In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [104]
Even with the rowdy crowd and the rattling of dishes and calling out of orders, the hiss of steam and the sizzle of the grill, it was impossible for Mel not to overhear Camelia’s conversation.
He was talking to Claudia. “Forgotten?” he said. “How could I? Yeah, tesoro, a lot of years together. But you can cut that in half if you remember all the weeks I was working and was never around. . . . Okay, then, so okay. Yeah. Dinner Friday night. At Nino’s. And when did I not get you an anniversary gift?” He was smiling as he said good-bye.
“How many years is it?” Mel asked.
“Twenty-six. Nope. I tell a lie. Twenty-seven on Friday.”
She nodded, wondering what it felt like to be with the man you loved for that long.
“Tell me about your wedding,” she said.
“Weddings are a woman thing. Y’know, it was all flower girls and maids of honor and Claudia looking . . . beautiful.”
He suddenly remembered quite clearly the way she had looked, her cloud of dark hair pinned up with a circlet of flowers, and the long, spreading veil that had half hidden her from him as they faced each other at the altar and made their vows.
“The party was good.” He changed the subject. “The uncles and aunts flew in from Italy and Sicily. They arrived in a big bus looking like a movie–Italian family. Roberto Benigni should have filmed it. The wine flowed and the women had baked Italian cookies and the little kids ran around and got under everybody’s feet. Aunt Sophia slipped on the dance floor and waved her legs in the air, showing more than she should, and everybody laughed.”
He grinned at her. “We had a great time. Family, y’know.”
Mel laughed, but she didn’t know. She had never had a family like that. She had hoped to create one of her own, be the founding member, so to speak. But now she wasn’t sure it was going to happen.
She frowned as she thought of Ed. He was not responding. He was still fed through a tube and had lost so much weight she hardly recognized him as the big, burly man she had fallen for. This morning his hand had remained perfectly still under hers. There was no movement, no flicker of response, just the endless whir of life-support machines and monitors as his life ticked slowly on.
She pushed the chair back abruptly. “I have to get back.”
Camelia looked up at her, surprised. She had that urgent “if I’m not there he may go and die” look, which he knew too well by now.
Mel paid the check this time, in line with their unspoken agreement that they would take turns, and Camelia walked her back to the hospital and said good-bye at the door. He had to get back, see what was doing, if anything, on the Aramanov situation.
Brotski was on duty again. Mel shook her head in disbelief as she walked toward him down that long corridor. “Don’t they even allow you to read a book?” she asked.
“I’m keeping guard, ma’am. Got to be alert at all times.”
“You’re a good cop, Brotski,” she told him, and saw the color rise in his fair-skinned baby face.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied with a pleased grin.
Mel took her usual seat at Ed’s bedside. She lifted Ed’s hand to her lips, waited for a response, an undercurrent that told her he was there. Nothing. She had lost him to the blackness. Yet the monitors bleeped on, telling her he was technically still in the land of the living.
Oh Ed, she thought, when will this nightmare end? How will it end?
61
Marina del Rey was a huge yacht basin with thousands of boats. Mario had never been much of a sailor, though he had done his share of sportfishing and could manage a boat when he needed to. Like he had with the man whose identity he had stolen after he shoved him over the stern.
There were boats up on slips and monster seagoing yachts in deep moorings with Panamanian and Bahamian registry; old boats and new boats; sailboats and power boats and fishing boats. You name it, you could find it at Marina del Rey. Mario guessed Californians were like Floridians: they lived on the ocean, therefore they felt they needed a boat.
He wandered the slipways, contemplating the wealth sitting out there on the