Sunburn(4)

"Why?" said Arty. "What makes you think he has a story?"

But now Joey got shy. He had dark blue eyes that were a little surprising against his jet-black hair, and when he got to feeling bashful they narrowed down; the long lashes shaded them like awnings. "I dunno. Maybe he doesn't."

Arty Magnus, reluctant newspaperman, had done a one-eighty, had come to feel that maybe he did. "His background? War experience? Wha'?"

"I dunno, Arty. Let it go, it's probably a dumb idea."

"Nah, come on, Joey," the editor coaxed. "If there's really something there—"

Joey Goldman sighed. He leaned a little lower across the padded bar, twined his fingers, and cast wary upward glances over both his shoulders. He pursed his lips, then gave an instant's worth of nervous smile that was erased almost before it could be glimpsed. "Arty, are we, whaddyacallit, off the record heah?"

"Of course we are," said Arty Magnus, but he said it a little too blithely for Joey's taste. Joey raised a single finger, and his face took on a look that Arty had never seen before. It was a look not of threat, exactly, but of purpose and of a solemn pride that carried with it a burden and a sadness. The slight cleft in Joey's chin grew suddenly deeper, his skin appeared suddenly more shadowed with the full day's growth of beard.

"No shit now," he said. "Off the record?"

Magnus, slightly chastened, slightly rattled, said, "Yeah, Joey. Yeah."

Joey Goldman sat up straight, gently tugged the placket of his shirt, gave his neck a rearranging twist. He put his palms flat on the bar, leaned close to Arty Magnus, and softly said, "My old man, he's the Godfather."

The blender was slushing up a batch of frozen daiquiris. The air conditioner was whining. There were conversations all around them, and here and there cigarette lighters were rasping into flame.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"Cut it out."

But Joey just looked at Arty, and Arty understood he wasn't kidding. He drained his beer, held the empty bottle against his lips an extra second, and tried to think. Then he said, "Goldman?"

"Try Delgatto," Joey said. "Vincente Delgatto."

"Holy shit," said Magnus.

Joey lifted an eyebrow. The momentary hardness had gone out of his face, was replaced by a wry look, a little bit self-mocking but tempered by years of settling into the oddness of his beginnings and making a life that by now felt hardly odd at all. "So whaddya think?" he said. " 'Zere a book there?"

"Jesus Christ," said Magnus.

"Well, do me a favor," Joey said. "Fuhget we talked about it. It's a very dumb idea."

"It isn't dumb—"

"It's impossible. It's against everything the old guy thinks is right. He'd never do it. It's just tavern talk."

"But—"

"Nah, I shouldn'ta brought it up. I guess I figured, Hey, you work for the paper, you probably know guys who write books."

Magnus put his bottle down and twisted it against his soggy coaster. The noise of the bar flooded in on him, surrounded him like puffs of cotton, both buffered him and kept him pinned. "Guys who write books," he said. "Yeah, I know a few."





3


"OK, ya don't want religious, fine, it don't have to be religious. But I'm tellin' ya, really, somethin's gotta go there. A birdbath, a Cupid, a fountain, somethin'. The way it is, it's like . . . naked."

Sandra Dugan nodded, smiled politely, and let her father-in-law continue with his decorating advice. They were standing out on the patio, which was, in feet, somewhat radically austere. An expanse of chalky flagstone gave onto an apron of pale blue tile around the pool; on the far side were clustered a few simple lounges. A modest iron table and chairs hunkered under a broad umbrella. Beyond the flagstones, there was no lawn, just white gravel; palms sprouted wherever there was earth for them to root. Aralia and oleander hedges framed the property, and here and there herbs and flowers sprouted in clay pots that reminded Sandra of the French Riviera, a place she had never been.

"And ovah heah," the Godfather was saying, "this empty corner, look, ya put a little love seat, ya have a guy build a trellis for ya, better still an arbor, like. Ya put grapes. Beautiful. Ya sit inna love seat, ya look up at grapes. Fabulous."

Sandra nodded. She wondered if she could possibly explain to Vincente that what she really enjoyed looking at was air. This, for a girl who'd grown up in cramped and cluttered Queens apartments, was the great novelty, the design breakthrough. Air. Not hassocks, drapes, or doilies. Not torch lamps, end tables, or souvenir ashtrays stuffed with crumpled butts. Not weird-shaped glasses with pink spiral stems, not decanters filled with colored water, not radiator covers with little octagons. . . .