Travis spelled “wicked” and picked up a lot of points by using a doublescore square, so Nora used her tiles to spell “hurkey,” which was worth even more points.
“‘Hurkey’?” Travis said doubtfully.
“It’s a favorite Yugoslavian meal,” she said.
“It is?”
“Yes. The recipe includes both ham and turkey, which is why they call it-” She couldn’t finish. She broke into laughter.
He gaped at her in astonishment. “You are putting me on. You are putting me on! Nora Devon, what’s become of you? When I first met you, I said to myself, ‘Now, there’s the grimmest-damn-most-serious young woman I’ve ever seen.’”
“And squirrelly.”
“Well, not squirrelly.”
“Yes, squirrelly,” she insisted. “You thought I was squirrelly.”
“All right, yeah, I thought you were so squirrelly you probably had the attic of that house packed full of walnuts.”
Grinning, she said, “If Violet and I had lived in the south, we’d have been straight out of Faulkner, wouldn’t we?”
“Too weird even for Faulkner. But now just look at you! Making up dumb words and dumber jokes, conning me into believing them ‘cause I’d never expect Nora Devon, of all people, to do any such thing. You’ve sure changed in these few months.”
“Thanks to you,” she said.
“Maybe thanks to Einstein more than me.”
“No. You most of all,” she said, and abruptly she was stricken by that old shyness that had once all but paralyzed her. She looked away from him, down at her tray of Scrabble tiles, and in a low voice she said, “You most of all. I’d never have met Einstein if I hadn’t met you. And you… cared about me… worried about me… saw something in me that I couldn’t see. You remade me.”
“No,” he said. “You give me too much credit. You didn’t have to be remade. This Nora was always there, inside the old one. Like a flower all cramped up and hidden inside a drab little seed. You just had to be encouraged to… well, to grow and bloom.”
She could not look at him. She felt as if a tremendous stone had been placed on the back of her neck, forcing her to bow her head, and she was blushing. But she found the courage to say, “It’s so damn hard to bloom… to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it’s hard. Desire to change isn’t enough. Or desperation. Couldn’t be done without… love.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and she was unable to lift it. “Love is like the water and the sun that make the seed grow.”
He said, “Nora, look at me.”
That stone on her neck must have weighed a hundred pounds, a thousand.
“Nora?”
It weighed a ton.
“Nora, I love you too.”
Somehow with great effort, she lifted her head. She looked at him. His brown eyes, so dark as to be almost black, were warm and kind and beautiful.
She loved those eyes. She loved the high bridge and narrow line of his nose. She loved every aspect of his lean and ascetic face.
“I should have told you first,” he said, “because it’s easier for me to say it than it is for you. I should have said it days ago, weeks ago: Nora, by God, I love you. But I didn’t say it because I was afraid. Every time I let myself love someone, I lose them, but this time I think maybe it’ll be different. Maybe you’ll change things for me the way I helped change them for you, and maybe this time luck’s with me.”
Her heart raced. She could barely get her breath, but she said, “I love you.”
“Will you marry me?”
She was stunned. She did not know what she’d expected to happen, but certainly not this. Just hearing him say he loved her, just being able to express the same sentiments to him-that was enough to keep her happy for weeks, months. She expected to have time to walk around their love, as if it were a great and mysterious edifice that, like some newly discovered pyramid, must be studied and pondered from every angle before she dared to undertake an exploration of the interior.
“Will you marry me?” be repeated.
This was too fast, recklessly fast, and just sitting there on a kitchen chair she got as dizzy as if she had been spinning around on a carnival ride, and she was afraid, too, so she tried to tell him to slow down, tried to tell him they had plenty of time to consider the next step before taking it, but to her surprise she heard herself say, “Yes. Oh, yes.”
He reached out and took both her hands.
She cried, then, but they were good tears.
Lost in his book, Einstein had nevertheless been aware of what was transpiring. He came to the table, sniffing at both of them, rubbing against their legs, and whining happily.
Travis said, “Next week?”
“Married? But it takes time to get a license and everything.”
“Not in Las Vegas. I can call ahead, make arrangements with a wedding chapel in Vegas. We can go next week and be married.”
Crying and laughing at the same time, she said, “All right.”
“Terrific,” Travis said, grinning.
Einstein wagged his tail furiously: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
5
On Wednesday, the fourth of August, working on contract for the Tetragna Family of San Francisco, Vince Nasco hit a little cockroach named Lou Pantangela. The cockroach had turned state’s evidence and was scheduled, in September, to testify in court against members of the Tetragna organization.
Johnny The Wire Santini, computer hacker for the mob, had used his high-tech expertise to invade federal computer files and locate Pantangela. The cockroach was living under the protection of two federal marshals in a safe house in, of all places, Redondo Beach, south of L.A. After testifying this autumn, he was scheduled to be given a new identity and a new life in Connecticut, but of course he was not going to live that long.
Because Vince would probably have to waste one or both of the marshals to get at Pantangela, the rubout was going to bring a lot of heat, so the Tetragnas offered him a very high price-$60,000. They had no way of knowing that the need to kill more than one man was a bonus to Vince; it made the job more-not less-attractive.
He ran surveillance on Pantangela for almost a week, using a different vehicle every day to avoid being spotted by the cockroach’s bodyguards. They did not often let Pantangela outside, but they were still more confident of their hiding place than they should have been because three or four times a week they allowed him to have a late lunch in public, accompanying him to a little trattoria four blocks from the safe house.
They had changed Pantangela’s appearance as much as possible. He had once had thick black hair that he had worn longish, over his collar, Now his hair was cut short and dyed light brown. He’d had a mustache, but they’d made him shave it off. He had been sixty pounds overweight, but after two months in the care of the marshals, he had lost about forty pounds. Nevertheless, Vince recognized him.
On Wednesday, August 4, they took Pantangela to the trattoria at one o’clock, as usual. At ten minutes past one, Vince strolled in to have his own lunch.
The restaurant had only eight tables in the middle and six booths along each side wall. It looked clean but had too much Italian kitsch for Vince’s taste: red- and white-checkered tablecloths; garish murals of roman ruins; empty wine bottles used as candleholders; a thousand bunches of plastic grapes, for God’s sake, hanging from lattice fixed to the ceiling and meant to convey the atmosphere of an arbor. Because Californians tend to eat an early dinner, at least by Eastern standards, they also eat an early lunch, and by ten past one, the number of diners had already peaked and was declining. By two o’clock, it was likely that the only customers remaining would be Pantangela, his two bodyguards, and Vince, which was what made it such a good place for the hit.