Dennis Lehane (Editor) - Boston Noir

“I’m sorry, but you kids,” Bob said. “You know? You go out of the house dressed like you’re still in your living room. You say terrible things about women. You hurt harmless dogs. I’m tired of you, man.”

Eric stared up at him. Winced like he had heartburn. He looked pissed off. Frustrated. The expression froze on his face like it was sewn there, and then he wasn’t in his body anymore. Just gone. Just, shit, dead.

Bob dragged him into the cooler.

When he came back, pushing the mop and bucket ahead of him, Nadia still sat on her stool. Her mouth was a bit wider than usual and she couldn’t take her eyes off the floor where the blood was, but otherwise she seemed perfectly normal.

“He would have just kept coming,” Bob said. “Once someone takes something from you and you let them? They don’t feel gratitude, they just feel like you owe them more.” He soaked the mop in the bucket, wrung it out a bit, and slopped it over the main blood spot. “Makes no sense, right? But that’s how they feel. Entitled. And you can never change their minds after that.”

She said, “He…You just fucking shot him. You just…I mean, you know?”

Bob swirled the mop over the spot. “He beat my dog.”

The Chechens took care of the body after a discussion with the Italians and the Micks. Bob was told his money was no good at several restaurants for the next couple of months, and they gave him four tickets to a Celtics game. Not floor seats, but pretty good ones.

Bob never mentioned Nadia. Just said Eric showed up at the end of the evening, waved a gun around, said to take him to the office safe. Bob let him do his ranting, do his waving, found an opportunity, and shot him. And that was it. End of Eric, end of story.

Nadia came to him a few days later. Bob opened the door and she stood there on his stoop with a bright winter day turning everything sharp and clear behind her. She held up a bag of dog treats.

“Peanut butter,” she said, her smile bright, her eyes just a little wet. “With a hint of molasses.”

Bob opened the door wide and stepped back to let her in.

“I’ve gotta believe,” Nadia said, “there’s a purpose. And even if it’s that you kill me as soon as I close my eyes-”

“Me? What? No,” Bob said. “Oh, no.”

“-then that’s okay. Because I just can’t go through any more of this alone. Not another day.”

“Me too.” He closed his eyes. “Me too.”

They didn’t speak for a long time. He opened his eyes, peered at the ceiling of his bedroom. “Why?”

“Hmm?”

“This. You. Why are you with me?”

She ran a hand over his chest and it gave him a shiver. In his whole life, he never would have expected to feel a touch like that on his bare skin.

“Because I like you. Because you’re nice to Cassius.”

“And because you’re scared of me?”

“I dunno. Maybe. But more the other reason.”

He couldn’t tell if she was lying. Who could tell when anyone was? Really. Every day, you ran into people and half of them, if not more, could be lying to you. Why?

Why not?

You couldn’t tell who was true and who was not. If you could, lie detectors would never have been invented. Someone stared in your face and said, I’m telling the truth. They said, I promise. They said, I love you.

And you were going to say what to that? Prove it?

“He needs a walk.”

“Huh?”

“Cassius. He hasn’t been out all day.”

“I’ll get the leash.”

In the park, the February sky hung above them like a canvas tarp. The weather had been almost mild for a few days. The ice had broken on the river but small chunks of it clung to the dark banks.

He didn’t know what he believed. Cassius walked ahead of them, pulling on the leash a bit, so proud, so pleased, unrecognizable from the quivering hunk of fur Bob had pulled from a barrel just two and a half months ago.

Two and a half months! Wow. Things sure could change in a hurry. You rolled over one morning, and it was a whole new world. It turned itself toward the sun, stretched and yawned. It turned itself toward the night. A few more hours, turned itself toward the sun again. A new world, every day.

When they reached the center of the park, he unhooked the leash from Cassius’s collar and reached into his coat for a tennis ball. Cassius reared his head. He snorted loud. He pawed the earth. Bob threw the ball and the dog took off after it. Bob envisioned the ball taking a bad bounce into the road. The screech of tires, the thump of metal against dog. Or what would happen if Cassius, suddenly free, just kept running.

But what could you do?

You couldn’t control things.

Beacon Hill

After nearly twenty years at the United Nations, his wife was offered a position with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and she was thrilled. He was not. “Jeff, are you sure you’ll be all right leaving here?” she asked. What could he say? A fair-minded man would acknowledge she’d sacrificed for his career.

During the first week in town, they were invited to a cocktail party in Cambridge. “How long had you lived in New York?” inquired one of her new colleagues.

“Forty-nine years,” he replied.

“And you are…?”

“Forty-nine,” he said, scratching his two-day growth.

“Oh my goodness,” said the man’s wife, “I wonder what you’ll make of us.”

When they were leaving, the host called him Joe.

They settled over by the Museum of Science, and he explored the music clubs-the Dise and T.T. the Bear’s, mostly. He went to shows at the Orpheum, where he had opened for Jesse Colin Young long ago, and concerts at the colleges and at Berklee, roaming by himself while Maya prepared for her lectures. A few musicians he worked with in the ’80s played the Garden, and he walked over, hunched and shivering in a biting wind as he crossed the Charles. Backstage, hugs all around and “What are you up to?” “You know,” he shrugged.

He called Club Passim and asked if he could do a set or two. Thank you, no.

Soon Maya said they were better suited to Beacon Hill, near where several of her colleagues lived, and she found a condo on Beacon Street, two floors in a brownstone built in 1848, the former French consulate, reasonably priced by Manhattan standards, an investment in a down market, and with space for his music room. “Your call,” he said, since he’d made only $6,200 in royalties in the previous year.

She said that she felt revitalized by the new city, that Harvard was a miracle of intelligence and discourse. She was learning, and having fun. He noticed that she no longer asked if he wanted to go back to New York. Boston was becoming her home, while he felt he’d been exiled.

With little else to do, he soundproofed an upstairs bedroom and brought in his equipment-his upright piano, his guitars, a classic Fender bass, his old reel-to-reel tape recorder, mikes and stands, cables, and silver tape. He put baffle over the windows, his old Persian rug on the floor. His platinum album went downstairs in the living room. The label had sent one to every songwriter who contributed to the Grammy-winning soundtrack album. His tender love song was performed at weddings, and even people with little interest in pop music knew the words he’d written. This went on for years, the money rolling in. Then a comedian did a version on Letterman , mugging it up as he serenaded a pig in a straw bonnet. No one took the song seriously from then on. You couldn’t listen to the original version without thinking of the comedian, his rubbery face, squealing voice, and the damned pig. In time, his publisher dropped him. Who’d sing any tune written by a man whose music was so easily ridiculed? Fortunately, they’d set aside enough money for their son to finish at Stanford. His wife had preached frugality even in his best years: before the chaos of his sudden acclaim, they’d planned on having more children. They tried even when it seemed too late.