CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Al sat in the mess hall on Sub-Level Five, forcing himself to eat today's mystery casserole, which smelled vaguely (very vaguely) of cow. It was funny how spoilt a decade of plenty made you. Ten years ago he would have given his right arm for such a dish. Today, despite his empty stomach, it was all he could do to choke it down.
The improvised screwdriver helped a lot. Al had surreptitiously doctored his orange juice, and was now enjoying a glass of brilliant yellow fluid that never seemed to empty—because each time he took a sip, he slipped in a bit more vodka from his hip flask.
He was trying to cut down on expenses, which was why he was doing gastric penance instead of whipping up something decent in his suite. His bank account was sapped dry, and he was doing his best not to rack up any more debt on the VISA. Divorce was never cheap. Divorcing Sharon had proved downright expensive. It wasn't that Al had a bad lawyer, it was just that she had a better one. Not to mention the fact that he had seriously miscalculated. Thinking that once the initial arraignment was over and the charges of adultery were laid out in the cold he would once again be a free agent, he had treated himself to an unforgettable night on the town, and several more delightful little one-night stands. With Stevie officially cancer-free and on the mend, and things at Starbright moving along absolutely swimmingly, Al had been ready to cut loose and have a good time. What he hadn't bargained on was how these indiscretions would reflect on him in court.
Sharon's lawyer had really taken him to the cleaners. Figures. Woman cheats on you and divorces you for her new lover, and when they get you up in the dock they make you look like the philanderer! At least it was over now. Sharon was paid off, and two days ago she and her bricklayer had packed up their cargo-friendly vehicles and taken off on a cross-country convoy tour, destination unknown. Al had his work, he had the knowledge that Stevie was going to live a full and happy life, and he had Chester. In short, he had everything that mattered.
It had been just over a month since the wonderful news about Stevie's remission. He was getting stronger every day, and he was back at school. The color was returning to his cheeks, and his body was filling out again as his appetite returned. There was even a thin, fine black fuzz on his head, that Celestina was certain would grow into a fine crop of curls in no time. Al rode into town every Saturday morning. He would zip Chester into his new jacket, the dog's head sticking out over the zipper, and hit the road right after breakfast. They would play with Stevie, and Al would coach him in English and talk to Celestina. They would eat lunch and supper together, and then Al would say goodbye. He always stopped by the liquor store in the strip mall to stock up on essentials for the week before heading back out to Starbright.
The first time they had tried it, Chester hadn't known what to think, but after that he loved the rides as much as his master did. When Al brought out the leathers, the dog began to leap with ecstasy. He was a little furry Wild One at heart.
If it weren't for the money issues, Al would have been perfectly happy. He was in the hole. Way in the hole. Divorce equals lump sum, and despite the machinations of Gavin Prendergast Stevie's hospital expenses hadn't been taken into account by the bench when meting out compensation to Sharon. Al didn't think she had really been trying to suck him this dry: to be fair, she hadn't had any idea how close to the edge of the financial cliff they had been getting. He had seen to it that she didn't find out, and hoped she never would. Above all, he was going to see to it that Celestina never did.
In any case, the Navy wasn't going to let him sleep in the gutter. He was very comfortably lodged here at the Project, even if it did make liaisons with young lovelies a bit of a challenge. He wasn't going to starve, either, though this wasn't exactly the most appetizing way to get by. His only expenses were gas for the bike, food for Chester, and his little cupboard of liberty.
Sometimes he thought maybe he was drinking too heavily. But no, he decided. He was almost never drunk, and anyway, a man had to have a few little pleasures.
The thought of pleasures reminded him of how nice it would be to have a cigar. Not only would that set him up for a very productive afternoon (they were all very productive afternoons now!), it would also get the taste of this mush out of his mouth. He polished off the last of his screwdriver and made his way upstairs to his office. He could smoke all he wanted in there: it was his own private workspace, after all.
He hadn't been drawing on the Chevillo for more than three minutes when the telephone rang. It wasn't the intra-Project phone, either: it was the outside line. Al let it ring again while he drained his flask of the last four ounces of vodka. It was probably Congressman Davies.
"Calavicci," he said.
"Where the hell is my sister?" a deranged voice demanded.
Al's eyelids fluttered several times. "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number," he said mildly, moving to hang up.
"Not if you're Calavicci I don't! Where the hell is Sharon?"
Al recognized the voice at last. He had only ever heard it laughing and boisterous before. This was a whole new context. It belonged to Rich, Sharon's kid brother. He tried to suppress a laugh. "I don't know," he said.
"Topeka, that's where!" Rich cried. "She called me from Topeka last night!"
"Well, then I guess you know where she is," Al said sweetly. "Or where she was last night, since I imagine she's moved on by now. Personally, I didn't even know what direction they were headed in when they—"
"What the hell are you thinking, letting her take off to Kansas like that?" Rich bellowed.
"I had no say in the matter," Al informed him. "We're divorced."
He could almost hear the angry man choking on those words.
"You're… what?" he gasped, as if he was unable to say anything more.
"Divorced. She divorced me. We settled a week ago. She's on holiday with her new man." Somehow saying it blithely that way hurt more than any of the other admissions of this loss. Al dug out the key to the bottom drawer of the desk.
"New man? New man?" Poor Rich. He sounded like he was having a coronary embolism just thinking about it. "Damn that woman! You mean she just took off?"
"Just like that," Al agreed. Then something occurred to him. "How'd you get this number?"
"Sharon gave it to me," the other man said absently. "Said in case anything happened with Dad—what the hell am I going to do about Dad?"
"What do you mean? He's in a nursing home, isn't he?" Al asked.
"Yeah, but Sharon took care of the visiting and crap… aw, well. He can just be lonely till she gets back. She is coming back, right?"
"How would I know?" Al said, fumbling with the lock on the drawer. "We're divorced. What she does isn't any of my business anymore." That stung, but he tried to keep his voice light. The drawer was open, anyway, and that was something to be thankful for. His fingers closed on the cool glass object inside.
"Divorced… she get a good deal?"
Al didn't dignify that with an answer. He was too busy refilling his flash with bourbon from the bottom drawer. He balanced the phone between chin and shoulder.
"Aw, forget it. Like you'd tell me. This guy she ran off with—why are they holidaying in Kansas?"
"I don't know!" Al snapped. He took a drink, which blurred the edge of his annoyance. "Until you called I had no idea she was even in Kansas. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really am actually employed here, and I don't have time for this."
"No, wait!" There was a new desperation in Rich's voice now, replacing the anger. "Wait. This guy she ran off with. What do you know about him?"
Al closed his eyes in exasperation. "He's half her age. He's a bricklayer. He's Mexican. He has a sister-and-law and a nephew in Wickenburg."
"That's not what I mean," Rich said. This time the worry in his tone was plain despite his efforts to disguise it beneath a gruff exterior. "I mean… you know… is she gonna be okay? Is he gonna hurt her?"
Al considered this. He liked to think of Juan as a nozzle, but that wasn't really fair. The truth was that he was a hard-working kid with a part time job running letters across the border between Celestina and her husband. He loved Stevie and had brazened out what had to have been an uncomfortable situation to stay with the kid right till the end of his illness. "No," he said resolutely. "No, I don't think he'd hurt her. I'll bet she's having a great time."
"I hope so," Rich admitted. "You know what sisters are like. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em."
"Sure," Al said softly, thinking briefly of Trudy. "She'll be fine, Rich. I'll call you up if she gets in touch."
"Thanks," the other man said. Then the line went dead.
Al couldn't reflect on this fraternal love, because a wave of annoyance overtook him. Where did Sharon get off bandying his top-secret landline number to people? HE wasn't supposed to give it out to anyone, except family at his discretion. And Sharon's family wasn't his family anymore.
Sharon's family. Al thought of Pat, all alone in the nursing home with nothing but his own decaying mind to keep him company. What would he do when Sunday rolled around and Sharon didn't come? Would he notice? That was stupid. Of course he would notice. He would be devastated. The man had already lost his wife in a way that was completely senseless to him. Must he also lose his daughter?
As Al turned back to the heap of requisition forms, he made up his mind.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMWMWMWMWMWMWMIt was a brilliant, sunny summer day, and the seniors' residence and care home looked very cheerful and domestic—less like a prison or a museum than usual. Al made a slick pass at the pretty young nurse, then made his way up the hall towards Pat's room, striding as nonchalantly as he could in the hopes that no one would notice that he was actually way too skinny to have the kind of beer belly he looked like he was packing under his leather jacket. To his surprise, he could hear voices coming from behind the door. Not wanting to interrupt, he paused to listen.
"And there he was!" Pat was saying. "The great Beiderbecke himself. Boy, I never heard anything like that horn. There was an angel in the man's mouth, blowing away on that cornet. Never heard anything like it. Beautiful. And Mary, she's got tears in her eyes, and I take her out onto the dance floor, and the Wolverines are playing, and there's Bix Beiderbecke bringing heaven to earth with that music…"
Al knocked.
"Who's there?" Pat demanded.
"It's Al Calavicci, Mr. Quinn. Can I come in?"
"What kind of species?" the old man called.
"Not species, sir. Cal-a-vee-chee. Al. It's Al."
The door opened and a young man in black held it open for Al. "It's Aunt Sharon's husband, Grandpa," he said. Then he flushed. "Ex-husband," he amended softly.
Al grinned. "Luke!" he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, just stopping by for a visit. You know." Luke shrugged and closed the door. "What about you?"
"Same thing," Al said. "Sounds like you two were having quite the conversation."
"Grandpa saw Bix Beiderbecke!" Luke enthused. "Grandpa, did you know Al met Louis Armstrong?"
"Louis Armstrong?" Pat said. "He was good. Didn't have anything on Beiderbecke, though. Only Kraut I ever liked. Beiderbecke. Now there was a cornet."
Al frowned. "Not sure if I've ever heard him," he said.
"Probably not," Luke said, almost dejectedly. "Nobody has. He died when he was twenty-eight. Drank himself to death. He was a genius. The geniuses always die young."
"Not always," Al pointed out. "There's Armstrong."
"Yeah," Luke allowed glumly. "But he was a happy genius. The unhappy ones always die young."
Pat slapped the boy's knee. "You cheer up! That's no way to talk! It's a Sunday! Be happy! Sharon will be here soon. My Sharon visits every Sunday."
"Actually, Pat, that's why I'm here," Al said. "Sharon couldn't come, so I decided I would instead."
Pat looked up, startled. "Sharon couldn't come?" he echoed unhappily.
"No, not this week," Al said. "But I brought someone to meet you." He unzipped his coat and produced Chester, who had been dozing comfortably against his abdomen. The terrier yawned and looked around.
Pat frowned. "What's that?" he said suspiciously.
"This is Chester. He's my dog. I didn't like to leave him alone all day, so I brought him with me."
"That's not a dog, that's a guinea pig!" Pat exclaimed.
Al affected indignation. "Is not!" he said with a good-natured huff. "I'll show you. Speak, boy! Speak!"
Chester barked. Pat grinned. "So it is a dog!" he said. "Let me have him here!" He laughed as he took the animal and stroked his fur. "What'd you say his name was?"
"Chester," Al said.
"Chester," Pat repeated. "Pleased to meet you, Chester. Chester, this is Luke. Good boy. Dresses funny, though. But that's okay. Al dresses funny to. I do, myself. Nothing wrong with that, eh?"
Al hadn't expected the dog would go over so well. Pat spent the better part of an hour talking to and about him. Eventually, Luke got to his feet and announced with apathy that he had to get home. Al excused himself hastily, leaving the old man in charge of the dog, and followed the boy into the corridor.
"Got stuck visiting Gramps, huh?" Al asked.
Luke shook his head. "No, I wanted to come," he said.
Al hadn't really expected that. He had thought the kid had been driven here at gunpoint, and had been about to congratulate him for not letting his disappointment in the waste of his weekend—as most kids his age would have seen such a task—show. "You did?"
"Yeah," Luke said. "I know I never really learned how to relate to Grandpa, but since Aunt Sharon ran off with that bricklayer I knew he'd be by himself. Not much fun to be by yourself."
"You sound like you know what you're taking about," Al said softly.
"Yeah," Luke grunted. "So I've never fit in. Big deal. It's not like you'd know what that's like."
"You'd be surprised," Al told him.
"Sure. War hero, astronaut, captain in the Navy. I can tell you have trouble fitting in." There was the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. Al got the impression that the boy had been having a miserable week.
"You want to talk about it?" Al asked.
As he had expected, Luke shook his head.
"Okay. I respect that," Al told him. He knew how important it was to give folks space when they didn't want to talk. He also knew, however, what it felt like to feel you could never approach anyone or unload the crushing burden weighing on your mind. He didn't know what to do, so he fell back on a cliché.
"Listen," he said quietly, pulling out one of his cards and scribbling the number to his private line onto the back. "You ever need anything, give me a call, okay? This is my night number, and this one on the front is where you can reach me during the day. Anything you need, you call me."
"Seriously?" Luke asked, and there was something like wonder in his eyes.
"Seriously," Al promised.
The boy's glum expression melted into a smile. "Thanks," he said. "You're excellent, Uncle Al."
Al shrugged off the compliment. "What are ex-uncles for?" he asked.
Luke left and Al went back to sit with Pat. After a while the old man hid Chester under his lap robe, and Al wheeled him out onto the grounds. They spent about an hour in the sun, then went back inside. Pat was getting sleepy, so Al helped him into bed and said his goodbyes. Then he tucked Chester back inside his jacket and departed.
The night was young, so he went cruising on the bike. It didn't take him long to find a girl. Her name was Sandy and she was a parking meter attendant who happened to dote on small dogs. Al treated her to an al fresco meal (purchased from a hot dog vendor downtown), and then they went up to her apartment. It was actually a very good day. He was glad he'd decided to head out here.