“I’m sure Elvin would have been most unhappy finding out I was at the White House. The first thing he would have done was ask Maggie what I’m up to,” I explain, and we’re in Northeast Alexandria.
Following the Potomac’s shoreline, our timing is just right for getting caught at every red light.
“She didn’t say what either of you were doing there,” Marino says.
Keeping his eyes on the road, he steers with one hand while tossing out his gum again. There’s no point in reprimanding him about it.
“I asked and she wouldn’t tell me,” he adds.
“I doubt she knows. I doubt he does either,” I reply. “I hope they don’t, at any rate. Otherwise the president has serious issues with intelligence leaks.”
“You were with the president today? He wanted to meet with you personally?”
“I’m saying, it’s risky to national security if people can’t have private conversations.” That’s as much as I’m going to share.
“It would be helpful if you’d tell me what was so important that you suddenly got called to a top secret meeting.” Marino starts rummaging inside the ashtray for more gum, and it’s a good thing it’s sugarless or he’d have no teeth left. “You know, in case there’s something I should worry about besides you bringing home poisoned wine from Interpol.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s plenty for us to worry about, Marino.”
“I’ll take that as meaning we’re back to the way things used to be, you and me swimming upstream with alligators.” Peeling the wrappers off several sticks, clove again, he offers them to me.
“You know what? I could use a hit.” I take the gum from him, the inside of the truck smelling like potpourri.
“Sometimes I want to smoke so bad it’s killing me, Doc, and this is one of those times,” Marino says.
“Believe me, I know the feeling.”
“What if I told you I had a pack of Marlboros for emergencies?”
“I’d tell you that I didn’t hear what you just said.”
“Do you still think about it?”
“Not a day goes by.”
“Exactly,” he says. “One damn cigarette! What if I lit just one and we shared it?”
CHAPTER 32
IT’S NEVER JUST ONE,” I reply, both of us chewing our gum.
“I thought the craving would go away but if anything, it’s worse. As much as I hate to admit it.” He’s been saying the same thing since he and Dorothy got married.
Only Marino has been craving more than cigarettes if he’s honest about it, and he’s not. Easier if he’s blind to what I saw when he and Dorothy started dating seriously several years ago. He was her new challenge, her next bright, shiny thing.
It wasn’t for me to judge, and I was their biggest supporter despite my misgivings about my sister smothering him while sucking out his life force, emotional spider that she is. I’ve watched her do it to every pair of pants that’s come through her door. But maybe it would be different with him, not that it was my decision, and I was careful not to interfere.
I went so far as to become an ordained minister by mail so I could marry them in Benton’s and my Cambridge backyard. I wanted their relationship to work, didn’t matter the complications it would cause. Most of all, I wanted Marino to be happy. As long as I’ve known him, he’s been trying to fill an emptiness that goes back to his earliest years in the wrong part of New Jersey.
No one quicker to fill a void, no one more exciting than Dorothy. She dotes on him, and has plenty of money, but it can’t replace what he lost when he and I stopped working together.
“I’m sorry I can’t talk about what Benton and I were doing in D.C. I wish I could tell you everything.” I look over at Marino’s strong profile in the glow of taillights ahead, chewing gum, wishing he were smoking.
I know what it is to want what you can’t have. When I was a child taking care of my father as he was dying of cancer, I wanted him to get better. I wanted it more than anything. I wanted him in my life, and I’ve never stopped wanting it.
“Look, I wasn’t born yesterday,” Marino says. “I’m wondering if your being at the White House might be related to where we’re headed this minute. Maybe what’s going on in Alexandria is of interest because of Gwen Hainey’s spying.”
“As they say in quantum physics, everything’s connected,” I reply, and out my window is the Mount Vernon Trail, the dark void of Daingerfield Island just ahead. “Her illegal activities have caused a number of catastrophes even if indirectly, and I shouldn’t tell you even that much.”