Blood Count

CHAPTER 58

I went home. I parked my car, saw Mike waving at me through the coffee shop window, saw him beckon to me, but I ignored him, and went upstairs. I was beat. Anxious as hell about Lily, and dead tired.

“Hello, Artie.” She was sitting at the kitchen counter. “I borrowed your keys from Mike. I hope that was OK.” Lily looked at me.

“Yes.”

“I had to get out of that building for a while. I couldn’t just stay with Tolya.” She paused. “That’s not true,” she said. “I wanted to be here.”

“I’m glad you came.” I sat across from her.

“My own apartment is still sublet,” she said.

“Stay here.” I said. “Lily?”

“What?”

“The tape you used to record Simonova, the one you put in the box of her stuff-you wanted me to find it.”

“Yes. I couldn’t understand all the Russian, but there was plenty in English.

“So you know what she did to Valentina?”

“Yes.”

“Artie, there’s something I need to tell you.”

I cut her off. “No. There’s nothing at all. I know. Everything is fine. It’s all taken care of. It’s over.”

“Thank you. What about the Russian? Ivan? Won’t he talk? Say he had instructions from Marianna?”

“So what? Who will care what a pig like him says? Did you tell Virgil?”

“Not everything,” said Lily. “He wouldn’t have understood about Valentina and Tolya. He doesn’t know that I loved Val, and you loved her, and how it is with Tolya and us.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I wanted to, God, I really did. I was going to, but then you got there, and I was so crazy, it was as if I’d fallen over into some other universe. I didn’t know if I should tell you the truth or try to mislead you, so I came up with that cockamamie story about forgetting Marianna’s meds. I was scared. I freaked out. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Not to me. Never.”

She reached in her bag and took out a CD. “I wanted to give you this,” she said. “Lionel gave it to me for you.”

I opened the brown envelope addressed to me in Lionel Hutchison’s hand with his old Parker pen. In it was Anniversary, a Stan Getz album. I put it on my CD player. Then Lily and I sat on my couch and listened to “Blood Count,” Billy Strayhorn’s last song. We sat there for a long time, just listening.

Inauguration Day,

January 20, 2009

T hat morning I ran into Sam, the doorman at the building next to mine. He was getting a cab for a woman and her kid. Then he said hi and we stopped to talk for a minute.

“Great day,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yes.”

“Never thought I’d live to see this day.” Sam’s eyes welled up. “Never in my whole damn life,” he said.

Most of the time, Sam was a quiet man. Today he wanted to talk. He was wearing an Obama button.

“You know it’s my birthday,” said Sam, straightening his jacket. “Nice way to celebrate. I’m seventy years old today, Artie. My daughter went down to DC this morning. I said to her, ‘I want you there, I want you to see it with your own eyes and tell me.’ ” Sam paused and smiled. “Bet they don’t got anybody like Mr. Obama over in Russia.”

“Not a chance.” I don’t know why I asked, but since he had mentioned the place where I was born, I said, “Where are you from?” I realized I didn’t know. I had never asked Sam. I should have asked him.

We stood inside the front door of the building. He told me he was from Mississippi. Bad place, he said.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“I was no more than six years old,” said Sam. “I went out hunting for rabbits with my grandfather-I adored him; he raised me-and I got lost in the woods.” He paused. “Lost my way, lost him. I just wandered around, and then I looked up, and he was hanging from a tree.”

I didn’t know what to say, so we just stood there for a while until Sam said, “I have to get going. Want to be at home for the speech.”

In spite of having voted for McCain, Mike Rizzi had made fresh apple pie that morning, and I got Sonny Lippert over to eat breakfast with me. We sat, drinking coffee, chewing the fat. It was inauguration day. He told me he had fixed it with Jimmy Wagner to lose the tape that showed my car near the van on election night. For a while, Sonny told me, there had been talk that I’d pushed the van out of place, that somehow I was involved, that I could even be had up for some kind of involuntary manslaughter. But they found the bastard who left the hand brake off, 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.