Part 11 (1/2)

”We're having a party in that apartment,” he says, waving his handkerchief at the door. ”You know?” He looks at me levelly. ”Maybe you'd like to join us.”

”No, no.” I back myself nearly to the mailboxes, my elbow hitting one metal box hard.

”Sorry,” he says evenly, with a shrug. ”I thought you were ... someone else.”

”Someone else?”

”Never mind.” He shakes his head. ”I got it wrong.”

He offers a tilted head and a grin, and then I watch as he opens the door, disappearing inside.

It is at this moment that I realize I am smoking so deeply my throat feels raw, thick with tar. By the time I get to my car, I have finished the cigarette and feel my stomach turn. There is this sense that the closer I come the more things slip away.

I sit in front of the wheel for maybe fifteen minutes, trying to explain things to myself. Edie. Joe Avalon. Alice. What kind of sticky web connects these three? I drive around the block a half dozen times. Then I park back in the lot and get out of the car again, not sure what I am going to do.

I find myself approaching Apartment 5 again with a sick feeling in my stomach I decide to walk behind the building into the wide alley. Overcome by the mingling smells of ripe garbage and heavy jasmine, I put my hand over my nose. There is a white apartment number painted on each overflowing trash can, and I quickly locate Number 5. There is one small window facing the alley. I walk over to it, conscious of every small tap and scuffle my shoes make. I peer in between the shutter slats, seemingly drunk on my own sense of invisibility. I can't see much, but I can see this.

I can see Edie, her whipped cream hair piled high on top of her head, sitting on the edge of a bathtub wearing a half-slip and stockings. Her hands cover her face, but I know it is her.

At first I think she has a scarf tied jauntily around her upper arm.

And then, feeling foolish, I realize.

This, of course, is what could bring together a vulnerable Pasadena housewife and a Los Angeles shark. If nothing else, this. If there's a way to describe it, it's like the world, once sealed so tight and exact, has fallen open-no, been cracked open, and inside, inside ...

I am ready to tell him, to tell Bill. To tell him at least what I have seen, if not the lengths I've gone to see it.

Even if I don't know what the clues point to, the clues themselves are troubling enough. Joe Avalon in his home, his bedroom. Edie Beauvais. G.o.d, does Charlie know? Shouldn't Charlie know? I tell myself it is Bill's job to string clues like this together. I can, as tenderly as possible, give him the clues, and he can see what they add up to. As hard as it will be for him to hear, I have to tell.

That night, Alice suggests an evening out at a dark-walled Latin dance club.

At first, I decline her invitation. But, knowing how hard it is to get Bill alone anymore and knowing Alice will be the one dancing while Bill will mostly sit and watch, nursing one watery drink for the entire evening, I decide to go.

As I sit there with him in the curved booth, however, I am frozen. How do I say these things to him? I try to imagine how he would tell me.

”Sis,” he says, head turned, hand lightly on my forearm. I can't look into those eyes. I look down instead at the slightly dented knuckles on his cop hands. When he was on the beat, they'd often be grated raw across the joints from rough arrests, from holding men down while his partner cuffed them, from climbing fire escapes and breaking up bar fights and dragging drunks through cracked doorways.

His hands are smoother now but still studded with small, healed-over tears, flecks of white from old scars, old stories mapped onto him, some stories he won't tell even me.

His hand rests on my arm. ”Sis.”

”Yes.” I manage a sidelong glance at his sharp, focused eyes.

”How are things?”

”Fine, Bill.”

'You like this Standish guy, huh?” The familiar strain to sound casual. Even after all these months, Bill still turns away, teeth clenched, when he sees Mike with his hand on me.

”He's fine. That's all. You know.” This is what we do.

He shrugs a little, softening. ”Well, Alice says he's okay, so.”

”She should know,” I say. I have to do it now. Now.

As if on cue, Alice flits by on the dance floor, bottle green dress throbbing, a man with a pencil-thin mustache leading, but just barely.

”Doesn't that bother you?” I say. ”Her dancing with other men?”

”No, I like it,” he blurts out, eyes fixed on her until she slips out of sight. ”I mean, she enjoys it,” he quickly adds with a shy smile. ”I'm no match. I can't keep up with her.”

His eyes tracing her, sparking with energy. No I like it. This is my wife. Look at her. Christ would you look.

Is there no end to the devotion? What dark corners would it furrow around and where would it end? What are its limits?

”You know what Charlie said to me,” Bill says. ”He said, Billy, you couldn't have dreamed up a wife like that.”

”Yes, Bill.” I steal another look, and I see he's glowing. He's nearly red-faced with-what is it? Pride.

”She's very special, Bill,” I add. A sharp pain, my own nails into the heel of my own hand. What am I waiting for?

”I remember, on our honeymoon ...”

He can't possibly- ”Sis, she was so beautiful it hurt to look. On the beach, hand over her eyes, looking out on the water and talking gentle and low, dizzy from the sun, talking about how I'd changed everything for her.”

'You did.” I nod.

”I must be going soft from that last drink,” he apologizes with a grin, tapping his fingers lightly on my arm.

”No, I know.” I'm ready. I am.

Lost in his own thoughts, he turns his face away from me suddenly. Then, ”Lora, I do know she's not like the other girls. Like Margie, Kathleen ... I know she's not like them. But...”

He knows. He knows she's something foreign. Something not us. He tilts his head thoughtfully. ”She's been knocked around a little. And I've seen, from the job, what that can do. I know what that can do to a girl. Even the best girls.”

He looks at me, his face lit by the candle on the table. His eyes darken a little. I see it.

Then, decisively, he thrums two fingers on the table. ”But it hasn't done it to her. She fought it off. And, really, isn't that something?”

He smiles, waiting for me. For my rea.s.surance.

”Bill.” I can't bear it. I put my other hand on his. ”I want-” Then, just as he is about to lean toward me, to hear what I am saying, he spots Alice again on the dance floor.

I can see his eyes catch, lock. I can see a change sweep hard over his face.

She is looking at him. She's dancing with some man, any man, and looking at my brother. Her eyes like black flowers. She places one white hand across her collarbone, her mouth blood red. It's so open, so bare, I can't look.