The bell on the door at Satriale's did its sound at four of four and Vinnie was the third man in.
Silvio was at the round table — the round table had come back the day after the Richie meeting, the long table folded and propped against the back wall — with the Star-Ledger business section open across his side and a cup of coffee that he had not been drinking. Paulie was at the front counter with a sandwich the kid behind the case had wrapped in wax paper. Christopher was not there yet. Two men Vinnie didn't know were at the side booth, eating quietly. The two old guys at the counter were having a slower version of their usual argument, which meant the older of the two had a chest cold and was conceding points.
Vinnie went to the counter. Got coffee. Did not get a sandwich. Brought the coffee to Silvio's table.
Tommy was, by then, in his Cadillac across the street with the paper on the dash and his eyes on the door.
"Sil."
"Marchetti."
"How is he."
"He's gonna live. He's at home, on the couch. Carm called me at two. He kept the toast down at lunch. That's a first since Friday."
"Good."
"It's the dreams that have her worried more than the clams."
"The dreams."
"He's having — he keeps having the same one, in pieces. A fish that talks. The fish keeps saying a thing he doesn't want it to say. He woke up at five this morning telling Carmela he had to call somebody but he didn't know who. Then he went back to sleep before he called anybody. Then he woke up an hour later and said he didn't know what he had been talking about."
Vinnie kept his face on his coffee.
"Fevers'll do that."
"Fevers'll do that."
The bell did its sound. Christopher came in. Took the chair next to Vinnie. Did not get coffee. Did not say hello. Sat.
The bell did its sound again at four-eleven.
Pussy.
He came in without a coat — June, no coat necessary, no information in it — and crossed the front of the deli with the small grimace that was the only thing his back ever gave him publicly. He nodded at the old guys at the counter. Said Hey, kid to the kid at the case. Got to the round table. Pulled out the chair across from Silvio.
"Where's T."
Silvio looked up from the paper for the first time.
"Home."
"Home why."
"Bad clams. Carm says he kept the toast down at lunch."
Pussy did not sit down for a beat longer than a beat. Then he sat.
"Bad clams."
"Bad clams."
"He's — he's all right."
"He's gonna be all right. Carm's got him."
Pussy's hand went up to the side of his neck the way it had been going up to the side of his neck for ten months and a different version of him took it back down to the table without seeming to notice it had gone up. Across the street, behind the wheel of the Cadillac, Tommy was looking at the door of the deli with the kind of patience Tommy could maintain for six hours if he had to.
"Bad clams," Pussy said. To himself.
"From somewhere on the shore," Silvio said. "Carm thinks the place by his cousin's. He'll be all right by the weekend."
"By the weekend."
"By the weekend."
Pussy ate the sandwich the kid brought him without being asked. Christopher complained about a kid he had hired at the production office who was costing him money. Silvio went back to the Star-Ledger. Paulie came over with the second half of his own sandwich and sat down. Pussy was now sitting at a four-cornered table with three men and Pussy did not look at any of them for more than the social second a man looked at the next man over.
Vinnie sat at the same table and looked at his hands on the cup.
Across the room — past the meat case and past the espresso machine and past Brian who had come up from the back to slice something and gone back down with it — past all of that the door of Satriale's stayed where it was.
The system warmed.
He did not ask it anything. It did not say anything to him. It had been a system for almost eighteen months and it had learned what he liked from it and what he didn't, and what he liked from it at this particular moment was to be a quiet pressure behind the eyes that confirmed without speaking what the man across the table from him was telling him without speaking either.
He stayed twenty more minutes.
When he stood up Pussy was still at the table. Pussy did not look up. Silvio looked up. Christopher did not look up. Paulie said Hey Marchetti with food in his mouth. Vinnie said Sil. Pussy. Paulie. Chris, in that order, did not shake any hands, went out.
The Cadillac pulled out from across the street and was at the curb by the time Vinnie's hand was at the door handle.
"You see what I needed."
Tommy did not start driving.
"He came in expecting to see T at that table."
"How can you tell."
"The way he set his hand on the back of the chair before he sat down. He was about to say a thing to T before he had even pulled the chair out. When Sil said home, his hand stopped moving for a half second. He was — he was adjusting."
"Adjusting."
"Adjusting."
Tommy pulled out into the avenue.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You said he was about to have a bad month."
"I did."
"You sure."
"I'm sure."
A beat.
"Where to."
He sat in the back for a few seconds without answering. The Cadillac rolled past the corner where the bus from Bayonne came up Tonnelle. Past the bodega that had been a different bodega last summer. Past the windowed second floor of the building over the hardware store on McCarter where the lights of Ortega's gym would be coming on around five-thirty for the after-work guys.
"Tommy. Pull over by Saint Lucy's."
"The church?"
"The church."
Tommy pulled over a block from Saint Lucy's. Did not ask why. Did not turn off the engine.
Vinnie got out. Crossed the avenue at the corner. Went up the steps of the church. The doors were the kind of doors he remembered from his mother's church in this body's life — the heavy double doors with the brass handles a child's hands could not pull and the smaller side door a child's hands could.
Inside it was cooler than the avenue had been.
The candles were where they always were — at the side, before the statue of the Virgin in the alcove that had been painted blue in the forties. He took a dollar from his wallet and slid it in the slot. He picked up a long wooden match from the box. Lit the match on the box. Touched the match to a wick.
The wick caught on the second try.
He stood at the rail for a minute. He was not, by either count, a praying man. The transmigrator had not prayed since he was twelve. The host body had not prayed at a candle since his mother had taken him on Holy Saturdays through 1986. The body remembered which knee to put down. The transmigrator watched it remember.
He did not know what he was lighting the candle for.
He stood with the body's knee on the worn pad and the head bent and the hands together in the way the body knew the hands were supposed to go.
He thought of the four-inch tomato plant that was now seven inches and had four true leaves. He thought of a man who was sitting in a back room at a deli wondering why his boss was at home with the flu and not at this table. He thought of a woman in a different apartment across the river who had stood in his kitchen and asked which cabinet the dishes went in.
He stood up.
He walked back down the side aisle. Pushed the heavy door open. The afternoon outside felt warmer than it was because the inside of Saint Lucy's was always two seasons behind the avenue.
He crossed back to the Cadillac.
Got in. Closed the door.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Tomorrow morning. Six AM."
"That early."
"Six AM. The gym on McCarter. Pick me up at five-fifty. I want you in the lot while I'm inside. After — drive me to the office. I'm gonna call Silvio at nine. I want to make sure I'm at my desk when he calls back."
"What're you calling Sil about."
"Nothing. I want to make sure I'm at my desk when he calls back."
A pause.
"You're expecting a call."
"I'm expecting some kind of week, Tommy."
Tommy pulled the Cadillac out from the curb. The Cadillac drove north on Broad Street in the after-school light. Vinnie watched the church get small in the side mirror, watched it get smaller, then watched a building he didn't know put itself in the way of the church.
He kept watching the mirror anyway.
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