The Unexpected Salami: A Novel (25 page)

“Mate, been a long time,” the groovester said. Stuart? His greaseball hair was gone; he’d always used bargain-shop hand cream or Vaseline in his hair to keep it stiff, or sometimes it was simply dirty. There was color in his skin. On closer look, he was still a bag of bones, but healthier. His eyes weren’t glazed over—he kept my gaze.

“And we thought you’d stay dead,” I said, sitting down, my knees ready to give out anyway.

“I was an addict then,” he said. Mrs. Ganelli froze in her tracks with my coffee, to hear his next words, but they didn’t come.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You see Rachel?”

“Yeah, last night. She wants me to help you get your life back in order.”

“We’re doing fine,” Mrs. Ganelli said.

“Rachel wants me to stay,” I said to Stuart.

“No kidding,” he said ironically.

Mrs. Ganelli sat down on the rocker and breathed out. “
Ffufff.
” Rachel had imitated her parents all the time, and it was strange to see her mum really do that. I wondered if her dad really said “piffling,” but I didn’t want to wait around and find out.

“She’s headed for another disaster. Don’t you agree,
ffufff,
it’s best you leave, Colin?”

I didn’t want to grovel or go into the whole “who did what and why” bullshit. I’d made my own bed. I’d had enough of guessing my fate. “Whatever I can to make things okay again. I was a real shit—oh, sorry, Mrs. Ganelli—”

“Shit?” she smiled, a toothy smile like Rachel’s. “That’s nothing. You should hear the vile crap that comes out of my kids’ mouths. Frank says it’s because how they didn’t get enough zinc.” She laughed at that. I didn’t quite get the humor.

“Frank is so wry,” Stuart agreed. Wry? When did he start using that word? Stuart was like Rachel’s cousin.

“Colin, honey, is something wrong with your eye ?”

“It’s a tic,” Stuart said. “He get’s it when he’s nervous.”

“You don’t have to be nervous of me. It’s my husband you want to avoid.”

“Joseph’s quite a square bloke if you ask me,” Stuart said. In an earlier time he would’ve immediately asked for a twenty after those greasy words.

“Isn’t he a sweetie?” Mrs. Ganelli asked, blowing him a kiss. “Anyway, before we digress, dear, I think you should leave the mess alone, but I guess it all depends on what Stuart wants.”

“Are you thinking of returning to Australia?” I leaned over nervously. “My panel van’s in good nick. I guess I could give over the papers—”

“You want me to go back?” Stuart asked.

“I don’t know. I’m scared what they’ll do to me. To us. I don’t know what would happen. There’s a lot of people involved—”

“I imagine there’d be quite a brouhaha,” Mrs. Ganelli said. “It’s certainly a sad situation. You should’ve thought this through, darling.” I couldn’t imagine Mum saying “brouhaha.” She’d say “mess” or “uproar.”

“There’s nothing there for me,” Stuart said, running his fingers through his hair. His nails were clean, probably the first time I’d seen them clean since he met Melissa. He was a good-looking bloke now, clean and sharp.

“What about Melissa?” I said. Should I mention my run-in with her?

“Who’s Melissa?” Mrs. Ganelli asked.

Stuart said nothing. “Nah,” he finally repeated, “there’s nothing there for me. I’m not gonna say a word. What does Phillip think?”

“Phillip doesn’t know.”

“Then let’s keep it that way.”

“Who’s Melissa?” Mrs. Ganelli tried again.

“No one, Sylvia.”

I held out a hesitant hand to him. He took it. “Rachel says you don’t want any of the money off the record deal to make things better.”

“Why would she say a stupid thing like that?” Stuart smiled. “This is an expensive town and I don’t reckon I’m any angel.”

We laughed at that, which punctured the tension. Mrs. Ganelli went to answer the phone. Stuart leaned over and said, “I think you should stay for Rachel—she and you make a good team.”

“I heard that!” Mrs. Ganelli said before picking up the receiver. “Please, Stuart, don’t be a cupid.”

“I’m going to see Rachel again tonight. I’ll tell her you said so.”

“Oi,” Mrs. Ganelli said, like a footie player. Stuart guessed my thought and knew better: “That’s a Yiddish
oy
, not a footie
oi
,” he explained. “How can you see her anyway?”

“They’re pretending they’re engaged,” Mrs. Ganelli answered. I wasn’t ready to tell her it wasn’t pretend anymore. “Wrong number,” she said to the phone. Then she handed me a piece of paper with her account number on it so I could transfer funds for Stuart to use, to get going again.

“How come we didn’t
hear about your fiancé?” Louis said, as I climbed on to the minibus.

I wanted to reflect on my emotional night with Colin. Fat chance: everyone on the bus was waiting for my answer—including Fred Kaluzny, Mr. Stray Quote.

“A month after Colin proposed to me back in Melbourne, his uncle developed a tumor. He’s very close to his uncle—I never thought he was going to go through with the move to New York. I didn’t want to talk about the engagement in case it fell through.” I was disengaged from my anti-probing lie. I could lie all morning if I had to.

“Too bad, Rachel,” Mrs. Ricasio said. “I was going to set you up with my handsome young gynecologist after the trial. He prefers women with dark hair.”

Raj and Greg snickered at her inadvertent vaudeville joke.

“You two are awful,” Mrs. Ricasio said, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I think the ADA’s assistant will be disappointed if he gets word of your engagement,” teased one of the quieter alternate jurors whose name I still hadn’t processed—Lisa, or Paula?

I held up my palms in theatrical protest. “Enough, guys, enough.”

“Something’s not adding up,” Louis said. He pushed
start
on his Walkman. “I’m going to pump it out of you.”

“Louis, there’s nothing there.”

“What?” he asked loudly, from a more rhythmic universe.

Humid, still air trapped and amplified that
singular
fragrance of industrial New Jersey. Even though the air-conditioning was broken, Fred asked the driver to hit the automatic window button to close out the smell. “Lefties,” he then said, “die on average nine years earlier than everyone else.”

“I’m a lefty,” our Rockette said from the seat next to the driver. “My longevity line goes from my joint to my wrist.”

When the bus talk shifted to lefty death, my psychic weight lifted some. The Statue of Liberty’s hand loomed in the horizon. I thought of Grandpa Ganelli’s arrival-in-America story, and how he had exaggerated it for his grandkids’ entertainment. I fished in my knapsack for the bag of marbles and rolled two on my knee.

Grandma Rosa rarely acknowledged her dead, annulled, turned-atheist-on-his-seventieth-birthday husband. Once, baby-sitting us, she caught us throwing frozen frankfurters out of our bedroom window (for what reason I haven’t the vaguest idea). We were seven and nine, old enough to know better, and therefore banned to the kitchen, where Grandma Rosa was knitting a blanket for my father.

“Just like your grandpa. Always with the pranks. Eat your Froot Loops.” Had Grandpa Ganelli’s humor skipped a generation, like twins? Would a child by Colin be as science-serious as Dad?
Would it have my Italian-Jewish-brown eyes or Colin’s Irish-English blue? This marriage was supposed to be a finger in the dike. I had to stop thinking like this.

The jury van let us off on Centre Street. A media zoo had formed outside the courts.

Safe in our guarded quarters, Kevin played Omniscient Bailiff but wouldn’t fill us in. “Finish your muffins—we’re starting on the dot.”

In our regular kindergarten-style single file, we entered the packed courtroom. Ms. Gorsham, the ADA, was heavily made up; she’d never been before. I couldn’t wait for halftime analysis back in the jury room.

“Mr. Presticastro, call your next witness please,” Berliner said.

“Maria De Meglio,” Presticastro said.

That explained the cameras. Maria De Meglio had been rumored too devastated by her arrest to testify. The courtroom hushed. Louis and I were jurors numbers eight and nine; we were front row flush left, right near the witness chair. Mrs. De Meglio was fat yet tiny; the court clerk secured phonebooks for her to sit on. Mrs. De Meglio’s mouth seemed two sizes too small for her soft, fleshy jowls, like it would hurt her to eat a big bite of hamburger. This was our nefarious defendant?

“Please state your name.”

She looked straight at the jury. “Maria De Meglio.”

“Your address for the record?”

“196 Sullivan Street, Manhattan.”

“Good morning, Mrs. De Meglio.”

“Good morning.” Mrs. De Meglio was wearing a red and white
shift that could have been bought off a Woolworth’s rack. I’d caught her tan orthopedic shoes as she walked to the stand. Her fashion sense reminded me of Grandma Rosa’s.

“For the record, why do you think you’ve been asked to testify today?”

She looked straight ahead. “On July first, 1991, my grandson checked into the hospital and almost overdosed. I was, how you say, not myself. How could a nice boy like Bruno who never did anyone wrong end up at Saint Peter’s mercy?”

“Relevance!” Gorsham protested.

“Your Honor, state of mind!” Presticastro said.

“I’ll allow you to proceed, but Mr. Presticastro, please keep this kosher.”

“I went home and cried. My daughter has no husband. He was killed in a car accident. My husband, may he rest in peace, died before Bruno was ever born.” Her accent was raspy and old-worldly.

“Relevance!” Gorsham protested.

Berliner stole a quick look at the reporters. They were on the edge of their seat. I could tell that he didn’t quite mind the media attention.

“She may proceed.” He glanced over to Presticastro. “But move this along!”

“She works two jobs to support Bruno. There is no man for him, no, how you say, role model. So I took him fishing and bought a gun so I could take him hunting, like Poppa did with my brothers back in Italy. The gun was loaded because we shot rabbits a week earlier.”

“There is a big difference between a rabbit and—”

“Leading!”

“Sustained.”

“Mrs. De Meglio. Did you shoot Derrick Johnson with your hunting rifle?”

“I don’t remember.”

Louis poked the side of my leg twice. Our cryptic code for “what a load of shit.” But I’m listening to you, Mrs. De Meglio. Heroin pushers deserve it. What about our kids, Grandma? What about Stuart? It amazed me how right-wing the courtroom setting was making me.

“Mr. Presticastro tells me I was wild with anger that day. I don’t remember. They say I shot him, I must have shot him.” Mrs. De Meglio paused to sniffle. “I am a decent, church-going woman. I never done anything bad. After he was in the hospital they wouldn’t let me see him. My daughter brought a Polaroid camera and took a photo of him, because they wouldn’t let me see my grandson. Imagine, my grandson might die, and all I could see was that photo.”

“Mrs. De Meglio, I would like you to look at exhibit forty-nine.”

Presticastro passed Mrs. De Meglio the photo her daughter had identified the previous day. We had not been allowed to look at it then.

“Is this the Polaroid of your grandson?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“I remember it. And the district attorney—”

“Ms. Gorsham?”

“Yes. She showed it to me after I was arrested. I think she showed it to me. I was so upset.”

“Are those your initials?”

“Yes. So I think she showed it to me—”

“Have you seen it since?”

Mrs. De Meglio burst into tears. Jesus, no one can give her a tissue? I reached in my pocket for a tissue and held it up for the court to see.

Berliner glared at me. “Can someone please give Mrs. De Meglio a tissue? No one from the jury is to give her a tissue. A neutral tissue, please. Mrs. De Meglio, please try to answer the question.”

“No,” she said through her sobs. The clerk handed her a tissue box.

“Your Honor,” Presticastro said, “I would like to pass the photo of Bruno De Meglio to the jury.”

“May I look at it first?” Assistant Hunk asked. “There were two photos her daughter took. I just want to make sure it is the one corresponding with our evidence sheet.”

“I have no problems with that,” Presticastro said.

Cohen showed it to Gorsham. She nodded. “Oh, yes,” Cohen said, “This is the right one. I’ll just pass it over to the jury for you,” he said, headed straight for me, even though Louis’s seat would have been the logical starting point. He pressed his thumb into my hand during the baton pass-off.

“I’ll do that next time, Mr. Cohen,” Presticastro said, his annoyance seeping through. For Presticastro to say Cohen was making personal contact with the jury would sound cynical. He’d only
handed the photo to me. Cohen liked me,
for sure
. I looked at his finger. No ring.

“Ms. Ganelli, when you are done looking at the Polaroid, please pass it around,” Presticastro said.

In the photo, Bruno De Meglio looked worse than Stuart. He was so young for a heroin addict. Where did he get the money? What did he steal or did he hustle like Jim Carroll? Fourteen was young when you look at it under a microscope. Would I kill for a grandson? You bet I would, I determined. Shit, was the court artist sketching me? I tried to keep expressionless.

“Thank you, Mrs. De Meglio,” Presticastro said when Fred Kaluzny passed him back the photo. “Your Honor, I have no more questions.” As Presticastro hovered in front of me, I could see his cranberry corduroy slacks had bare patches where his thighs had rubbed together. A court-appointed slob.

“Let’s take a twenty-minute break, and then, Ms. Gorsham, you can start your cross-examination.”

“Good Morning, Ms. De Meglio,”
Gorsham began.

“Mrs. De Meglio,” she replied.

“
Mrs.
De Meglio, forgive me. I only have a very few questions for you, Mrs. De Meglio. Four, to be exact.”

Mrs. De Meglio nodded nervously.