But Karras knew. He had felt it pulse through her as they had lain together afterwards on the bed. It was that girlfriend of hers, a dark, brooding woman named Natalie, with whom Vera had shared an office at the Census Bureau since 1946. Natalie, who had worked support staff on the Manhattan Project throughout the war and had been on site at Trinity. The woman had filled Vera’s head with a nightmare’s worth of information on the bomb. She had made her obsession Vera’s obsession, too. It was always crawling around in Vera’s mind — who had it, what it did, when it would land on us — and when Karras held her sometimes, during one of their frequent afternoon naps, Vera’s head would snap back and forth and she would often wake with a start. It was this Natalie character who had put the cancer into Vera’s dreams.
“You’re thinking about that bomb business again, aren’t you.”
“No,” said Vera, wincing slightly at the unconvincing sound of her own voice. She looked at him again in the mirror. “What about you? What’s your excuse?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You haven’t been right all day.”
Karras nodded his head in the direction of the bed. “Not right, huh. I didn’t hear you complainin’.”
“You know what I mean. When we make love, everything’s fine. Other than that, you’re off somewhere else.”
Karras dragged on his cigarette. The smoke from it hung in the blocks of light coming through the bedroom window.
“I saw an old friend the other day. When I saw him walking into the grill, I felt nothing, like he had died or something and I had gotten all the way over it. But since then, I’ve been thinking about him more and more. It’s like someone’s tapping a finger on my shoulder, and when I turn around, there’s no one there. But that finger on my shoulder, it won’t go away.”
“Your friend Joe,” said Vera.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not going to go away, Pete. It’s not going away until and you and Joe settle it. You know it, and that’s what bothering you. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Karras. He squinted at the sunlight that had entered his eyes. “Somehow, me and Joe are gonna have to make things right.”
Lois Roman came up naked behind Joe Recevo, put her arms around his shoulders, ran her hands across his chest. Recevo was fumbling with his tie, trying to put together a quick Windsor. He pushed her hand out of the way.
“Move it, baby, I’m tryin’ to get dressed.”
“What’s your hurry?” said Lois.
“We got some guys comin’ in from Philly tonight.”
“That’s not for a few hours yet.”
“I know it. I thought you and me would head over to Mark Gallagher’s first, have a couple of beers.”
Gallagher’s was up on Georgia Avenue, near Recevo’s apartment. It was just a bar, a place where he could watch the fights, jawbone with friends, sip fifteen-cent drafts. It was a man’s joint mainly, a little bit on the dull side, and Lois didn’t care for it one bit.
“Ooh, Gallagher’s,” said Lois playfully. “You better be careful, you might spend a dollar or two on me by accident.”
“Maybe I’m savin’ it up for somethin’ nice.”
“Like a ring, maybe?”
Recevo reached behind him, grabbed a handful of Lois’s perfect ass. “What we got baby, you can’t buy in a jewelry store.” He slapped her one there. “Go get dressed.”
He turned and watched her walk back to the bathroom. Lois’s bottom half — God, that was some kind of temple. He smiled just looking at it, thinking that his face had been wet with it just a half-hour earlier. Lois had sat herself on the side of the bed, put her hands behind her and shook that black hair of hers off her shoulders, and Recevo had kneeled there in front of her like he was in church, and he had buried his face in it until she had called out his name. And all the while his hands had been working on that beautiful ass of hers. Recevo knew that there would never be anything better than that.
But marriage? Hell, Lois was a nice kid, and all that. You might be able to stretch it and even say that he loved her. But weddings, steady jobs, a family, yatta, yatta, yatta, that kind of noise was not for him. He’d have to be careful how he danced around it, though, because a man would be a fool to let a flesh trophy like that get away. Lois and her goddamn beautiful ass. Recevo could live down there, never come up for air. What did Pete always call him when they were clowning around? “The Frogman,” on account of he loved to dive for gash. Yeah, “Frogman,” that was it. Pete Karras and his names.
Karras. It was funny about Pete. He hadn’t seen him since that night in the alley back in ’46, hadn’t thought a whole lot about him after the first six months had passed. And now, having run into him at Nick’s, it was like someone had pointed out to Recevo that he had been walking around for the last three years without a right arm. It was like some joker had tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Here, buddy, you musta dropped this back there,” and then handed him his own limb. Like he had been some kind of cripple, all that time, and didn’t even know it. A cripple, just like—
“C’mon, Joe,” said Lois, walking into the room in a sharp-looking tight skirt and high heels. “I thought you were gonna fix that tie.”
Recevo looked in the mirror. He hadn’t done a thing to it in the last five minutes.
“You better get it for me. My mind’s somewheres else.”
Lois turned him around, fixed it for him, tightened the knot. She patted him on his chest, smiled.
“Thanks, baby,” he said.
“We better get goin’,” said Lois with a wink. “I mean, you never know — Gallagher’s, they might run out of those fifteen-cent beers.”
“Mike, you’re shaking.”
“It’s cold, that’s all.”
Kay laughed. “It’s not so cold in here, Mike. Look at the windows. How cold could it be?”
Florek had a look around the interior of the car. It was true that it had gotten plenty warm, the windows had even steamed up since the last time he had checked. It smelled sweaty and kind of briny in there, too. Florek wondered if Kay’s father would notice the smell when he got into his car the next morning. He squirmed a little at the thought.
“Where you goin’,” said Kay with a chuckle, “wigglin’ away from me like that.”
Kay put her hand behind his head and drew him to her. She kissed him roughly, sliding her tongue across his. Florek thought he would burst from his trousers — God, this Kay was something! And then he felt her reach for his hand, take it, move it across the wool of her carcoat. The coarseness of the wool gave to the smooth heat of her skin, and now she was moving his hand inside her blouse, the top buttons of which had come undone somehow, and then beneath her loose brassiere, where his knuckles barely brushed the fine weave of lace. Then his fingers were tracing the bumps of her nipple as he listened to Kay’s steady moan, and he opened his eyes to watch her even as they kissed. Kay’s eyes were neither open nor closed, but kind of away and not looking at anything at all. Her scent was strong in the car now, and Florek felt something rising in his cock, and he wanted to stop it but he could not. He caught his breath at the point of his own dull explosion, a quiet ejaculation sending rhythmic, warm spurts into the underwear which he had cleaned in the sink that very afternoon.
“Why are you stopping, Mike?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed his hair away from his eyes. “I’m nervous, I guess, that we’re going to get caught.”
She kissed him again, but saw that the passion in it had passed. Kay dropped her head onto his shoulder. “You had a good time, didn’t you?”
“I had a great time, Kay.”