“Either way.”
Emil said that to his wife, but he did try to replay his dreams, to grasp hold of them before they dispersed like morning mists, tantalizingly, as if they wanted to be chased. But it was impossible, like holding water in a cupped hand. And if a dream troubled his sleep and he emitted soft wounded-animal sounds, Elena would tap his head, saying, “Knock, knock!” He’d mumble, half awake, “Who’s there?” “Dream a little.” “Dream a little who?” And she’d sing, “‘But in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.’” And he’d feel easier because of her singing.
Monday, the start of the work week, but not for an ex-cop. He’d have stayed in bed, but a morning garden was chaste; its breath sweetest, the light a gentler wash. He was no good at lounging anyway. Not like Elena who could sleep for hours on end, lie in bed like a cat. He sometimes lingered with her on weekend or holiday mornings, but a sense of expectation—or suspicion—kept him alert.
He’d forced himself up and was in the garden earlier than usual, kneeling before the tomato plants. He concentrated on tying the last of the tall stems to a notched bamboo pole. Then, as he stood, his eyes fell on the empty dirt where the peppers had grown. He hadn’t meant to look, but the dead patch was impossible to avoid now that Franco was drumming it into him. Not even weeds grew there, as if a child’s grave had planted itself on that spot. Emil shifted his weight. A cloud skittered across the sun, dimming the light. Something is wrong, he told himself. “No,” he said aloud, sloughing off a gnawing uneasiness. He no longer had to pay attention to every passing cue. But how does a guy stop being a cop?
He returned to the tomatoes, two neat rows, four tidy plants in each. Insignificant yellow flowers already hinted at the little green balls, the ripe red tomatoes to come. He touched one lightly with his long fingers; there would be a plentiful crop this year. Tomatoes were a favorite, but he preferred flowers.
Elena wanted an apple tree. It started around the time of the pepper patch, he thought. Or, no, was it before the peppers? “An apple tree,” she said, “endures.”
“You want to tempt me, is that it?” he joked. “You could hold a strip of rotten herring in my face and I’d be tempted.” She wanted the apple tree smack in the middle of the garden. It made no sense. He remembered reading somewhere that flowers captured the smile of God. He’d told Elena this, hoping to amuse her, to deflect her from the wished-for tree.
But she’d said, “Atheists are the most religious people in the world!”
Would Adam and Eve have quarreled over a tree? Wouldn’t God have made all horticultural decisions? But then what were they supposed to do all day before they fell?
There had been an orchard at Elena’s father’s summer estate in Trieste. Emil thought she was reminiscing. He treated her wish as a friendly disagreement between them. Some mythical remnant from her girlhood, he told himself. But was he wrong? Had he dismissed her unfairly? Was he a man who could figure out a killer but not his own wife?
The snake tempted Eve first; she got to Adam, who, according to Emil, ended up looking pretty much like a sap. Couldn’t the snake just as easily have lured Adam first, in a very different narrative? Looking out, he saw there was barely room for an additional tulip bulb, never mind a tree. The garden was ripe and beautiful and almost perfect, and he was aware that he alone stood between this state of grace—a garden—and the chaos of Franco.
He walked the path over to Elena’s two robust lavender bushes. Their scent called up pleasurable memories, like sniffing postcards of forgotten places. Emil reached down to rub a branch between his palms. He felt in a lighter frame of mind. The morning gloom had lifted. It hadn’t been gloomy, only a few passing clouds and his mood, but the day was now wide open and deeply blue, and he responded to it. He was about to go back inside for another stab at the newspaper, empty the dishwasher, get some sort of day going, but he stopped again by the pepper patch. The dirt sifted through his fingers like sand. Could someone have tampered with the soil? Could there be an underground influence at work, some chemical poisoning?
He laughed at himself: Detective Emil Milosec—retired first class, cited with the department’s highest honors, and here he was thinking like an old maid. “Underground influences! Come on,” he said. If anything was wrong, that patch had been deliberately sabotaged, and the logical suspect would have to be Franco. Some plot between him and Elena to drive Emil mad. “I’m letting that bastard get to me,” he said, touching his head. “The man isn’t capable of plotting more than a can of beer.”
He brought his hands close to his face again to breathe in the soothing scent of lavender. He stood for several minutes. The bitter peppers used to grow up against the fence between his and Franco’s property. Why had he so despised their very presence? Was it Franco? He was Latino; didn’t they all like spicy food?
Back in the kitchen, he made himself a second cup of espresso and forced a look at the newspaper, but it was no good. Two years since Elena’s death, and then the peppers died. Swigging down the coffee and rinsing his cup under the tap, he dried his hands and headed for the garden door.
He marched straight to the narrow tool shed in back. Bands of gray-and-brown sparrows left off their incessant pickings, swept out of his path. The door to the shed stuck before pulling open. From within came the cold breath of the dark. Reaching in, his hand brushed against strings of spider webs. As a boy spiders had horrified him. In a recurring nightmare he’d be trapped by thousands of silver webs spun across his bedroom door. Today he ignored the sticky, sickening feel of the spider webs, pulled out a shovel, and slammed the door shut.
By the time Franco called to him from the other side of the high fence, Emil had already broken a sweat shoveling nearly two feet deep. “Amigo, that is some racket so early.”
Emil kept digging.
“Listen, man, you want a break? I’ll get us coffee, Bustelo. What do you say?” Emil shoved deeper into the earth. “Hombre, maybe you need a beer to relax yourself, huh?”
Emil kept digging, shook his head. “A beer?” he said. “At seven thirty in the morning?”
“I am being poh-lite.”
Emil stopped shoveling. “Polite? Last night you wanted me to shoot you.”
“So now you dig my grave?”
Emil went back to digging.
“It is the pepper patch, sí, amigo? That you dig? Unless you plan to visit China the slow way?” Franco laughed at his own joke. “Ayee, I have my headache this morning.” He waited. “The sound of that shovel is no help.”
“So take an aspirin, amigo.”
“You know, why do you trouble the place that won’t grow? Maybe the ground is still crying for La Señora Elena, you ever think of that?”
Emil leaned on the shovel. “Franco, don’t take this the wrong way: Screw yourself.”
“No, see, hombre, earth can cry. We don’t think so because we put buildings on top and roads; still, the earth feels; under all that shit she lives.”
Emil listened and all he could think of was Franco’s dump of a building and his trashed backyard. Elena saying he never gave Franco a chance. Sure. They used to talk through the fence, she and Franco, and sometimes out front. Once, home early, he’d seen her step out of Franco’s car.
Elena Morandi worked as a diplomatic translator for the Italian and Austrian Embassies. Her clothing had flair, suited to luncheons, cocktail parties, and dinners, political events where appearances mattered; fluid dresses and smart suits; a fine figure, pure class. That day he saw her was warm, her bare arms slipped through a sleeveless yellow dress with narrow brown stripes. She laughed before thanking Franco, leaning into the car. Thanked him for what? Emil was out in the garden before her key was in the downstairs lock. He pretended he’d been outside for some while, though he still wore his suit. He too dressed well and was noted for it at the precinct, for the