Stuart Kaminsky - Vengeance

“Sure,” he said, moving to a sofa against a wall and plopping into it. His feet went up on a low coffee table and his eyes turned to the television set, where Harrison Ford was scrambling along a rooftop.

I was standing in a small, neat living room with a bright comfortable sofa, an armchair, a dark wooden coffee table, a line of Georgia O’Keeffe flowers on the walls. The floor was gray carpet. I guessed the floors in all the apartments were management-gray carpet. The room and the dining room beyond it were clean and uncluttered.

I pushed the door closed behind me and said,

“Frantic.”

“Yeah,” Michael said.

“What’s your favorite Harrison Ford movie?”

He looked up at me and said, “You care?”

“I think so. I’m killing awkward time till your mother comes to save me, but it’ll be easier for both of us if we find something reasonably interesting to talk about. My favorite is Witness.”

Mike nodded and looked back at the television set. Harrison Ford almost fell.

“I like the first Indiana Jones too,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Mike.

“I’ve got tapes of both of them,” I said.

“We don’t have much room for tapes,” said Mike. “But we do have the VCR.”

“You can borrow my. tapes,” I said.

“That depends on if you go on another date with my mother.”

“No, not really, but maybe. I live over by the DQ on Three-o-one.”

“I go there all the time,” he said, looking at me. “You eat there?”

“Every day,” I said.

“No shit. Oh shit, I told Mom I wouldn’t say ‘shit’ or…”

“I don’t give a shit,” I said.

He looked at my blank face and smiled.

Sally came hurrying out of a door across the room. She was putting in an earring.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just got home. Home visit… I told you. You met Mike.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You said casual. I’m casual,” she said.

She was wearing a loose-fitting dress with a belt, flats and the silver earrings. She’d done something to fluff her hair and she’d put on more makeup than she wore the day before. She looked alive. She looked great.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Mike was transfixed by the television. He wiggled his toes.

“I’m ready,” I said.

I was lying. I had the feeling she was too.

“One more thing,” she said. She turned and called, “Susan.”

A second door opened and a girl about nine came out. She was wearing cutoff jeans, a green blouse and sneakers. She was dark, pretty, with long dark wavy hair. She was definitely her mother’s daughter.

“Susan, this is Mr. Fonesca,” Sally said.

“Fonesca,” she said. “Are there Italian Jews?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’m not one of them.”

“I told you,” Mike said without looking up.

“Nice to meet you, Susan, Mike,” I said.

“Have you got the X-Files movie?” asked Mike.

“No,” I said as Sally guided me toward the door.

Mike shrugged.

“Can I stay up till ten?” Susan asked sweetly.

“Nine. In bed, lights out. School tomorrow. You’ve heard this story every night for years.”

“But tonight is different,” she said, glancing at me.

“Nine. Mike?”

“Nine,” he said. “What time will you be home?”

“Not late,” said Sally.

“You look like that actor who plays the bad guy,” said Susan to me. “You know the one.”

“Stanley Tucci,” said Mike without looking back at me. “He does funny stuff too.”

“Is that his name?” Susan asked. “Two cheese?”

“Nine o’clock,” said Sally, ushering me out the door and pushing it closed behind us.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well?”

“That was test one.”

“I think I like them,” I said. “You think I look like Stanley Tucci?”

“A little,” Sally said, walking next to me as I guided her toward my Geo. “Where are we going?”

“I know a good pizza place,” I said. “Then I’ve got some questions for you and I thought we might go looking for Adele Tree.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Sally.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to make a joke.”

“No, you weren’t,” she said. “And I’d like to find Adele. You like anchovies on your pizza?”

“I love anchovies on anything,” I said.

“You just passed test number two.”

There were a few things wrong with Honey Crust Pizza. The place was small, crowded, with booths on both sides and tables with red-and-white tablecloths down the middle. The place was smoker friendly, but the smells from the open kitchen behind the counter at the rear overrode the tobacco. The waitresses were friendly, efficient and fast, and the pizza matched anything I had eaten back in Chicago. My mother was an Italian cook only because she was Italian. Her preference was for American staples: meat loaf, fried chicken, broiled fish and matzo-ball soup. There was no explanation for the matzo-ball soup, but my father, sister and I didn’t need one. We liked it.

All this I told Sally, who was a professional listener. She paid attention, appeared interested and knew when to ask questions. She was as good as I was, in a different way. Sally was animated, friendly, willing to talk herself. I am the quiet, sympathetic type. My basic affect was “I’m sorry for your trouble. I’m listening. I wish there was more I could do.” Compared to my father, I was a blabbermouth. My father’s usual evening conversation was “You all right. Kid’s all right.” My mother usually said “Yes.” Sometimes, at dinner, she told about family slights, tragedies, inadvertent moments of comedy. My father ate, nodded and said nothing. He patted me on the head at least twice each night till I left the house and went out on my own. He always kissed my sister twice on the top of her head; once when he came home, the second time when she went to bed.

When we went to bed, he always said, “Good dreams. If you have a bad one, wake yourself up and try again.” My mother claimed that was an old Italian saying. He always said it in English. Both my mother and father spoke Italian, though they had been born in the United States.

All this, too, I told Sally as we shared our large onion-and-double-anchovy pizza.

Sally had come to Sarasota a dozen years ago with her husband, whose name was Martin, Martin Herschel Porovsky. He liked to be called Jack because he admired John Kennedy. Sally had been born Sally Feld-man. They had come to Sarasota because Jack, an engineer, was transferred by his company to the research lab in Sarasota to work on government military projects. Jack had died in an accident at work. Sally had never been given a straight answer about what had happened. She had been given a $125,000 death benefit and collected another $150,000 in life insurance. The money was in a mutual fund for the education of her children. Sally never touched it. She worked, lived carefully and spent as much time as she could with her mother in Dayton, Ohio. She hadn’t dated in the five years since Jack died.

All this she said over coffee and a split order of can-noli.

“Why did you say yes?” I asked.

“To you, about tonight?”

I nodded. Like my father. Sally sighed and examined her coffee for an answer.

“You seemed safe. I meet a lot of people, good, bad, sad, troubled. I usually read them well. Maybe intuition. Maybe intuition is just experience. You looked sad, safe, troubled. No threat.”

“Some people,” I said, “think I look a little like Richard Gere. Those people are now safely locked away.”

She smiled.

“Some people say I’ve got a sardonic sense of humor,” I said. “I’m trotting it out in the hope of impressing you. I haven’t been out with a woman, I mean like this, since my wife died.”