Lucy was standing in front of her bed, red-faced, in hysterics.
Marlene knelt to embrace her, but the child shook away from her and backed away toward the bed.
"What's wrong, baby! Calm down and tell Mommy what's wrong," cooed Marlene, heart in throat.
Karp, trained observer that he was, said, "It's her foot." The child had all her weight on her left leg, with only the toes of her bare right foot touching the floor. Marlene lifted her thrashing, sobbing daughter and grabbed at her ankle. She inspected the foot and cursed. "Christ, she's got another splinter."
"No needuh! No needuh!" yelled Lucy.
"Baby, please calm down! Mommy has to take it out. You don't want an infection, do you?"
"Nooooo! No neee-duh!"
"Hold her," said Marlene, after which ensued Karp's absolutely least favorite paternal chore, that of clamping in a viselike grip the wriggling, choking, screaming, red-faced, snot-bubbling changeling his darling had become, while its mother probed the splinter out with a flame-sterilized number two sharp.
And after that necessary torment, Lucy extracted the maximum of cosseting, as being only her due. After a fretful supper there were multiple tuckings in, expeditions for milk and cookies, story after story read, cramp-backed sittings by the little bed-in short, all the forms of torture imposed upon guilty, loving parents by their innocent young.
The couple collapsed in the living room, having at last seen their kid off to dreamland. Marlene poured herself a stiff one of jug red and drank off half of it.
"God, did I not need that! I've told her a million times to wear her slippers."
"She's only three and a half," said Karp in defense. "She gets splinters because we live in a decaying industrial building. Maybe she should wear gloves too, and a face mask."
"Please, don't start…"
"No, really! It's all part of the same thing. You have a job that drives you crazy and leaves you exhausted, we live in a five-flight walk-up with splintery floors and leaky plumbing that's freezing in winter and boiling in summer, and you wonder why we're irritated all the time."
"We're not 'irritated all the time,' " snapped Marlene. "Every time something happens you blame it on the loft. Okay, we'll get the floors sanded and refinished."
This was far from a new argument. The loft had originally been Marlene's dwelling. She had constructed it herself, with help from family and friends, tearing out the industrial ruins, cleaning it, painting it, putting in drywall, kitchen and cabinet work. She'd lived in it happily for six years. When Karp moved in it had seemed to him just one of his lover's delightful eccentricities. But as the seat of a marriage, and a place to raise a child, it was, in his often-voiced opinion, a giant pain in the ass.
"Refinishing isn't going to do any good. The damn floor's sagging all over the place. It's probably totally rotted out underneath."
"Okay, we'll replace the fucking floor! Why are you hocking me about the floor? Why now?" A flush had appeared across her famous cheekbones and she took another swallow of wine. Then she looked at her husband narrowly. He met her gaze for an instant and then glanced away.
"Because," said Karp, "we have to make some decisions. How long are we going to keep pouring money into this place? I mean, is this it? We're going to live here forever?"
Marlene wasn't listening. She was still staring at him and the expression on her face was not pleasant.
"What?" said Karp.
"You rat! This isn't about the floor, or Lucy, or how hard I work. They offered you a job in Philly and you want to take it and move and you're afraid to just come out and say it."
Karp felt his face steam in embarrassment. A denial sprang to his lips, but, to his credit, he suppressed it. He was a rat.
"Well?" pressed his wife. "Did they?"
He nodded.
"And you want to take it."
He nodded again.
"Christ! What I hate is having to worm stuff like this out of you like you were a little boy. Why don't you just come up to me like a real person and talk about it?"
"I don't know," answered Karp, meaning that he did know. "I guess… avoiding. I really started wanting this and I knew there was going to be an incredible explosion when I told you and I was just easing into it. I'm just basically slimy that way."
"I'll say! So spit it out already. What is it, a glossy partnership with the white shoes, down in Philly there?"
"No. It's a government job. In D.C."
"Huh? Schmuck! Darling! You already got a government job. What, you just developed a sudden interest in federal crimes?"
"No, it's with a congressional committee, working for Bert Crane. The House is reopening the Kennedy assassination case and they want me to be in charge of it, Crane does."
Marlene was sipping at her wine when this emerged and her snort of amazement sprayed a purple mist over the nearby area, including Karp.
"I'm sorry!" she sputtered. "That was unexpected. Let me hear that again: they want you to find out who killed Kennedy?"
"Yeah. What's wrong with that?"
"It's looney's what's wrong with it," she laughed. "I mean, I knew you were a caped crusader, but…"
"Marlene," said Karp, his tone strict, "it's a serious investigation: A lot of new stuff has come up."
"Oh, yeah? Like what?" She waited. After a silence and some uncharacteristic fumfering by Karp, she added confidently, "They didn't tell you, did they? They sold you a pig in a poke. And you bought it." She struck her forehead to indicate the extent of her amazement.
"I can't believe it! Especially you. Jesus, Butch! It's like some mutt said, 'Hey, let me walk on this one and I'll give you Mr. Big,' and you let him walk and then you called him up, hey, Mr. Mutt, how's about coming down and talking about Mr. Big?"
"Bert Crane isn't a mutt, for Chrissake, Marlene!"
"No, he's a lawyer," Marlene shot back. "I rest my case."
They glared at each other for an uncomfortable few seconds. Then Marlene rose and went to her closet, where she shed her working outfit and put on a T-shirt and Osh-Kosh overalls and flip-flops. Then she began putting together a meal. Karp drifted into the kitchen. Wordlessly she put on the butcher block in front of him a tin colander loaded with washed salad ingredients. Karp got a salad bowl and tore and cut the vegetables into bits. Marlene threw a mystery casserole into the oven.
They ate a silent meal. Marlene put the little espresso maker on the stove. They listened to it hiss. Then they both said "Look" simultaneously, which made them smile.
Karp said, "Your 'look' first."
"Okay, look… I'm sorry. I'm sure what's-his-name thinks it's a great honor to get picked for this job, and maybe you do too. I shouldn't have pissed all over it like I did. But… we got to work stuff out like this together, Butchie, like a team. We got to think it through together, the pros and cons, for all three of us, what's best-you know? That's all I'm saying."
"Okay," said Karp. "I should've been straight about it. I'm a cryptic son of a bitch, all right? But… if what Crane suggested to me checks out, if we could really crack the assassination…" He waved his hands, speechless before the magnitude of those "ifs."
"Big time, huh?"
"Not just 'big time.' If you want to know, it's mainly not working for the clown anymore. It's eating me up. Crane's a real guy. It'd be like Garrahy again."
Marlene took the little silvery pot off the stove and poured herself two ounces of tarry liquid into a squat clear glass cup. She put half a cube of sugar into her mouth and slurped the coffee past it until the sugar was all gone.
"Well. You shouldn't be eaten up. Except by me, of course." She smiled, faintly, not the real Marlene thousand-watt room-lighter, but a smile, and welcome.