A development project was a dumb thing for an alderman’s office to lie about.
Walter was meowing loud and insistently on the other side of the door to my apartment. He seemed to have an innate biological clock that told him dinner needed to be served, now. And the whoosh from the elevator shaft brought him running. I set my grocery bags on the floor and pulled my keys out of my bag. As soon as I opened the door, Walter charged into my legs, yelling and demanding a head rub and a chin scratch. I scooped him up, feeling his body go limp in my arms and his purr reverberate. If anyone wondered whether cats could smile, this was the evidence.
We traipsed to the kitchen for our nightly routine of profuse petting, followed by kibble, tuna flakes, fresh water, and later, a fur ball that seemed to forget I was around. A friend of mine described her love life the same way.
Was that my future, too? There was a new uneasiness about my relationship with Michael. I sensed he was growing tired of my inability to commit, and the more he brought up living together, the more I felt cornered by the pressure to do something so serious. But I still didn’t know if my reticence was about my feelings for him or the residual damage heartbreak and betrayal had left me with from my marriage.
And I hated that a dead man still had an influence on my life.
With Walter settled, I returned to the vestibule, gathered the bags, moved everything to the kitchen, then went to my bedroom to change into jeans and a light silk sweater. I had an hour to prep dinner and clear out thoughts of my dead ex’s bad behavior before Michael arrived.
I laid the branzino I had chosen for our meal in a roasting pan, then sliced lemons paper-thin and pulled sprigs of rosemary to stuff the cavity. The work was meditative. Thoughts of marital lies were pushed aside, leaving me only with the here and now.
But now other lies filled my mind. Lies told by an alderman’s assistant. And not skillfully. Lies were not this woman’s normal vernacular. Someone had told her not to talk about the project, but given her inexperience, she hadn’t yet come up with a smooth way to say, “I can’t go there” or some other version of “Nothing to see here.” Politics might not be an ideal career choice for this young woman.
If her lie hadn’t been so obvious when she had been presented with a simple question, I wouldn’t now be convinced that the big roll of plans contained something I really wanted to know about. That reactive jerk of her head was the tell, not just to the lie but to where it lived. She was checking to see what might have accidentally been left exposed.
Aldermen didn’t keep big development projects secret. Ever. They used them like catnip to build their status, their power base, and their coffers. Details of a project would sometimes be dripped years before breaking ground. Secrecy didn’t fit. Which meant the project and the lie were important. And it was also a possible explanation for that envelope I’d seen. Rastello had expectations that Striker could deliver something, and so did Gaetano. Rastello made sense. A big construction project meant a big paving project and, therefore, big dollars. It would be worth it to him to slide cash under the table to get what he wanted. Gaetano, by comparison, was a small fish with an anger management problem. That roll of plans was not his.
I puttered and fussed over the food, my mind wriggling with what-ifs while I cleaned endive and shredded parmesan. Beyond the five-hundred-grand debt to Selciatto, where did Judge Reynolds fit in? It was the crucial gaping hole I didn’t have an answer to. I didn’t even have a hint of an answer.
There was a light rap on the door, and I smiled to myself. Michael. By this point, the front desk staff knew to send him up without an advance phone call, the rarest of privileges for those of us who chose doorman buildings because of the added security they offered.
We smiled and kissed hello at the door, a bit less enthusiastically than what was normal for us. The unease from our last conversation still hung in the air like stale smoke. Walter sat at the side of the door, eyeing him warily as he always did. He’d never taken a swipe at the man or laid his teeth into an exposed ankle, but I always had the sense that he was prepared to just in case Michael turned out to be one of the bad guys. Michael reached down to pet him, but Walter simply showed his ass and walked to the other side of the room. Typical. But Michael kept trying, regardless of how many times he was rebuffed.
“Scotch?” I asked.
He nodded and followed me to the kitchen. I handed him a glass and let him do his thing while I pulled a bottle of Vermentino out of the fridge and poured a glass for myself.
“Let me put the fish in the oven and we can sit on the terrace.”
We settled into the lounge chairs, the orange glow of the setting sun to the west bouncing off the Hancock Building and lighting up its dark facade. The colors of the sky and the way they shifted and played off the structure were endlessly fascinating. Lush plantings lined the edges of my large terrace, and I relaxed into my seat, my head resting against the cushion, my heart full of gratitude, as it was every time I sat here, that this oasis was actually my home.
“Anything new on Judge Reynolds’s murder?” I asked.
“Nothing more since the last time you asked me.”
I looked at him hard. Had I caught him in a bad mood again, or was it that I was asking at all? Like most couples, we talked shop, where and when we could. There were things we both left unsaid. Things that were part of the muddy waters of a relationship between two people whose jobs occasionally had conflicting needs. But irritation with a simple question, the kind either one of us would ask routinely, wasn’t part of our behavior. A respectful, “I can’t talk about it” usually sufficed.
“You sound irritated. Have I offended you?” I asked, knowing that I wasn’t being fully truthful myself. The Abbiocco sticker that I’d withheld from Michael loomed in my mind.
“I just got here, and already you’re fishing for material. Don’t you ever take a break?”
“You’d rather I show no interest in your work?” I shot back. A little too quickly. A little too full of attitude myself. This was a bad omen at the start of our evening.
Michael just sat in his chair scowling, lifting his drink to his mouth, and ignoring me.
“Okay. Maybe we should just enjoy our drinks for a while. But if I’ve done something, you should tell me, or just tell me you’re in a mood right now and I shouldn’t worry about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about work. I want to talk about us. You keep using work to avoid talking about us, and I’m getting tired of it.”
His voice was clipped with annoyance, as if he’d decided to pick a fight before he’d even arrived. His jaw was set, and it seemed clear that the evening was not going to be a smooth one. I could feel myself gearing up with irritation at his accusation. The fact that I didn’t want what he wanted right now didn’t make it avoidance.
“So if I ask about your case, I’m not showing an interest in you, I’m avoiding? Or fishing for material, as you put it? Is that what you’re saying? Because I’m confused. When did we start skipping over polite conversation about what’s going on in our lives? That’s what couples do.”
“Couples? We’re not a couple. We’re apparently two people who get together now and then. I wish I could say we were a couple, but that takes commitment and setting aside your fears that I’m going to start acting like a jackass the way your ex-husband did. What more do I have to say to you to prove I’m not him? To prove I’m not a fucking cheater? What do I have to do? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”
I shifted in my chair, gathering my thoughts, afraid my tone or my word choice would aggravate the stuff he was processing. Any response I came up with seemed to be a minefield that could explode, creating something we couldn’t come back from.
“Michael, I know you’re frustrated with me. I know you are getting tired of waiting to see if my feelings about living together will change. As I’ve told you, my hesitation isn’t about what you haven’t said. I heard all the right words in my marriage, but they meant nothing.”
I didn’t want to flash back to the old hurts. I didn’t want to assume that Michael would hurt me down the road. But I also couldn’t ignore the fear and the memories that crept back in. And Michael seemed unable to understand that this ultimately was not about him or what he had or had not done or said. It was about me.
“What you’re telling me through your increasing irritation is that I haven’t acquiesced. And that your desire to live together is more important than my unreadiness to do so. You’re sending the message that I should bend to what you want because what you want is more important than what I’m ready for. I’m not going to be strong-armed into a live-in relationship because you’ve decided it’s time. If we aren’t both ready, it’s the wrong thing. I’m sorry you don’t see it that way. This isn’t something to be forced.”
He stood, looking down at me, his eyes tense.
“I’m going home. This is a circular conversation that never changes. And I think it’s just an excuse for you to hold on to your fear. I am not Erik.” He paused. “Or maybe you’re just using me to get information you can’t get elsewhere.”