snort or stall. I’d be paid more than cabbie wages. Nothing to beef about, just rain-slicked roadway and no idea where the man might be headed. Maybe he’d head straight to Jessica’s like a homing pigeon and sleep peacefully in his own bed. Maybe the printed message was a lie delivered by a jealous coworker of Jessica’s or a spiteful ex-girlfriend of Ken’s.
I’d tried to get the names and addresses of Ken’s former gal pals, but Jessica wasn’t having any. She’d behaved as if naming her suspicions would make them real. Just tail the man and tell her where he goes, write down any addresses.
Maybe he had a whole harem. His looks, it was possible.
The door to Mamma Vincenza’s opened, a slice of yellow light in the dark. My client led the way out. I watched her closely, but she didn’t glance around. I’d warned her about that. Don’t look for me; don’t givethe show away. She smiled and chatted with Ken like a good little actress.
He wore a camel-colored overcoat that had set him back several hundred, a maroon scarf neatly twisted at his throat. He didn’t touch her as they got into the car. The Volvo was silver, with a moonroof.
Hello, luck. A gift, an absolute gift: His left taillight was busted. An irregular sliver of red plastic had slipped its mooring, and the Volvo was unique on the highway. I wondered if Jessica had broken it to help me out. If she’d done it, I owed her a tip of my hat for enterprising behavior.
Speaking of hats, I had a couple of different ones in the car, plus a raincoat, a shawl, my bottles of water, a bottle for other purposes, bananas, a stash of Fig Newtons, and a plastic bag of hard candies to suck on. I was wearing layers and running shoes, ready for a long haul and looking forward to it. Tailing and surveillance are my meat; I like to do what I do well, and my fellow officers used to claim I had an infinite capacity for watching and waiting for something to happen.
In my work, it’s a strength. In my life … How long could I watch and wait for Sam to return? I’d waited a long time already, for him to make up his mind, for me to make up my mind. And now that we had come to an agreement, now that the proposal had been made and accepted, where was the payoff?
I’m too old to believe in happily-ever-after transformations, but for a minute, I’d let my guard down and bought into the fantasy. We hadn’t gone so far as to have invitations printed as Jessica’s mother had, but there had been a sense of anticipation. Now I had to peel it away, dismiss the scent of orange blossoms and the whole irrational mystique that’s grown up aroundweddings, the perfect culmination, the perfect day, as though one day could alter the future, as though the right ceremony could forge a bond beyond the bond already created.
Legality, that’s what it was, a simple legal procedure that could be countered and later reversed by another civil procedure.
Marriage was what you made it. And so many made a mockery of it. My client was wary, and why not?
I followed the Volvo with the broken taillight, three cars back, northeast on North Square toward Sun Court Street. North Square turned into Moon Street and I hung a right onto Lewis, lots of rights and lefts till we hit the Surface Road and slid onto Summer. This was the easy part, the warm-up, because I knew where the Volvo was headed: South Station for the train to New York, the 8:20 Acela Express. Ken let Jessica off on Atlantic Avenue, leaving her on the wrong side of the street with lanes of busy traffic to cross. I didn’t see them kiss. Not a good sign. I wondered if she’d been able to carry off the dinner with aplomb, without asking him what his plans were for the evening or doing anything else to stoke suspicion.
As he drove away, I saw him lift a cell phone to his ear.
Ah, cell phones. They’ve made deception so much easier. When I’d asked whether she’d ever called home and found him unexpectedly absent, she’d
I’d tried to get the names and addresses of Ken’s former gal pals, but Jessica wasn’t having any. She’d behaved as if naming her suspicions would make them real. Just tail the man and tell her where he goes, write down any addresses.
Maybe he had a whole harem. His looks, it was possible.
The door to Mamma Vincenza’s opened, a slice of yellow light in the dark. My client led the way out. I watched her closely, but she didn’t glance around. I’d warned her about that. Don’t look for me; don’t givethe show away. She smiled and chatted with Ken like a good little actress.
He wore a camel-colored overcoat that had set him back several hundred, a maroon scarf neatly twisted at his throat. He didn’t touch her as they got into the car. The Volvo was silver, with a moonroof.
Hello, luck. A gift, an absolute gift: His left taillight was busted. An irregular sliver of red plastic had slipped its mooring, and the Volvo was unique on the highway. I wondered if Jessica had broken it to help me out. If she’d done it, I owed her a tip of my hat for enterprising behavior.
Speaking of hats, I had a couple of different ones in the car, plus a raincoat, a shawl, my bottles of water, a bottle for other purposes, bananas, a stash of Fig Newtons, and a plastic bag of hard candies to suck on. I was wearing layers and running shoes, ready for a long haul and looking forward to it. Tailing and surveillance are my meat; I like to do what I do well, and my fellow officers used to claim I had an infinite capacity for watching and waiting for something to happen.
In my work, it’s a strength. In my life … How long could I watch and wait for Sam to return? I’d waited a long time already, for him to make up his mind, for me to make up my mind. And now that we had come to an agreement, now that the proposal had been made and accepted, where was the payoff?
I’m too old to believe in happily-ever-after transformations, but for a minute, I’d let my guard down and bought into the fantasy. We hadn’t gone so far as to have invitations printed as Jessica’s mother had, but there had been a sense of anticipation. Now I had to peel it away, dismiss the scent of orange blossoms and the whole irrational mystique that’s grown up aroundweddings, the perfect culmination, the perfect day, as though one day could alter the future, as though the right ceremony could forge a bond beyond the bond already created.
Legality, that’s what it was, a simple legal procedure that could be countered and later reversed by another civil procedure.
Marriage was what you made it. And so many made a mockery of it. My client was wary, and why not?
I followed the Volvo with the broken taillight, three cars back, northeast on North Square toward Sun Court Street. North Square turned into Moon Street and I hung a right onto Lewis, lots of rights and lefts till we hit the Surface Road and slid onto Summer. This was the easy part, the warm-up, because I knew where the Volvo was headed: South Station for the train to New York, the 8:20 Acela Express. Ken let Jessica off on Atlantic Avenue, leaving her on the wrong side of the street with lanes of busy traffic to cross. I didn’t see them kiss. Not a good sign. I wondered if she’d been able to carry off the dinner with aplomb, without asking him what his plans were for the evening or doing anything else to stoke suspicion.
As he drove away, I saw him lift a cell phone to his ear.
Ah, cell phones. They’ve made deception so much easier. When I’d asked whether she’d ever called home and found him unexpectedly absent, she’d
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