Dead Cat Bounce (7 page)

He drank coffee and read the paper while Prior finished his lunch. He silently cursed whoever was calling the shots over at Shea, why they kept chasing over-the-hill ballplayers was beyond him, particularly when it was obvious what they needed. Stick Michael was the guy they needed to go after, and they could get him, too, all they had to do was wait until the next time Steinbrenner took a piss on the guy's shoes, then call him up and make his day.

Prior stood up to go, said good-bye to the two waitresses who were still talking to him, left some money on the counter. Stoney could see why they'd be attracted to him, some women wouldn't be able to see through the act. This guy could model clothes for Brooks Brothers, Stoney thought, or play a rich doctor in one of the daytime soaps. Prior took a heavy leather biker jacket off the rack and put it on, fished a thin pair of driving gloves out of a pocket, and walked out the back door as he put them on. The guy in the gray suit got up and followed him out.

There was an old Italian motorcycle parked next to a stretch Lincoln Town Car in the lot behind the diner. The bike was a vintage Ducati 750SS, it was beautiful, and just like the man who owned it, rich, easy on the eyes, and probably had a few good moves. The thing was a classic, a piece of mechanical jewelry, exceedingly rare and positively gorgeous. It really belonged in a museum. Prior nosed it out of the parking lot, took off, the bike bellowing that unmistakable Ducati roar. The Town Car, piloted by the man in the gray suit, followed close behind.

Stoney waved to his waitress for the bill. Who is this guy, he wondered, and why should I care? Why not just smoke the bastard and be done with it? But he had promised Marisa…Got to be a way to find out who you are, he thought, looking out the window, in the general direction Prior had taken. Got to be.

 

You open the door to the place, you're looking down the length of the bar, dark paneling, brass rail, big mirror, rows of bottles, tall beer taps, TV down at the end where the fat bartender and a couple of waiters were watching a baseball game. It was
preseason, the grapefruit league was playing, and a lot of kids with names nobody knew were out there taking their shots. It was long odds that any of them were going to make the bigs, but they were doing the best they could. They were in the game.

Stoney could feel his heart trying to crawl up into his throat. Nice, quiet place to sit and get a load on. It would have felt just like home to him, once, this place and a thousand others just like it. Heaven on earth, and he had never intended to leave, never aspired to anything better, never thought he could find any greater happiness. That familiar barroom smell filled his head as he stood in the inner doorway. It was the perfume of a beautiful woman who had once loved him, and a hint of that scent started the images rolling, what she had looked like, how she had taken him in her arms, the way she had been able to blow all that shit out of his mind, open his cage door and set him free….

Yeah, never mind the way she'd tried to cut your throat, last time out. Nostalgia for the gutter, that's what Benny called it.

“Help you, sir?” Stoney was standing in the doorway to The Landing, a steakhouse in Piermont, New York, and the maître d' was looking at him quizzically.

“Yeah.” The dining area was to the right, in a different room. Away from the bar. “Yeah, I'm meeting someone here.” Two steps took him to the threshold of the dining room. She was sitting all alone, over by a window on the far side of the room. Their eyes met and he was sixteen again, getting ready to ask her out for the first time, his stomach sinking because he knew she was out of his class, she would never go out with a guy like him. He'd been so sure she'd say no, laugh at him with her friends later on. She hadn't, though. He felt a little
unsteady, put a hand on the door frame. How am I gonna do this? he wondered. God, can I go through this again? “I'm with her,” he said.

“Right this way, sir.” The maître d' had a large leather-bound menu under his arm, and he headed across the room. Stoney would have preferred to stand where he was for another minute, to wait for his heart to go back down where it belonged, maybe catch his breath, but he did not, he followed the guy over to her table.

She looked tired, but he knew better than to tell her that. The maître d' laid the menu on the table and departed. Stoney stood there looking at her, she sat there looking at him. Neither of them was exactly young anymore. Stoney never thought much about time's erosion of his own face, but looking down at Donna, he could see faint lines and shadows where once there had been none. It didn't matter to him, didn't affect the way he felt about her. She was the only woman he had ever loved, and the first human being who had ever really loved him. “Hello, beautiful. Mind if I sit down?” He smiled as he said it, trying to project a confidence he did not feel.

“Please do,” she said. She waited until he was seated. “You've lost weight,” she said. “I can see it in your face. You look nice. Did Tommy buy you that suit?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing a plain white blouse, khaki pants, and a blue blazer hung from the back of her chair. She probably came straight here from work, he thought. Better stay away from that….

“I missed you,” he said.

She had to think about it for a minute. “I missed you, too,” she said. “Sort of.”

He wondered what that meant, but the waiter came just
then, rattled on about his specials, a fish from here and a filet from there, prices to go with them, all of that. Stoney didn't listen, he watched Donna stare at the menu. She seemed reluctant to order, as though she had no appetite, or maybe she didn't want to be beholden to him. She did, though, finally, and so did he, and the waiter took their menus and went away.

“Oh,” she said, in sudden alarm, turning to look at the waiter's departing back. “I ordered a wine spritzer….” She turned back to face him. “I'm sorry, I forgot. I didn't think.”

“It's all right,” he said. “It won't bother me, just as long as you don't get all sloppy.”

She glared at him. “I should,” she said. “I should get loaded, just so you'll have to drive me home. Maybe I could throw up in the backseat of your car.”

Try to make a little joke, he thought. Mistake. “I'd have to have Tuco clean it out for me.”

“Sounds like you,” she said, still angry. “Pass your problems along for someone else to take care of.”

He just nodded.

“That was mean,” she said after a minute. “I apologize.” She didn't look at him when she said it, she just stared out the window.

“It's all right,” he said.

“It's just that—” She stopped, shaking her head, and then went on in a quieter tone. “I keep getting this urge. This impulse to pay you back. I just don't know what I could do to hurt you. Nothing ever touches you. You never feel anything.”

If you only knew, he thought. “Stay away.”

She stared at him. “That's it? That's all it takes?”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Donna looked
around, finally, at the other tables. The place did most of its business on the weekend. At that moment it was almost empty. “You know,” she said, “all of the years we've been married, I never knew how much money we had. I didn't know how much you made, or anything.” She paused. “I sort of know what you do. You and Tommy.”

“You were never—”

“Hush. Please. Let me get this out before you start poking holes in it, okay?”

“All right.” I wasn't going to poke any holes, he wanted to say, wanted to defend himself, but he kept silent.

“All this time,” she said, a little bit louder. “All these years, if I wanted something, I had to ask you first. ‘Stoney, can we afford this? Stoney, can I have one of those?' Just like a little kid…I thought the children were my job. That was the deal we made, you and I, even though we never talked about it. But then, we never talked about anything, did we? I needed you for everything. I needed you to check the oil in my car, to tell me what color to paint the kitchen, to figure out what schools the kids should go to…I was, I was like a toy, you kept me in the house next to your fishing rods. I always needed you for everything, and you never needed me at all.”

He couldn't remember owning any fishing rods. “That isn't true,” he said. “I always needed you. I need you now.”

“Yeah, to keep your house clean,” she snapped. “To wash your underwear. And for sex.”

Every time I open my mouth, he thought, I make this worse.

“Were you drunk at our wedding?” she asked. “Were you drunk when you married me?”

The few other patrons in the place were starting to pay the
two of them a bit more attention. Stoney inhaled. “No,” he lied. “Not at the wedding. Afterward, maybe.”

“Oh, I remember that,” she said. “And all during the honeymoon.”

“Well…”

“And when Marisa was born? You really wanted to be there, that's what you said, but you had some cockamamie story, what was that all about?”

He couldn't remember. He hadn't been there for Dennis's birth, either. She'd had to take a cab to the hospital, both times. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Well, let's start with an easy one. You've been under the influence of one thing or another the whole time I've known you. Is that fair to say?”

He hadn't been fucked up the whole time, that was ridiculous…But it had been there all along. His best friend, his crutch, as omnipresent as the air he breathed. He sighed. “Fair enough.”

“I feel like my whole life with you has been a lie,” she said. “You and I never had a real relationship. We were more like roommates than lovers. You had your life, and I never knew very much about it. I had my life, and you never cared much about that.” She saw the waiter headed for their table bearing plates of food, so she fell silent while he served them.

“When did you talk to Marisa?” she said, when he was gone.

“She came to see me last week.”

Donna pursed her lips. “She went in to see you? In the city?”

“Yeah. I met her at the train station.”

“That girl,” she said, shaking her head. “She looks so innocent, but she never tells me anything.”

She told me plenty, Stoney thought. She told me about this guy you're seeing. He almost said it, but then he bit it back, swallowed the words and the bile. Not now, he told himself. Not here. He felt it, though, the anger of it coming up, and the pain of forcing it back down. Was this all me, he wondered, is this all my fault? He remembered asking Benny if it was his fault he was an addict. “
Fault
is a word for school yards,” Benny had told him. ‘Doesn't matter whose fault it is. It's your responsibility. You gotta deal with it.'

“…did she want?” Donna was asking him something. “Did she just want to see you?”

He assumed they were still talking about Marisa. “I guess. She wanted to talk.” He swallowed Prior's name again, and it tasted just as bitter going down the second time. “She wants to go to school, says she wants to be a doctor. She wanted to know about tuition.”

Donna passed a hand across her forehead. “I've been afraid to even think about that,” she said, her voice unsteady. “What did you tell her?”

“Told her not to worry. Told her I could pay for it.”

Her eyes were on him then, hard and bright. “You told her you could pay for it.” She emphasized the word
you,
leaned on it hard, both times. Should have said “we,” he thought. You and I. It was too late, though.

“Yeah.”

“Just how much money do you”—she did it again—“have?”

“We.” He threw it out there, for what it was worth. “We have assets, you and I. Not just the house, either. Not what's in the bank.”

He could see her anger building. “In the bank?” she said, her
voice rising. “There isn't enough money in the bank for me to even use my ATM card anymore. I had to go get a job, just to try and stay somewhere near current on the bills, for chrissake.”

He was mad enough to take pleasure in that, loved her enough to feel guilty about it. “Don't you ever look at bank statements?”

“As a matter of fact, I did look,” she said. “The checking account had something like four hundred bucks in it when you left.”

When you threw me out, you mean. “What about the money-market account?”

He had her complete attention. “What money market account?”

“Farther down on the page,” he said, but he didn't manage to keep all of the sarcasm out of his voice. “You transfer money out of one into the other when you need it. I usually keep about twenty grand in it.”

She was leaning forward, her face red, but then she sat back abruptly and looked away. “Well, I'm an idiot, then,” she said. He could see the muscles working in her jaw. “And where do you get it from? When your twenty grand runs low, where does the money come from to fill it back up?”

He shrugged. “Here and there,” he said. “Tommy and I, and you, have a very complicated financial situation. But we're doing okay.”

“How okay?”

He shrugged again. “I'd have to talk to Tommy, go over it all. Or you could do it yourself. Go sit down with him, let him tell you everything.”

“You know I love Tommy,” she said, “but he's your friend. He'd protect you.”

“Tommy wouldn't lie to you.”

She looked unconvinced. “So Marisa's tuition isn't a problem.”

“No.”

“What about the mortgage on the house? Could we…” She threw the word in his face. “Could we afford to pay that off?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but it would be stupid. That mortgage is cheap money. Besides, a mortgage makes us look normal.”

“Is that so.” Her face was dark red again. “I've been killing myself to pay that bill every month, did you know that? I've been so afraid of losing the house because you, because you…” She swallowed then, and didn't finish her sentence. “How have you been getting by? Have you been taking money out of your money-market account?”