“Yes, Dad,” Jaclyn, Tess, and I promise. Roman, Charlie, and Tom nod in agreement.
Gram’s eyes are closed as she leans back on the chaise.
“So that’s gonna be how it’s gonna be. I’m going in.” Dad goes down the stairs.
Charlie and Tom have stepped away from the fray as far as they can go without falling off the roof. They stand with their hands in their pockets, half-expecting more bullets to fly on Christmas. When they don’t, Tom looks around and says, “Is there any more beer?”
Roman helps me into the passenger seat of his car, then climbs in the other side. I shiver as he starts the engine. His seat is pushed back as far as it can go; I push my seat back to his. “What do you want to do?” he says.
“Take me to the Brooklyn Bridge so I can jump.”
“Funny. I have a better idea.”
Roman drives over to Sixth Avenue and heads uptown. The streets of Manhattan are bright and empty.
“I’m sorry you had to hear all that.” I reach over and hold his hand.
“One time at a Falconi Christmas, we served dinner in the garage; my brothers got into a fight and were so angry they started pelting each other with spare tires. Don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t now.” We laugh. “What did you think of Alfred?”
“I don’t know yet,” Roman says diplomatically.
“Alfred has very high standards. No one is allowed to fail. After my father’s affair, Alfred got very righteous and even thought about going into the seminary to become a priest. But then Alfred was called by a different god. He became a banker. Of course, that’s just another way to get back at Dad. My father never made a lot of money, and that’s another way for Alfred to be superior. Alfred is morally and financially superior.”
“How about his wife?”
“She’s under his thumb. She’s so nervous, she eats baby food because she has chronic ulcers.”
“Why is he so hard on you?” Roman asks gently.
“He thinks I’m flip. I changed careers, I live with my grandmother, and I didn’t close the deal with the perfect man.”
“Who was he?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in perfect.”
“What do you want?”
“You.” Roman lifts my hand and kisses it. I’m besotted, and I don’t think it’s a passing holiday mood. As terrible as the fight on the roof was, I was soothed by Roman’s presence. He made it all better without saying a word or doing a thing. I felt protected.
Roman slows down in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and then makes the turn onto Fifty-first Street. He parks the car at the side entrance. “Come on,” he says. He comes around to my side and helps me out of the car. “It’s Christmas. We gotta do the windows.”
He takes my hand and we walk behind the red velvet ropes. There’s a Latino family down the way taking pictures in front of a window with a circus act of snowmen. The father holds up his three-year-old son, near the glass.
Fifth Avenue is hushed as we look at the windows, dioramas of holiday happiness through the ages, a fussy Victorian scene where the family opens a present and the puppy pulls the ribbon from a package over and over again, another of the Roaring Twenties, with girls in bobbed haircuts and short sequin sheaths doing the Charleston in synchronized repetition.
A man with a saxophone appears on the corner of Fiftieth Street, breaking the silence with a jazz riff. Roman holds me close and moves me down the line to the tumbling-snowman window. The man with the horn stops playing, his brass sax dangling around his neck like an oversize gold charm. As we move to the next window, I look at the old man and smile. He wears a beat-up English tweed cap and an old coat. He sings,
We have been gay, going our way
Life has been beautiful, we have been young
After you’ve gone, life will go on
Like an old song we have sung
When I grow too old to dream
I’ll have you to remember
When I grow too old to dream
Your love will live in my heart
So, kiss me my sweet
And so let us part
And when I grow too old to dream
That kiss will live in my heart
And when I grow too old to dream
That kiss will live in my heart
Roman takes me in his arms and kisses me. When I open my eyes, the floodlights on the dormers of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral disappear into the black sky in cones of white smoke. “You want to stay at my house tonight?” he asks.
“That’s about the best Christmas present I can think of.”
Back in the car, Roman looks at me and smiles. I plan to spend the ride to wherever he lives kissing his neck. And I do. He turns on the radio. Rosemary Clooney sings, sounding as smooth as whiskey and whipped cream. All I can think is that we’re going to start something wonderful tonight. I bury my face in his neck and wish that this car could take off and fly us to his home.
I am falling in love! My thoughts explode like a coin shower when the winning quarter hits the release lever in a slot machine in Atlantic City. I watch myself in my mind’s eye as gold disks pour out all around me by the hundreds, then thousands! I see spinning tops and ribbons unfurled, bluebirds flying out of belfries, church bells ringing, showgirls, rows of them in red sequin shorts, tap dancing at full power until the sound is so deafening you have to cover your ears. I see a bright blue sky filled with red kites, purple and white hot-air balloons, and shooting silver asteroids of fireworks that rain down like Christmas tinsel. I feel a parade coming on! Marching bands, flank after flank, in emerald green uniforms, baton twirlers in white sequin tank suits weaving in and out of formation while polished copper tubas work the street from right to left, braying a tune, my tune! My song! My head is full of sound, my eyes are full of wonder, and my heart is full of old-fashioned, spectacular joy. I open my eyes and look up at the moon, and it’s flipping in the sky! A celestial coin toss! I won! I’m in the money, my friends!
Roman pulls his car into a parking garage on Sullivan Street. He leaves the key in the ignition and waves to the attendant, who waves back. We go out onto the street and he kisses me under the streetlight. “Which one is yours?” I ask him.
“That one.” He points to a loft building, an old factory of some sort, with words carved on the door, but I can’t read them. He grabs my hand and we run to the entrance. We get inside and go up in the elevator to the fourth floor, we kiss, and when the car bounces, our lips wind up on each other’s noses and we laugh.
The doors of the elevator open onto an enormous floor-through loft with a series of large windows on both sides. The floors are wide planks of distressed oak with polka dots of old nail heads. Four large white pillars anchor the center of the room, creating an open, indoor gazebo. Greek-key plaster molding hems off the cathedral ceiling, while architectural pilasters lean against the wall, giving the loft a feeling of an old museum storage room. There’s a large painting on the far wall of a lone white cloud on a blue night sky.
An industrial kitchen, the length of the loft, is behind us. Neat and organized, it’s outfitted with state-of-the-art appliances. A wild chandelier of Murano-glass trumpet vines in orange and green hangs over the counter.
His bed, in the far corner of the room, is a four-poster, with a valance behind it of clean white muslin. The silver radiators spit steam into the silent loft. It’s got to be 120 degrees in here. I begin to sweat.
“Let’s get that coat off you,” he says. He kisses me as he unbuttons my coat. He doesn’t stop with the coat. He undoes the tiny pearl buttons on my pale pink cashmere sweater and slips it off my shoulders. For a second, I wonder how I look, then disregard it, good, he’s already seen me naked. He touches the damp drops on my forehead.
“Is this the steam heat or us?”
“Us,” I promise. He unzips my skirt. I help him off with his coat. He struggles with the sleeve of his shirt until I pull it off his arm, like a wrapper. We laugh for a moment, but then go back to kissing. I hold his face in my hands, never letting go as we move across the room. We leave a trail of our clothes on the floor, like rose petals, until we make it to his bed. He lifts me up and puts me on the soft velvet coverlet. He reaches across and opens the window. The wind blows in, ruffling the valance like summer laundry on the line. The cool air settles on us as he lies over me.