Chapter 5 #3
“Is this going to be us now?” I continued. “We don’t go anywhere? We don’t do anything fun? We just sit around thinking about a baby?”
Gianna didn’t say anything. She looked hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “but, you know . . .”
“It’s OK,” she said, rising. “Let’s go. We can have fun. You’re right. It’s not against the rules.”
We met our friends a few hours later. Sam and Annie were our age, not married, still in that pawing--each--other--at--every--moment stage. They brought beers over as soon as we arrived and banged them on the table.
“Let’s celebrate the end of a crappy week,” Sam said. “I worked my butt off.”
“Thanks, but I can’t drink,” Gianna said.
“Oh, right, sorry,” Annie said.
“No, no, don’t be sorry, you all go ahead.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Yes. It’s fine.”
So I drank with our friends. It felt good to be out.
The festival had loud, energetic bands, and Sam and Annie danced the samba.
Gianna said she was too tired, so we remained at the table, silently watching our friends wiggle and laugh.
Finally, I got up to explore the row of food booths.
I returned with large plates of barbecued beef, fried cod, and cheese bread.
“Oh, yes! Thank you!” Sam said, plopping down, sweaty from the dance floor. “I’m starving.”
“Me too,” said Annie.
We began gobbling it up, but Gianna left her plate alone.
“Eat something,” I said.
“I’m not really hungry.”
I slumped. “Really? Are you just gonna sit?”
Sam and Annie glanced at each other. They could see I had embarrassed my wife.
“It is delicious,” Annie offered.
Gianna nodded reluctantly and lopped some beef on her bread. She tried the fish as well. We made small talk for another hour, and Sam and Annie ordered more beers. Eventually, we caught a cab and headed home.
“Admit it,” I said, sitting next to her. “It was good to get out, right?”
She sighed. “I guess so. I’m sorry I’m so dull lately, Alfie.”
“And I’m sorry if I’m impatient.”
She smiled. “Well. You are impatient.”
“But you . . .” I took her hand. “Are never dull.”
We kissed gently, which should have been the end of that episode.
It wasn’t.
In the middle of the night, Gianna began throwing up.
“You OK?” I mumbled when she came back to bed.
“I thought I was done with morning sickness,” she said.
She groaned through the next few hours. I felt her forehead, which was hot. She said she had a migraine.
By sunrise, I was feeling it, too. I was sweaty and ran to the bathroom several times.
“I bet it was that food,” I said, emerging from the toilet. Gianna lay in bed with a cold rag on her head.
“My stomach really hurts,” she whined.
“Mine, too,” I said.
I later learned we both had food poisoning.
But our consequences weren’t equal. Gianna’s abdominal pain grew worse.
By evening, it was so bad, I insisted she go to the hospital.
In the emergency room, she threw up again, and the first doctor who saw her, a young Vietnamese physician, immediately sought out a senior staffer.
An older doctor came in, checked Gianna over, then said a few words which I didn’t understand.
Suddenly everyone was moving quickly and Gianna was being wheeled into an operating room, because the baby, they informed us, had no heartbeat.
?
I will spare you the details of the miscarriage, Boss, except to say we entered the hospital as expectant parents and we left as something else, unexpectant, if that’s a word, not just of a child but, in time, of a certain happiness.
We seemed to cross into a new, barren country, a gray place where dreams were mostly lost causes.
In the days that followed, Gianna was in shock. In the weeks that followed, she was in mourning. As the weeks turned to months, and she read about how food poisoning can sometimes lead to miscarriage, she got mad. And I became the target of her anger.
“Why did we go to that stupid festival? Why did you make me go?”
“I didn’t make you go!”
“You did! I told you I wanted to stay home! If I’d have stayed home . . .”
She didn’t finish. She just cried. And every subsequent time she brought this up, I was stung by the grief of unchangeable circumstances, which is not a feeling I’d known very often.
My mother’s death. Wesley. And Yaya. Other than those, pretty much anything that hurt me in life, I had changed.
Now, suddenly, with the worst thing that had ever happened between Gianna and me, I was powerless.
Did I think about jumping back to avoid that festival?
Of course. But I knew the rules. Our baby had died, which meant no matter what I did, I couldn’t save it.
It was going to happen, that day, that time, even if Gianna and I had sat inside a room with the doors locked.
I couldn’t watch my wife go through that again.
I wanted to tell her this. To let her know that I would have used whatever power I had to undo things, but this was beyond both of us.
I couldn’t get this across without telling her everything.
And it wouldn’t have changed the pain of it.
A heaviness fell over our kitchen table, our couch, our bed.
We drifted into resentment. When it came time to try again, at first I didn’t want to.
Then she pulled away. Months later, when we both agreed to make the effort, our lovemaking felt more clinical than romantic.
Gianna did get pregnant eventually, twenty months after the first go--around. But she lost the baby again, this time after nine weeks. It happened in the middle of the night. I heard her crying in the bathroom. I got up, but the door was locked.
“Don’t come in here, Alfie,” she sobbed.
And sadly—-despite how deep our love had been—-that sentence became a theme. Don’t come in here. We locked each other out of our hearts. We spoke. We ate. We slept in the same bed. But a connection had been severed.
A few months later I came home from work and she was silently grilling two lamb chops. No music. No “Hi, Alfie.” Just the dull sizzle from the frying pan. I looked at her in her sweatshirt and pajama bottoms and said, “I’m going to make a sandwich.”
“What about these lamb chops?”
“I don’t want those.”
“I made them for you.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“I don’t care.”
Her voice rose. “You don’t care?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I said no!”
“Neither do I!” she screamed and flung the frying pan across the room. It clanged off the wall. We stood there staring in opposite directions, hearing only the sound of each other’s angry breathing. We both knew we weren’t talking about lamb chops.
“This is ridiculous,” I finally mumbled.
“Maybe we should separate for a while,” she said.
“Maybe we should,” I said back.
Nassau
LaPorta escorted Gianna Rule to a large hotel ballroom, the kind where convention groups hold their breakfasts.
It was empty save for a few round tables, and the detective motioned his suspect to sit down.
He went to close the door when he spotted Sampson running down the hallway, holding a large iPad.
“These just came through,” he said, panting.
He handed the iPad to LaPorta, who grinned. Finally. The full security camera footage from Alfie’s time at the roulette table.
“Let’s see how she reacts to this,” LaPorta said.
They approached the table where Gianna was busy text-ing on her phone and shaking her head. Why wasn’t her assistant answering? She needed to tell the magazine folks she was delayed, although she didn’t want to say why. She didn’t know why.
“All right,” LaPorta said, pulling out a chair. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Gianna studied the man, who appeared to be in his early fifties. American. Mustached. A tad overweight. He wore a tan button--down shirt and a forest--green tie but had no badge or uniform, unlike the police officer standing behind him.
“My name is Detective LaPorta,” he began.
“OK . . .” Gianna said slowly.
“I work for the casino.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Do you want to tell me about the wire transfer?”
“What wire transfer?”
“The two million dollars.”
Her eyes widened. “Two million dollars? I don’t have two million dollars to send anyone!”
“It was sent to you.”
“To me?” She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“I do.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
She pushed back in her chair.
“Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
There it is, LaPorta thought. Just like Alfie predicted.
“The money was sent by someone you know.”
“Who?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t have a clue, Officer.”
“Detective. I’m a detective.” He nodded toward Sampson. “He’s an officer.”
“Well, Detective—-and Officer—-I’m afraid you’ve made a mista—-”
“The money came from Alfie Logan.”
She froze for a moment. Then her head dropped, as if she were being pranked. She ran a hand through her hair, looked up, and smiled broadly.
“Now I know you’ve made a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Alfie Logan doesn’t have two million dollars. Or anything close.”
“He won it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where?”
“Here.”
LaPorta froze an image on the iPad and handed it over. Gianna gazed at the photo of various people around a roulette table.
“Isn’t that your ex--husband?”
Gianna frowned and exhaled.
“Oh, God, it is,” she mumbled. “I heard he was in town.”
LaPorta leaned forward.
“You want to tell us how he won the money?”
“Who?”
“Your ex.”
“I thought you said Alfie won the money.”
“Yeah. Alfie. Your ex.”
“Alfie?” She laughed loudly. “Alfie and I were never married. God, no!”
She pointed to a man in the photo standing alongside the roulette wheel.
“Mike. That’s my ex.”