‘Vegas?’
‘The Presidential suite at the Bellagio.’
‘What did you say he did again?’ I quipped.
‘It sounds amazing, right? Well, it didn’t last. Come the holidays, it was like he’d had an asshole personality transplant. First came the plate smashing, then the phone calls . . . believe me when I say it got way out of hand, and fast.’
I pulled my jacquard blazer tight over my chest. ‘Did you ask him about it?’
‘You mean, before he ran out of things to smash? One night after my Villeroy & Boch dinner service ended up in a thousand pieces, he confessed. He confessed to taking bribes to ignore the Alderman’s less-than-legit friends, to getting tied up in some kickback over missing money and to skimming drugs off the top of those PCP hauls. Remember? A few months back in Englewood, on the news? That was Mickey. He pulled the guys in, then took a little product for himself to piss them off. Talk about balls.’
Kickback? What was a kickback? And skimming drugs? Where was Hero Cop of the Year? Surely Nina wouldn’t be seen dead with an actual drug-stealing dirty cop.
‘Do you know why he was in the lousy bar the night I met him? To collect money from some scumbag he knew. Then I asked why, why he’d become such an asshole. He mentioned another cop arriving at his district. He carried more weight and lifted his contacts, but I don’t know. Maybe Mickey had always been an asshole. Maybe he just got tired of hiding it.’
Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? Nina was living in a cop show, not that it wasn’t the most enthralling thing ever. Pulled from Nina’s imagination or not, I always loved a good story. My friend had the starring role in her own personal movie, laced with all the excitement and suspense of any Hollywood thriller. The story panned out in front of us: the dark world of greed and corruption shaken by the arrival of this mysterious stranger. The recent dramas with Joe were beginning to resemble a not-so-glamorous B-movie, and not a particularly good one at that.
‘Mickey takes direction from the new guy now. He calls him Victor, no last name. He has this henchman too, some old Mexican guy. Rafael. Like the turtle.’
‘So, why?’ I asked.
‘Why what?’
‘Why do it? He’s a cop, right? He’s supposed to be accountable. One wrong move, internal investigation, hidden camera, bug, and then what?’
Nina shot me a penetrating stare. ‘You swallow a morality textbook for breakfast or something?’
‘I’m only saying . . .’
‘Girl, there’s a reason I don’t have anything to do with Mickey’s world. Although I hate it, what he does, he must do some good to make up for the heads he cracks, and it’s not like I’m marrying into the goddamn Mafia. He’s a cop.’
‘I guess,’ I murmured.
‘Just don’t tell anyone, all right?’
Not that Nina was great at keeping her voice down, but above the hubbub of the office our conversation had gone unheard and unnoticed, apart from Quentin’s clock watching.
After examining a razor sharp talon, this time in muted mauve, Nina flicked her eyes up at me. ‘I’ve been waiting for the new Prada peep-toe boots all season. I don’t want to jeopardise my chances.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, don’t run to the cops about Mickey. You’re my friend. I trust you. Don’t make me doubt that.’
If it was such a big deal, I didn’t know why she’d told me in the first place. ‘I won’t go to the cops,’ I mumbled uneasily.
‘Good, because Mickey’s the one bankrolling me. We can’t all be as lucky as you.’
‘Who says I’m lucky?’
‘I do. My mom’s a cashier and my dad worked in the lumberyard ’til his vertebrae snapped, and most of my modelling money went up my ex-boyfriend Cash’s nose. Yeah, I put up with some crap from Mickey, but it beats living in poverty.’
Maybe Nina did love Mickey, but apart from the perks ‒ namely, expensive shoes ‒ she didn’t seem happy to be embroiled in it all. Hell, if Nina wanted those ankle boots, I’d buy them for her.
In moving to South Evergreen I’d learnt to do without, and when Joe and I were surrounded by lavishes my purse could afford, namely K2, he’d given me a new perspective. I’d seen through the pretence of champagne and candelabras, not to mention how uptight that world was. I knew Joe would’ve been happier at Wendy’s, but was there anything wrong with that? Good or bad, at least the people there were real.
Back to Nina and her impromptu confession. I knew she liked to talk, but it was getting ridiculous. Either it was a great story or there was now a sinister edge to my Imaginary Mickey, the doughnuts disappearing along with that tubby belly. Imaginary Mickey now worked out.
‘Nina, I won’t say a word. Promise. Besides, who would I tell? You’re the only friend in Chicago I have.’
‘What about Joe?’
‘What about Joe? Trust me, the only thing he listens to are the sports channels. Everything else is white noise.’
Memorial Day, aka perfect day for a picnic, equalled being dismissed after a couple of hours’ work and I was more than glad. I rushed home, changed into my sun-yellow bikini and denim shorts, plaited my hair and prepared a picnic basket full of treats in readiness for an afternoon park visit.
Rustling up a smoked salmon potato quiche and tuna pasta salad in the barely equipped kitchen, I cheated on the batch of lemon drizzle muffins and bought them from Delicia’s next to LaSalle station on the way home. I secured the treats within my new woven basket, cloth-lined with a double flip lid. It was a guilt-ridden gift from Joe after I failed to see the funny side of last week’s Dorothy joke.
On a date at Brooklyn’s, a place only described as dive-bar chic, I’d worn a D&G checked dress that had borne an uncanny resemblance to Judy Garland’s in The Wizard of Oz. Joe, knowing zero about fashion, decided to ridicule me all night with endless yellow brick road jokes. While ‘hilarious’ was not the word, he didn’t appreciate my Friend of Dorothy quips either. Still, the basket came in handy. The thought was there, somewhere.
Joe came home as I was finishing up the basket and was positively excited about a picnic in the park date. As I waited down on the baking street with Sybil panting by my feet like there wasn’t enough air to go around, Joe emerged shirtless and dog tagged onto the street with a pair of jeans low on his hips.
Standing there with his arms outstretched, I folded mine in confusion. I knew he was gorgeous, he knew he was gorgeous, but what was he waiting for, a round of applause? For being handed good genes by Mother Nature?
Turned out he was after Sybil’s lead, and after planting a quick kiss on my cheek, we set off for the park.
The bright May sun baked my shoulders, turning them a bubble-gum pink. I always believed my skin would muster its own form of defence in time; either that or skin cancer, but placing a hand on my hot skin, I found it peeling nicely.
Joe’s arms folded behind his head, like he was sunbathing on the deck of a private yacht in the Caribbean. ‘You’re turning a beautiful shade of red there, baby. That’s what happens if you wear a bikini when it’s one hundred outside. Not that I’m complaining.’
I sat up, mainly in protest. ‘If you had any cream I wouldn’t be frying in the sun.’
‘I don’t burn. I don’t need it.’
Joe stretched out his tanned olive arms, exquisite in hue. Like a lame synchronised swimming routine, I re-enacted his movements, only to find ancestral Irish skin inherited from my father morphing from shocking white to scarlet red.
Done preening, Joe lowered his shades, surely to disguise that wandering gaze. Window-shopping was fine so long as you weren’t caught, and I’d watched Mr Blond enough on the pooper-scooper park visits. Though I couldn’t say I enjoyed sitting next to Joe as his head blatantly followed the waif-like models. They were dressed in less than me, and even my bikini was lacking in the material department.
His Frankie confession might’ve still been troubling me, though it didn’t give him a fre
e pass to do what the hell he liked. I moaned again, hoping for a little sympathy.
‘If your sunburn hurts that bad I better rush you to the ER. Looks like third-degree burns to me.’
‘Like you’d ever catch me in a hospital,’ I shot back. I’d made it my mission to avoid anything and anywhere remotely clinic-like. I was going back to one this side of never. ‘Doctors, white coats, death . . . no thanks.’
He turned to me, staring from behind his sunglasses. ‘Why?’
Sybil was darting breathlessly over the grass before deciding digging it up might be fun too. ‘Shouldn’t you keep her on a lead?’ I was eager to divert the dangerous subject of conversation. In Chicago nobody knew about my chequered medical history, and no one was going to know. ‘Hey, Sybil, cut that out!’ I shouted for effect, like I was in a play or melodrama or somewhere not quite here.
When Joe rose to his feet, he shot me a dirty look. ‘Nag, nag, nag.’
He’d so climbed out of bed on the wrong side.
After finding a suitably sized stick, Joe set about playing with the Shih Tzu in a puerile manner, Sybil clinging to the stick by her teeth for dear life, though I was soon distracted by the sight of a familiar face and his Labrador. It was Mr Blond, on this occasion clad in a tight navy T-shirt and indigo jeans.
I made a point of blatantly gazing from behind my sunglasses due to Joe’s lack of restraint, but hubby dearest hadn’t registered my disinterest in the Joe and Sybil Show. Back on the other side of the fountain, a pair of sparkling blue eyes was looking back at me, obviously interested. I was only staring to piss Joe off, and he hadn’t bothered to notice. To make matters worse, I was given a slow knowing nod before Blondie strode away and joined the queue for Earl’s hot dog stand.
Snapping out of my trance, I looked back at Joe and Sybil to find they’d quit the stick game, ignored my picnic basket and hotfooted it to Earl’s too.
I lay back and expelled a well-deserved sigh, closing my eyes in the verdant urban greenery where the sirens of the city didn’t come so close.
‘How long do I put this stuff on for?’
Back at the apartment, I was spread-eagled on the sofa as I squeezed another gloopy dollop of after-sun into my palm.
Joe had been fiddling with the back of the television for the past half an hour, entirely oblivious to my damsel-in-distress routine. It looked like I’d crawled out of a burning building in a bikini.
‘That’s what happens when you fall asleep in the sun, babe,’ he warned knowingly, waving a screwdriver at me before smoke poured from the back of the TV ‒ cue Joe coughing like he was about to vomit his lungs up.
‘I didn’t fall asleep! And you could’ve told me I’d turned into a lobster.’ Just in case he didn’t get how pissed off I was, I pointed to my panda eyes.
‘You looked so peaceful. Besides, I was busy.’
‘What, scoffing hot dogs at Earl’s?’
‘I was hungry.’
‘For hot dogs but not my quiche?’
‘Your quiche was cold,’ he moaned.
‘It was supposed to be cold! What’s with the attitude?’ I pulled myself up to tentatively balance on my elbows.
‘How was Labrador Guy? Thought I aught to give you some privacy, you know, in case your husband was cramping your style?’
He had been paying attention.
‘And like you weren’t wondering what those bikini girls would’ve looked like without their bikinis,’ I reminded him.
Joe slowly rose to his feet, all six-foot-one of him. I wasn’t sure whether he was about to vent his anger on the TV or fall at my feet in forgiveness. In fact, it was neither.
He ambled over, taking the seat beside me and patting his knees for me to prop my legs upon them. ‘Would you listen to us? We sound like some old married couple already. It should be you and me, that’s it. Screw everyone else.’
‘You don’t have to get jealous every time I look at a guy.’
‘I can’t help it, okay? I just don’t get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘How I scored you. How a guy like me got hitched to a nice girl, a respectable girl; hell, a girl I love.’
He’d said it. Again. Those words had come out of that mouth, but they weren’t accompanied by a blissfully happy Joe; quite the opposite.
‘Then what’s the matter?’
He laughed, throwing down his hands. ‘I guess I’m not used to all this.’
‘All what?’
‘Domestic bliss?’ he admitted, shooting me a strained smile.
‘Let me do something to help, then.’
Joe eyes widened, the dirty smile emerging. ‘Are you talking a back massage? Or an any-other-place massage?’
‘You know what I mean. We need a new place. We need a fresh start. There’re some great buildings going up not too far from the lake. We could go and see the show apartment.’ I knew how precious he was about the Armanti Square abode, but he surely couldn’t argue with an en-suite and decor from this side of the millennium.
‘You know what? I remembered I have to go meet a guy.’ He threw off my legs and jumped up like he was sitting on a spring. ‘Why don’t you fetch some beers while I’m out and we’ll have a night in for once, if you know what I mean?’
Sitting in a shocked stupor, before I could utter a word he’d pushed a bunch of folded notes into my palm, kissed me on the forehead and sauntered out the door.
SEVEN
As the alarm shocked me from my early morning coma, I realised I wasn’t alone in the bed.
It was early, before-the-dawn early; the time of gangs in the shadows, of taxis and police and the odd drunk or hermit rifling the restaurant scraps. It was the moment before waking, when the city did still sleep, and Joe was here, not yet called to his messenger duties, to his clan of brothers in brown. Not yet.
In the cool bedroom air, Joe lay flat on his back. His gaze was on the ceiling as I watched his eyes flinch, like an unseen knife jabbed at his torso. Concerned, I reached out, though when I touched his arm it was like my fingers carried ten thousand volts. Shooting from the bed, he tripped over his work boots before careering sideways through the doors with a crash.
Disorientated and groggy with sleep, I moved from the covers and fumbled for my robe before creeping towards the sliding bedroom doors. There, I squinted through the crack in the opening before drawing slightly back from the piercing spotlight of the table lamp, the kitchen now a stage set for opening night.
There he stood, resting his weight against the kitchen counter as he poured what looked like vodka into a hi-ball glass. He took a gulp, then another, and then another. His breathing was shallow, his body looked weak and the weighty bottle was far beyond his meagre control. The might of Joe had waned, poured out like the liquor as clumsy fingers again grabbed the glass and the liquid trickled down his throat.
As he reached an arm to the counter to steady himself, I gasped too loudly.
A frost descended, my hand moving to my mouth as if cocooned in ice. As I paced back from the door, Joe’s head turned like something out of The Exorcist. Through the parting he was wholly unreal, silhouetted in the sharp glare of the kitchen lamp with the glass still in hand.
Unsure if he’d seen me, I was already back between the covers, trying to forget what I should never have seen.
My husband, Joe Petrozzi: the secret alcoholic.
Like the unyielding landscape before me on the train, in the fake splendour of the city before the Loop, I dissected the scenarios, prettied them up and cloaked their true visage. It had either been a vivid dream, a simple trick of the light, or I had a husband who drank in the dark to keep his sordid secret, secret.
Frankie dying, the tragic death of his parents . . . they were memories and recollections, facts too raw to discuss, but this was deception; his legal poison cloaked with tales of early starts and a boss who was a real stickler for timekeeping. Beer, wine, whisky, champagne . . . it’d been acceptable at K2 and lauded at Galvin
’s. He’d revelled in his addiction right under my nose while laughing at my ignorance. All this time, all those nights, he’d been a regular drunken Joe.
Alighting the early train at LaSalle, I was positively dawdling through the breezy daybreak, lost in the dream of a glittering city and drunk on my thoughts; of the bottle and vodka and death-stare I felt sure he’d given me. But more than anything, I pondered what it meant ‒ for me, for Joe and for us.
Pushing the revolving door to my building off the blustery LaSalle, the knot in my stomach refused to budge.
It could’ve been the result of my so far less-than-stellar morning, but I swore someone was standing in the lobby, in the far corner. It must’ve been a shadow; one of those human-shaped ones, though looking again only a blank space remained.
If Quentin hadn’t asked me to come in early and prepare the Lucassen account, I would’ve still been asleep. I wouldn’t have seen him. Joe’s morning floss, toast and vodka routine would’ve remained buried, like it was supposed to.
After journeying to the thirty-first floor, I dug my replacement pass out of my cerise tote, swiped it against the plate, trotted down the corridor and swung open the double doors to the workspace.
I swallowed a shocked gulp of air, glass from the shattered windows not only littering the carpets but cutting my throat too. Most of the computer equipment was gone; televisions and their entrails dangled like dead animals from the walls and the chairs were splinters of wood, their stuffing strewn beside them.
With stuttering breaths I began my pensive journey forward, the glass crunching with each step to the room’s far side. With the crackling underfoot, it was like I walked through a dense forest, the ground indistinguishable for twigs and leaves and moss. Standing before a series of windows, all missing, the wind bit at my cheeks and blew at my tartan dress, and as I peered toward the building’s edge with my heart in my mouth, I was almost sucked into the chasm below.
An hour later I was no longer alone and no longer hyperventilating. With the holes safely boarded by maintenance (the first guys to arrive), colleagues and co-workers had been confined to a taped-off space by the door, the chatter now growing to a crescendo. They could’ve been waiting for some celebrity to show, if not for the sea of immaculately coiffured heads shaking in disbelief.
The Good Kind of Bad Page 6
