‘I see,’ I said. ‘A known fact.’ I paused. ‘So tell me, would that be the case with Lucy and Janet?’
‘That’s why I recommend them getting help, because there’s hope. They could get guys easy. Especially Janet could with the way she’s built. If I wasn’t so tied up, I’d have half a mind to ask her out.’
‘Marino,’ I said, and he was making me tired, ‘leave them alone. You’re just setting yourself up to be disliked and snubbed. You’re setting yourself up to look like a damn fool. The Janets of the world are not going to date you.’
‘Her loss. If she had the right experience, it might straighten her out. What women do with each other’s not what I consider the real thing. They have no idea what they’re missing.’
The thought that Marino might consider himself an expert on what women needed in bed was so absurd that I forgot to be annoyed. I laughed.
‘I feel protective of Lucy, okay?’ he went on. ‘I sort of feel like an uncle, and see, the problem is she’s never been around men. Her dad died. You’re divorced. She’s got no brothers and her mother is in and out of bed with goofballs.’
‘That much is true,’ I said. ‘I wish Lucy could have had a positive male influence.’
‘I guarantee if she had she wouldn’t have turned out queer.’
‘That’s not a kind word,’ I said. ‘And we really don’t know why people turn out the way they do.’
‘Then you tell me.’ He glanced my way. ‘You explain what went wrong.’
‘In the first place, I’m not going to say that anything went wrong. There may be a genetic component to one’s sexual orientation. Maybe there isn’t. But what’s important is that it doesn’t matter.’
‘So you don’t care.’
I thought about this for a minute. ‘I care because it is a harder way to live,’ I said.
‘And that’s it?’ he said skeptically. ‘You mean you wouldn’t rather she was with a man?’
Again, I hesitated. ‘I guess at this point, I just want her with good people.’
He got quiet as he drove. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry about tonight. I know I was a jerk.’
‘Thank you for apologizing,’ I said.
‘Well, the truth is, things aren’t going so good for me personally right now. Molly and me were doing fine until about a week ago when Doris called.’
I wasn’t terribly surprised. Old spouses and lovers have a way of resurfacing.
‘Seems she found out about Molly because Rocky said something. Now all of a sudden she wants to come home. She wants to get back with me.’
When Doris had left, Marino was devastated. But at this stage in my life I somewhat cynically believed that fractured relationships could not be set and healed like bones. He lit another cigarette as a truck bore down on our rear and swung past. A vehicle rushed up behind us, its high beams in our eyes.
‘Molly wasn’t happy about it,’ he went on with difficulty. ‘Truth is, we hadn’t been getting along so hot since and it’s just as well we didn’t spend Christmas together. I think she’s started going out on me, too. This sergeant she met. Wouldn’t you know. I introduced them at the FOP one night.’
‘I’m very sorry.’ I looked over at his face and thought he might cry. ‘Do you still love Doris?’ I gently asked.
‘Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know nothing. Women may as well be from another planet. You know? It’s just like tonight. Everything I do is wrong.’
‘That’s not true. You and I have been friends for years. You must be doing something right.’
‘You’re the only woman friend I got,’ he said. ‘But you’re more like a guy.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘I can talk to you like a guy. And you know what you’re doing. You didn’t get where you are because you’re a woman. Goddam it’ – he squinted into the rearview mirror, then adjusted it to diminish the glare – ‘you got where you are in spite of your being one.’
He glanced again in the mirrors. I turned around. A car was practically touching our bumper, high beams blinding. We were going seventy miles an hour.