"Okay."
"How's Greta Garbo?"
"Okay."
The three of us sat there like Easter Island heads, staring into the off. Louie saw something in the corner of the yard and skulked off in that direction.
"How come when I was a kid we used to have great dogs, but when I grew up I chose him? The only male on earth with permanent PMS."
"Gee, Dad, you're in a good mood. Want to have a catch?"
"I would love to." I got up and went into the house for the baseball gloves and ball. They were on a table in the hall next to the mail. I looked it over and saw an express letter from Veronica. I appreciated the fact she hadn't called, but wasn't in the mood to listen to her right then, so I put it down and went back outside.
As a youngster, Cass was the best Little League baseball player around. She threw like a pro and could hit the ball into next week. Things changed as she grew older, but she was still the best person on earth to play catch with. For her birthday a few years before, I had bought her a ridiculously expensive baseball glove. Opening the package, she took the mitt out and buried her face in it. Then she rubbed it up and down her cheek and said in an ecstatic voice, "It smells like the gods!"
We tossed the ball back and forth, the first throws slow lobs to warm up our arms. That sound, that immortal American sound of a hard white ball slapping into the pocket of a leather glove: father and his kid together. After a few minutes, I nodded at her and she began throwing much harder. I loved everything about this. The knots in my head from the last few days began to undo themselves. This girl could throw both a curve and a knuckleball, two things I had never been able to do in my life. Sometimes I could catch them, sometimes they were so tricky and well thrown that I was completely baffled and they sailed by, back to the fence. I was in the midst of retrieving one of those when Cass broke her news.
"Dad, I've met someone."
About to throw her the ball, I dropped my arm instead. A smile grew on my face. "Yeah? And?"
She wouldn't look at me, but she grew a smile too. "And, I don't know. I like him."
"What's his name?"
"Ivan. Ivan Chemetov. His family's Russian. But he was born here."
This was dangerous ground. I knew anything I said now would determine how open she would be with me about what was really going on. Forget it. "Have you slept together yet?"
Eyes widening, she giggled. "Dad! How could you ask that? Yes we have."
"Were you careful?"
She nodded.
"Is he a good guy?"
She opened her mouth to speak, stopped, closed her eyes and said, "I hope so."
"Then mazel tov. I'll kill him the minute I see him, but if you like him, I'll wipe my tears and shake the man's hand." I flipped her the ball. She caught it with the most subtle little twist of her hand. My beautiful girl. "Does he play ball?"
"You can ask. He's coming over in half an hour."
We continued our catch until Ivan the Terrible rang the bell. The dog moped toward the door to see if anyone was bringing him food. Cass sprinted, while Dad held the baseball a little too tightly and tried not to scowl. I had been ruing this moment for years. Like the character in the Borges story who tries to imagine all the different ways he can die, I had wondered a hundred different scenarios of what it would be like to meet the fiend who deflowered Cassandra Bayer. Shake his hand? Spit on it, more likely. Perverse as it sounds, even when she was a little pixie I had thought about the day when . . . and now here it was.
Ivan. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan Denisovich. Ivan Bloomberg, one of the biggest assholes I knew. What was his last name, Chemetov? Cassandra Chemetov? Say that one fast three times.
"Dad, this is Ivan."
Half a head shorter than Cassandra, he had the kind of chiseled Slavic features and brushed-back long hair, short on the sides, you often see in Fascist art of the twenties and thirties. A handsome boy, but hard enough looking to open a can of peas with his stare. Add to this the fact he was wearing a T-shirt that covered arms roughly the size of Popeye's and Bluto's combined.
"Mr. Bayer, it's a pleasure." His shake was surprisingly gentle and long. "I've read all your books and would love to talk with you about them."
I asked the pitty-pat questions fathers are supposed to ask on first meeting the suitor: What do you do? Freshman at Wesleyan University, wanted to major in economics. Where did you two meet? In New York at a Massive Attack concert. Not knowing whether that was a rock group or a military group, I wasn't about to ask. We chatted and I half-listened to his answers. What really caught my attention was the look on Cass's face. The way she gazed at Ivan resembled the expression of a saint having a religious ecstasy on one of those camp Italian postcards. No sexy "I wanna eat you" or "Ain't he sweet" look. Hers was one-hundred-proof adoration. Coming from my notably cool and rational daughter, it said everything.
The phone rang. I walked over to the porch to pick it up. "Hello?"
"It's Frannie. You were at the cemetery today, right?"
"Yes."
"So you saw what they wrote on Pauline's stone? Why didn't you call me?"
The kids were watching. I turned and walked a few steps away. "To tell you the truth, Fran, I thought you might have done it. To get me stimulated or something."
"Stimulate yourself, Sam! I'm not interested in desecrating gravestones to get you off your ass. Whoever did it's going to have me breathing in his face, believe me. Mrs. Ostrova's a nice old woman and this upset her. She was the one who discovered it. I guess she was up there right after you. Jesus, who the fuck would do that? Write 'Hi' on a gravestone?"
"Hi, Sam. They were saying hello to me, Frannie. That's what gave me the creeps."
"Yeah, whatever. Listen, next time anything like this happens again, you call. Okay? You want my help on this, you help me back. Otherwise, I'm going to kick your ass like I used to. Got me?"
"Gotcha, chief."
"And one other thing: Hi, Sam!" He sniggered and hung up.
I took the lovebirds out to dinner. After forcing myself to stop thinking about his fingertips on her skin, I realized Ivan was an outstanding young man, and I could easily understand her infatuation. He was intense and enthusiastic in equal measure. He spoke respectfully to Cassandra and gave her his complete attention whenever she spoke. More important, he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. He was also one of those fortunate people curious about all sorts of things at the same time. Economics was no more important than the last novel he had read. He had been a state champion wrestler in high school. Granted, he exuded a faint aura of arrogance. But I would have been arrogant too if I'd been as on the ball and engaged as him.
At the end of the meal, Ivan said he'd heard about my new project and had brought along something that he hoped would interest me. Reaching into his knapsack, he pulled out an inch-thick wad of papers that looked like an unbound movie script. Since hearing the story from Cass, he had been doing some research for me. Another Internet Cadet, he had driven his Porsche brain all over the information superhighway, picking up a variety of available data that might be helpful. Thumbing quickly through the pages, I saw documents from the county district attorney's office, articles from regional newspapers about the murder, an old piece in Esquire magazine by Mark Jacobson I'd already read about the death of Gordon Cadmus . . . It was a treasure trove.
"Wow, this is terrific stuff! Thank you very much, Ivan."
"I would really like to help out in any way I could. I love doing research."