The Steel Kiss

I keep walking, loping really. I pass by the subway entrance. It’s a long walk to Chelsea but I have to use shanks’ mare (my mother’s mother’s expression, even though I don’t think she ever saw a mare in the flesh or walked more than a few hundred feet from car to her Indiana Piggly Wiggly); I’m worried about getting recognized. Those damn CCTVs. Everywhere.

What about dinner? I wonder. Two, no three sandwiches tonight. Then I’ll work on my new miniature project, a boat. I don’t usually make them. There’s a whole world of seafaring model makers (like airplane and train people—something about transportation has bloated the field). But Peter said he liked boats. So I’m making a Warren skiff for him. A classic rowboat with reciprocating oars.

Then maybe Alicia will come over. She’s been upset lately, the past returning. The scars—the inside scars—more prominent. I’m doing what I can to make it better. But sometimes I just don’t know.

Then I’m thinking again of the fun I’ve just had, recalling his face earlier in the day, all sneery and handsome, after we collided outside of Starbucks.

Walking Dead…

Well, Henry, that’s a good line. Clever. But I’m thinking of better one:

It has to do with the last laugh.

* * *

“Hey.”

Amelia Sachs walked inside Nick Carelli’s apartment.

“Kind of like your old one.”

“The view’s brick here, not maple trees and lilacs. But all things considered, not bad.”

“You got a TV.”

When they were together, Sachs recalled, they’d never owned one. Too much else to do.

“I’ve been watching some of the cop shows. You watch those?”

“No.”

Too much to do now too.

“They ought to do a show about you and Lincoln.”

“He’s been approached. He’s said no.”

She handed him the big cardboard moving box she’d brought. It contained some of his personal effects from when they lived together: yearbooks, postcards, letters, hundreds of family photos. She’d called him to say she’d found these things in her basement, thought he’d want them.

“Thanks.” He opened it up, rifled through the contents. “I thought this stuff was gone for good. Hey, look.” Nick held up a photo. “Our first family vacation. Niagara Falls.”

The family of four, the classic cascade behind them and a rainbow from the particles of water. Nick was about ten, Donnie seven.

“Who took it?”

“Some other tourists. Remember pictures back then? You had to have them developed.”

“Always tense when you got them back from the drugstore. Were they in focus, the right exposure?”

He nodded. More foraging. “Oh, hey!” He picked up a program.

New York City

Police Academy

Graduation Ceremony

At the bottom was the date he’d graduated. The cover featured a seal: Training Bureau. Preparing the Finest.

His smile faded.

Sachs was recalling her own graduation ceremony. That had been one of the two times in her life when she’d worn white gloves. The other had been at the police department memorial honoring her father after his death.

Nick put the program back in the box, gazing at it fondly for a moment. He closed the carton up and asked, “Glass of wine?”

“Sure.”

He stepped into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine and a beer. He poured her a glass of Chardonnay.

Another memory, of the two of them, triggered by the smell and the tap of metal on glass and his fingers brushing hers.

Boom…

She shot the recollection dead. She’d been doing a lot of sniping like this lately.

They sipped the oaky wine and the beer and he showed her around the place, though there wasn’t much to see. He’d gotten some furniture out of storage. Picked up a few things, borrowed from cousins, bought on the cheap. Some books. Several boxes of documents. And then there were the case files of People of the State of New York v. Nicholas J. Carelli. The many documents were spread out on the kitchen table.

Sachs looked over the framed pictures of his family. She liked it that he had them on the mantelpiece for all to see. Sachs had spent a lot of time with his mother and father and had enjoyed their company. She’d been to the funeral when Nick’s dad passed. She thought too about Donnie. He’d lived in BK, not far from Nick. After he was arrested Sachs made an effort to keep up with the Carellis, Nick’s mother in particular. Eventually, though, the contact grew wispier and finally ceased altogether. As often happens when the fulcrum of common connection between two people vanishes—or one of them goes to prison.

Nick poured more wine.

“Just a little. I’m driving.”

“How do you like the Torino versus the Camaro?”

“Prefer the Chevy, but it got turned into a cube of metal.”

“Hell, how’d that happen?”

Sachs explained about the perp who worked for a data mining company and had invaded every part of his victims’ lives—including hers. Having the beautiful Camaro SS towed and pressed into scrap had been as simple for him as tying his shoes.

“You nailed him?”

“We did. Lincoln and I.”