“Well, yes, but—”
“Was he with you for the whole party?”
“Tch.”
“I mean did he go off and leave you alone for any amount of time?”
Then it hit Claire what he meant. He wasn’t quizzing her about her private life. He was trying to find out if Stefan was … if Stefan had … oh, really! “It couldn’t have been Stefan who stole my cameras. He was at the party the whole time.”
“Did you see him the whole time?”
“Well, no. He was the host. He had people to entertain.”
“So he was around the whole time.”
“Yes. No. He was gone for twenty or thirty minutes at one point. But he was with my sister.”
“Mmm. The brassy one.”
“She’s not brassy.”
“Okay, she’s not.” He lit a cigarette.
Claire battled with herself for five seconds and then lit one herself.
“My sister is very interested in art.”
“Uh-huh.”
Claire smoked her cigarette. She certainly didn’t have to explain anything to him.
“And you?”
Claire looked at him with puzzled eyes.
“You like ‘art’?”
She smiled. “Look, Stefan’s a very nice man.”
“With lots of cash.”
“What’s wrong with money? Do you have something personal against money? Or are you asking me an actual, direct question?”
Johnny leaned back in his chair till it almost tipped over. He studied the boats.
“And how do you know that I was at that party anyway? Is someone following me? Are you having me watched?”
Johnny leaned across the table and grabbed her wrist. “Darlin’, there’s no one watching you but me. Got that?”
Claire felt her insides.
Red came back armed with three plates of baked clams and a tunnel of lemon wedges. “Guido!” he shouted. “Bring us some bread. And a couple a beers.” He laid his finger alongside his nose. “And then bring us a platter a calamari … with plenty a hot sauce!”
On the way home, the Mayor threw up. It wasn’t too bad. Claire heard him give a couple of dry heaves on her lap and she yelled for Johnny to pull over, quick. He swerved onto the shoulder, then into the parking lot from Lookout Reach. They stood over him, concerned parents, as he relieved himself of buttered pretzels, shrimps, some basta chorta, and quite a few horseradished clams.
“Better out than in,” philosophized Johnny as he went to fetch a box of tissues from the car.
“It’s all right, your honor,” Claire soothed him. “You’re better now.”
“Atta boy,” Johnny encouraged him, “atta boy.” He didn’t want a repeat performance back in the car. “C’mon. Let’s walk him a little bit down to the edge.”
They trolleyed across a narrow cement crossway after the dog and took off their shoes. His honor, good as new, went on ahead to scavenge for mussels. The cars behind them in the parking lot weren’t empty but you couldn’t see anybody in them, either. Claire worried for a moment that it would give Johnny ideas, but he just walked along beside her not saying too much, telling her a little bit about Red and how he’d come into his life and listening when she finally opened up and told him how Michael had died. Then he wanted to know about the men in her life. She told him briefly, in headlines, accentuating her own stupidity, not sparing herself at all.
“And how come you never married either of them?”
“Stupid I am. Dumb I’m not. It was pretty obvious, even to me, that I’d set myself up as the victim in both relationships.”
“Yeah. Well. You can’t be a survivor until you’ve been a victim first.”
“I guess that’s true.” After what Zinnie had told her about his wife, she knew exactly what he meant. “That’s what happened to you, too, wasn’t it? I mean in your marriage?”
“Look, don’t go asking questions like that, all right? I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, excuse me! I thought I heard somebody say they just wanted to talk to me. I thought that was the point of this entire venture. Rest assured, I’ll never bring it up again. Or anything else for that matter.”
“Why do you have to keep going on and on about it? You can’t just let things drop? You got to hang on to the negative?”
“Ah. The old pot-calling-the-kettle-black routine.”
“So now you’re gonna be pissed off.”
“It doesn’t mean that much to me to piss me off!”
“Good!”