Moth heard the rapid description of his estranged father and thought, That’s true.
“Anyway, Ed was the accident,” Teddy continued. “Conception, birth, and every day from then on, that’s what he liked to say. Proud.”
Andy heard the word accident and imagined that it somehow should mean something to her. I had an accident except it wasn’t an accident, it was a clumsy, stupid mistake. I let myself get raped by some guy I didn’t even know at a party I shouldn’t have been at, but then I killed it. She turned away to regain the composure that had just slid away from her.
Moth felt himself fill with questions, but he asked only one more. “What are you going to do now, Teddy?”
“That’s easy, Moth. Try not to fall off the wagon. Even though I might want to.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a plastic container of pills, holding them up like a sommelier examining a wine bottle label. “Antabuse,” he said. “Nasty stuff. Nasty drug. It’ll make me sick, and I mean really sick, if I start to drink. Never tried it before. Ed was always into We have the strength to do this ourselves-you know that, Moth. But now Ed’s gone, goddamn it to hell.”
Moth pictured his uncle, still alive, seated at his desk. Moth could see a gun in front of him, and he could see Ed reaching down to the drawer where the second gun was hidden. Makes no sense. He was going to say this but as he was about to, he saw tears in Teddy’s eyes. And Moth stopped himself.
“Sorry, Moth,” Teddy said. His voice quivered, a tuning fork reverberating with loss and sadness. “Sorry,” he said a second time. “None of this is easy for me.”
Andy Candy thought that was a significant understatement.
“Go away, Moth. I don’t want to speak with you.”
“Please, Cynthia. Just give me a minute. A couple of questions.”
“Who’s she?”
“This is my friend Andrea.”
“Is she a drunk, too?”
“No. She’s helping me out a little. She does the driving.”
“Lost your license again?”
“Yes.”
“Pathetic. Do you like being a drunk, Moth?”
“Please, Cynthia.”
“Do you have even the vaguest idea how many people you’ve hurt, Moth?”
“Yes. I do. Please.”
Hesitation.
“Five minutes, Moth. No more. Inside.”
Andy Candy was slightly taken aback by the staccato hostility in Moth’s aunt’s voice. Every word seemed spoken with black charcoal and burning cinders. She trailed a little behind Moth, who was hurrying to keep pace with his aunt, who marched through the vestibule of the house with military determination.
It was a three-story stucco home-rare enough in Miami-in a southern part of Dade County, surrounded by tall stately palms, manicured lawns, a bougainvillea-adorned walkway, and money. The flat white interior walls were crowded with Haitian art-large, wildly colorful representations of jam-packed markets, weather-beaten fishing boats, and floral designs, all with a homespun, rustic character to them. Andy knew they were valuable; folk art that was exploited in the high-end Miami art world. There were modern sculptures-carved dark woods, mostly free-form, in every corner. The corridors of the house shouted contradictions of creativity and rigid order. Everything was carefully in place, arranged precisely to look magazine-photograph beautiful, make a statement about elegance. Cynthia was dressed to blend in with the high style. She wore a loose-fitting, off-white, silken pair of slacks and matching blouse. Her Manolo Blahnik shoes made tapping sounds against the imported gray tile floors. Andy Candy thought the jewelry around Cynthia’s neck was worth more than her mother the piano instructor made in a year.
Moth politely asked, “How is the art business, Cynthia?”
Andy Candy thought the answer was obvious.
Moth’s aunt didn’t even look back as she replied. “Quite good, despite the overall economy. But Moth, don’t waste your five minutes asking me about my business.”
There was a man seated in the living room on an expensive white, handmade cotton couch. He stood up as they entered. He was a few years younger than Moth’s aunt, but equally stylish. He was dressed in a narrow, tight, shiny sharkskin gray suit, bright purple shirt, four buttons open to a hairless chest. He wore his long blond hair slicked tightly back. Andy Candy saw that the man had put white highlights in his hair, the way a fashion model might. Aunt Cynthia walked straight to his side, slid her arm under his, and eyed Moth and Andy Candy.
“Moth, maybe you recall my business partner?”
“No,” Moth answered, extending his hand, even though he did. He had met the man once before, and known instantly that he handled Aunt Cynthia’s business ledgers and sexual desires, probably with the same degree of extraordinarily cool passion and competence. Moth instantly pictured the two of them together in bed. How could they fuck without mussing their hair or disrupting their carefully applied makeup?
“Martin is here in case some legal matter should arise in the next…,” Cynthia looked down at the Rolex on her wrist, “… four remaining minutes.”
“Legal?” blurted Andy Candy.
Cynthia turned coldly toward her.
“Perhaps he didn’t bother to inform you, but Moth’s uncle and I did not split up on the best of terms. Ed was a liar, a cheat, and despite his profession, a harsh, thoughtless man.”
Andy started to reply, but then thought better of it.
Cynthia did not offer a seat to either Moth or Andy Candy as she slumped into a modern leather chair that Andy thought looked more uncomfortable than standing. Martin moved behind her, and placed his hands on her shoulders, either to hold her in place or give her a back rub. Either, Andy imagined, was possible.
“Okay,” Moth said. “I’m sorry you think that. Then I’ll get right to it…”
“Please,” his aunt said with a small, dismissive hand gesture.
“In the years that you and Uncle Ed were together, did you ever hear him say he felt threatened, or that someone might want to hurt him, or come seeking revenge of any kind…”
“You mean other than me,” Cynthia said. She laughed, although it wasn’t funny.
“Yes. Other than you.”
“I was the one hurt. I was the one he cheated on. I was the one he walked out on. If there was anyone with a reason to shoot him…”
She stopped. Then she shrugged, as if it meant nothing.
“The answer to your question is: No.”
“In all those years…”
“Let me repeat myself: No.”
“You mean,” Moth started, but she cut him off with another wave of her hand.
“I suspected there were people that he met in his secret life-the one he tried to hide from me-that maybe, I don’t know, hated themselves or him or whatever and might have been capable of pulling a gun out and shooting themselves in some drunken bout of self-pity. And sometimes I imagined when he was drinking hard, and disappeared for a couple of days, that maybe something awful had happened to him. But it wasn’t likely that some other repressed and closeted gay man that he met in some bar somewhere decided to stalk him years later. Of course it’s possible…” she said, shrugging once again to indicate with body language and tone of voice that it wasn’t actually possible. “But I really doubt it. And no one ever tried to blackmail him, because that sort of payment would have come up in the forensic analysis of his finances that I had done when we were divorced. And he never came on to some psychotic killer, like in Looking for Mr. Goodbar-there’s a book you’ve probably never heard of but was very popular once upon a time-you know, tried to hustle some guy who decided instead of fucking him to kill him. I worried about that for a little bit. But not really.”
“So, no one…”