“I just came from there—I figured I’d stop by during the slow time—and caught them in the kitchen.” She went on to describe how cozy it had all looked, Eloise scraping off the grill, the guy running his hands around her waist. “Very cozy indeed. Pillow talk missing only the pillows”—Dana winked—“if you know what I mean.”
Dana thought he looked kind of familiar, like maybe she’s seen him around town. A cool kind of look, denim shirt, rugged looks. “And I said to myself, well, Eloise has got herself a Marlboro Man!”
*
Seriously?
Eloise Timmler?
When Dana left to go work on her personal “choosing crisis,” as she called it, I sat back in the booth and thought about the latest problem. What was the likelihood there was another Marlboro Man in town? It could happen, I supposed, drumming my fingers on the table. And my definition of this subspecies might very well differ from another’s.
But I found myself feeling pretty narrow-eyed at the thought that Mark was up to something behind my back.
Or … was Mark up to something behind Eloise’s back?
Either way, I didn’t like it.
The front door swung open and Vera Tyndall appeared, early. While she handed me the linens delivery bags and started covering the tables, she talked about how much better her brother was doing and asked about Maria Pia. Pulling a Joe, I went all monosyllabic on the subject. Vera looked at me with a grin and kept working, her hair held back in a pretty black-and-gold headband. No one managed the Miracolo “look” better than Vera, who could somehow make you think that a white tailored shirt and black pants were a radical fashion statement.
Giancarlo arrived stiffly.
Followed by Alma, who had had bangs cut—at the suggestion of her grief support group, she told me—and jazzed up her baggy black pants with a new sample of Art for Your Feet! Paulette breezed in, heard about the various crimes, and stacked the poor empty shadow boxes as though she was putting away kids’ toys at the end of the day. When Jonathan sailed in with a basket of wine, I had a crazy moment of wanting to leave the Closed sign up and head out to the countryside with the staff for some late-afternoon wine and cheese alfresco.
I broke into all the chatter to tell them about tomorrow morning’s meeting at Joe’s for the Free Maria Pia operatives.
Choo Choo pushed through the double doors, and when Vera sailed a smile at him, I discovered my cousin’s secret: he was sweet on Vera Tyndall. The ramped-up personal style, the small portions, the blush he was wearing that very second. My heart lifted.
I grabbed the two linens bags and went back to the kitchen, humming. Things suddenly didn’t hurt so much—my shoulder, my pride, my grandmother, my uncertainties about Mark, my conversations with Joe, even the prospect of twenty years in the slammer. And, in honor of love, I decided to make my special filling for the Great Miracolo Cannoli Rebellion.
14
Four hours later I was in the middle of the dinner rush, up to my sleeves putting the finishing touches on an order of
scabeggio,
my favorite marinated fish dish, when I realized what I wanted to do: stake out Mark Metcalf. Garlic always sharpens my thinking. Content now, I reimmersed myself in the wine, garlic, lemon juice, and (user-friendly amounts of) sage aromas of my work.
When I stuck my head through the kitchen doors much later, Mrs. Crawford—resplendent in a butter-yellow full-length gown with black embroidery—was finishing up her last set with Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue.” Vera was erasing the words
Ricolato cannoli
from the specials board, to the satisfying sounds of inconsolable anguish from the customers. And as the night came in through the front windows, I could half shut my eyes and let myself think our soft hanging globes and flickering table votives were moons and stars in some benign universe where the air was scented with lemon and garlic. A place where you could believe the men were honest and true, and the women could sing on-key. Is that too much to ask?
As the late-night regulars drifted in—including Dana, who had added a double strand of pearls—I watched the final two couples gather their bags and wraps. In the kitchen, Landon and Choo Choo were discussing the Phillies’ chances.
I decided everything looked under control, which, of course, is always worrisome, but I kissed my cousins good night, saluted Li Wei, and donned a black zipped hoodie I yanked from the lost and found. With my black pants, black top (with hood fully deployed), and black Keds high-tops, I looked like a ninja homey. In terms of stakeout chic, it was a little too “in the box” for my taste, but as a newcomer I had to start somewhere.
As I slipped into the night, I got a grin from the smitten Choo Choo and a “Tell me you’re going to a mime bar” from Landon. I snaked through what backyards I could between the restaurant and the northeast corner of Market Square, pushed my way through some uncooperative hedges, and emerged onto the side street that connected us to Callowhill Street, where the streetlights were so bright you’d think it was Madison Square Garden.
I dashed into the shadows, and tried on a hiphop gait, head down, as I passed a group of college girls. I was jazzed. I was pumped. Clothes really do make the manic. When I was in range of Full of Crêpe, I oozed across Callowhill Street and looked totally suspicious loitering at the side of the Herb and Yarn Shoppe. On the one hand, I told myself,
Be bold
, and on the other hand, I thought,
What are you, nuts?
Suddenly I wondered why it had not occurred to me to stake out Mark in my car. It would have made sense, parking across the street in an inconspicuous old car that draws about as much attention as a middle-aged lady in T-shirt and jeans in a bingo hall. But as Landon once pointed out to me, my brain always looks for the longest distance between two points. He calls it Eveometry.
When I hung back as a patrol car cruised down Callowhill Street, I realized Eloise’s storage container in her driveway offered the perfect cover. Peeking around it, I could see that the restaurant was dark, but there were lights on in the back.
What’s the plan, Angelotta?
Well, first I should determine the worst-case scenario, which seemed to be discovery. Once I came to terms with that, I could relax and go for bold.
I decided to handle discovery by Mark with total honesty. The exchange would go something like this: when he asks what the hell I’m doing skulking around, I would go all Needy Mental Case on him, accusing him of cheating on me, making up a slew of broken promises he had never made in the first place, flinging our nonexistent fling at him. In short, full-out
pazza ragazza.
Crazy girl.
Most definitely a plan.
Of course, the stakeout might prove that Dana was hallucinating, and that Mark and I were just a matter of time. The office couch was going nowhere. So I actually tiptoed along the side of the pod and frog-walked my way past the crêperie windows. Although my thighs were screaming, my mouth was clamped shut. I rose upright just enough to get the lay of the land, stepped through the bushes lining the building, and cursed Eloise for planting something with stickers and prickers. What didn’t scratch my ankles gripped me by my hoodie.
Then a loud metallic roar, pretty much like how I imagined the End of Days to sound, sent me sprawling on the ground between the bushes and the building. My heart was trying to burst out of my chest and the words
sitting duck
leaped to mind, but then I saw that the side floodlight was broken.
Phew.
I twisted a smidge to find the source of the noise.
Near the bottom of the driveway, the metal door of the pod had been rolled up and the storage unit was standing wide open. A dim Coleman lantern sat at the edge of the bay while a dark figure moved around inside, carrying something. It looked like a dead body, and my stomach lurched. What was in my karma that seemed to place me within twenty-five feet of corpses?
The Coleman lantern may have been helping the mysterious mover, but it wasn’t clearing things up for me, clinging full of dread to the earth. But when I forced myself to take a closer look, I decided the shape of the Thing Moved looked more like a rug than a body.
Okay, so Eloise Timmler was still moving in. That was kind of boring. But then the window just above me slid open and a voice called out. I chewed the dirt.
“That you out here?” Eloise herself.
Presumably, she wasn’t talking to me.
Indistinct mutterings from the pod.
“Come on in. I’ll be done soon,” Eloise said, and I heard her walk away from the window. When I heard two feet on the driveway I looked as far over my shoulder as I could, catching only the edges of the shadowy figure, who shut down the lantern, set it on the driveway, and pulled the pod’s rolling door back down.
There was no way I could just leap up, push my way back through the bushes, and spring away into the night. So I stayed as motionless as I could and hoped for some deliverance that did not include being pulled upright by the hoodie.
Footsteps.
I swallowed hard.
When I caught a peripheral glimpse of the figure heading for the front door of Full of Crêpe, I shuddered with relief. Now would definitely be the time to ease myself to my feet and ooze off into the night, but I got stubborn. I wanted some answers.
After I counted to sixty, I rose up to the half-open window. Halfway across the dimly lighted room was Eloise Timmler spray-washing a pot. Lounging next to her was my Marlboro Man, Mark Metcalf. So Dana at least got that right: they knew each other.
Okay, so he was helping Eloise move in. Nice of him. This was one of the reasons I liked him. He was helpful, like an Eagle Scout. How he knew her, and for how long, and why exactly, were none of my business. (Which was both true and false all at the same time.) He’d probably just happened by Le Chien Rouge one day, craving something sweet and syrupy, and knew her as a customer. Maybe there was a little flirtation between them, whatever Dana saw or thought she saw, but was that any reason to—
They started talking, but it was hard to make out the words over the sound of the power spray hitting the metal pot.
Eloise: “—much longer, Mark.”
Mark: “—patience, it’s not—” (He stepped behind her and nuzzled her neck, and my mouth went grim.)
Eloise, who sprayed the wall by mistake: “—risk just keeps—”
Mark the Bum: “—beyond our wildest—” (He supplemented his clichés with some hand work that I, after three dates, had never seen.)
Eloise, who dropped the pot: “—last time, I don’t think I—”
Mark the Groping Bum: “—baby, sweetie, tastykake—”
“Tastykake?” I mouthed. Was he kidding me? I didn’t know about Eloise, but the word
tastykake
always put me in mind of round, chocolate-covered dream treats with a layer of peanut butter inside—not sex. But clearly, the crêpe cook and I were different people. She attracted Marlboro Men. I attracted corpses.
Since I didn’t want to stick around to learn just what the word
tastykake
led to, I elbow-crawled and frog-walked my way back down the driveway to the cover of the pod, to steal silently into the night. But not before running into the Coleman lantern, which fell over with a clatter.
Saturday
As I hung out with a ratty afghan in my butterfly chair at 1 a.m., with a shot of Laphroaig in my hand, I took turns between pondering Big and Little Dippers and the faithlessness of men. In the partial moonlight the constellations were particularly lucid, which was more than I could say for myself. I sipped a little more. Looking up at the brilliant night sky was all I could do, because gazing toward the center of Quaker Hills was making me sadder than I could stand.
I knew that I was really kind of lucky to be just a witness to Mark’s faithlessness and not more intimately involved. When finally neither the afghan nor the Scotch kept off the night chill, I went back inside my tiny Tumbleweed home, locked up, and climbed alone up to my sleeping loft.
*
In the morning I woke up in a bad mood. So it didn’t help that the milk was sour. And that I still couldn’t figure out what was bugging me about the murder. And that I couldn’t find my phone. And that I had a sudden craving for Tastykake. All this was bad, bad, bad. I threw on a top and a pair of shorts, and found my phone under the heap of stupid red dress I had kicked off the edge of the loft the night before.
When I headed out to my Volvo, even the dew on the grass bugged me. Some days it was galling that the world went on spinning, even when you were passed over by love and headed for twenty years in the slammer. If there was any spoliating to be done, I had wanted it to be by Mark. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t have landed me in the big house. Hurling an epithet at the morning dew, I slammed myself into the car and realized there was some fog that could receive some choice words as well.
My GPS took me, bad attitude and all, straight to Joe Beck’s place for the meeting of the Free Maria Pia ops. It turned out to be a carriage house on the margin of the Quaker Hills Historic District, and I discovered that renovated carriage houses were right at the top of the list of what annoyed me that morning. It was old brick and old ivy and old slate roof. So trite. When I saw a silver Subaru that could only be his, I rolled my eyes. If he served anything other than Tastykake, I might blow sky-high.
Landon pulled up behind me, so I waited for him, scuffing my thonged toes in the gravel. He looked me over. I crossed my arms, adjusted my sunglasses, and crossed my arms again.
“Mime bar not work out?” he asked softly.
I looked around, then spilled it. “Mark Metcalf is seeing Eloise Timmler,” I said through barely moving lips. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Ah,” said Landon. “And Mark Metcalf would be … ?”
“Well, this morning I’m thinking he’s not the love of my life, after all.”
Alma and Vera crunched across the gravel toward us. I gave them a wan smile.
Landon went for reasonable. “Perhaps he has an explanation that wouldn’t rule out the love of your life part.”