples who want to adopt.”
“I’m not interested in getting into some long, protracted process involving miles of red tape, or the expense that goes along with it. And like most people, I prefer to bear a child from my own blood, especially if I’m able.”
The waiter brought our drinks and took our dinner order. Jackie asked for a country salad, and I ordered
souzoukakia,
a meatball dish in a spicy tomato sauce served over rice. He left and I had a pull off my beer, then studied Jackie’s face.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Never been more serious, Nicky.”
“How do I fit in?” I said. “So to speak.”
Jackie smirked. “I thought that part would interest you.”
“Only in the scientific sense.”
“Uh-huh.” She sipped her retsina and set down the glass. “Actually, the ball is rolling right now. A week from now I’m scheduled for a sonogram. If everything goes according to
schedule—that is, if I’m ovulating—we could have intercourse next Sunday night.”
“Intercourse? You make it sound so romantic.”
“I just want to be efficient. It’s not that the thought of being with you is so awfully repulsive.”
“Now, stop. You’ll make me blush.”
“What do you think?” she asked.
I lit a cigarette and aimed the exhale away from her face. “Normally, I’d say something wise. But I can see you’re not bullshitting me. I can tell you right off the bat that a guy like me has no business being a father.”
“You wouldn’t be, not in that way. I’ve had my lawyer draw up a waiver that would limit any parental rights you might have, even if you were to have a change of heart up the road. Of course I’d never stop you from seeing the child, if that’s what you wanted.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“That’s right,” she said, and her eyes softened. “What else?”
“I’ll tell you the first thing that came to my mind. Bringing a kid into this world—it’s a huge decision, and sometimes it’s one based entirely on selfishness. And I’ve got to admit, you know, as much as I wear my heart on my sleeve, who’s to say that the fact that you’re gay is not rattling around somewhere in the back of my mind?”
“What bothers you about it?”
“Are a gay couple going to make proper parents? I don’t know. I don’t know if it does bother me. I’m just being honest with you. I’ve gotta think about it. All of it.”
“I didn’t expect you to decide right here,” she said. “But don’t drag your feet. I’ve scheduled you for an appointment at the clinic on Wednesday morning. I want you to have a blood test, and I want them to check your sperm count while you’re there.”
“Don’t trust me, huh?”
“If your sperm count’s low, there’s no reason to go through with it. As for the blood test, the fact is that I’m monogamous. And you’re an active heterosexual. I’m not taking any chances.”
“No chances, huh? Kind of takes the fun out of it.”
“Fun?” Jackie said. “You’ll find a way.”
I DROPPED JACKIE OFF
and drove north on Wisconsin through an alternation of flurries and freezing drizzle. The radio was on, a sports-talk program on WHUR. The caller was saying something derogatory about Larry Bird. He called and said roughly the same thing at about the same time every week. What he really objected to was the fact that Bird was white. But tonight I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Billy Goodrich.
I had called him at his house in Scaggsville after my meeting with DiGeordano. There had been a pause on his end when I told him about the money. The pause in itself could have meant a lot of things—shock, fear for his wife, a moment to strategize—and as I was waiting for his response, I realized my mistake. I should have brought the matter up in his presence; there are, after all, more clues in one face than in a hundred telephone conversations. In any case, when I hung up with Billy, he knew more than I did, and I knew nothing.
I found a spot near Lee’s apartment in Tenleytown and killed the engine. On the way to her stairwell I hawked the remainder of a mint onto the brown lawn of the property. At Lee’s door I straightened my overcoat and knocked twice. I watched my breath hit the metal door until the door swung open.
Lee had on a jade green shirt, buttoned to the top, the one that made her green eyes seem violently alive. The large brown speck in one of those eyes appeared hazel in the yellowish light of the stairwell. Her dark hair was drawn back, but a twist of it had come unbound and had fallen across her forehead and then down the side of her angular face. Her smile caused small lines to flower at the corners of her eyes.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Sober. Get my flowers?”
“Uh-huh. Not very original. But the note was.”
“You liked it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I got the part about you being a perfect slob. And the apology. But what are you now, an Indian? I mean you signed the note ‘Tongue of Snake.’ What’s that got to do with the price of beans?”
“If you’d like” I said, “I’ll just come on in and show you.”
A moment later we were against the wall near the hall closet where, in a mindless rush, I penetrated her with my trousers heaped down around my shoes. Then, carrying her, still inside her, with a Chaplinesque waddle (my pants still binding my ankles) to the living room rocker, I set her down, pulled out, and with my chin scraping the perforated cane seat, her legs veed out over the Brentwood’s lacquered arms, I chased the sliding chair across the hardwood floor, as I sunk my face into that slippery thicket of sweet brine, and showed her, with workmanlike pride, just what my tongue had to do with “the price of beans.” During her first orgasm, her muscular thighs clamped down so tightly on my head that I thought for a moment she had dislodged some vertebrae. Her second spasm, marked by her cool dry lips and a visible shudder of her damp shoulders, was less dramatic. Then we were down on the floor and I was inside her once again, in an undulating crab walk that ended with her head tilted against the base of the sofa and me baying unashamedly, like the dog I was, at the low white ceiling.
Afterward we sat naked on the couch and drank a bottle of Chilean cabernet and listened to the “Reggae Splashdown” on HFS. We were both fairly quiet that night and both of us wanted it that way. The sex and the wine and our nakedness had thrown a calming blanket over us and the entire room. Somewhere in the evening I told her about Jackie Kahn’s proposition.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. I searched for a trace of jealousy in Lee’s voice, but there wasn’t one. Instead there was interest and the genuine concern that I was not setting myself up for a brass-knuckled punch in the heart.
“She’s going through with it,” I said, “whether I agree to be the one or not. We’re friends. I can’t turn her down.”
“How does it make you feel, to think you might become a father? Even though, you know, you’re not really going to have the responsibility.”
The chugging rhythms of Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It” filled the room. I finished off the goblet of wine and placed it on the glass table in front of the couch. Lee leaned into my shoulder and I put my arm around hers. “There was a long while, after my marriage flamed out, I resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to have any kids. It’s not an easy thing to come to terms with, believe me. Having kids always seemed to me to be the most elemental thing to do. But there’s certain people maybe shouldn’t have kids, even if they want to. I’m probably one of them.”
“Cut it out,” she said.
“It’s not self-pity,” I said. “What’s the old expression? ‘Kids shouldn’t have kids’—Lee, that’s all I’m saying. But when Jackie explained the deal, I’ve got to admit, I got excited. I can be a father, Lee. I
can
be. And I don’t have to screw anybody up by doing it.”
“You’re just too hard,” Lee said, and kissed me on the mouth. But she knew I was right, and she couldn’t look me in the eye.
“I know who I am,” I said. “That’s all.”
THE CLOCK ON THE
nightstand read 4:39 when I awoke in Lee’s bed. Lee’s hip was warm against mine, and her breathing was like a faint wind slipping through the crack of a pane. I watched a tree’s shadow shimmer across the bare white wall of her room. The shadow became more detailed as my eyes adjusted to the
light. I thought about the weekend and felt my blood jump and knew then that it would be a while before I would return to sleep. I reached for the pack of Camels on the nightstand, found a matchbook, and struck a flame to the tobaccoed end.
The first lungful was toxic with sulfur, but I held it in and tried to watch the smoke of my exhale drift up toward the ceiling. What I saw was a subtle change of the spare light, like the slow movement of deep water on a moonlit night. I studied the lit end of the smoke and made a trail of it with a small circular motion of my hand. Lee woke and got up on one elbow. She put one small hand on my chest and with the other brushed the hair back away from her face.
“What’s up, Nicky?” she said.
“Just thinking,” I said. “The thinking woke me up, and now it’s keeping me up.”
“Thinking about what?”
I took a deep drag off the cigarette. “I had a run-in with this guy yesterday. This guy just happened to be Italian. Anyway, I belted him across the mouth. And after I did that I called him a name.”
“What kind of name?”
“A Guinea. A dago. I don’t remember.”
“Go to sleep, Nicky. You didn’t mean anything.”
“Something like that always means something.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I got a feeling here,” I said. “That this whole thing with Billy Goodrich—his wife, the DiGeordanos, all of it—there’s something not right about it. Nothing ever good comes from situations like that, Lee. It’s going to turn out bad.”
W
ASHINGTON, D.C., IS
laid out in quadrants with the Capitol serving as the point at which they all meet. Numbered streets progress, well, numerically, and run north to south. Lettered streets are arranged alphabetically and run east to west. At the border of each quadrant this numerical progression begins again. Thus it is nearly impossible to get lost in our nation’s capital. Unless, of course, one hails from some hotbed of logic like, say, Baltimore.