'Awful. Yeah. I can imagine.'
She got off my lap; took command. Miss Efficiency of 1933. 'We can talk later. Come on. Let's get you to bed.'
She took me by the hand and led me through the big open studio room. Alonzo had moved out long ago- he was living with a man, now- but had left a couple of his 'experiments in dynamic symmetry' behind. He'd told Mary Ann she could choose any two, and, to her credit, she picked the two smallest. But for some unexplainable reason, I'd taken a perverse liking to both of the paintings, meaningless abstract splotches of color though they were.
In the bedroom, with its blue-batiked ceiling and walls, its single, painted-out window, its four-poster bed. I felt safe. Secure. Hidden away from reality. The man in the moon over the bed seemed to be winking at me. We had a secret.
'You look so tired.' she said, looking at me with furrowed brow, taking my coat off me.
'Yes. I am.'
She undressed me- except for the gun. which she didn't like handling, and left for me to deal with- and then she slipped out of her clothes and put me to bed.
I said. 'Could you hold me? Just hold me.'
She held me. She was the mother; I was the child. I fell asleep with her cradling me in her arms.
When I woke, she was cradled in my arms. The room was dark, though she'd left the electric moon glowing. I got up and looked at my watch, on the dresser. Four in the morning.
She stirred. 'What woke you?'
'I remembered something.'
She sat up; the covers were around her waist. Her breasts looked at me curiously.
I said. 'I remembered I haven't made love to you tonight.'
She gave me that impish grin. 'It's too late. It's morning already.'
I felt my face turn serious; I couldn't make it do anything else. 'It's not too late.' I said, and went to her.
I came inside her. It was the only time I ever did that, came without using something, without pulling out. I came inside her and it was wonderful. We were both crying when we came.
We lay in each other's arms.
'That can lead to little Nathans and Mary Anns, you know,' she said, looking over at me, with a faint smile.
'I know,' I said.
The next morning I told her. Not the truth, exactly, but something close to it. I woke, and she was making tea, and I went into the kitchen and she smiled, standing there in that black kimono with red and white flowers she'd worn the first night, and poured me tea and I told her.
'Jimmy's dead'
She put a hand on her chest. Then she sat slowly down.
'Your brother was working for gangsters. With gangsters. He may have been doing it to get material for a story, to try and make his dream about being on the
She raised the back of a fist to her face and bit her knuckles; her eyes were very, very wide. She looked about eleven years old.
'That's why I got pushed off that tower last night. I've been snooping around and it almost got me killed. I didn't tell you, but I was shot at night before last; a man I was with, a man who knew your brother, was killed. Standing right next to me. Killed.'
She was shaking. I pulled my chair around and put an arm around her. She was staring straight ahead; it was like I wasn't there.
After a while I said, 'There's nothing we can do.'
'But- how- when- where's his- I'
She got up, pushing me and the chair away, rushed out of the room.
I went after her.
She was in the bathroom, kneeling over the stool.
When she was through. I helped her out into the studio. Sun streaked down through the skylight. Alonzo's mattress had been moved out and a secondhand sofa put in its place; we sat there. Dust motes floated.
'Do the authorities know?' she asked. It was a strain for her to keep her voice from cracking.
'No.' I said. 'I can't even prove it happened.'
She looked at me sharply, contused. 'You can't- what?'
'I don't even know where he's buried.'
'Then how do you know he's really dead?'
'Frank Nitti told me.'
'Frank Nitti…?'
'That's where I went last night. From the fair. I thought that man had been sent by Nitti to kill me. I was
