CHAPTER ONE

It had been an especially wet April, but when the rains off Lake Erie ended, May broke upon the city with plenty of sun and unusually high temperatures. Casimer Dobranski could leave his hat at home and when escorting a woman, he no longer had to wait as she fussed with a plastic babushka head scarf. Outside his apartment, he walked streets that were pleasantly broad, tan concrete instead of the usual dark asphalt. Lush grass sprouted in neat front yards of brick homes which teetered between lower and middle class, their chief value being that they lined a bluff which overlooked the bay, their chief detriment being their proximity to the Anvil Paper Mill’s sulfur smell and cyanide emissions into the water.

It was a Sunday and Cas followed his ritual of rising early, drinking one cup of coffee, then walking to the store for a box of powdered doughnuts and a loaf of bread. A blue machine had eaten four of his quarters in exchange for the Daily Dispatch, never a fair trade in his mind since most the news he wanted he knew already and often could provide more details than the newspaper. On his way home he visited the restored cement lighthouse, rubbing his hand along the round wall’s smooth exterior, peering up at the top where a light used to beckon ships home. Till recently, Cas had been a guard in the county prison, a patronage plum granted to him twelve years ago after he gave tips to Joe Mize, then-candidate for city council, about a dope ring on the waterfront. Unfortunately a new warden forced Cas into early retirement, stressing college degrees over ability, but Cas’ real career, since he was old enough to go outside by himself, was on the streets, selling numbers and providing security and information to both the law and the rackets. Such a career had required not so much that he knew what was in the papers, but what was kept out of them.

Distant bells chimed eight and he stepped up his pace back home so he could dress for church, take Wanda home, pick up his slips at Garibaldi’s and see his wife before Mass. Still he kept his routine of walking the path behind the lighthouse, watching the lake’s waves kick in the wind, and hearing surf crash the beach as it deposited tires and shoes and the accumulated trash of the lake. Though the water was choppy, green-headed mallards bobbed effortlessly on the waves, barely disturbing their rhythm when Cas threw in pieces of bread. One litter of ducklings, quacking crazily, paddled desperately after their mother, and he recalled his grandchild’s baptism a few weeks back, his mother’s faint and her delirious mumbles about a lost baby. He knew which child she referred to: it had been eighteen years since they had given Laurie’s baby away, and he wished hard that his mother would let the matter drop. But in fact, the baby haunted him too, invaded his dreams at night, and sometimes unexpected odd pangs would shiver through his gut when he saw a young baby or heard a cry followed by a mother’s calming voice. It wasn’t every day or every night. Sometimes he went weeks without thinking about the kid, but it was often enough to disturb him, for him to wonder why, after so many years, he couldn’t finally push the child out of his mind.

Cas wanted relief from his thoughts. It would be a simple and pleasant day on the beach, he mused, and he was tempted to leave Wanda lying in bed, forget his wife at her house, forget church and the numbers he expected to sell there. Relax in the calm behind a wind-scooped sandbar somewhere far away.

But he shook his head and reminded himself to check on his mother soon. His brothers and sisters were claiming she was too old to live alone and the Sisters of Saint Kalipygian had an opening in their nursing home. They would "carry" her, their brochures advertised, like the legendary Kalipygian had carried the Christ-child on her buttocks over burning hot desert stones. Except, of course, the saint had not charged the hefty fee the sisters were demanding.

He stopped in front of his apartment building, leaned against a picket fence, his back to the lake, and looked up at his bedroom window. There behind the red-and-white political sign for Joe Mize lay Wanda Niedemeyer, asleep in bed -- or if awake, planning how she would dawdle and protest against his seeing his wife this morning. He kicked at the dirt. Everything felt out of step this Sunday, slowing him down. If he lost too much time, he might not be able to pick up Helen to take her to Mass as usual, and she would be loud in her complaint. They had been married forty years, though they had not lived together for the last seventeen. Since their separation, they continued to see one another most Sundays and he felt they were more honest with each other now, a peace in their separation.

Cas took the back stairs quickly to his apartment, a one-bedroom with a small bath and kitchenette, situated on the top floor in the back of a red brick building. Waiting inside was Wanda, whom he had dated for the last six months and most Saturday nights she stayed over, alarming him because his passion had not yet burned out. He tried flirting with other women, leering at them long and admiringly, but found that, mysteriously, this only increased his lust for Wanda. What disturbed him most was the odd reawakening of the guilt he used to feel about his wife, guilt he thought long buried.

After letting himself into his apartment, he sat on a black-painted wood chair and smoked a Camel as he watched Wanda, lumped under the bed sheet on her hands and elbows, her butt forming the rounded peak of a lofty white mountain, her dyed strawberry-blonde hair splayed across his pillow. He smacked her bottom with the full Sunday edition of the Dispatch, and glossy advertisements flew out, leaving him a very slim paper.

"Get up Wanda." Her rump collapsed into the sheets and a freckled leg inched out till toes met the floor. Lifting her head, she turned and leaned on an elbow. She was ten years younger than Cas.

"Church time?" she said and blew hair out of her mouth. Her mascara had settled into her crow’s feet, giving her the appearance of two black eyes, the only color in her face. Cas decided that she looked ugly in the mornings and the feeling that she would leave him soon crept inside his head. For another man, she would go, perhaps someone closer to her own age.

"Wife time," she sighed, sat up, and lit a cigarette, dumped the match into a half-empty glass of tonic.

"It’s Sunday," Cas said. He opened a dresser drawer and grabbed a clean, pressed white shirt.

"I’ll never get used to it," Wanda said. "Cheating on a wife is one thing. But you got this standing date with your old lady. Like she’s the girlfriend."

"Won’t be anything to get used to if you talk about her like that." He fastened cherry-red rhinestone links into his cuffs. "It’s a good marriage."

"Yeah, I bet." She blew out a long smoke trail and walked to him. She ran her hand through his hair, traced the muscles in his arm, then reached under his shirt to grab his ring of belly fat and laughed when he instinctively sucked in.

"Maybe someday you’ll take me to Mass," she said. "It’d make an honest man out of you." She sauntered into the bathroom and water gushed and bottles rattled, while in the wall a pipe groaned.

Cas checked the local section of the Dispatch for articles about city hall and the courthouse: gossip and arraignments, arrests and sentencings. From the bathroom he heard Wanda brushing her stiff hair, pauses when the brush got stuck, followed by curses. He surveyed the mess surrounding his bed.

"Where are my shoes?" he yelled to her.

She walked back in wearing a satin slip. With her body covered and her face made up, she looked five years younger.

"You left this in the bathroom." She handed him a gray revolver. "Don’t shoot yourself, lover."

Cas shifted the gun to his back pocket. Grabbing her red checked dress off the chair, she headed back to the bathroom.

"Where are my wingtips?" Cas said.

"How should I know? Do I look like your wife?" She laughed and twirled in front of him. "Come on, Cas," she said. "Do I look like your wife?"

"Enough, Wanda." He watched as she bent over in front of him to put her dress on. "You know I don’t like you to talk about Helen."

"I don’t think you like how I look anymore. I know you’ve lost your sense of humor."

He picked her purse off the floor and tossed it on the bed. "You make this place into a sty. No wonder I can’t find my shoes."

"Under the bed," Wanda said. "You always stuff your shoes under the bed. Why would you expect them to be anyplace else?"

"They’re supposed to be in the closet."

He reached under the bed and found his shoes.

"I wonder if your wife knows how big a favor I’m doing her. If it wasn’t for me you’d be pestering her more than once a week. Cook your dinner. Wash your clothes. Find your shoes."

"Finish getting dressed, Wanda." He sat on the chair and tied his shoes. "I got to be early this Sunday."

"Maybe I’ll call my ex-husband," she said. "He and I could go to church together. Better yet, we could be Jews. Go to a synagogue on Saturdays and I could leave you high and dry once a week." She smiled. "That would be fair."

Cas tossed her purse at her feet.

"Enough with the jokes. We got to get going."

"I don’t know why I stay with you. That’s the joke. Oh, you got nice cheekbones and you’re in good shape for your age. And you got stamina." She paused to smile again. "But, Cas, that doesn’t mean you’re not old. Half your head is gray and your face has lines I can sink my nails into. Your knees creak and you’ve got a paunch. When I look at you, there’s nothing that excites my heart."

"Why are you here then?"

"You’re a gentleman, Cas. Gentle when you want to be." She smoothed her pantyhose around her ankles, then sat up. "And this whole thing with you is easy," she laughed. "That’s the God-awful truth of the matter."

"Easy?" He cupped his hand around her chin, tilted her head back and kissed her. She pushed him away, left him with his hand out, holding nothing.

"You got a wife," she said, "still willing to put up with you. Maybe it’s time you went home to her."

"I don’t need advice. I told you it’s a great marriage."

"If your wife really loved you, she’d force you to make a choice to be a full-time husband or be nothing at all to her."

Outside he waited by his Ford Galaxie. Wanda came down like a flame of the sun, blonde hair perfectly set and a red dress and shoes. She smoked and leaned on the car, complementing the waxed burgundy fender.

"Nice day," she said. "I think I’ll walk home."

"Get in." Cas opened the door.

"Not today." She smashed the cigarette butt under her shoe. "I need the air."

"Come on, Wanda."

"Does it hurt your pride to let a woman walk? Relax Cas. There’s no harm. I just want to be away from you right now."

"Fine." He slammed the door. "Maybe I’ll see you at the club tomorrow."

"I suppose." She blinked and brushed a strand of hair out of her eye. She pecked him on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, lover."

He sat in his Galaxie and watched her nylon legs glisten in the sun, but he didn’t wave or look when he drove past, temporarily dismissing her from his mind. He hardly touched the wheel, wishing the newly aligned car could find its own way to church. In the rear-view mirror, he saw blue puffs of smoke trailing from the exhaust and Cas knew that the Galaxie was nearing the end of its useful life, though he didn’t know much about cars and never took care of them the way the manuals suggested. There were few oil changes or inspections of plugs and valves. His son, Chet, had predicted a short life for the Galaxie when Cas first bought it, used and ten years old. "You won’t take care of it," Chet had told him, "something that old you got to care for." Cas knew that. Everyone knew that.

Though he was not likely to do anything about it just yet, he worried about the exhaust’s blue puffs. Like he worried about Wanda, who had left him with his jaw down, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. Flowers were due her, he figured, and a candle-lit night, a well-done steak, slow dancing. Feminists might be right that such gestures didn’t truly pacify a woman, but what it did for Cas was put him in the right mood to talk ... and talk had always been his strongest point. And then the planning of such an affair would keep his mind busy, make him feel as though there was an important problem brewing. It was a game, he reminded himself, between Wanda and him. He never stayed with a woman who did not, in some way, understand that. And the game would end when he no longer cared to make plans for dinner or flowers, or maybe when the woman finally refused his gestures.

Like the numbers he sold or the gambling houses he guarded, all of it felt like a game. Cops knew everything going on and they picked and chose who they busted, depending on the political heat. Most of it was destined to end soon since the Pennsylvania Lottery had cut the numbers racket in half and young people didn’t get involved anymore, especially since Atlantic City now provided them a place to gamble legally. It was all penny-ante stuff now and the only honor Cas felt was that he did not try to gloss over that what he did was two-bit and illegal.

Still, he worried about the Galaxie and he worried about Wanda. He worried about his wife and mother and now, unfortunately, he worried too much about his mother’s grumbling about the lost baby.