Early Warning

“Okay. Well, I guess we’ll stay away from him for a while.”

“Maybe Prince got hit. He spooked.”

But there was no blood on Prince. Once again, when they got back to Fiona’s, a half-hour ride from the top of the hill, and the horses were cool and calm, Fiona kept her adventures to herself. It was summer, so her mom was home, sewing in the dining room. She said, “Oh, hello, girls. Beautiful day — not too hot, for once. You having a good day?”

And Fiona kissed her on the cheek, easy as you please, and said, “Not much going on.”

“Oh, that’s the good old summertime.” When Friday came, and Debbie had her slumber party with her other friends, the good girls, she had to admit that she found them a little numerous and irritating.

—

SHE WAS AHEAD of him, walking down Maiden Lane, almost to Front Street. Frank recognized her from the back, just the way her hips shifted from side to side. He sped up, and came up to her right at the corner, and they stood there, waiting on the traffic. He pretended not to look at her; he was adept at that. She was wearing a black wool coat, nicely cut, cheap. Of course, her face was much older — she would have been almost the same age as Frank in ’44, so in her early twenties. That would make her at least thirty-eight or so. Frank gave her a little smile, somewhere between friendly-on-a-deserted-street and would-you-like-to-get-a-drink. She glanced at him and looked away. Of course, she didn’t recognize him — he was no longer a GI, his hair had darkened, he was wearing a very expensive suit and custom-made shoes. He dropped back and let her go ahead. He slowed his steps and watched her, and the farther she got away from him the more certain he was that he was right — it was she, “Joan Fontaine,” the love of his life, the prostitute (but so unprofessional) that he had spent — what? — four, five hours with on Corsica after the Italian campaign. He watched her walk toward the entrance of a pleasant-looking red brick building on the corner. When she had closed the door behind herself, he walked that way and passed the door. He did not stop, but he noted the address: 158 Front Street, between Maiden and Fletcher.

He kept walking up Front until he found the subway station at Fulton Street, and went home. Once he got there, he was in such a good mood that he sat with Janny for half an hour, listening about the Halloween party at school (Mary Kemp had real wings — well, not real, but see-through — and Doug Lester came as Satan and the teacher sent him home). Richie and Michael had gone out dressed as a pirate and a cowboy. They were now fighting over the sword and the gun.

Frank had a long history of knowing exactly what he was doing. He looked at a thing, there was a click, and he was right. All he had to do was act on that thing. It hadn’t started in the war, but he had noticed it in the war — he always knew before he fired his weapon whether he was going to get a kill or not. The other snipers in his squad had talked a little about the same feeling. Lyman Hill, the best of them, thought it was a predatory instinct — not the instinct of a wolf, but that of a hawk or an owl, a sightline followed by a swoop. Frank pictured the woman again in his mind. He tried to imagine what she had been doing in the last seventeen years that had brought her to this street corner in New York City. He couldn’t imagine it, but he knew that he would find out.

1962

STEVE SLOAN DECIDED that he was going to learn to play the guitar, and Stanley Sloan went along with this — he chose bass. Tim didn’t know anything about music except that he liked everything but Ricky Nelson. The Sloan boys had been up to Philly and gone to American Bandstand. Tim liked the Marvelettes, and who did not like “The Duke of Earl”? But he had never thought about actually making music.

Steve Sloan never saw anything that he didn’t think he could do, and anyway, his uncle on his mother’s side was a piano player in various musical establishments up and down the Jersey Shore. He bopped around the halls at school muttering “Stand by Me” under his breath, just, Tim knew, to be showing off. But the girls smiled fondly as he walked by. Tim had been trying to cultivate a more reserved demeanor, interesting but distant. It wasn’t working. So he chose rhythm guitar.

When he asked his mom for a guitar, she looked at him and said, “Oh, that would be fun. Your uncle Frank had a lovely voice as a boy, and, of course, Granny Elizabeth quite enjoyed playing the piano.” She walked away, humming. This was not quite the response he was looking for. At least, Mrs. Sloan would throw up her hands and say, “Not again! I wish you boys would quit bothering me!”