The Unexpected Salami: A Novel (26 page)

“The first one is, did you know Derrick Johnson before you shot him?”

“I do not know such trash!”

“But did you hear of his name before?”

“Bruno once talked of Derrick, his friend.”

“Thank you. The second question is, when did you know that Derrick was your son’s dealer?”

“I called all his friends. I needed to know who put my grandson at Saint Peter’s mercy.”

“When was this? The day of the shooting?”

“No, two days before.”

“So you had time to think about this terrible predicament your grandson was in?”

Mrs. De Meglio looked over at Presticastro. I was getting furious on her behalf. Even I could have protected her better from these questions. Our feisty rosary-bead vigilante was screwing herself. Couldn’t he have rehearsed this obvious line of questioning with her?

“Mrs. De Meglio, you must answer the question,” Berliner said.

“Yes. But I was not myself. I was in a stew.”

“You were in a stew for forty-eight hours though, correct?”

“Yes.”

Presticastro was staring at his nails. He’d obviously gone into the trial a defeated man.

“Thirdly,” Gorsham said, “I am going to give you my own photograph. Can you identify who is in this photo?” A poster-size blowup was brought forward to the witness stand. The jury didn’t get a look at it.

“Do you recognize this photo?”

Mrs. De Meglio’s face dropped.

“Objection!” Presticastro said. “This was not the size I approved earlier.”

“We have simply blown it up for easier viewing,” Gorsham said.

“Overruled,” Berliner said. His face was hard to read. What was this photo?

“Your Honor,” Gorsham said, I would like to enter this photo as exhibit fifty-three.”

The clerk recorded the evidence.

“Mrs. De Meglio, can you tell the court what the photo is of?”

“Derrick Johnson,” she said, very low to the ground.

“Finally, Mrs. De Meglio, did your grandson, who according to our earlier witnesses has now recovered—”

“Objection!”

“Sustained. Ms. Gorsham, please watch your relevance.”

“Mrs. De Meglio, did your grandson ever tell you how old Derrick was?”

“Fourteen,” she said softly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.”

“Fourteen.”

“The same age as your grandson Bruno?”

Mrs. De Meglio nodded. I really wanted a look at the blowup now.

Cohen brought out an easel, and Gorsham put the photo on it so we could see. It was Derrick Johnson; his brains splattered over the room.

Several jurors gasped. “
Ayyyyeee!
” Derrick’s mother screamed. “He was only a boy!”

Even though I have twenty-twenty vision, I pretended to fiddle with a contact lens. In the few seconds I squirmed, I spotted a reporter I hadn’t seen before, leaning in to catch every last jury reaction. I knew her from where? And then it came—Jennifer, my
brother’s girlfriend his senior year at the High School for Art and Design. About five years back she wrote an article for one of those women’s magazines on penises she had known. One penis she called Dr. Hook. Ingrid was in the living room with my folks, showing them photos of the happy couple’s funky home in Minnesota. I showed Frank the article in the kitchen, where he was cooking pasta. Frank laughed at my audacity, but he wouldn’t tell me if he was the proud owner of Dr. Hook. He whistled a high C through a dry ziti until I left him alone. Think of anything, Rachel, anything, to keep from processing that picture. I wanted to run out of the room, but, abruptly, I let out an extended shrill sound, an animal being slaughtered.

Louis grasped my hand. “Are you okay? Rachel?”

The court artist turned a page on her pad.

“Jurors, Ladies and Gentlemen visiting the courtroom,” Berliner said. “This is a rough part of the trial, but I will have to ask you to try and keep from reacting. You must keep an open mind. We will take a fifteen-minute break so Mrs. Johnson and Ms. Ganelli can pull themselves together.”

I grabbed the closest chair to the door when we returned to jury quarters. My hand was trembling. Everyone was embarrassed for me.

“Rachel,” Louis said, “tell us what’s in your head. Why aren’t you talking?”

I wasn’t talking? I felt like I was talking. My brain was on over-drive.

The De Meglio trial was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. The infected blood of disaffection, seeping through all these
months, had finally blitzed my brain. Colin. Jesus, Colin, my fiancé of sorts. My
second
one. How could I have humiliated Will, the nicest guy in this or any universe, when the invitations for our wedding had already gone out? (Boom!) I’d let a stranger on a plane pinch my nipples when I couldn’t even go beyond a kiss and that shower with Colin. (Zing!) My remoteness from my mother. (Wham!) How could my selfish mind drift into dried macaroni when before me were families who had endured personal holocausts? Derrick Johnson’s mother’s words echoed with me again. He was only a boy. My emotions, like Derrick’s brains, were all over the room.

“Wham!” I said.

“Rachel—do you want a Lifesaver?” Greg asked. “Rachel?”

“Let her be,” someone said. “She looks ill.”

“Shh, Rachel. You’re incoherent. It was a ghastly photo. Don’t try to talk. Take a breather.”

Until the trial, my proxy for religion had been the fine tuning of knowledge. Where am I on the map of the world? Where are we all on the plane of infinite planes? Pop culture and place as secular reference points.

Why suffer unanswerable questions when there’s the option of folly? Spending forty minutes pinning down that Ethel Maye Potter was Ethel Murtz’s maiden name on
I Love Lucy
soothed me. And if I could get five others to remember a precise moment that drew blank faces from my elders and younger cousins—like the week in the early 1980s that the ass-hugging Sasson jeans changed their pronunciation because of a hair salon owner’s lawsuit—I had proof of
my exact seconds on Earth. If you don’t accept the juggernauts of a Messiah and past lives, how else but through common popular ground can you tell yourself we’re in the morass together?

Fred poured several inches of his Perrier into a paper cup for me.

And that map, I thought, the one Jorge at the public library had gotten a facsimile of for me. The great old map from the 1800s in the Library of Congress which shows the second expedition of the vessel Pinta returning from a voyage around the island of matrimony. There are many rough waters to cross—Gulf of Flirtation, Whirlpool of Reflection, Undercurrent Bay—but then the journey leads to calmer waters of comfort, delight. The ship’s final path led to Land’s End, one hundred feet from Port Hymen. Inland from Port Hymen looms the holy church.

It hit me in new dimensions, like I’d just purchased a relief map of my life: cold facts weren’t enough. I wanted Colin near me so that love could fill the doubting gap. But did we really love each other? And by obsessing on Stuart, I was trying to do good without someone of the cloth patting my head. I was pounding square pegs into round holes. I had to let Colin and Stuart be. They were square pegs. Oh how
shameful
, another part of me said suddenly, all you are thinking of is Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

“Shameful,” I said.

“Yes, shameful,” Greg said, snagging a pretzel from the table, “she
knew
what she was doing.”

“Rachel, don’t worry. We’re not buying the saintly grandmother act. She’ll get life.” Fourteen jurors nodded.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Raj said.

“But you know she’s guilty,” someone behind me said.

“I believe in fucking up the American jury system,” Raj said. Raj sing-songed every word, even his personal manifesto. Raj, our most unanticipated anarchist.

“Bullshit, College Boy. I work hard every day,” Greg said from the other side of the room. “My brother dealt crack so he landed in jail. I love him, but he should be there. If we don’t punish those who take God’s name in vain, how can the system work?”

Fifteen minutes of bickering turned into forty-five. What was keeping Berliner?

Kevin knocked on our door and led us back to our seats. Rougeless Battle-ax and her hunky assistant were smiling. They smelled victory. Presticastro looked over at me, too. And Judge Berliner. Then I noticed that Maria De Meglio was gone.

Over the bench:
IN GOD WE TRUST
. “Jurors—during the break, a plea bargain was entered. The District Attorney’s office has accepted it, as it will save New York State thousands of dollars. The clerk will come into the jury room in a few minutes to arrange a time for a court officer to deliver your personal items. Ladies and Gentlemen—I thank you for your time. You are dismissed.”

Berliner and the attorneys from each side came over to shake our hands. I noticed Assistant Hunk had a ring on now. He had played my singleness like a book. What were the targeted weak spots of the other jurors? The lawyers had done their jobs. Their scientific tactics had broken through New York cynicism, the tire-thick coating over our rawest fear.

It wasn’t noon yet
and I was out on the street. Three weeks in a hellhole and I couldn’t even deliver a verdict.

About now, Colin would be telling my parents that I wanted him to move in with Stuart and me when they finally left for Paris. Should I race home and stop him?
Oh, by the way, Colin, I had an epiphany on the courtroom floor; I’m going to let you go, you lucky lab rat.
Maybe I could begin to deal with my unexpected reentry into everyday living in a few hours, but not now. I started walking toward the Bowery and Grand where Frank’s loft was. I needed to cool my head, let Frank joke about my courtroom crack-up.

It was only a few blocks from the Centre Street courthouse to the Bowery. Tar droplets were scattered over the asphalt from the searing sun. If it was this hot mid-June, God save us from August.

Frank didn’t answer the doorbell. I still had a set of his keys from our time with Stuart. I figured I’d help myself to ice cubes to rub on my neck and wrists. I climbed the five flights of the former flophouse-turned-artists’-lofts, panting from lack of exercise. The Elizabeth Motor Lodge didn’t exactly have a four-star nautilus room. And there was that delightful extra poundage from three
weeks of waist-slimming treats like meatball heroes and the unlimited supply of Entenmann’s boxed cakes. In sequestration, as on a long plane ride, each course of food is high entertainment.

Puffing, I opened the door, raced for the freezer, and plopped a cube in my mouth to suck on. The shower was at full blast; an ancient plumbing structure in the middle of the kitchen area. Frank was home. Good. The shower curtain—black vinyl with the international male and female symbols you see at bus terminals—was a cheap find from some East Village boutique. I’d bought it with the remnants of my temp check, a thank you for my brother for helping me dedrug Stuart, even if Mom and Dad thought we were well-intentioned simpletons.

“Frank! I let myself in. I’m going make some iced tea, want some?”

“Rachel?” the shower curtain said. “What are you doing here?”

“Haven’t you been watching TV? The trial was dismissed. Grandma plea-bargained.”

“You couldn’t call?”

“I’ve been in sequestration for three weeks. Aren’t you thrilled to hear my whine? I’m in another of my trademark funks, and your place is closer than Mom and Dad’s.”

“I have company here—”

“Where?”

“In the shower. A friend is here with me.” He turned the water off.

For the first time I noticed that there was a tidy pile of pastel clothes on the sofa. As square a package as the bundle of six starched shirts you’d get back from a Chinese hand laundry.

“Janet?!”

“Oh, Frank, how could she know?”

Confirmed. I leaned back into the couch, my mouth slack-jawed. How could they? I’m in the middle of sequestration, and she’s having the time of her life porking my brother? After everything we went through?

Janet grabbed a towel off of the peg and emerged, her evenly-tanned legs dripping. Her blond hair was brown with water. “Rachel. This is not about you. We love you. Our relationship is about us.”

“We? Since when are you a
we
?”

In the background I saw a hand reach for another towel from the peg. Moments later Frank emerged too, bright red and wet. He’d obviously just gotten some sun with Janet, probably at Jones Beach or Sheep Meadow.

“God—I’m having a nervous breakdown and you two are getting it on? How long has this been going on?”

“Since you started jury duty,” Janet said, embarrassed.

The ice cube was melting in my palm.

“Rachel,” Frank said, desperately looking for his jeans. “This is not about you.”

Janet retrieved the jeans from her pile, and Frank slipped them on under his towel.

“Don’t ‘Rachel’ me. Unreal. All I wanted to tell you is that I’ve decided not to get married. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you back-stabbers.”

“Married?” Frank asked, my hateful words hitting Teflon. “Who were you getting married to?”

“I’m out of here. Have a nice relationship, kids. Happy to provide my meaningless existence as a stepping stone for your rapture.”

I headed for the door. “Please,” Janet called after me. “Stop being selfish. Calm down. This is a good thing. This isn’t a bad thing. Don’t you want us to be happy?”

I flung the remaining chunk of ice back toward the sink and hit a hook-shot. I raced down the stairs. I hated feeling sorry for myself. In my zero-competition elementary school, students received comments instead of grades. Mine had been virtual clones from year to year. “Sunny and smart.” “Laughs at everything.” “Always a smile on her face.” What had become of the sweet, optimistic child? When had I become such a lemonball? I reached into my knapsack for a tissue—and pulled out the napkin Danny Death had given me with his phone number, back at Coffee Bar. I found a quarter. So I rang him.

“Hello?”

“Danny?”

“Who’s this?”

“Rachel Ganelli. I met you in Coffee Bar about two months ago? You bought me the slice of blueberry pie and told me what a selfish person I was?”