“So you’re a reader.”
“Got into the habit when I first met my wife. She’s an English teacher. She kind of insisted that if I wanted to date her, I had to broaden my literary horizons.”
“Thank God for the annealing effect of women,” Huston said. “So then, are you familiar with Nabokov’s Lolita?”
“Heard of it but haven’t read it. Isn’t it about an older man’s involvement with a young girl?”
“Right. And there’s this character named Quilty, the narrator’s nemesis. I’m thinking of making him a state trooper.”
The server appeared at their table then, a thin Asian girl in a crisp, white uniform. Huston gave their order and engaged her in pleasant conversation for another minute or so. When she walked away, he turned to see DeMarco smiling.
“I wasn’t flirting with her,” Huston said.
“I know. You didn’t look at her butt when she left.”
“Did you?”
“It’s a very fine butt.”
Huston grinned. “You’re not what I expected in a policeman.”
“You’re not what I expected in a pompous ass,” DeMarco said. “So anyway, back to this guy in your book who’s based on me. He’s extremely good-looking, right? Sort of a George Clooney type.”
“Not a bad choice,” Huston said. “Clooney is quite convincing at playing bumblers.”
“Wait a minute. My character is a bumbler?”
“In Nabokov’s novel, yes. He’s rigid. He’s obsessed. He’s a moralizer who refuses to see the immorality of his own actions.”
“Tell you what,” DeMarco said. “It’s probably better to just leave me out of the story. That way I won’t have to arrest you for something.”
They met on three more occasions that summer. At the second meeting, again at Dino’s, Huston quizzed DeMarco on the hierarchy of authority in the state police organization, who did what, the types of firearms they carried, under what conditions the state police assisted or overrode the local police. But he also talked at length about his own life, his wife and three children, all obviously adored.
Then there was a pause. And Huston told him, quietly, “You know about my parents probably.”
DeMarco nodded. The bungled robbery of the Hustons’ hardware store, the blast that tore out his mother’s throat. His father’s suicide two weeks later from an overdose of his antidepressant. The horrific images that still haunted Thomas, the memories that sometimes overwhelmed him.
DeMarco found himself so moved by the intimacy of that conversation that he nearly dragged out his own ghosts and demons for examination, thought that if he chose now, after all these years, to finally speak about that almost hallucinatory happiness of the early years of marriage and fatherhood, then the sudden violent extinguishment of it, his anger and too-aggressive behavior and the subsequent demotion, that here was a man who would understand. Unfortunately, he could bring himself to speak only elliptically of Ryan Jr. and to say of Laraine, “She left me not long after that.”
Huston’s hand slid across the table as if to reach out to DeMarco, but it stopped short, and Huston said only, “Fuck, man. Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
DeMarco nodded, but he was looking away now, watching the traffic go by outside, and he was relieved when Huston asked nothing more, and grateful when the server walked by and Huston told her, “We’re ready for the check now.”
For their third meeting, in August, DeMarco was invited to a barbecue at Huston’s home. He met Huston’s beautiful wife and three beautiful children, was given a tour of the lovely Victorian, and spent the rest of that dulcet evening conscious of and resenting the heavy ache of envy deep in his chest.
The envy reached its crescendo near dusk, with Huston and DeMarco seated side by side on lawn chairs, both relaxed, both watching the other guests. DeMarco was watching Tommy with one of his friends, the boys taking turns mugging with a Wiffle bat, tongues stuck in their cheeks like wads of tobacco, maybe imitating a parent or coach from Little League practice. The scene made DeMarco smile, and when he said to Huston, “He looks just like you,” he hadn’t meant it to sound as wistful as it did.