I couldn’t keep up with it, either. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
“You need Annie to help you,” Grandma said. “She’s real smart. She’s fixing up everyone at bowling. She even had a man in mind for me, but I told her he was too old. I don’t want some flabby, wrinkled codger to take care of. I want a young stud with a nice firm behind.”
My mother refilled her wineglass and my father put his fork down and hit his head on the table. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.
“Go for it,” I said to Grandma.
“I’m not so old,” Grandma said. “There’s parts of me don’t sit as high as they used to, but I’ve got some miles left.”
My father pantomimed stabbing himself in the eye with his fork.
Okay, so my family’s a little dysfunctional. It’s not like they’re dangerous. At least we all sit down and have dinner together. Plus, by Jersey standards, we’re pretty much normal.
NINE
MY FATHER WAS SETTLED IN, watching sitcom reruns, when I left. My mother and grandmother were at the small kitchen table enjoying a ritual glass of port, celebrating the return of order and cleanliness in the kitchen. And I departed in the powder blue and white ’53 Buick that was kept in the garage for emergencies. Sitting on the seat beside me was a doggy bag that included fried chicken, soft little dinner rolls from the bakery, a jar of pickled beets, half a homemade apple pie, and a bottle of red table wine. The wine had been sent along, I’m sure, with the hopes that I might have a romantic evening with Morelli and make a grandchild. So much the better if I got married first.
I drove past the Bugkowski house out of morbid curiosity to see if my car was there. Not only wasn’t the car parked at the curb, but the house was dark. No one home. Probably, Big Buggy took his parents for a drive in his new RAV4.
Twenty minutes later, I rolled into the lot to my apartment building and did another car check. No RAV4. No black Lincoln Town Car. No green SUV that belonged to Morelli. No megabucks shiny black Ranger car. I found a space close to the building’s back door, parked, and locked up. I took the elevator to the second floor, walked down the hall, and listened at my door. All was quiet. I let myself in, kicked the door closed, and a swarthy guy with lots of curly black hair jumped out of the kitchen at me. He was holding a huge knife, and his dark eyes were narrowed.
“I want photograph,” he said. “Give it to me, or I kill you big-time. I make you very painful.”
I grabbed the bottle of wine from the doggy bag, hit the guy in the face with it as hard as I could, his eyes rolled back, and he crashed to the floor. I’d acted totally on instinct and was as surprised as he was that he got knocked out. I put a hand to the wall to steady myself and took a couple deep breaths. It felt icky to have the guy in my apartment, so I cuffed him and dragged him into the hall. I returned to my apartment and closed and locked the door in case there was a partner lurking somewhere.
I retrieved my Smith & Wesson from the cookie jar and walked through my apartment looking in closets and under the bed, finding dust bunnies but no more swarthy guys. I went back to the kitchen and called Bill Berger.
“There was a nasty-looking guy in my apartment when I came home just now,” I told him. “He had a big knife, and he said he’d kill me if I didn’t give him the photograph.”
“And?” Berger asked.
“I hit him in the face with a bottle of table wine and knocked him out.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s in the hall.”
There was a beat of silence. “What’s he doing in the hall?”
“I didn’t want him in my apartment, so I dragged him into the hall.”
More silence. Probably, Berger wasn’t believing any of this.
“Did you check for ID?” he finally asked.
Damn! “No. Hold on, and I’ll go look.”
I opened the door, and the hall was empty. No swarthy guy.
“He’s gone,” I said to Berger.
“Problem solved,” Berger said. And he hung up.
I closed and locked the door, plugged my stun gun into a wall socket, returned the Smith & Wesson to the cookie jar, and opened the bottle of wine. Thank God it hadn’t broken, because I really needed a drink. A Cosmo or a Margarita or a water glass filled with whiskey would have been even better. I brought the bottle into the living room, settled in front of the television, tuned in to the Food Network, and tried to get my heart rate under control.
Some woman was making cupcakes. Cupcakes are good, I told myself. There’s an innocence to a cupcake. A joy. I poured a second glass of wine, and I watched the woman frost the cupcakes.