The Color of Light by Wendy Hornsby Read Free Book Online Page A

you.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt.”
    It was a beautiful day, and it was nice to be outdoors. Instead of going straight home, I walked across the western end of campus and went into town. I had missed breakfast and lunch, unless you count one rugelach. I was hungry, there was nothing at home except garden vegetables to eat, and I wanted to see Beto. Not to tell him about the film—I wasn’t ready for that yet—but just to spend a few minutes with my old friend.
    Bartolini’s Deli and Italian Market on Shattuck Avenue was busy, as always. Located half a block from the BART station, about equidistant between the Civic Center and the massive Cal campus, even at two o’clock in the afternoon there were seven people ahead of me when I pulled a number tab from the machine on top of the refrigerated deli cases.
    Beto was hard at work behind the counter, serving customers and supervising three young clerks, sending orders to the kitchen, overseeing plates coming out of the kitchen, slicing and wrapping meats and cheeses as ordered, dishing up take-out containers of salads and casseroles and precooked entrees. He was so busy that I gave up on any notion of having any sort of chat with him. But I was still hungry.
    When he noticed me he flashed me his big smile and called out, “Hey, Maggie.”
    â€œHi, Beto.” I gave him a little wave, took a bottle of cold water out of a drinks cooler, and found a table near some freestanding metal racks filled with imported pastas and delicacies and waited for my number to come up on the board.
    While I was waiting, Kevin called. Without preliminaries, he said, “Patrol officers responded to Mr. Sato’s call. Larry was picked up and brought in. He was released to his probation officer, but it was Father John who picked him up.”
    â€œFather John?” I said. “Our Father John? I thought he had gone off to Outer Upper Gadzookistan or somewhere.”
    â€œHe’s back in the parish,” Kevin said, followed by “I have to go.”
    I thanked him, wondering about his abrupt tone. Something was up with him.
    â€œYo, is that my favorite TV lady?” Old Bart Bartolini, Beto’s dad, came out from the kitchen when he spotted me. He kissed me on both cheeks. “Beto said you was in town.” He lowered his chin. “Sorry to hear about your mother, honey. Betsy was one nice lady.”
    â€œMom is fine,” I said. “She moved down closer to me so you won’t be seeing as much of her, but she’s just fine.”
    He furrowed his brow, seemed confused; we’d had exactly the same conversation two days earlier.
    â€œI thought you retired,” I said, shifting the topic. “So why are you wearing that big apron?”
    â€œJust helping out the boy,” he said, sitting down heavily in the chair beside mine, grimacing as if his feet hurt. “You know, only till Beto gets the hang of running the place.”
    â€œSeems to me he’s doing just fine.” No need to remind him that Beto had worked in the store for most of his life.
    Mr. Bartolini beamed as he looked over at his son. He could behave like an old curmudgeon with his employees and with overly demanding customers, but where Beto was concerned, there was nothing but sweetness and light.
    â€œWhat a kid, uh?” He pulled a towel off his apron string, picked up my sweating water bottle and wiped the table under it. “Always a good worker, that one. I just wish his mom...”
    His eyes filled, just as they had two days earlier, when he’d said exactly the same thing.
    Mr. Bartolini was somewhere in his eighties. When he moved to Berkeley about forty years ago and opened his deli, he was a retired navy cook with a much-younger Vietnamese bride and a baby boy. If Beto was the apple of his eye, his wife, Tina, was the entire apple orchard. I could only imagine the pain her death inflicted on