David Handler - The Bright Silver Star

“I thought Dorset would be good for us,” she replied, shrugging her soft shoulders. “I was wrong.”

A pair of kids on jet skis went hurtling past them now, shrieking with high-decibel delight. Mitch sat back on his ample haunches, watching them. “Look, maybe we ought to talk about Tito’s script again in a few days,” he suggested.

“No, Mitch,” Esme said. “I don’t ever want to talk about that again. Just promise me one thing, okay?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“His fans deserve to know who Tito really was. Tell them. It can’t hurt him now.”

“What about you? It can hurt you.”

“No, it can’t,” Esme said softly as she continued working on their castle, her wet hands fashioning its walls higher, higher, and still higher. “Nothing can hurt me anymore. Not a thing.”

“Hey, Tina-long time no see.”

“Mitch, it has been too long!” Tina’s round, pink face lit up with motherly delight as she planted wet kisses on both of Mitch’s cheeks. She was a chubby, bustling little strawberry blond in her fifties. “Now tell me,” she commanded him, gazing up, up at Des. “Who is this lovely creature?”

“Say hello to Desiree Mitry.”

“Welcome to my restaurant, Desiree.”

Des smiled at her. “Thank you, I’ve heard a lot about it.”

The Port Alba Cafe was on Thompson Street a block below Washington Square Park, next door to a shop where men sat playing chess with each other. It was a tiny cafe-no more than a dozen tables, all but one of them filled. Young families with small children were eating there. Several couples. One very dignified old man in a white suit who sat alone, sipping an espresso. There was a mural of a fishing village on one wall, a tiny bar with glasses in an overhead rack. The ceiling was of stamped tin. Wonderful smells were coming out of the kitchen.

Des had on a dress for the first time in ages, a sleeveless little yellow knit thing that clung to her hips and bootay for dear life. She wore sandals with it, gold loops in her ears, her grandmother’s pearls, a bit of lipstick. She had even painted her toenails, which she almost never did. But this was a special night. She was out on a genuine New York City date with the man she loved.

Mitch wore a white oxford button-down, khakis, and Mephisto walking shoes, which was the same damned thing he always wore. But for this occasion his shirt and trousers were actually pressed and his mop of curly hair combed. He looked positively grown-up.

Tina seated them at the empty table by the window and brought them a bottle of chianti, a loaf of warm, crusty bread, and a platter filled with little plates of antipasti-grilled sardines, white beans in extra-virgin olive oil, marinated calamari salad, fresh buffalo mozzarella with basil leaves and tomatoes. After Tina had poured them each a glass of wine she went to fetch her husband, Ugo, a grave, scrawny little man who was the chef. Ugo solemnly shook hands with Mitch and asked him if he wanted the usual.

“For two,” Mitch said, beaming at Des. “If that’s okay with you.”

“What I’ve been waiting for, boyfriend.”

Ugo disappeared back into the kitchen.

Mitch reached across the table and took her hand. “You are a total hottie, you know that?”

“Um, okay, I’m thinking maybe I should put on a dress more often.”

“That’s funny, I’m thinking about taking it off of you.”

“You’re awfully frisky tonight, sir. Happy to get away from Dorset?”

“I’m just excited about spending the night here with you,” he said, attacking the grilled sardines.

Des spooned some calamari onto her own plate and dove in. “That was our deal. And a deal’s a deal, right?”

“Whatever you say, Master Sergeant.”

Des gazed over at the mural of the fishing village, loving it even though she was fully aware that Professor Weiss would pick it to pieces. The proportions, angles, placement of cast shadows-all were wrong, wrong, wrong. “So this was your place, am I right? You and Maisie.”

Mitch lowered his eyes, nodding.

“You haven’t been back here since she died, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.” His eyes met hers now. “Is this okay, us coming here?”

“Mitch, it’s more than okay. It’s an honor.”

They had gone through the entire antipasto platter and a half bottle of wine by the time Ugo emerged from the kitchen with a battered copper skillet full of spinach fettuccine. Tina laid warm platesbefore them and he spooned it out. Ugo had a whole Alfredo thing going on in there with the homemade green pasta and fresh spinach-lots of cream, butter, and melted cheese. Total sin. Especially when Tina was done grating even more cheese onto it.

She hovered there anxiously as Des tasted it. “You like?”

“No, I love.” Truly, it was the best pasta Des had ever eaten. It positively melted in her mouth.

Thrilled, Tina left them to it.

“Have you figured out what to do with Tito’s script?” she asked Mitch as they ate.

“I’m going to publish it,” he replied. “I’ll write an introduction that expands on the article I wrote after he died. I’ll go into the real deal of what happened to him, complete with the transcript of Will’s confession. Esme wants it that way. Whatever money it earns will go into a college scholarship fund for kids in the barrio where Tito grew up. And if someone wants to buy the movie rights, the same deal applies. Sound good?”

“Sounds real good, Mitch.”

“Des, what do you think will happen to Dodge?”

“You mean with the law? My guess is he’ll cop to malicious mischief, get off with six months probation.”

“No jail time?”

“I wouldn’t think so. He is a pillar of the community, after all,” she pointed out dryly.

Mitch sat back from his plate. He had a troubled look on his face. “I’m thinking I don’t believe in what I believed in before.”

“Which was?…”

“Dodge is a really, really bad guy. He’s done horrible things to Esme, to other girls, to his business competitors, his friends. He gets a slap on the wrist and is basically free to dust himself off and start all over again. Will, meanwhile, was a decent guy who fell in love with the wrong person, lost his head, and now he, Tito, and Donna are all dead. Where is the justice here?”

Des patted her mouth with her napkin and said, “First of all, you’re wrong. Will wasn’t a decent guy, he was a stone-cold killer.”

“And Dodge?”

“Total human scum, I’ll grant you.”

“So where’s the justice?”

“You don’t win them all. That’s why I have such a clean kitchen floor.”

“Okay, you just lost me.”

“Bella gets down on her hands and knees and she scrubs when she’s upset. You watch old movies about giant bugs-”

“Not always. Sometimes they’re about giant crustaceans.”

“And I draw pictures, or at least I used to. I don’t know what to call the stuff I draw now. Actually, I do-I call it crap. My point is, we all deal in our own way. That’s real life.”

“Well, it sucks,” he grumbled, sipping his wine.

“Sometimes it does. Other times, it can be pretty damned perfect.”

“Like when?”

She put her hand over his and squeezed it. “Like right now.”

The Tavern was on Horatio and Washington, right around the corner from Mitch’s apartment. It had sawdust on the floor and very little in the way of decor. In past days, it had been a saloon favored by the neighborhood’s big burly meatpackers. Now it was filled with bright, boisterous young writers, artists, actors and grad students. A lot of them hadn’t paired off yet and were assembled in groups. A lot of those groups were mixed. Des saw black faces, Asian faces, all sorts of faces.