“What?”
“Nothing.” I groaned. “Who ever heard of a lightning storm in late November?”
“You know, they had a tornado in Catskill last month. The oil companies want us to think it’s a ‘natural cycle.’ Bullshit. The earth is a living thing, like an animal or a person. When it’s threatened, or attacked, it fights back.” He folded his powerful arms across his chest and glared straight ahead. “To the death, if it has to.”
Anger was swirling in the air around him, as if a tornado were right there in the car with us. What was he so ticked off about?
I struggled to concentrate on driving. We sat in silence again except for the drumming rain and the intermittent click and squeak of the blades. I was exhausted, emotionally drained. I just wanted to drop Mr. Moody off, go soak my frozen bones in a tub and clear my mind of disturbing thoughts. Then, as we passed the Tea Cozy, the rain miraculously let up. Within seconds, it stopped completely. I leaned back into the seat and shut off the wipers. Stokes turned to face me.
“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
“What?” I glanced over at him. His long, girlish lashes framed intense, dark eyes that glared into mine.
“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
Spooked, I looked back at the road. “No. Fortunately, I have not.”
“I have. I found my in-laws in their bed. Curled up next to each other like honeymooners. They looked so healthy, I didn’t realize they were dead at first. Their cheeks were all flushed pink like they’d just come back from a run. That’s what the CO does.”
He cracked a few knuckles. I winced.
“I ran around opening windows and doors, but they’d died hours before. That’s what the coroner said.”
“It must’ve been awful for you.”
“Yeah, it was bad. But I didn’t like them much.” Another knuckle sounded. “You know what was totally weird? Finding them together like that—snuggled up. They hated each other.”
I peeked over at him again. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.
“They made everyone around them miserable, too. My father-in-law was a cheap son of a bitch. Sitting on a pile of money he’d made selling some of his farmland to a fracking outfit. I think death by gas was . . . what do you call it? Poetic justice. He never gave any money to Kelly and me. Never helped us out. The bastard even made us pay our share whenever we ate dinner there. He’d show us the grocery bill. And Kelly’s mother had battery acid for blood. Nothing good to say about him, or us, or anyone. But there they were, spooning.”
I was amazed Kelly had turned out as well as she had, given Stokes’s report on the people who raised her. But even if the murder scene had triggered his memory of finding his in-laws’ corpses, why air all this family laundry with me?
“I guess you never know what goes on between couples in bed,” I said.
Relieved to see the bowling alley coming up on my right, I flicked my turn signal on.
“Here we are.”
I steered into the parking lot and stopped next to the hulking, unlit VAN WINKLE LANES sign. Stokes unbuckled his seat belt and hesitated. He turned and studied me for a few seconds.
“What?” I asked, uncomfortable.
“Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
I worried he was going to ask details about the Hugh and Helene affair in some inappropriate fashion.
“Um, how would I know until you ask it?”
“Did you still love him?”
“Ah,” I sighed.
I wasn’t expecting that one. But I’d asked myself the same question after Hugh moved to Pequod. How could I not still love him a little? We shared so much history—I’d spent almost a third of my life with him. There were so many bittersweet memories. And yet, whenever I thought about the way we ended, I felt a cold, black stone in my heart.
“I’m not sure.”
“Because if it were me, I think I’d be grateful someone offed him,” he hissed. “Her, too.” He was practically spitting the words. “I’d want anyone who screwed me over like that to be fucking dead.”
“Good to know,” I said, startled by his vehemence.
Stokes stepped out of the car.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He slammed the door so hard that I jumped. I felt like I could finally breathe again as I watched him stride off and disappear into the alley.
I was about to drive off when a giant yawn overtook me. I sat there, bleary-eyed and groggy, as the Van Winkle sign woke up. Blood red letters flickered against the pale gray sky. I stared at them and thought back to those worrying days of my childhood when I’d first known this level of exhaustion. Troubled, frightening days that began as I understood the darker side of my father’s world—a place of angry, violent men.
How many times had I held my father’s hand as we strolled past neon bowling alley signs in the early morning hours? He’d be nattily dressed in a suit and tie, Clark Gable-handsome with slick black hair. So many Saturday mornings, while my mother primped at a beauty salon or took tennis lessons at her club, I would go with Nathan Glasser to visit a bowling alley in our suburban township or a neighboring one. Bellport Lanes. Bayshore Lanes. Pro-Bowl at Hempstead. Nathan with his black book of numbers. His 1984 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon full of cigarette cartons and racing forms.
All the alleys seemed the same to me: cavernous concrete buildings, dark inside except for a dimly lit concession stand or small bar. Quiet except for the hum and buzz of soda machines, refrigerators and a whirring floor buffer if the night janitor was still there. On occasion, Nathan would get a lane switched on and hand me a sparkly blue or pink child-size bowling ball, so I could roll it at the pins while he and the owner spoke in hushed tones.
“I have dozens of men working for me all over New York,” he liked to brag. He told everyone he was president of Nat-o-Matic, a statewide vending machine distributor. In truth, he worked for the Mob, stocking their alley and bar machines with contraband cigarettes. He also booked sports bets for them on his route and skimmed some of the profit off the top for himself. It was a cash business. He didn’t think his bosses would find out. If they did, he’d pay them back with interest from his winnings at the racetrack. The problem was, his horses lost. He hid this from my mother and me. By the time his lies came to light, they’d ruined us all.
Both my parents had secret lives back then. Sally the Country Club Wasp née Sasha, the Russian Jew from East New York. Nathan, the bookie, gambler and money launderer.
So did I. Another life I lived only at night. A potentially dangerous one.