Chapter 4 Justice and a Happy Ending #2
Soon the houses grow bigger, the lawns steeper.
Then the sidewalks become bare, clean, and the roads free of potholes and old cobble.
It’s been cold for Los Angeles, and Frankie wears a motoring coat in the car, which she takes off as soon as she’s parked in Nico’s driveway, an arc around a pristine expanse of grass.
Right at the height of the arc, there’s a fountain with a statue of what looks like three fish holding a shell, and drops of water shimmer like crystals in their moonlit fall.
By the door is Nico’s orange-and-black Bugatti coupe, a sophisticated but sinister-looking car.
Halloween for the rich and famous, Frankie’s always thought.
At the last second she remembers to grab a few plates that she has to return from the back seat, and heads up the path to the front door, where Angela, Nico’s wife, appears before Frankie’s even pressed the bell.
The apron Angela wears is blue and white checked and punctuated with red felt tomatoes in the lower corner, and the sight is a familiar anchor to every week.
Angela leans in, a waft of Chanel and shallots. A kiss on each cheek, and she takes the plates. “He’s with his juveniles,” she says before turning back to the kitchen. “Dinner’s soon.”
Bing Crosby croons into empty rooms. Past French doors is the garden, which, to someone who didn’t know better, would appear filled with an army of skeletons.
Rows and rows of bare trees, their naked arms white against the night.
These are the juveniles, as Angela’s termed them.
Young fig trees. And in the middle stands Nico.
Maybe he sees her shadow on the ground, but without turning, he says, “I have a few cuttings inside that are leafing out.”
She’s learned to let Nico lead conversations. And though all she wants to do is demand to know about Jack, instead she says, “Already? You’ll have figs by Easter.”
He smiles to his trees. Almost all are from cuttings, collected from places of significance or even from wild trees he’s spotted in California.
Cuttings are the only way to get an identical fig, he’s told her.
A fig from a seed is new, with one unknown parent and questionable traits, not unlike most people I know.
And, sure, a seedling could be mediocre or bad, but it also might be the next best thing.
Once, Frankie had to wait in the car late at night, after a premiere, while Nico climbed a hillside against the road to take a fig and a cutting from a tree that was growing wild.
This might be the one. Taste this, he’d said, his eyes bright.
Now his finger glides on the branch in front of him.
“This is from my grandmother’s house in Puglia.
Dark-red figs, almost black on the outside.
We’d pile them in our shirts and run down this path, down her hill to the water, tripping over grapevines.
I’m telling you, grapevines are everywhere, and they’ll take over, like figs.
Never plant grapes unless you want to cut them back every year with a machete. ”
“I won’t,” she says, though she will. The second she gets a house. She’ll dare the vine to become a monster. Free grapes, shade. She’ll welcome its dominance.
“We’d run to the water and sit on the sand, and stuff our faces with figs hot from the sun. Like strawberry jam inside. Then jump in the Adriatic, which is warm and turquoise and nothing like the Pacific, I’ll tell you that. Then swim till we needed to eat again.”
Frankie traces an X with her foot on the ground. “We stole apples from a cart on Hester and ran all the way to the hydrant on Canal. I like your childhood better.”
“No. Yours is good too.” He lowers his arm. “They lost that house. I just found out. My grandmother’s house. The bank took it. I didn’t know.”
She looks up. “Nico. I’m sorry.”
“A hundred and sixty-three years it was in my family. Couple years back there was a quake in Irpinia, not even near the house, more in the middle, on the way to Naples. But my cousin was there for it and wanted nothing to do with Italy after that. He wanted to move here actually, but I said no, California gets earthquakes like the best of them, so he stayed put.” He looks up, at bark that’s white against the sky.
“What no one told me is he was hurt in that quake, and couldn’t work.
If they’d told me, I’d have sent money. He wouldn’t need to work.
And we’d still have the house.” He looks over his shoulder.
“This whole row is from Italy.” Quickly, he glances at each tree as if speeding down the Italian coast. “So, Jack.”
“Jack,” she repeats. Waiting.
“He’s not happy, but he understands.”
“He does?”
“He knew it was coming. You don’t date someone for years and not move forward. Fictionally or not. But at least June’s happy. Or, happier, I should say. I tell you what she had in her handbag? A derringer.”
A gun.
In time, this conversation will be something of a bookmark, the memory she keeps flipping to.
But now, the change of topic is only an indication that Jack is not as upset as she thought he’d be, which is both disturbing and a relief.
Could it be that he’d always figured this would happen, that he long ago made peace with their relationship being temporary?
It’s a miserable thought, and she tells herself to stop.
She just needs to go to him, to see where his mind really is. Then she can worry.
“I thought June hated guns,” Frankie says. After June’s ex, Tank Adams, surprised her outside a diner, Nico tried to convince her to carry a firearm. At the time, though she was rattled, June refused. I’ll master the slingshot.
“She got spooked a couple weeks ago. Some couple asking for money on the street; they got a bit aggressive and she got scared. I don’t even think they knew who she was, just saw she was dressed nice.
I told her, keep one on you if you’re by yourself—but you know what it really took?
She saw some movie where the heroine had a gun that was pearl-gripped and pretty.
See? Westerns and mob films. Everybody wants them.
The lowly man makes something of himself,” he says in an announcer voice.
“You know why people love those films? I’ll tell you: justice and a happy ending.
That’s all anybody ever needs, since the beginning of time.
Why do you think people like religion? Justice and a happy ending. ”
“There’s something Magda said today that you should know about. She mentioned that about a couple months ago, June’s neighbor saw a man watching June’s house. Watching her in the house, I mean.”
Nico nods, taking this in. “Tank.”
“She needs a house that’s gated.”
“She’ll have one soon.”
Jack’s house. “Right.”
“Speaking of Jack,” Nico says, “Diego from the Cocoanut Grove called. Our groom of the hour sat down for a bourbon.”
“I thought you said he took it well.”
“To my face, he took it well. Because he had no choice. But he’s out drinking, so we need to listen for the phone.”
On studio payroll are those they call helpers, people on the lookout who will call them at the first sign of trouble.
Sometimes just for a heads-up that someone’s on their first drink, while other times it’s more than a heads-up; it’s a full-on call for help, like a flare shot into the sky.
Waiters, bartenders, valets—the list of helpers is endless.
Usually, the second a helper makes a call, Nico sends the troops: a nurse, an ambulance driver, and two heavies who can stop fights or carry someone out. Whatever’s needed.
“You send in the troops?” she asks.
A shaft of light widens at the back of the house as a door opens, and Nico’s daughter tells them dinner’s ready.
“Of course I did. Anything goes wrong tonight, it sets the tone. We can’t afford to mess this engagement up.”
Dinner looks like a cake, a fragrant pastry crust that hides a meal, a dome that Angela cuts into carefully, releasing steam and a heady scent of mushroom and meat.
Baked tubes of pasta twist like little tunnels.
Frankie watches Angela tip a slice onto Nico’s plate, and she quickly swallows down a full glass of water—a trick her mother taught her to do before each meal.
We just need a head start, that’s all. That fear of ending a meal still hungry never goes away.
Taking that last bite and still being consumed by a hollow ache .
. . Sometimes Frankie thinks it was worse than not having the meal to begin with.
Now she sets her empty water glass on the table, and Nico launches into a story about his father’s family in Calabria, the side that used to make the dish, timballo di maccheroni, as Gabriella, his daughter, tries to talk about the wedding.
“My cousin Beatrice called,” Gabriella says to Frankie. Twelve years old, Gabriella’s got a pink fade from lipstick that she must have wiped off before her father got home. “All the way from New York. Even she heard. It was on the radio in Brooklyn. They said it was in a month. That’s soon!”
Nico turns to the girl. “And did your cousin have a theory on why?”
Angela’s eyes widen.
Without missing a beat, Nico continues. “It’s so they can vacation in Italy without the summer crowds. With nonno e nonna.”
Now it’s Gabriella’s eyes that widen.
Nico laughs. “Or maybe they’ll just have dinner with them.”
“I wouldn’t care if it was a snack,” Gabriella says. “Jack Sawyer is perfect.”
Angela laughs. “I must say, I’m surprised June’s unofficial husband is letting her get married.” She says this looking straight at Nico. When he turns to her, she winks.
“Not even letting,” Nico says quietly. “Insisting.”
Gabriella puts her napkin on the table. “A wedding that fast. It’s impossible.”
Nico shakes his head. “That word’s not in our vocabulary. We built an English village in a week, the Statue of Liberty in three days.”
Subtly, Angela leans in to Frankie and whispers, “She’s expecting, isn’t she?”
Frankie pretends to consider the question. Nico’s always said he keeps his wife out of studio business, and clearly this is the case. But the omission feels fragile, something Frankie doesn’t trust herself with.
“I know her morals clause is tight,” Angela adds as Nico turns, perhaps sensing his attention is needed.
But before he can speak, Gabriella chimes in. “Imagine Jack Sawyer as a husband. In pajamas.”
“Gabriella Marconi.”
She looks confused. “Or flipping burgers. I mean husband things.”
And though the comment draws a laugh, Frankie’s food catches in her throat.
Jack standing outside at a grill, flipping burgers.
A common, mundane thing they never did because they could never be outside if there was a chance the neighbors could see.
She takes a sip of water, which shoots cold at a tooth that’s gone nervy.
Gabriella continues. “I heard he got a medal in the war. Is that true?”
“A lot of people got medals,” Nico says.
“Maybe you should make a movie about that.”
He shakes his head. “We need happy stories right now. And no one who went through it wants to relive it.” A glance at Frankie. They both know that even loud noises can be tricky with Jack.
Just then, Nico’s private line rings, a shrill sound that cuts through the house.
Loud enough to wake the dead, Angela often jokes about the phone in his office that the helpers call, usually in the middle of the night.
The number’s not listed in phone books, and operators can’t find that number attached to Nico’s name—so if someone’s calling it, it’s because they’re part of the inner circle, and there’s a problem.
Quickly, Frankie stands, thankful for the interruption, even though it means dinner will be cut short. Angela watches her as she goes.
Attached to Nico’s den, which he uses as an office at home, is a small bathroom converted into something of a makeshift greenhouse.
Against the window, there is a table that takes up half the room, and on it are dozens of little pots, some with fig cuttings and others that are waiting, prefilled with his special soil mix.
Every so often, Nico runs the shower to give them humidity, and now, as he hangs up the phone, Frankie notes the ghostly trace of a heart someone drew on the mirror.
Almost immediately, the phone rings again.
“Christ,” he says into the mouthpiece. “Five? I’m on it.”
Once he hangs up, he appears in the doorframe. “You want to take your dessert to go?”
Without being told, she knows Jack’s involved but waits to hear how bad it is.
Instead, he says the name of their top director. “Little bit ago, Olivier Monteleon hit on someone’s wife, and apologized by throwing an ice cube at the husband, who returned the favor with a punch. So I sent in the troops.”
Olivier, a flirt, but not usually a troublemaker.
“But now I get a call from the Cocoanut Grove, and guess who’s on his fifth?”
“His fifth?” Frankie repeats. Jack doesn’t drink. Or when he does, it’s one glass. Maybe two. “I’ll head to Jack. Got it.”
She won’t bring up their relationship to him tonight. Not when he’s already upset. The priority is to get him away from the bar with the fewest eyes on them.
As she leaves, she stops in the kitchen to take some cannoli with her. Right by the tray of dessert is one of the plates she returned, along with a napkin.
Angela appears, leaning against the doorframe. “Just bring it back next time.”
“You had it ready.”
“Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.” Angela smiles. “You’re not the only one who’s learned from Nico.”