“Well, you can’t be fine,” she replies.
“Packing,” I tell her what I am doing. “Marino’s with me and I’m packing,” I repeat myself as my eyes fix on Marino in a frozen way. His attention wanders around and it seeps into my awareness that he has never been inside my bedroom. I don’t want to imagine his fantasies. I have known him for many years and have always been aware that his respect for me is potently laced with insecurity and sexual attraction. He is a hulk of a man with a swollen beer belly, and a big disgruntled face, and his hair is colorless and has unattractively
migrated from his head to other parts of his body. I listen to
my niece on the phone as Marino’s eyes feel their way around my private spaces: my dressers, my closet, the open drawers, what I am packing and my breasts. When Lucy brought tennis shoes, socks and a warm-up suit to the hospital, she didn’t think to include a bra, and the best I could do when I got here was to cover up with an old, voluminous lab coat that I wear like a smock when I do odd jobs around the house.
“I guess they don’t want you in there, either,” Lucy’s voice sounds over the line.
It is a long story, but my niece is an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and when the police responded, they couldn’t exile her from my property fast enough. Maybe a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and they feared a big-shot federal agent would insert herself into the investigation. I don’t know, but she is feeling guilty because she wasn’t here for me last night and I almost got murdered, and now she isn’t here for me again. I make it clear I don’t blame her in the least. I also can’t stop wondering how different my life would be had she been home with me when Chandonne showed upinstead of out taking care of a girlfriend. Maybe Chandonne would have known I wasn’t alone and would have stayed away, or he would have been surprised by another person in the house and would have fled, or he would have put off murdering me until tomorrow or the next night or Christmas or the new millennium.
I pace as I listen to Lucy’s breathless explanations and comments over the cordless phone and catch my reflection as I go past the full-length mirror. My short blond hair is wild, my blue eyes glassy and puckered with exhaustion and stress, my brow gathered in what is a mixture of a frown and near-tears. The lab coat is dingy and stained and not the least bit chiefly. I am very pale. The craving for a drink and a cigarette are atypically strong, almost unbearable, as if almost being murdered has turned me into an instant junkie. I imagine being alone in my own home. Nothing has happened. I am enjoying a fire, a cigarette, a glass of French wine, maybe a
Bordeaux because Bordeaux is less complicated than Burgundy. Bordeaux is like a fine old friend you don’t have to figure out. I dispel the fantasy with fact: It doesn’t matter what Lucy did or didn’t do. Chandonne would have come to murder me eventually, and I feel as if a terrible judgment has been waiting for me all of my life, marking my door like the Angel of Death. Bizarrely, I am still here.[“_Toc37098903”]
CHAPTER 1
I KNOW FROM LUCY’S VOICE THAT SHE IS SCARED. Rarely is my brilliant, forceful, helicopter-piloting, fitness-obsessed, federal-law-enforcement-agent niece scared.
“I feel really bad,” she continues to repeat herself over the phone as Marino maintains his position on my bed and I pace.
“You shouldn’t,” I tell her. “The police don’t want anybody here, and believe me, you don’t want to be here. I guess you’re staying with Jo and that’s good.” I say this to her as if it makes no difference to me, as if it doesn’t bother me that she is not here and I haven’t seen her all day. It does make a difference. It does bother me. But it is my old habit to give people an out. I don’t like to be rejected, especially by Lucy Farinelli, whom I have raised like a daughter.