Nothing but a Smile (28 page)

Compared with this guy, he felt like a fraud, and he didn't really appreciate the arched eyebrow Reenie was shooting him across the table, like she was about to bust out laughing any second.

He liked the guy. He was bold and funny. And talking to him here, the four of them getting along now like old pals, it sort of put things in perspective. So they'd screwed the pooch up at North Shore Beach and with Sal and her in-laws, the Chester-tons, and these strange visits from shadowy men in overcoats seemed to be on the upswing … Still, obviously, things could be worse.

He remembered how Uncle Len had always said
Feeling better don't mean feeling better than
and
Life's not a misery contest
— meaning not to go around grinning because you've lost a row of corn to locusts but your neighbor's lost sight of the sun on account
of locusts. And it wasn't that—it wasn't just feeling better about things because the guy had a hook while he himself only had some loss of use,
dysfunction,
as the doctor put it. It wasn't a misery contest.

Because things could even be worse for this guy, too. After all, Keeney did still have his dominant hand intact, which was more than Wink could say for himself. If he were truly getting into comparisons, unlike him, the guy could still draw—if he
could
draw. So it wasn't a matter of feeling better through pity.

It just felt nice. It just felt like things could be a hell of a lot worse for Wink if he didn't have great folks to sit with in a booth and just bull and laugh about whatever came up. And it was nice to have another guy be a part of that.

Of course, the fact they were getting along didn't mean the guy didn't let him have it. His objections were quite clear, as if he'd had them ready to lay out for some time now, storing them up to reel off if he ever ran into the “sumbitch who made that picture.”

As he counted them off, he touched his hook to his right hand, working his way down the intact fingers. “First of all, I had a job at the time. I was working the afternoon you snapped the photo, actually. Right around the corner there's that outdoor newsstand where I work. Second, I wasn't anywhere near that
NO LOITERING
sign. You've got it worked out so it looks like I'm leaning up against the mother! Pardon my Swahili, ladies … Any rate, I
wasn't
loitering, I was taking a five-minute smoke break on account of the owner gets all hinky I'm gonna burn his shack down. Had one too many run-ins with O'Bannion and the protection racket back in the dinosaur days. Guy gets worked up anytime some punk kid walks by with a bottle of pop—guy's convinced it could be kerosene … Any rate, I'm actually minding the store. Also—”

“But your duffel bag,” Sal said, speaking up. “I'm not doubting your claim, but it
appears
—”

“That's my laundry, lady, if that's quite all right with you. I'm waiting for Vin at the cleaners there to reopen after his lunch— you can't see it behind that deli truck that's in the way, sticking out of an alley.” He turned back to Wink. “And I know you want that to look like it's want ads I'm reading, like it's job listings, but it's the Business Opportunities section, friend. Big difference. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for someone wants to unload their newsstand, you know—buy my own. Now, the
NO VACANCY
sign across the street? It says that, partly, on account of me. I got one of the last apartments they had. And the cold cuts part—what is that, some kind of sick crack about my hand? Maybe you need to be a college boy to get that one. That's your idea of a sophisticated joke, yucking it up over the handicapped?”

At this, Wink decided it was time to show him his own hand “in action or, rather, lack thereof.” He demonstrated with a fountain pen how he could no longer sign his name even, let alone do the work he'd been trained to do, had his heart set on doing. “I know it's maybe not the same,” he said, “but I know
something
about that. A little.” Then he told him he was sorry, that he'd write a public letter of apology or maybe request a different sort of retraction, if he wanted, but he should know, a lot of people who saw that photo saw a lot of different things in it. And none of them were meant to ridicule
him.

“Yeah, I know,” Keeney said, waving him off. “Skip the letter. This is just junk I've been saving up. I pretty much figured a lot of that out myself, since. I just promised myself, if I ever met the fella, I'd give him a piece of my mind. So I did. You're lucky— if I'd run into you a few months back, you'da gotten more than a piece of my mind, believe it.”

It still felt like he should do something to make it up to the
guy, and he had the thought, though he knew better than to promise it yet, that maybe he could talk to the grump at the news shop, that Sunshine character, about taking this guy on. It was the same work, but at least he'd be indoors.

But for now, Wink put out his good hand, which was his left, and Keeney put out his good hand, his right, and they shook, a little awkwardly, like old ladies shake, he thought. But it also felt deeply personal, like he'd known the guy for years, the two of them putting what was left of themselves out there, reaching out with no more apologies or excuses, just clutching hands.

If she hadn't gone back for her gloves—the white evening gloves she felt necessary for an opening like the one Mort was taking her to—she would have been in the clear. But she imagined herself among the posh patrons and art critics mingling at the new photography exhibit, a dowdy shopkeeper with fingers pickled from darkroom chemicals, and she insisted they return to the shop.

Mort stayed on the street to smoke his pipe while she looked for the gloves, unsure if they were still in her apartment somewhere or down in the overstuffed prop trunk that had blossomed in the studio area on the first floor.

She heard a man calling
Hello?
and footsteps and knew it was Wink, back from shooting some bridal party portraits. He knocked on her open bedroom door. “Sal? You okay? Why's the front door unlocked and our lawyer's standing out front? Were the cops here? Something happen?”

“No, no,” she managed to say.

He tried a smile, but she could see he was confused, anxious. “Doerbom guarding the place or something? We don't have him on that kind of a retainer, I hope.”

She pictured the carnation in Mort's lapel. And in an instant, it seemed as if Wink pictured it, too, or put it all together as he took her in, glancing down at her dress for the first time.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. My mistake.” Nodding, red faced, he pulled the door closed behind him, stopping when it was just ajar to say, “You look nice, by the way. Real nice.”

She heard him walking slowly down the hall and entering his own apartment, and the radio coming on. She had the gloves now and put them on, then took them off, then tugged them back on, and, thinking of Reenie, took them off once more to dial the phone.

While she waited, she hurried to the window and rapped her ring against the glass to get Mort's attention. When he glanced up, she held up one finger: a minute.

When her friend picked up, she told her what had just happened and asked her to come over and keep Wink company.

“Can't,” Reenie said. “Got a date myself. With the
pirate,
if you can feature that …”

“Who?”

“The troublemaker with the hook. Keeney. The marine?”

“But—”

“I'm doing you both a large, is the way I see it,” Reenie said. “You want another favor on top of—”

“But no one asked you to—”

“Guy appears to be sweet on me, so I figure I let him buy me a nice dinner, listen to his war stories, his
hand
story, he's less likely to come pounding on your door again—maybe sometime when we're both indisposed, if you catch my meaning. I mean, what—we're doing a shoot and he just barges in again? Maybe
he sues Wink? Besides, Sal, so what that Wink knows you've got a date? What's
his
beef? He's got no say-so in this. You two have some sort of …
thing
you're not—?”

Sal told her she was just concerned he might be a little thrown by it—by any kind of change. And maybe a little hurt that she hadn't confided in him. As a friend.

“Bilge,” Reenie said. “If things change around there, I'm sure he'll find another place to live. He's a big boy. People adapt. That's life.”

Sal didn't bring up the widespread housing problem these days. Reenie was certainly aware of that. Besides, she was pretty sure her friend wasn't just talking about him having a place to sleep and get his mail. She was talking about learning to look out for herself, putting herself first. But she knew, too, that as much as Reenie had been a part of everything that had happened since Wink came to town more than two years ago, she could never be as in on the little everyday things, the way they interacted throughout the day with certain glances and certain
hmms
and grunts and smart-mouthed inside jokes, that made it so comfortable to think of him remaining down there at the end of the hall until they were both very old. Because even now they felt like an old couple—one that had never actually been a couple, of course, one that had never made love.

“You owe it to yourself to try,” Reenie said. “Go. Get out of there.”

Wink could tell. She had
him
in there, alone in her apartment. He lay there listening to muted conversation, lingering murmurs,
for more than an hour, afraid to move for fear of rustling too loud and missing something, though he couldn't make any of it out, anyway. They were getting along—that's all he could tell.

He turned off his reading lamp at twelve-thirty, but was still wide awake at one when there was some kind of an outburst coming from Sal's end of the hall, followed by a general state of ruckus, enough to bring him out into the hallway in time to see Mort leaving, heading down the stairs. It wasn't anger on his face, but something else. And then Sal was right there and they were rushing past too fast for Wink to put it together. “Everything all right?” he asked, but she waved him off, following her new lawyer boyfriend down. She had her hand over her mouth, and at first he thought the guy had gotten rough with her— in which case, he was begging for a soaking, no matter how much she waved him off. Wink hesitated at the top of the stairs, thinking only now to dart back in and grab his bathrobe, which he did, though he imagined after more than two years it couldn't be the first time she'd caught a glimpse of his boxers.

She didn't follow Mort far. Wink heard the jangle of the shop bell as the guy exited into the street, and she started back up the stairs, looking distraught and yet smiling, kind of, shaking her head like she was trying to laugh off a bad piece of news or something.

She was gesturing in the air—a thing she only did when she was pretty worked up. She'd told him once her mother had done that—”got all Italian” with her hands.

“I thought I was ready!” she announced, and Wink shuffled in after her, into her apartment. “I really did. I mean, it's been so long and he really is a dear man, but I guess maybe it's
too
soon or maybe it's been
too long, too
much time has passed, because I …” She stopped for a second, as if uncertain she should continue with the details. Wink flopped down on her love seat and
waited, bathrobe folded genteelly, crossing his legs like he had all night to hear this. “I
started
giggling, okay? And I just couldn't stop.”

She flopped down next to him dejectedly, and he threw his arm around her, giving her a squeeze that made him feel a little like a gym coach about to launch into a pep talk. “Giggling's okay, Sal. Really. Guys like a girl who's … you know, having a good time and enjoying herself and … It's cute.”

She shook her head. “The giggling didn't really start till he got out his
thing.
I tried not to—I bit my lip, actually—but it only got worse and I
don't
think it was okay with him.”

Extricating himself, he got up and mixed them both an old-fashioned, assuring her it would happen when it happened. Maybe not with Mort Doerbom, but rushing it wasn't a good idea at all. And even if it had been a while, which maybe it had— Chesty had been dead a year but gone much longer than that— the giggling might be a hint to herself that she was too nervous and needed even more time.

She seemed to be deliberating before announcing, “It was smaller than I remembered. That's why I started giggling.”

“Than you
remembered?”
He was confused. “But I thought you and Mort just—”

“Than I remembered … you know,
the only other one I've ever seen,
is what I meant.” She punched him in the arm, maybe thinking he'd been trying to make a crack. The punch felt awfully like something a sister would do. He hadn't meant to make a crack; he'd just been confused about her sex life and if she already, prior to tonight, had one up and running. He'd been operating under the assumption all along that she hadn't made that step yet, which, apparently, was still true.

Sal took a big swig of her drink, then said, “But maybe my memory's playing tricks on me. Who knows?”

“Maybe …”

She elbowed him now, and he turned to see she was waggling her eyebrows, Groucho style, grinning, and nodded at his lap as if …

But no. She
had
to be kidding. He just knew she had to. So he played along, leaping from the love seat as if outraged. “Listen here, ma'am! If you're expecting me to whip it out and give you something to compare it to, you can forget it right now, sister!”

She laughed, clearly drunk. He decided she must have had more than a few before he'd mixed the old-fashioneds.

“Seriously. Mine is not to be used for some sort of Gallup Poll. It's
special.”

She howled, shoving him. “You said
pole!”

“Unintentional.” He took a step toward the door. “Good night, Sal.”

“Hey!” She shoved him back down onto the love seat, thumping him on the chest. “Just so we're clear, bub. I didn't want to see your pole, either! I'm still in mourning!”

Mort stood in the half-open doorway. They froze. Wink could feel Sal's hand still lingering on his chest as if stuck there, caught in something sticky.