The Missing Piece (9 page)

“How's the Ruskie?”

“His name is Ivan,” said Jessima. “And he's fine.”

“Well, when you get tired of him, you can always come back.”

“Back to what?”

“I'm hot for you.”

“You're hot for every lady you see,” said Jessima.

Damien laughed, then shook down his sleeve. His hand lit on her knee. She slapped it away and ran back to the courthouse.

*   *   *

Ivan went out the rear entrance of the courthouse, skirted the basketball courts on the south end of Columbus Park, then turned up a short street into Chinatown. He never expected that he could have someone like Jessima, and now that he had, he craved her, not just the sex, but the idea of her, the comfort of her, the need to keep her all to himself. He had been with her for almost a year now, and he knew there was no going back to life as it existed before her.

The air was cool, but the sun was bright and warmed him through his blue coveralls. He passed several markets in the block leading up to Canal Street. They each featured chicken carcasses hanging from hooks or huge fish lying on ice. As a boy, he had eaten things he would rather forget, but since coming to America he became accustomed to food so far removed from its natural sources that it seemed to have appeared by magic. The Chinatown markets reminded him otherwise, and he passed them quickly until he reached the newsstand where he bought his weekly lottery ticket.

Back at the courthouse, the afternoon mag lines were long. Ivan flashed his ID card at the officer seated at the security desk, then passed the coffee shop and headed up the staircase. Two floors up, he opened the door to his supply closet. On the shelf above the slop sink, a coffee can stood next to a ceramic bud vase with a single silk rose bent crookedly over the rim. The day after he first made love to Jessima, he found the rose wrapped in a paper towel and balanced on the doorknob.

“I never had a woman give me a rose before,” he told her.

“I never gave a rose to a man before,” she replied.

The rose had stood in the coffee can until a day, some weeks later, when Jessima reached up to straighten the stem and found it embedded in a thick layer of lottery tickets. Dozens of tickets, scores of tickets, hundreds of tickets. Ivan explained that one day he would win and he would use the money to take her away from here. She smiled kindly.

“Men need their dreams,” she said.

“It's not a dream if it comes true,” he replied.

Still, he sensed her disapproval. She had given him this rose as a symbol of her feelings for him, and he had planted it in a soil of worthless lottery tickets. He brought the bud vase from home the next day, and ever since the rose stood perfectly upright in the long, narrow neck.

Now he stuffed the latest lottery ticket into the coffee can. He knew exactly how much money he had wasted on this stupidity. But one day none of it would matter. As Jessima said, men need their dreams.

 

CHAPTER 9

Foxx balanced the two pizza boxes on one hand and buzzed two shorts and a long, the not-so-secret code. A moment later, Gary's voice crackled on the speaker.

“Friend or foe?”

“Who is to say what we really are?” said Foxx.

“Oh, it's you,” said Gary.

“How'd you guess?”

Foxx stepped off the elevator and into the aroma of something spicy. The people in 4D always seemed to be cooking exotic foods, and tonight's concoction smelled like curry with a hint of coconut. Indian, he guessed, maybe Thai.

The extra-wide door to 4A was ajar.

“Gary,” called Foxx as he stepped into the small foyer that had been ornate with engaged columns and arched doorways until McQueen's remodeling crew got done with it. One extra-wide doorway opened into the kitchen, another into the living room, a third into a short corridor that led to the bedroom and bath. In the distance, overheated voices argued about a college football game.

“You here, Gary?”

“Where the hell would I be?” The reply came from doorway number two.

“I got pepperoni and meatball.”

“I love you, Foxx.”

“Only kidding. Two veggies. Lots of red onion and low-fat cheese.”

“Lovely,” said Gary, resigned.

“Someday you'll thank me.”

“Doubt it.”

“I'm inviting myself down the hall for Indian.”

“Suit yourself.”

Foxx took the pizza into the kitchen. Dried tomato sauce dotted the stove. Rubbery curls of scrambled eggs littered the counter. A pile of dirty plates leaned in the sink. Foxx nudged the faucet lever and held a sponge under the thin stream.

“I hear you, Foxx. Forget the mess. I'm lazy, not helpless.”

Foxx shut the faucet and tossed the sponge. He tore the lid off one pizza box, grabbed two beers from the refrigerator, and went into the living room. Gary was parked between the sofa and the recliner. He leaned forward in the battle chair, an elbow balanced on his knee as he wrist-curled a five-pound dumbbell. Foxx set the pizza on the coffee table and popped the beers as Gary finished his set.

“I'll trade you,” said Gary.

Foxx lifted the dumbbell from Gary's palm and replaced it with a beer. Gary's face and arms were red, his forehead sweaty.

“Where's Mike?” he said. “Spending my money?”

Foxx laughed. McQueen had his faults, but dishonesty with money was not one of them.

“Might as well give me a slice,” said Gary. “They're even worse cold.”

McQueen showed up a few minutes later, clipboard in hand.

“How can you stand that stench in the hallway?” he said.

Gary rolled his eyes at Foxx.

McQueen grabbed a beer and wolfed down one slice and then settled back on the sofa to begin the official post-fund-raiser meeting.

“Our receipts break down like this,” he said. “Cover charge minus food netted fifty-one hundred fifty. The auctions, silent and live combined, brought in ten thousand four hundred seventy-five. Both these figures are up from last year. Donations from people who didn't attend came to eighty-five hundred.” He unclipped an envelope thick with checks and handed it to Gary. “That figure is down from last year, but that's because more people showed up this year.”

Gary balanced the envelope on his lap and thumbed through the checks.

“So we cleared twenty-four thousand one hundred twenty-five,” said McQueen. “Now, I propose that we take fifteen thou and ladder another fifteen months of one-thousand-dollar CDs. That gives us a two-year cushion.”

“What's the interest rate?” said Foxx.

Gary, still thumbing the checks, did not look up.

“Practically zero,” said McQueen. “But that's not the point. The point is Gary can cash in a CD each month if he needs the money. If he doesn't, he can roll it over to the end of the ladder.”

“Whatever,” said Gary.

“What about the rest?” said Foxx.

“We already made the essential renovations with the doorways and the bathroom,” said McQueen. “So I figure, while we still have the people's generosity, we redo the kitchen.”

“For nine grand?” said Foxx. “Can you even get a set of plans drawn up for that?”

“C'mon, Foxx. Between you and me, we know every donkey-Irish tradesman in Throggs Neck and City Island. We can dragoon somebody into donating labor and use the money on appliances.”

“We should ask Gary what he wants,” said Foxx.

Gary closed the envelope and tossed it onto the coffee table.

“New kitchen? Great. Increase the resale value. Plus I can cook all Mike's exotic foods.”

“See?” said McQueen. “That's why I don't ask.”

Foxx went into the kitchen and came back with the second pie and three more beers. As they ate and drank, Foxx caught McQueen's eye.
Well?
he asked silently.
You start,
McQueen mimed.

“Gary,” said Foxx. “We need to talk about something else.”

Gary bit into a fresh slice, then extracted a long peel of red onion from between his teeth.

“What's that?” he said.

“The amount of time you spend on the computer.”

“How the hell do you know how much time I spend on the computer?”

“Well, Gary,” said McQueen, “we think there's reason for concern.”

“You're shitting me, right?” Gary looked back and forth from Foxx to McQueen several times before recognition came into his eyes. “Oh, I get it. Ursula put you up to this.”

“She didn't,” said McQueen.

“Actually, Gary, she did,” said Foxx.

“Look, guys,” said Gary, “I'm sorry she drew you into this, but what's really going on is she wants to move back in.”

“And you're not hopping on that?” said McQueen.

“It didn't work out so great last time, if you remember. Much as I'd like to try again, I'm worried about it not working out because I don't know if I could handle that now. I never had to deal with it then.”

They went silent for a while, then Foxx spoke up.

“But you do spend a lot of time on that thing.”

“That thing is my salvation,” said Gary. “I'm in this chair because of that fucking Roman treasure. What I've tried to do, since I can't do anything else, is learn everything about it. I read art history sites, blog posts, Twitter feeds. I Google ‘the Salvus Treasure' twice a day. Yeah, I spend a lot of time on the computer, and Ursula knows exactly why because I've told her. It keeps me from going crazy.”

*   *   *

Linda did not know what was going on in the movie, an art film playing on an obscure premium cable channel. But she liked the rhythm of the dialogue, the sudden swells of background music, and, when she looked up from her book, the sepia tones of the cinematography. She did not know what was going on in the book, either, which was a memoir by one of her favorite novelists. But she liked the weight of the book on her lap, the texture of the pages against her thumb, the shape of the print in her eye. The wineglass stood on the coffee table, out of reach now since she had tucked herself back into the corner of the sectional sofa and drawn her legs up under her. The glass had a tiny circle of red at its depth and a faint imprint of her lips on the rim.

She may have dozed. She may have slipped again into deep, transporting thoughts. She could not be sure. What she did know was that when she heard Hugh come in the front door the book was facedown on her lap and the movie credits were rolling up the screen.

She reopened the book and listened to Hugh's progress: the thud of his briefcase, the squeak of his shoes heading into the kitchen, the solid tick of a heavy-bottomed glass on the granite counter, the clatter of ice, the glubbing sound of bourbon and air fighting past each other in the neck of the bottle. Silence then, until he peeked in and said, “There you are,” and sat beside her with half a cushion between them. His shoes were off, his tie gone. Wisps of dark chest hair curled over the exposed V of his T-shirt.

“Are you ready for the trial?” said Linda.

“I am now,” said Hugh. “The associates flew out today, which left me a big chunk of time to work on my opening statement.”

He took a healthy slug of bourbon and settled back to describe his work process, which she had heard many times but did not prevent him from explaining again. He never wrote out his opening statements because a tightly written script sounded stiff in its delivery. He preferred only a general sense of what he needed to say; how he said it was a game-time decision, dependent upon what the plaintiff's attorney had said and what vibe he felt from the jury.

“And you're still leaving tomorrow?” said Linda.

“I need the weekend for final witness prep and to coordinate with local counsel on an in limine motion set for Monday morning.” Hugh drained the rest of his drink. “A trial is like a play. You judges don't get to see the rehearsals, the rewrites, the cast changes.”

He rattled the ice in his glass. “You want another?”

“No,” she said. She had not drank the first glass. She had swirled an ounce of wine in the glass, then kissed the rim before pouring it into the sink.

He took the wineglass into the kitchen, fixed himself another drink, and returned.

“Good book?” he said.

“Some interesting parallels between her life and her fiction, but I prefer the fiction.”

He removed the book from her hand, flipped it away, and snuggled against her. He was distracted when consumed with his work, playful when not. And whenever he felt playful, he wondered why she did not feel playful, as well. She tried to relax, stroking the stubble of his cheek as he nuzzled her shoulder. Mountain-time, she had called him during their original dating days, because his five o'clock shadow seemed to arrive by three.

“Hugh,” she said, breathier than she wanted to sound.

He mumbled, somehow reached the glass out to the coffee table without his cheek retreating from her neck. And then his hand slipped beneath her and worked between the cushion and her ass. Their circling before sex had lost its spontaneity, but the hand squeezing her ass was the one unmistakable sign of what Hugh wanted.

Oh great, she thought. He hadn't approached her or shown her any affection since, well, since
that night
, and now, because she needed to have a serious discussion, he turned amorous, which meant he'd get mad if she turned him down and they would spend another night lying side by side, separate psyches in the same bed, each waiting for the other to fall asleep.

Still, as much as she tried to relax so that she could buy time, she stiffened.

“Something up, Lindy?” he whispered.

It was her turn to mumble. But she could not resist a shrug and, despite being two people who earned their living by bending words, they were highly attuned to each other's body language. Hugh felt that tiny shrug. He lifted his head off her shoulder, pulled his hand from her ass.