Nobody offered an opinion on that one.
“Well,” he said, “whichever the word is, that’s it. What a metamorphosis! From Brenda Starr to Little Orphan Annie.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she said. “I always liked Brenda Starr.”
“What have you got against Annie?”
“Nothing, but I never much wanted to look like her.” She was in the front of the car, next to Richard, and she had an arm hooked over her seat back so that she could look at me. “Well, Matthew S.? What’s your verdict?”
“It looked nice long,” I said, “and it looks nice short. One thing it does, it shows off your face better.”
“It used to get lost in all that hair,” Richard said. “Now it pops.”
“I look like Little Orphan Annie and my face pops,” she said.
“These are good things, sweetie. Trust me.”
“All I know,” she said, “is it’s done. The boy who does my hair couldn’t believe it when I went in there this morning and told him what I wanted.”
“Like, ‘Oooh, how can you possibly want me to do that to you?’ ”
“Not at all,” she told him. “He’s been wanting to cut my hair forever. ‘I finally talked you into it!’ But it wasn’t his doing.”
“The occasion,” I guessed. “Washing that man right out of your hair.”
Richard said he always loved Mary Martin. Donna said, “Sort of, but not exactly. I called him last night.”
“Vinnie,” I said.
“Which was probably a mistake, because I didn’t want to hear his voice, or for him to hear mine. But I thought I should remind him that I was coming for my things this afternoon, and that it would help if he could contrive to be elsewhere.”
“And?”
“I don’t know if he was able to take in the information. He started going on and on about my hair, my beautiful long hair, and how he wanted to see it spread out on his pillow and, well, other things I’d just as soon not repeat.”
“We’ll use our overheated imaginations,” Richard said.
“I’m sure you will. And I thought, You know, buster, if you like my hair that much, there must be something wrong with it. And whether there is or not, you’ve seen it for the last time. And I got up this morning and rushed straight to the beauty parlor, and Herve was able to fit me in, and the rest is history.”
“It’s not history, sweetie, it’s art appreciation. Just fabulous.”
“Thank you, Richard.”
“But Herve? Honestly?”
“I think it used to be Harvey.”
“Ooh la la,” said Richard. “How continental.”
Vincent Cutrone’s apartment was in a six-story brick building on a street corner in Cobble Hill. A dry cleaner and a deli shared the ground floor, with half a dozen small apartments on each of the upper floors. Richard, who’d found the place with no trouble, was able to park right in front, and the three of us entered the building together. Donna had her key out, but pushed the button for 4-C anyway, and sighed deeply when the intercom made that throat-clearing noise it makes when someone’s about to respond.
“Yo,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m coming up,” she said. “I’ve got people with me.”
He didn’t say anything, nor did he buzz us in. She used her key, and we were getting on the elevator when we finally heard the buzzer sound.
“Yo,” Donna said, and rolled her eyes again. “Why did I ever think—never mind.”
He must have been waiting at the door, because it opened inward as Donna was extending the key. Vinnie loomed in the doorway, his eyes taking in all three of us, then doing a pronounced double take. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”
“I had it cut,” she said.
“By a fuckin’ butcher?” He looked past her at me and Richard. “You believe this, guys? Best thing the woman had goin’ for her and she chops it off. Hell of a thing. I’m the one who drinks and she’s the one who goes nuts.”
She said, “I came for my things, Vincent. I thought—”
“Oh, now it’s Vincent. All the time it was ‘Oh, Vinnie, nobody ever made me feel like you made me feel. Oh, Vinnie, I love it when you—’ ”
I’d seen him before. At meetings, here and there around town. I never heard his story, never knew his name, couldn’t recall ever seeing him with Donna. But I recognized the face.
He was an inch or two shorter than I, and a few pounds heavier. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, and a little longer than the new Donna’s. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and he smelled the way you do when the alcohol is working its way out of your pores. He was wearing a soiled white undershirt, the kind that leaves the shoulders uncovered, and a pair of cutoff jeans. His feet were bare.
“You said you’d stay away from the apartment while I collected my things.”
