“Sunny has made it clear that she doesn’t like you and doesn’t want to go out with you,” Spike said. “I felt it was important that you know I feel the same way.”
“What?”
“Stay away from Sunny,” Spike said.
And then Spike did what he does. I don’t know how he does it. Something happens behind his eyes, and whatever it is shows through, and quite suddenly there’s nothing playful about Spike.
Don saw it and it scared him.
“You’re threatening me,” he said finally.
“You bet,” Spike said. “Think how embarrassing it’ll be, to tell the guys at the health club that you got your clock cleaned by a ho-mo-sex-ual.”
Don didn’t move. Better men than Don had been frightened by Spike. But he didn’t want to back down in front of me.
“... remember Pearl Harbor, as we march against the foe...”
“Don,” I said. “There’s nothing between you and me.”
“I’m not scared of him,” Don said.
“You should be,” I said. “Walk away from this. There’s nothing here for you.”
Don sat for another moment. Then he stood up.
“All right, but only because you asked me, Sunny.”
“Sure,” I said. “I understand. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
Don nodded and said, “Good-bye, Sunny.”
“Good-bye, Don.”
To salvage his self-regard he gave Spike a hard look. Spike smiled at him. Don turned away and walked stiffly out of the restaurant.
“I could have chased him away myself,” I said to Spike.
“Sure,” Spike said, “but it’s like the old joke, praise God you didn’t have to.”
Chapter 21
It was after six and I was starting supper for Millicent and me. She had slept much of the afternoon and now sat at the kitchen counter drinking a Coke and watching me. I had a cookbook open on the counter beside me. I had put a carving knife across it to keep the pages from flipping over. Rosie was between and around my ankles as I worked.
“You like to cook?” I said to Millicent.
“No.”
“Do you know how?”
“No.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“You a good cook?” Millicent said.
“No. But I’m getting better. Actually I’m learning, too. I’d love somebody to learn with me.”
“Who’s teaching you?”
“I’ve been watching Martha Stewart,” I said.
“Who?”
“A woman on television,” I said.
“What’s in the plastic bag?”
“Pizza dough,” I said. “I buy it at a place in the North End and let it warm a little and then roll it out.”
“You’re making pizza?”
“Yes, white, with vinegar peppers and caramelized onions.”
“Whaddya mean, white?”
“No tomato sauce.”
“What’s that other stuff — whatchamacallit onions and peppers.”
“Sweet and sour,” I said. “Here, roll out some of this pizza dough.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Take this roller,” I said. “Put some flour on this board.”
I showed her.
“Put a little more flour on top of the dough.”
I showed her again.
“Roll it from the center out.”
Millicent sighed a large sigh and took the rolling pin. She dabbed at the dough with it.
“No, no,” I said. “Roll it.”
I took the pin and showed her. The dough sat there inertly. When I rolled it in one direction it shrank up in another. I rolled more vigorously. The dough sat there more inertly. After five hard minutes I had a lump of pizza dough the same size and thickness with which I had started. I put the rolling pin down and stepped back and looked at the dough.
“You ever make this before?” Millicent said.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Maybe if you just squished it with your hands,” she said.
I tried it. The dough was recalcitrant. I picked it up and dropped it into the trash compactor. Then I took the dish of sliced onions and chopped up peppers and scraped them into the trash.
“If at first you don’t succeed,” I said, “have something else for supper.”
Millicent made a little sound that might almost have been a snicker.
“You don’t know how to cook for shit,” Millicent said.
“I’m learning,” I said. “I’m learning.”
She made the sound again.
“You were pounding and shoving that sucker and it wasn’t doing a thing,” Millicent said.
I laughed. She might have laughed. We might have been laughing together.
“The perversity of inanimate objects,” I said.
“Huh?”
“It’s something my father always says.”
“Oh. So what are we going to eat?”
“What do you like?” I said.
“I like peanut butter.”
“Me, too,” I said. “And even better, I think I can make a sandwich.”
“For crissake, Sunny, I can make a peanut butter sandwich.”
“With jelly?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, yeah? Okay, smarty pants, go ahead. Show me.”
After supper we took Rosie for a walk along Congress Street down toward the Fort Point Channel.
“So can you cook anything?” Millicent said.
“Some things.” I said. “Who knew pizza dough was going to be ugly?”
“How come you’re not a good cook?”
“Probably the same reason you’re not,” I said. “Nobody taught me.”
“My mother’s a good cook,” Millicent said.
“She teach you?”
“No. She said I would mess up her kitchen.”
“My mother’s kitchen was always a mess,” I said. “Her problem was she didn’t know how to cook either.”
“I don’t see why a woman has to cook,” Millicent said.
“Nobody has to cook,” I said. “Only if they want to.”
Rosie had found a crushed earthworm on the edge of the sidewalk and was rolling purposefully on it.
“What’s she doing?”
“Rolling on a dead worm,” I said.
“Gross,” Millicent said, “why don’t you make her stop?”
“She seems to like it,” I said.
“Why’s she doing it?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
Rosie stopped rolling and stood up and sniffed at the worm remains, and then looked proudly up at me and stepped out along the sidewalk.
“How come you’re trying to learn to cook?” Millicent said.
“I like to make things,” I said. “And I like to eat.”
Millicent shrugged. Rosie charged ahead on her leash as if she had a place to go and was in a rush to get there. At Sleeper Street, downtown Boston loomed up solidly ahead of us. To the right was the Children’s Museum in the big wooden milk bottle, and the tea party ship replica bobbed on the water next to the Congress Street Bridge.
“I suppose,” I said, “as I think of it, that I also probably think at some level or other that the more I can do for myself, the less dependent I will be on anyone else.”
“I think it’s easier just to let somebody else do it,” Millicent said. “Then you don’t have to do anything.”
“Which is why you’re here,” I said, “walking around South Boston with a detective you barely know.”
Millicent was silent. Rosie was adamant, as she always was, about looking at the water under the bridge. We stopped on the beginning of it while she stared over the edge, her wedge-shaped head jammed through the bridge railing. The water was dirty. I looked up at Millicent. She was crying. Hallelujah! An emotion! I put my arm around her. She was thin and stiff.
“On the other hand, you’ll know me really well in a while. And when you do you’ll absolutely love me.”
She didn’t say anything. She stood rigidly with the tears running down her cheeks, then the rigidity went away, and she turned in against my shoulder and cried as hard as she could while I patted her and Rosie gazed intently down at the black water.