Veronica steps off the escalator and moves fast toward the exit. Curtis follows her, not sure where she’s going. The mattacino spots her as she walks by, doffing his feathered cap—Come sta, bella?—and she sidesteps him without breaking stride, flips him off without bothering to look at him. A second later she’s out the door.
Curtis catches up with her against the railing of the outdoor canal. The sun is sliding toward the mountains—big and soft, a yolk on a tilted frypan—and the sky is a yellow muddle interrupted by pink flares of contrails. She’s chewing on a thumbnail, arms crossed tight on her chest. Looking at the moored gondolas without really seeing them. Jesus, I fucking hate those guys, she says. People in masks creep me out.
Curtis frowns, then grins, studying her profile. Except when it’s you wearing one, he says. Then it’s okay. I got that right?
She nods. Used to be, she says, when I was a kid, I’d wear a mask the whole week of Halloween. I’d never take it off, not even in the bathtub. My mom would bring home these blue gel-masks from the spa where she worked, and I’d sleep in ’em. It was the only way I could sleep. Otherwise I’d just lie there all night. Wondering how I could ever be sure that anybody was anybody. Or that I was myself, even. My poor mom had me in counseling like you would not believe. I probably took the MMPI six times before I so much as heard of the SAT.
Curtis leans on the rail to Veronica’s left, looking down at the water. A guy with a net on a long aluminum pole is fishing trash off the surface, sweeping it back and forth. He looks like a gondolier without a boat.
Veronica shifts her weight, moves closer. She must have showered abovedecks before she cleared out this morning: she smells like the hotel soap. What about you? she says. What were you for Halloween, back in the day?
Curtis doesn’t look at her. My grandparents were Jehovah’s Witnesses, he says. I never got to do all that much for Halloween.
But as he says it, he’s remembering a party he went to once in Springfield with some of the guys from Leonard Wood. Black shades. The charcoal suit he wore to his grandmother’s funeral. A piece of coiled handset cord snaking from his ear to his jacket. Damon was there too, in a regimental tailcoat and a bicorn hat, no telling where he found them. Stupid, the things we want. Stupid to want anything.
What are you gonna do now? Curtis says.
Right now? I’m gonna hit some tables. Get paid. My bankroll’s getting—
Not right now. I mean in general.
She fakes a laugh, tosses her hair. Honestly? she says. I have no idea. How ’bout you?
He smiles softly. I was hoping Damon would get me on with security at the Spectacular, he says. But that’s starting to look pretty unlikely.
You still in the Marines?
I retired in January. Got my twenty, got out.
Twenty years? she says. Christ. What did you do?
In the Corps? I was an MP. Military policeman.
No shit?
No shit.
Wow, she says. So you’re not just playing around with this detective business.
Curtis laughs, shakes his head. I didn’t really do anything like that in the Corps, he says. I was more about security. Guard duty. Stuff like that.
She’s looking at him again, sizing him up. You were a security guard for twenty years? she says.
Base security, rear-area security on the battlefield, processing prisoners of war. I did other stuff, too. But security’s what I liked.
That’s some pretty glamorous shit, Curtis.
Curtis just smiles, lets that pass. Below, the canal-cleaner has caught a bunch of red carnations; they drip over the edge of his broad flat net.
What did you like about it? Veronica says.
Curtis thinks about that. He opens his mouth a couple of times to answer, closes it again. I like getting in the way of stuff, he says after a while. I guess I just like being in the way.
She laughs, shakes her head. That’s it? she says.
Basically, yeah.
That’s bullshit.
Curtis sighs, straightens up, sighs again. Back in ’81, he says, when Reagan got shot, I was about two miles away, in high school, at football practice. They pulled us all off the field. And then they kept showing it on TV. You remember that?
I was in—let me think—third grade.
That guy Tim McCarthy, Curtis says. The Secret Service agent, the one who caught the fourth bullet. He jumped right in front of it. I remember it just blew my mind that somebody could do that.
She’s giving him a strange look. Skeptical. He can see it at the edge of his vision. He’s not sure why he’s telling her this. He keeps his eyes trained on the water.
You played football in high school? Veronica says.
I did. I was on the offensive line.
You were not.
I was. I was a guard.
You went to high school in D.C., right?
Dunbar, all four years.
She’s studying him closely. How tall are you, Curtis? she says. If you don’t mind my asking?
I don’t mind. I’m five-seven.
Five-seven. And the other kids were—
All about eleven feet tall, yeah.
That cracks her up. Okay, she says. Cool. And after you got out of the hospital? After all the gnarly physical therapy? What did you do then?