Glimmering

“Of course—we brought food, Jule will bring it in. You’re not to do a thing, Keeley, I forbid it. But if it’s all right, we thought we’d stay over tonight—”

“Oh, darling.” Keeley stopped, catching her breath, and looked up at Emma with full eyes. “We would love that.”

“Great!” Emma straightened. Her voice took on the brisk cheerfulness of the doctor on duty. “All right! Up we go.”

When they were gone Jule refilled his glass.

“Jackie, Jackie,” he rumbled, “you fucking idiot. Some cracked-out kid—”

Jack grabbed the bottle. He poured a shot into his teacup and gulped it. “I was going to call Emma. To ask what I should do with her.”

“What, like feed her?”

“No, you asshole. Like tell me whether I should call the Child Welfare League or whoever it is you call about things like this.”

“Have you tried the police?”

“No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone. The phones are too screwed up.” Jack hesitated, trying to remember exactly why he hadn’t called anyone. “I mean, Keeley just took her over. You think I should call the police?”

Jule shrugged and knocked back his drink. “Was she breaking into the house or anything like that?”

“No. She was here, though. I mean she was on our land, so she was technically trespassing, I guess.”

“Well, these days you’re not gonna get a big response to a call about some kid trespassing,” said Jule dryly. “My suggestion would be that you give her a nice meal—if you can get her to eat it, she looks like she’s pumping ice or some such shit—and send her packing before she causes trouble.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jack broke in, “but Keeley is doing the whole stray-cat thing—”

“Yeah? Well, then, maybe you should go the whole nine yards and do the whole stray-cat thing and like, dispose of her. Don’t give me that look. I just mean take her somewhere, drop her off, and let her go back to wherever she crawled from. Capische?”

“I know, I know.” Jack nodded unhappily. “But she’s pregnant—”

“And the sooner the better. I mean, weeping Christ on a stick, Jackie, what’re you thinking? A kid like that, alone here with you and all these old ladies? Sometimes I think you have no common sense.”

“But she’s pregnant.”

Jules looked aghast. “Jesus, Jackie—not by you? Okay, okay—I just thought, you know—it happens. That’d be right up there with the Immaculate Conception, huh, Jackie? Kinda skinny for my taste.”

Jack grinned ruefully. “She’s not a bad kid. She’s incredibly quiet.”

“Does she help out? With Grandmother and Mrs. Iverson?”

“I guess. I don’t know what she does, really. I think maybe she sleeps a lot. I haven’t spent much time with her. Alone, I mean. But no, she’s no trouble. And Keeley and Larena, they just seem to love her. I guess because she’s a girl.” Jack gave a broken laugh. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

Jule leaned back on the couch, balancing his glass on one knee. “A girl. Yeah, girls are different.”

His tone grew wistful, and Jack looked up, fearful of what he might see on his friend’s face. But Jule seemed peaceful. After a moment he asked, “But how are you, Jackie? You look pretty good—”

“Good, good, I feel—”

“—but you look skinny.” Jule’s red face folded into worry. “You getting enough to eat here? I mean, all of you soaking wet weigh five pounds—you getting enough to eat?”

“Of course we are. The grocery at Delmonico’s still delivers, every couple of weeks. We do okay. And—”

“Delmonico’s! God. They still have that caponata? You don’t get shit where we are. I mean, the movie people can get it flown in, sometimes, but the rest of us, stores and stuff—if you can even get there, they don’t got shit for food. But Emma grows everything, anyway…”

They talked for a long time. As evening came, the room a swirl of lavender and yellow, Emma brought them food—cumin-scented rice, tiny bitter eggplant, last year’s dried apples—then left. It had been a year, at least, since they’d had the luxury of time, a night together without the long treacherous drive back north for Jule, without Jack having to worry about whether his friend would make it home in one piece—Jule drank heavily since Rachel’s death, there was nothing else to be said about it—and no assurance that Jule would be able to call to let him know that he’d gotten there safely. And it had been much longer than a year since they’d really talked, unfettered by business or the need to break bad news, or to console—could it have been since Jack’s fortieth birthday?

“Yeah, you gotta watch those birthdays, Jackie,” said Jule. “Fuckin’ A, Jackie Finnegan turns forty, and the world comes to an end!” He roared, wiping his eyes; then abruptly was weeping.

“Oh Jule—” Jack reached for him. The first bottle of Jack Daniel’s was long empty, a second only half-full. “Don’t cry, Julie,” he stammered, not yet aware he was weeping himself. “Oh please don’t cry—”

Jule raised a hand, begging silence. His big ugly face crumpled in upon itself like a broken box. He grabbed his friend and pulled him close.