The Next(35)

At that moment, I couldn't get myself to care a fuck.

I'd been mistaken about his motivation to get into my apartment these  last couple of days. I'd talked myself into thinking he was merely  working this sucker for information via a manipulated undercurrent of  sexual attraction. Yet in spite of my crap, he wanted more from me, and  this attraction had been drawing him farther inside my lair since the  first second he knocked on my door days ago. It was all the more  wrenching to learn that, when push came to shove, I was not what he  really wanted. Or I was not what he'd ever let himself really want. What  the fuck else could I conclude? Why else would he have pushed away from  me?

I could feel that morbid, deflating feeling once again creep from the  grimy apartment walls, across the lumpy, shadowy floor, through my bare  feet, and up my legs toward my core.

But there was a new twist on this invasion. I now had in my possession a  new way of battling it. This time … this time it was not I who backed  off. This time it had been Marzoli. Instinctively, I realized helping  his investigation into the deaths of Nathan and Ruben was the only way  to break Marzoli's resistance to me.

"How do you plan on uncovering the body?" I asked.

"By getting into that damn apartment."

"But Layworth never leaves."

"Then I'll get invited in."

"Into his bedroom?"

He paused, thinking, cogs clicking their teeth into grooves. His eyes  darted to the floor, to the window, then paused up at the ceiling.  Finally he stared directly at me and responded to my last question with  pulse-elevating conviction.

"Yes."

I looked up at him blankly, then realized what the fucker was intending to do.

He'd get invited over the way Ruben had gotten invited over. The way  Nathan had gotten invited over. By being the next to put on a show for  Mr. Perfect and then the next to be hailed to traverse the courtyard.

In bullet points, it made sense. He'd not be breaking any law by  uncovering a body if he were invited to enter the apartment. Marzoli had  the kind of irresistible physique that could start a war. I had no  doubt he had abs whose definition could be seen all the way from Staten  Island. Layworth hadn't gotten his rocks off in days, and was obviously  pent up like a loaded cum cannon. There was no one in a better position  to light that fuse than Marzoli.

But all the same … holy shit!

Marzoli gathered one of many piles of clothing on the floor in his arms  and said, "We've got about five hours before the kids come home from  school. Time to do the laundry."

Although I adored his infuriating, leap-frogging logic, the connection between those kids and my laundry was beyond me.

"You start with that pile of shit on your piano," he ordered.

"Why?" I asked.

"We're opening the curtain all the way. I'm not about to be seen as a  slob, you slob," he winked with a grin and added, "Do as Miss Hannigan  tells you."

In spite of my apprehension, I laughed.

After all, what the fuck kind of Puerto Rican Sicilian makes an Annie reference?





Chapter Nineteen

Four busy, sweaty hours later I was standing in a brand-spanking new crib.

On the way back from dropping four large trash bags full of laundry to  Rosalinda at the laundromat, Marzoli picked up a bottle of wood polish.  The spotless shiny piano reflected the gleaming mopped floor, the neatly  placed books on the dusted bookshelves, and the litter-free desk. Every  square inch of the kitchen counter was completely visible, the dishes  having been washed, dried, and placed in the cupboards. The mounds of  yellowed music scores were sorted in orderly fashion in drawers. No less  than eight trash bags of refuse and recycling had been hauled down to  the curb as I Windexed the smudges of grime and mold off the walls as  best I could.

We had to open the window again to cool the room, ripe and muggy from  the heat of our bodies. The more we'd worked, the damper his polo shirt  had become, sealing tighter and tighter to his form. Who knew hard work  could make someone look even hotter? The more he labored, the more I  realized his efforts were fueled by far more than setting the stage for  his upcoming performance. Far more than an anal retentive need to  cleanse his environment. His subtle glances in my direction as he tied  trash bags, hoisted piles of books, and scraped hardened soda off the  counter were accompanied by warm looks and toothy dimpled grins. He was  magnanimously cleaning for my own well-being, and in turn, he was  deriving joy from my reactions to his generosity. We were in some  marvelous feedback loop of rowdy, sweaty labor and buoyant glee.         

     



 

And then it was done.

The apartment was as immaculate as it was possible to get in four hours.  Every surface was as smooth and unwrinkled as the crisp shirt Marzoli  had worn when I first laid on eyes on him. My eyes reddened with tears  of disbelief. As much as Richard Dreyfus's slimy mashed potato mound of  my apartment had once been an extension of my slimy disheveled emotional  state, my brain seemed to relish this new, gleaming, orderly landscape.  It sparkled, it was orderly, and it smelled like lemon and clean linen.  It felt healthy, and it was mine. I took a large, full breath and  released it. I was still imprisoned in a six-hundred fifty square foot  box, but feeling freer than I had in a long time.

If I gained nothing else from Marzoli than this, I was damned grateful.

Marzoli handed me a soft fresh white towel and directed me to take a  shower. God. To start clean. To wash into the drain the anger, the  regret, the confusion, the hostility, and the repression. As the water  poured over me, I kept my ears open for the squeak of the bathroom door.  For the rush of cool air that would indicate Marzoli was joining me.

The door did not open.

When I emerged from the bathroom dressed in clean clothes, Marzoli  turned to me, polishing the silver framed photo of Johanna and me.

"Do you want this front and center on your desk or back on the shelf?"

I knew if Johanna walked in the room right now, she'd look around and  smile with approval. I knew she'd view this environmental improvement as  a definitive step closer to my commitment to a marble kitchen-island  future with her. When Johanna returned to ask for my thumbs up or thumbs  down on that future, I knew which direction my thumb would go.

"In the trash."

Marzoli shook his head. "If you were ready to throw it away, you would have."

He placed the photo on the shelf between two other gleaming, polished,  framed photos that had not been placed there previously. I suddenly  recognized the children pictured in them. My heart squeezed tight.

"What did you … where did you … " I stuttered.

"I found them buried in your closet in a box. Mom and Dad?"

The pair of photos we'd not shot with rifles stared back at me like  visitors from another world. I froze in a catatonic onslaught of mixed  emotions. I closed my eyes as the previous euphoria was suddenly  punctured by terror …

Paul and I held the axes above our shoulders, poised to strike as a hot, heavy cloud of smoke engulfed us.

I shook my head vigorously.

No! I will not let this memory victimize me!

"Tell me." I heard Marzoli speak to me firmly.

"Tell you what?" I retorted.

We shouted at the top of our lungs. "Now, Mom? Now?"

For the first time, Marzoli's voice rang with true anger. "Tell me where you just went!"

He was loud. Too loud.

"Keep your voice down!" I whispered firmly.

We immediately bolted to the window to see if Marzoli's outburst had  attracted any attention. It had not. We'd previously decided Marzoli  would begin his performance the moment Layworth began to stir. The man  did not stir, asleep undisturbed on his bed in a silk bathrobe, his  laptop on his chest.

"I fear," I said quietly, "the kids will return from school before Layworth wakes up."

Marzoli remained stern.

"Then tell me this," he said. "What do you fear will happen if you let me in on it?"

"You don't understand," I retorted. "Cleaning my apartment is the easy part."

"Try me."

I was backed into a tight corner. My stomach was knotting.

"My past has nothing to do with the investigation. Isn't that what you're here for? Isn't that the sole reason?"

"Yes," he said under his breath, betraying the bullshit of his reply.

"Marzoli, what do you want from me?"

He picked up the pictures of my parents and thrust them at me  vehemently. "If you don't start with the fucking truth, then I want more  than you're willing to give."

I was right. The instant he heard me mutter Grandfather during one of my  attacks, the bees buzzing in his hive would never settle down until he  figured out why. Ignoring a mystery as troubling as mine was simply not  in his goddamn iron-fisted Puerto Rican Sicilian constitution.

I felt flattered but helpless as fuck.

"I don't know what happened to you that you're trying to kill," he said,  "but it's obviously fighting back. It already tried to give you  frostbite on the fire escape. What's your plan? To wait until it finds  the right moment to finish you off for good?"