3 Quarters by Denis Hamill Page B

ordered piroghis, lamb, borscht, caviar, vodka. She took me to the Ukrainian festival on Seventh Street, into these little Ukrainian saloons where men played cards and bet horses and spoke in whispers as if the KGB was outside the door. She showed me around my city! I was overwhelmed, swallowed whole. Then one day she took me into St. Peter’s Church on Seventh Street, a gorgeous Ukrainian cathedral, and in front of the altar she looked me in the eyes and whispered, ‘Ya tebe kohayu. ’I told her I loved her, too. I asked her to marry me. If I could have, I would have copyrighted her.”
    â€œI would have fuckin’ adopted her,” Gleason said, clearing his throat, growling.
    â€œShe said she would marry me,” Bobby said, checking in the rearview mirror. “That Taurus is back.”
    Gleason turned and looked. “So? Just drive. Keep talking, I’m listening.”
    â€œAnyway, I could never get her to commit to a date,” Bobby said. “I never doubted her story that she was raised by her outcast mother in the Ukraine. Or that after her mother’s death, she came to New York a few months before I met her, on a possible exchange program. That she fell in love with New York and decided to stay. When I pressed her for more details or a marriage date, she simply got undressed and would make love to me and whisper passionately in my ear in a different language every time. I was becoming multilingual in sex!”
    â€œJesus, the most exotic I ever got was a Panamanian stripper from Washington Heights who used to call me ‘Poppi’ in the sack,” Gleason said.
    Venus leaned forward and said, “Qué?”
    â€œNada, sweetheart,” Gleason said, waving his hand. “Nada . . .”
    Venus smiled and sat back and listened to her tapes.
    â€œShe stole me, heart and soul, body and mind, inside out,” Bobby said, not even hearing Gleason. “When I was with Dorothea, the world didn’t seem dirty or corrupt at all. She was the perfect antidote to the job.”
    â€œDid she work, get mail, make long-distance phone calls?” Gleason asked.
    â€œNot when she was with me.”
    â€œWhere did a broad from a commie country get money?”
    â€œShe seemed to have plenty of money,” Bobby said. “I didn’t ask from where or how much. I thought that would be impolite. Especially since she wouldn’t take any of mine. She offered to pay half the rent, bills, but—”
    â€œYou turned her down? Someone finally found one broad willing to pony up her half of life’s fuckin’ nut, and you turned her down?”
    â€œYeah,” Bobby said.
    â€œYou set men back twenty fuckin’ years,” Gleason said. “The idea, dickhead, is to clone a broad who actually pays her own freight.”
    â€œMy daughter, Maggie, who is more protective of me than I am of myself, liked Dorothea right away,” Bobby said. “She thought she was perfect for me, and Maggie has a built-in bullshit detector, a human polygraph. Besides my daughter, Dorothea was my lifeline to humankind at its very best, as it’s supposed to be. When they charged and convicted me of killing her, I was in a prolonged trance, too stunned at the horror of Dorothea’s supposed murder to even comprehend the gravity of being charged with it. I was in jail for six months before I accepted that she wouldn’t be coming to visit me.”
    â€œOkay,” Gleason said. “I get the picture. You had a storybook ten-week romance with a mystery dame, and you got Shine in your corner. Who else can you count on?”
    Bobby told him more about the old cop named Tom Larkin, sixty-one years old, facing mandatory retirement in two years. Because of his age he was now the “house mouse” or “the broom” at the 72nd Precinct in Brooklyn, the glorified porter who swept up around the precinct. Since becoming the house