Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

He made squeaking sounds with his cheek. “He talk to you yet?” he asked.

“Wednesday night,” she said. “You were there when we worked it out.”

“Ah,” Bruno said.

“Bruno,” she said. “What is the mystery here? I mean, what is the big deal? You guys all work for the CIA? What?”

“We’re fuckin’ Russian agents,” he said tiredly. “We want Milford’s secrets.”

“He shows up everywhere. I mean, like today I went to the mall, he was at the mall.”

“Stop the presses. Joey Distefano’s at the mall. What was he doing at the mall?”

She looked out her window. “How should I know? Eating ice cream,” she said.

“ Ho, boy,” Bruno said.

She rubbed her face and settled farther down into her seat. She turned on the radio.

She counted exits. After three she asked, “How long did he know Tommy?”

“Look. Me and him and Tommy, we worked together, okay? We had some things going on the side.”

Again they were quiet. But every time she wanted to let it go she pushed herself: what had she come for in the first place?

“You said some money was stolen,” she said. “From Tommy. How’d you know that?”

“Joanie,” he said. “This is not a fucking joke. This is not gossip. You don’t need to know this stuff. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

She smoothed each of her eyebrows with her index finger and gave up.

“You been talking to people about this?” he asked. “Hey.”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t been talking to anybody. Not a soul.”

They ate at Carbone’s. Bruno was preoccupied through all three courses, watching the waiters across the room like they’d already cheated him. She worked her way unhappily through her fettucine abbacchio, surprised at herself, because she was still thinking about their kiss and not focused enough on her disappointment at having found out almost nothing.

Bruno left a ten-percent tip. “The guy slopped coffee around like he had Parkinson’s,” he said when she noticed.

The concert turned out to be outside, at Bushnell Park. Bruno didn’t seem to have known that and was unhappy about standing around on a lawn. He kept sneaking looks up at the sky and shaking his head. There were about a thousand people crammed into a space that she figured should hold fifty. Half of them annoyed Bruno. A guy next to her had a baby that kept taking off his Orioles cap and hitting Bruno with it, and a little red puppy on a leash that kept winding and unwinding around their legs. In the crush, they were pressed together. Bruno made a jerky motion and the dog yelped.

Another guy pushed into them holding a little black dog up high, like the dog needed to see. The guy was calling for B.B. It had to be forty-five minutes before the warm-up act.

“Hey. Dan Blocker,” Bruno finally said. “He can’t hear you, pal.” When the guy looked at him he added, “Somebody’s lookin’ for you over that side of the park,” and pointed.

They stayed like that, shoved back and forth by the crowd. She saw Bruno gauging the distance to the street, to see if it was worth the fight to just leave.

Finally there was cheering, and a kid with long blond hair got up onstage and announced the opening act: Alberto.

“What the Christ is Alberto?” Bruno muttered.

Alberto climbed up onstage in black tights and white pancake makeup. He had a red dot rouged on each cheek and black eyebrows painted in a mournful expression. He was carrying an easel and an armful of placards.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Bruno said.

Alberto stood up the easel and set a placard on it. The placard read: THE PICNIC. Alberto sat cross-legged onstage and began pulling things from an imaginary box. A flute began to play.

“A mime,” Bruno said. “They’re opening for B.B. King with a mime.”

An old black man twenty feet away stood open-mouthed. “What’re you doin’, fool?” he called.

Joey Distefano was right behind the old man. He turned when he saw her and disappeared.

“There ain’t nothin’ in your hands, fool,” the old man called out.

“Whatchu doin’?” a black woman behind him called. “You at a pic nic? You gonna go hungry.”

“Bruno,” Joanie said. She had his arm. “He’s here. Distefano.”

He looked where she was pointing and pushed a guy aside to see more clearly.

She couldn’t tell if he was faking shock or not. “Bruno, what’s goin’ on?” she demanded.

“Where was he? You sure it was him?” He was right in her face.

“This sucks,” someone next to her called. “ You suck.”

“Pal,” Bruno said to him. “I’m trying to talk here.”

The guy gestured to the mime onstage. “What, is he drownin’ you out?”

“It was him,” Joanie said. “I know it.”

He turned without saying anything and pulled her through the crowd.

She excused herself and said she was sorry whenever she could to the people who got shoved as he yanked her along. They were both looking, but with the size of the crowd and the fading light, it was hopeless.

He stopped so that she bumped into him, halfway to the street.

“No big deal,” he announced. “You wanta stay? See the concert?”

She gaped at him.

“Or let’s go,” he said. “We’ll grab a movie.”

He looked back and forth casually, giving the search one last shot. “What?” he said. He mimicked her open mouth.

She put her hands on her hips, trying to look like she was tired of this nonsense. She had no idea what to make of his actions.

“Has nothing to do with him,” Bruno said. “You like it out there?”

The crowd roared, and Joanie looked back toward the stage. Alberto’s easel had collapsed. He was trying to pick it up, and placards were fanning out from under his arm like an oversized hand of cards. People were shouting out guesses, as if he were still doing mime.

She turned and headed out of the crowd. She had no notion of whether it was toward the car — it probably wasn’t — but she couldn’t put up with this anymore and was tired of letting Bruno lead.

He caught up with her at the edge of the grass, near a Polish-sausage vendor. He asked if she knew where she was going, and she said she wanted out of Hartford, now. She led him around the park, back to the car. “Nice-lookin’ Polish sausage,” he said from behind her. Otherwise they didn’t talk.

In Meriden she said, “You’re not gonna explain anything about what’s going on.”

That stretch of 91 was dark, and the dashboard lights weren’t much help in reading his expression. Every now and then, oncoming headlights swept over him. “I didn’t expect to see him up there,” he said. “He didn’t tell me he was going up there.”

“So? What, does he tell you everywhere he goes?”

“Apparently not,” Bruno said.

“Is he following me?” Joanie asked.

“Following you? ” Bruno said. The car lifted and pancaked slightly over a rise, the sensation unpleasant. That sense she’d been suppressing that Bruno already knew what she’d done was coming back.

“You work together,” she repeated glumly, as if she couldn’t believe he’d saddle her with such a lame story. When he didn’t answer, she got frustrated. “When does he work as a cop? Every time I see him he’s wanderin’ around doin’ nothing.”

“He’s workin’ Wednesday night,” Bruno said.

It shut her up. She gave the lights outside her window great attention and tried to systematically run down the ways in which he or they could have possibly guessed what happened. They’d seen her there. They’d seen her near there. He’d seen the damage to the car.

She was trying to calm herself. She pinched her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger.