Rossi
Well, shit. This again.
I'd completely forgotten about the dinner I'd agreed to (because I am a sap who should know better) with Gabe next Thursday, but it's not going to happen anyway because he's in the hospital, all banged up after a car hit him. The great, staring goof. I got the news from his brother, darling Christopher, which led to our using up his lunch hour and my evening-research time trading the same old insults and petty attacks that got us both kicked out of more than one family backyard barbeque back in the day. So goddamned full of himself, and still as angry for no good reason as ever.
Now I have to get in touch with their dear old mom for dinner, since she's asking, and one or both of her boys might be there, along with the rest of the whole famiglia for all I know . . . and it just makes me tired and cranky. I broke up with Gabe three years ago, after only 18 months or so together. Isn't trading Christmas and birthday cards enough now? Why's he wanting to do dinner all of a sudden?
And why didn't I bloody well hang up on his asshole brother when I had the chance? God.
It was a decent distraction, I guess. Nothing like two hot-blooded idiots going at each other hammer and tongs, for no good reason at all.
6/24/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evening moving into night over Salem Center, far from New York's madding crowd: a slow breeze is wending through the open windows in Leah's living room, where she sits on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, at the center of a storm of paper. Note cards, yellow legal foolscap, torn scraps, and even a couple napkins spread around her in physical representation of reporter's research. She's flipping through a pair of magazines at once, trading between the two with a frown and a highlighter's impatient swipes.
The streets of Brooklyn proper /are/ New York's madding crowd; a growling sedan that has seen too many owners to retain its identity, that teeming borough's slow breeze. A man stretches his legs into the passenger side's floor and curses as the driver parks. The obscenity is pro forma: it lacks creativity, opting for conformity to setting, instead. An ink-smudged thumb batters a cell phone's keys, beating identity out of a menu. "The hell do I know," he says, to a gravel-voiced query. "I think she called me once or twice. The number Gabe gave me didn't work. --Shut up. I'll have the usual. No coffee, just a coke. Make yourself useful."
For once, for a mercy, Leah's cordless phone isn't across the apartment, but resting on the couch cushion next to her, half snowed under a sheaf of spilled note cards. She glances at it in irritation, then sticks her hand in the magazine currently under highlighting attention to grab at the receiver, nudge the Call button, and crook her neck into a good phone hold. "Yeah?"
"/Regular/, not diet! What am I, a monkey?" the phone demands, to some off-receiver ear. Hardly the salutation advocated by Emily Post. Shy of articulation, a deeper voice calls something through a muzzle of rasps; then a man's baritone, Brooklyn-scored, engages itself to demand, "Is this Leah Canto?" In the car, the man slouches into his seat, jabbing his knees against the glove compartment.
"Yeah," shoots back another of the great borough's own, rising to the challenge with instinctual chutzpah, "whaddya want?" Then Leah pauses on a startled blink and lets the magazine slip off her lap unheeded. "Wait a sec -- Chris? Christopher /Rossi/?"
"Chris, yeah," agrees the phone's voice without enthusiasm, though it rouses itself -- manners, Mother-taught manners! -- to courtesy's mellow brightness. "How've you been? How'd you know it was me? Caller I.D.? Gabe asked me to give you a ring. It's been a long time." Rossi, identified, glances out the window to the freedom of the streets; their denizens recognize him as well, and skate along their ways with tactful indifference.
Leah snorts and answers, "You sounded like your brother on a three-day bender, and so I said to myself, 'Ah, Chris. Who probably still owes me that twenty bucks we bet on the World Series and would sooner carve out his own heart than pay up, the cheap bastard.'" Suspicion swings low in her voice; she's squinting with absent ferocity at the far wall while bare feet swing idly against each other on the tabletop. "What did Gabe say? What did he want?"
If the description of his voice is meant as an insult, it fails in translation. The grin, unseen, takes root in that deep baritone and sprouts through the line: "Twenty bucks I /paid/ you already. For a reporter, you got a crappy memory, Canto. --Listen. Nothing to worry about, but Gabe's had an accident. He can't make it on Thursday." Scuffed shoes dent the carpet of the car, smoothing over the dim remnants of a long-dead coffee stain. "Just wanted me to call and apologize for him."
"Up yours, Rossi," Leah responds, but obviously half-heartedly: squint is now a frown. "What happened? Is he in the hospital?"
"Maimonides," supplies Rossi, on his brother's behalf. The remnants of the grin still warm his voice; fraternal disgust deepens it. "He broke his leg. Couple of fractured ribs. Dropped his cello in the middle of the street, got hit by a car. Dumb shit."
Leah groans. "Oh, /Gabe./ God. I'll see if I can swing by to see him -- hmm. Tomorrow. God," she repeats again, on a lower register rubbing alto against his baritone, and mixes concern and disgust and lingering fondness. "I guess I should ask how the cello is."
"Saved /that/," says the younger of the brothers, imbuing that one short phrase with all the bemusement of a man to whom the Arts (capital A) are a closed book. "Damn thing's in a case like a tank. It'd take most of Yankee Stadium to get through that shell. He should've let it take its chances, but he always was a dim bulb."
Leah rallies to immediate defense: "Hey, just because he's not chasing mooks around the city with a shiny badge -- not to /mention/ the sleazing done off-duty -- doesn't make him stupid, Chris. He's a good man, and I'm still fond of him, whatever went down back then, so just knock it off. He's in the /hospital./ Heartless son of--" She breaks off what was threatening to be a torrent of invective, and she bangs her head softly back against the couch pillows. "I forgot," she continues more conversationally, "how fucking irritating you are."
"Right back at you, princess," says Rossi, in the same vein. In the car, a wide hand balls into a fist before splaying itself wide, starfishing under the hot, speculative inspection of its owner. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. That's rich, talking about sleazing done off-duty -- /on/-duty, and how's the whole reporter gig going for you, Ivory Tower?"
"Oh, here we go!" exclaims Leah with real glee, and she sits up into a tense posture, dragging her knees up for an arm's tight embrace. "The man on the street is going to tell /me/ about what's real in life and what's not. The reporter gig is fine, Rossi, thanks so much for asking." Her voice whips acidic contempt at him down the line, through a smile's gritted teeth. "How's your case-closure rate down at the station? Still so far in the red that you're seein' it in your dreams?"
It is not in the man's nature to play the appeaser. The rustle of movement hisses as he straightens, shoulders squared, head beetled to the prod of anger. The free hand gestures, threatening window glass and dashboard: the Italian theater of passion, rendered obsolete by sound. "/Listen/, you," Rossi's voice stabs, "at least I'm down here busting my hump to do some good. Not like you with your magazines and your useless talking head shit, trying to tell people what to think so they'll buy this shampoo or use that toothpaste. What have /you/ done lately that's worth a damn?"
Leah snarls back, "I'm educating people about keeping from killing each other, asshole -- but, oh, I'm sorry." She affects huge, innocent dismay. "That would cut into your work, wouldn't it? No dead bodies for Detective Christopher Rossi--" astounding, really, how well she can turn title and name into such a facilely foul curse "--to stand over in the dead of night, shaking his head at the cruelty of the world, alas, alas, alas. I'm sorry; of course I don't want to ruin your business. Those free lunches aren't going to eat themselves, are they?"
"Teaching them to be scared shitless about someone because they're /different/, you mean. We used to call that racism, back in the day. You have a new, politically correct word for it, Canto?" Sneer meets sneer; biting obscenity meets its kindred spirit. The car's confines are too limiting, too narrow for the striding confines of rage: noise rushes into the line, burbling, bubbling behind the rip of baritone. The door slams, leaving Rossi outside. Free, to punish Brooklyn's pavement for Leah's faults.
Leah laughs freely. "Oh, you worthless simpleton. You have no idea -- Look," she says more quietly, more calmly, and curls forward to rest her head against crooked knees. A sigh. "For your /information,/ I am currently working on a story about the mutant shelters Warren Worthington's funding. I met the man himself this week. Very nice. Noble, even. I admire his vision, and I sincerely hope that the idea will bear fruit, so normals and mutants /can/ figure out how to live together. Anything's better than another attack by that fucker Magneto, don't you think? I'm /trying/ to help, in my own small way. Fuck you if you're too stupid to get it."
Says the hard, ripe voice on the other side, "Fuck /you/," -- but it is without its prior heat; the moment has peaked and moved on, leaving some bastard mockery of tranquility behind. At corner of 84th and 3rd, Rossi thumps the side of his fist into a clinic's brick wall, then strides to slant over his car's cooling top. Washed by anger, in its wake his baritone is conversationally mundane. "Moving in higher circles now, are you? What've you got on that attack in the Park?"
"The dead werewolf? Hell if I know." Scrubbing her forehead on her jeans, Leah closes her eyes into the luxury of the argument's downslope -- or at least the trough before the next peak, in the stormy seas of their conversations. "Doesn't Mutant Affairs have anything on it? That detective, Archer, he's gotta know something. Saw him on the news talking about some new task force. Now, Chris," she pets him verbally with solicitous kindness, "I might come from a cop family, but I'm not one myself, as you well know. I don't have to tell you how to do your job, do I?"
"Up /yours/, sweetheart," says Rossi, pleasantly. The muted roar of background traffic peaks for a moment, plunging through some quixotic echo. Another slam, muffled, then: fresh silence. Chris extends himself through the passenger side, reclaiming his territory and then some. (Beston will need to readjust his seat when he returns.) "Haven't seen as much of your work around lately. You getting enough? --Mom says hi, by the way."
Leah feigns startlement now. "When did you learn to read, Rossi? My God, we need to celebrate! A party! A round for the house on me! Bastard," she concludes almost fondly, with rivalry's old familiarity. "I had an editorial in the _Times_ a while back, but I'm workin' on this new story, so nothing since. I'm /not/ moving in high circles, though. Call me 'princess' all you want; I'm no more socialite material than /you/ are, babe."
A laugh rewards that quip, throaty and deep; there is an intimacy in the chamber of a car, and the subversive lacing of sound between two people. "You look better in a dress than I ever will, Canto. I've seen you clean up pretty good. Saw the editorial. Everything you said in it was complete bullshit. You hear me about Mom? Don't know what she sees in you."
"Oh, screw you," Leah lances wearily back. "Your dear little old mother hates my guts, and you know it. At least, that's what Gabe said after we broke up." A sudden new thought squeezes in between her eyes, drawing them into another squint. "Hell. Oh, Jesus and Joseph and Mary in /hell./ Your gentle, saintly brother, Rossi, has tried to scam me to get me back for dumping him. Does -- does she still ask about me? Really?"
"Gabe," says Chris with disapproval -- and never mind the irony -- "is an asshole. Yeah, she liked you fine. Likes you," he amends, superstitiously conscientious: step on a crack.... "If she knew you called her my 'dear little old mother,' she'd break your neck. Pop, all /he/ cared about was whether your hips were wide enough to pop out kids. --She wants you to come over for dinner sometime." It is an afterthought, a grudging addendum wrung out by filial obedience. In the car, Rossi squashes his thumb into the window, twisting the digit ruddy.
Leah mutters, "Your father and my mother would get along grandly, just as I thought. I am more than a goddamn brood mare; you tell him that, just go ahead and tell him /that./" A wordless sound of frustration pushes her back into the couch's embrace, wherein she studies curled fingers' nails. "He's not an asshole," she says at length, tired again, "just sensitive. Ha. The artiste -- I did the right thing, cutting him loose, didn't I? Will /he/ be at this dinner, once he's out of the hospital? For that matter, will you?"
Rossi's shoulders hitch up around his ears, defensive (protective?) at the threat of socialization. /Their/ kind. Not his. "Thinking about it," he says, a cautious man's field of retreat. "Yeah, you did the right thing. You weren't his type, anyway. Figure he needs, I dunno, one of those college kids he ends up with, or maybe a mother type, Julia says. It's his dinner -- oh. You talking about Mom's?"
"Julia," comes out with honest affection. Leah and Rossi have this in common, at least, for the driven, determined, most-cherished only daughter and sister in the clan. "I say hi to her, if you get around to it. And yeah, your mother's. Let's just say that Thursday's off and to be rescheduled when hell freezes over. I'll tell Gabe myself, though, when I see him; don't worry about it." And pity fallen-angel Gabriel when he receives that visit, oh verily.
Rossi doesn't worry. Not at all. "Good idea," he compliments, and sends a spark of a grin through the line. Fraternal bonds, sibling revenge; he wedges his foot on the dashboard (his shoe will leave a mark, but that's for later recriminations) and stares up at the felted roof. "Yeah, I'll tell her. She just made engineer. Pop's ready to shit a brick. And she took second in California last month."
Leah declares, "Cool. Good for her. I ran into a kid from a school up here who's about as nuts about bikes as we are; I should mention that, next time I see her." Some troubled speculation worries at her expression, lingering, but her voice remains clear and clean, still sharply focused on the verbal match between them. "You know I moved up to Salem Center, right? That shithole I was squatting in downtown -- ugh. Finally gave up and went to the 'burbs like a good little white-collar worker. You may now point and laugh, if it will make you feel better."
"Couldn't make it in the /real/ city, Canto?" Rossi asks, but it is the easy-going mockery of friendship, however ephemeral. The seat, he discovers, rocks if he pushes off the dashboard; he entertains himself with it, pitching back and forth on the creak of springs and agonized mechanics. "What school? In California? I keep telling her she's a nutjob for riding that bike through Brooklyn. Give me a car any day. Finding parking's no trade-off for being an organ donor, though at least she's no squid."
"No, you nitwit, up /here,/ in Salem. Some posh private place; I've actually been inside, which is about as close as I'll ever come to that kind of thing. I've made friends--" Leah rolls her eyes up in silent, fretful anxiety over such easy identification of what is anything but easy "--with a couple of the students. Even one of the teachers, kinda. See? I'm in touch with real people. Look at me. Woo-hoo." Shifting gears, as it were, she adds sarcastically, "Too scared to go jaunting around the 'hood with your little sister, Chris? Some people aren't."
Says Rossi, pragmatic, "There's stupid and then there's /stupid/, Canto. Motorcycles just aren't my thing. And if you think those plastic heads over in Salem are 'real people,' you don't know squat. What kind of school is it? Some sort of college? Maybe they can teach you how to write." He pushes off with his foot (creak) as the door's alarm turns on, chiming a courteous, agitated alert. A whisper of street noise filters through the receiver; behind them, a husky, lazy voice makes inarticulate comment.
Leah presses, gently mocking, "Oh, the big bad poh-leece detective /is/ scared. Poor Christopher. Julia'd kick your ass, anyway; might as well not set yourself up to look /too/ stupid." She chews at a bit of stubborn cuticle on one of the fingernails, spits it out, and resumes. "Hey, are you actually on the job right now? What the fuck, man? That's my tax money you're wasting!"
Driven back to the tried and true, Rossi offers another heated, "Even cops get lunch break, Canto, so fuck you. Calling you was a /favor/. If it was just you and me, I'd have let you show up to that restaurant and wait it out." The seat, tried almost beyond endurance, springs back to its proper position with relief. In the driver's seat, a solidly-built, stoop-shouldered older man wipes ketchup off his chin with the back of his hand, and keys the engine into life.
"Bet you would, stud. You've always been the gentleman." Leah gnaws on the next nail's housing, frowning around it. She chooses retreat into answering his previous questions, hoarding energy for a battle actually worth fighting. "It's a prep school, actually. This big old mansion with gorgeous grounds and architecture straight out of a storybook -- not like the old P.S. back home, huh?"
The detective grunts, rummaging through the bag bleeding grease on his lap. "What is this, meatball? You eat my sandwich, Beston? --Rich kid stuff, sounds like. They got lawyers, Canto. Watch yourself. Last time we moved into a prep school's turf, they tried to get the L.T. kicked out of the force for asking for the warrant. Reporters are meat and potatoes to those types."
Leah smooths out in almost a croon, sickly-sweet with mockery, "I'll thank you for your concern, Detective, but I can handle my own. I seem to remember some big story I broke a few years ago, where I was going after councilmen and a judge and the last governor's own brother . . . oh, but that was a trifle, of course. Pure luck. Silly me, thinking I could ever operate in /your/ world," she concludes, voice hardening at the end. It barely eases back again as she continues. "Actually, I had an interview at the school with /the/ mutant herself, Dr. Jean Grey, and it went very well, and she didn't swallow my soul or any damn thing, or kick me out as a hateful bigot." So there, is practically tangible in her words.
"What /you/ need," says Rossi -- and there's satisfaction in his throat, caught like a melting candy -- "is to get laid, princess. You've got a chip on your shoulder the size of your head. I'm just giving you a little friendly warning, from one professional to another. Christ. Who lit your tampon?" A man with a sister needs no pointers on how to offend a woman.
"Oh, are you offering? If I can possibly tear you away from the Skank o' the Day, that is." Leah kicks futilely at the papers on the coffee table to make room for her slide down onto the couch, with a foot propped in the cleared space. "I know I'm no match for Gloria the gum-snapping goomba's girl with her hair teased up to here, but gosh, if you really think you could help me out, loverboy, I'd be eternally in your debt."
The engine's thrum muffles the conversation in the background, ("You didn't want meatball?" "/How/ long have you been my partner?" "I'm an old man. I'm expected to remember how to drive /and/ what you eat?") a moment's pause for the insults to deflate into unresponsive air before the retaliation. Such as it is. "Audrey was the latest," Rossi volunteers, all too cheerfully. "From around where you're living, now. If you see her, tell her I'm sorry I didn't call. Want me to hook you up with some cops? Flores is single."
Leah reminds him, "Flores is a piece of shit who smells like dead feet and can belch the alphabet twice through whether you ask him to or not. I'm really feelin' the love here, Rossi. Maybe I'll ask your mom for matchmaking advice. She has a good eye, and she probably has some ideas." She makes her voice doting and fond. "We could have a real good conversation about children who need to settle down and start providing for the family's future."
"You might want to think about that before you do it," advises the fond son. ("Meatballs and /sauerkraut/? That's disgusting. Nobody should eat like this." "How do I know how you dagos like meatballs? I'm a pork-eating Jew.") The paper bag crumples, balled into a gummy, squashy mess before being tossed into the rear seat. "You might want to think about who Mom would set you up with if she even thought you were interested."
"Well," Leah spins out as she tucks a folded arm behind her head, "I was thinking that she'd probably settle on /you./"
"Thank /hard/, Canto," recommends the disembodied Rossi-voice. "Do you really want to go out with /me/?"
Leah wheedles, "Oh, but Rossi, my very dear, you know how I've been longing for you, and now, with this talk of getting me laid -- I am just /all/ aflutter! Whatever will I do if you refuse me?" Her eyes slip to half-closed; it's no kind and gentle expression around them.
A moment's flat silence, spun out between them over the throb of the engine. Then: "I wouldn't touch you with a pole the size of Long Island. And you can take that to the /pope/." Rossi's jaw locks, knitting to the throb of a temple-caught vein. ("Shut up, Beston. Just drive already, will you?")
Leah's laughter slings low and throaty on the line. "Yeah, thought so. Man, you can dish it out, but you just cannot take it. Pussy. No wonder you went for the gold shield instead of walking a beat like a real cop. I have," she tells him thoughtfully, "always preferred your fine partner for that reason. /Him/ I'd want at my back in a fight. He's there, right?"
Her answer? More silence. Rustling. A gravel-baritone objection, heavy-set even in its cadence, and then: "Yeah?" Beston. It is a crime to drive while speaking on a cell phone. The veteran detective guides his sedan through a narrow opening, skips neatly across a changing light, and bends its nose down 4th.
"Your partner's being an ass to me, friend," is Leah's response, after a surprised pause. (Rossi, of all the cowardly chickenshit--) "I think he's getting a little too big for his britches again. Smack him upside the head for me, wouldja?"
He has the Irish charm, for all his claims of a spurious Jewishness. "Ms. Canto," greets Beston, voice warming; it carries the shadow of his unseen smile, the crinkle at the corners of friendly eyes. "He's a good kid. You shouldn't rile him up like this. It's bad for his digestion, and that's all a cop's got: his stomach and his partner."
Leah makes a rude noise, but can't help her smile creeping into her voice. "He's a good kid who needs a timeout . . . but all right. For your sake. Just yours, got it? Give me back to him, and I promise to be nice."
("Why're you talking to her?" demands Rossi's voice in the background, irritated. "Don't /talk/ to her. Give me the damn phone--") "Be nice," says Beston, placidly ignoring the younger man's annoyance. "Nice speaking with you again. Hope all's going well for you. Hold on, let me give you right back--"
"You do not deserve that man, Christopher," Leah states plainly as soon as the phone on the other end stops moving through confused, empty space, to find the previous ear. "I'm going to be nice to you, because I promised, but stop pushing me. Darn it." That's nice enough, right?
"You're the one doing all the shoving," points out Rossi, bristling on behalf of justice. A long arm stretches back to retrieve the squashy ex-sandwich, and tosses it to the floor of the passenger side. "You going to call Mom, or what?"
Leah sighs. "I'll call, I'll call. Give me the damn number; I don't have it."
The number, reeled out without deference for slower pencils, assumes Leah's proximity to pad and pen. A fair assumption. "718," begins Rossi, finishing with tangential resignation, "She won't get a cell phone, so you'll have to try her at home. Or at the hospital, if you're going to visit Gabe."
"Yeah, maybe I'll run into her there. I /will/ visit your brother. Hope you do, too." Archly Leah can prod him with that, using the invalid as the latest weapon at hand. "Thanks for calling to let me know about him, you insufferable prick. You didn't have to, and I appreciate it." And, wonders of wonders, she gives him honesty, and the niceness promised, without strings attached.
And not unappreciative, if somewhat wary, Chris accepts in like fashion. "Yeah. Well, I promised Gabe. He--" But that thought will have to wait. The baritone pauses, broken off by the hiss and crackle of the police radio's peremptory summons. Drowning in the white noise of sound, a woman's voice bleeds a code of incoherence. ("...third...." "...fired...") "Got to go," he says into the phone, in a different voice altogether: Rossi-the-Cop. Beston's voice rises behind it, harmony to the wail of siren. "Talk to you later." And then he is gone.
And not a moment too soon, though Leah does grant him professional respect, with a fleetingly concerned frown at the receiver, for whatever dragged him so precipitously away. But . . . enough. Her research isn't going to write itself, so sitting up, she pulls over the discarded magazine, the highlighter, and begins again.
[Log ends.]
I'd completely forgotten about the dinner I'd agreed to (because I am a sap who should know better) with Gabe next Thursday, but it's not going to happen anyway because he's in the hospital, all banged up after a car hit him. The great, staring goof. I got the news from his brother, darling Christopher, which led to our using up his lunch hour and my evening-research time trading the same old insults and petty attacks that got us both kicked out of more than one family backyard barbeque back in the day. So goddamned full of himself, and still as angry for no good reason as ever.
Now I have to get in touch with their dear old mom for dinner, since she's asking, and one or both of her boys might be there, along with the rest of the whole famiglia for all I know . . . and it just makes me tired and cranky. I broke up with Gabe three years ago, after only 18 months or so together. Isn't trading Christmas and birthday cards enough now? Why's he wanting to do dinner all of a sudden?
And why didn't I bloody well hang up on his asshole brother when I had the chance? God.
It was a decent distraction, I guess. Nothing like two hot-blooded idiots going at each other hammer and tongs, for no good reason at all.
6/24/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evening moving into night over Salem Center, far from New York's madding crowd: a slow breeze is wending through the open windows in Leah's living room, where she sits on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, at the center of a storm of paper. Note cards, yellow legal foolscap, torn scraps, and even a couple napkins spread around her in physical representation of reporter's research. She's flipping through a pair of magazines at once, trading between the two with a frown and a highlighter's impatient swipes.
The streets of Brooklyn proper /are/ New York's madding crowd; a growling sedan that has seen too many owners to retain its identity, that teeming borough's slow breeze. A man stretches his legs into the passenger side's floor and curses as the driver parks. The obscenity is pro forma: it lacks creativity, opting for conformity to setting, instead. An ink-smudged thumb batters a cell phone's keys, beating identity out of a menu. "The hell do I know," he says, to a gravel-voiced query. "I think she called me once or twice. The number Gabe gave me didn't work. --Shut up. I'll have the usual. No coffee, just a coke. Make yourself useful."
For once, for a mercy, Leah's cordless phone isn't across the apartment, but resting on the couch cushion next to her, half snowed under a sheaf of spilled note cards. She glances at it in irritation, then sticks her hand in the magazine currently under highlighting attention to grab at the receiver, nudge the Call button, and crook her neck into a good phone hold. "Yeah?"
"/Regular/, not diet! What am I, a monkey?" the phone demands, to some off-receiver ear. Hardly the salutation advocated by Emily Post. Shy of articulation, a deeper voice calls something through a muzzle of rasps; then a man's baritone, Brooklyn-scored, engages itself to demand, "Is this Leah Canto?" In the car, the man slouches into his seat, jabbing his knees against the glove compartment.
"Yeah," shoots back another of the great borough's own, rising to the challenge with instinctual chutzpah, "whaddya want?" Then Leah pauses on a startled blink and lets the magazine slip off her lap unheeded. "Wait a sec -- Chris? Christopher /Rossi/?"
"Chris, yeah," agrees the phone's voice without enthusiasm, though it rouses itself -- manners, Mother-taught manners! -- to courtesy's mellow brightness. "How've you been? How'd you know it was me? Caller I.D.? Gabe asked me to give you a ring. It's been a long time." Rossi, identified, glances out the window to the freedom of the streets; their denizens recognize him as well, and skate along their ways with tactful indifference.
Leah snorts and answers, "You sounded like your brother on a three-day bender, and so I said to myself, 'Ah, Chris. Who probably still owes me that twenty bucks we bet on the World Series and would sooner carve out his own heart than pay up, the cheap bastard.'" Suspicion swings low in her voice; she's squinting with absent ferocity at the far wall while bare feet swing idly against each other on the tabletop. "What did Gabe say? What did he want?"
If the description of his voice is meant as an insult, it fails in translation. The grin, unseen, takes root in that deep baritone and sprouts through the line: "Twenty bucks I /paid/ you already. For a reporter, you got a crappy memory, Canto. --Listen. Nothing to worry about, but Gabe's had an accident. He can't make it on Thursday." Scuffed shoes dent the carpet of the car, smoothing over the dim remnants of a long-dead coffee stain. "Just wanted me to call and apologize for him."
"Up yours, Rossi," Leah responds, but obviously half-heartedly: squint is now a frown. "What happened? Is he in the hospital?"
"Maimonides," supplies Rossi, on his brother's behalf. The remnants of the grin still warm his voice; fraternal disgust deepens it. "He broke his leg. Couple of fractured ribs. Dropped his cello in the middle of the street, got hit by a car. Dumb shit."
Leah groans. "Oh, /Gabe./ God. I'll see if I can swing by to see him -- hmm. Tomorrow. God," she repeats again, on a lower register rubbing alto against his baritone, and mixes concern and disgust and lingering fondness. "I guess I should ask how the cello is."
"Saved /that/," says the younger of the brothers, imbuing that one short phrase with all the bemusement of a man to whom the Arts (capital A) are a closed book. "Damn thing's in a case like a tank. It'd take most of Yankee Stadium to get through that shell. He should've let it take its chances, but he always was a dim bulb."
Leah rallies to immediate defense: "Hey, just because he's not chasing mooks around the city with a shiny badge -- not to /mention/ the sleazing done off-duty -- doesn't make him stupid, Chris. He's a good man, and I'm still fond of him, whatever went down back then, so just knock it off. He's in the /hospital./ Heartless son of--" She breaks off what was threatening to be a torrent of invective, and she bangs her head softly back against the couch pillows. "I forgot," she continues more conversationally, "how fucking irritating you are."
"Right back at you, princess," says Rossi, in the same vein. In the car, a wide hand balls into a fist before splaying itself wide, starfishing under the hot, speculative inspection of its owner. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. That's rich, talking about sleazing done off-duty -- /on/-duty, and how's the whole reporter gig going for you, Ivory Tower?"
"Oh, here we go!" exclaims Leah with real glee, and she sits up into a tense posture, dragging her knees up for an arm's tight embrace. "The man on the street is going to tell /me/ about what's real in life and what's not. The reporter gig is fine, Rossi, thanks so much for asking." Her voice whips acidic contempt at him down the line, through a smile's gritted teeth. "How's your case-closure rate down at the station? Still so far in the red that you're seein' it in your dreams?"
It is not in the man's nature to play the appeaser. The rustle of movement hisses as he straightens, shoulders squared, head beetled to the prod of anger. The free hand gestures, threatening window glass and dashboard: the Italian theater of passion, rendered obsolete by sound. "/Listen/, you," Rossi's voice stabs, "at least I'm down here busting my hump to do some good. Not like you with your magazines and your useless talking head shit, trying to tell people what to think so they'll buy this shampoo or use that toothpaste. What have /you/ done lately that's worth a damn?"
Leah snarls back, "I'm educating people about keeping from killing each other, asshole -- but, oh, I'm sorry." She affects huge, innocent dismay. "That would cut into your work, wouldn't it? No dead bodies for Detective Christopher Rossi--" astounding, really, how well she can turn title and name into such a facilely foul curse "--to stand over in the dead of night, shaking his head at the cruelty of the world, alas, alas, alas. I'm sorry; of course I don't want to ruin your business. Those free lunches aren't going to eat themselves, are they?"
"Teaching them to be scared shitless about someone because they're /different/, you mean. We used to call that racism, back in the day. You have a new, politically correct word for it, Canto?" Sneer meets sneer; biting obscenity meets its kindred spirit. The car's confines are too limiting, too narrow for the striding confines of rage: noise rushes into the line, burbling, bubbling behind the rip of baritone. The door slams, leaving Rossi outside. Free, to punish Brooklyn's pavement for Leah's faults.
Leah laughs freely. "Oh, you worthless simpleton. You have no idea -- Look," she says more quietly, more calmly, and curls forward to rest her head against crooked knees. A sigh. "For your /information,/ I am currently working on a story about the mutant shelters Warren Worthington's funding. I met the man himself this week. Very nice. Noble, even. I admire his vision, and I sincerely hope that the idea will bear fruit, so normals and mutants /can/ figure out how to live together. Anything's better than another attack by that fucker Magneto, don't you think? I'm /trying/ to help, in my own small way. Fuck you if you're too stupid to get it."
Says the hard, ripe voice on the other side, "Fuck /you/," -- but it is without its prior heat; the moment has peaked and moved on, leaving some bastard mockery of tranquility behind. At corner of 84th and 3rd, Rossi thumps the side of his fist into a clinic's brick wall, then strides to slant over his car's cooling top. Washed by anger, in its wake his baritone is conversationally mundane. "Moving in higher circles now, are you? What've you got on that attack in the Park?"
"The dead werewolf? Hell if I know." Scrubbing her forehead on her jeans, Leah closes her eyes into the luxury of the argument's downslope -- or at least the trough before the next peak, in the stormy seas of their conversations. "Doesn't Mutant Affairs have anything on it? That detective, Archer, he's gotta know something. Saw him on the news talking about some new task force. Now, Chris," she pets him verbally with solicitous kindness, "I might come from a cop family, but I'm not one myself, as you well know. I don't have to tell you how to do your job, do I?"
"Up /yours/, sweetheart," says Rossi, pleasantly. The muted roar of background traffic peaks for a moment, plunging through some quixotic echo. Another slam, muffled, then: fresh silence. Chris extends himself through the passenger side, reclaiming his territory and then some. (Beston will need to readjust his seat when he returns.) "Haven't seen as much of your work around lately. You getting enough? --Mom says hi, by the way."
Leah feigns startlement now. "When did you learn to read, Rossi? My God, we need to celebrate! A party! A round for the house on me! Bastard," she concludes almost fondly, with rivalry's old familiarity. "I had an editorial in the _Times_ a while back, but I'm workin' on this new story, so nothing since. I'm /not/ moving in high circles, though. Call me 'princess' all you want; I'm no more socialite material than /you/ are, babe."
A laugh rewards that quip, throaty and deep; there is an intimacy in the chamber of a car, and the subversive lacing of sound between two people. "You look better in a dress than I ever will, Canto. I've seen you clean up pretty good. Saw the editorial. Everything you said in it was complete bullshit. You hear me about Mom? Don't know what she sees in you."
"Oh, screw you," Leah lances wearily back. "Your dear little old mother hates my guts, and you know it. At least, that's what Gabe said after we broke up." A sudden new thought squeezes in between her eyes, drawing them into another squint. "Hell. Oh, Jesus and Joseph and Mary in /hell./ Your gentle, saintly brother, Rossi, has tried to scam me to get me back for dumping him. Does -- does she still ask about me? Really?"
"Gabe," says Chris with disapproval -- and never mind the irony -- "is an asshole. Yeah, she liked you fine. Likes you," he amends, superstitiously conscientious: step on a crack.... "If she knew you called her my 'dear little old mother,' she'd break your neck. Pop, all /he/ cared about was whether your hips were wide enough to pop out kids. --She wants you to come over for dinner sometime." It is an afterthought, a grudging addendum wrung out by filial obedience. In the car, Rossi squashes his thumb into the window, twisting the digit ruddy.
Leah mutters, "Your father and my mother would get along grandly, just as I thought. I am more than a goddamn brood mare; you tell him that, just go ahead and tell him /that./" A wordless sound of frustration pushes her back into the couch's embrace, wherein she studies curled fingers' nails. "He's not an asshole," she says at length, tired again, "just sensitive. Ha. The artiste -- I did the right thing, cutting him loose, didn't I? Will /he/ be at this dinner, once he's out of the hospital? For that matter, will you?"
Rossi's shoulders hitch up around his ears, defensive (protective?) at the threat of socialization. /Their/ kind. Not his. "Thinking about it," he says, a cautious man's field of retreat. "Yeah, you did the right thing. You weren't his type, anyway. Figure he needs, I dunno, one of those college kids he ends up with, or maybe a mother type, Julia says. It's his dinner -- oh. You talking about Mom's?"
"Julia," comes out with honest affection. Leah and Rossi have this in common, at least, for the driven, determined, most-cherished only daughter and sister in the clan. "I say hi to her, if you get around to it. And yeah, your mother's. Let's just say that Thursday's off and to be rescheduled when hell freezes over. I'll tell Gabe myself, though, when I see him; don't worry about it." And pity fallen-angel Gabriel when he receives that visit, oh verily.
Rossi doesn't worry. Not at all. "Good idea," he compliments, and sends a spark of a grin through the line. Fraternal bonds, sibling revenge; he wedges his foot on the dashboard (his shoe will leave a mark, but that's for later recriminations) and stares up at the felted roof. "Yeah, I'll tell her. She just made engineer. Pop's ready to shit a brick. And she took second in California last month."
Leah declares, "Cool. Good for her. I ran into a kid from a school up here who's about as nuts about bikes as we are; I should mention that, next time I see her." Some troubled speculation worries at her expression, lingering, but her voice remains clear and clean, still sharply focused on the verbal match between them. "You know I moved up to Salem Center, right? That shithole I was squatting in downtown -- ugh. Finally gave up and went to the 'burbs like a good little white-collar worker. You may now point and laugh, if it will make you feel better."
"Couldn't make it in the /real/ city, Canto?" Rossi asks, but it is the easy-going mockery of friendship, however ephemeral. The seat, he discovers, rocks if he pushes off the dashboard; he entertains himself with it, pitching back and forth on the creak of springs and agonized mechanics. "What school? In California? I keep telling her she's a nutjob for riding that bike through Brooklyn. Give me a car any day. Finding parking's no trade-off for being an organ donor, though at least she's no squid."
"No, you nitwit, up /here,/ in Salem. Some posh private place; I've actually been inside, which is about as close as I'll ever come to that kind of thing. I've made friends--" Leah rolls her eyes up in silent, fretful anxiety over such easy identification of what is anything but easy "--with a couple of the students. Even one of the teachers, kinda. See? I'm in touch with real people. Look at me. Woo-hoo." Shifting gears, as it were, she adds sarcastically, "Too scared to go jaunting around the 'hood with your little sister, Chris? Some people aren't."
Says Rossi, pragmatic, "There's stupid and then there's /stupid/, Canto. Motorcycles just aren't my thing. And if you think those plastic heads over in Salem are 'real people,' you don't know squat. What kind of school is it? Some sort of college? Maybe they can teach you how to write." He pushes off with his foot (creak) as the door's alarm turns on, chiming a courteous, agitated alert. A whisper of street noise filters through the receiver; behind them, a husky, lazy voice makes inarticulate comment.
Leah presses, gently mocking, "Oh, the big bad poh-leece detective /is/ scared. Poor Christopher. Julia'd kick your ass, anyway; might as well not set yourself up to look /too/ stupid." She chews at a bit of stubborn cuticle on one of the fingernails, spits it out, and resumes. "Hey, are you actually on the job right now? What the fuck, man? That's my tax money you're wasting!"
Driven back to the tried and true, Rossi offers another heated, "Even cops get lunch break, Canto, so fuck you. Calling you was a /favor/. If it was just you and me, I'd have let you show up to that restaurant and wait it out." The seat, tried almost beyond endurance, springs back to its proper position with relief. In the driver's seat, a solidly-built, stoop-shouldered older man wipes ketchup off his chin with the back of his hand, and keys the engine into life.
"Bet you would, stud. You've always been the gentleman." Leah gnaws on the next nail's housing, frowning around it. She chooses retreat into answering his previous questions, hoarding energy for a battle actually worth fighting. "It's a prep school, actually. This big old mansion with gorgeous grounds and architecture straight out of a storybook -- not like the old P.S. back home, huh?"
The detective grunts, rummaging through the bag bleeding grease on his lap. "What is this, meatball? You eat my sandwich, Beston? --Rich kid stuff, sounds like. They got lawyers, Canto. Watch yourself. Last time we moved into a prep school's turf, they tried to get the L.T. kicked out of the force for asking for the warrant. Reporters are meat and potatoes to those types."
Leah smooths out in almost a croon, sickly-sweet with mockery, "I'll thank you for your concern, Detective, but I can handle my own. I seem to remember some big story I broke a few years ago, where I was going after councilmen and a judge and the last governor's own brother . . . oh, but that was a trifle, of course. Pure luck. Silly me, thinking I could ever operate in /your/ world," she concludes, voice hardening at the end. It barely eases back again as she continues. "Actually, I had an interview at the school with /the/ mutant herself, Dr. Jean Grey, and it went very well, and she didn't swallow my soul or any damn thing, or kick me out as a hateful bigot." So there, is practically tangible in her words.
"What /you/ need," says Rossi -- and there's satisfaction in his throat, caught like a melting candy -- "is to get laid, princess. You've got a chip on your shoulder the size of your head. I'm just giving you a little friendly warning, from one professional to another. Christ. Who lit your tampon?" A man with a sister needs no pointers on how to offend a woman.
"Oh, are you offering? If I can possibly tear you away from the Skank o' the Day, that is." Leah kicks futilely at the papers on the coffee table to make room for her slide down onto the couch, with a foot propped in the cleared space. "I know I'm no match for Gloria the gum-snapping goomba's girl with her hair teased up to here, but gosh, if you really think you could help me out, loverboy, I'd be eternally in your debt."
The engine's thrum muffles the conversation in the background, ("You didn't want meatball?" "/How/ long have you been my partner?" "I'm an old man. I'm expected to remember how to drive /and/ what you eat?") a moment's pause for the insults to deflate into unresponsive air before the retaliation. Such as it is. "Audrey was the latest," Rossi volunteers, all too cheerfully. "From around where you're living, now. If you see her, tell her I'm sorry I didn't call. Want me to hook you up with some cops? Flores is single."
Leah reminds him, "Flores is a piece of shit who smells like dead feet and can belch the alphabet twice through whether you ask him to or not. I'm really feelin' the love here, Rossi. Maybe I'll ask your mom for matchmaking advice. She has a good eye, and she probably has some ideas." She makes her voice doting and fond. "We could have a real good conversation about children who need to settle down and start providing for the family's future."
"You might want to think about that before you do it," advises the fond son. ("Meatballs and /sauerkraut/? That's disgusting. Nobody should eat like this." "How do I know how you dagos like meatballs? I'm a pork-eating Jew.") The paper bag crumples, balled into a gummy, squashy mess before being tossed into the rear seat. "You might want to think about who Mom would set you up with if she even thought you were interested."
"Well," Leah spins out as she tucks a folded arm behind her head, "I was thinking that she'd probably settle on /you./"
"Thank /hard/, Canto," recommends the disembodied Rossi-voice. "Do you really want to go out with /me/?"
Leah wheedles, "Oh, but Rossi, my very dear, you know how I've been longing for you, and now, with this talk of getting me laid -- I am just /all/ aflutter! Whatever will I do if you refuse me?" Her eyes slip to half-closed; it's no kind and gentle expression around them.
A moment's flat silence, spun out between them over the throb of the engine. Then: "I wouldn't touch you with a pole the size of Long Island. And you can take that to the /pope/." Rossi's jaw locks, knitting to the throb of a temple-caught vein. ("Shut up, Beston. Just drive already, will you?")
Leah's laughter slings low and throaty on the line. "Yeah, thought so. Man, you can dish it out, but you just cannot take it. Pussy. No wonder you went for the gold shield instead of walking a beat like a real cop. I have," she tells him thoughtfully, "always preferred your fine partner for that reason. /Him/ I'd want at my back in a fight. He's there, right?"
Her answer? More silence. Rustling. A gravel-baritone objection, heavy-set even in its cadence, and then: "Yeah?" Beston. It is a crime to drive while speaking on a cell phone. The veteran detective guides his sedan through a narrow opening, skips neatly across a changing light, and bends its nose down 4th.
"Your partner's being an ass to me, friend," is Leah's response, after a surprised pause. (Rossi, of all the cowardly chickenshit--) "I think he's getting a little too big for his britches again. Smack him upside the head for me, wouldja?"
He has the Irish charm, for all his claims of a spurious Jewishness. "Ms. Canto," greets Beston, voice warming; it carries the shadow of his unseen smile, the crinkle at the corners of friendly eyes. "He's a good kid. You shouldn't rile him up like this. It's bad for his digestion, and that's all a cop's got: his stomach and his partner."
Leah makes a rude noise, but can't help her smile creeping into her voice. "He's a good kid who needs a timeout . . . but all right. For your sake. Just yours, got it? Give me back to him, and I promise to be nice."
("Why're you talking to her?" demands Rossi's voice in the background, irritated. "Don't /talk/ to her. Give me the damn phone--") "Be nice," says Beston, placidly ignoring the younger man's annoyance. "Nice speaking with you again. Hope all's going well for you. Hold on, let me give you right back--"
"You do not deserve that man, Christopher," Leah states plainly as soon as the phone on the other end stops moving through confused, empty space, to find the previous ear. "I'm going to be nice to you, because I promised, but stop pushing me. Darn it." That's nice enough, right?
"You're the one doing all the shoving," points out Rossi, bristling on behalf of justice. A long arm stretches back to retrieve the squashy ex-sandwich, and tosses it to the floor of the passenger side. "You going to call Mom, or what?"
Leah sighs. "I'll call, I'll call. Give me the damn number; I don't have it."
The number, reeled out without deference for slower pencils, assumes Leah's proximity to pad and pen. A fair assumption. "718," begins Rossi, finishing with tangential resignation, "She won't get a cell phone, so you'll have to try her at home. Or at the hospital, if you're going to visit Gabe."
"Yeah, maybe I'll run into her there. I /will/ visit your brother. Hope you do, too." Archly Leah can prod him with that, using the invalid as the latest weapon at hand. "Thanks for calling to let me know about him, you insufferable prick. You didn't have to, and I appreciate it." And, wonders of wonders, she gives him honesty, and the niceness promised, without strings attached.
And not unappreciative, if somewhat wary, Chris accepts in like fashion. "Yeah. Well, I promised Gabe. He--" But that thought will have to wait. The baritone pauses, broken off by the hiss and crackle of the police radio's peremptory summons. Drowning in the white noise of sound, a woman's voice bleeds a code of incoherence. ("...third...." "...fired...") "Got to go," he says into the phone, in a different voice altogether: Rossi-the-Cop. Beston's voice rises behind it, harmony to the wail of siren. "Talk to you later." And then he is gone.
And not a moment too soon, though Leah does grant him professional respect, with a fleetingly concerned frown at the receiver, for whatever dragged him so precipitously away. But . . . enough. Her research isn't going to write itself, so sitting up, she pulls over the discarded magazine, the highlighter, and begins again.
[Log ends.]