“The body was right outside my house. My girlfriend is totally freaked out.”
“What did you expect living there?” Cal didn’t answer. “We got nothing on the case. No suspects, no leads.” There must have been something in Cal’s face. The officer seemed to soften. He scowled with discomfort. “Between us men, this looks like a gang thing. Some territorial issue, dealing drugs, the rest of it. The dead kid was in and out of the ACI. They aren’t after you or your girlfriend, okay? That’s all I got.”
When Cal came home and told her what the officer had said, Laura locked herself in the bathroom. He heard her crying, but she said she was fine, just taking a bath.
*
Laura became strident. Her eyes were narrowed and suspicious. She barked at him for little things—the toilet seat, urinating in the shower, leaving socks on the floor. She refused to take care of the chickens so he had to do it, even though they were her idea, and she refused to walk Elmo after dark.
She avoided him like a bad roommate. She went to class and the library. She stayed in her office with books filled with color plates, frescoes of gaunt faces, and shiny gold haloes. She was mapping the geometry of the Master of Provence, crisscrossing photocopied pages of the Descent from the Cross with thick black lines. Christ, bloody and disfigured, lay gruesomely prone across the arms of gray-faced mourners, Mary and Nicodemus and whoever else. Something to do with perspective and arrangement, connecting points located in folds of cloth and faces to create a pattern of diamonds that revealed some hidden structural mystery. She explained it to him, but she was looking toward the kitchen window. She was talking herself through it. She did not want him to respond.
The smell of exhaust seemed to linger in the alley. The plants thrived on it. Liz’s garden rose up, green tendrils swallowing the yellow pickets and spilling into the street. When he took Elmo out for his last walk of the night, Cal looked behind him as they rounded the blocks. The streets were usually empty, long stretches of darkness broken by pools of dim light, shadowy and dangerous. Cambodian gangs were a problem, he knew, but there was a Cambodian family down the street. There was a Hmong church across the park. There were black and Latino families along with Italians and Poles who had been in the neighborhood for decades. He and Laura were identified with the new wave of younger people, gentrifiers. In the summer, the park was filled with all sorts of people. Liberian men played soccer in the mornings, screaming over fouls. White urban hipsters played kickball on Saturdays with stereo systems and kegs of Narragansett beer. On summer nights teenagers loitered around the swing sets, lit by intensely bright flood lamps, and they screamed with such intensity that Cal couldn’t tell if they were playing or being raped. There were too many trees casting shadows that were too dark. There were too many beat-up cars with rusted wheels and too many people hanging around, like the Latino men who gathered under the trees on hot days, or the bums near the dog run, drunk on cheap hooch from Tropical Liquors.
He turned up Parade Street. The park was on his right. A large elm created a black canopy for two silhouettes that Cal could only discern because of the electric glow of one’s cell phone. He thought they looked Hispanic. A third man was straight ahead on the next corner; he looked at Cal, then away. His right hand was shoved deep in his pocket, his other hand on his phone. A man under the tree called to the man on the corner: “What are you doing? Come over here.” The man on the corner looked at Cal, then crossed the street. Was that a gun in his pocket?
Elmo sniffed the grass along the curb. Cal’s elbows locked. He felt light-headed. He turned stiffly, trying to be casual, to move deliberately. “Come on, Elmo,” he whispered, tugging at the leash. He resisted the urge to run. His fear embarrassed him. He was angry with himself, but what were his options? Was he going to ask them for their papers? Comment on the weather? Clearly a drug deal. He rushed home. Security lights clicked on in a flash outside the apartment. It jolted him, and he felt foolish again. A knot of anger stuck in his throat. He had forgotten the old woman had put them in. About fucking time.
Laura was in her office with the door open. She asked how the walk was. His voice rose as he answered, “It was fine, only three dead bodies.” She was moody? No problem. He could be moody too.