Free The Side of the Angels by Christina Bartolomeo, Kyoko Watanabe Page B

You think she’s going to let Louise pick out your ties? You think she’ll let you go racing over there when Louise calls crying at one in the morning over some loser?”
    He was quiet, appearing to digest this. You never know with men. Sometimes they look as if they’re cogitating, when all the time they’re just playing the NBA theme song in their heads.
    Finally he said, “I would be nuts to screw things up with Betsey. She’s a wonderful girl. She has so many great qualities.”
    â€œWhich of course is why you marry someone. Because they have great qualities.”
    â€œYou want me to marry someone
without
great qualities?”
    â€œI’m saying it’s not quantifiable. There are only two reasons to marry someone, Johnny. One is that she’s pregnant and her father isin the Mob. The other is that you want to, for reasons you could never list.”
    â€œI don’t know, Nicky. Why’d you have to bring all this up right now?”
    He was scowling and uncomfortable, but he was still managing to drive wonderfully, avoiding taxicabs, Metro buses that took up two-thirds of the road, and diplomats who, as we all know, can bump off a few people on their way in to work without fearing legal retribution. There’s a reason the subway is so popular in this town.
    â€œBecause I thought that it might be rude to bring it up at the rehearsal dinner. Just turn it over in your head, Johnny. I won’t bug you for another week or two.”
    â€œThat long?”
    The station loomed up before us. Whenever you were late for a train, traffic was awful. Be early, and in the middle of an engrossing conversation about affairs of the heart, and every light turned green for you. I leaned over and hugged my cousin, and told him not to come in with me. He knocked the side of his head lightly against the side of mine, his version of a cousinly embrace.
    â€œGo get ’em up there, Nicky. And if I find myself needing advice for the lovelorn, I’ll know who to call.”
    â€œAnyone but me.”
    â€œRight.”
    Watching the Mennonites unwrapping their homemade sandwiches, I wondered if I was even remotely qualified to boss Johnny about his romantic choices. After all, I was passing up Jeremy despite his sincere repentance, a move that spoke volumes about my unyieldingness, my stony heart. Was there something to be said for Christian forgiveness, a precept that had been drummed into me since I was five and beat up Jamie Raley next door for painting my bicycle black? Then again, what had always irked me about Christian forgiveness was that it was never presented to me as a choice. As soon as you can toddle, you’re just ordered to turn the other cheek, even in situations that violate the keen sense of justice that every child possesses. This is hardly theway to raise mercy-minded adults. After all, the reason most people don’t like lima beans is that no one ever asked them if they did or not.
    The train rounded a curve and knocked coffee over the page where Hercule Poirot discovers the mysterious pipe cleaner left at the scene of the murder. Poirot, of course, would not be fooled by the intended implications of that pipe cleaner, or by the grease spot on the Countess’s passport, or the strange complication of the doorknob and the sponge bag.
He
would never let a bunch of singing Mennonites, even if any had been permitted to board the Orient Express, distract him from the task at hand.
    My own wits wandered more easily. Half my mind was on Johnny and Louise as I read.
    During the Gulf War. That was the first time it came home to me that Johnny might love Louise, that Louise might love Johnny.
    My little brother, Joey, who went through college on an ROTC scholarship, was in the air force reserves, and it looked for a while as if his unit would be called up. This was before he met Maggie, and he wanted to go. Joey’s job in the reserves was repairing the