Rhode Island Red (15 page)

“Just get dressed and get here, Nan. Take a cab. And don't wear no overalls, okay?”

So I grabbed a taxi, driven by, thankfully, a brother who was downright eager to get me in his backseat. He beat out two other cabbies who were heading toward me like ICBMs. We were at First Street—in hippie renewal territory—in no time.

Ooo la la
. My lucky night. The French hostess in the leopardskin leotard was glad to see me too. Maybe management would be willing to pay Walter and me a few bucks a night to lend a little dark ambience to the joint.

“Hey, baby.” Walter took me in his arms and kissed me, reluctant to let me go, it seemed.

I finally broke from his embrace and took a seat next to him at the bar.

“Walter …”

He kissed me again, lightly, on the ear.

I had once accused him of behaving like a jealous housewife, but now it occurred to me that he was doing the classic guilty husband routine—overplaying the love bit because an infidelity was weighing on his conscience. If he pulled a box of chocolates out of his briefcase, I was going to deck him.

The bartender, Creole or not, was seriously cute. I'd take a 'tini from his tapered brown hands any day of the week. He smiled at us and left a little dish of olives next to my glass.

“Mind if we eat at the bar?” Walter asked. “It's private up here.”

I looked past his shoulder into the hopping main room. A wave of high pitched conversation and laughter floated toward us.

“No problem,” I said.

“You look good, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Walter. But what's your story? You're a little overstimulated, aren't you?”

He chuckled. “I suppose you're right. I just—I came to some decisions today, that's all.”

“What decisions?”

“Number one, I'm quitting the job. Real soon. Another guy at the office—Morantz—Morantz and me, we're starting our own company.”

“Well, congratulations … I guess. But isn't that going to be a pretty big deal? I mean, money and offices and staff and all that stuff.”

“It's gonna be covered. We've got an appointment tomorrow in Philadelphia. We sign up this client and we got it made. Snatching him right out from under the nose of the firm. And we are going to snatch him. Trust me.”

I raised my glass, and my eyebrows, in a wordless toast to him. “And that's why I had to put on a dress?”

“No …”

“Walter, you're acting dopey, you know that?”

“Nan, let me ask you something.”

“Yeah.”

“How many times we split and come back together?”

I looked into his eyes. Maybe I was about to be dumped. But that's not what the eyes were saying.

“Too many to count,” I said. “Five—maybe six.”

“Gets kind of old, don't it? I mean, we must belong together or something, or we wouldn't keep doing it. Right?”

I didn't know how to answer that.

“Why'd I have to put a dress on, Walter?” I asked softly.

“Because I didn't want to ask you to marry me while you were wearing overalls.”

Lord!

“Can I have another drink, Walter?”

“So what do you think about it?” he said as he signalled the bartender.

“Shit, man. I don't know. What do you want to get married for?”

Not the world's most gracious response to a proposal, is it? I was sorry the minute the words came out of my mouth. But he went on, undaunted.

“I'm tired of fucking around, Nan. I want us to have a house. I want us to have kids. It's just … time.”

Kids?
Kids?
I'd never told Walter my thoughts, fears, about having children. I guess, like a lot of other women, or at least I assumed there were many others like me, having children had never been a desire of mine, though I'd always assumed that if I were to hook up with a man who really wanted them, I'd be able to do my part.

Truth was, I was sure I wouldn't make much of a mom. And I'd always counted myself lucky for having a mother who was so unlike me. I'm self involved, mercurial, emotionally unstable, don't get any gold stars for patience, something of a loner, apt to take off for ports unknown at a moment's notice, if that, and really don't appreciate people I can't reason with. In short, a child's nightmare. Poor thing would be logging hours on the school counselor's couch before it turned seven, all because of me. But if this theoretical man insisted on babies, at least I could tell him what the deal was going in. Hell, I was better about it than Aubrey. She hated children—with a pure, unalloyed hatred—and would say so to just about anybody.

But I said none of that to Walter. Instead, I took his hand and held it for a long moment.

“Here's what we do,” he said eagerly. “I'm renting a car in the morning. Driving to Philly for the meeting. You catch the train at Penn Station and wait for me at Thirtieth Street Station. I'll pick you up at twelve. We drive up to Bucks County. I know this inn you're gonna love. Matter fact, we might spend a few days there once we get married. Anyway, we drive up there, just you and me, have lunch, take it easy, stay the night, just talk about things. Doesn't it sound good?”

Yes, it did. Looked at as nothing more than a little respite from the city, or as a romantic getaway during which we'd plan our wedding (ha ha), it did sound good.

Wild Bill was dead. Henry Valokus had vanished, probably for good. And the trail of Rhode Island Red was dead cold. I'd been played for a fool, pushed around, threatened, assaulted, fucked and abandoned. And so what was the big issue in my life? Getting married. To quote Fats Waller, “One never knows, do one?”

Walter's proposal had genuinely knocked me on my ass. I had never really known whether I loved him. And I suppose I had never believed he loved me.

So why
did
we keep coming back together? He'd asked a good question.

I tried to visualize myself dusting the living room of some two-bedroomer upstate. Waiting by the garden gate for the little one to come home from school.

Not.

I tried to be a little more realistic: Walt's at work, I'm still in my nightgown at three in the afternoon, listening to Monk records while the pork roast defrosts, maybe noodling a little on the sax or with some spiral bound notebook full of over-ripe verse.

Would Walter want to go to the Loire and sample wines on our vacation? No. We'd wind up in some pricey time share in Jamaica.

“So you gonna marry me or what, girl?” He kissed me again.

I was glad Mom couldn't see me now. She'd have a heart attack from the suspense. I kind of smiled at the image—not the image of her clawing at her chest but the one of her rising off her barstool with the
girl, are you crazy?
look on her face.

“Walter, Walter, Walter,” I said, feeling at one and the same time aroused and sad. “I'll tell you what. I'm not going to marry you—tomorrow—but I am going on that honeymoon. And we can talk about it, as you said.”

Yeah, “talk” was right. There was an awful lot I hadn't told my little fiancé.

I took the nine-thirty to Philadelphia the next morning. I'd brought four paperbacks along to read on the 90-minute run: a novel by an expatriate American writer with whom I'd spent about ten minutes in bed the last time I saw Paris; a couple of poetry anthologies; and the same unread Gertrude Stein volume I'd been toting on and off trains for most of my life. I didn't crack one of those books. I was much too distracted.

I saw a sign just outside Trenton that seemed to tap on some long buried memory. TRENTON MAKES/THE WORLD TAKES, it read. It made me wonder if perhaps my parents had taken me to Philly when I was a kid. Where could we have been going? Probably someplace exciting, like an interstate spelling bee.

The train stalled just past Trenton and pulled into Thirtieth Street Station at eleven-thirty, a half hour late. Even so, I was still early. Walter had told me to wait for him on one of the benches near the geographical center of the station because he didn't know at what entrance he would find parking for his rented car. I sat down and went a couple of rounds with Gertrude.

At eleven fifty-five Walter had not yet arrived. We were supposed to meet at noon, but Walt is notoriously early. Meaning that five minutes before the appointed time is late for him. He wasn't there at noon either. And he wasn't there at twelve-thirty.

I tried to remember where he was going in Philly. He was trying to corral a client, he'd said. Clients for Walter were magazine publishers. That's what he did—sell space in magazines to advertisers. But he didn't mention any specific magazine. He just said he and his new partner were going together. What was his partner's name? Mitchell? Mariachi? I didn't remember, and what did it matter? I wouldn't know where to reach them anyway. I couldn't call Walt's New York office—they probably didn't even know he was in Philadelphia. After all, Walter and his partner were on a sort of secret mission to help them start their new firm.

I got up and made a circuit around the station. I sat down again. I bought the
Enquirer
and read it. I bought a New York paper and read that. I bought a coffee, keeping watch on the two ends of the station as I sipped it.

It was one-thirty. No Walter. Under my breath I began to curse him in the kinds of terms you don't expect one affianced to use when referring to the other.

I searched out the phones and tried calling Walter's New York apartment. No answer there. And no answer at my own place – just my own voice on the machine.

At one fifty-five I heard the announcement that a train was boarding for New York … Last call! It was all I could do to keep my seat. But I managed.

When they made the same announcement forty-five minutes or so later, I succumbed.

I hadn't bought a return ticket. I paid the conductor in cash.

As the train rolled along, my anger dissipated. And in its place came guilt and chagrin and an almighty embarrassment. Why the hell had I gotten so angry at him? Why hadn't I waited? I'd assumed his failure to show up had been volitional, malicious in fact. But any one of a hundred things could have prevented him from being on time. God, he might even have been in an auto accident—or something worse.

Why hadn't I waited longer? Why hadn't I done something else instead of just fleeing? Because I was still Lady Fly Off the Handle; that was part of the answer. I knew another part of the answer, too: I knew I wasn't going to marry Walter Moore.

By the time we got to Newark I had myself a little more in hand. The disaster scenarios were receding from my mind. Surely something had gone awry with Walter's potential client and he was in the station now making frantic calls to me in New York. He'd come back to the city and tell me what happened and I'd make him a nice dinner, or something. And as for the honeymoon, well, one has just got to be philosophical about that kind of thing.

Darn that dream—right, Mom?

CHAPTER 13

Friday the 13th

I was in no mood for the subway. I took a cab home.

The afternoon sun fell dustily into the lobby as I stood fumbling through my overnight bag and all my pockets for my keys. Finally, burrowing at the bottom of my bag, I felt them through a wad of Kleenex. Relieved, I slipped the key into the lobby door and stepped inside.

A meaty black hand covered my mouth so powerfully and so completely that my whole face went numb, my vision blurring.

“Just stay calm, college girl,” I heard. “Stay calm and quiet. Somebody's in your apartment and I'm going up to get him. Understand?”

I nodded. The hand dropped away. I turned in the cramped space and found myself staring into the demonic eyes of Detective Leman Sweet.

“Who's in my apartment?” I asked, voice cracking.

“You'll find out soon enough,” he said, soundlessly closing the lobby door and drawing his gun. He gestured me backward with the piece. “Stay put.”

He was taking the stairs slowly, slowly, the boards creaking faintly as he moved. But before he had even reached the second floor landing, I heard the door to my place swing open. I popped out and looked up after Sweet but I could see nothing but his massive back.

“Police! Hold it!” Sweet bellowed to the intruder.

The words must have escaped the man's throat involuntarily, instinctively: “What the fuck …”

“Get your hands up!” Sweet screamed at the man. At Walter.

It had taken me a second or two, but I recognized that voice. That was Walter up there.

What the fuck? My sentiments exactly.

Through Leman Sweet's legs I could see Walt's loafers. I heard a thud and then saw a saxophone case on the worn out carpet.

“Don't fight him, Walter!” I shouted. “He thinks you're breaking in.”

I began running up the stairs, bellowing as I went, “Sweet, leave him alone, Sweet!”

“Shut up!” he yelled down to me. “Stay!” he shouted at Walt. “Don't you move, motherfucker.”

The two of them stood in a sweaty frieze, neck muscles taut, eyes locked, until Leman Sweet took a menacing step toward Walt.

“Do what he says, Walter,” I warned. But Walter wasn't listening. I don't even think he knew I was there. “For godsakes!” I shrieked at the detective. “Leave him alone, godamnit. He's not breaking in. I know him. He's my—”

“I know who he is, girl.”

“I ought to kill you where you stand,” Leman Sweet growled at Walter.
Stand
was the operative word. He wouldn't allow Walter to sit. As for me, he had said that if I dared move from the kitchen chair, he'd shoot us both.

God help us, I thought at first. It's going to be the Diego scene all over again. Abusive cop beating the hell out of an unarmed citizen. Except my instinct to try to protect poor Walter had suddenly frozen. In one dread-drenched second I had realized that Walt was no innocent bystander here. He was guilty. Guilty of what, I didn't yet know. But it was something a lot more serious than standing up his fiancée in Philly.