Commonwealth(2)

“Look how pretty she is,” his mother-in-law said to no one, running the back of one finger across the baby’s rounded cheek.

“Ice,” Beverly said to her husband. “We’re out of ice.”

“That was your sister’s assignment,” Fix said.

“Then she failed. Can you ask one of the guys to go get some? It’s too hot to have a party without ice.” She had tied an apron behind her neck but not around her waist. She was trying not to wrinkle her dress. Strands of yellow hair had come loose from her French twist and were falling into her eyes.

“If she didn’t bring the ice, then she might at least come in here and make some sandwiches.” Fix was looking right at Wallis when he said this but Wallis capped her lipstick and ignored him. He had meant it to be helpful because clearly Beverly had her hands full. To look at her anyone would think that Beverly was the sort of person who would have her parties catered, someone who would sit on the couch while other people passed the trays.

“Bonnie’s so happy to see all those cops in one room. She can’t be expected to think about sandwiches,” Beverly said, and then she stopped the assembling of cream cheese and cucumbers for a minute and looked down at his hand. “What’s in the bag?”

Fix held up the gin, and his wife, surprised, delivered the first smile she’d given him all day, maybe all week.

“Whoever you send to the store,” Wallis said, displaying a sudden interest in the conversation, “tell them to get tonic.”

Fix said he would buy the ice himself. There was a market up the street and he wasn’t opposed to slipping out for a minute. The relative quiet of the neighborhood, the order of the bungalows with their tight green lawns, the slender shadows the palm trees cast, and the smell of the orange blossoms all combined with the cigarette he was smoking to have a settling effect on him. His brother Tom came along and they walked together in companionable silence. Tom and Betty had three kids now, all girls, and lived in Escondido, where he worked for the fire department. Fix was starting to see that this was the way life worked once you got older and the kids came; there wasn’t as much time as you thought there was going to be. The brothers hadn’t seen each other since they’d all met up at their parents’ house and gone to Mass on Christmas Eve, and before that it was probably when they’d driven down to Escondido for Erin’s christening. A red Sunbeam convertible went by and Tom said, “That one.” Fix nodded, sorry he hadn’t seen it first. Now he had to wait for something he wanted to come along. At the market they bought four bags of ice and four bottles of tonic. The kid at the register asked them if they needed any limes and Fix shook his head. It was Los Angeles in June. You couldn’t give a lime away.

Fix hadn’t checked his watch when they’d left for the market but he was a good judge of time. Most cops were. They’d been gone twenty minutes, twenty-five tops. It wasn’t long enough for everything to change, but when they came back the front door was standing open and there was no one left in the yard. Tom didn’t notice the difference, but then a fireman wouldn’t. If the place didn’t smell like smoke then there wasn’t a problem. There were still plenty of people in the house but it was quieter now. Fix had turned on the radio before the party started and for the first time he could hear a few notes of music. The kids weren’t crawling in the dining room anymore and no one seemed to notice they were gone. All attention focused on the open kitchen door, which was where the two Keating brothers were heading with the ice. Fix’s partner, Lomer, was waiting for them and Lomer tipped his head in the direction of the crowd. “You got here just in time,” he said.

As tight as it had been in the kitchen before they’d left, there were three times as many people crammed in there now, most of them men. Beverly’s mother was nowhere in sight and neither was the baby. Beverly was standing at the sink, a butcher’s knife in her hand. She was slicing oranges from an enormous pile that was sliding across the counter while the two lawyers from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, Dick Spencer and Albert Cousins—suit jackets off, ties off, and shirtsleeves rolled up high above the elbow—were twisting the halves of oranges on two metal juicers. Their foreheads were flushed and damp with sweat, their opened collars just beginning to darken, they worked as if the safety of their city relied on the making of orange juice.

Beverly’s sister Bonnie, ready now to be helpful, plucked Dick Spencer’s glasses from his face and wiped them with a dish towel, even though Dick had a capable wife somewhere in the crush. That was when Dick, his eyes relieved of the scrim of sweat, saw Fix and Tom and called out for the ice.

“Ice!” Bonnie cried, because it was true, it was hot as hell and ice sounded better than anything. She dropped her towel to lift the two bags from Tom, placing them in the sink atop the neat orange cups of empty rinds. Then she took the bags from Fix. Ice was her responsibility.

Beverly stopped slicing. “Perfect timing,” she said and dug a paper cup into the open plastic bag, knocking out three modest cubes as if she knew to pace herself. She poured a short drink—half gin, half orange juice, from the full pitcher. She made another and another and another as the cups were passed through the kitchen and out the door and into the waiting hands of the guests.

“I got the tonic,” Fix said, looking at the one bag still in his hands. He wasn’t objecting to anything other than the feeling that he and his brother had somehow been left behind in the time it had taken them to walk to the market and back.