The Ex

26

Molly scooted over toward the window to make room for Michael. David sat across from them in the booth at the Choice Deli, on the corner two blocks down West Eighty-fifth Street from their apartment. The Choice had been at the same location for decades. Though the walls screamed for plaster-patch, their coat of rose-colored paint was fresh. The counter stools and booths were only a few years old, gray vinyl with a sparkling silver design salted throughout. A tall, slowly revolving glass display case near the cash register dated back to the fifties and somehow made the thick cream pies and cheesecakes look like delicious confections from childhood.

The waiter came over and they ordered an omelet for Molly, scrambled eggs and milk for Michael, a toasted corn muffin for David. Molly scooted the steaming coffee cup that the waiter had left, so it was well out of Michael’s reach, and stared at the back page of a Saturday Times the man two booths away was reading. A young woman from the Village had been raped and murdered near the East River, full-column news because it was in the area of Sutton Place, where the wealthy of New York didn’t factor possible murder into their plans.

The pretty, young victim was smiling mischievously in her photograph, as if someone had just told her an off-color but amusing joke. On that sunny day she’d been psychologically a million years from unexpected violent death, but in reality closer than she’d known when the camera’s shutter was tripped. The city had been waiting.

Michael stared up at Molly over his mustache of milk. “I’m hungry.”

“Everybody’s hungry,” David said.

Molly patted Michael’s wrist. “The food will be here soon,” she assured him. David handed him a pencil and he began scrawling crude stick figures on his napkin, his eyes sharply focused and his lower lip tucked in with childish concentration.

Molly glanced out the window at the wet street. It had been drizzling from low, dark clouds since early morning. The sky looked like an upside-down gray bowl arcing inches above the tops of buildings. Along with the heat and almost tropical humidity, it helped to produce a claustrophobic feel to the city.

“Thank God it wasn’t raining yesterday at Bernice’s funeral,” Molly said.

“This isn’t your morning to run, is it?”

David changing the subject yet staying with the weather. Very adroit.

“Tomorrow,” Molly said.

He picked up the Times he’d wrestled from the corner vending machine and folded then started to read the front section. The smiling young woman who’d met her death near Sutton Place again stared at Molly from her newspaper photo.

The waiter arrived with their breakfasts, and David had to lay the paper on the seat beside him to make room.

When their coffee cups had been topped off and the waiter had left, Molly spread butter on Michael’s toast, then, at his insistence, jelly. He beamed when she gave in to his demands, then promptly stuck his elbow in the jellied toast as he reached for his milk.

David observed this and grinned. “He’ll clean up okay with a little soap,” he assured Molly.

“Deirdre called and offered to baby-sit him today while I work,” Molly said, using her napkin to wipe jelly from Michael’s arm.

“Take her up on the offer?”

“No. Julia called with the same offer. I told them both no. I think we should keep him home for a while, watch him for…you know, effects.” She lowered her voice to pronounce the last word, knowing even as she did so that it was silly. Michael was sitting right beside her and would hear. But he wouldn’t know that the effects she referred to were his possible reactions to Bernice’s death. Molly was worried about what the experience would do to him. Three-year-olds could accept these things with a matter-of-factness that eluded some adults. Yet on a deeper level the trauma and grief could leave a lasting scar.

As she forked a bite of omelet into her mouth and chewed, Michael glanced up at her, possibly wondering about his fate for the day.

“I’m going to the gym to work out later this morning,” David said. “When I get back, I can keep an eye on him while you work. Maybe we’ll go out, find something fun to do.”

Michael had resumed eating and didn’t look up from his scrambled eggs, but he grinned.

“I thought you worked out yesterday,” Molly said.

“Upper body.” He bit into his toasted corn muffin. “Lower body’s scheduled for today.”

That didn’t seem right to Molly, but she said nothing. David, as far as she knew, had never been on an alternating workout schedule. But then she wasn’t privy to what went on at Silver’s Gym. She’d been there only once, to meet him before leaving to join friends for dinner. She remembered it as a functional, depressing place, with old equipment and a darkened and smoothly worn wood floor. But men seemed to like that kind of atmosphere where they worked out. Possibly it made them think they were sacrificing more and so should see greater benefits.

“…about the fire?” David was saying.

“What?”

“Did Julia say anything more about the fire at her mother’s apartment?”

“She told me it was deliberately set. The arson investigators said an accelerant had been used, and they found an empty wine bottle in the basement that had contained gasoline. It was lucky nobody was killed. Well, not only luck was involved. Unlike our building, when the fire alarm sounded, everyone knew there was probably a fire.”

“Maybe they’ll lift some fingerprints from the bottle,” David said. He took a sip of coffee.

“No. According to Julia, fire took care of that. The bottle was blackened and in pieces from the heat. Gangs, is what the police think. There’s a lot of gang activity in that neighborhood, and a sixteen-year-old kid who’s been in that kind of trouble before lives in the building.”

Michael demanded more jelly for the second half of his toast.

“It’s a shame kids get screwed up in those gangs,” Molly said.

“It must be a tough neighborhood.”

She used her knife to scoop grape jelly from its plastic container. “You do what you must to survive, I guess.”

Don’t we all? he thought. Or was he only telling himself the survival of his marriage and reputation depended on his cooperation with Deirdre? She was a potent exterior force, but maybe his compulsion was his own. Their relationship was one he knew was drowning him as surely and fatally as Bernice had been drowned. He realized it yet seemed unable to find the strength to swim toward the surface.

He could only struggle and sink deeper.

As he was going to do later that morning.