Ted had told Mariana on the phone that since he was corpse walking, he didn’t want to drop the body off at the hospital, but that he would drive Marty one last time to Brooklyn before surrendering to the authorities. Mariana had consented. Ted loved her willingness to do the weird thing, to say fuck you to protocol. She made him braver and better just by being on the planet. He would imagine new things from now on because he wanted to know what she thought. He hoped so hard that it almost took the form of a prayer, that they would become the close reader of each other’s life.
He pulled up to the curb at Forty-eighth and Ninth at about two a.m. Mariana stood there waiting with Maria outside the diner where they had shared café con leche. The women opened the doors of the Corolla and got in the back. First Maria, and then Mariana, leaned forward and kissed Marty’s cold forehead and whispered private endearments in his ear. Then Mariana angled over Ted’s headrest and kissed Ted deeply and meaningfully on the lips, an apology and half a promise, he hoped, and an incentive to keep waiting. She said as she hugged him, “Ay, papi, Bucky Fucking Dent—conyo.”
The champagne flowed in the Yankee clubhouse. The curse held. In Boston, they were waiting still.