The Night Before (4 page)

Though downtown glowed in an inviting way, Joe crossed the bridge, gazing now and then into the icy black water. The night and the streets were quieter and houses smaller on the other side, the Christmas lights hanging in haphazard strings as if advertising the disorder of the lives inside or absent altogether. The snow had receded to a gentle flutter.

Huffing along in no particular direction, he shoved his thoughts off his misery and instead buried them in practical matters. He didn't know what he would do now. How could he face Mariel? How could she face him? How could he enter their dining room and not see her and Don clawing at each other? And what of the kids? What would the backwash of this sad and crazy mess do to them?

He stopped walking, stilled by the revelation that his life would never be the same again. He might not be able to go back at all.

He stopped at the next corner, dug out his cell and saw that he had no messages. This was not a surprise. Mariel would be in the throes of shock at getting caught. He thought about calling Billy, but his friend left his phone off most of the time, claiming one day that the devices caused brain cancer and the next that they were an insidious way for the government to spy on truant citizens like him. Joe knew he could try the Delaware, but in truth, he wasn't ready to share the bad news. The shame would be too much. He could hear his friend's voice rough voice:
That bitch! Are you kidding me? On the table? What a whore!

He stopped at a quiet intersection. A few flakes circled helplessly to the cold ground, as lost as he was. He heard the weary sound of a car on the next street over spinning tires.

Peering down the block, he caught sight of a sign flashing red and green against the white landscape. In an instant of dull surprise, he realized that his errant shoes had carried him back to the edge of his old neighborhood. The sign beckoned and he started walking.

Jimmy's was a memory that went back to when he was a squirt. His father had taken him there on Friday nights when he wanted to give his wife a break.

The bar had been a mysterious place to a small boy, a cavern of muted light, shadows, and whispers. Joe remembered how they would arrive to a small fanfare. His dad would lead him to the bar and sit him on the end stool. The bartender would present a cherry Coke as if he was serving a duke. The regulars, many of them lone drunkards, doted on him. When he got to be a little older, he saw the cracks behind the smiles and in the pained, bleary eyes. There was never any music, only hard laughter lifted on the smoky breaths of workingmen. A woman with a painted face would sometimes make a drunken fuss over him until the bartender chased her away. No one wanted her likes around a child, and Joe could still see the look on her face when they ran her off, as if she'd been struck and wanted to weep.

Later, Jimmy's was one of the few joints where teenagers could buy beer any time of day or night and rumors floated about all kinds of vice inside those smoky walls.

That had all been a long time ago and it never occurred to him that the tavern would still be standing. It had been years since he had passed this way. Now he tramped along the sidewalk to stand beneath the sign of red and green neon in a rusting metal box. With not another welcoming light in sight, he climbed the steps and pushed the door open.

The room had shrunk, with the long bar and the Formica tables with the tube metal legs that he had negotiated as a child cramped together beneath a low ceiling. The once-mellow lights were now as gaudy as swabs of cheap lipstick and the air in the room was close, laden with decades of sweat, rough tobacco, and stale liquor.

Two men perched like twin buzzards at opposite ends of the bar and a woman sat alone at the table in the far corner. The bartender was thin and ferret-faced, his ropy arms scrawled with old tattoos. The three men regarded Joe with hooded gazes as he made his way to the middle of the bar.

“Help ya?” The bartender made no move in Joe's direction, assuming that he had gotten lost or had car trouble.

Joe pulled off his gloves and perused the bottles on the shelf. “You have a decent Irish whiskey?”

It required several seconds the bartender to understand that the visitor was a paying customer. Then he didn't seem to care much for the idea, taking his sweet time to poke around until he located a bottle of Bushmill's, which he held up for inspection.

“That's fine,” Joe said, unzipping his coat. “Double, straight up.” He glanced down the bar. “A round for the others,” he said. “And one for you, too.”

The bartender hiked a hard eyebrow, poured Joe's whiskey, and then went about pulling draughts for the twins and mixing a Seabreeze for the lady at the table. The older of the two men grunted something that might have been a thank you.

The bartender placed the cocktail on a coaster and called, “Gina? Man bought a round for the house.” He helped himself to a shot of the Bushmill's, throwing it back like a pro. Joe laid a twenty and a ten on the bar and said, “Keep it.”

The bartender cocked his head as if he mistrusted Joe's intentions. After a moment's pause, he shrugged, picked up the bills, rapped his knuckles on the polished wood, and moved off to stock a cooler.

Joe planted an elbow, leaning his cheek into his palm. “I'll Be Home for Christmas” was playing softly in the background, like someone's idea of a joke. Mariel and Don appeared to him again in their lurid coupling, this time in slow motion. It had all transpired in the space of a few seconds, and yet something told him he'd hold the images in his mind for a long time. He took a fast wallop of his whiskey, settled the glass on the bar, and gazed moodily into the amber liquor, feeling a smoky heat settle in his head and gut. Minutes passed as he wandered down a dark road, drawing more pictures of bloody murder. The nausea made another visit and went away.

Something moved in the corner of his eye and turned to see that the woman from the table had stepped to the bar to claim her drink. She was peeking at him from under a shock of hair. Her smile was uncertain. She said, “Joe?”

It had been almost thirty years and it took a few seconds to fill in the woman's face. “Gina Marinelli,” he said. For that brief moment, the awful drama that had landed him there was shoved aside by the thought that he knew someone on the premises.

Or at least remembered her. She, Marie Petrucci, and Donna Amato had run together at school, a three-headed monster that had always reminded him of the Shangri-Las. They had been wild and flashy, splashed with too much makeup, their hair cut spiky and dyed various colors, dressed in thrift-store ensembles that listed to black, real Italian girls who weren't afraid of the boys. Was it Gina who had knocked Benny Hess on his ass in back of the Sunshine Lanes or had that been one of the others? He thought to ask her, then changed his mind. That younger world was no place for a glum cuckold on the night before Christmas.

He couldn't recall the last time he had seen her. In school, they had existed in different orbits. Afterwards, he had spent years wandering gypsy roads before coming back to start his family, work at whatever he could, and put words to paper. What he had to show for it was two beautiful children, a career that had just been raised from the dead, and a marriage that was rolling in the opposite direction.

Was that the deal? A trade-off? Had a bargain with the devil been made without his knowledge? That would explain the entwined strokes of luck, one fabulous and the other terrible.

He sensed Gina watching him and pulled himself out of his tailspin to look her over. She had been adorable in a funky way back when. Now the cute had given way to middle age. Her hair was short and bottle black and the olive cast of her skin had gone pale. She was wearing jeans and a blouse that was too light for the weather. She looked tired, though running into an old classmate seemed to have buoyed her spirits, bringing little points of light to her dark eyes.

He said, “What are you doing here?”

“You don't remember?” she said. “My dad owned it since we were in school.”

Joe did remember. Mr. Marinelli had been the proprietor of various gin mills around Eastborough. There had always been something faintly suspect about the man and the whispers had his hands in all sorts of murky business. Though there was nothing in doubt about the way he treated the boys, as if every one was a threat to his youngest daughter's virginity. It was a big joke, as Joe recalled, because in Gina's case, that bird had long since flown.

The princess from this ancient opera broke into his thoughts. “I read something about you in the newspaper,” she said. “You wrote a book.”

“Three,” he told her. “Had three published, I mean.” He thought over spouting off about the option, but it seemed such a hollow victory now. Win the big prize, but lose the girl to the snake that had been lurking in the bushes all along. “That was a while ago,” he finished.

“So that's what you do,” she said. “Write books.”

“And other things.” It sounded more feeble with every word and he hoped she'd change the subject.

She did. “So, you still live in Eastborough?”

“Crescent Drive,” he said. “It's up near the—”

“I know where it is.” She glanced down at the ring on his finger. “And you're married.”

“Yeah.” He got it out quickly, adding: “Nobody you would have known.”

“Kids?”

“Two. A girl and a boy.” He blinked and looked away from her, feeling as if he'd taken a punch. After a fast sip of his whiskey, he said, “And what about you?”

If she heard the odd note in his voice, she gave no sign. “What about me?” she said. “Married? Divorced? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

Her mouth dipped and her eyes cooled and shifted. “I was married, yeah. You remember Kevin Sammons?”

Joe conjured a fuzzy photo of an upperclassman.

“Lasted five years and I was out the door. No kids.” Now it was she who didn't want to linger. “So what brings you in here?” he said. Joe said, “Just out for a drink.”

She produced a dim smile. “And you didn't have anywhere else to go?”

She hadn't said “better,” though that was what she meant. “Not much open,” he said.

She was regarding him with her head tilted slightly back. He figured she was trying to guess the real reason why he had wandered into a seedy saloon in a dark corner of town on this of all nights.

Before she could grill him further, he said, “You know my dad use to bring me here.” Gina said, “Oh, yeah? How old were you?”

“Little,” he said. “Five or six. You could do that then. Bring kids into a bar.” He thought for a moment about those long ago times and then the odd arc that had so many years later brought him to that same location and to Gina Marinelli.

She took a turn and told him a little more about herself. She had gone to community college, then dropped out because the old man needed help with the bar and she was the only one of the siblings who had an interest. She had taken off and bummed around some. Mexico was nice, she said, and would have stayed on a beach forever, but her dad passed away and left Jimmy's to her. Now she mostly lived by night.

Joe understood that there was more, most of her life, in fact. But he wasn't inclined to ask about it and she didn't offer anything further. He ordered another round for the two of them, leaving the bartender and his customers to fend for themselves. The drinks arrived and they them fell silent, thinking their own thoughts.

As if they'd been waiting for a cue, Joe's kids reappeared, this time in a cloudy vignette. A wave of emotion washed over him as he pictured their sweet faces. They were truly his life. And now what, now that he had discovered their mother's treachery? How would they go on? The bile rose again and he felt another bolt of sick wrath at what she had done to them.

He cracked his glass down on the bar, spilling some of the whiskey over his hand. Gina reached for some napkins. She dabbed his hand and the bar. With a glance his way, she said. “Are you all right?”

Joe lifted his glass and then put it down again.

She touched his arm. “You have trouble at home?”

Joe thought to put a game face on, but then said, “Yeah, kind of… yeah.”

She gazed upon him with a frank sympathy. “And tonight, yet.”

He swallowed hard. The last thing he wanted to do was break down and start bawling in front of her, the two mugs, and the tattooed bartender. The cartoon that played in his head sent him around a corner and instead he coughed up a laugh.

Gina said, “What?”

“It's nothing.” He didn't want the drink and didn't want to be in that lonely dive anymore. The whole mess was so odd and sad that even his fabulous news couldn't wash it clean. Any more than the thick wad of bills in his pocket could ransom his anguish.

Gina caught the vibe and said, “What is it?”

“I think I need to go home,” he said.

He stood on the sidewalk, pulling on his gloves, when he heard Gina call to him. She was framed in the doorway, her arms crossed against the chill of the night. “You're not going home, are you?” she said.

Joe shook his head. “No. I'm not.”

She watched him for a few seconds before saying, “Come back inside while I get my coat.”

Nicole had whispered a silent prayer that it would be okay, that things would stay calm through the evening and into Christmas morning. So far, Myra was minding her own business, parked in the front room with the TV blaring canned laughter and her jelly glass of Seagram's on the end table. With any luck, she'd drink herself back into a nodding stupor and sleep through the night.

Peeking from the kitchen doorway, Nicole could see the corona of curlers beginning a downward tilt. It was a good sign, though by no means were they out of danger. She sensed something in the air, a bitter energy that was all too familiar. And for all her hoping, she couldn't hold back the tidal wave when it rose up to drown their Christmas Eve.