and there wasn’t much they had on me.
Lippert had fixed it with Wagner and I was grateful. I thought about the van, and how my finding a parking space meant I had made it to the election-night party where I’d seen Lily.
I knew Radcliff was probably still pissed off at me, thought I was trying to get Lily back. He was right. I wasn’t sure I could survive without her.
Later that morning, when Obama was to be sworn in, I went over to Il Posto Acconto, my friend Beatrice’s place on East Second Street, to eat and watch the big TV over the bar. Lily had said she’d come by at some point, no promise when, just that she’d come for a drink. She had moved back to her own apartment, and we had spoken a few times and met for a drink once or twice. I didn’t ask about Virgil, not yet. It was none of my business. Yet.
Bea, the best Italian cook in town, is a glamorous Roman who can always cheer you up with her talk and her food, and she was there with Julio, her husband, who’s a dead ringer for Dizzy Gillespie. I drank one of Bea’s great Bloody Marys and watched the crowd in a frozen DC, and wished I had gone.
“She’ll be here,” Beatrice said, seeing me look out the glass door to the street. She knew I was waiting for Lily.
It was cold out. A few people dropped in to Beatrice’s, everybody looking quiet and solemn and happy. Tolya showed up and sat next to me. We drank a bottle of good wine.
Bea turned up the TV. We stopped talking and watched.
And then Obama was sworn in, and Aretha Franklin, in a big hat, sang, and we sat and watched. And I waited.
Tolya raised his glass.
I looked at the young black man in front of the frozen Capitol, and I looked at Tolya. “Things are going to get better now, aren’t they?” I said.
