Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [27]
“You went off the pill?” I said, just like that, as we stood unceremoniously fucking in the living room.
“Yes,” she said with a thrust of her hips.
“No way, Karen,” I said, abruptly pulling out of her, causing her to whine like a dying lawn mower, “not the way you’re erratic. I don’t want two kids growing up with divorced parents.”
Usually I didn’t speak my mind with her quite this frankly. I had in the very beginning. When I’d met her, she’d been starting over after being a high-priced call girl supporting her coke habit. The first time she walked into my home group of AA, every guy in the room pretty much instantly wanted her. And I instantly wanted to kill those guys. I felt possessive of Karen before I’d even talked to her. And, to try and do things right with her, I’d been completely honest about everything. But a lot had changed in eight years.
She wheeled around, face red with anger, her workout pants still down around her hips, exposing her bush.
“What the hell are you talking about, Sal?”
“Don’t take it like that, baby,” I said. “Come on, I’ll get a condom.”
This infuriated her even more. She pulled her pants back up and stormed upstairs, leaving me there in the living room, with my dick literally hanging out. Maybe my diplomacy skills left a little to be desired.
I didn’t know what to do. So I pulled my pants back up, got my keys, and went out.
I got in the truck, started the engine and the Beethoven. Ruby was on me to expand my repertoire and listen to some Bach and maybe Shostakovich but I hadn’t gotten there yet. I liked Tchaikovsky, but when I’d told this to Ruby, she had scowled and, the next time I’d seen her, she’d given me five new CDs. Bach, Handel, some moody Russians, and some guy named Schoenberg. An opera no less. I wasn’t ready for that. Or was I? Right then I needed some serious mood alteration. I riffled through the glove box until I found the Schoenberg disc. I stared at it for a minute. Moses und Aron it was called. Ruby had told me how Mr. Schoenberg had only used one A in Aron because otherwise the title would have had thirteen letters and he didn’t want to bring bad luck on his opera. I took Beethoven out and put in Mr. Schoenberg. Full volume even though I had no idea what I was in for. The music came. A low rumble of male voices. It was pretty strange sounding but not bad strange. I put the truck into drive and pulled ahead.
For about ten minutes I succeeded in not thinking. Not about Karen, not about Ruby’s damn jockey. I just drove and listened to that crazy, dark music. Then I found I’d pulled up outside of Johnny’s candy store on Havemeyer Street.
I turned Mr. Schoenberg down. Very gently so as not to offend. I’d gotten that way with classical music. If I had to stop it before listening to the whole thing, I turned it down in tiny increments so as not to shock myself or offend the spirit of the dead guy who’d composed it. I suppose a coupla the CDs Ruby had told me to buy were by guys who were actually still alive. But Mr. Schoenberg had died fifty something years ago.
I stared at the bright yellow-and-red entrance to Johnny’s. The place had been in the Del Tredici family since the turn of the century. At one point though, Johnny’s dad had gone under and rented it to some Dominicans who turned it into a bodega, painting it that red and yellow that is apparently in the bylaws of some Bodega Decoration Code. Eventually, Johnny had gotten on his feet enough financially to take the place back over and restore it to a candy store—bookie in the back—but he’d never gotten around to painting it and it was now a crumbling yellow and red. He’d put up a green awning that said JOHNNY’S CANDY and someone, maybe his kid Nicky, had pointed out that the shop was now flying Rastafarian colors. But it’s not like any Jamaican guys were mistaking it for a social club. Everyone within a twenty-block radius knew