“Me, too,” said Michaelaen.
Stan peeked his head in (speak of the devil), wanting to know when dinner would be ready.
“Right after you go wash the sawdust off your face and hands,” Mary poked him out of the doorway. “And you stay off my clean linoleum!”
“I wish he’d go back to Vivaldi,” Carmela shook her head at the retreating mezzo staccato. “At least then we didn’t have to listen to the words.” Wherever Stan went he was locked to an opera.
“Why don’t you use the frigging air conditioner?” Zinnie demanded. They’d all chipped in and bought Mary an air conditioner, but she never used it. “I stopped at Jay Dee’s,” Zinnie changed the subject, holding up a box of coconut custard pie.
“There goes my diet,” Mary moaned.
“I get the string,” Michaelaen shouted. He collected bakery string.
“Where’s Claire?” asked Zinnie.
“Down in the cellar. Assembling her darkroom.”
“Oh.”
“Jay Dee’s?” Carmela asked shrewdly. “Isn’t that the one on Queens Boulevard?”
“Best coconut custard in Queens.” Zinnie turned her back and removed her gun.
“I don’t suppose you ran into anyone?” Carmela continued.
“As a matter of fact I did stop off at Freddy’s, nosy.”
Michaelaen’s ears perked up and he regarded his mother with serpentine quiet.
“And?”
“Sweetheart, be a good boy and go get Grandma some parsley from the garden, would you?”
Michaelaen glared at his grandmother.
“Go ahead,” Zinnie smiled and gave him a hug. “Then I’ll tell you where your dad’s taking you tomorrow. Okay?”
Michaelaen raced outside, a lit-up glider plane. Tomorrow he would see his dad.
“So what did Freddy have to say?” Mary threw nutmeg into her white sauce. “He making out all right?”
Zinnie snatched a major leaf from Carmela’s strategically arranged salad and sat down. “What is this, the centerfold for Gourmet Magazine?” Carmela had bombarded the table with peony branches and distinguished pink roses. Zinnie frowned. “I so hate not being able to see my date.”
“Your date is Michaelaen,” Carmela said. “Now tell about Freddy.”
Zinnie shrugged. “I just thought I’d, you know, go see how they’re coming along with the restaurant.”
“And how’s it coming?” Mary asked.
“I’ll tell ya, it looks really nice. Fancy. You’d love it, Carmela. Veddy veddy art deco.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Yeah. Well … he’s doing so damn well without me. I was kinda hoping … I really don’t know what I was hoping.”
“You tell him about the murder?” Carmela asked.
Zinnie looked from her to her mother and back. “Sure.”
“Don’t give us ‘sure,’” Carmela sneered. “We know all about it. The whole neighborhood knows. It’s all anybody’s talking about.”
“Oh. To tell you the truth, I did talk about the murder with Freddy. Only it was me who did the asking. I wanted to get the gay slant on it.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean. Sometimes they know about someone who’s … uh … kooky in that direction. They hear things.”
“And did he?”
“Naw. But he’ll keep his ears open. The last thing he wants is the cops cracking down on all the gays. They’ve got enough trouble with the AIDS scare.”
Mary and Carmela exchanged looks.
Zinnie screwed up her mouth. “Now what?”
“No, nothing,” Carmela busied herself with napkin folding. “Mom was just a little worried about Michaelaen …”
“What, that he’d get AIDS from Freddy?!” Zinnie’s face went red.
“Well, God, Zin. Children do get AIDS, you know. It’s not such a farfetched concern.”
“Look,” Zinnie cried then lowered her voice. “Michaelaen is my son and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me worry about it, all right?”
Claire, coming up the cellar stairs, saw Michaelaen at the back door standing still with a bouquet of parsley, waiting cautiously inside his little shroud of gloom. She slipped out the door.
“Hello,” she said.
He said nothing.
“I was just going to catch myself some lightning bugs.”
Michaelaen regarded her suspiciously through hooded eyes.
“Just to catch. I’ll let them go, of course. I like to hold them in my hand. You?”