God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (35 page)

And they all laughed like it was funny, and she liked
that.

And after he'd brought them a drink and left, Richard
looked at her and said, "He's right." And she was special
again, the way she was supposed to be.

They left her car in the parking lot and took the
Continental to Rittenhouse Square. The doorman at the Barclay opened
her door and helped her out, and a kid in a bow tie and a dark red
jacket parked the car. She'd never been to the Barclay before. He
held her arm at the elbow and took her into the bar. They had Scotch
there, and then he ordered champagne when they got to the room. It
was on the sixteenth floor. She looked out the window at Rittenhouse
Square, and there were a hundred people down there walking dogs—nice,
little ones you could pick up and put in your purse. He came up
behind her with a glass of champagne, putting his arm around her to
deliver it. When she took the glass, the hand moved to her stomach.

"I love you," he said. She was still
looking out at the square, so it wasn't as uncomfortable as if they'd
been face to face.

“
From the minute I saw you," he said, "I
loved you." It turned her cold.

She knew that was how writers wrote, so in a way it
didn't surprise her that's how they were in person, but it turned her
cold. He kissed her on the back of the neck and she let him. If there
was a place to stop in all this, it was gone. His hand moved up to
her breast, and then back down her stomach to her legs. She wished
she was in the park, holding one of those dogs on a leash. One of the
little ones that couldn't pull you off your feet. He kissed her
again, and it ran a shiver up the back of her head.

He did have a nice touch.

Then he moved between her and the window and said it
again. "I love you." She was looking at the floor, but he
took her chin in his hand and brought her eyes up into his face. "I
love you," he said. If he was going to do something, why didn't
he just do it?

She didn't know why she didn't want to look at him.
She didn't know why she began blinking tears. "I'm sorry,"
she said. He put his arms around her neck and held her next to his
ear. She could feel his hand and his hair and the edge of the
champagne glass.

"It's too much all at once," he said.

And that was true, and at the bottom it was all
empty. When Tom died, it had been enough. The looks at the cemetery,
the things she overheard. "
So beautiful,
and with that poor sick little baby . . .
"
It took his place. And there was a way people treated her afterward,
there was always a consideration.

Jeanie Scarpato depended on that consideration, and
accepted it naturally in a way that made it pleasurable to offer. On
the day Leon died, there was no time to think of him at all. For that
day, it was only the loss, the neighbors coming by with hams and
salads, her sisters' shoulders. But somewhere in the time since, she
had come to the bottom of it, and at the bot tom it was empty.

She'd tried to turn them away from her toward what
happened to Leon, to tell them he hadn't died in an accident, but it
wasn't set up for that. They listened, and then they patted her hand
or her shoulder, or they hugged her, or told her it would be all
right.

And it wasn't set up for her to refuse that, because
empty as it was, it's the way it had always been, and she couldn't
give it up. She stayed in Richard Shellburn's arms five minutes
without moving. Then he let go of her and got them both another glass
of champagne. She took it like medicine.

The room was quiet. Even with both of them there the
air never seemed to move. That's how you could tell an expensive
hotel. "I don't think I belong here either," she said. She
sat down on a small couch facing the bed and wiped at her eyes. He
sat down on the bed and watched her.

"You want to take care of Leon first," he
said. “And your husband."

She shook her head. "I don't know," she
said. "Everything happened at once, Mickey's somebody different.
..." She felt him staring at her.

He stood up and walked to the window. "It's not
the right time," he said. He stood there awhile and then he
said, "It's better than a dog sneezing in your ass, though."

She smiled at that and put her head against the arm
of the sofa. She felt tired and a little dizzy. He said, "Why
don't you lie on the bed?"

She said, "I've got to leave soon." He
pulled the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket and walked back to
the window. He seemed ordinary to her now. She closed her eyes, and a
little later she heard him talking on the phone. A few minutes after
that, somebody came to the door with more champagne. She wasn't
asleep and she wasn't awake, nothing was all the way anymore.

When she opened her eyes again, the room was dark.
She was thirsty and cold. "What time is it?" she said. He
was in the room, she knew he was in the room.

He said, "You were tired." She sat up and
looked around. He was over on the bed, sitting cross-legged in the
dark, staring at her. There were two empty bottles of champagne on
the bed with him, and he took a drink out of another one in his hand.

She went into the bathroom and turned on all the
switches on the wall. Light, sunlamp, a fan. She brushed her hair and
washed out her mouth with a little bottle of Lavoris the hotel left
with the soap and shampoo. Her shirt looked like she'd pulled it out
from under the front seat of the car.

She tucked it into her pants and then began to fix
her face. A little lipstick, some color for her cheeks. It wasn't
anything artificial she did with makeup. She didn't use it to cover
anything up, she let it bring her out. It had been like that as long
as she could remember.

When she came out, Shellburn was still sitting
cross-legged on the bed. "Is it all right if I turn on the
lights?" she said. She heard what might have been a laugh.

"No, leave them off," he said.

"Are you mad?"

“
I love you," he said.

"I can take a cab back to my car," she
said.

"All right." He sounded calm to her, and
for a second she wondered if it was all just trying to get himself a
piece of ass. She put a knee and a hand on the bed and kissed him on
the cheek.

One of the bottles rolled over her fingers.

"Call me," she said. All the way down the
hall, she wondered why she'd said that. She thought she might of felt
sorry for him. The doorman looked at her different than he had when
she'd been with Richard Shellburn, it was like they were both the
same now. He got her a cab, though, and held the door. When she
climbed in he said, "There you go."

“
Thank you," she said.

"Another day, another dollar," he said, and
he closed the door before she could be sure what he meant. The cab
smelled like somebody lived in it, and she told the driver she wanted
to go to Bookbinders. A block from the hotel the driver suddenly
turned around and said, "I don't change nothin' bigger than a
ten."

"All right.”

"I had this fare when I first come on,” he
said, “tried to give me a hundred. You believe that, a hundred?"
She smiled but she didn't answer. She had problems of her own.

Mickey wasn't at home. She let herself in and got out
of her clothes and into a robe. She was still cold from the hotel
room, and she made a cup of hot chocolate, thinking of herself
floating someplace between Mickey and Richard, waiting for one or the
other to do something to save her and Leon. It felt like everybody
she'd ever known had missed the point.

Did Richard Shellburn think she was the kind to walk
into a hotel room, with Leon still waiting to be buried, and tell him
she loved him too? All in all, she'd rather of been raped.

She thought of Mickey throwing off the sheets,
tearing her nightgown, pinning her to the bed. Yes, she'd seen him
pick up the air conditioner, as high as his head, and fit it into the
wall. She saw him lift up the back end of Mole Ferrell's Toyota when
the jack slipped and it fell on him—you could of understood it if
it had been Mole Ferrell that got killed on the job, he was born for
injury. But Mickey had never picked her up, he was afraid to be
forceful.

And afraid to be soft. He didn't have a nice touch,
like Richard. She finished the hot chocolate and went upstairs and
lay on top of the bed. She imagined Mickey coming up the stairs. She
got back up and put on a yellow nightgown—trying for a few seconds
to remember if she'd ever heard of anybody else who only liked one
co1or—and then she stood in front of the mirror half an hour,
moving the part in her hair, lightening her eyes and then brushing
mascara into her lashes until they looked too heavy to open.

When she'd finished, the effect was a
fifteen-year-old girl trying to look thirty. It wasn't anything she
made up, it was inside her and she'd just let it come out. She lay in
bed two hours, waiting for him to come home. About two o'clock she
heard the noises on the street and knew McKenna was closing. Mickey
must have been the last one out, though, because it was another
fifteen or twenty minutes before she heard him downstairs.

She spread her hair out over the pillow and pulled
the bedding down so that he would see the curve of her waist to her
hip under the sheet. She heard him coming up the stairs and closed
her eyes, and waited for him to look into the room and see she was
helpless.

She could tell from his steps that he was drunk.
Sober, he was as light on his feet as Leon. He climbed the stairs,
not even trying to be quiet. She lay with her hair spread over the
pillow and her eyes closed. He came down the hall and stopped in the
doorway.

She heard his breathing, and then he was moving
again, toward the bed, and a step before he got to her she opened her
eyes and jumped. "Oh, Mickey," she said. "It's you
.... "

He sat down next to her on the bed. Her eyes got
bigger.

"What are you . . ." She let that die. "Oh,
no," she said, "no. . ."

He reached over and touched her arm. It wasn't rough
and it wasn't gentle. He said, "Jeanie, we got to talk."

She closed her eyes. "Oh, no,” she said. He
noticed the fear had gone out of her voice and thought that at least
was a start.

"I got to tell you what happened today," he
said. She closed her eyes. "Don't go to s1eep," he said.
"We got to talk."

"It's late," she said. He turned on the
light next to the bed, and it hurt her eyes. "In the morning,"
she said.

He shook his head. "In the morning I'll change
my mind," he said, "and this whole fuckin' thing will be
right where it was."

She said, "At least turn off the light."

"I got to see you when I say it," he said,
"so I can tell how you're takin' it." He looked at his
hands a couple of minutes and then he began to say things. "This
morning I took the truck down to sell it."

She looked at him. "Why'd you do that?"

"I didn't have the money to bury Leon," he
said. "I had the money, but it wasn't enough to do it right.
Fuck, what do I know about it? The only family I had was Daniel, and
there wasn't nobody else there to worry about when I buried him, so I
just did it." She was looking at him now suspicious, like she
expected it all along. He decided not to mention Turned Leaf.

"Anyway," he said, "I took the truck
down to Little Eddie's, but the guy he's got workin' for him took it
out and wrecked it. He hit a bus, I don't know how bad the guy's
hurt, but they took him to the hospital." He stopped and looked
at the ceiling. "His name is Stretch," he said.

She didn't say anything, but she was paying
attention. At least she knew he was there. "Anyway, see, Bird's
been havin' troubles of his own, and now he's out of business. You
see what I'm ta1kin' about? The truck don't matter, let me put your
mind to rest about that." He wasn't telling it right. It was
supposed to be about him.

"How much do you need?" she said.

He shook his head. "I don't need money. Little
Eddie bought himself a truck as soon as Stretch hit the bus." He
looked at the ceiling again to tell her the next part.

"Anyway," he said, "Leon was in the
truck."

"What?"

"Leon was with the truck," he said,
correcting himself. “He was in the back."

“
With the meat?"

"Take it easy," he said. "I kept him
separate, the meat never touched him. I took care of him, kept him
clean .... " He wished now he'd turned off the light when she'd
wanted him to. "Anyway," he said.

"Stop saying anyway," she said.

"Right. So Stretch ran into the bus, and the
truck tipped over in the middle of the street."

"No," she said.

"Yeah,” he said. "And the back door flew
open, and Leon fell out." It wasn't supposed to be coming out
like this, and he could see she wasn't understanding his side of it.
It wasn't about him at all. He said, "See, Jack Moran wouldn't
bury him until he had the cash."

"He's been riding around in the back of that
truck all the time?" she said. "Mickey, he was just a
baby." He thought of the way Leon had looked at the medical
examiner's, like an angel.