I started walking along the boardwalk into the heart of Coney Island. I’m not sure whether I was more upset at him or at myself. He was right, after all. We had used each other over the years. Maybe I was just jealous that he had used me to better effect than I had him. And I had always known what Larry was at his core. But his threat-
When my legs stopped moving, I turned back to look. Either Larry had gone or I was just too far away to make him out. On the other hand, the Parachute Jump seemed just as big as if I were still standing directly beneath it. Fucking thing seemed to follow you like the full moon on a clear night-or your own guilt. I think maybe that’s why I hated it so.
CHAPTER FIVE
A ruined marriage is a peculiar thing. After the dust settles, I think you can look back and see that both parties had a fair amount to do with the collapse. At first blush, it’s easy to point the finger at one party or the other, especially when there’s cheating involved. And even though that wasn’t the case with Katy and me, I’d have to confess to having known a few people who would have cheated regardless of what their spouses did or did not do. But a lot of the time, cheating is as much a reaction as an action. I guess it’s not only cheating that works that way.
I’d been thinking about this shit a lot lately. Maybe a few of our troubles can be traced back to the miscarriage, maybe most of them. Sometimes, though, I think the fatigue was structural, a flaw in the design. It’s like when there’s an undetected crack in the airframe of a jet as it first rolls out of the factory, but it takes thousands of flight hours before the aluminum fails and the plane disintegrates. Were we like that, I wondered, Katy and me? Were the cracks there even before we took our vows?
I mean, it’s not like Katy and me got together under the best of circumstances. Her big brother had been killed in Nam. She’d been recently divorced and Patrick was missing. Me, I was lost without my job and so drugged up from the pain medication for my knee that I could barely see straight. Jesus Christ, the first time I met Katy we were standing over a body-the cops thought it might’ve been Patrick-that had washed up in the Gowanus Canal. Now how many people have a Guess How I Met My Wife story like that one? Pretty fucking romantic, huh?
Then Katy went and converted to Judaism. Don’t look at me! Wasn’t my idea. Worst of all were the secrets. Yeah, secrets, plural. There was the big one between her dad and me, but there were others-things I’d uncovered about Francis Sr. and Patrick, about myself even, that I kept locked away where no one else but me could see them. All the ingredients except the miscarriage were there from the very beginning. What more proof do you need for the blinding power of love?
But for the two days since I’d told Larry McDonald to go fuck off, the shaky legs of my marriage were all I could think about. Paradoxically, his threats had made me ponder what I’d be losing if Katy and I stopped pushing the boulder up the hill and let gravity have its way with us. In one sense or another, people had been threatening me my whole life and I hadn’t gotten any more comfortable with the process. Nothing like being pushed to make a man push back.
Red, White and You was my baby for the time being, so on Monday and Tuesday I’d schlepped out to the new store and settled into the same boring routine that had, for the preceding dozen years, passed for my life’s work. “Same shit, different venue,” that’s what Ferguson May, the late philosopher of the 60th Precinct, used to say. He would have laughed his big black ass off at the thought of me explaining the differences between Australian and South African Chardonnays. Too bad he got a shiv shoved through his eye and into his brain while trying to break up a domestic dispute. There were days I wondered if he wasn’t the lucky one.
As it was, I was fiercely regretting Larry having threatened me. If he had only had a little patience and given me a few days back in the stupefying world of wine sales to come around. Don’t think I hadn’t been tempted to call him and tell him as much. I’d played the scenario out in my head during the few moments’ break between the boredom and my contemplations on marriage. I never got the chance.
“Moe, line one.” A voice woke me from my torpor.
“This is Moe, how can I help you?”
“Moe, how are you?”
It was a woman’s voice, a vaguely familiar one, and the words it spoke belied its tone. This voice was worried, and not about how I was doing.
“Margaret! Margaret McDonald, is that you?”
“It’s Margaret Spinelli now.”
The woman on the phone was Larry Mac’s ex-wife. They’d split up about four years back and we’d lost touch.
“I guess congratulations are in order then.”
“Thanks, Moe.”
“But this isn’t a wedding announcement, is it?”
“It’s about Larry. I’m worried about him.”
“Why?”
“I hadn’t heard from him for a few years. Then about two weeks ago he started calling out of the clear blue. He just kept apologizing for the way things had turned out between us and how if he could only take it back. . things like that. And last week, there was this one call when he just broke down. He asked me to come out to dinner with him, just so we could talk. He said he needed to tell me some stuff in person.”
“What happened?”
“At first I told him to stick it up his ass. He really hurt me, Moe. The man turned his back on twenty years of marriage. One day, what, he decides he’s had enough? Do you know what that felt like? After I got done throwing up, I thought they’d have to sweep me off the floor in pieces.”
“I’m sorry. Did you tell him this?”
“Every word and more.”
“And. .”
“He took it. Then he did something I never thought I would ever hear Lawrence McDonald do.”
“What was that?”
“He begged me.”
“He begged you?”
“See, you can’t quite believe it either, can you?” She sounded relieved, like someone being told they weren’t crazy after all. “I was stunned, because as ambitious as my ex-husband is, regardless of the things he’s done to get ahead, the one thing I was always sure he would never stoop to do was beg.”
“Did you agree to see him?”
“Yeah. Frank, he’s my husband, he’s down visiting his mom in Florida. So I agreed to meet Larry this once, at the Blind Steer in the city.”
“I know it. He took me and Katy there once.”
“How are you guys?”
Don’t ask! “We’re great. Sarah’s getting big. But what about last night?”
“He didn’t show. I checked with the maitre d’ and Larry had made reservations, but he just never came. I waited at the bar drinking red wine for hours. I used their phone to call every number I knew, but. .”
“Did you-”
“I tried every number, Moe, even the police special contact numbers. Nothing. No one’s seen him. They tell me he’s taken some vacation time and he won’t be back for a week.”
“Maybe he just forgot about dinner, or thought better of it and flew down to the islands,” I said, not quite believing it. “You know how he loves the islands.”
“You trying to convince me or you? He would never do that, not after begging to see me.”
“I guess you’re right, Marge, but I’m not sure what I-”
“Moe, check around for me, please. He really sounded awful. Something’s wrong, very wrong. I can feel it.”
“Maybe something is wrong, but why should you care?” I asked, the vapor from the chill in my voice almost visible.
“He left me, Moe, not the other way around. He stopped loving me, but I never stopped loving him. That’s why it hurts so much.” Her use of the present tense wasn’t lost on me.
“Okay, I’ll ask around and see what’s what.”
She gave me her numbers and address, then hung up. Her worry hung in the air around the phone like ground fog. Margaret was right about there being something wrong, only I don’t think she had a clue that her chief-of-detectives ex-husband had started his storied police career in someone’s pocket. There’s a lot of shit a cop’s wife doesn’t know, and even more she doesn’t want to know.