‘Julia?’
‘Aunt Nora?’ Julia asked, looking at the cell in her hand and almost missing the entrance ramp onto 836, the Dolphin Expressway. She hadn’t even heard the phone ring.
‘I sure hope so, honey,’ her aunt chuckled. ‘You called me. Unless you meant to call someone else.’
‘No, no. I was calling you,’ she replied, embarrassed. ‘The phone didn’t ring, that’s all. How’d you know it was me?’
‘I had Jimmy go down to Best Buy today. He bought me one of those caller ID phones,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘No more annoying telemarketers ruining my dinnertime.’
‘Alright, then. Well, a hearty welcome to the twenty-first century, Aunt Nora,’ Julia said, wondering how it was Uncle Jimmy had managed to talkher aunt into giving up the Mickey Mouse talking phone with the ninety-foot-long pigtail cord that had sat on her kitchen counter for the past twenty years. The next technological push would be to get her to use the cellphone Julia had bought her two Christmases ago. Or at least to answer it.
Aunt Nora laughed. ‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?’ Julia heard the mixer start up in the background.
‘Just wanted to say hi, that’s all. See how Uncle Jimmy’s back was feeling.’
‘He’s fine, don’t worry about him. He’s driving me crazy, though. Over my shoulder all damn day, looking for something to do. Driving the neighbors crazy, too, with all his stories down at the pool, when they’re trying to get some peace and quiet with their sunshine. You should be worrying about me, is who you should be worrying about. Why don’t you come on over? I can tell you haven’t eaten yet, little one. I’ll make you a little something.’
She couldn’t help but smile. Her aunt amazed her sometimes. Instincts like a cat. ‘Oh yeah? How do you know I haven’t eaten?
‘I can hear it in your voice.’
‘Only you can hear hunger pangs. I’m just heading home, Aunt Nora. I’m still like, I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes away and it’s already eight thirty.’
‘Heading home from where?’
‘Work.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I was hoping you were out doing something fun. I was hoping, actually, you had a date. What you doing at workthis late? Aren’t all your criminals locked up safe and sound for the night?’ Nora despised what Julia did for a living and didn’t try very hard to hide it. When she’d sprung the idea of law school on Nora and Jimmy, it was Julia Valenciano, Esq., Real Estate Lawyer or Valenciano & Associates, Practice Limited to Tax Law they’d envisioned etched across the plate-glass doors.
‘I have a trial in the morning.’ She sighed at the thought. ‘And my victim doesn’t want to cooperate. It’s just a mess.’ There was no need to get into why else her day had gone bad. Or what else was on her mind. She’d really called just to hear her aunt’s familiar, throaty voice. The content of what they said didn’t matter so much.
‘And …?’ demanded Aunt Nora, shutting off the mixer.
‘And what?’
‘And what else is bothering you?’
There went those instincts again. There was the briefest of silences before she answered, ‘Nothing. Honest.’
‘You’re a bad liar, little one. And I know you’re hungry. Now listen and listen carefully. I’ve got your little dog and I’m holding him hostage till you come over and have a bite of decent food. I know you’ve been using that microwave too much. Jimmy said there was butter sauce all over the inside of it. Those rays, they’ll give you cancer, Julia, I’m telling you. They’ll make that pretty hair of yours all fall out and your skin scaly, like a lizard. That’s why the cancer rates are so high, you know. Everyone’s in such a hurry nowadays, that they’re microwaving themselves to death.’
Julia ignored all the clutter in the conversation. ‘What? Why is Moose over your house?’
‘Jimmy went by your apartment this afternoon on the way backfrom the track and figured he’d take Moose out for a walk. You know Jimmy and that dog.’
‘And a walkturned into a sleepover?’ Moose sometimes camped out at Nora and Jimmy’s while Julia was at work. Uncle Jimmy was retired, and besides bugging her aunt all day long or getting lost for a few hours at the track, he liked to come by and take Moose to the dog park or for a walk on the Hollywood Beach boardwalk. Her apartment was about twenty minutes southwest of her aunt and uncle’s condo on Fort Lauderdale beach, and about twenty minutes northwest of Gulfstream Racetrack– right smack-dab in the middle of all the excitement. Aunt Nora swore it was all the attention Moose got from lonely dog-sitters and girls in bikinis that kept Jimmy walking all over Broward county, when he never even liked to take the garbage down the hallway to the incinerator chute at home. On occasion, Jimmy would steal Moose and take him back home with him. Not that Moose minded being stolen – the food was much better uptown, and so was the view of the Atlantic from Uncle Jimmy’s La-Z-Boy.
‘What? What? You don’t feed him,’ whined her aunt. ‘Poor baby.’
‘He’s not allowed to have human food, Aunt Nora. No more lasagne.’
‘I didn’t give him no lasagne.’
‘Good.’
‘I made ravioli. Come have some before your piggy little dog eats it all and turns himself into a Great Dane. He got into my pepperoni, you know.’
Julia grimaced. ‘Oh no, Aunt Nora. Please don’t give Moose pepperoni! It makes his hiney itch.’
‘It’s too late for that. He begged and Jimmy listened, the coward. Now I can’t make chicken pepperoni tonight unless I go to Publix.’
Aunt Nora was a true night owl. Always had been. Her mom had told her that, even as a little kid, Nora would be up reading comic books under the covers with a flashlight, erupting into giggle fits that would wake up their dad and get them both in ‘water hotter than the divil’s piss’. As a teenager in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Nora had taught her mom how to sneak down the fire escape in high heels without it creaking so that they could go out dancing. Now it was n’t comic books or nightclubs pulling her aunt out of bed in the middle of the night anymore – it was her kitchen, which was probably why she looked a little like the food she liked to cook most: gnocchi. Soft and round and short – a 220-pound, five-foot-two little dumpling, topped off with a generous splash of teased red hair on her head, like a spoonful of marinara. Her most creative concoctions were made sometime between the wee hours of midnight and 3 a.m. – trays of eggplant rollatini and home-made manicotti, osso bucco that would melt off the bone. When most people were counting Zs, Aunt Nora was busy measuring cups of ricotta for cheesecake and leavening loaves of bread to twist into sausage and broccoli stromboli. Her aunt was the most ethnic Italian Julia had ever known outside of a Sopranos episode, and she was German Irish – although you’d never get her to admit it anymore. It was Uncle Jimmy who had the Neapolitan roots and the family tree you didn’t want to shake too hard.
‘You know, it is late,’ Julia tried. ‘Maybe you should keep Moose tonight, then, and I’ll pickhim up tomorrow after work.’
‘Not on your life. The pepperoni’s already giving him gas. For such a little dog, he can sure fill a room. That’s why I’m in here and he’s in there with Jimmy. The two of them deserve each other.’
‘That’s too much information, Aunt Nora.’
Nora laughed and turned on the mixer again. ‘Come get your piggy, little one. He misses you. And while you’re at it, let me feed you some ravioli. I have some porktenderloin left over from dinner and some semolina. I’ll make you a sandwich. Then you can tell me all about whatever it is that’s got you so damned upset.’
‘Know what I think?’ said Perry. ‘I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.’
Dick was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn’t Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddamn thing up?
‘There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that,’ Perry said.
‘Deal me out, baby,’ Dicksaid. ‘I’m a normal.’
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood