“Your brother is really a total jag-off,” she says, loud enough for Dean to hear, and adds, as if that weren’t enough, “I just can’t handle your entire fucking family.” She is drunk of course although the real problem, Cass suspects, is that she dropped a ’lude before the picnic so she would be able to get through it.
“Yeah, well,” he says, and instead of getting into it, simply slips his arm around her waist and leads her slowly across the lawn, away from the crowd and toward the river. He understands that her anger flags quickly, and after a minute, she sags against him as they walk.
His family thinks he loves Dita because she is the worst woman in the world for him, as if his passion is for sheer contrariness. But Dita is like no other female he has ever known, potty-mouthed, brilliant, fearless, screamingly funny-and, her secret, profoundly kind. Not fifty people at this picnic realize Dita works her butt off every day as a social worker in the Abuse and Neglect Division of the Kindle County Superior Court. Cass has watched her with those kids, to whom she gives her entire heart.
She is, no question, the most complicated person he knows, with vices everybody sees and strengths she keeps hidden. She is certainly the greatest ever in bed. She has sex-‘fucks’ is the only real word for it-as if she invented the activity. She comes more quickly and more often than any other female he has ever heard of, a quaking, gasping, sweating, moaning heap, who says as soon as she finally has her breath again, “More.”
They do it most often right here, in her bed. It’s a weird turn-on for her to be down the long hall from her parents, bucking and carrying on at volume, albeit with the door locked. She has sneaked him up the stairs on occasion, but most nights, he just climbs to the tiny second-floor balcony outside her window, ascending on the hooks driven into the brick wall to hold the phone wires.
His mother hates Dita, probably because she is as strong-willed as Lidia. But that makes Dita a perfect ally for Cass. Dita will never succumb to convention. She will never say ‘OK, that’s what Paul would do.’ She will demand that he-and they-be different, and that is an assurance he requires, because the tidal pull his brother exerts will last forever.
He wants to marry Dita. That is another secret, because her response, especially initially, is bound to be harsh. ‘Me? Marry a cop?’ Or more likely, ‘Me, fuck just one guy for the rest of my life?’ He cannot imagine how horrible it would be to have her actually laugh in his face. Paulie smolders, but Cass has absorbed all of Lidia’s quick temper. That is the one piece of Dita he still does not know how to contend with, the part that dislikes herself and tries to drive everyone away. The risk of loving Dita is that she will hate him for doing it.
Around six, when it is just about time for the picnic to end, the sky darkens and opens, drowning them all in rain. Dita, predictably, stands out in the downpour until her blouse is soaked through. He finally takes a tablecloth and throws it around her and shepherds her inside. She tries to drag him upstairs, but there are too many people in the house, and he whispers that he will be back later.
Near seven, Paulie, who has hung on with Cass and the members of the picnic committee to clean up, has had enough.
“Let’s get a couple cold ones and sit out by the river.”
“No hokey-pokey while Father Nik is playing pinochle with the men’s club?” Nik would lose his entire salary if the men didn’t take turns throwing hands to him. His parishioners feel obliged to take care of Nik now that Georgia’s mom is gone and the father’s priestly vows require him to remain alone.
“Not tonight, Josephine,” Paulie answers. He actually looks troubled.
“Where’s Lidia?” Behind her back, they have called their mother by her first name since they were in grade school.
“She’s gone. She said Teri was going to drive her home so they could visit.” The boys meander across the lawn.
“What was up with Sofie Michalis?” Cass asks. “Were you guys going two falls out of three?”
Paul explains a bit, but concludes, “Can you believe how good she looks?”
“Uh-oh. Paulie has a crush.” It’s been years in fact since his brother indicated interest in any woman besides Georgia. In college, Paul and she agreed to date other people, but it was halfhearted. He was still on the pay phone in the dorm lobby, pouring in quarters and talking to Georgia at least three times a week. They clung to each other, as to life rafts in the tide of growing up. But that time has been over for a while now. Georgia isn’t dumb. She’ll be good at all the stuff women once were supposed to do, having babies and keeping house, but Jesus, it is 1982, and being with her would be like an endless loop of Father Knows Best. The slim chance that Paul might actually escape her lifts Cass’s heart. In the meantime, his brother crumples up his chin and wheels to look around.
“Jesus, Cass. Cut the crap. Georgia’d be crying for a month.”
Instead Cass whispers the same thing in a singsong several times until his brother slugs him in the shoulder. In reprisal, Paul asks, “Brewski or not? Or are you just going to hide in the bushes until you can climb up the drainpipe?”
This effort to get even is so simpleminded but inevitable that Cass breaks into loud laughter. The night is ripe. After the rain, the air has become cool and clear. There is a slice of moon over the river, and the water rushes below. Cass has a full sense of life’s possibilities and the joy of loving certain people. Paul. And Dita. He loves Dita. He realizes he has decided.
He will ask her to marry him tonight.
12
In prospect, Evon had regarded retirement from the FBI as something akin to dying. She had her twenty in more than three years ago, but was required to wait until age fifty to claim her retirement benefits-about half her salary for the rest of her life, one of the big selling points of the Bureau to start. Within the agency, the standard advice was to go as soon as possible, when you were young enough to establish yourself in another career, but she’d thought she had time to figure out her future-until a local headhunter called. With the headlines then about ZP employees in Illinois bribing tax assessors, Hal and the board had decided to replace Collins Mullaney as head of security with somebody who had shining armor and a crime-buster reputation. The fact that Evon had also done an MBA in the weekend program at Easton-a way to stay busy after Doreen died-and had management experience as deputy special agent in charge of the Kindle County RA made her a perfect fit, and one to whom Hal made the proverbial offer she couldn’t refuse.
So here she was, the senior vice-president for security at a publicly traded company. But the most unexpected aspect of the job was how much she loved it. Heather, who could be astute about everybody else, had sized Evon up accurately one night when she said, ‘You’re just one of those people who loves to work.’ True, but the challenges were intricate in masterminding security for a company that owned 246 malls and shopping centers in thirty-five states, with over three thousand employees. She basically confronted the same issues as a suburban police chief, with far less authority. There was a big-league felony on one of their properties every day-serious drug deals, truck hijackings, shootings. Terrorism preoccupied her, since the haters could make quite a statement by, for instance, blowing up a mall during Christmas season. Over two thousand security guards roamed their sites, most rented from an outside vendor, but they became her problem when they stole from tenants or, like one creep, raped somebody in a clothing store dressing room. Every day she had to deal with reports of road rage in the parking lots, vandalism somewhere, kids caught smoking pot on the security cameras, slip-and-falls, and six-year-olds getting their sleeves snagged in the escalator. Who would have believed that so many protest groups would desire to make their case in the local mall? And none of that considered internal operations, where she was responsible for computer security and investigating the astonishing range of misbehavior your own employees could think up, everything from sexual harassment to a guy in Denver who was pocketing the proceeds when he rented out the far side of the company parking lot for football games at Mile High Stadium. Not to mention compliance issues, which brought the never-ending grillings from the lawyers. Often, she was still at her desk at ten at night and back at seven, with not much time in between when her brain went into neutral.