The toast is everything I remember and twice as big, buried under fruit, cream and syrup, made all the sweeter by the discreet hip bump Mary throws me on the way past. It’s like tossing a bone to a drowning dog. I appreciate the gesture, but it doesn’t really improve my situation.
I go to work on the toast, which is so good that I grudgingly enjoy it even though any respite is temporary.
It’s fuel, I tell myself. There is a lot of business to get through before sundown. You still gotta make the trip to SoHo.
I put down my cutlery and think about reneging on that deal. After my brush with the wrong arm of the law, I can’t help thinking that I could go fetch my weapons’ stash out of my locker at the bus station and deal with this Mike Madden situation myself. The Irish government spent a lot of money training me to do wet stuff and quiet stuff and it would be a pity to waste that investment.
Better the devil you know, right? This touchy guy in SoHo could be some goodfella arsehole who will not give shit one about my lousy day.
I go at the toast again and pour myself another cup of coffee, feeling the caffeine opening up my heart’s throttle all the way.
Yeah. Just take Mike’s whole gang out, why not? Wouldn’t take more than an afternoon and a coupla clips.
Maybe in a war zone. But this is New Jersey we’re talking about. Plenty of cameras and concerned citizens.
And if you screw up?
Then Mike will block the club’s exits and torch the place. Jason, Marco and the girls would be gone.
Sofia. Don’t forget Sofia.
Yeah. Sofia would be as good as dead.
So, how’s about I just kill Mike? Cut off the snake’s head?
Nope. Calvin is waiting in the wings. Maybe Manny too. There are plenty more snakes where Mike came from. And these guys love to make examples.
I decide to text Sofia for no more practical a reason than to make myself feel better.
So I send: ?
That’s all, just a question mark. It used to be: Hey, what’s up? How are you? But we got a shorthand now and I guess that’s progress.
A minute later I get back: ??
Which means: I’m fine. How are you?
So I send: L8R?
And get back a big smiley face.
Which is good. It means Sofia’s taken her meds, or at least is not in one of her near-suicidal troughs, and she wants to see me later.
I feel a little guilty for making a date I might not show up to or be recognized at, but sometimes a man needs more than french toast to buoy him through the day’s shenanigans.
While I have the phone in my hand I check for missed calls and see there are six from Mike and three from Zeb.
Screw those guys.
My malicious side half hopes that Mike takes Zeb hostage to hurry me along. A little light torture would not go astray on that guy. Nothing life threatening, but as far as I know Zeb rarely uses all of his toes.
My Twitter icon is chirping, telling me that there is a Tweet from my psychiatrist, who is doing online wisdom now, which he assures me was inevitable, so he might as well be in the vanguard. I have never actually Tweeted, but I do follow Dr. Simon and Craig Ferguson, who is one funny Celtic fecker.
There is something compulsive about Tweets, so I read Simon’s latest:
Remember, my phobic posse: it’s always darkest before the dawn unless there’s an eclipse.
I wonder who that’s supposed to comfort.
I swipe back to Sofia’s brief final message and just the sight of that simple emoticon makes me feel a couple of degrees warmer.
Sofia. Could there be a chance for us?
Shit. I’m gonna be writing poetry soon.
My proximity sense tingles and I know someone is standing before me. I know without looking that it’s a woman. My subconscious throws up the clues: perfume, footsteps leading up to this moment, the sound of her breathing. A woman, but not Mary.
So, I look up and there’s a rich lady not three feet away, staring at me like she’s seen her maid in Tiffany’s. This gal is maybe forty but with ten years of that slate wiped clean by spas and exercise. She’s got burnished blonde hair framing her striking face, which is horsey in a good way, and a gym body being hugged very nicely by a red velour sweat suit that I just bet has something provocative writ large on the ass. I can tell this lady is rich by the glitter-ball diamond on her finger and the fact that a cluster of waiters is bobbing six feet away, worried that something might happen to her.
I have no idea what this is but I do not have time for it.
I go for pre-emptive dismissal.
“Lady,” I say. “Whatever you think—”
She cuts me off. “Mr. McEvoy? Daniel McEvoy?”
This is a surprise. Rich folk do not generally recognize me, since I let my country-club membership lapse when Enron went under.
“Who’s asking?” I ask, seeing as we’re in a noir movie.
Uninvited, the lady pulls up a chair and sits opposite.
“Daniel,” she says. “I think that I may be your grandmother.”
We must be watching different movies.
Mary pours more coffee and reinforces her earlier hip-bump with a high-beam cleavage flash because, as a professional, she knows that statistically even the presence of another female will drop my tip by 5 percent.
Get a grip, soldier. The girl is pouring coffee and you’re forty-three years old.
I can’t help it. I read layers of meaning into the actions of everyone around me. I guess it’s because sometimes it seems as though everyone around me has bad intentions toward my person. And as my shrink Simon once told me: being paranoid never got anyone killed, not being paranoid on the other hand . . .
The glam gran has slid onto a chair opposite me and is busy muting her phone so we don’t get interrupted. She orders a grapefruit juice from Mary without even glancing at my lovely server, then eases herself into the story.
“I go to the gym here. It’s really good. And I have a trainer who comes to my house. Pablo is fantastic. I’m more flexible now than I was at twenty.”
I don’t comment; effective as Pablo’s techniques may be, this is all preamble.
“You look good too, Daniel. Solid. Are you married? Do you have kids?”
I shake my head once to cover both questions.
“Me neither,” she says. “Not really. Anymore.”
Three short sentences. All loaded.
“I’m really sorry . . . eh . . . Nana, but I’m under a bit of pressure today.”
She slaps her own cheek gently, dislodging a tiny puff of foundation, which I would have sworn she was not wearing.
“Oh my God. Where are my manners?” she offers her hand for a shake, at a weird sideways angle, like royalty. “I’m Edit Vikander Costello.”
She pronounces Edit to rhyme with Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
I shake the hand. To be honest it’s less of a shake and more of an undulation, but I feel strength in the soft dry skin.
“Costello?” I say. “So you married old Paddy?”
“Wife number four,” she says. “The first to outlive him.”
This was something of a feat. Paddy Costello had always seemed to be carved from granite.
“So, you’re not my blood grandmother?”
“No. I’m the later model. Version Four point oh.”
“And how would you know about me, Edit? How could you possibly recognize me?”
“I’ve been looking for you, Daniel. For six months I’ve had Irish detectives on your trail. And you turn up here, two blocks from my apartment on Central Park South.”
“Why are you looking for me? Did old Paddy leave me a whack?”