T. Boyle - Talk Talk

“But we need a plan here,” he said. His features were pinched, his eyes staring wide. He was trying to be cool, she could see that, but he was as agitated as she was. “If it “is” him in there, and chances are it's not, I know-we have to just back away, I mean, “run,” and I'll call the police on my cell. Okay? Don't say a word, don't talk to him, nothing. Just identify him and call the police.”

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I know. He's dangerous. I know that.”

Bridger was saying something else, using his hands now to underscore the words. “'Assault with a deadly weapon,' remember? That's in the police report. We do not mess with him like back there in that parking lot in where was it, Sacramento? That was insane. We're not going to do anything like that, you understand? Just identify him and call for help. Period.”

The sky had closed up, and as she slid out of the car and crossed the street with Bridger, feeling light-headed, the first few spatters of rain began to darken the pavement. At the last moment, when they'd already started up the walk, she wanted to hang back, reconnoiter the place-or the joint, case the joint: isn't that what they said in the old movies? — but then they were on the porch and Bridger was knocking at the screen door and there was a dog there, a shih tzu, all done up in ribbons, and it was showing the dark cavern of its mouth, barking. A moment later a woman appeared behind the screen, not a pretty woman, not young and dark-eyed and stylish, but the sort of woman who'd live in a house like this and find the time to tie ribbons in her little dog's hair.

Bridger did the talking. Was this Frank Calabrese's house, by any chance? No? Did she know-oh, the “F” stood for Frances, Frances Annie? Uh-huh, uh-huh. He was nodding. Frank, the woman thought-and she didn't know him, they weren't related-lived over on Union or Ringgold, one of those streets on the other side of the park.

It was raining heavily by the time they got to Ringgold Street, dark panels of water scrolling across the windshield, the pavement glistening, the gutters already running full. The house Bridger pulled up in front of wasn't appreciably different from the one they'd just left, except there were no bicycles out front and the car parked in the drive was a newer, more expensive model (but not a Mercedes and not wine red). And what had she expected, to see the thing sitting there sparkling in the rain with its California dealer's logo framed neatly in the license-plate holder? She felt deflated. Felt depressed. This time she stayed in the car while Bridger hustled up the walk, his shirt soaked through and a newspaper fanned out over his head. She saw him at the door, saw a figure there behind the screen-a shadow, nothing more-and she was frightened all over again. It was him, she was sure it was… but no, they were talking, some sort of negotiation going on, and now she could see the faint pale oval of the man's face suspended against the matte darkness of the interior, a naked forearm floating beneath it, gesturing, and in the next moment the door was shutting and Bridger was dodging his way back down the walk. She reached over to fling the car door open for him.

The rain came with him, the scent of it, his hair flattened across the top and hanging in loose wet strands around his ears. “Well?” she said. “Not him, right?”

“He's at the restaurant. That”-he turned the engine over, put the car in gear-“was his cousin, I think he said.”

“Restaurant? What restaurant?”

“Fiorentino's. On South Street-we passed it earlier, don't you remember? I guess he must work there or something… the guy that answered the door was maybe, I don't know, forty, forty-five, totally overweight-he had this huge belly. In a wife-beater, no less. Could you see him from here? No? Anyway, he just looked at his watch and said, 'You'll catch him over at the restaurant at this hour.' I asked him what restaurant and he said Fiorentino's before he thought to ask me what I wanted with Frank-and that was when he started to give me the suspicious look.”

“What? What did you tell him?”

“That I was a friend. From the coast. From California.”

She could feel her heart going again. “But what if he calls and warns him?”

“Shit,” Bridger said, and they were out on the street now, water planing away from the tires, “if he does, he does. We don't even know if it's him-and it's probably not, because you're telling me he already has a house and a job? I mean, how likely is that?”

Fiorentino's was on the far side of a broad street a few blocks down, and as Bridger hung a U-turn and pulled up at the curb in front, she had the feeling she'd been here before, déjà vu. Could this be the place, the one her parents had taken her to? The thought made her feel queasy. If this “was” it, then the whole thing got stranger and stranger. She imagined the thief, the guy with the sideburns and the cocky walk, shrunk down to the dimensions of a child, watching her from the kitchen, watching her eat and sign and roughhouse with her brothers, pizza on a shining silver platter, and memory like the taste of it.

She climbed out of the car, fumbling with her umbrella, and looked up at the façade. The restaurant occupied a pair of storefronts somebody had tried to unify with lateral strips of varnished wood that set off the windows like a big picture frame and the sign over the main entrance had been hand-painted in a flowing script. Each of the tables, dimly visible through the screen of rain, featured artificial flowers and a Chianti bottle with a red candle worked into the neck, but it was all so generic. Once she stepped inside, though-a long L-shaped bar to the left, an alcove and then the dining room to the right-she knew. And as if her visual memory weren't enough, there was an olfactory signature here too-some peculiarity of the pizza oven, the imported pomodoro and homemade sausage, the spices, the spilled beer, the mold in the back of the refrigerator in the farthest corner of the kitchen-who could say? But this was it. This was definitely it. She took hold of Bridger's hand and squeezed it. She wanted to say “No more, stop right here,” but her throat thickened and her fingers felt as if they'd been carved of wood.

What she saw was a typical neighborhood bar, half a dozen men in short-sleeved shirts, the white-haired bartender with his flaming ears and red-rimmed eyes, the cocktail waitress in a little skirt and net stockings, bored, her elbows propped on her tray. The TV was going-baseball-and nobody was eating. Too early yet. Too hot. Too rainy.

She stood beside Bridger, her hand locked in his, as he leaned in at the end of the bar and waited for the bartender to acknowledge him. There was a suspended moment, people giving them furtive glances, the quick assessment, her blood racing with fear and hate even as she felt crushed by a kind of trivial nostalgia for the place, for the way she was then, as a girl, when her parents were still married and her brothers were contained by these very walls, and then the bartender made his slow way down the skid-resistant mat and she saw his lips shape the obvious question: “What'll it be?”

She couldn't bear to look at him-she was watching Bridger, as if that could protect her, expecting the thief to step out of the shadow of the alcove and put an end to it all. “Is Frank here?” he asked. And then the movement caught her eye and she was watching the bartender's head swing back as he called down the bar and the cocktail waitress, buried under the glitter of her nails and the sediment of her makeup, awakened briefly to drift to the swinging door of the kitchen, lean into it and convey the message, the name passed from mouth to mouth: “Frank,” she imagined her saying, or maybe shouting over the noise of the dishwasher, the radio, the tintinnabulation of pots and pans, “Frank, somebody wants you.”