CHAPTER 8

Johnny stood bewildered in the camera shop. The salesman laid a seventh possibility into his hands.

“Now this little model has automatic everything. Right down to your lens opening.”

Johnny didn’t know what a lens opening was but by now he was afraid to ask. “Okay. Now let’s see that first one again.”

“Which one, sir?”

“The first one you showed me. With the gizmo that made everything look close up.”

“That’s a lens, sir.”

“Yeah, that one.”

The salesman went back under the counter. “Here we are, sir.”

Johnny studied the unfamiliar apparatus. “Now would you say a professional would use this lens?”

The salesman dabbed his upper lip with a hanky. “With which camera, sir?”

“Oh. With this good one here.”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Well, which one would he use it with?”

“A professional would never use that camera.”

“I get it. So show me again which camera a professional would use.”

“The Nikon, sir.”

“The one that means I gotta go for my lungs.”

“That’s the idea, sir.”

“Hmm. And professionals wouldn’t use any other camera, huh? Never?”

The salesman flung his left arm into the air and discovered his watch. “Well. Some do use the Canon. Or the Olympus.”

“Yeah? So how much is that … the Olympus.”

The salesman wrote the new price on a piece of paper already cluttered with outlandish numbers.

Johnny shook his head and muttered. “And the Canon?”

“Together with which lens? With that model you looked at three.”

“Okay. Go back to the Olympus.”

“That’s the one on special.”

“Yeah, but it’s still good, right?”

“Sir?”

“I mean it’s not some fegazey outfit?”

“Fegazey?”

“Yeah.” Johnny took a deep breath. “Like fake.”

“Certainly not.”

“And that comes with the flash and all?”

“I did tell you that, yes.”

“Oh. You did?”

“Several times, sir.”

Johnny clicked his gum and looked at the guy. “Wrap up the whole thing.”

“The OM-2S with accessories, sir?”

“Yeah.”

“Will that be gift wrapped, sir?”

“Sure. Go ahead. Wrap it up nice.”

The salesman, in his element now, went about the elaborate job of dressing up each package in its own bold yellow paper, precisely slicing off any excess with a ruler and then zooming one blade savagely along the blue string ribbon and voilà! one curly decoration just as saucy as you please. He presented the attractive tower of boxes to Johnny. He stood before the counter patiently; what’s more, he was all smiles.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“No. Now you can take the whole thing and shove it up your padooza. I wouldn’t buy nothin’ from you if you were the last salesman in Queens. Now I’m gonna go down the street and buy the whole kit & kaboodle from the competition, you nasty little piece a garbage.”

It was nine o’clock at night and Claire still wasn’t at home. She’d gone to pick up her nephew at Freddy’s place, so there were two things he could do. He could wait right here in front of her house and have her see him waiting when she came back. Or he could go up to Queens Boulevard and surprise her, risking missing her altogether if she came home a different way. That wouldn’t be too good because then her mother would tell her that he’d been there and by the time he caught up with her she’d have had time to arrange her face however she wanted. He couldn’t risk that. He had to see her eyes in their moment of recognition, before she disguised them with propriety. This was crucial. He had to see if she was going to be as happy to see him as he was going to be to see her. The present he had for her in the shopping bag was incidental. The icing on the cake. He made a silent bet with himself that she’d refuse it, too. That was the kind of girl she was. Only he was going to make her accept the camera no matter what. He’d see to that. Johnny paced up and down the walk. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. He could get the hair, the mouth, the eyes … but he couldn’t put them all together. One thing he had in front of his face as though it were painted there was that ass. Johnny cleared his throat. He paced back and forth a few more times. Mrs. Breslinsky stuck her head out the window.

“Sure you wouldn’t like to wait in here?”

“Oh, no,” he blushed at his thoughts so inappropriate to her mother’s vicinity. “I’ll just wait awhile out here. Couple a things I gotta ask her.” He looked down, puzzled, at his fancy shopping bag. He could hear the crickets.

“I see. Well, if you change your mind.”

Johnny waved and smiled. The hell with this. She’d probably take Park Lane South. He hopped in the car. Another thing. If she was coming along Park Lane South she might run into that Stefanovitch bastard. He took the corner without stopping for the sign.

Freddy’s place was across the boulevard from the municipal building. He could leave the shopping bag in the car or he could lug it with him—no, he’d walk in empty-handed and take it from there. Of course there was nowhere to park. The hubbub of the street made it impossible. And of course he would be driving Pokey’s whale of an Oldsmobile. He’d tuned it up for him and now he couldn’t get rid of it. Pokey had discovered the delights of his snappy sports car and wasn’t in a hurry to give it up.

He pulled up dead in front of the joint underneath the NO STANDING sign and put Pokey’s shield number on the dashboard, rejoicing as he always did that with his responsibilities came privilege, this probably being his favorite one. Not that there were that many anymore. Used to be, a cop was respected for the chances he took. You went in to the fruit and vegetable store, the guy wouldn’t let you pay. You got your coffee and doughnuts from the diner, the cashier would wink and you’d zip out the door. And you took care of those places. You risked your life for a couple a lousy hundred bucks in the cash register anytime you went around back when you saw a screwy light on at three in the morning, and those owners, they used to appreciate it. Now? Jeez. Now the same owners made a stink when they saw you cuff up the suspects too tight. It was all rights and privileges for the criminals these days. No doubt about it. The city wasn’t changing … it already had changed.

He slammed the door shut and walked up the pink marble stairs. Self-consciously he pushed his hair back. He hated joints like this. Women all tensed up and on the make. Men, if you could call them men, with hairdos and nipped-in waists and shellacked eyelashes. A fellow in a chartreuse shirt down to his knees eyeballed him up and down. He could have slapped him. Then, through a forest of good-luck-bannered potted plants he saw the back of her head at the bar. She was tapping her fingers impatiently along an empty bottle of Perrier. At least she wasn’t chatting away happily with some creep. (In reality, she was waiting for a moment alone with Freddy. She was going to tell him exactly what she thought of his slimy interlude with Carmela.) The kid, beaming, was being detained by a silver-eye-shadowed flight attendant type who was cooing and oohing all over him. She bent over, breasts exposed, and gave him the celery stick from her bloody mary. Michaelaen clung shyly to his father’s hand. Shit. Johnny didn’t want to talk to him. He turned on his heel before Claire could see him and went back outside. What if Freddy was going to drive them home and they went out the back way through the parking lot? He went back in. A lawyer type in a dinner jacket approached Claire and he saw the two of them banter back and forth and then laugh out loud. He watched Claire blow an easy stream of smoke in the man’s face and deliberately turn her back on him. And that takes care of that, thought Johnny with relief.

Derickson, from the 102 and looking every bit of it, was mopping long-stem glasses behind the bar. The other bartender was either off or on a break. Johnny knew he wouldn’t risk blowing Derickson’s cover. Derickson was too smart to do anything more than look right through him, but at the same time he didn’t feel like letting the whole station house know that his interest in Claire was anything more than professional. Bunch of old fishwives. He went back outside. He noticed that his palms were wet. What am I, delirious? he asked himself. He walked across the boulevard to the big stone statue, a naked statue of a man the old-timers called the Fireman. There he was, this huge muscular Greek, balls ass in the middle of traffic. There was a wooden bench there, mercifully free of bums, and he sat down on it, watching the door all the while. Even if they went out the back way he could still see them from here. And then he saw the Mayor. He must have walked right by him several times, for there he was, tied with his clothesline to the parking meter in front of Freddy’s place. Johnny flew across the street. “Hi ya, Mayor,” he greeted him affectionately. “You remember me, don’t you?”

The Mayor watched him blandly. He’d been following Johnny’s indecisive helter-skelter all along. Now there was no doubt in his mind that Johnny was smitten with Claire. Although he’d guessed that from the start, way back in the confusion over the kosher chicken. If there was anyone who had a nose for that sort of thing it was himself. Now what was this? Johnny was untying the clothesline and escorting him across the boulevard. This was a rare opportunity indeed. What exotic strains of frowziness might he encounter here? Truly he did love Natasha, only once you were as old as, let’s do face it, he now was, each opportunity that presented itself, handed to you, as it were, was well worth taking. One might never have the chance again. Alone, he would never even consider the risk of crossing a boulevard. Why he’d never been across a boulevard. And now he was. He was just becoming involved in what could very well be the musk of a dane when he felt his clothesline stiffen. He looked about. Across Queens Boulevard he could see Freddy coming down the steps with Claire and Michaelaen. Claire was being very cool toward Freddy. You could see that even from a distance. Michaelaen wasn’t keen on leaving at all. He loved that place. As many french fries as he could lay his hands on. All of a sudden Claire threw her arms up into the air. Back and forth she raced. Then around in a circle. Michaelaen, always distinguished, did not panic. He was quite used to the disappearance of the Mayor. He’d grown up within the routine of it. However, he did put his thumb in his mouth and kept it there. Freddy ran inside and came back out. Claire was looking underneath the parked cars. The Mayor thought all right, a game’s a game, but this one has gone far enough now. He looked up at Johnny, who was looking idiotically spellbound and crackling his knuckles.

Claire was thinking of the stricken pairs of eyes she would face back at home if she didn’t find the Mayor. Frantically, she craned her neck in all directions. Someone could have hit him and he might be lying out there broken and bleeding and with no one to care for him. And all those cars just nonchalantly speeding by. She broke out in a fervent sweat. Freddy put an arm of solace around her shoulder and she flung herself free of him. “Look!” hollered Michaelaen. He pointed towards the newsstand on the corner. There was a pedestrian crossway there and an entrance to the subway. Out from the exit, Tut from his tomb, emerged the Mayor, waddling, pink tongue dangling, and Johnny Benedetto rushing accommodatingly behind.

“Your honor!” Claire fell to the ground.

Johnny squatted beside her. “I just happened to be coming up from the subway,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “and who do I see but the dog here.” It wouldn’t hurt for her to think destiny had played a hand. She’d like that sort of thing. And so she did. Her eyes, when she looked up at him, were pools of sparkling wonder. This grateful ardor, if it hadn’t come from such a cheap trick, would have caused him no small joy. Uncomfortably, he stood back up. Michaelaen claimed his rightful end of the leash and they walked in a tight band back to the restaurant.

“This is wonderful,” said Freddy. “If you hadn’t come out from the subway at that exact moment.…”

Claire shuddered at the torrent of possibilities. Michaelaen watched Johnny with careful admiration. He didn’t know quite what to make of Johnny. Both Claire and Freddy spoke derisively about him but he noticed they both buckled to attention the moment he was around.

“Were you going to take the bus or a cab?” Freddy asked him. “I’m just taking Claire and Michaelaen home. I’ll drop you all off at once. You don’t live far, do you?”

Johnny looked over at Pokey’s Oldsmobile. “I’ll just hop on the …” he was about to say “bus” when he saw a lady parking cop writing out a ticket. If they all left now he could stop the bitch. She could see the detective shield in there. What the hell was the matter with her?

“I wouldn’t think of that,” Claire said.

“No, really. It goes right by my house. I’d rather.” He looked past her at the traffic cop. Claire followed his eyes. All she saw was a taxi full of pretty girls in gauzy dresses disembarking.

“Don’t be silly,” she said without certainty.

“No, I want to. Really.”

Claire tipped her chin to look at him. So that was it. He hadn’t liked the kiss she’d loved. He didn’t care about her after all. What a silly fool she was! Of course, now he could see how ugly she was with her nose all sweaty. “Well, thank you, then, for saving the dog,” she muttered.

“Hey, don’t mention it.” He let go a manic laugh. The policewoman picked up the windshield wiper and smacked it down on the ticket. The jig was up. Then it hit him. Claire’s mother would certainly tell them he’d been there forty minutes ago. There was no reason now not to come clean. “Uh … look, I didn’t want to say nothin’ before. Didn’t wanna worry you or nothin’, but I got a car right here.”

They looked at him, puzzled.

“I been sorta following you,” he said to Claire.

“What, still?” Freddy studied Claire with scornful interest. “You think Claire is in some sort of danger? I doubt that.” He laughed a condescending little laugh. “She’s a little bit past the age for a child molester’s interest.”

“Is that right?” Johnny put his face up against Freddy’s. “I guess you got this whole business all figured out.”

“I didn’t say that.” Freddy’s sardonic tone faded fast.

“You were just acting like that for no reason, like.”

“Yeah, that’s it. No reason.”

“’Cause if you got any ideas about what’s going on around here, we’d be more than happy to listen to anything you have to say down at the stationhouse.”

Freddy went pale. He hoped with all his heart that the customers just going in hadn’t heard that.

The traffic cop sauntered by. “Whatsa matter,” Johnny shouted at her, “you never heard of professional loyalty?”

“Hey, mister, I just do my job.”

“That’s a cop on duty, sister.”

“Yeah, well I got my orders. I ticket anybody, any vehicle sits itself down in my no standing.”

“Johnny,” Claire said, and as she did she realized she’d never said his name like that before, directly to him.

“What.”

“Perhaps you could drive us home. Then Freddy wouldn’t have to leave at all. It’s getting awfully busy in there.” As if to demonstrate her point, a gang of snappily dressed coke types went rollicking up the stairs.

“Hey.” Johnny rolled his shoulders. “Can a corn.”

“I take it that means you will.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell your mother,” Freddy said to Michaelaen, “that I’ll be over tomorrow to see her.”

And Carmela, thought Claire, sick to death of him.

“Off you go,” Freddy tapped him on his bottom.

Neither Claire nor Johnny spoke until they dropped Michaelaen off. They both smiled pleasantly from the car and waved to Mary as she let the boy and the dog into the house.

“You didn’t have to make a fool of him in front of his son,” was the first thing out of her mouth.

“He’s a piece of shit.”

“Maybe so. But that knowledge isn’t going to help Michaelaen grow up a happier person.”

“Happier than what? Happier than who? You? Me?”

Claire let her breath out slowly. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Especially not with him this close to her. “Whatever happened with the license plate numbers?”

“Nothin’. Didn’t turn nothin’ up.”

“Oh.” She waited.

He didn’t want to tell her about the only old golden Plymouth he did know about, the one that sat in front of the station house for as long as he could remember. Furgueson’s. Captain Furgueson’s. 5473 BNJ. So she had her numbers right. Only the thought of Furgueson molesting kids was so ridiculous it almost made you want to laugh. The only body Furgueson was known to molest was over twenty-one and top heavy. Which was where he’d been on his way back from the morning of the murder. He didn’t want to tell Claire about that, though. Nancy Drew here would have the whole neighborhood informed. Truth and all that crap. And where would that leave Furgueson? Divorced, that was where. And from a very nice old broad. A lady. So why hurt either of them? The famed wall of blue loyalty between cops was not always a bad thing. You had to be loyal in this game. He looked over at Claire’s worried, pretty face.

She’d been staring at him. “Were you really following me?” she asked.

“Yes.” He looked through the rearview mirror at the shopping bag on the backseat and sighed happily.

“Because you think I might truly be in danger?”

“Truly,” he mimicked her.

“Why, though? Anyone who thought I could hurt them would surely be satisfied with the films. I would think. Or hope. I don’t mean to say that I’m afraid. At least not unreasonably so. I carry my white light about me so I couldn’t possibly come to any real harm.”

“Your what?”

“My white light. Around my aura. Stop looking like that. What are you thinking when you look at me like that?”

“What do you care? You’ve got your aura thing there protecting you.”

“Yes, but what are you thinking? I’d just like to know. Or perhaps you disagree with the theory that fear attracts fearful things and peace repels them?”

“I’m thinking you’re really stupid, you know that?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” she heard herself saying. “While I was over there chanting, you were over here … stun-gunning or whatever.” She was pleased with the effect this statement had on him. He controlled his rage, however.

“Somebody might think you still know something,” he said stubbornly. “Something you been choosing to keep to yourself for the time being.”

“I don’t know anything. I keep telling you.”

“Except maybe you do and you don’t know it.”

“But I would remember something. I really don’t know anything. I keep telling you.”

“The killer doesn’t know that. And who says he’s rational, anyhow?”

“The killer! It’s like a film. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Neither can the dead kid’s parents.”

That shut her up for a bit. It was quiet enough for Johnny to realize he was driving them around in circles.

“You wanna go to my house?”

“No,” she replied as a matter of form.

“So you wanna go to a motel?”

“Let me out of the car.”

“Huh?”

“Just stop the car and let me out.”

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“With me? I don’t even know you and you’re talking about going to a motel? I think there’s something wrong with you!”

Johnny locked her door from his control panel and kept his finger on the switch. “You’re gonna sit there and tell me you don’t feel nothin’ between us? Is that what you’re saying? You really wanna get out?” He let go of the switch. “So get out!” He waited. She waited. “’Cause if that’s the way it is, then my mind isn’t tickin’ too quick. Or what is it? You want me to play the game with you? Come over to your parents’ house with flowers? Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Johnny made a horrible grimace and grabbed the cement loaf stuck in his jeans. “This! This is what I’m talkin about! Whenever I get within ten feet of you!”

“Ach du liebe scheisse!”

“Ach du liebe this!” he shouted, reaching under her skirt. “Oh Jesus,” he groaned. “You’re wet.” He climbed over the stick shift with the alacrity of a ballet dancer and pushed her seat into a reclining position. Recovering from his surprise attack quickly, she punched him in the chest, then once in the ear with a high choral bang. Still he held devotedly on to her underwear and still she kept her knees locked tight. While their limbs continued to wallop in combat, Claire’s mouth had called an independent open truce and the tongue that attached itself to hers fit snugly in there like the perfect juicy glove. He collapsed on top of her in bewildered frustration and she realized where she was: pinned to the emergency brake and suffocating quickly. A blaring horn sounded from someplace.

“What the hell?” Johnny picked up his head. Not having bothered to pull over, they now had six or seven cars backed up impatiently behind them. He grappled to retrieve his hand and lurched back to his seat. Claire looked about frantically and tugged on her skirt.

“You’ve gone and ripped my knickers,” she panted.

“I love you, too,” he said and shifted into first.

He made a quick left onto Woodhaven Boulevard. Up in the woods on her right she could barely make out the soft lights of the merry-go-round.

This is it, thought Claire. Nothing on God’s earth can stop us now. She settled back in the big plush seat of the vast American car and let him take her wherever he wanted. There was a button on her door. She pushed it and the window opened. The night time came in, the huddled streets blurred past and she still felt the hard, kinetic weight of him on top of her. Good thing I shaved my legs, she thought. A siren passed them, a squad car racing in the opposite direction. He said he loves me, she marveled. He’s watching me out of the corner of his eye and he wants me as much as I want him. Another bweep bweep bweep of a radio car cut through the noise of the deafening el train. Johnny did a U-turn on 111th and Jamaica. She saw her reflection in the bakery window, sliding across the seat and flattened against the car door like a passenger on the Roundabout, the carnival ride that whips you around until you’re dizzy. “What are you doing?” she cried.

“I’m taking you back home,” he said, his mind on something else entirely now. “Something’s going on.”

He pulled up in front of her mother’s house with a screech and practically pushed her out the door. She stood on the curb, looking at him as though he were mad. “Go in the house,” he ordered and turned the big car around one two three. “I said go in the house, dammit.”

She went into the house.

Johnny followed the noise. In the very same pine forest where they’d found the body of the little boy Miguel, where no one in his right mind would ever think to look for trouble again, some kids up there, young kids getting high in the summer night, had stumbled across the mutilated body of a five-year-old girl.

This time the papers had a field day. Furgueson at the 102nd had everybody working overtime, and that meant everybody. Nobody said boo. They all wanted this guy and they wanted him quick. This was their precinct. It made them nauseous to think of some monster out there just sick enough to try it again. There weren’t too many cops who didn’t have little ones of their own at home.

By morning, all of New York had had a tour of the Richmond Hill pine forest over three major networks. The squirrels were mad with joy from all the Drake’s Cakes and doughnuts the crowds had left all over the place. Reporters got in everybody’s way down at the station house and when Furgueson had them thrown out, they interviewed the people on the street. This was no longer one alleged “minority crime.” Or something within one family. This was beginning to look like a habit. The dead girl had been a perfectly charming blond innocent with cherry lips and pink hair ribbons—the whole thing. She’d been missing only five hours, last seen on her tricycle in front of the Park Lane South candy store. This was news, big news, and the media was out to milk it for every ounce of hypnotized fear and fascination its viewers were sure to tune in for.

A few of the reporters had themselves televised up in front of the carousel. It was awful to see it on television that way, they all thought. How hard they had worked in the community to bring it back to life. Nothing over the years had brought the people together with such pride and happiness. Nobody didn’t love the carousel. And now, to see it used like this. It was a sin. A real sin.

At the Breslinsky’s, the newspapers were spread out on the kitchen table. There they sat, recounting with fascinated horror just how close they’d come to being at the candy store yesterday and, who knew, right now it could have been themselves, God forbid, dressing up to go solemnly down to the morgue.

“And I say,” Stan insisted, “that it could never happen in a family like ours, where we keep such close tabs on the kid. We would notice the moment someone talked to him.”

“Stanley. Sweetheart. It only takes a second. Look how the children run around the block wild as Indians and there’s no one to pay them a never you do mind. I mean it can happen to anyone.” She shuddered. “You can be as careful as you like, but then there’s always that unguarded moment.”

“Oh, come on. I saw that Miguel kid around here a hundred times, up and down the block with the other kids. You can’t tell me his parents kept tabs on him.”

“Daddy, that’s easier said than done. How many times have I come home from work and there was Michaelaen, across the street,” her voice rose. “Alone. No one around. So you come on.”

Claire, her face half buried in her hand atop an elbow on the table, listened to their morbid might-have-beens. Mary made another batch of waffles and laid them caressingly on top of the cold ones. No one would eat those, either, but the effort of it soothed her. She didn’t exactly know the parents of the dead girl but she was almost sure she’d seen the mother, the day before Easter it must have been, on line at the butcher.

Stan had a feeling he knew the unfortunate father. He’d come into the store once or twice. For nails. Or linseed oil, he thought it was. He’d know him well enough to nod hello.

Annoyed by this claim, Mary scooped the colder, bottom waffle onto his plate.

“What’s this for?”

“It’s good. Just because you couldn’t make up your mind about it doesn’t make it bad.”

“I don’t want a waffle, Mare!”

“And you who told me to make them!”

Here the Mayor stood and waddled confidently to his empty dish.

“Did I ask for waffles? Did anybody here hear me once ask for waffles?!”

“Gimmie one, Ma. Only gimmie one from the top. I don’t want a cold one.”

Indeed, it was chilly enough in the kitchen to make you want to warm up. Mary had the air conditioner on maximum. She felt safer in the cold, today of all days, barricaded from the murder lurking outside with the doors locked tight. They huddled together as though from a winter’s storm.

Michaelaen came up from the cellar. He put his sneakers on his lap. The first knot was easy. Then you did a loop. That was easy, too. It was that darn second loop that got him. Did it go around the first loop or stay right where it was? The possibilities exploded in the air until he had to close his eyes. Here he would stay until, like any exasperated ostrich, he felt the coast was clear. Something was going on. Everybody was yelling and then whispering. Especially Grandma. You had to be careful when Grandma started whispering. Michaelaen opened his eyes and saw his old friend Miguel’s picture right in the paper. Miguel was probably in jail, he thought morosely. There were some things you just knew you weren’t supposed to ask about.

Stan turned the page. He didn’t want Mary to notice the horoscopes and get started on that. Then the doorbell rang and the dog howled. Michaelaen ran to the front and the Mayor trotted after him. “It’s the back,” said Zinnie. “It’s the back,” hollered Mary. They trotted to the back. Carmela got to the door first. It was Johnny Benedetto. He came into the kitchen ducking, big fellow that he was, one corner of his mouth stuck upward. Claire felt herself blush at the sight of him and the sight she knew she must be, rumpled in her father’s Yankees T-shirt and a red plaid robe she’d discovered behind the bathroom door. She felt his eyes go right through her, and then he acted as if she wasn’t even there.

“It’s crazy out there,” he said. “I can only stay for a minute.”

“Of course, of course,” the family nodded in unison. They knew he was working on the murders. They wouldn’t bring it up unless he did. They were a family on the “in,” a fact that was etched importantly all over their faces. Stan patted him fondly on the back and signaled for coffee. This is wonderful, Mary thought. She had three waffles on his plate before he sat down. A man needed his strength. Good thing she’d had Michaelaen pick those raspberries. She gave the sour cream a fluff up with her spoon and licked it with a smile to demonstrate how mm-mm good it was.

Claire was embarrassed by all of this coddling. Even Michaelaen stood rapt at Johnny’s knee. What would he think, they’d never seen a nice young man? She’d never brought a fellow home? Oblivious to her, Johnny wolfed down a deck of waffles and held out his plate for more.

Carmela had to go to work. She went upstairs to the bathroom and Claire was glad to see her go. Carmela looked so chic. Even Zinnie, whom she loved with all her heart, looked far too cute for so early in the morning.

“You sleep all right?” Johnny asked her.

She almost jumped. His eyes were teasing her.

“Not bad.” She gave him what she hoped was a look of nonchalance.

“I got somethin’ for ya.”

What did he mean? Was he going to give her a kiss? Right in front of her parents? There was a street-sharp danger that accompanied him and you never knew quite what he would do.

Johnny was more nervous than she was but his demeanor was deliberately cool. Inside, he swelled with the love he felt for her and the awe he had for her family. A real American family, he thought, his orphaned heart pounding. Just like on television, with no one on drugs or drunk and all of them casually sitting down to home-cooked meals together as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Hell wasn’t being one of twelve kids in a tenement flat the way they showed you on “Eyewitness News.” Hell was being out on your own every last morning in a different burger joint, greasy spoon, whatever. They were all the same. He’d heard a poem once, in passing, on some jerkie’s radio. He didn’t remember the whole thing, but part of it had hit him like a hammer: “Nobody playing piano … in somebody else’s apartment.” That was him. That was his life. These people here, they didn’t know what they had. He stood up, knocking over the heavy oak chair, then picked it up as though it were some featherweight. Mary didn’t even glance at her linoleum. Claire clasped the robe to her chest in a panicky gesture but he turned and went out the door. Then back he came with a shopping bag from Lipschutz Quality Camera Store. He laid the whole thing down on her empty plate, obliterating her from view. “What’s this?” she said.

Her family, eyes bit as buttons, nodded her on.

“Go ahead,” he urged her. “Open ’em up.”

Uncertainly, she tugged at a ribbon.

“Not like that,” Zinnie yelled at her. “Rip the mother open!”

“Here’s a knife,” Mary sang.

Stan, a veteran of too many birthday parties throughout the years, went back with one eye to Jimmy Breslin’s column. He hated Breslin. Or so he said. The columnist’s heated opinions held his devoted daily fury, though. Some hates were indeed akin to love.

“Here,” said Johnny. “Open this one first. This one’s the main one. Maybe you’re gonna like it. Maybe not.” He said this as though it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. Claire peeked into the box. It was an Olympus. A good old Olympus, just like the first thirty-five she’d ever shot with. She hadn’t had one in her hand for years. Professionals all used Nikons nowadays and she had followed suit, but many a time she’d had a yearning for the downright lightness and practicality of her old manual Olympus. She broke into a smile, such a smile that he knew he’d done the right thing. Whatever he’d done wrong with her so far was wiped out good by this. He knew he shouldn’t have jumped on her like that last night and he was sorry. But not too sorry.

“Such an expensive camera,” Mary touched it tentatively.

“I had a little luck at the track,” he offered humbly.

Claire opened the next package. It was a seventy-five-to-one-fifty zoom. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe you knew just what to get.”

Johnny shrugged. “I saw you up in the woods with that kind of lens. At least I hoped it was that kind. I mean if you don’t like it or it’s wrong you can take it back.”

“The lens is wonderful,” Claire said.

This news was met by the rest of them with satisfaction. They knew how picky Claire could be. Next she opened the flash. She shook her head with wonder. Johnny sat back down for the rest of his waffles.

For some reason Claire was overcome by a sickening sense of suspicion. Her mother dalloped the last of the sour cream onto Johnny’s plate and she watched their eyes meet conspiratorially. It hit her as the signing of the deal. She had no idea why she felt that way, but there it was, strong and real in her, the witness to the signing away of the proverbial truant daughter. She burned with shame. And Johnny. He looked so damn smug. Suddenly she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

“I can’t accept this,” she told him in her gravely voice.

They all stopped talking and looked at her.

“It’s much too kind of you. I … thank you … but I’m sorry. I can’t accept it.”

“Can’t accept what? What are you talkin’ about?”

“I can’t. It’s just too much when I hardly know you. I’m expecting some money shortly … a great deal of money … and I’ll be able to replace my cameras myself, you see.”

The Mayor searched his brain. Embroidered and elaborated grains of truth rang truer than fact. But so did lies. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on. “It’s much too kind of you,” she was saying again. “It’s just too much. Thank you, but I can’t.” Claire studied Johnny’s face for traces of change. Still he watched her with that mocking, amused, unblinking, infuriating look. No one in the family knew exactly what to do. “Excuse me,” murmered Claire and she left the table. It didn’t surprise her that they were all whispering. Uh-oh, the Mayor thought, and he followed her out. She was standing, hunched and listening, behind the door.

“Don’t worry. Claire’s just a dumb girl.” Michaelaen, the little traitor, was comforting Johnny. Michaelaen’s sense of protective guardianship only extended to the offended at hand.

“Three things my mother told me about life,” Stan’s voice rang out suddenly. “‘Never,’ she said, ‘eat meat loaf out.’ That was the first thing. Two was: ‘Never loan money you can’t afford to give away.’ And the third was, ‘Never, but never think you might be smarter than the stupidest woman.’”