Dino

by Desiree Lafawn

  “She said she knows you’re working hard to fight that man, so don’t come. Don’t undo the progress you’ve made.” Vanessa choked on a little sob then, showing me that she wasn’t as held together as it sounded. “She said maybe though, you can hurry up a little. Dino, I’m scared. I don’t want to lose our restaurant, but I can’t let this keep happening to Nonna. Is it the restaurant that he hates, or is it us? The family?”

  “I don’t know, Vanessa,” I admitted. And I didn’t fucking know, but I was going to find out.

  “I knew you didn’t do it, Dino.” Vanessa whispered into the phone. “I’m just so fucking scared. I don’t know what to do. I’m headed to the hospital and after we take care of Federico I am taking Nonna to Uncle JoJo’s place in Bowling Green. She needs to be away from this, and the restaurant is closed for a little while anyway.”

  “I can go to Uncle JoJo’s and see her.” He wasn’t my Uncle JoJo, technically he wasn’t even my step-uncle, he was Vanessa’s mom’s brother, but he’d always been nice to me as a kid.

  “No, you can’t. Don’t blow your cover, brother. Just…keep doing what you need to do to find out why he is doing this to us. I’ll take care of Nonna.” That was all the signal I was going to get that she was ending the conversation, and the next thing I knew there was dead air because Vanessa had hung up the phone.

  Fuck. This. Shit.

  Too far. Chaz had gone too far, and he’d just told me to lay off the Affinis. I couldn’t even call him and ask, because I shouldn’t even know about it yet, I was supposed to be working on the Gabriella Hensley situation. I couldn’t go see my Nonna, and Jeanette was treating me like a stranger even after we’d had sex in her dining room. Where the hell was I going to go?

  I went to the one place everyone goes when their world is falling apart – the bar.

  Well, I cheated a little bit. I wasn’t supposed to go to Nonna’s and I wasn’t supposed to go to Affini’s, but there was no reason anyone would be able to come up with for why I couldn’t go to a bar. And if Nasta’s happened to be across the street from the restaurant, well then wasn’t that a coincidence?

  The place was jumping actually, for nine on a weekday, but everyone was spooked by what happened at the restaurant, and since rubbernecking was a past time as old as prostitution, everyone at the bar had an idea of what was going on.

  “Probably drugs,” said one young hipster to his group of friends as he sipped a hard cider that he had poured from the perfectly good bottle it came in into a pint glass, trying to pretend it was an actual beer.

  “Maybe they owe money to the mob,” exclaimed the bespectacled girl next to him. Her hair was short and dark and stuck up all over in artfully arranged spikes. It was supposed to look messy and casual. I bet she spent a shit ton on that haircut in a salon that played techno music and only hired trendy young people wearing lots of eyeliner when they were freshly graduated from cosmetology school. I turned away from their group and contemplated my Sammy Boston Lager. Man, I was a cynical dick tonight.

  “That place is run by the Affini’s, and Rosalina Affini is one of the nicest old ladies you will ever meet. What happened out there was a scary damned tragedy, and you aren’t doing that family any favors by gossiping about it like a bunch of hens.” The young bartender with the strawberry blonde beard looked over at the group disapprovingly. “Angel’s about to start a set, why don’t you go bug her for a little bit while you can? She loves it when people yell “Free Bird” from the back of the bar while she is opening up for requests.”

  “Damn, Jesse, we’re sorry. We didn’t know you were friends with the restaurant lady, but you don’t have to send us on a suicide mission. Jesus,” a girl with ketchup-red hair and a septum piercing, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five whined.

  Jesse smiled and flicked the towel he had been wiping the bar within their general direction. “Be a little more mindful, is all I’m saying, you guys.”

  “Sorry, Uncle Jesse,” the group chimed as they walked closer to the tiny corner where Angel was setting up her guitar and mic.

  “You are a little young to be anyone’s uncle don’t you think?” I asked the young bartender, mostly because I was the only one at the bar and felt the need to fill the empty space with conversation for some reason.

  “And yet I feel like I have lived a thousand lifetimes,” the young man named Jesse said as he sighed tiredly. He did look rough. He had dark shadows under his eyes and his beard looked in need of a trim. Everyone has their own set problems they have to deal with, don’t they?

  Angel started making noises on the mic at the other end of the dark bar and I turned to look at her. “I’d like to start off the evening by playing a song for my friend D, who is here tonight.” Oh fuck me, please no. “I want to play this song especially for you, because even though you may not be as big of a douche bag as I had originally thought, unless you have something you want to tell Jesse tonight, this is how I am going to treat you forever and ever, until you die.” Then she blew a fucking kiss in my general direction and started playing an actually really well executed acoustic version of the All-American Rejects, Gives you Hell.

  “Jesse, man, can I get a shot of whiskey? Two shots of whiskey I mean?” Jesus, Angel was never going to forgive me. I wasn’t welcome at the restaurant, I wasn’t welcome with Jeanette, shit was I not going to be welcome here either? I could have just gone back to the hotel, but the thought of laying alone in that shit stick after the news I got seemed like the last thing I wanted to do.

  “What did you do to her, buddy?” It occurred to me that Jesse didn’t know my name. And why would he? I had only been in the bar a handful of times, and the only time I had actually spoken to him was when Jeanette and I had come in for Angel’s music kit after she had gotten spooked and ran out of the bar when one of Chaz’s guys tried to take her out. Admittedly it was my face that had scared the shit out of her, but that was a big misunderstanding. It didn’t help that I had to tase her to calm her down. Shit, actually, the list of reasons Angel was probably mad at me was pretty damn long.

  “Uh, Jesse, I think I need to clear something up here.” Jesse put two shot glasses down on the bar in front of me and started filling them with warm amber liquid. “I don’t know if you remember, but a few months ago when Angel had a problem and had to leave in a hurry, I came in with a woman to pick up her gear.”

  “Oh, I remember you,” Jesse said with a grin as he pushed the shots a little closer to me.

  “I may have misspoken about the reason Angel took off that night.”

  “Mhmm, how so?” He stroked his beard, waiting for me to continue.

  “I told you she pissed her pants and left embarrassed and that was a lie.”

  “Oh I know.”

  I couldn’t have heard him correctly. “You know?”

  “Oh for sure, especially after Angel came back for her next gig and had her finger in my face talking about that - No good Doucho and his fucking lying lips. She was pretty pissed.”

  “If you know,” I said slowly, “and she knows you know, then why did I just have to do this?”

  “Because she was mad and wanted you to squirm? Because she wanted a reason to sing that song? I don’t know, man. But she looks super happy right now, look at her.”

  I glanced over the dark bar at Angel, who was still singing what boiled down to a “fuck you Dino” song to me and I had to admit Jesse was right. The lights shone down on Angel as she sang and sported a shit-eating grin. Her eyes twinkled as she caught me looking at her and she threw me a wink. Okay, she got me. She could have this round, Jesus Christ. I knocked back the two shots one after the other, letting them burn all the way down to my belly before taking another swig of my beer. I looked over at the young bartender who looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. I was jonesing for something, my family, a friend, someone who didn’t hate me or at least didn’t know me enough to be mad at me for something. Emotions were boiling up insi
de me that I was having a hard time keeping in control. My bones ached, and I was so damn exhausted from trying to pretend I didn’t care about anything, when everything I did was because I cared too damn much.

  Jesse caught me giving him the eye and in his best bartender customer service voice he asked, “You have the look of a man with a heavy load, man. What else can I get you?”

  I pulled a wad of cash and slapped it down on the bar. I wouldn’t be ready to leave for a while. “Well,” I said slowly, thinking it over. “We can start with two more shots of whiskey, and then you can ask me again.”

  13

  Jeanette

  Time sure flew by when you were entertaining two drunk old ladies. I actually really enjoyed myself, and even allowed myself to have two whole margaritas and had to admit, Gerta had been right. Her margaritas were a lifetime work of art. They went down tangy, yet smooth, then exploded ten minutes later like napalm when I stood up to use the restroom and realized that someone had tilted the room about thirty degrees from where it had been.

  Jolene called me “Stumbles” for the rest of the night. I couldn’t even be mad at her for it. They were a joy to be around, each woman telling me stories of husbands, former lovers, and tons of stories about Toledo. Those women knew everyone, holy crap. They were like a little elderly information network, it was amazing. I learned all about the tattoo shop where Gerta got her work done, which happened to be the same place where Angel had gotten hers. I remembered hearing about the barbershop baby fiasco, and it was just as funny hearing Jolene tell the story as it was when I heard it from Angel. I learned about the old lady that owned the best Italian restaurant in town, and how her only son had turned out to be such a waste of space, but she had a family she was proud of, regardless. And how the bar next door to the tattoo shop had almost fallen into ruin until the handsome young son of the owner came into town and picked it up out of the ashes of fiscal failure.

  I also learned that Gary in the apartment below me had been courting Gerta, who hadn’t yet moved on from the death of her fifth husband a few years back. She thought it had been long enough, and maybe she would let Gary take her out since he had been so earnest. “He’s a lovely man,” she’d said, while Jolene snorted into her margarita glass and mumbled something under her breath about “gonna break a hip if you don’t slow it down.” I didn’t ask her to repeat herself, old ladies having a more exuberant sex life than I did, which was just a notch over nothing, was too pathetic to say out loud. Good for them though.

  After I said goodnight to the ladies and heard the two different apartment doors shut downstairs, I was truly alone for the first time. The silence in the small apartment was deafening, and I wondered what the hell I was going to do with myself. I wasn’t tired yet, and I was in an unfamiliar place. A hot bath would be calming, but it was an apartment bathtub, and I didn’t think I would be very comfortable trying to get a good hot soak in a tub the size of a washbin, so I opted for a shower instead. There’s something to be said about beauty rituals, shaving legs, applying body lotion, brushing my hair until it lay glossy against my shoulders – it was calming. And when I slipped into the new adorable and - so Angel like - shorts and cami set I felt like a new woman.

  There was no way, even if he didn’t believe Dino that Jeanette Clary was not Gabriella Hensley that David would sniff out my hiding place. Not tonight anyway. Tomorrow was a different day, and a different situation. I was strong now, I had spent the last six years training my body like a weapon. And even if he did somehow manage to get me alone, all I had to do was fight until help came, because I was not alone. Other people knew. Other people believed me.

  I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

  It still scared the shit out of me though, when the entire apartment blazed with light, until I realized it was a car pulling up to the front of a building. Angel’s apartment faced the street and was located on the corner, so any traffic coming from the opposite direction shone their headlights directly into the windows if the curtains were parted at all. No wonder those old ladies kept an eye on who was coming and going, it was better than a damn doorbell.

  I peeked out the window from behind one of the thin billowy curtains, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw who got out of the taxi. He had his back to me as he paid the driver through the open passenger side window, but I recognized those shoulders and back. I’d stared at them as he walked away from me enough to know who it was, swaying a bit as he walked up the sidewalk to the apartment and hit the buzzer on the front door.

  Holy shit it was Dino - and was he drunk?

  The buzzer beeped to the apartment and I prayed to whatever God was listening that it was only loud in this apartment and not the whole building. I pushed the button by the door that would unlock the downstairs and looked around frantically, at what I wasn’t sure. I was in a tiny pair of shorts and a cami top with no bra. He had seen me naked already once that day, but for some reason I felt so much more vulnerable in these sweet feminine pajamas than I did previously. I needed something else to wear, some armor or chain mail or even a fucking hoodie would work.

  It was a very unfamiliar apartment, I was reminded of that as I was running to the back bedroom to get something to throw on and stubbed my toe on the part where the kitchen linoleum changed to the carpet. I launched myself across the floor, cracking my knee on the same damned end table that Gerta had put her pitcher on earlier that afternoon.

  Stars exploded behind my eyes at the same time I heard a loud knocking on the apartment door. Shit! Double Shit! If he kept pounding on the door like that he was going to wake up the whole building. As it was I wasn’t all the way sure Gerta and Jolene wouldn’t be standing behind him in the hallway. Limping my way to the door I swung it open, nervous about what to even say to him after I had apparently insulted him this afternoon.

  Hot damn he was delicious. He’d traded his button-down look for another pair of dark wash jeans with a tight black V-neck shirt. The kind that looked like it had been painted on with a brush, but in reality was probably super soft and comfortable. I wanted to touch it. Shit. I hadn’t even said “Hello” or “Come in” or even moved from the doorway yet. I was frozen, tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and I was afraid if I did try to speak all I would be able to say was “Please.” Because I was two breaths away from begging him to touch me like he did earlier, all from looking at those golden-brown eyes. Those eyes that had gone from slightly unfocused and tipsy when I opened the door, to laser sharp and angry as he looked me up and down.

  “Why the fuck are you bleeding?”

  What? Bleeding? What the hell was he talking about? I looked down and saw a thin trail of blood trickling down from a small, but ugly looking scrape right above my knee. Oh, I must have just done that. My breath hitched on the inhale as I looked at the angry red cut. It never hurts until you look at it. Now it stung like a bitch.

  I was barely able to muffle the screech as I was swooped up in Dino’s arms and plunked softly on the couch, the door shutting loudly behind him. I cringed at the noise, but Dino just moved about the apartment wordlessly, ripping off a paper towel in the kitchen and running cool water over it, then returning to the living room to kneel in front of my and dab gently at my leg.

  “It’s not so bad, I just fell because I’m not used to this apartment in the dark.”

  “Should have turned on the light,” he murmured as he went about his nursing duties, gently poking at the small cut and blotting away with the wet towel. Satisfied that he had cleaned it properly, and that it really was just a small cut and nothing major, he looked up at me, still kneeling on the floor while I sat on the couch.

  He was clearly under the influence. I could smell the light odor of whiskey in the air around him. He didn’t reek of it, and it wasn’t even an unpleasant smell, but it was enough for me to know that he had been drinking. I shouldn’t be so turned on by him kneeling on the floor, especially when he was doing something as clinical as tending my superficia
l wound, but it wasn’t fair that he leaned in super close, pressed his lips softly against that tiny cut above my knee, and like a cat, licked it. Instead of being sandpaper and rough, his tongue was smooth and firm and I couldn’t stop the low moan that escaped at the memory of just what that tongue had done to me not more than a few hours before.

  “Jesus, Dino,” I said breathlessly. “Only animals do that.”

  “We’re all animals, Jeanette.”

  Then he crossed his arms over my thighs and rested his chin on them, and looking up at me with sad eyes filled with a million emotions he said, “I’ve had a hard day, Jeanette, and I could use a hug.”

  Well that was unexpected. And surprisingly adorable. Drunk Dino was a bit like a child, and I thought maybe there was nothing else in the whole world I would rather do, than hug all his worries away. I patted the cushion next to me on the couch, expecting him to have a seat, but instead he laid his large body across all the cushions, and put his head in my lap. It wasn’t a sexual gesture, him lying down on the couch with one arm flung across his eyes. It was exhaustion. I ran my fingers through his hair absently, I almost didn’t realize I was doing it, but it seemed to comfort him because even though I couldn’t see his eyes, his lips curved into a small smile and he started breathing slow and evenly. Dino was relaxing. In my lap.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked after about five minutes of silence, with just the two of us on the couch breathing at each other.

  “That’s the one thing I’m never allowed to do, Jeanette. I’m not supposed to tell anyone anything, but I really want to tell you. Can I show you, Jeanette? Can I tell you who I really am?” It was heartbreaking, somehow, this admission from Dino. The only response I could give was that one word I had to swallow when I opened the door.

  “Please,” I whispered.