There was activity across the street. The door to the room over the garage opening, a rectangle of light spilling onto the platform just outside the door. Tommy. Reaching inside to snap off the interior lights. Only the spot over the steps shining now. He locked the door and then came down the steps. He was wearing jeans and a striped polo shirt. Head bent, watching the steps as he came down. Carella ducked deeper into the shadows.
Was there a bimbo?
He gave him a decent lead, and then fell in behind him. Not too close to be spotted, not too distant to lose him. Tailing my own brother-in-law, he thought, and shook his head again.
He'd once talked with his father about faithfulness. Or rather listened to his father talking about it, listened carefully to every word because by then Carella was old enough to realize that his father had come through many of these same things himself and was able to discourse on them without sounding like the wise old man of the world. Without sounding like - a father. Sounding like just another man you happened to like a lot. A friend. Possibly the best friend Carella had or ever would have.
This was just before he married Teddy. A week before the wedding. He and his father were in the bakery shop - all of their important conversations seemed to take place near the ovens, the aroma of baking bread wafting on the air - and Carella was experiencing what he guessed could be denned as prenuptial jitters, wondering out loud whether or not he was about to enter a contract that might be, well, too limiting. Too restrictive, you know what I mean, Pop?
He guessed he felt the way he had when Angela started coming to those Friday night dances with him, that his turf was being invaded, his space threatened. He'd never told his father that he used to dry-hump Margie Gannon on the dance floor, or that his sister's presence had cramped his style somewhat. Neither had he ever mentioned that he'd later moved onward and upward to the blissful actuality of truly humping Margie in the backseat of the family Dodge, but he suspected his father knew all this, understood that his only son had been leading a fairly active sex life with a wide variety of women before he'd met Teddy Franklin, the woman he was now about to marry, the woman to whom he was about to commit the rest of his life.
He was troubled, and his father realized it.
He'd never signed any kind of contract in his entire life, not for a car, not for an apartment, not for anything, and here he was about to sign a contract that would be binding forever. He'd never sworn to anything in public except to uphold the laws of the city, state, and country when he took his oath as a policeman, but now he was about to swear before his relatives and friends and her relatives and friends that he would love her and keep her and all that jazz so long as they both should live. It was scary. In fact, it was terrifying.
"Do you love her?" his father asked.
"Yes, I love her, Pop," he said. "I love her very much."
"Then there's nothing to be scared of. I'll tell you something, Steve. The only time a man considers taking another woman is when he no longer loves the woman he already has. Do you think that's going to happen? Are you afraid the time will come when you won't love Teddy anymore?"
"How can I know that, Pop?"
"You can know it. You can feel it in your bones and in your blood. You can know you'll love this woman till the day you die, and you'll never want another woman but her. And if you don't know this now . . . don't marry her."
"Now isn't tomorrow," he said.
"Yes, now is tomorrow. Now is forever," his father said.
The shop fell silent.
"Listen to me," his father said.
"Yes, Pop."
His father put his hands on Carella's shoulders. Big hands covered with flour. He looked into Carella's eyes.
"How do you feel about anyone else touching her?" he asked.
"I would kill him," Carella said.
"Yes," his father said, and nodded. "You have nothing to worry about. Marry her. Love her. Stay with her and no one else. Or I'll break your head," he said, and grinned.
And now, all these years later, Carella was following his sister's husband because the possibility existed that a time had come when he didn't love her anymore. He supposed that time could come to anyone. He did not think it would ever come to him. But he wondered now if that was because he truly loved Teddy to death or only because his father had threatened to break his head. In the darkness, quickening his pace as Tommy rounded a corner ahead, he smiled to himself.
He must have been trailing Tommy for at least half a mile, ten blocks or so, the area changing from strictly residential to commercial, elevated train tracks overhead now, stores still open on this gaudy summer night, July still flaunting her passion, men and women in the streets - was he planning to take a train? Was he heading for the platform on the next . . .?
