Chapter 6 #2
I was back in New York a week later. I could have called Gianna to say I wanted to see her, but it had been months, and I didn’t want to start things back over the phone.
I got a room at a hotel and took a long hot shower.
Since all my clothes were filthy from my travels, I stopped at a department store and bought new underwear and socks and jeans and a decent shirt.
Then I grabbed a cab to our apartment building, took the elevator up, and stood outside the door.
I sucked in a few breaths, excited to see her to the point of giddiness.
I had an apology practiced. And a new sense of patience.
Mostly, I just planned to tell her how much I loved her, and promise to show her, to do better, to be better.
I gripped an envelope with some photos of Lallu that Juma had taken, and I knocked.
No answer.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if she’d moved. I knocked again, loudly. Nothing. I still had my key. I fished it from my wallet and tried the lock. It worked. I let myself in.
The place was the same, but I could feel my absence every-where. All the possessions were Gianna’s. Her sweater on the couch. Her sunglasses on the counter. Her purse. Her magazines. None of my coffee cups in the sink, or jackets on the back of a chair.
I waited a few minutes, then started to feel like I was trespassing.
I removed a single photo from the envelope, Lallu and me, with her trunk pushing my hat over my eyes.
I placed it on the coffee table, imagining it a small surprise for Gianna.
I had my hand on the door, about to leave, when I heard the sound of the elevator opening down the hallway, and then her voice, animated, saying “I couldn’t believe it, you know?
” I heard a response from another voice, a man’s voice, and I retreated, suddenly trapped, and before I could do anything the door was swinging open and I was looking straight across at a stunned Gianna, wearing a lavender turtleneck and a leather coat and standing in front of a guy whose face was instantly familiar from my freshman year at college.
Mike.
The soccer star. The guitar player. The guy who’d broken her heart.
“Alfie!” she screamed. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?”
“Twice,” I whispered.
?
Now, Boss, if you’re hoping for an explanation of what Gianna was doing with her old boyfriend, I don’t have one.
You’d have to ask her. I time jumped back to, of all places, the department store fitting room, where I was breathing hard and cursing until a salesman on the other side of the curtain said, “Sir, are you all right in there?”
I spent the next hour weighing whether I should return to the scene and confront Gianna.
She was still my wife, after all. I thought of every possible reason why she could be coming to our apartment with her old college beau, but my mind kept returning to the worst one, that she was seeing him again, that she was sleeping with him.
That I had been replaced.
I knew if I revisited the moment, I could not undo it.
I’d be stuck inside the apartment, staring at Mike and his perfect teeth and two--day stubble, and forced to have my confrontation with Gianna in front of him.
I didn’t want that. But I couldn’t just leave things.
I needed to know more. So I took a cab back to our apartment building and found a spot across the street, in a Korean grocery store.
I positioned myself by the window. And I waited.
I must have looked at my watch a thousand times.
I scanned the faces of everyone who came down the block.
New York City is an endless cast of characters, pouring out of taxis, pushing through doorframes, turning around the corners.
I wasn’t sure if I’d missed Gianna by looking the wrong way at the wrong moment.
But then a bus stopped at a nearby intersection, and I caught sight of her stepping off.
There was Mike right behind her. They walked together, heads nodding in intermittent conversation.
They stopped momentarily by a vendor selling mixed nuts, but Gianna shook her head, and they continued on.
I kept waiting for her to look my way. What was I hoping?
That she’d break into tears? Push Mike away and come running with her arms out, screaming, “Alfie! You’re back! ”
They approached our building, and from behind, I saw Gianna reach into her handbag, maybe looking for her key. Mike turned his head. Then he made a small gesture that is forever seared in my memory.
He put his arm around Gianna’s shoulder, and when he did, Gianna patted her free hand on his. If a single human act could morph into an arrow, that one would have shot directly across the street, shattered the glass of the grocery window, and pierced my heart.
My throat constricted. I started to sweat.
When you experience an emotion you’ve never felt before, your body is confused.
And in my mind I had just, for the first time in my life, lost someone I truly loved—-not to the angel of death, but to another person’s affection.
Where do I go? What do I do? Beneath my suddenly uncomfortable skin, my soul felt gutted, angry, pathetic, victimized.
And at fault.
“Ey! Mister! Mister!”
I turned. The Korean owner was scowling from behind the cash register.
“You buy or leave! No stand there. Buy or leave!”
Buy or leave. That’s what it felt like. Invest in whatever it would take to get Gianna back—-long talks, long apologies, new promises, new behavior—-or walk away, licking my wounds.
I walked away.
?
What happened next, Boss, I am not proud of.
I went to a liquor store, bought four bottles of whiskey, and marched back to the hotel.
I stayed there for two nights, ripping up photos of Lallu and drinking myself into a stupor.
I didn’t eat. I barely slept. Late on the second night, half out of my head, I called Gianna’s number from the room phone.
It was well past midnight. The answering machine picked up. We used to have a dumb message, the two of us trading lines, then finishing by screaming “Beeeeep!” But now I heard her recorded voice, solo, calm, saying “Hi, it’s Gianna, sorry I missed you, leave a message.”
The words played tricks in my head. Sorry. I missed you. I pressed the receiver to my ear, breathing hard, maybe even crying. Sorry. I missed you. And then I heard a sudden fumbling noise, as if she knocked the phone over trying to answer it.
I panicked and hung up.
In that moment, my worst imagination took over.
I pictured Gianna and Mike in bed, making love, ignoring the ringing (Should you get that?
Mike whispers, No, nooo, Gianna moans) until my whimpering could no longer be ignored and Gianna, naked, stretched for the phone and knocked it over.
And, as I pathetically hung up, the two of them burst into laughter, then flung themselves back atop one another.
It was a stupid, agonizing thought at a stupid, agonizing moment. But I have already made my case about moments: how you forget so many over a lifetime, yet a lifetime can turn on a single one.
At that low moment, fueled with alcohol, jealousy, and the relentless ache of being no longer wanted, I thought back to a time when the tables were turned, when I was the desired one.
I thought back to Nicolette, beautiful, sexy Nicolette, and the night I left her in that elevator in L.A.
The memory glowed in my mind like a lighthouse tugging me from the fog.
With my eyes squeezed closed, wanting only relief from the hurt, I inhaled the deepest breath I’d ever taken on this earth, and screamed out “Twice!”
Instantly, I was back in that elevator, with Nicolette’s hands on my belt, undoing it slowly while she purred, “Lemme see. Lemme see . . .”
This time, I let her see. I let her do everything she wanted.
In that elevator. In her luxurious hotel suite.
Across her king--size mattress. Against the bedroom wall.
I summoned every ounce of my virility that night and lost myself inside her supple body, because losing myself was what I wanted to do.
Sadly, when you lose yourself, you don’t realize who else you’re losing, too.
Nassau
LaPorta tapped his finger on the iPad photo.
“That’s your ex--husband?” he said, pointing to a man standing by the roulette wheel.
“Yes,” Gianna said.
“And this guy is not?”
“That’s Alfie.”
“Who has never been married to you?”
“No!”
“He never met you in Africa?”
“He did. When we were kids.”
“He didn’t go to college with you?”
“Yes. Well. Not with me. We were at the same school.”
“He never told you he loved you? Made a big deal about it during a rainstorm in Philadelphia?”
“Look, Detective, I don’t know what you’re—-”
“Never married you in some little town? Never fought with you over having a baby?”
Gianna straightened her back. She looked upset.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Not until I have a lawyer.”
“Look, lady, I’m not trying—-”
“My name is Gianna Rule. Not ‘lady.’ And I don’t know what you have against Alfie, or why you would make all this up, but it’s not fair to him, and I’m not putting up w—-”
“He ripped off a casino.”
“He doesn’t gamble! That’s not Alfie! He’s a good man. He doesn’t take stupid chances.”
LaPorta leaned back. “You’d be surprised.”
Gianna shook her head.
“I’m not saying anything more. Not until I have representation. I’m an American citizen. I have the right to—-”
“I know all about your rights,” LaPorta interrupted.
“I also know there’s two million dollars in a bank account that bears your name.
And it came from this guy in the photo, after an impossible three straight ups at a roulette table, which can only be done by cheating, which is illegal.
So, you might not want to talk to me . . .”
He leaned over and opened his bag. He pulled out a notebook.
“But you’re gonna want to read this.”-