worthwhile, even when the results suggest otherwise. Does that make sense? As you get older, you roll with the punches a little better. That’s all I’m saying.”
She walked away, and Arnie called her back.
“Hey, Lil,” he said, “have you ever taken that drive to Key West?”
“Not since I was a kid.”
“The weather’s supposed to be beautiful Sunday. I was thinking of going for a ride. An old friend of mine owns a restaurant there, and if you’re not doing anything...”
Lili laughed. “Are you asking me out?”
“That’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Would that be appropriate? In light of current sexual harassment guidelines, I mean.”
“I’m not sure,” Arnie said, “I’d have to refer back to my sensitivity training manual.”
Arnie didn’t think he was her type, and he didn’t think Lili was his, either, but maybe it was time he found out.
She said she could be ready by around eleven. “By the way, we’re supposed to be in the lieutenant’s office for a pow-wow on this Hannah thing. Robotaille’s working a lead, and Kramer wants to fill us in on the details.”
“Alright,” Martinson said, “let’s get on it.”
Four months after Harry moved in, Aggie started throwing up in the morning, and it was obviously more than a virus or some fluke stomach bug. She went to the drug store and brought home a test, and when that came back positive, she made an appointment to go see her doctor. He said she was eight weeks pregnant.
Harry did not think this was bad news. Just the opposite. He was thrilled.
Although Aggie had been wanting to have a baby, she didn’t know if she was ready for it. She didn’t know if this was the right time.
Fair enough. Who was ready to be a parent? But if everybody thought that way, they might as well give the world back to the monkeys.
His attitude was good, but his attitude alone didn’t do enough to reassure Aggie.
“Think of it as having nothing to do with me,” she said.
“That’s stupid,” Harry said. “It has everything to do with you.”
“Then think of it as an independent event. Think about being a father. Think about me being dead, and you having sole responsibility for this child. How’s that look?”
Harry despised hypothetical problems. They were a waste of time. He’d rather deal with the reality of a situation, and the reality of this one was, there was going to be a third tiny existence in the apartment that was going to need to be fed and burped and have shoes bought for it.
“Statistically,” he said, “I’ll be around for another thirty-five years, minus a few on the back end if I don’t quit smoking soon. What’re you now, twenty-nine?”
“Twenty-nine,” she said.
“Odds are you make it to seventy-eight. Not a bad run, all things considered. That’s almost fifty years. You’re going to be tied to me for thirty-five of those fifty years.”
There. Right back at her. “Which is like what, seventy percent of the rest of your life? Think about it.”
“I have thought about it, only you make it sound like you’re selling insurance.”
“Gambling is what I had in mind,” Harry said, “but insurance is good. It’s like taking a stake in the future. I’m not saying I have any confidence in the future, but it’s going to get here regardless. I say we have the kid.”
Lying in bed a couple nights later, imagining a son, Harry thought about playing catch with his boy. It was the fear most often mouthed by guys who were scared they were too old for children. The fear of catch. As if this were the single, defining experience of fatherhood. But how taxing was tossing a baseball? And when did his old man ever play catch with him?
They were both awake. Aggie said, “Do you really think you’re going to be tied to me for the rest of your life?”
Harry said, “Mmmmmm,” since there was no point in pretending he was asleep.
“After we have the baby?”
Harry said, “Does this mean it’s been decided?” All the guys living in mortal fear of being too old for catch, it wasn’t like they’d been out there throwing baseballs at their fathers, either.
“Answer me,” she said.
“If we’re going to be any kind of parents, the answer is yes.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Nothing scares me,” Harry said, though that wasn’t true. The prospect of being mangled in a car wreck, now that he was driving all the time, on point against motorists in their seventies and eighties, that scared the shit right out of him.
“Your life is going to change,” Aggie said, and she rolled onto her side, facing away from him. “In a hurry.”
It already had. Not long ago, he was hustling blow and holding his breath until Jimmy De Steffano wired up their next heist, doing bouncer gigs for Frankie Yin. Now he liked to be asleep by midnight, so he could be up at seven for his maintenance man job.
She was right. Life changed in a hurry. Like if you were sailing through an intersection without a care in the world, and some half-blind octogenarian came ripping into your ass, your life could change in a second.
Connor Merrill turned out to be worth every penny Arthur paid him. Harry had to serve out the rest of his minimum, ninety days, but after that he was back on his parole deal. Florida broke his balls on the terms: Three years, with five more of probation thrown on top. Any fuck-ups during that time, he was going back in, two years, no questions, no nothing. It was as harsh as they could make it. But the bottom line was, for now he was out, and he had Merrill to thank for that.
Aggie hooked him up with the job. She knew somebody in the company that managed the apartment complex, and they were looking for a guy. Harry was responsible for cleaning the pool, a cinch if you did it regularly, for cutting the grass, and for vacuuming the carpets in the hallways. He had to fix little shit that broke, a door, a window, but if there was a major problem with plumbing or electricity, Harry called in the plumber or the electrician. Maintenance man was not a spectacular career, but it beat the hell out of being in jail.
For his latest challenge, management had decided it was time to paint, so Harry was in charge of hiring and supervising the painting crew. Painting was easy. You had to make sure the new color covered the old color, and you had to be neat, or else you wound up with paint all over the fucking place, and that was about it.
But he couldn’t keep any painters. Seven dollars an hour was not a lot of money, and Harry understood that, but the guys who answered his classified would work a day, demand their pay, and that’d be the end of them. One clown came back when he was short of wine money, to cadge a five-dollar “advance.”
For a while it looked like Harry’s permanent crew would consist of himself, Cedric Baker, and a Seminole Indian named Pat Mule Deer, but Pat went and got blasted on schnaaps, busted up a bar, and took on the Sheriffs when they arrived, in an eerily familiar scenario. He left Harry a message on the office answering machine, asking Harry to bail him out, and that was the last Harry heard of Pat Mule Deer.
Cedric Baker appeared on a Tuesday, with a metal lunch pail and work boots spattered mostly white. He was from some podunk in South Carolina that was so small it got absorbed by a neighboring town. Compared to picking strawberries, as far as Cedric was concerned, painting was genteel employment. And he painted with pride. He had a delicate touch with a two-inch brush, deftly cutting trim, no running, no dripping, before Harry went in after him and whacked the walls with his roller, or when they could get away with it, the Power Painter.
Cedric had to take two buses to get there, but he was on time every morning with the lunch bucket and a thermos of what Cedric said was iced tea. Harry knew it was spiked, and Cedric knew that Harry knew, but whatever it was, it didn’t slow Cedric down.
Harry bumped him up to eight bucks an hour, then started paying him for his half-hour lunches and two fifteen-minute breaks. They finally settled on three-fifty for the week. Harry pulled his ad from Aggie’s newspaper, hoping to go the rest of the way, just Cedric and him.
