15
For Angelina the evening had been at least as flabbergasting as it was for her old flame.
When her Uncle Louie had appeared at her side at the bar where she'd found Sal, the abrupt combining of the forbidden with the incongruous had dizzied her, had hit her like a mix of pills and booze. Her eyes had gone unfocussed, the sinews of her knees had briefly caved, but somehow she had bluffed her way through a charade of social niceties. She'd kissed her uncle on the cheek. She'd introduced Michael, realizing in an instant that he—a young man, a date—served naturally as camouflage. The three of them performed a little skit of small talk as Ziggy stood apart, skulking in the shadows of the vines and wondering if he would be unmasked; as Angelina, stealing glances at the barkeep's hands, begged her reeling mind to keep alert; as Uncle Louie thrummed with his chance to be a hero to the family; as Michael fairly swooned with the desperate romance of it all.
But the small talk could not go on forever, there had to be a time when Angelina and her relative would have a heart-to-heart.
It happened not long after they left Raul's to walk in no particular direction through the hot streets with their slinking cats, their sleeping dogs nestled against the tires of parked cars. At a quiet intersection, Michael looked at Angelina, tried to read in her eyes what it was she needed from him, then gave a somewhat theatrical yawn and announced that he was tired, he was going home— which meant, of course, that he wasn't tired and he was going out.
Alone now with his niece, Uncle Louie said, "Cuppa coffee?"
They ducked into a side-street cafe, really just a Cuban grocery with a few tables set up in an alley dimly lit with strings of Christmas lights. They settled into slatted wooden chairs from which hung little curls of peeling varnish, and after they'd ordered, Angelina said, "So Uncle Louie, why are you here?"
"Why are you here?" he asked right back.
"I asked you first."
He was fidgeting with a sugar packet, shaking all the sugar to one end. He replied as though the answer was self-evident. "I came to find you."
Angelina had been uneasily proud of her getaway from Pelham Manor, the unpracticed deftness with which she'd sneaked and fibbed. Now all of a sudden she wondered if she'd fooled anyone at all, if there'd been even a moment when she wasn't in the unrelenting bosom of her family. "You knew I was here?"
Uncle Louie didn't answer right away. Instead, he folded his hands, tilted his head, fixed Angelina with a cockeyed smile full of fondness and collusion. Then he said something he would never say to anyone up north, because up north he could not imagine that it might be taken as a compliment. "Angelina, you and me, we're a lot alike, I think. My tape—I saw the way you looked at it. This town—I could tell it struck a chord with you."
"Who else knows?" said Angelina. She couldn't entirely keep panic out of her voice, nor could she wholly banish from her mind a shaming and equivocal hope that her father might yet rescue her and spoil everything, drag her kicking and screaming away from this splendid adventure she shouldn't be having.
Her uncle had hoped for a different kind of reply, some confirmation from his favorite niece that they did in fact have lots in common. Hiding his deflation, he said, "Who else? No one else. Nobody knows I'm here either. And dollars to donuts no one figures it out."
He leaned low across his elbows, his tone turned even more conspiratorial. "Our family, Angelina, I'll tell ya something about our family. They think they're close-knit, they pride themselves on being loyal, but the truth is, no one really pays attention t'each other, no one sees enough to really know what anybody else is feeling, wanting."
The waitress brought the coffees. Steamed milk foamed on top, the bubbles turned blue and red and green beneath the Christmas lights.
"Now it's your turn, Angelina," Louie said. "Why did you come here?"
She drizzled sugar into her coffee, watched the crystals turn translucent, then congeal into a coffee- colored paste, then sink beneath the foam. Finally she said, very softly but with a serene defiance, "I came to find the love of my life. And I have."
Louie did not expect quite so fraught an answer. He settled back against the peeling varnish of his chair to mull it over. He looked at Angelina with wonder and almost shyly, the way a father looks upon his daughter as a bride, and he trembled for her, knowing suddenly that she was grown and he had no wisdom to impart, no advice that could assure her happiness. Still, he hated to see her hurt or disappointed. "Angelina," he said, "maybe it's none of my business, maybe I should keep my mouth shut, I mean, hey, wha' do I know? But okay, lemme say it straight out: Don't'cha think maybe he's gay?"