Never without you, p.3
Never Without You, page 3
Those seven summers with my grandparents were magical. Until then, I hadn’t known our family, most of whom lived in California. My sister Laura remembered them a little, but not enough to recall much about them. Such as our family resemblance, and how many mannerisms we shared as a family, and how deeply loved we were by people who hadn’t seen us for years.
My mother’s two brothers and their families, who live in Santa Rosa, came to the vineyard about six times a summer, and we got to know them and their kids. But since we stayed with our grandparents, my uncle Dominic’s – my father’s brother – children were always around. Mostly, we hung with them: Massima, who has always been called Max, Donna, and Luca.
Max is two years younger than me, but that never mattered. We clicked, and since that first summer, she’s been my best friend.
Through the phone, Max breathed, “Oh my god,” catastrophe lacing each word. No surprises there. Seven in the morning my time, four in California, and Max is not the type of girl to get up before the chickens. In fact, Max rarely gets up before eight-thirty.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ziggy’s knocked up.” My mother’s brother Stefano married a Norwegian, my aunt Asta. All their children have Norwegian names. At twenty, Ziggy, whose real name is Sigrid, is the youngest of their three kids.
“Lemme guess, she arrived on your doorstep –”
“An hour ago.”
That explains Max’s super early morning call. Ziggy has always been a bit of wild child and crashes regularly at Max’s place. Even though Max isn’t technically Ziggy’s cousin, all sides of the family are intertwined in each other’s lives.
My mother’s brothers didn’t abandon the Calapianos after “the breakup.” They stayed tight with my grandparents, my Uncle Dominic and his family, and our family.
“She face-planted in my sofa a few minutes ago. Dead to the world.”
I shook my head. “Hit me.”
Max laughed. “Short version: she doesn’t know who the father is.”
“As in too many one-night stands having unprotected sex?”
“As in she’s been dating two guys at the same time, neither knows about the other, and she’s sleeping with both of them.”
I sighed. “And having unprotected sex.”
“So it would seem.”
“It boggles. How pregnant is she?”
“About two months.”
“Well,” I slid into my professional voice, “if she’s more than seven weeks along, she can have a DNA test done, but tell her fingernails and hair from a brush are not going to work. Both guys need to have a cheek swab done.”
“You wanna tell her that ’cause she came in ranting and raving about how she was going to keep this secret from both of them.”
“I’m guessing this means she’s terminating the pregnancy.”
“You’d think, but I’m wondering if she’s opting for door number three.”
“You can’t mean going it alone?” The mere thought of Ziggy being a parent right now brought on unrelenting shudders. On her own with no help from the baby’s father – double insane thinking.
“’Fraid so.”
“So, the purpose of this call is not merely informational. You want me to shrink talk her.”
“That’s the plan.”
“When has that ever worked?”
Max let out a long sigh. “Tell me about it.”
“Call me when she wakes up. If I’m in session, I’ll ring back as soon as I can.”
“Got it. Talk later, cuz.”
“Right. Bye, Max.”
Ross,
Well my morning has been eventful. One cousin called about another cousin who’s pregnant but doesn’t know which of her two boyfriends – neither knows about the other – is the father. Apparently, she’s been having unprotected sex with both of them. If you’re shaking your head right now, trust me, I’m right there with you.
The pregnant cousin is twenty and not a mature twenty, she’s more like a fifteen-year-old who’s been let loose on the world for the first time. Right now, she is not mother material. Insult to injury, she doesn’t want either guy to know about the pregnancy, and since she’s passed out on our cousin’s sofa, we don’t know what baby mama intends to do. Frankly, I don’t think she knows what she intends to do, but she has to make a decision soon.
I have a friend who has a great word for this type of situation: dramarama.
In Boo news, he has a terrible habit of eating anything he thinks smells good. When I take him for his walks, I try to keep a sharp eye, but he’s sneaky. The problem is, he has a sensitive stomach, so guess who had to get up at three in the morning two days ago to clean up his mess and take him onto the patio so he could get the rest out where I could hose it down? Rhetorical question.
Cooking. A little hubris here – I can cook. I love to cook, and I’ve had good teachers. My mother is a wonderful cook, and both my grandmothers were amazing cooks. I’m 3/4 Italian. My Gramps – my mother’s father – was of Scottish descent and he never weighed in on the food, except to compliment my grandmother. Aside from traditional Italian dishes, I enjoy cooking Asian food, especially Thai. It’s all about the seasonings, and I admit to having a deep bench in my spice cabinet.
Actually, I’m a member of a cooking club of sorts. Once a month a member of this group of friends – all of us are foodies – cooks a dinner for the rest of us. We can cook whatever we want, but it has to be something none of us has ever cooked for the group before. Each of us has favorites, and a lot of us have traveled extensively, so the variety is vast and the food is always great.
Off to walk Boo before I head out to work.
Flower
Nine days later
Hey babe,
Yeah, I was shaking my head. Stating the obvious here – your cousin is fucked up, and so are those two dudes. Who goes ungloved? And who lets a guy go ungloved? Especially when they’re not exclusive. Sounds like nothing good is going to come out of this.
Try carrying treats when you walk Boo. When he looks like he’s spending too much time with his nose down in one place, get his attention and give him a treat. Eventually, he’ll look to you for his walk snacks instead of scarfing the crap on the ground. Though, he’s a dog and that’s what they do. They’re not what you’d call discriminate eaters.
You, on the other hand, are all kinds of discriminating when it comes to food. I’m not. I’ll eat just about anything you put in front of me. I’m not afraid to try new things, but don’t give me bird tongue size portions. I need to feel satisfied when I walk away from a meal.
Deep bench, huh? You into sports?
Ross
Max called when Ziggy woke up, and I talked to her – sort of. The minute she heard my voice she went off on a tear, yelling at Max for involving me, yelling at me for being “up my ass” about something I know nothing about. My favorite passage of that non-conversation is: “You even know what a condom feels like? Prob’ly not since you get laid like once a decade. Lemme tell you what it feels like, Ter. It feels like rubber over a dick. If I’m gonna get some dick, I want dick, not rubber.”
True, it’s been a while since I’d had some “dick,” but there were legitimate extenuating circumstances that took me out of the dating pool ’til recently. I’ll get to that later. Prior to the lull in activity, I’d had an active social life and a couple of meaningful relationships. I’m thirty-one years old, and while I’m not wild, I enjoy men, and I’ve had my fun. Safely. So I know, we are not living in the 1700s when men used chemical-soaked linens as condoms.
I never got to tell Ziggy that she would still feel “dick” if the man used a condom because she hung up on me. Max shared that Ziggy stormed out two minutes after throwing Max’s phone at her. She hasn’t heard from Ziggy since, and had tried to reach her without success. I’ve been assured that if my crazy cousin doesn’t surface by this weekend, Max is pulling out the big guns and will tell Ziggy’s older brothers, Isak and Endre, that their sister has ghosted and Max is worried about her.
Tactically, it’s a better move to sic ’em on Ziggy without knowing why she’s disappeared. Those boys tend to be a little extreme when it comes to their younger sister, and Max wants everyone to avoid bloodshed and jail time.
Obviously, I concurred.
Ross,
Your assessment has proved accurate. My baby mama cousin didn’t want our opinions or advice, isn’t returning our calls, and hasn’t shown up at her usual haunts. She’s done this before, but typically she resurfaces after a week or so. We’re concerned enough to tell her older brothers she’s dropped out of sight. We’re confident they’ll find her.
Thanks for the treats suggestion. I’ve taken your advice, and so far so good. Though, you’re right, it’s in his nature to scavenge. Boo sure loves stinky smells. Sometimes he gets in full rolls before I can pull him up. He hasn’t associated getting a bath, which he is not a fan of, with rolling in mess.
Spectator sports. I like tennis, but baseball is my thing. It’s played in a park on a diamond when the weather is nice. It’s rare for someone to get hurt, and it takes skill, patience, and quiet strategy. Plus, all those wacky hand signals from the third base coach are fun to try to decipher. I’m loyal to my team and have season tickets. I almost never miss a home game.
Non-spectator sports. Poker is my game. I don’t play competitively, but I’m told I’m good enough to. I’ve sat a few high-stakes games. They were tense and exciting. I can see the allure of doing it competitively, but I don’t have a cutthroat temperament, which is essential once you enter that level of play.
What about you?
Flower
Boston, Massachusetts
Ethan
Intuition
“Hey,” someone calls as they walk by my desk. “Where are you, man?”
I swivel my chair to see Skip staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “Right here, brother. Whassup?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Something wrong?”
I give a quick headshake then, “Nope.”
“Then why were you fifty thousand miles away? I must’ve said ‘hey’ three times before you looked up.”
Shit. Flower on the brain. “Trying to piece together the best way to surveil the BU Russians.”
He gives a quick nod. “That’s why I came by. Team meeting with the ASAC in fifteen.”
“Conference room?”
“Yeah.” His chin aims to my iPad, indicating he wants me to bring my notes, then he heads toward his office.
I don’t do lost in thought at work. Actually, I don’t do it much, if at all. When I started The Letter Club thing, my intention had been to find someone to talk with who didn’t drag on my time. Light, easy, make a friend, have a connection. It’s hard to have female friends in general. It’s even harder when you make your job your life.
Yeah, I know. That has to change. I spend too much time at work, where a small percentage of my colleagues are women – I don’t do the hiring so give it a rest – and the nature of my job doesn’t leave a lot of time to go for a beer after work. I have no time to meet someone I can hang with who doesn’t have an interest in working my body, and vice versa.
Unexpected, and way too distracting, is this feeling of being drawn to a woman I can’t talk to or see, but whose pull is undeniable. She writes things like “wacky hand signals” in the same letter she discloses she’s a card shark. She has me dying to taste whatever food she’d cook for me, wishing I could hang on her back patio with her and Boo, and worrying about a fuckin’ crazy cousin I really don’t know.
Now, instead of rubbing one out in the shower before I go to sleep, I’m thirteen years old again, lying in bed with my hand on my dick imagining what she looks like – don’t ask me how, I already know what she sounds like – while I go through all the ways I intend to enjoy her body.
I have to back burner her and get my mind in the game. The reason for this upcoming meeting has to mean we’re in “go” mode, and there’s no room for error with this shit.
Fifteen minutes later my ass is in a chair. My seven teammates, Skip, and the ASAC, a badass named Rashad Silverton, are all sitting around a large oblong conference table in a darkened, closed-door room. Rashad, at the far end of the table, has a laptop open and he’s clicking through images that appear on the big screen behind him.
“This is what we have so far. No sign of the older guy Jonas described,” a rendering of the guy flashed on the screen, “but these are a dozen of the Russian ‘students’ we’ve already identified.” The candids on BU’s campus were lined up against passport photos and images taken at Logan Airport’s Terminal E. “We know for a fact three,” larger passport photos of three men appeared on the screen, “of the twelve have entered the country under assumed names. Surely false identities were created to make a viable profile of an incoming or exchange student. We’re firming up which, and all the information provided to BU. Based on these three,” head nod toward the screen, “we are presuming most, if not all, of the ‘students’ Jonas said gather in his dorm are fictitious, and are affiliated with the Lebedevsky Bratva as are the three whose photos you see here.” Fuck. Seriously bad dudes. “Their files have been sent to you.”
Skip picks up the narrative. “We’re in information gathering mode and there’s a lot of ground to cover. When we’re at a point where our analysts have gotten as much intel that’s available on the suspects, we’ll put our operation in play. Working up to that, you become experts on these people, their Bratva and their enemies. No holes, and no stone unturned.”
Lots of questions and discussion ensued, then Rashad concluded the two-hour meeting with, “Stay sharp.”
Hey babe,
A card shark, huh? How are you with tells, as in have any and can you spot them? My poker games have been friendly. The guys I’ve played with are about the same skill level, and no one takes the game too seriously. It’s an excuse to eat junk food and drink beer while talking shit.
Can’t say I’ve watched any tennis. Never played, but know it can be competitive. I like baseball. Good way to spend an afternoon in the sun eating hot dogs and drinking beer. See a theme here? My game of choice is football. I played in high school and college, defensive backfield – strong safety. Was never good enough for the pros, didn’t even try out, but it allowed me to attend a good college on a partial scholarship, and that helped out my folks. Win-win. Since college I’ve been in the occasional game, usually around the holidays, and never full contact.
How’s my man Boo? Any word on Ziggy?
Ross
While writing that letter I had to actually hold back from telling her about my day. I’ve never wanted to talk about my day with anyone but a colleague, and those recaps were more about work than any touchy-feely sharing. But today’s briefing made me less happy than usual about the state of the world, and I would’ve liked to’ve unloaded on a sympathetic ear. Yeah, I don’t have any hard evidence she’d give a shit, but something about the way she sounds makes me think she’s really intuitive and would care. I’m pretty good at reading people – job skill, and I’m a watcher – so I’m guessing she’s in the medical profession or a social worker, or something like that.
This particular infiltration by dangerous mobsters on my patch feels more personal. I’m sure it’s because this shit impacts Jonas. Skip arranged for the boy to switch dorms. We don’t know what’s going to go down, but Skip wants his son far from it. If he were my son, I’d make him transfer colleges.
So far as we can tell, none of the Russians are in Jonas’s classes. He’s a sophomore, and apparently is a tech wiz, so his classes are more high level than a bunch of thugs could pull off. I’ve met the kid a few times, mostly when he was little and Skip worked out of the Portland office. Since I’ve been in Boston, I’ve seen Jonas once, and that’s when he came in to help work up a likeness of the older guy who’s the Russians’ drop man.
Talk about all grown up, I have to admit, I thought the kid would stay scrawny, but he’s taller than his dad, like six-two with broad shoulders and that surfer boy hair chicks love. He’s still shy and down to earth. Good kid. I hate that this shit touched him even for a minute.
Even if Flower were really in my life, I couldn’t give her any details about my job, but I could come home to her, tell her I had a crap day, and that I hate there are people in the world who suck big time. She’d listen, serve up a fantastic dinner, and after I’d fuck away my day in her arms.
Yeah, I’ve turned into a sap. But if I could live my dream with her, I wouldn’t mind one fuckin’ bit.
Ross,
Thanks for asking, Ziggy’s fine. She came up for air after hearing her brothers were looking for her. We don’t know where she was, but she banged on my cousin’s door at 2:30 in the morning – seems middle of the night is Zig’s preferred time to annoy people – went in and gave my cousin a ration for siccing the brothers on her. She says she’s terminated the pregnancy, but who knows if she’s telling the truth. It won’t be long before we’ll be able to see if she’s lying. My guess, she’s not. Even Zig knows becoming a mother right now would be a disastrous mistake.
Boo is doing well. He’s settled into his routine and he’s become quite a character. He watches my feet. No lie. He sits with his head down, or lies down and stares at my feet. He checks which shoes I have on and determines where all that fits into his world – are we going out or staying in. He knows the sounds of everything in the kitchen and how each sound pertains to him. Some bags I open, he doesn’t budge. Others, he’s right there knowing it’s something I’m eating he wants, or it’s something for him. He understands sit, stay, wait, gentle, and come. However, when he decides he doesn’t want to come, usually when it’s time to go to bed – he’s crate trained – he plops his butt down and doesn’t move. I’m not a fan of arguing for arguing’s sake, and I have no problem with being in charge, so I get a leash, and the minute it’s on, he trots ahead of me, and heads straight to bed. I’m of the mind he likes the production value of putting on the leash in the house. For reasons only he knows, it makes him happy.
