be afraid of.”
“Steve, he’s killed people, do you know that?”
“So have I.”
“I know, but…we’re going to be alone tonight in…in one of the biggest hotels in the world…right in this city…and I don’t even know the man I’m about to marry. How can I allow him to…to…”
“Did you talk to Mama, Slip?”
“Yes, I talked to Mama.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘To love is to fear nothing.’ I’m translating loosely from the Italian.”
“She’s right.”
“I know, but…I’m not sure I love him.”
“I felt the same way on my wedding day.”
“You didn’t have all this church hullabaloo.”
“I know. But there was a reception. It was just as nerve-wracking.”
“Steve…do you remember one night…I was sixteen, I think. You’d only been a cop a short time. Do you remember? I’d just come home from a date, and I was sitting in this room having some milk before I went to sleep. You must have had the four-to-midnight shift because it was pretty late at night, and you were just coming in. You stopped in here and had milk with me. Do you remember?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Old Birnbaum’s light was burning across the way. We could see it through the window there.”
He looked across at the window and through it over the long expanse of his father’s back yard to the gabled house belonging to Joseph Birnbaum, his father’s closest friend and neighbor for forty years. He could remember that spring night clearly, the sound of insects in the back yard, the single light burning in Birnbaum’s attic room, the thin yellow crescent of a moon hanging listlessly over the sharply slanting roof of the house.
“I told you what had happened to me that night,” Angela said. “About…about the boy I’d dated and…what he’d tried to do.”
“Yes, I remember”
“I never told Mama about that,” Angela said. “You were the only one I ever told. And I asked you if this…happened all the time, if this was what I could expect from boys I dated. I wanted to know what to do, how I should behave. Do you remember what you told me?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“You said I should do whatever I felt was right. You said I would know what was right.” She paused. “Steve…I’ve never…”
“Honey, shall I get Mama?”
“No, I want to talk to you. Steve, I don’t know what to do tonight. I know that’s awfully silly, I’m twenty-three years old, I should know what to do, but I don’t, and I’m terrified he won’t love me any more, he’ll be disappointed, he’ll—”
“Shhh, shhh,” he said. “Come on now. What do you want?”
“I want you to tell me.”
He looked into her eyes and he took her hands and said, “I can’t do that, Slip.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not a baby in cotton slips any more, and you’re not a little girl who’s suddenly puzzled by her first kiss. You’re a woman, Angela. And there isn’t a man alive who can give a woman instructions about love. I don’t think you’ll need them, honey. I really don’t think you’ll need them.”
“You think it’ll…be all right?”
“I think it’ll be fine. But I also think you’d better start dressing. Otherwise you’ll miss your own wedding.”
Angela nodded glumly.
“Come on,” he said. “You’re going to be the prettiest goddamn bride this neighborhood ever had.” He hugged her, rose, and started for the door.”
“Was…was Teddy frightened?” Angela asked.
“I’m going to give you one bit of brotherly advice,” Carella said. “I won’t tell you whether Teddy was frightened or puzzled or innocent or whatever. I won’t tell you because marriage is a private thing, Angela, built on faith more than anything else. And whatever happens between you and Tommy—tonight or forever—you and he will be the only two people to ever know about it. And that’s one of the frightening things about marriage…but it’s also pretty damn reassuring.” He went back to the bed, and he took her hands again, and he said, “Angela, you have nothing to worry about. He loves you so much he’s trembling. He loves you, honey. He’s a good man. You chose well.”
“I love him, too, Steve. I do. Only—”
“Only nothing. What the hell do you want? A written guarantee that life is just a bowl of cherries? Well, it isn’t. But you’ve got a clean slate, and you can write your own ticket. And, honey, you’re starting with one of the major ingredients.” He grinned. “You can’t miss.”
“Okay,” she said, and she nodded her head emphatically.
“You going to get dressed?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Okay,” she said again, more emphatically. She paused.