David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

He flinched at her tone, withdrew his cheek and lowered her shirt.

“Frank- ”

“Can I tell you something?” he said, vexed. “You been drag-assing around this house the past I don’t know how long. Mumbling to yourself like Popeye.” He picked up his spoon, toyed with his soup. “Feel like I’m here all by myself.”

“Given who we owe for being here,” she said, “I’d say merely talking to myself requires a special courage.”

“Now, now, now. Like we had a choice. Got evicted last time, right? Lucky Roy had this place.”

Luck has nothing to do with it, Shel thought. Frank had met Roy Akers on a construction site, or that was the story at the time. It wasn’t till later, after considerable prodding, Shel learned that Roy and his Arkie transplant brothers weren’t nomad carpenters trailing after new construction up and down the valley. They were jackals. Crankers. Thieves. Shakedown artists. Worse, they owed their ability to operate to a ruthless, cagey old wolf named Felix Randall. No one in the Delta so much as felt an untoward impulse without paying Felix Randall for the privilege.

“Don’t kid yourself,” she said. “We’re just here to keep the lights on, ward off snoops and squatters.”

“Yeah, well, hey,” Frank said with a shrug. “Rent-free.”

“No such thing as rent-free, Frank. Sure as hell not with the likes of Roy Akers. We’ve had this discussion.”

Frank sighed. “While we’re on the subject of ‘we’ve had this discussion,’ remember that little talk we had a while back, about what we’d do if we came into a little money?”

He toyed with his sandwich, wearing an odd smile. His eyes zagged.

“What talk?” Shel said. “When?”

Frank shrugged. “Maybe I just thought about it. You know, like a little windfall.”

Shel sat down across from him. “What are you driving at?”

“Pull up stakes,” Frank said. “Haul ass outta here. Money in our pocket and gone gone gone.” He tasted his soup. “Any event, an opportunity’s come up. Nothing major. But it could give us just that kinda chance.” He glanced up, offering a wink and a smile. “You and me. You and me.”

Shel froze. “Roy know this?”

Frank pursed his lips and waved his spoon back and forth. “Our little secret.”

“You trying to get yourself killed?” She reached across the table and grabbed his wrist. “Promise me, Frank. Don’t get clever. Frank, look at me.”

Two months earlier, she’d almost fled in the night. Shaking Frank awake, she’d told him, “I’m going. Come with me.” Frank’d stared up at her, gripped her sleeve, and said, “Whoa, wait, stop. Please. Not that simple.” There was panic in his eyes when he said it, a look she didn’t want boring into her back. At which point she realized there’d be no walking out alone. Blame conscience, she thought, or habit, or that deadening haze inside your mind, whatever. The truth remains: You’re staying. You’re staying because, without you, Frank will crumble. And in that state he will undoubtedly do the very thing the Akers brothers will kill him for.

“Frank, I said look at me.”

Frank, smiling, prodded a wedge of meat with his spoon. “Chicken rice, mighty nice.”

Walking through the Tucson air terminal, Abatangelo fought intermittent bouts of vertigo adjusting to the speed of things, the freedom of movement, the colors. The presence of women. Erections surged and waned with an unsettling lack of discrimination. He ordered a cup of hot tea and sat by himself in the lounge, waiting for his flight.

He suffered a recurring premonition that something was about to go wrong. Any minute someone would press his face in close, a hand’s width away- You know me, right? - and then the rest of it going off like popping lights, the drawn weapons, the cries of Down on your face and Show us your hands - as though this day of all days could be involuted, drawn back upon itself and wrung inside out, like some topological oddity. He’d wind up right back where he’d started, forever.

He sipped his tea and listened for his flight number on the intercom.

Once on board his flight, he reached into his pocket and took out Shel’s letter. He already had it memorized, and so he didn’t so much read the words as just let his eyes trail across her loopy script. As he did, he listened for an echo- the memory of her voice, as though she herself were reciting the words. It was a pleasant illusion, despite what much of the letter said. The final paragraph, in particular. His eyes invariably settled there, as though it were some sort of mistake.

Got a new life now, out in B.F.E. with a man named Frank. It’s heaven on earth, except when it’s not. Like I said, it’s complicated. To tell the truth, I could stand to see you. I miss how sane things used to feel with you around. But hey, I wouldn’t know what to do with sanity if I owned it.

Love you, Shel

Sanity, he thought, gently folding the letter closed. I could stand to see you. As the plane descended into San Francisco, the stewardess cautioned against opening the overhead bins too quickly. He thought for all the world she added, “The continents may have shifted during flight.”

He took a cab to the corner of Union and Columbus, where Napolitano’s Bohemian Café sat in the shadow of the cathedral. Inside, crowd noise mingled with the shriek of the espresso machine. Berlioz’s Le Damnation de Faust provided background as bald men reading European newspapers shared tables with black-clad students. A woman in a business suit played pinball in her stocking feet.

Abatangelo approached the bar and sat beside two secretaries who smiled but did not engage. One of them reminded him vaguely of Shel and he suffered an immediate, embarrassing ardor for her. Behind the bar, his reflection in the mirror peeked through tiers of wine bottles. He made a halfhearted truce with what he saw and gestured for the bartender.

“Dominic here?”

The bartender paused for a moment. “You’re Danny A,” he said.

Abatangelo shot a sidelong glance at the secretaries.

“So?” The bartender shrugged, brought down a bottle of Bardolino and poured Abatangelo a glass. “Ben tornato.”

As Abatangelo tasted the wine, an unbidden smile appeared. He waited for something bad to happen.

“You want a sandwich,” the bartender said, recorking the bottle, “we got fresh-baked focaccia, put some salami on it, coppa, meatball, we got pizza, espresso, cannoli, you name it. Dominic said make you at home.”

“He’s not here,” Abatangelo guessed.

“Sit tight, he’ll be back soon. He knows you’re due.”

With that the bartender drifted away. Abatangelo squared the stool beneath him and settled in to wait. Beside him the two secretaries chattered feverishly, smelling of rain and perfume and chardonnay. Shortly, a commotion broke out from the rear of the bar, and Dominic Napolitano swam through the storeroom curtain, followed by a gray-haired, barrel-bodied woman. This was Nina, his wife. She brayed at his back: “How much? I got a right to know, you piss it away, I gotta right. How much, huh?”

Dominic shouted back, “Go ahead, bust my balls, the whole damn world can hear, what do I care?”

Dominic, looking up, spotted Abatangelo and blinked as their eyes met. He ambled forward and extended a meaty hand. He had small blue eyes and a nose bespotted with large pores. His short white hair accentuated the spread of his ears.

“Nina, look. It’s Gina’s boy, God rest her soul.”

Nina Napolitano stayed where she was. “That ain’t Gina’s boy. That’s Vince’s boy.”

“Nina, don’t- ”

“If this was Gina’s boy, he’d a been at her funeral. But I didn’t see him at Gina’s funeral. I didn’t see him nowhere, never. Not when she lived in that apartment all by herself. Not when she got sick, not at the hospital. Musta had plans.”