A Drop of the Hard Stuff (22 page)

“And?”

“I don’t know if he was able to take in the information. He started going on and on about my hair, my beautiful long hair, and how he wanted to see it spread out on his pillow and, well, other things I’d just as soon not repeat.”

“We’ll use our overheated imaginations,” Richard said.

“I’m sure you will. And I thought, You know, buster, if you like my hair that much, there must be something wrong with it.
And whether there is or not, you’ve seen it for the last time. And I got up this morning and rushed straight to the beauty parlor, and Hervé was able to fit me in, and the rest is history.”

“It’s not history, sweetie, it’s art appreciation. Just fabulous.”

“Thank you, Richard.”

“But Hervé? Honestly?”

“I think it used to be Harvey.”

“Ooh la la,” said Richard. “How continental.”

Vincent Cutrone’s apartment was in a six-story brick building on a street corner in Cobble Hill. A dry cleaner and a deli shared the ground floor, with half a dozen small apartments on each of the upper floors. Richard, who’d found the place with no trouble, was able to park right in front, and the three of us entered the building together. Donna had her key out, but pushed the button for 4-C anyway, and sighed deeply when the intercom made that throat-clearing noise it makes when someone’s about to respond.

“Yo,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m coming up,” she said. “I’ve got people with me.”

He didn’t say anything, nor did he buzz us in. She used her key, and we were getting on the elevator when we finally heard the buzzer sound.

“Yo,” Donna said, and rolled her eyes again. “Why did I ever think—never mind.”

He must have been waiting at the door, because it opened inward as Donna was extending the key. Vinnie loomed in the doorway, his eyes taking in all three of us, then doing a pronounced double take. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”

“I had it cut,” she said.

“By a fuckin’ butcher?” He looked past her at me and Richard. “You believe this, guys? Best thing the woman had goin’ for her and she chops it off. Hell of a thing. I’m the one who drinks and she’s the one who goes nuts.”

She said, “I came for my things, Vincent. I thought—”

“Oh, now it’s Vincent. All the time it was ‘Oh, Vinnie, nobody ever made me feel like you made me feel. Oh, Vinnie, I love it when you—’ ”

I’d seen him before. At meetings, here and there around town. I never heard his story, never knew his name, couldn’t recall ever seeing him with Donna. But I recognized the face.

He was an inch or two shorter than I, and a few pounds heavier. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, and a little longer than the new Donna’s. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and he smelled the way you do when the alcohol is working its way out of your pores. He was wearing a soiled white undershirt, the kind that leaves the shoulders uncovered, and a pair of cutoff jeans. His feet were bare.

“You said you’d stay away from the apartment while I collected my things.”

“No, Donna, you’re the one who said that. But you moved out, right? It’s my apartment now, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So it’s my apartment, who’s got a better right to be here? You want to kick me out of it? Hey, I wanted to, I could kick
you
out of it.”

“Vinnie—”

“Ah, we’re back to Vinnie. I feel all warm and fuzzy now.” He reached out a hand, rubbed her hair. “You know what you look like? You look like Raggedy fuckin’ Ann.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“ ‘Don’t touch me.’ A different tune these days, Donna. Hey,
don’t worry. I’m not gonna kick you out of my apartment.” He stood aside, motioned her in.
“Esta es su casa,”
he said. “You know what that means?”

“I know what it means.”

“It’s Spanish, it means this is your house. Except it’s mine.”

I said, “Vinnie, maybe it’d be a good idea if you gave us an hour.”

He looked at me. Before, he’d regarded me as an audience, but now I had a speaking part, and he responded accordingly. “I know you,” he said. “Matt, am I right? Used to be a cop before they kicked you off the force for bein’ an asshole. You the new boyfriend?”

“Matt and Richard are helping me move,” Donna said.

“They’re just what you need,” he said. “Matt can beat me up and Richard here can blow me. Between the two of ’em I got no fuckin’ chance.”

It was a long afternoon in Cobble Hill. Vinnie had been drinking around the clock for days now, and he got to show all his emotions in turn, from self-pity to belligerence. He said he wished that Donna hadn’t cut her hair, and that he’d like to wrap it around her neck and strangle her with it. He walked out of the room, turned up the volume on the TV, came back with a beer, wandered off again.

The apartment must have been nice before he picked up a drink. Now it was all empty bottles and beer cans and pizza boxes, half-eaten containers of Chinese food, and copies of
Hustler
and
Penthouse.
There was a page torn from
Screw,
hooker ads with their photos and phone numbers, taped alongside the wall phone in the kitchen. Some of the ads were circled in Magic Marker.

“This one,” he announced, pointing to one of the photos,
“could give you cards and spades, Donna. Could suck a tennis ball through a garden hose. I dunno, though. Bet you could do the same, huh, Richard?”

Nobody answered him, but this didn’t seem to bother him. I’m not sure he noticed.

A long afternoon in Cobble Hill.

W
E WERE ACROSS
the bridge and back in Manhattan when she said, “Raggedy Ann, for God’s sake. Little Orphan Annie and Raggedy Ann.”

“You are fabulously glamorous,” Richard said. “So will you please stop that shit?”

“Okay.”

“I meant Little Orphan Annie in the nicest possible way. And you have big eyes, the same as she does, except yours are this gorgeous light brown. And they really pop now that your hair’s not falling in front of them.”

“So now I’m pop-eyed? I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”

“And you don’t look at all like Raggedy Ann,” he said. “The man is a drunken imbecile.”

There was a long silence. Then she said, “He’s not a bad fellow, you know. When he’s sober.”

“He’s not sober, though, is he?”

“No.”

“And drunk or sober, he was never right for you. And deep down you always knew that.”

“Oh, God, Richard. You’re absolutely right.”

“Well, of course,” he said.

Her belongings filled the trunk and shared the backseat with me. When we got back where we started, Eighty-fourth and Amsterdam, Richard circled the block and couldn’t find a parking spot. I told him to park next to the fire hydrant, and handed him a card to put on the dashboard.

“Detectives’ Endowment Association,” he read aloud. “And this means I won’t get a ticket?”

“It improves the odds.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d take my chances on a ticket, but what if they tow it?”

Donna said, “Honey, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable staying with the car. Matt and I can manage the stuff. We’ll just make an extra trip.”

She lived on the fifth floor of a brownstone. It was a fine building in excellent condition, and the only smell in the stairwell was a faint hint of furniture polish. But it was a walk-up, and it took us three trips, and by the time I’d climbed those four flights of stairs for the third time I was winded.

“Sit down,” she said, “before you fall down. Those stairs keep me in shape, but they’re killers if you’re not used to them. Plus you were carrying three times as much as I was. Can I get you a glass of water? Or maybe a Coke?”

“A Coke would be great.”

“Except it’s Pepsi.”

“Pepsi’s fine.”

“Here you go. I’ll just tell Richard we’re all set now.”

She parked me in a Queen Anne wing chair in the living room, in front of a fireplace with a marble surround. Over it she’d hung a nineteenth-century landscape in a fancy frame, and a thick Chinese rug was centered on the dark hardwood floor. It was a very pleasing room, richer and more formal than I’d have expected, and a better match to the business attire she’d worn last night than to this afternoon’s jeans and sweater.

I wondered what the apartment’s other rooms looked like. The kitchen, the bedroom. I stayed where I was and imagined them, and then I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

“Now just let me catch my breath,” she said upon entering, and dropped onto the medallion-back love seat. “Richard said to give you his love, and tell you to have a happy anniversary, if he doesn’t see you before then. You’re coming up on a year, aren’t you?”

“Pretty soon.”

“Another Coke? Pepsi, I mean. Can I get you another?”

“One’s my limit.”

“Ha! I like that. Oh, before I forget—”

She came over and passed me a pair of hundred-dollar bills. We argued about it. I told her it was too much, and she said that’s what she’d given Richard and that was what she was giving me. I said I’d have been happy to do what I’d done for free, out of friendship, so at the very least why didn’t we split the difference? And I handed her one of the bills, and she pushed it back at me.

“I’d have happily paid four hundred,” she said, “or even more, so we’re already splitting the difference. And if you’ll put the money away we won’t have to discuss it anymore, and won’t that be a pleasure?”

I agreed that she had a point there, and put the bills in my wallet. Without planning to, I said, “Well, let me spend some of this on dinner. Will you keep me company?”

Her eyes widened. “What a lovely idea. But it’s Saturday, and don’t you have a standing date with—is it Jane?”

“Jan.”

“I was close.”

“And she decided she’d rather spend this particular Saturday having dinner with her sponsor.”

“Oh.”

“I guess the two of them have something they feel it’s important to discuss. Me, most likely.”

“Oh,” she said. She was on her feet, and I stood up myself, and our eyes locked. I felt as if I were on the brink of a decision, and then I realized the decision had already been made.

She took a step forward. “You’re a lovely man,” she said, and put her hand on my arm.

Her bedroom was frilly and Victorian, with a canopy bed. Afterward I lay there beside her and listened to my heart. I found myself wondering, not for the first time, just how many beats it had left.

Beside me, Donna lay on her back. She raised her hands over her head and stretched, then touched her armpit with one hand and brought her fingers to her face.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I stink.”

“I know. It was all I could do to bring myself to touch you.”

She had a good laugh, rich and just the least bit naughty. “I noticed,” she said, “how much trouble you had overcoming your natural repugnance.” She laid a hand on my thigh. “But I could have had a shower.”

“I thought of having one myself,” I said, “but we’d have had to wait.”

“And that might have given one of us time to think things through.”

“In which case we might not have wound up here.”

“Oh, we’d have wound up here,” she said. “Sooner or later.”

“Written in the stars?”

“Written on the subway walls,” she said, “and tenement halls. I love that song.”

“I haven’t heard it in ages.”

“Hang on,” she said, and slipped out of bed. I must have drifted off for a moment, because the next thing I knew she was curled up at my side while Simon & Garfunkel crooned softly in close harmony.

“In my fantasies,” she said, “I never imagined we’d be all sweaty.”

“You had fantasies?”

“You bet. And in all of them I came to you fresh out of the shower, with a little dab of perfume here and there—”

“Where and where?”

“Stop that. You’re distracting me. Where was I?”

“Here and there,” I said.

“You have the gentlest touch, Matthew S. Oh, my. Fresh out of the shower, subtly scented, with my long hair flowing. Well, the scent’s none too subtle, and the long hair’s no more than a memory.”

“In
my
fantasies,” I said, “the long hair didn’t really enter into it.”

“Hang on,” she said. “You had fantasies? About me?”

“That surprises you?”

“I never got any kind of vibe from you,” she said. “That’s one thing that made it so safe to have fantasies about you. You weren’t interested in me, and you were already taken.”

“I guess I started getting ideas when you put your hand on my arm.”

“You mean like this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That was just, you know, friendship.”

“I see.”

“I did it unconsciously.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe it wasn’t entirely unconscious,” she said, and thought it over. “Maybe it was just the tiniest bit sexual.”