DESPITE BETTY HALUKA’S PREVAILING mood, a mix of anxiety and self-righteous anger such as a parent might feel for a wandering child lost at the beach, the view got to her. The American 757 out of Los Angeles, after a nearly interminable cross-country voyage, was on its final approach to La Guardia Airport, running straight up the East River with Manhattan spread out beside and beneath. The aircraft was moving very slowly, seeming almost at stall speed, a mere thousand feet above the taller buildings, offering a perspective that reduced the city to a scale model (like the one in a Flushing Meadow Park museum) while at the same time forcing Betty to acknowledge its overwhelming mass. Below her, on First Avenue, a pair of EMS ambulances tore north, their revolving lights drawing her face to the window as she automatically strained to hear the sirens.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? I fly at least once a month and I always hope the plane will take this approach on the return.”
Betty turned to the middle-aged woman (who’d been mercifully silent up to this point) sitting next to her. “Awesome is more like it.” She paused, reconsidered. “Or aweful. I can’t decide. Maybe both.”
She looked down at the lights strung along the cables of the Triboro Bridge, then north across Harlem to the George Washington Bridge on the far side of the Island. Street lamps lined every block, throwing patches of orangey light, their softly defined perimeters contrasting with the sharp, harsh rectangles offered by thousands upon thousands of lit windows.
The plane took a leisurely turn to the east, descending rapidly, and Betty tightened her seat belt. She’d never been afraid of flying, never had to fortify herself with a few quick belts in an airport bar. That was Stanley’s act, one of several, or so it seemed. Like his failing to call her, like Jim Tilley having to call her instead.
“He’s taking it real hard,” Tilley had said after a long, detailed preamble. “The job’s sending me out to Chicago, to pick up a mutt we’ve been after for a long time. I’ll probably be gone a couple of days.”
The message had been clear enough and Betty, with her cousin now in what the doctors called “an irreversible coma,” had abandoned Arthur and jumped on the next plane out. Not before calling, however. She’d called several times from the house, several times again from an LAX passenger terminal, her mood flipping from worry to anger with every unanswered ring.
She was angry because she was convinced that he should have called her. They’d been lovers and best friends for almost six years. If he couldn’t (or wouldn’t, or didn’t) reach out to her … well, the consequences were obvious enough. The whole relationship would have to be redefined. Hell, the relationship would redefine itself.
But the worry was just as real, a nagging fear she didn’t want to acknowledge. Moodrow’s failure to call was beyond any response she could have predicted. Thinking about it, she finally understood why he’d always insisted that he absolutely hated mysteries.
“Stanley blames himself for the kid,” Tilley had said. “And the funeral’s two days from now.”
“He told you that?”
“About the funeral?”
“About blaming himself.”
“He didn’t have to, because I’ve been there myself a few times.” Tilley had hesitated, as if determining exactly how much he wanted to say. “My first year, on foot patrol, I ended up on a roof with a jumper, a woman holding a baby. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, had no training whatever. Meanwhile, I was the only one there, so I had to make a choice: try to talk her down or wait for the sergeant to show up with a department expert. Being young, stupid, and pitifully ambitious, I decided to be a hero. I took a step toward her and over she went. It’s ten years later and I still dream about it.”
The plane was up against the ramp, the other passengers standing, when Betty finally pulled herself together. There were practical things to be done, a taxi to catch, luggage to retrieve, a mystery to be confronted. Best not to get obsessed, she told herself, until you know what to be obsessed about.
Forty minutes later, her taxi rolled off a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway ramp and up onto the Williamsburg Bridge. A subway J Train clanked and screeched a few feet to her left, coming out of its hole to pace the cab for a moment, then falling behind as Betty’s driver accelerated away.
“Too loud, too loud.” The driver waved a hand in dismissal. “Make me nervous. One day bridge falls down from that damn train. You see.”
Betty nodded, but didn’t answer. Suddenly, the simple fact that she was going to arrive on Stanley’s doorstep unannounced jumped into the forefront of her consciousness. What would he say? What would she say? It would be easy enough to use Marilyn’s condition as an excuse for suddenly coming back, to keep her own counsel until she had a better grip on events. On the other hand, if Stanley was sitting there, nursing a bottle of Wild Turkey and a wounded ego, she might not be able to control her response.
Her dilemma was resolved a few minutes later when she opened Moodrow’s door to find him seated at the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon and a half-full glass within easy reach. His back was to her and he clearly hadn’t heard her make her entrance. That, most likely, was because he was talking to himself.
“There’s things in your life that just can’t happen. There’s mistakes you just can’t make, because when you do make them, they run you straight into hell. I mean if you decide to swallow the gun, and flinch when you pull the trigger, there’s a certain price to be paid, right?” He reached out for the glass, but instead of drinking, held it against the side of his unshaven face. “I should’ve checked up. When I asked Gadd to find a way to come around again. If I’d just looked at the map for a minute, I would’ve known how long it was gonna take to get back to the Expressway.” He waved the glass like a baton, slopping the drink onto his shirt and trousers. “I tell ya, Betty, I don’t know why I didn’t make that goddamned U-turn. I mean who was gonna see? Some jerk in a house two miles away from Jilly’s? And what was he gonna do, call the fucking cops? By the time the cops arrived, if they even bothered to respond, we would’ve been inside that house, waiting.”
Betty flinched at the sound of her name. Did he know she was there, standing in front of the door? Probably not, she decided. And that was because he was definitely drunk.
The anger she’d been nursing cut through her initial confusion, providing just enough focus to get her moving. She dropped her bag onto the carpet, strode across the room, wheeled to face him.
“Stanley …” Her first impression, that he was crying, passed almost immediately. His collar and hair were soaked; beads of moisture covered his scalp and forehead. Unless teardrops had somehow learned to defy gravity and run upward, something else was happening.
“I mean what was it?” He was staring directly into her eyes now, as if she’d been there all along. “An ego trip, nothing else. Hotshit Stanley Moodrow riding to the rescue. I should’ve paid a price for that, Betty, and maybe I really have, because I can’t get Theresa’s face out of my mind.”
Betty took a step forward, brought her palm and fingers to rest on her lover’s cheek. Even as she spoke, she felt the tears spring into her own eyes.
“Christ, Stanley,” she whispered, “you’re on fire.”