A Drop of the Hard Stuff (13 page)

“Gross.”

“But what I don’t get,” I said, “is why it would strike him as a good idea to pour the bottles out the window. Just set them aside until you can get it together to empty them in the toilet. What’s so hard about that?”

“I can see one advantage in pouring your pee out the window.”

“Entertainment?”

“Well, I suppose, but that’s more of a fringe benefit. The main thing is, then you don’t have to worry about drinking it by mistake. Ha! Got you with that one, didn’t I? The little lady wins the gross-out contest.”

We both agreed it was nice enough to walk the half mile home, and she took my arm crossing Houston Street and didn’t let go when we reached the curb. We’d finished the meal with espresso, and the waiter had come over with a pair of cordial glasses, the house’s standard lagniappe for customers they hoped to see again. As he reached our table he remembered we were the ones who’d passed on the wine. “You no want,” he said tentatively, and we agreed that we didn’t, and walking home Jan wondered what we’d turned down.

“Probably anisette,” I said, “or something anise-flavored.”

“Not Sambuca?”

“It could have been Sambuca.”

“They wouldn’t pass it out,” she said, “because most people can’t stand the taste of it, but you know what I used to like? Fernet-Branca.”

“You liked that stuff?”

“It’s pretty horrible,” she admitted, “but nothing beat it on a bad morning. The bitter taste, I think it did something for your stomach.”

“All it ever did for mine,” I said, “was turn it. The only cordial I developed a fondness for was Strega.”

“Oh, Jesus, Strega! I haven’t even thought of that in years. I hope that’s not what he had for us.”

“What difference does it make? Since we didn’t drink it anyway—”

“It was definitely anisette,” she said. “Some cheapo anisette with a nasty perfumy taste.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“You know what
Strega
means? In Italian?”

“
Witch,
isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Witch.” We walked along in a pensive silence, and then she said, “You know, here I am remembering the taste, and if they perfected some kind of faux Strega, exactly the same but with no alcohol in it—”

“You wouldn’t want it.”

“Wouldn’t touch it with a stick.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Don’t let this get around,” she confided, “but I just might be an alcoholic.”

By the time we got close to Canal Street, the acknowledged boundary between SoHo and Tribeca, I could scarcely
remember how I’d felt earlier—resenting her for presuming to save me a seat, chafing under the obligation of having to spend yet another Saturday night in her company. Why on earth would I want to spend the night differently?

For a moment it seemed to me that I’d been given a glimpse of the future. We’d go on like this, growing ever closer to one another, and sometime after my one-year anniversary I’d spend all my nights on Lispenard Street. I might keep the room at the Northwestern as an office, at least for a while, but it wasn’t really a place to meet clients, and what other need did I have for an office?

So we’d live together, and after a year of that, or less if it felt right, I’d put a ring on her finger.

Would she want kids? I had two sons, and sooner or later Jan would have to meet them, and I figured they’d all get along as well as they had to. But she was two years younger than I, and had been sober two years longer, and she was still young enough to have children, although that biological clock was ticking away. So how would she feel on the subject? For that matter, how would I feel?

Stay in the moment, I told myself. It’s a beautiful night and you’re going home with a fine-looking woman. What more do you need to know?

I
DON’T KNOW
what the hell happened,” I told Jim. “We were the cute little couple on top of the wedding cake, and then we crossed Canal Street and everything turned to shit.”

It was Sunday night and Jim and I were in a Chinese restaurant. Hot-and-sour soup, sesame noodles, orange beef, and a chicken dish named for a Chinese general, all as ritualized in its own way as my Saturday evening.

“We got to her door,” I said, “and she was fumbling in her purse, so I took out my key and unlocked the door.”

“You have keys to her place.”

“For months now. It’s a convenience. Her building’s an old factory converted to artists’ lofts, and it doesn’t have an intercom, although there’s been some talk about putting one in. What I would have to do was phone her when I was a block or so away, and then she’d wait at the window until she saw me and throw down a set of keys, and I’d pick them up off the sidewalk and let
myself in. It didn’t take too long for both of us to get tired of that system.”

“No, it would get old fast. So you unlocked the door and she bristled.”

“Exactly.”

“She say anything?”

“No.”

“Did you?”

“What was I going to say? ‘Hey, why give me a key if I’m not supposed to use it?’ ”

“So you waited for it to blow over, and it didn’t.”

“We went upstairs, and she made some coffee, which I don’t think either of us really needed at this point. And she put the radio on, and we’d picked up the Sunday
Times
on the way home, and we each settled in with a section of the paper.”

“The old folks at home,” he said. “This chicken’s good.”

“It’s always good.”

“I know, but somehow it always exceeds my expectations. So, domestic bliss. Unless you had a fight over the Arts and Leisure section.”

I shook my head. “But I didn’t want to be there. And she didn’t want me there, either. And there was no way either of us could say anything or do anything, so we were stuck with each other until morning.”

“And a few minutes earlier you’d been thinking of names for your kids.”

“Well, not exactly. But close enough. Still, it was quiet.”

“Duke Ellington working away in the background.”

“Among others. The jazz station. Except for what was going on in both our minds, everything was fine.”

“Not that you knew what was going on in any mind other than your own.”

“Well, I picked up vibes.”

“Ah, vibes. And who was playing them? Lionel Hampton or Milt Jackson?”

“I didn’t know what she was thinking,” I said, “but I had a pretty good idea. And I thought, All right, the thing to do is make the best of it, and there’s not really anything wrong, and it’ll work itself out. And when I was done with the sports section I went to take a shower, figuring that maybe she’d like me a little better if I smelled nice when we made love.”

“Which you always do on Saturday night?”

“Pretty much. And I thought, you know, that it might help things work out.”

“Because sometimes sex has that effect.”

“Sometimes it does.”

“And even if it doesn’t,” he said, “at least you wind up getting laid. But somehow I gather the physical manifestation of your mutual affection wasn’t a great success.”

“I went to bed,” I said, “and she said she’d be along in a few minutes. She went to the kitchen first, to wash the coffee cups. Usually she leaves them until morning.”

“The detective speaks.”

“And she was a long time in the shower, and a long time in the bathroom after the shower stopped running. And lying there waiting for her, I thought of pretending to be asleep.”

“So that you wouldn’t have to have sex.”

“And then she came in, quiet as a mouse, and she asked me if I was awake. In a whisper, too low to rouse me if I wasn’t paying attention. And I knew she was hoping I was asleep, so
she
wouldn’t have to have sex.”

“The cute little couple on the wedding cake, as I recall.”

“So I rolled over,” I said, “and made room for her beside me, and we worked our way into this slow and gentle lovemaking,
and eventually she either had an orgasm or faked one, but either way I was grateful. It took me forever to fall asleep.”

Sunday morning she said she didn’t feel much like brunch, and I said I ought to skip the morning meeting and see if I could get some work done. She made coffee and we each had a cup and accompanied it with sections of the paper we hadn’t gotten to the night before. Then we kissed good-bye and I got out of there.

I wound up walking all the way uptown to my hotel. I kept thinking I’d catch a meeting or a subway, but I just kept on walking, stopping once for coffee and another time for a sausage roll. By the time I got home I was ready to lie down, and I napped for an hour until it was time to watch the Giants lose to the Packers. There was snow on the field in Green Bay, which surprised me. It was still sport jacket weather in New York, except on those days when the wind had an edge to it.

The phone never rang. I had some calls to make, but first I watched the game through to the bitter end, and then I pulled my chair over to the window and watched the sky darken. When I finally picked up the phone it was to call Jim, so he could decide where we’d have our sesame noodles.

Now he said, “You’re coming up on a year.”

“No kidding.”

“Generally a tense time, immediately before and after an anniversary.”

“So they tell me.”

“Not that the rest of the time’s a piece of cake, but anniversaries seem to polarize things for us. You know, you got involved way too soon.”

“I know.”

“But maybe you didn’t have much choice.”

I’d known Jan before I ever saw the inside of an AA room.
There’d been a string of murders, a guy using an ice pick on women, and a few years after I left the force they got the guy. Except there was one killing he wouldn’t cop to, and it turned out he couldn’t have done it, he was inside at the time. It was an ice-cold case as far as the police department was concerned, and they certainly weren’t going to waste time on it, so a cop who knew me steered the victim’s father in my direction, and he hired me.

The investigation led me to Jan’s loft on Lispenard Street, among other places, and we liked each other’s looks enough to get drunk and go to bed together.

That worked out pretty well, and it looked as though I had a girlfriend, and a drinking buddy in the bargain. And I did, until she started going to meetings. That meant she was no longer a drinking buddy, and the people she met in church basements convinced her that she couldn’t be a girlfriend either, not of a man with a powerful thirst. I wished her the very best of luck and went off to get something to drink.

And some time went by, and she got sober and stayed that way, and I went on living my life. Then, when it got bad enough, I started going to meetings myself. I was in and out, I’d stay sober for a while and then I wouldn’t. Jim began to take an interest in me, and talked to me when he saw me, or tried to anyway. Pretty much everybody else left me alone.
My name’s Matt. I’ll pass.
Right.

Over the months I’d called Jan once in a while, when I was drunk enough to think it was a good idea. She was always polite, but knew better than to spend time talking to a drunk. Then I called her when I was trying to stay sober. I had to talk to someone and I couldn’t think of anybody else to call.

And we started keeping company of a sort. And one day I ordered a drink I didn’t really want, which was nothing new,
and left it untouched on a bar, which was. And since then I’d been sober, and we were a couple. More or less.

Jim said he’d have to pass on St. Clare’s. There was something on PBS Beverly wanted to watch, and he’d agreed to keep her company. Did I want to join the two of them? I knew I didn’t, and headed for the meeting instead. I left at the break and went home.

No calls. I went to bed.

T
HAT WAS SUNDAY.
A week and a half later, on Wednesday, I cleared the last suspect. I didn’t put in long hours and I can’t say I made any brilliant deductions, but I used the phone and the subway to good avail, and that turned out to be enough. By the time I was done I still didn’t know who’d killed Jack Ellery, but I knew five people who hadn’t, and that was all I’d signed on for.

I’d spent Monday renewing my acquaintance with some cops I’d known over the years. There was a guy I’d worked with a long time back in Brooklyn, and just a few blocks from me at Midtown North there was Joe Durkin; we’d had dealings right around the time I first started trying to get sober, and since then he’d earned a couple of extralegal dollars by steering a case or two my way.

Neither of them had anything for me, but they made a few
phone calls and set up other cops for me to see. A guy from a downtown precinct knew the name Crosby Hart. He wasn’t a hood, he was a Wall Street guy, but he’d developed a fondness for cocaine that led him to embezzle from his employers. Which added up:
Screwed him on a coke deal
was next to his name on Jack’s Eighth Step list.

“Skinny guy in a suit, skinny tie, all the time tapping his long bony fingers, bobbing his head. Could not sit still. Cocaine, the miracle drug. We hauled him in, airtight case, but the firm changed their mind, insisted on dropping the charges. Restitution, treatment, never do it again, di dah di dah di dah. Which is fine, because once the coke’s out of the picture you’ve got a respectable guy leading a respectable life. Isn’t he better off with the wife and kids in Dobbs Ferry than a few miles further up the river in Ossining?”