Page 27

March

Claire stood motionless in a dreary hall before Apartment 3A, her hand raised, ready to knock, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. He was home, there behind the scarred door with so many locks she wondered how he managed to find the right keys. Or if any worked. Light seeped from beneath the door, a narrow splash of yellow on otherwise dingy gray linoleum. She could smell onions frying, could hear the faint sound of canned laughter. The man who’d destroyed her mother was watching a television sitcom.

I’m sorry, Cam. I just can’t do this.

She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned. Behind her the door opened.

“Can I help—Claire? Oh my God, is it really you?”

Heart beating erratically, she slowly turned. “Hi, Daddy.”

The man silently staring at her, a dish towel in his hands, had aged terribly. His thick red hair had all but disappeared and what little remained was sepia. His deep green eyes were now red-rimmed and nearly colorless. Once tall and muscular, he was thin and stooped. A shell of the debonair hustler he’d once been.

He broke out of their mutual stunned surprise first and stepped back, pulling the door wide. “Come in. Please.”

She stepped over the threshold and was nearly knocked over by the scent of onions. “Something is burning.”

“Oh shit!” As he disappeared around a corner, he yelled, “I was just making supper and haven’t quite gotten the hang of cooking for only one.” A pan clanged and water hissed as cold met hot. “Make yourself at home.”

On what? There was a lonely recliner held together by duck tape sitting before a card table and an ancient fourteen-inch TV with foil-tipped rabbit ears sitting on a cinderblock and wood bookcase. At her feet lay a tattered copy of David Copperfield.

A definite improvement over racing forms, which she saw no sign of.

He startled her coming through the kitchen door in stocking feet. “Sorry ’bout that. I never was much of a cook.”

No, he’d left that to Mom, along with everything else. For lack of anything to say—what she’d rehearsed for hours on end had simply flown—she asked, “So, how have you been?”

“Good. I’m working at Gino’s. As a dishwasher, but I hope to get a promotion soon. Become a waiter maybe.” He shrugged as he smiled, showing a gap where his right front tooth should be. “Have to prove myself, ya know. They can’t have ex-cons handling the cash right away.”

“I understand.”

He waved toward the recliner and pulled a cardboard box before it. “Take a seat and tell me a little about yourself.” As he settled on the box, his knees nearly poking through his threadbare slacks, he said, “That young man that came around told me precious little. Nice fella, though. Are you two engaged or something?”

“No, we’re just friends.”

He wrung his hands in the ensuing silence, then said, “Claire, I’m so sorry for all I put you and your mom through. It wasn’t fair to either of you. I was a selfish bastard, pure and simple.”

She wouldn’t argue with that. “You know she committed suicide.”

“No.” Looking stricken, he murmured, “They said it was an accidental overdose.”

“I found her. Christmas morning. Found the letter, the eviction notice. I pocketed it all, then called the police. No way would the church have performed a funeral mass had they’d known, and I was damned if they’d bury her in unconsecrated ground.” Anger got the better of her and her tears spilled. “Not after a lifetime of devotion.”

He nodded as he wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You did the right thing.”

She took a shuddering breath. “So, do you need money?”

“No.” He looked around. “This place is cheap and I get paid weekly. It’s not much, but I’m getting by. I just wanted to see you again. See that you were all right. Tell you that if I could, I’d take back the hurt, be a better father to you and a better husband to your mom.” He looked out the window. “I never did understand why she chose me over Delucci. He had looks, ambition. And he was Italian like her, which would have made her parents happy. Instead she chose the guy with an easy line and a fist full of useless promises, who brought her to his level instead of rising to hers. That’s my sin, Claire. I married above myself and knowing it, destroyed an innocent.” He straightened and placed his hands on his knees. “I’m thankful to see you didn’t get sucked down too. That you look like her but have her father’s grit.”

“You knew him?” Her mother had told her little about her grandfather. The few times Claire had pushed for information, her mother had started to cry.

“Yes.” He grinned. “Your grandfather was a handsome, hardworking son of a bitch, who could sing the birds out of the trees and loathed me on sight. He owned this really profitable grocery and butcher shop call Mama’s, of all things, right in the heart of Little Italy. You know where Church meets Stuart, right there across from …”

“We have to do it one more time, Cam. The gull flew right past the lens and ruined that last shot.”

“Ack, not again.” If he ran into the freezing surf one more time he’d have no balls at all. He huffed and reached for the whiskey flask, the aqua vita being the only thing keeping his blood from turning to slush. The whiskey down, he shouted over the surf, “I’m done after this, Maggie. I bloody well mean it.”

Maggie looked up from the camera the photographer held out to her. “Cam, just one more, I promise. The rest are great.”

If they were all so great, then why the hell did they need another? Ack, he’d never ken these people. And what all this had to do with a man’s perfume was beyond any kenning.

He backed into the surf, his legs stinging as wave after wave crashed up against him, and shouted, “Are ye ready? Because ye’ve only this one chance and I’m out of here.”

He’d garnered enough to repay Claire and a bucket more.

When the photographer placed the camera on the three-legged stand, the poor bastard with a huge white reflector waded out to him. As he held it up to catch the setting sun and fought to keep his balance, he muttered, “Thanks for putting your foot down, man. I’m about to die out here.”

“Ye are? Humph!” At least the man had clothing on. Cam had naught on but a slip of glossy black protecting his bag of sweeties and it was doing a damn poor job of it. When the photographer finally held up a thumb, Cam cocked a hip, raised his arms, and crossed them above his head as Maggie had instructed. His thoughts on Claire and the last time they’d made love, he looked straight into the camera’s all-seeing eye.

Several months later …

Claire jolted awake on the first ring, looked at the clock and grabbed the phone. One of these days, Cam might figure out time zones, but she wasn’t going to hold her breath. “Hello?”

“Claire, get your ass out of bed and open the door for me.”

“Tracy? Are you drunk? It’s—” she glanced at the clock again, “—two-thirty in the damn morning.”

“Claire, you are not going to believe this. I’m holding a copy of this month’s Cosmo and three guesses who’s in it?”

Who cared? “Tracy, go home and go to bed.” As she started to put the phone down, Tracy screamed, “It’s Cam!”

Claire immediately pressed the phone to her ear again. “What did you say?”

“I said it’s Cam. Get down here and see for yourself.”

Claire’s feet barely hit the steps, before punching in the alarm code and jerking open the Pumpkin’s front door. “Let me see it.”

Coming through the door, Tracy handed over the magazine.

Breath held, Claire flipped pages, and suddenly there in living color, beautiful and nearly naked, looking for all the world like every woman’s sex fantasy, stood Cam, waves splashing off the back of his heavily muscled thighs, looking straight at her. In the lower right-hand corner, on the simple but unmistakable, black-and-white designer label were four simple block letters. LUST.

She collapsed onto the nearest chair. “It is him.”

“Ya, and he’s growing out his hair.”

Claire lifted the flap and sniffed the perfume sample. Nice but not anything like Cam.

“There’s more, Claire.”

“Huh?”

Tracy hauled four more magazines out of her oversized designer knock-off satchel. “These are all I could afford. I dog-eared the pages.”

Claire opened the top one, a stylish men’s magazine and there was Cam, leaning against a stone wall, a horse peering over his shoulder, dressed in the height of country gentleman fashion. She opened the next, and there he was again, this time astride a seriously tricked-out motorcycle.

“He’s famous, Claire. Next, we’ll be seeing him on romance covers and doing margarine commercials like Fabio.”

And he’d never said a word about any of this. Without looking at the rest, Claire handed the magazines back. “How did you find these?”

“I saw the bike ad a few nights ago but thought I was seeing things. Then I picked up this month’s Cosmo and there was no mistaking him this time, so I went to that all-night newsstand.”

Claire rested her head in her hands. She’d lost him. To the tall beautiful Tyra and Gisele what’s-her-faces of the high-fashion modeling world. It certainly explained why he’d been calling less and less. She straightened, and over the burning at the back of her throat, said, “I believe I’m going to get drunk. Care to join me?”