“You’d better take it easy with that stuff,” I said.
There was a bleariness in his eyes that made the whites seem curdled. “Why?” he said. “What difference does it make?”
“I thought you decided getting drunk wouldn’t solve anything.”
“Neither will staying sober.”
“I told you earlier that I don’t like bodyguard work much,” I said. “I don’t like it at all if it means looking out for a drunk.”
“All right,” he said, and waved a hand loosely, and the expression on his face became self-pitying. “All right, have it your way.” He banged his empty glass down on the table, left it there, and moved off a little unsteadily.
I rejoined Shelly, and she asked me if I knew how to polka, and I said it had been a long time and I wasn’t much good at it anyway; dancing was the last thing I felt like doing at the moment. We sat talking some more instead, listening to the accordion music. From time to time she touched my hand or my arm, and finally she moved close to me and I could feel the warmth of her hip and thigh against mine. I wondered if she was feeling the same sexual stirrings I was.
At three o’clock the elder Simontacci called lunch. We sat with the Cappellanis and Rosten and ate antipasto and barbecued chicken and garbanzo bean salad and homemade French bread. I had not had anything all day, so I wolfed my portion; Shelly ate with the same gusto. But nobody else seemed to be hungry, and there was little conversation. Leo appeared more interested in the passage of attractive women than in any of us — I wondered briefly where his wife was — and Rosa gave most of her attention to Alex. She did not look at Rosten and Rosten did not look at her; I thought that if Brand had been right in his comment at The Boar’s Head and they had or had had some sort of sexual relationship, it was completely private and secretive. Alex picked listlessly at his food and seemed to be getting more and more restless. And halfway through the meal he got up abruptly, without saying anything, and went off toward the Simontacci house.
He was gone for fifteen minutes. When he came back I knew right away that he had gone after more alcohol in spite of my warning; the color was high in his face and he was walking in that slow, measured pace drunks affect when they don’t want you to know they’ve been drinking: it doesn’t fool anyone but themselves. Well, damn it. I gave him a sharp look as he sat down, but he avoided my eyes.
Beside him Leo said distastefully, “My God, you smell like a fermentation vat. How much have you had to drink?”
“None of your business,” Alex muttered.
“It’s my business if you make a spectacle of yourself.”
“Sure, that’s right. Somebody’s trying to make me dead and all you think about is your public image.”
Rosa said, “Alex, be quiet,” in her imperious voice.
He ignored her. “How’d you feel if you were a target instead of me?” he said to Leo. “Huh? How’d you feel?”
“I wouldn’t get drunk in public,” Leo said.
“You’d be nice and calm and rational, right?”
“Yes.”
“Oh sure,” Alex said. “Big man, big business executive — a goddamn iceberg, that’s what you are. No feelings at all. You don’t give a shit about anything except profit-and-loss statements and Monday-noon projects; you don’t care about anybody except yourself.”
We were all staring at him now, Leo with his face drawn tight and cold. Rosa said in a flat, mother-to-recalcitrant-children tone, “That’s enough, both of you. You’re only making matters worse.”
“Screw it,” Alex said. He shoved away from the bench again, stood up; he seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes focused.
“Where are you going?”
He did not answer her, but then he didn’t have to: he went off in an unsteady gait toward the wine casks.
The rest of us exchanged glances. I said to Mrs. Cappellani, “Unless you’ve got an important reason to stay on here, I think we ought to get him home.”
She nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”
“Do you want me to tell him?”
“No. I will.”
“You can also tell him that if he keeps on drinking, I won’t go on working for him. I mean that, Mrs. Cappellani; I’m no good with drunks.”
That broke things up. She gave me a long unreadable look but no argument; another nod, short and stiff, and we all stood from the bench. Shelly took my arm, and when Mrs. Cappellani and Leo and Rosten were out of earshot she said, “One big happy family. You’re going to have your hands full if you stay on.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Two accordion players started up with a traditional tune, and the people at the benches began clapping their hands in time to the music. There was laughter, spontaneous singing.
Some fest, I thought wryly. Some celebration.
16
It was after four when we got back to the Cappellani Winery. I rode in the back seat with Alex; Leo did the driving and Mrs. Cappellani sat like a block of granite beside him. None of us had much to say. Alex was sullen and fidgety, and you could see the beginnings of withdrawal sickness in his eyes and in the blotchy pigmentation of his skin.
When Leo parked the Lincoln in front of the house, Alex got out immediately without saying anything to any of us and went inside in quick jerky strides: a man on his way either to his bed or to his toilet to do some vomiting. The rest of us got out and stood looking after him. As soon as he was gone, Rosa turned to me.
“He won’t drink any more today,” she said. “He’ll probably just sleep.”
I nodded.
Leo said, “He never could hold his liquor very well.”
She fixed him with a stony gaze. “Must you always make disparaging comments about Alex?” She said. “He’s not as strong as you, Leo, we all know that — and he knows it as well as any of us.”
Leo seemed about to argue with her, changed his mind, and said instead, “Yes, I guess he does. Maybe you’re right, Rosa. Maybe I have been a little rough on him.”
You said it, brother, I thought.
The two of them went into the house. I stayed out there in the warm sunshine, for no particular reason except that I did not want to shut myself up in any of those musty rooms. It was quiet in the vineyards and around the winery buildings; all of the grape pickers and the cellar workers had evidently gone home for the day. Shelly and Rosten — and Dockstetter too, I supposed — were still at the fest. Shelly had said, just before we left, that she would see me later tonight; I may have read promise in that where none was intended, but I found myself thinking now, again, about going to bed with her.
I killed five minutes doing nothing, decided that was hardly what I was getting paid for, and finally went inside. Neither Leo nor Mrs. Cappellani was around; the house had a hushed aura to go with its mustiness, like something out of a Gothic novel. Or maybe that was just my imagination.
Upstairs, I went through my room and into the adjoining bathroom and stood listening at the closed door to Alex’s room. Silence, except for a faint breathy sound that might have been snoring. I opened the door and looked in, and Alex was sprawled out face down on his bed, clothes on, shoes on, breathing heavy sour odors through his nose. I went in there and took his shoes off and opened his shirt and covered him with a blanket. He did not move through any of that; he was going to be out for a while.
Back in my room, I pulled off my jacket and my own shoes and lay down on the bed. I thought about reading, but I had not brought any pulps with me and the only books I had seen downstairs were those on military history and winemaking. So I closed my eyes, just to rest — but the day had already been a long one: I was pretty tired. I fell asleep within minutes.