Fin & Lady: A Novel by Cathleen Schine Page A

when Lady came downstairs looking ravishingly beautiful in her very short skirt and coltish legs, Fin was gratified to notice that Jack glanced down self-consciously at his shiny boots, frowned, and blushed.
    It was only a few days later that Fin began to worry about Jack. It was only when Biffi phoned and Lady told Fin to say she was out.
    “She said to say she’s out, but she’s not,” Fin said.
    “Ach.”
    “Yeah, ach. There’s this guy, and he’s a jerk.”
    “We will get hamburgers,” Biffi said. “You and I.” He liked to get hamburgers. He believed they were the secret of America’s health and prosperity. “Not the hot dogs,” he would say. “That is nonsense.”
    “So that’s the story. Pretty bad, huh?” Fin said as they sat in the coffee shop.
    “Love,” said Biffi, “is bondage.”
    “Lady likes freedom.”
    Biffi put his chin in his hands.
    Fin did the same. “Do you want to go to the World’s Fair again? Or something?”
    “The world,” Biffi said, “is not a fair.”
    “No, the World’s Fair is a fair.”
    “You are very young, Fin.”
    “God, you’re as bad as her.”
    “No one can compete with Lady,” Biffi said.
    After the hamburgers, they walked back to the house and sat on the stoop.
    “If your sister finds me here on her doorstep, I am a dead duck.”
    He sighed. He took out his pipe, rubbed the bowl on his nose, then pulled out a yellowing tobacco pouch. “Here,” he said, handing both to Fin. Fin filled the pipe, used Biffi’s little tool to tamp it down the way Biffi had taught him, then watched the flame of the lighter sucked down into the bowl as Biffi puffed. The smell of the smoke was sweet and dark. Biffi’s hands were large. How long had it been since Fin had held his father’s hand?
    “Sometimes I miss my father,” he said. “Although I guess he wasn’t such a nice man.”
    “I miss my father every day, and he was a terrible and selfish man.”
    Biffi puffed on the pipe. Fin closed his eyes.
    “You’ll tell me what goes on with this unworthy uncle?”
    Fin opened his eyes. “Like a spy,” he said.
    “Like a friend,” said Biffi.

 
    Spies
    He asked Phoebe if she would help, and she immediately produced a pair of binoculars from a closet. She positioned herself at her window, which faced Lady’s window across the street.
    “I don’t want to look in Lady’s window,” Fin said. “What if she’s getting dressed or something?”
    “You’re such a pervert.”
    “No, I said I don’t want to…”
    “Only a pervert would even think of that.”
    Fin said, “Just aim them downstairs, okay?”
    And they looked through the living-room windows and watched Mabel emptying ashtrays.
    “This guy has got to be removed from the picture. We have less than a year. Our mission is clear.”
    “We will not fail,” Phoebe said.
    That night, they met in the space beneath Phoebe’s stairway where the door to the kitchen was.
    “They just left,” Fin said. “They went to the Café Au Go Go. Can we get in there?”
    “What did you do all summer, Fin?” It was a coffeehouse, of course they could get in, Phoebe went all the time. Sometimes she just listened from outside, sometimes she had ice cream inside.
    They stood outside this time. Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto were performing. “The Girl from Ipanema,” soft and seductive, floated out to them. At about ten o’clock, when Fin and Phoebe sat sleepily on the sidewalk, backs against the wall of the building, Lady and Jack walked out. Jack had his hand on the small of Lady’s back. As if he owned her. Phoebe put her finger to her lips. Fin watched Lady put her head on Jack’s shoulder.
    “Criminy Dutch,” he whispered to Phoebe when Jack and Lady had turned the corner.
    “That was close.”
    “Come on,” he said. “We have to follow them.”
    They kept at least a block behind Lady and Jack. They followed them home, home to the house on Charles Street. Watched them stop abruptly. Heard