lied to her, but I had a feeling the walls of this house had seen a lot of lying before I ever walked up those front porch steps.
TWELVE
Mary Lambert, flush with pride over having purchased a GPS at her firm’s expense, fairly demanded that she come to my end of Brooklyn for dinner. I wasn’t going to argue with her. The thought of seeing her again gave me that happy nervousness I hadn’t experienced since I’d been with Carmella. Like I said, I was no monk and there had been no shortage of women to warm the other side of my bed, but there hadn’t been any buzz with them beyond the buzz of bitterness. Dating always sucks, but dating in middle age sucks a whole lot worse because everyone involved has baggage, usually in the form of ex-spouses—either dead or divorced. You have no idea how much fun I had explaining that I had one of each. And even when the bitterness quotient was low, dinner conversation usually degenerated into a discussion of kids and grandkids or comparing whole-grain cereals and doses of Lipitor. Then, if dinner was nice enough, if there had been sufficient alcohol consumption, I’d wind up falling into bed with my dinner companion. You want to talk about baggage... Bed is the Broadway stage of baggage. No, don’t turn me over. My husband always forced me into that position and even when I liked it I hated it.
I tried the younger woman thing for a while. That was even less successful because then most of the baggage was mine, and mine included a murdered ex-wife whom I still loved, an ex-wife I’m not sure I ever loved but still wanted, and enough secrets to choke the Trojan Horse. Besides, it was nearly impossible to find common ground with women my daughter’s age. And inevitably, within an hour or two, I wound up sounding paternal and/or professorial. I found out soon enough that no one finds it dead sexy when you utter the phrase, “Don’t worry, when you get to my age you’ll understand.” There were times, I confess, I yearned for those whole-grain cereal discussions and photos of the grandkids. Modern pharmacology notwithstanding, there are issues for men of a certain age beyond just staying hard. The nature of desire itself changes with time.
I made three phone calls while I waited for Mary Lambert. I put Jimmy Palumbo on alert that his services might be required in the coming days. He was eager for the work, for the two hundred dollars, and, he said, for another steak dinner. The next call was to Palumbo’s boss at the museum, Wallace Rusk. I didn’t figure to get him in the office, not if his security guard was already home. I left a message anyway. What I needed from him could wait until Candy got me those four paintings. Then I put in the call I was least looking forward to, the one to McKenna. Not that he’d kept his promise either—I’d checked my cell phone all throughout the day—but cops can have funny notions of whose job it is to do what. Hallelujah! I got his voice mail and left a message. I’d have to talk to him sooner or later. Every minute later was better.
I found myself looking out the front window of my condo at the moonlight reflecting off the black waters of Sheepshead Bay and beyond to Manhattan Beach. I’d lived here for a lot of years now. I had intended to move Carmella, Israel, and me into a nice house, but I never got the chance. The marriage started to crumble almost from the second we took our vows. Given that we were business partners, that she was pregnant with another man’s child, and that I was still reeling from Katy’s murder, it was a miracle we lasted fifteen minutes. And Carmella had a rage in her that dated back to a time before her name was Carmella or Melendez, to when she had been abused as a little girl. One time I asked her why she chose to spell her new first name with a double l, a very untraditional spelling for a Spanish speaker. She told me it was a final Fuck you! to her mother who had reacted with shame to the abuse.
TWELVE
Mary Lambert, flush with pride over having purchased a GPS at her firm’s expense, fairly demanded that she come to my end of Brooklyn for dinner. I wasn’t going to argue with her. The thought of seeing her again gave me that happy nervousness I hadn’t experienced since I’d been with Carmella. Like I said, I was no monk and there had been no shortage of women to warm the other side of my bed, but there hadn’t been any buzz with them beyond the buzz of bitterness. Dating always sucks, but dating in middle age sucks a whole lot worse because everyone involved has baggage, usually in the form of ex-spouses—either dead or divorced. You have no idea how much fun I had explaining that I had one of each. And even when the bitterness quotient was low, dinner conversation usually degenerated into a discussion of kids and grandkids or comparing whole-grain cereals and doses of Lipitor. Then, if dinner was nice enough, if there had been sufficient alcohol consumption, I’d wind up falling into bed with my dinner companion. You want to talk about baggage... Bed is the Broadway stage of baggage. No, don’t turn me over. My husband always forced me into that position and even when I liked it I hated it.
I tried the younger woman thing for a while. That was even less successful because then most of the baggage was mine, and mine included a murdered ex-wife whom I still loved, an ex-wife I’m not sure I ever loved but still wanted, and enough secrets to choke the Trojan Horse. Besides, it was nearly impossible to find common ground with women my daughter’s age. And inevitably, within an hour or two, I wound up sounding paternal and/or professorial. I found out soon enough that no one finds it dead sexy when you utter the phrase, “Don’t worry, when you get to my age you’ll understand.” There were times, I confess, I yearned for those whole-grain cereal discussions and photos of the grandkids. Modern pharmacology notwithstanding, there are issues for men of a certain age beyond just staying hard. The nature of desire itself changes with time.
I made three phone calls while I waited for Mary Lambert. I put Jimmy Palumbo on alert that his services might be required in the coming days. He was eager for the work, for the two hundred dollars, and, he said, for another steak dinner. The next call was to Palumbo’s boss at the museum, Wallace Rusk. I didn’t figure to get him in the office, not if his security guard was already home. I left a message anyway. What I needed from him could wait until Candy got me those four paintings. Then I put in the call I was least looking forward to, the one to McKenna. Not that he’d kept his promise either—I’d checked my cell phone all throughout the day—but cops can have funny notions of whose job it is to do what. Hallelujah! I got his voice mail and left a message. I’d have to talk to him sooner or later. Every minute later was better.
I found myself looking out the front window of my condo at the moonlight reflecting off the black waters of Sheepshead Bay and beyond to Manhattan Beach. I’d lived here for a lot of years now. I had intended to move Carmella, Israel, and me into a nice house, but I never got the chance. The marriage started to crumble almost from the second we took our vows. Given that we were business partners, that she was pregnant with another man’s child, and that I was still reeling from Katy’s murder, it was a miracle we lasted fifteen minutes. And Carmella had a rage in her that dated back to a time before her name was Carmella or Melendez, to when she had been abused as a little girl. One time I asked her why she chose to spell her new first name with a double l, a very untraditional spelling for a Spanish speaker. She told me it was a final Fuck you! to her mother who had reacted with shame to the abuse.
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