Robert Tanenbaum: Irresistible Impulse

“That sounds like my cue, dear,” said Marlene brightly. “Posie?”

Posie laughed and gathered the two infants to her mighty breasts, jiggling them, rocking them, crooning to them, until they calmed down. She was a seventeen-year-old from rural Pennsylvania with a disturbing chemical and sexual history and a remarkable touch for infant care. Marlene had rescued her from life on the street and a particularly violent boyfriend.

“Hey, have a good time, you guys,” said Posie, her rubbery face grinning, as they slipped from the nursery. They had still to escape from Lucy.

Who whined, “Why can’t I come?”

“Honey, you know we all go out together on Saturday. Your daddy and I need some time for just us. Posie is going to order pizza for all of you. We’ll be home early. Did you finish your math?”

In answer Lucy sent her pencil skittering across the oak floor, and assembled on her face an expression of hollow-eyed despair suitable to a refugee from the Nazis. This expression touched Karp’s heart, as it was designed to do, but he knew better than to suggest that just this once the three of them might go out, as they often had before the twins came. Marlene would not have stood for it.

She said severely, “Pick up that pencil and finish your work! I want to look it over before school tomorrow.”

Lucy snarled something sotto voce that Marlene chose not to hear, and the two adults left the office.

“That child!” said Marlene when they were out in the street. “I swear, sometimes I want to throttle her. She was terrific this afternoon when we took our walk, and as soon as she got back to the office, she turned into a spoiled brat. She is not doing well in school either.”

“Marlene, it’s third grade,” said Karp. “Give her a break. She’ll still get into Smith.”

“She won’t get into fourth grade if she keeps on the way she’s going. You don’t get the notes from her teacher. She’s acting out, as they say.”

“The twins.”

“I can’t think of anything else,” Marlene said. “It’s too early for puberty.”

“I’ll try to spend more time with her.”

“That’d help. Poor little kid! Here she is, doted on by two parents, and bango, all of a sudden she’s an extra. We didn’t figure two babies would take so much energy.”

No, we did not, thought Karp as they walked slowly up Broadway. Nor did we calculate that one of us would be starting a heavy new job while the other of us would be up to her neck in a business that required night work, weekend work, and continual crisis. Guns in the house. Karp made a mental effort to stop this line of thought, which he knew from experience led to irritability, argument, and pain. As Marlene never tired of saying, he knew what she was before he married her. True enough, as far as it went. He had married a graduate of Smith and Yale Law, a rising prosecutor. He had long ceased to pine consciously for what still dwelt deep within his reptile brain, of a house in a leafy suburb, or a condo in a good building, himself coming home, she being there, wooden spoon in hand, smiles, the children taken care of, displayed for the paternal cuddle. No, Marlene was going to have a career, which was fine, but Karp had counted on a woman with Marlene’s talent pursuing something more regular, at the D.A.’s, or a slot at some big firm, or even teaching at a law school. Marlene was smart; she could write; her intelligence was wide-ranging. A short fantasy played out on the video of his mind: Marlene teaching at Columbia, regular hours, long summer vacations, tenure, a nice salary to add to his, a settled life in the upper bourgeoisie of Manhattan, the children in good schools, perhaps an au pair, an au pair from Sweden, to help with the kids, rather than a pudgy, not-too-clean street girl with no front teeth, a smaller dog …

“Are you listening?” said Marlene, breaking in on these thoughts, of which, to give him credit, Karp was slightly ashamed.

“Sorry,” said Karp. “I was drifting. What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Marlene. “Just bitching and moaning. I was saying Harry and I had a little argument today.”

“What about?”

“He wants to move into regular security. Events, rent-a-cops. Like that.” She laughed. “Good old Harry. Four years ago he was a drunk thinking about eating his gun; now he’s talking business plans, cash flow.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

“Oh, I’m sure he is right, technically. It’s just not right for me. Why’re you giving me that look? Hey: I went in to this business to deal with a social problem that nobody else was dealing with, and also make some money, and, to be frank, because I liked the work. The point of starting B and C was that there are men who fixate on women and won’t let go, and stalk them and, most times, either hurt or kill them. Call me crazy, but I think there should be at least one business in town that exists to prevent that.”

“There is, Marlene. It’s called the cops.”

Marlene rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again . Of course the cops! Don’t we work with the cops? With the courts? I spend a good chunk of my personal time getting orders of protection, and making sure these guys get stung when they violate. On the other hand, there’re guys who’re like guided missiles. It doesn’t matter what you do to them; they’re going to home in on the woman, and if the choice is between letting an innocent woman get killed and taking out the guy, I have no problem deciding which. Every citizen has a right to use deadly force to prevent death or serious injury to themselves or others.”

“I already heard the commercial, Marlene.”

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head, as if shaking out unpleasant thoughts. “Yeah, right, sorry. We’re supposed to be relaxing tonight, I’m giving you the lecture. My point was, and I said it to Harry too, that we have a decent business doing what I like doing and what no one else does. We have enough celebrity clients to pay the freight for the poor ones-oh, did I tell you? Speaking of the rich and famous, we got a call from Trude Speyr today. Her agent, I mean. They want us to handle personal security.”

“She’s being stalked?”

“Isn’t everyone? Apparently she’s been getting weird letters since she won at Wimbledon this year. She’ll be here for the circuit next spring, and of course she’s going to go with the most famous name in feminist security, moi-meme .” Marlene did a little mock curtsy. “We’re talking major bucks here, by the way.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Harry isn’t objecting to the money, I take it.”

“No. He has no problem guarding celebrities.”

With this, Marlene left the conversation hanging. They had reached Grand Street. A short block up was their destination, Paoletti’s a small dark restaurant that was, along with the Ferrara Bakery and Umberto’s Clam House, one of the few remnants of the original Little Italy.

Freddy the owner, a remnant likewise, a man shaped like a fine brown egg, got up from his stool behind the cigar counter and came out and shook their hands formally. Marlene had been eating at Paoletti’s for nearly twenty years, first with her parents and then as a regular since she had moved to her loft on Crosby Street in 1971. Freddy led them to their table and stood there chatting for a while. The subjects were always the same: weather (getting nippy; hot enough for you?); children (Marlene’s and Freddy’s own); family (ditto); and the decline of the neighborhood, attributable, in Freddy’s opinion, to the two-pronged invasion of weirdos (by which he meant the artists and the vastly larger number of artoids that had colonized lower Manhattan since the seventies) and of Those People, by which he meant the masses formerly of Asia, whose outposts now flowed up Mulberry and lapped at Grand Street itself. Freddy usually supplied an anecdote about the latest weirdo who had tried to obtain service in Paoletti’s and been turned away. The Asians, of course, knew better than to try. Paoletti’s clientele therefore consisted exclusively of Italians, both real and honorary. The real Italians included the locals, and their descendants, like Marlene. Honorary Italians included all police officers, of whatever, the people friendly with real Italians or police officers (a double score for Karp), and those few in the neighborhood that Freddy identified as regular people. Regular people did not wear vicious leather, had hair of a length and color appropriate to their sex and species, and, if wearing earrings, were women.