“Or/and own the firm. Stop talking like a movie. Last year when I was sweating in that five and dime for thirty-eight bucks a week, they gave me a movie title—I was one of the 'assistant managers' instead of stock boy. Mary, you were all for me taking Civil Service exams: okay, now I'm a cop, I have—”
“Of course I wanted you to take the exams and get out of that horrible store basement. But if I'd known the risks you take as a cop, the crazy hours, the way it would shake up our life, I would have been against it then.”
“The point is I did take the exam and I'm a cop now, I have a trade. I've only been working five or six months at it. In time I'll be making a decent salary, take other exams and maybe become a captain. Give me a chance.”
She shook her head and most of her trim body under the pajamas shook too. “Don't try to sell me, I know the pitch—you're David Wintino, the youngest detective on the force. Want me to take out the newspaper picture of the Commissioner shaking your hand?” She paused. “And I wasn't talking like a movie before. Some people do get ahead. Clerks do become executives—when they have somebody behind them. Uncle Frank called me at the office, asked why you haven't been down to see him.”
“I thought there was something beside my coming home late. How's his ulcer?”
“Very funny!”
“Babes, I'm not interested in the freight business or in being the boss's pet relation.”
“You were interested when he used his influence to keep you off the Youth Squad, or the times you got into trouble socking other cops—you didn't worry about his ulcer then! Dave, I said I can't take much more of this and I mean it. I'll be jittery as a sick cat in the office tomorrow and you know the way things are there—I goof once and I can forget about ever becoming Mr. Jackman's secretary. You're just selfish, you're always against everything I want. You didn't want to live in a decent apartment, you argued about the furniture, you don't like my friends—I've taken enough from you!”
“I know, now tell me how you stood up to your hundred and fifty per cent all-American family when they found they were getting a Jew and an Italian in the family, all in one package.”
Her mouth opened wide now and her pug nose quivered and her eyes went big as she gasped, “David! That's a dirty, horrible, lousy thing to say!”
“Yeah, it was. Sorry, Babes. I'm on edge.”
She got under the cover, turned her back to me. I put out the light. After a moment I could hear her weeping. I rolled her over, kissed her, her hair so soft and her skin cool where it wasn't wet with tears. I held her tight, a little proud that this beautiful chick was mine. For a moment that was all that mattered. “Honey,” I whispered, “I don't mean to make you cry. We'll work things out.”
“Will we, Davie?” she said in my ear, her lips warm.
“Of course we will. Okay, I'll go have a talk with your uncle.”
“And nothing will come of it. You like being a detective?”
“Babes, you want me to soft-talk you? All right, I like the job.”
Mary rolled out of my arms, said to the darkness, “Know why you like it? Because you're cocky, a know-it-all, and being a detective makes you feel good, you like authority, bossing people. You and your pretty face, you like that part of it too. You even enjoy looking like a seventeen-year-old sharpie—you eat up the amazed look when people finally believe you are a real cop, a detective.”
“Lay off me. Somebody has to be a cop,” I said weakly.
“Somebody doesn't have to be my husband!”
“And if anything happened you'd break your back screaming for the police. You're like all the other fine law-abiding citizens.”
“That's it exactly, whenever I need a cop I'll call for one. That's much different from being a cop's wife.”
“How do you know, you never tried being a cop's wife.”
She shrilled, “Go ahead, say you resent my working. You'd like me to mope around the house like a glorified maid, thinking up ways of cooking supper for my big strong provider, whenever he decides to give the little lady a break and come home. Wise up. That corn went out with silent pictures. If I ever find myself doing that I'll give you a fine supper each night—right in your face!”
I pulled her to me again, held her when she pushed me away, my hands going over all the curves I knew so well. “Listen to me, Mary, I—”
“I won't listen.”
“Yes, you will. This is you and me talking in bed, not a couple of strangers shacking up for the night. You want to work, a career—great. I never asked or wanted you to spend all your time handling a dust mop or a frying pan. I never tell you to change your job. Why can't you understand that being a cop is my work, something I think is important? That's what I mean by being a cop's wife. Honey, before you get too set up in this advertising business, let's have a kid.”
“What?”
“I want a baby,” I said, not really sure if I wanted one so soon. “We have a child now, by the time he's fifteen, we'll only be thirty-six, we'll all be pals. Have your career but let's make a baby first. And in a year—you'll only be twenty-two or—three by then—we'll get somebody to look after the baby and you can go back to the agency business again. I don't know, maybe that's what we need to settle us. Don't you want a kid?”
“Not this way. I want my baby to have a father not a lousy posthumous medal. No, Davie.” She started pushing again and I let go of her.
“What's this add up to, the kiss-off, Mary?” ..
“You know now where I stand. As to how it's going to add, that's for you to decide, Dave. Are you married to me or to your badge? I told you, I mean it. And I do, really.”
That was a wallop that shook all the tiredness out of me. “You realize what the hell you're saying?”
“I certainly do because I know what fun it was before you got on the force. Even when we were living in that crummy room and watching our pennies. It was fun then. It isn't now. Good night, David.”
“Good night, Mary.” I turned toward the windows. Outside a car went by now and then, in the distance a horn sounded, then the small scream of brakes. We ever got the furniture paid up, we could get on rubber ourselves, a good secondhand heap—although Mary would want a new car. Our marriage was getting to be one of those deals where everything had to be her way. And I'm selfish! Didn't matter whether I wanted to work for Uncle Frank or not. Uncle Frank, what a case. Him and his silly wife and those fat-assed kids who acted like a couple of fags.
But what had happened to us? Babes was right, it had been great in the beginning. Even when I was a soldier and Mary had to sneak out of her house to see me. Maybe I was her way of getting to New York City, a one-way ticket from the hick town? Naw, that wasn't fair, Babes was the best at times. Maybe it was her job: ever since she'd gone on this Madison Avenue lack she'd been rough. Trouble was, lately I felt as if I'd married Mom and... damn, hadn't phoned the folks in a couple of days, not since last Friday.
For no reason I suddenly saw the old flat, Mom shrilling, “You're trying to kill my baby!” Her gray hair all wild-looking and her face so pale.
She had to say “baby.” And Dom Franzino rubbing his bald head, embarrassed as he said, “But Mrs. Wintino, he ain't no baby. He's a natural welter and going on eighteen. Ten amateur fights with nine kayos. Nine kayos, Mrs. Wintino. Dave can take a man out with his left. Fans go for a puncher, go nuts over a left-hook artist. And his baby puss won't hurt none. He'll make a fortune, a—”