“We’ve known each other since October fifteenth,” Louise said.
Birthdate of great men, Carella thought, but did not say.
“Seventy-one days today,” Luigi said.
But who’s counting? Carella thought.
His sister’s eyes met his.
There was something like a warning in them.
Et tu, brute?he thought.
He’d played Caesar, too. And had gone to bed with Portia after the opening-night party. A year and seven months in college, and he’d been able to score with only two girls, big Lothario. How did he suddenly get to be forty? It occurred to him that he had never been to bed with another woman since the day he met Teddy. Nor did he ever plan to. Nor had he ever felt the slightest desire for any other woman. He wondered how many womenSignore Marcello over there had been to bed with,Signore Casanova, wondered if he’d already been to bed with Carella’s mother, Louise, with her stylish new clothes and her svelte new figure and her elegant new coiffure, wondered if his mother had already forgotten that once upon a time there’d been a gentle, loving man named Anthony Carella who’d been shot to death during a holdup in his bakery shop, wondered if sooner or later everyone who dies is forgotten, and thought, curiously, Shakespeare isn’t forgotten, I was Claudius, I was Caesar.
He poured himself another glass of wine.
This time, it was his wife’s eyes that shot a warning across the table.
He smiled at her and raised his glass in a silent toast.
She sighed and turned away.
SHE DID NOT SAY ANYTHING to him until she was certain the children were asleep. Carella was already in bed when she came to him. She sat on the edge of the bed, and in the light of the lamp burning on the night table, her fingers and her eyes told him what was on her mind.
You’re drinking too much,she said.
“Come on,” he said, “a few glasses of wine, what’s wrong with you?”
It started in November, when Danny Gimp got killed …
“Danny was a stool pigeon,” he said.
He was your friend.
“I never considered him a friend.”
He came to the hospital.
“That was a long time ago.”
He came when you were hurt. And now he’s dead. And you never cried for him.
“He meant nothing to me,” Carella said.
Did your father mean something to you?
Carella looked at her.
You didn’t cry for him, either.
“I cried,” Carella said.
No!her hands shouted. Her eyes were flashing. He realized all at once that she was containing enormous anger.
“I cried inside,” he said.
Why are you still so angry with Henry?
“Oh for Christ’s sake, is heHenry already?” Carella said.
Your sister’s going tomarryhim!Teddy said.You have no right to make her feel guilty about it! She loveshim!
“Love!” Carella said.
Is that all at once a dirty word?
“He lost the case!”
Do you think he wanted to?
“He let the man who killed my father …”
Steve,she said, and put her hand on his arm.Sonny Cole is dead. You killed him, Steve. He’s dead. Let it go, honey. Leave it alone.
“Seems everyone’s asking me to do that these days,” he said, and shook his head.
What does that mean?
“Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.”
You never used to say Nothing, forget it.
Her hands stopped, the room went suddenly still. She looked at him for what seemed a very long time.
Steve?she said at last.Do you still love me?
“I adore you,” he said.
Then what is it? Is it the job?
He shook his head.
Is it?
“No. No, I love the job.”
She took a deep breath.
And in the stillness of the night, she asked him why he’d drunk so much at his mother’s house today, and at first he told her he hadn’t drunk that much at all, a glass or two of wine, and then he admitted he’d had at least a full bottle, but this was Christmas Day, so what the hell, she didn’t have to start talking to him as if he was some kind ofdrunkard, this wasn’t Tommy Giordano here sniffing his life up his nose in Santa Fe or wherever. Then he admitted that he was annoyed that his sister would evenconsider marriage to the man who’d let Sonny Cole walk out of that courtroom …
“Never mind that it ended with me shooting him, do you think that’s something Ienjoy doing?” he asked. “Gunning down a man? Do you think I became a cop so I could shoot people dead in the street, twenty yards from the house where my wife and my children are sleeping, do you think Ienjoy doing that?”
I think the job is getting to you, she said, and he told her Don’t be ridiculous, and she said I think the job is beginning to get to you, honey, you’re not the same since your father got killed, you just aren’t the same man I married, and she began sobbing into his shoulder. He told her Come on, nothing’s changed, Ilove the job. And Idid cry for my father, you don’t know how much I cried. I cried for Danny, too, hewas a friend, I know he was, he practically died in my arms! Jesus, Teddy, don’t you think Icare for people, don’t you think I have any feelings?
And suddenly he was crying again—or perhaps for the first time.
She moved out of his arms.
She sat up.
Listen to me,she said.
He nodded. His nose was running. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
If it’s the job,she said,I want you to leave it.
He shook his head. No. Kept shaking it. No.
I don’t want to lose my husband to the job.
Tears kept streaming from his eyes.
I don’t want you eating your gun one day.
He kept sobbing.
At last, she turned out the light and went to bed with him cradled in her arms.
He fell asleep thinking that only two days ago, he’d seen a woman chewed to pieces like raw meat.
VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUM FAIRIES danced in Ollie’s head, even though Christmas Day had come and almost gone. Visions of roast beef slices, too. And candied yams. And buttered beans. And thick apple pie with vanilla ice cream sitting on its flaky crust. And red Delicious apples, and Bartlett pears, and Baci chocolates with a sort of fortune-cookie message that readA woman’s soul is like an angel’s kiss. Lying alone in bed, he thought of all the delicious things his sister had served for Christmas dinner today, and he forgot all about the two separate—or so he thought—cases he was currently investigating. Suddenly famished, he got out of bed and went to the refrigerator.
He fixed himself a thick Genoa salami sandwich on rye bread smothered with butter and mustard, and poured himself a glass of whole milk, and carried these to the upright piano he’d rented.