The Perfect Holiday

by Mia Ford

  “That’s right,” Jimmy grunted. He looked at me and wrinkled his nose like I was a bad smell. “Fucking college boy.”

  I almost told him to go fuck himself but decided to let it go. I wasn’t afraid of Jimmy, to the contrary, I kicked his ass when we were in high school and I could do it again today. He was all muscle and strong as a fucking ox, but in a fair fight he moved with the speed and grace of a sloth. One good punch to the nose or jaw and his knees would buckle like toothpicks. I just didn’t want to spend my Sunday afternoon picking his teeth out of my knuckles.

  Tony grinned at me, waiting for my reply. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to get into it with Jimmy, he downed the shot and wiped his lips on the back of his hand just as the waitress arrived with a full tray of shots and beers.

  Tony started talking smack to the waitress, who, unlike the dancers, was topless, but wearing a see-through thong that did very little to hide the outline of her neatly-trimmed dark pubes. The health department demanded the waitresses (all servers of beverages and food) cover their vaginas (for the purposes of sanitation), so Tony had found the see-through thongs online and bought them by the gross. He said it was his way of telling the health inspector to go suck a dick. Tony loved coming out on top.

  The waitress was a pretty brunette with small tits and a big smile named Bethany something or other. She had worked at Gino’s Gentleman’s Club for a few months and had spent a considerable amount of her off time in Tony’s bed or in the back seat of his car. He said she wasn’t bad for backup pussy and could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, which seemed to be all that Tony was thinking about at that moment.

  I picked up my beer and sat back in the plush booth to let my eyes go around the large room. I heard myself sigh, but I wasn’t sure if it was from boredom or disgust. It was barely two in the afternoon on a freakin’ Sunday and the place was already filling up with men ready to spend their whole paycheck or max out their credit cards on the two things that made the world go around: booze and pussy.

  I looked away when Tony pulled the waitress onto his lap and started fondling her tits while she stuck her tongue down his throat.

  One thought kept running through my mind.

  I was Nicky D’Angelo, the proverbial tall, dark and handsome Italian man, with a business mind second to none and a cock that would make most men envious and most women salivate. I had a Master’s Degree in Finance from Wharton. I lived in a luxury penthouse downtown and had my own limo and driver. I was the founder and CEO of a successful financial services company that had made me a multimillionaire before I was thirty years old. I was twice voted one of the city’s most eligible bachelors and had dated more beautiful women than I could even remember.

  I was young, rich, and had the world by the tail.

  So what the fuck was I doing here?

  One word: family.

  My full name is Nicholas Ramone D’Angelo. I had been called Nicky since the day I was born. In a big Italian family like mine, everybody has a nickname. You only hear your full Christian name when your mother is pissed off and screaming at you.

  Tony’s full name was Anthony Luigi D’Angelo; Tony for short. Jimmy Fist’s real name was James Orson White. He wasn’t Italian, but he got a nickname anyway, like naming the family pet. Jimmy was an Irish mick whose father worked for our grandfather as a bodyguard and enforcer. Jimmy grew up with us and Tony gave him the nickname Jimmy Fist because he used his fists more than he used his brain. It fits him still today.

  I’m the only son of Ricardo and Marina D’Angelo. Grandson of Luigi D’Angelo, and one of the heirs to the D’Angelo family fortune. The thing is, I don’t want anything to do with the family business or the family fortune. Unlike Tony and the rest of my shithead cousins, I prefer to make my own way in the world, not because I don’t want the money, but because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail.

  The D’Angelo family is involved in lots of businesses, some legit, most not. I knew all along growing up what my family did for money and while I didn’t involve myself in any of it, I certainly enjoyed the spoils.

  Family money put me through Yale, then through Wharton Business School, where I earned my Master’s in finance and graduated with honors. I started my company, Phoenix Capital, on family money and my first clients were my mother and father, then my uncles, and cousins. I manage their investment portfolios and retirement accounts. I make my money off their money.

  I know. I’m a fucking hypocrite, but I keep telling myself that once my company is firmly established with non-family clients, I’ll turn over the management of my family’s money to someone else. Until then, I’ll do the best fucking job for them that I can and pretend that I don’t know where the money comes from. And therein lies the issue because I can’t ignore the fact that much of my family’s wealth has come from the pain and suffering of others.

  The D’Angelo fortune was built on drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, gambling, racketeering, money laundering, extortion, and other more violent acts that I try not to think about. Like most criminal empires, it’s one that’s built on a house of cards that could come tumbling down at any time. One good jailhouse snitch or one random conversation picked up on a wiretap could bring the Feds to my grandfather’s door.

  I refused to take part in anything criminal. The money I managed for the family was done so legitimately, no money laundering here. I made damn sure every cent was vetted by my in-house counsel before accepting the wire transfer. I felt that I owed the family a debt for getting me here, and nurturing their fortunes, making them grow, was my way of paying them back.

  I also told myself that family was the reason that I was sitting in a bar surrounded by drunk, horny men, and naked women at two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Tony was my cousin, my best friend, and I loved him like a brother. He had asked me to come out for brunch and we ended up here, as we did most Sundays. And like most rationalizations I come to about my family, this one was bullshit, too. I enjoyed Tony’s company, but I also enjoyed the attention of the girls, even if I didn’t partake as much as he did.

  I’m a red-blooded American male with raging testosterone and a fondness for blondes with big tits and blue eyes; especially if those eyes are looking up at me while she has my cock in her mouth.

  I’d had my share of lap dances and I’d even fucked a few of the girls in the backroom, but I always went home alone, unlike Tony, who liked to caravan all the girls back to his place so he could have as many girls at a time as he wanted. And like a good cousin, he always invited me to come along.

  We’d done a lot of gangbanging in our younger days. Tony was like a carnival ride in bed. He liked to have a girl riding on his cock, a girl riding on his face, and a girl riding on each hand. I had to admit, it was pretty impressive to watch.

  The truth is, playing the field is getting a little old for me. I’d love to meet a nice girl and settle down, but it’s been my experience that women are more interested in what you can do for them than having a serious relationship. I’m surrounded by strippers and hookers and gold diggers who will do whatever I tell them to in the bedroom but expect a gratuity in exchange for spreading their legs to me.

  I’d love that ring, Nicky.

  Oh, look at that convertible.

  Wow, Nicky, wouldn’t I look great in that mink coat?

  I’d tried dating models, actresses, socialites and spoiled rich chicks, but they’re even worse because they don’t need your money. They act like you should be honored just to be fucking them. I swear, I fucked this chick you would recognize from TV and she just laid there while I fucked her. It was like shoving my cock into a corpse. It literally gave me the creeps.

  I was ready for something different.

  I needed a real woman, one with a brain as well as a body.

  One with ambitions and passions that rivaled my own.

  It wouldn’t hurt for her to have big tits and like it up the ass once in a while.

  Like
I said, I am a red-blooded American male.

  CHAPTER THREE: Katrina

  I left my father sitting alone at the table feeling sorry for himself and went downstairs to open the bar for the Sunday night crowd. Maybe I should have gotten up and given him a big hug and told him I loved him. Or reassured him that somehow, some way, we’d figure it out together and it would all be okay because that’s what families did, they put their heads together and came up with a solution when one of them had done something so incredibly stupid that it might get them all killed. Or at the very least I could have told him that I’d miss him when he was gone. Maybe I should have done all that, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. At least not yet. So it was tough luck, pops, but you’re getting what you deserve. Thanks for stealing my savings and ruining my life. You’re just the worst dad ever… you selfish prick.

  We opened at four on Sunday to give the churchgoers time to do their morning penance with God and have lunch with their families before coming in to drink with their pals and blow their grocery money on beer and wings.

  I hated the bar. I always had and always would so long as my life was tied to it. I hated that it was a haven for men like my father, who preferred the company of their drinking and poker buddies over their wives and kids; men who would steal money from their kid’s piggy bank to gamble it away without a moment’s regret. I hated the bar, but it was all we had and the only way my father could make a living. He had worked at the bar since he was a kid for my grandfather. He barely graduated high school and had never worked anywhere else. Then, as now, he was devoid of ambition and talent. Working the bar was all he knew. It was who he was. If my grandfather hadn’t died and passed on the deed and debts to him, he’d probably be selling shitty used cars in Jersey or pushing buggies at people out front of Wal-Mart. Granted, he drank up much of the inventory himself and always had his hand in the till, but without it, we probably would have been homeless long ago.

  We didn’t open the kitchen on Sunday because the fry cook, an elderly black man named Willis Jones who had worked there as long as my dad, insisted on taking the Lord’s day off, but we did a healthy business in beer and shots among the heathens who came in every Sunday like clockwork.

  Our clientele was loyal, I had to give them that; mostly older neighborhood guys and a few skanky older women not above blowing you for a couple of beers. They were the hard drinkers, the career drunks, the ones who had kept the place going all these years.

  Tommy’s was a dive bar, a shit hole, not one of those fancy uptown joints where drinks are mixed from recipes and secret formulas and cost twenty bucks a pop. We didn’t mix fancy drinks here. If you wanted something other than beer and liquor shots, you were shit out of luck. And asking for something fruity would get you tossed out on your ear.

  I had been behind the bar pulling taps for several hours when my father finally came downstairs. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, standing with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the world was bearing down on him. I glanced at the neon clock above the bar. It was almost seven. I figured he had been upstairs drinking all afternoon, but when he joined me behind the bar his eyes were clear and he wasn’t stumbling over his tongue.

  “I’ve got this,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you take a break.”

  I didn’t say a word. I just held up my hands and scooted past him to get out from behind the bar. I picked up a round tray and started walking around the bar collecting empties from the tables and booths. Several people said hi and I said hi back, but my mind was a million miles away. I wished that my body could join it.

  “Hey, Kitty Kat, what’s shaking?”

  I turned around to see my best friend Bethany coming toward me with her arms out and a big smile on her face. She waved at my dad, who gave her a nod, then gave me a hug and slid into the booth I was clearing.

  “I’ll have a Coke, waitress,” she said playfully. “And pour one for yourself. On me.”

  God bless her. Bethany was always so happy and upbeat, even though her home life was no better than mine and she worked as a topless waitress as a strip club downtown where men pawed and poked her like a grocery store cantaloupe.

  She’d told me horrible stories of nearly being raped in club’s restroom and having to fend men off with a drink tray. Then again, she bragged about the money she made on her back and on her knees working there.

  She was also a “favorite fuck” of one of the owners, she said, who showered her with gifts and hundred dollar bills. I couldn’t do what Bethany did, but she had her own place and her own car and her own money and wasn’t dependent on anyone other than herself, so maybe the trade-offs weren’t so bad.

  Bethany’s perpetual giddiness was infectious and I was so happy to see her I almost cried. She always had a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. She said life is what you make of it. It can be great or it can be shit. It’s all up to you. I would have loved to buy into that bullshit, today especially, but my life was nothing like I wanted it to be. Maybe because it wasn’t really my life. At least not yet.

  I took the tray of empties to the bar and came back with two glasses of ice filled with watered-down Coke. I set the Cokes on the table and slid into the booth across from her. She picked up a straw from the table, ripped off the paper, and stuck it into her glass, then guided the straw to her lips, which were painted a deep red.

  I took a sip of my Coke and looked her over. She worked the afternoon shift at Gino’s on Sunday and had obviously just come from work. She was wearing a pair of jeans so tight they looked painted on and a gypsy shirt that fell off one shoulder with no bra underneath. Her thick nipples poked through the material, though she didn’t seem to notice as much as everyone else did.

  When Bethany came into the bar every head turned and every mouth dropped open. The old men lusted after her and the skanky old ladies hated her guts. Bethany loved the attention, bad and good.

  There was glitter across the top of her chest and her lipstick was smeared, as if her mouth had recently been busy doing something other than sucking on a Coke straw. I could smell the smoke and sex beneath her heavy perfume.

  “Did you just get off work?” I asked, working up the best smile I could for her.

  “I did,” she said with a nod. She swizzled the straw around the glass and gave me a heavy sigh. “It was a slow afternoon, so the tips were shit, but Tony was there, so it was fun.”

  I rolled my eyes at the mention of his name. Tony was one of the club’s owners that Bethany slept with on occasion, and by “slept with” I meant that she screwed him in the back of his car or in the back of the club or anywhere else they happened to be when his cock got hard. She also gave him blowjobs under the table right there inside the club while it was full of people.

  She told me about all kinds of things they did that I would never have the guts to do. Granted, some of it made my panties damp and made my clit tingle, but on the sex scale Bethany and I were miles apart. I was still sitting at ground zero and she kept pushing the scale further and further out on the other end.

  I had never met Tony, but he sounded like a total rich jerk who treated her like total shit. She said he had a huge cock and loved rough sex. She called him “The Hammer” because of the way he “hammered his monster cock into her”. Her words, not mine. There were times she’d come in walking bowlegged, like she’d been hit in the twat with a bat, but she would just laugh it off and say Tony went up the back a little too hard, whatever that meant.

  The real allure for Bethany was that Tony had deep pockets and didn’t mind sharing the wealth. Bethany often came home with her pockets full of hundred dollar bills and new clothes and jewelry he’d bought her. In my mind, she was prostituting herself and I’d told her as much. She just smiled and said a girl had to do what a girl had to do to pay the bills. After the day I’d had, I wondered if I would soon be of the same frame of mind.

  “What’s bothering you, Kitty Kat?” she asked, frowning at me w
ith the straw between her lips. She had been calling me Kitty Kat since the fifth grade. She was the only one allowed to do so.

  I blinked at her. “What? Nothing’s wrong. Tell me about your day.”

  “Oh, fuck my day,” she said, setting the drink aside and wiping her lips on a napkin, staining it blood red. She reached across the table to put her hands on my arm. “Okay, cut the shit, home girl. This is me. I can read you like a book. What’s wrong?”

  I glanced toward the bar. My father wasn’t looking our way. He was lining up shots and pouring drafts for the regulars at the bar. His expression was blank, emotionless. Like me, he was just going through the motions. I saw him glance toward the door several times. I wondered if the people he owed the money to would actually come into the bar to collect. They might come in to intimidate him, but I doubted they’d do anything to him in front of a roomful of people. Rats and cockroaches avoided the light. When they came to collect, it would be in a back alley where there were no witnesses.

  Call me selfish, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that would be the end of it. Once he was dead, would they expect me to cover his debt? People like that don’t just write off seventy-five-grand like a business loss. They would get their money one way or another. And I was a twenty-one-year-old girl. Maybe I’d seen too many Liam Neeson movies, but I knew that I had assets that were worth money to people like that. The thought made me shiver.