“Not so fast.” Mendoza lifted his coffee cup halfway to his mouth and just held it there, as if we had all morning to sit around.
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t go off half-cocked on this, and nothing important is going to happen at the U.S. Attorney’s office between now and New Year’s anyway. I have to talk things over with Sam Schwartzchild. I have to have someone other than you do some legal research. And then I have to prime the pump with Schuyler.”
I bristled at that, but I kept my mouth shut long enough to think it through.
“You’re right.”
“Look, Jake, you’ve just been through a helluva bad trip. When you sit down with Schuyler, if that’s what we end up doing, he can’t think you’re some psycho-ex-girlfriend-from-hell. You’ve been at the office for almost a year now, and you haven’t had a vacation yet. I want you to take off until the Monday after New Year’s. Go home and indulge yourself. Eat popcorn and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on it, take long baths, watch old movies, lie in bed ’til ten a.m., track down some friends who’ll go out drinking with you—whatever you have to do to start getting past the shitty way this low-rent, son-of-a-bitch, pretentious hack writer treated you.”
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “I really appreciate it. But I think it’d actually be better for me to get to work on something.”
“It might be better for you for the next six hours, but not in the long run. You can work seventeen hours a day. I know. I did it for close to a year after my divorce. But you can’t work twenty-four hours a day. Sooner or later you wake up at two o’clock in the morning, and you have to be able to handle it then, too.”
“Maybe, but—”
“No buts about it. I’m not asking, I’m telling. I’m the boss. You’re on vacation for the duration of the holidays. C’mon, I’ll get the bill and drive you home.”
I came home to an empty house. I flipped on the living room switch so that the red and green lights on the Christmas tree would come on. I walked distractedly through the downstairs. I looked at the crèche on the dining room buffet. The shepherds and magi seemed to have mocking grins underneath their pious expressions. I glanced at a bright, cardboard Santa train about four feet long that I’d taped to the top of the wall in the downstairs hallway the night we put the tree up. I gave particular attention to the jolly, full-bearded Santa who was driving the thing from a perch on top of the locomotive. I decided that he needed to have his butt kicked.
Merry Christmas, Cindy…. No! Snap out of it! None of that crap! Self-pity is for losers!
Lugging my TravelPro upstairs to unpack gave me something to do. I got laundry down the chute and everything else put away except the pair of blue pajamas with feet that Paul had given me. I left those on the bed and just stood there, looking at them.
Could I have been wrong? No. There were too many facts, too clear a pattern. Besides, Learned had basically confirmed that he and Paul were sexually involved with each other, and Paul himself hadn’t bothered to deny it. Some part of me deep inside, though, was whispering that maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe I’d jumped to conclusions. Maybe there was some non-betrayal explanation for what had happened.
I stripped and put on the pajamas. I walked slowly into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at myself as objectively as I could in the full-length mirror.
I’d made that crack to Paul about the pajamas making me look like a twelve-year-old boy because I was flailing around, searching for any piece of abuse to throw at him. But I’d nailed it. I mean bullseye. A twelve-year-old boy a little tall for his age. The jammies lent a grotesquely elfin cuteness to my figure while concealing every curve I had, including my breasts—and that’s no mean trick. I thought for a second about what fantasies had been going through Paul’s head when he made love with me in those jammies.
I would appreciate some credit for not vomiting, thank you very much. I wasn’t feeling very tough right then, but I’m tougher than that. I trudged wearily back to my bedroom, took off the pajamas, and tossed them in front of the door so that I’d remember to put them in the bag of donations for Purple Heart Veterans. Then I climbed under the covers and curled myself up as tightly as I could.
If you’d been standing there you probably wouldn’t even have noticed the first sob, a tiny little gasping, unimportant thing. Within seconds, though, I let go. The tears came in earnest, and I was crying like I hadn’t cried since I got the news about Mom, sobbing and shaking like a punished child.
I ended up crying myself to sleep. The last thing I remember thinking through my convulsive sobs was I hate you I hate you I hate you and if it’s the last thing I ever do I’m going to kill you.
Chapter Thirty-two
I didn’t get out of bed until almost four o’clock in the afternoon. Crashing for five hours had done me some good. My headache was now aspirin-class instead of Advil-class, and I’d wrung some of the poor-little-me crap out of my system. I was still lower than Lindsay Lohan’s voice after a pack of Camels, but at least I was functional. Even so, if the Christmas tree hadn’t drawn my eye I probably would have ended up vegging out in front of the tube.
The tree, though, reminded me that Job-One was to hold it together through Christmas. I owed Vince that much. Vince had gotten the assignment of finding the tree and buying it and setting it up, because that involved going outside and using tools. I’d handled the substitute-mom stuff: finding the ornaments and lights and fixing popcorn and cocoa to keep us company while we decorated the tree; getting the Advent wreath and the crèche and all the Christmas decorations set up; digging up the thick red and white candles in their glass holders and putting them on the mantle and the buffet so we could light them on Christmas Eve before we left for Midnight Mass; and so forth. Until Vince took things to the next level with Lainie I was the closest thing to a companion he had on the premises. I couldn’t crawl into a shell and let him go through the holidays with a basketcase on his hands.
Right about then I heard Vince’s rig pulling into the driveway. I glanced at my watch to see if I’d somehow lost an extra hour after my Sleeping Beauty number. I hadn’t. I hurried to the door to meet him as he walked in.
“You’re home pretty early for a Friday, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” He began shedding his parka, his body language as listless as his voice. “They closed Minelli’s. Nine mechanics.”
I blinked. Almost five percent of his customers gone, just like that. Nine guys who wouldn’t be buying any more tools or, probably, making any more payments on the tools they’d already bought.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“At least you sold six of those big toolboxes. Maybe that’ll tide you over until someone moves into Minelli’s space.”
He smiled indulgently at my naiveté. I got a Schaefer for him while he hauled the fleece-lined parka with its Pro-Tools logo over to the peg rack on the hallway wall.
“Thanks.” He took the beer. “But if anything goes into Minelli’s space, it’ll probably be a self-service BP without a garage. And those big toolboxes aren’t money in my pocket, just a credit on my tool bill. That credit turns into a charge-back if the buyers default on their installment payments. Meanwhile, my bill for those things comes due in February.”
So I got a dose of perspective right between the eyes. Heartbreak at twenty-six versus bankruptcy at sixty. Yeah, that’s close—not. I wanted to hug him and tell him everything would be all right, but I knew that would stop the conversation. I played it the other way.
“And that’s not the worst of it. Turns out you’re still gonna have an extra mouth to feed from February through August.”
Vince blinked at that. It took him a couple of seconds to realize the implications. Once he had, though, he reacted fervently.
“What?” His eyes flashed with indignat
ion. “They’re jerking you around again?”
“Yep, they’re jerking me around again. But I think that this time the deferred report date is gonna stick.”
He turned his head away from me so that I wouldn’t hear the obscenities that poured out under his breath. His fists clinched and his face turned purple. He was reliving vicariously, through me, the eternal working class curse: do everything right, obey the rules, pay your taxes (well, some of your taxes), work your ass off, study until your brain fries, turn in all your homework, show up for work every day even if you feel sick as a dog—and the suits will still find a way to shaft you. He turned back to me, contrition sketched eloquently across his face.
“I’m sorry, honey, I shouldn’t of laid my stuff on you.”
Now I hugged him, now that the weakness and vulnerability could be mine instead of his.
“It’s gonna be okay, Vince. We’re gonna make this work.” I broke the clinch and got all businesslike. “Now, go grab a shower or catch some tube or something. I’ll call for pizza.”
He smiled, gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and headed upstairs. Shower, yes—TV, no. That was a good sign. I decided to wait until later to tell him about Paul.
I managed to keep myself from falling apart for the next week. Then it was Christmas Eve and that cheered me up a bit. UPS dropped off a basket from Calder & Bull with more fruit in it than a platoon of vegetarian Marines could eat in a week. I had changed my Facebook status to uncommitted without further comment, and most of the reactions had “Right on, sister!” in them. I got three emails from Paul, which I took vast satisfaction in deleting without opening. I decided that I didn’t really want to kill Paul. Vince and I spent fifteen minutes with Mike, live from Afghanistan, on Skype.
“Midnight” Mass started at 10:30. We got home in time to open one present each. Old family tradition. Vince opened a new set of deluxe barbecue tools that I’d gotten him. I opened a package that he’d slipped under the tree before we went to Mass without my noticing. It was small and light. It sure wasn’t pajamas, thank God. I actually got a little excited as I undid the ribbons and pulled the wrapping paper off. I found a certificate for three free replica-gun rentals and shooting lessons at Cumonow’s. I gaped at it for five seconds, then burst into laughter.
“I saw that look on your face when you fired that thing,” he said.
“Vince, this is fantastic!”
Christmas Day I took a break from my broken heart and smoldering rage. My funk wasn’t history, by a long shot. Closure wasn’t even on my horizon. But for one day I just stepped outside of it. Just focused on Vince. Lainie was having Christmas dinner at her daughter’s home and there was no way Ken could come over—priests are kind of busy on Christmas—so instead of a turkey I fixed a couple of Cornish game hens for Vince and me, with uncomplicated side dishes and chocolate cake for dessert. My vegetarianism is a personal preference, not a religious principle. I don’t guilt-trip myself over an occasional exception.
Vince offered to help me clean the kitchen. Fortunately, I realized just before I would have shooed him out that I should let him pitch in, so I did. Ken called in the middle of our effort and between Vince’s time on the phone and mine he stayed connected for an hour. With that interruption, it was dark by the time Vince put the last plate away and glanced over at me.
“Hey, you remember how we used to drive around during the holidays when you kids were young, and look at the lights?” He said this kind of shyly, in the voice he uses when he wants to make something he’s been thinking about for three hours sound impulsive.
“Sure.”
“Do you think it might be kind of a kick to do that tonight?”
That wasn’t quite the last thing I wanted to do. It came ahead of root canal surgery and self-flagellation. But there was only one possible answer, and I made it sound peppy.
“I’ll race you to the Chevy.”
We spent forty-five minutes cruising around some neighborhoods that had always had a reputation for going a little over the top on holiday decorations. They didn’t disappoint. Reindeer on rooftops, six-foot candy canes, lifesize nativity sets on front porches, Rudolph nuzzling nutcrackers, the whole nine yards. And lights, lights, lights. They started to blur together after awhile, but I suppose that’s part of the point. All those bright lights, all those snowmen and Santas—a brave, brightly colored defiance of darkness and winter.
I could tell that this meant something special to Vince, something a lot more than it meant to me. I got a warm fuzzy remembering how we’d done this when I was eight and nine, but I wouldn’t call my reaction transcendent. Vince was just plain sailing, with a little half-smile on this face and tears in the corners of his eyes. I wondered if maybe that was because he’d reached an age when you think about defying darkness and winter in more than a seasonal sense.
When we got home we watched some schmaltzy flick on TV—not It’s a Wonderful Life—and had some more cake and went to bed. I’d gone an entire day, a good sixteen-plus waking hours, without thinking about myself. I fell asleep in a hurry.
Between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, as I crashed from what passed for my Christmas high that year, I learned something. I learned that, at any hour of the day or night, some iteration of Law and Order is showing on some channel in Pittsburgh and, probably, anywhere else the English language is spoken. Which, all things considered, wasn’t bad as shameless self-indulgence goes. I didn’t binge on junk food, I didn’t start doing cocktails at two in the afternoon, and I didn’t quite waste every waking hour in front of the tube. I ran, read, and talked with Stacy. Also, four important things happened.
First, Ken called me on the 26th and left a message: “I don’t know what’s wrong, but if it would help to talk about it, please call me. God bless you.”
Second, Paul drunk-dialed me at least three times and left messages that involved a lot of weepy pleading. I found guilty pleasure in it. I told myself that he was hurting more than I was—one of those lies you sometimes use to get you through the night.
I could have gotten past the cheating, I suppose. Maybe. You have to make allowances for human weakness. I could have gotten past the bisexuality. After all, if he loved me enough to forsake all others, why should I care if he was forsaking men as well as women? And maybe the pedophilia fantasies were just Cindy overanalyzing thin evidence. I never resolved that issue. I didn’t have to, because what I couldn’t get over was being used. I absolutely could not get past that. That was a deal-breaker. “I’m a passionate artist, so the rules that apply to ordinary people don’t apply to me.” Oh really? Well, screw that.
Third, on Tuesday, December 28th, at 3:37 p.m., I got a searing insight. I’d finished a punishing, three-mile run in thirty degree weather, taken a very hot shower, and gotten dressed in grubs. I was bluer than a midnight routine on Comedy Central, and I was right on the verge of moping. And then, with a little start, I looked up, eyes wide open, and the realization hit me: I’m miserable, but not because my heart is broken. My heart is NOT broken. I was in love with someone who didn’t exist, a fictional character invented by a novelist as the protagonist in a story called “Cindy’s a Sap.” Being brokenhearted over the Paul I’d been engaged to would be like being brokenhearted over Rhett Butler. I’m miserable because I got scammed and behaved like an idiot.
Fourth, on December 30th, Mendoza called.
“Gotta dial back on that vacation, Jake. I need your butt in here tomorrow morning bright and early. The fish bit—and we’ve got some work to do hauling him in.”
Chapter Thirty-three
I didn’t meet with Schuyler until Monday. I spent Friday morning and part of the afternoon with Mendoza and Sally Port, the criminal law specialist I’d met with Schwartzchild the day after Bradshaw’s murder. We had to do three things: (1) make absolutely sure I got the facts right; (2) decide whether I needed to tell
Schuyler about Learned’s claimed affair with Ariane Bradshaw; and (3) make absolutely sure I got the facts right. It took quite a while.
“You’ve gotta be comfortable with this, Jake,” Mendoza said when we were hip-deep in the second. “The case law says you’re okay, but case law is words in books. You’re the one who might be up there on the stand someday, getting grilled about whether you willfully concealed information relevant to a murder investigation when you were talking to Schuyler.”
I took a quick glance at Port. She was biting her tongue. She couldn’t encourage me to keep my mouth shut about the adultery and she knew it. That might look like interfering with a witness. After all, her client wasn’t my client. I thought it over. I thought long and hard. Calder & Bull or no Calder & Bull, a formal reprimand—or worse—from a judge wouldn’t qualify as a very promising start to my legal career.
“I’m comfortable with it,” I said at last, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt. “The Feds aren’t investigating Bradshaw’s murder.”
Port nodded and smiled without showing her teeth. Mendoza did not smile and he did not nod. He glanced at Port.
“We’ve been going close to two hours since our last break. You feel like a cigarette or something?”
She got it. I mean she caught the ball on the fly in full stride, without so much as a stutterstep.
“I don’t smoke. But a breath of fresh air would be nice. Would it be okay if I stepped out on your balcony for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, Jake,” Mendoza said to me as soon as we had his office more or less to ourselves. “Sometimes a lawyer gives the right answer because it’s the right answer, and sometimes she does it because it’s an excuse to do something she wants to do whether it’s right or not. I don’t blame you for wanting the FBI to toss Mr. Learned’s suite at the Hilton and generally turn his life upside down. If I were you I’d want that so bad I could taste it. But you can’t let that foul up your thinking here. The Department of Justice keeps a naughty lawyers list, and if you get on it you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your career.”
But Remember Their Names Page 19
