Commonwealth(7)

Fix nodded, trying not to smile and smiling anyway. Of course he went up. In a certain stretch of the imagination they had done this thing together.

“So you were the detective,” Cousins said. He could see him now, that same brown suit all detectives wore to court, like there was only one and they shared it.

“Arresting,” he said. “I’m up for detective now.”

“You’ve got a death card?” Cousins said it to impress him without having any sense of why he would want to impress him. He might be a grade-one deputy DA but he knew how cops kept score. Fix, however, took the question at face value. He dried his hands and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, fingering past a few bills.

“Fourteen to go.” He handed his list to Cousins, who dried his hands before taking it.

There were many more than fourteen names on the folded piece of paper, probably closer to thirty, with “Francis Xavier Keating” printed at the bottom, but half the names had a single line drawn through them, meaning Fix Keating was moving up. “Jesus,” Cousins said. “This many of them are dead?”

“Not dead.” Fix took back the list to check the names beneath the straight black lines. He held it up to the kitchen light. “Well, a couple of them. The rest were either promoted already or they moved away, dropped out. It doesn’t make any difference—they’re off.”

Two older women in their best church dresses and no hats leaned against one another in the frame of the open kitchen door. When Fix looked over they gave him a wave in unison.

“Bar still open?” the smaller one said. She meant to sound serious but the line was so clever she hiccupped and then her friend began to laugh as well.

“My mother,” Fix said to Cousins, pointing to the one who had spoken, then he pointed to the other, a faded blonde with a cheerful, open face. “My mother-in-law. This is Al Cousins.”

Cousins dried his hand a second time and extended it to one and then the other. “Bert,” he said. “What’re you ladies drinking?”

“Whatever you’ve got left,” the mother-in-law said. You could see just a trace of the daughter there, the way she held her shoulders back, the length of her neck. It was a crime what time did to women.

Cousins picked up a bottle of bourbon, the bottle closest to his hand, and mixed two drinks. “It’s a good party,” he said. “Everybody out there still having a good time?”

“I thought they were waiting too long,” Fix’s mother said, accepting her drink.

“You’re morbid,” the mother-in-law said to her with affection.

“I’m not morbid,” the mother corrected. “I’m careful. You have to be careful.”

“Waiting for what?” Cousins asked, handing over the second drink.

“The baptism,” Fix said. “She was worried the baby was going to die before we got her baptized.”

“Your baby was sick?” he asked Fix. Cousins had been raised Episcopalian, but he had let go of that. To the best of his knowledge, dead Episcopal babies were passed into heaven regardless.

“She’s fine,” Fix said. “Perfect.”

Fix’s mother shrugged. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s going on inside a baby. I had you and your brothers baptized in under a month. I was on top of it. This child,” she said, turning her attention to Cousins, “is nearly a year old. She couldn’t even fit into the family christening gown.”

“Well, there’s the problem,” Fix said.

His mother shrugged. She drank down her entire drink and then waggled the empty paper cup as if there had been some mistake. They’d run out of ice, and the ice had been the only thing to slow the drinkers down. Cousins took the cup from her and filled it again.

“Someone’s got the baby,” Fix said to his mother, not a question, just a confirmation of fact.

“The what?” she asked.

“The baby.”

She thought for a minute, her eyes half closed, and nodded her head, but it was the other one who spoke, the mother-in-law. “Someone,” she said without authority.

“Why is it,” Fix’s mother said, not interested in the question of the baby, “that men will stand in a kitchen all day mixing drinks and juicing oranges for those drinks but won’t so much as set a foot over the threshold to make food?” She stared pointedly at her son.

“No idea,” Fix said.

His mother then looked back at Cousins but he only shook his head. Dissatisfied, the two women turned as one and tipped back out into the party, cups in hand.

“She has a point,” Cousins said. He never would have stood back here making sandwiches, though he felt he could use a sandwich, that he wanted one, and so he poured himself another drink.

Fix returned to the business of the knife and the orange. He was a careful man, and took his time. Even drunk he wasn’t going to cut off his finger. “You have kids?” he asked.

Cousins nodded. “Three and a third.”

Fix whistled. “You stay busy.”

Cousins wondered if he meant You stay busy running after kids, or, You stay busy fucking your wife. Either way. He put another empty orange rind in the sink that overflowed with empty orange rinds. He rolled his wrist.

“Take a break,” Fix said.