Over the years he'd been gone for her birthday, their anniversary — she doubted he even remembered when it was — Christmas, New Years, most national holidays. She'd gotten used to living without him around. Preferred it.
She hadn't had sex with him in nine months. When he was home, Sharon stayed on her side of the queen-size bed, her back to him, hoping he wouldn't touch her — thinking the last few times they'd tried to do it had been disastrous.
When he was home she felt like she was walking on eggshells. They'd have dinner, sitting across the table from each other, eating in silence. She'd say, "Come on, Ray, talk to me. How's the job?"
"Are you making conversation? You really want to know how the job is. Come on…"
"You've got to get out of there," Sharon said.
"I do, I lose my pension, everything I've worked for."
"You don't," Sharon said, "you're going to lose your mind."
"What do you care?"
He was right, she didn't. She'd given up. He was drinking Scotch, Dewar's with ice. "Dewar's-rocks," he'd say when he ordered a drink in a bar. He looked drunk, face puffy, eyes bloodshot. She said, "How many is that?"
"You counting my drinks now?"
"Somebody better." She was trying to remember why she married him. Trying to remember why she'd stayed with him so long-determined to get a divorce every time he left the house. But then changed her mind. Not sure why. It was weird, like he had some strange hold over her.
She lit a cigarette, sipped her wine and looked down the bar. There was a good-looking guy smoking a cigar, talking on his cell phone. He saw her looking at him and smiled. He closed the phone, put it in his pocket, got up with his drink and his cigar and came over to her. He was a big man and she liked big men.
He said, "Know what my horoscope said?"
Sharon said, "You’d fall in love with a mysterious blonde." She’d gone from blonde streaks to full blonde a month earlier and got more attention from men than she ever had in her life. Her mother thought she looked like a $20 hooker. Sharon wondered how her mother knew what hookers charged, but she liked her new look. Had her eyebrows done too, waxed and colored to match her hair. Sharon worked with a girl who dyed her muff with a product called Fun Betty that came in three colors. You could be red down there, brunette or blonde. Sharon thought that was going too far. She didn't care if the carpet and drapes didn't match. No guy she'd been with had ever mentioned it.
He said, "You're close. It said, 'You're starting to design a life for yourself that is truly custom-fit to your proclivities.'"
Proclivities, huh? She wondered if he had any idea what it meant. Sharon hadn't heard a guy use his horoscope as a pickup line in fifteen years. Maybe it was back in style. She said, "You just get a divorce?"
"No, I just met you." He puffed on the cigar and blew a cloud of smoke over the bar top. "Where're my manners?" He held up the cigar, pinched between his thumb and index finger. "This bother you?"
"I like it," Sharon said. "Reminds me of my father and uncles."
He said, "Good, we'll get along great. My name's Joey, by the way. Joey Palermo."
He offered his hand and she shook it. It was warm and dry and wrapped around hers.
She wondered why a grown man would want to be called
Joey. "I'm Sharon Vanelli," she said.
"How do you like that? Two Italian kids meeting by chance, or is it fate?" Joey still working the horoscope angle, that being there at the same time was somehow pre-ordained.
Joey said, "Where'd you grow up at?" He gestured with his right hand, kept it going while he talked, like he couldn't talk without it.
"Bloomfield Hills."
"So you're rich and beautiful."
"My dad was in PR at Chrysler." She almost said Chrysler's, out of habit.
"You in PR?"
"I sell ad space in magazines." She finished her wine.
"How about another one?"
"Chardonnay," Sharon said. "Sonoma-Cutrer."
Joey raised his hand, got the bartender's attention, pointed to his glass and Sharon's. The bartender nodded and went to work.
"What magazines?"
"Heard of Rolling Stone?"
"No. What's that?" He grinned. "'Course I heard of it. Bought the issue had Jessica Alba on the cover."
"You like beautiful, tall, thin movie stars, huh?"
"Who doesn't?"
He puffed on the cigar, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.
"Not everyone," Sharon said and winked.
"She don't got nothing on you," Joey said, and winked back.
He wasn't going to be mistaken for a p-t laureate, but she appreciated what he was trying to say.
Joey said, "What do you listen to?"
"On the way here, the new Wilco CD." She had 3,500 songs on her iPod.
"I've heard of them," Joey said.
"What do you like?'
"Old stuff, Frank and Bobby."
Frank and Bobby. Using their first names like they were friends. He wore a blue button-down-collar shirt with the top three buttons undone showing chest hair and a gold chain with the letters "SJ" hanging from it. "What's SJ stand for?"
He grinned and put the nub of his cigar in the ashtray. "Swinging Joey."
"That's your nickname, huh? What's it mean, you like to dance, like to have a good time?"
"Something like that."
The bartender put fresh drinks in front of them. Joey picked his up, and clinked her glass and said, "Salute"
Sharon sipped her wine and said, "You from Sicily?"
"Huh?"
"Your name's Palermo," Sharon said. "Isn't that the capital?"
"I'm from St Clair Shores. Used to go to Tringali's with my mother, she'd buy her tomatoes, or Pete amp; Frank's."
She said, "Ever go to Club Leo?"
"Club Leo? We were there like every other weekend, weddings and parties. My dad and the owner were buds. We called him Uncle Phil. You went there too, huh? I wonder if we met before."
"It's possible," Sharon said. She pictured the place, an old Knights of Columbus hall, spiffed up, cinderblock on the outside, fake stucco inside. A dance floor and long tables and buffet food, three meats: baked chicken and pork chops and sliced beef that looked like shoe leather. The men drinking wine out of little juice glasses. "Remember dancing to Louis Prima? I can hear him doing 'Felicia No Capicia' and 'Buona Sera'." She remembered dancing with her uncles who smelled like cigars and BO.
Joey said, "When'd you graduate high school?"
"You want to know how old I am? Ask me. I'm thirty-eight."
"How old are you really?"
Sharon gave him a dirty look. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hey, take it easy, I thought you were like twenty-nine, thirty tops."
It was a line but Sharon liked hearing it.
"Ever been married?"
"Once. I'm separated." In Sharon's mind it was true. That's how she felt.
"Now I live in Harrison Township," Joey said. "Place on the lake."
Sharon could picture it, mammoth house on a postage-stamp lot, nouveau-retro. "Let me guess," Sharon said. "You've got a thirty-foot Wellcraft docked behind it."
"It's a Century," Joey said, "and it's a thirty-two-footer. How'd you know?"
How'd she know? He was a wop from the east side. "What do you do?"
"Little of this, little of that." He sipped his drink, looked like vodka on the rocks with a twist. "Want to go somewhere?"
Sharon was thinking, who was this guy lived in a five-thousand- square-foot house — not that his taste was any good — on Lake St Clair, had nothing but leisure time or so it seemed?
He called her four, five times a day, said, "How you doing?"
And Sharon would say, "Same as I was when you called fifteen minutes ago."
"Baby, I miss you. Tell them you're sick, we'll go to the casino." Or he'd be at the track or a Tigers day game, he'd say, "I gotta see you. Take the afternoon off, I
'll send a car."
She'd been going out with him for three weeks and it was getting serious. They'd meet at noon, check into a hotel a couple times a week and spend two hours in bed, screwing and drinking champagne. It was something, best sex she'd ever had in her life. He did things to her nobody had ever done before. She'd say, where'd you learn that? And he'd say, you inspire me, beautiful. The only bad thing, he called her Sharona, or my Sharona. Everything else was great so she let it go.
They'd take his boat out on Lake St Clair and she'd sunbathe topless. Something she'd never done in her life and never imagined herself doing. She felt invigorated, liberated. He always told her she looked good, complimented her outfit. Showered her with gifts, bought her clothes and jewelry. She felt like a teenager again. They'd meet and talk and touch each other and kiss. She was happy for the first time in years. She had to be careful. Ray, the next time he came home, might notice something and get suspicious. Why're you so happy? she could hear him saying — like there was something wrong with it.
But this relationship with Joey also made her nervous.
Things were happening too fast. She was falling for him and she barely knew him, and she was married.
Joey drove a Cadillac STS with the big engine. He liked to drive fast, too, like a high-school kid, always flooring it, burning rubber. He'd have a few drinks, nail it and the tires would squeal and he'd get a big grin on his face.
She said, "What're you running?"
"469-horsepower V8," he said.
She said, "What's its ET?"
"Jesus, you know cars, huh? I don't know what its ET is. Never been timed."
Her dad used to take her to Detroit Dragway when she was a kid to see the nitromethane-burning fuel dragsters, fuelies that went zero to sixty in two tenths of a second. Nine seconds in the quarter mile, its ET, elapsed time.
Her dad said you could tell the guys that burned nitro. When they took off, it smelled like acid. Nitro isn't a fuel, it's an explosive. It would blow off cylinder heads like a hat off your head.
Her dad's interest: most of the stock blocks were 426 Hemis, an engine Chrysler made.
One day they went to Nino's for groceries and then drove to Joey's place, this atrocious-looking, fake brick neo-colonial. He popped the trunk and as they were unloading the bags of groceries, Sharon noticed a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger that was stained with something red. She said, "What's on your bat? Is that blood?"
He told her he played on a softball team and one of his teammates got hit in the face by a pitch. That's where the blood came from. She knew you didn't use a wooden bat to play softball, but didn't really think about it at the time. But then Joey had his friends over and everyone had a nickname.
There was Hollywood Tony.
Joey said, "Ain't he a good-looking kid?"
There was "Big Frankie" and "Cousin Frankie." They were cousins who looked like twins. Sharon said, "How do you tell them apart?"
"What do you mean?" Joey said. "It's easy."
There was "Joe the Pimp" and "Skippy" and "Paulie the Bulldog." "Fat Tony," who was thin, and "Chicago Tony," who was fat, and "Tony the Barber" who didn't cut hair. They all drove Caddys and had money and hung out with hot young girls who looked like models or strippers. Sharon had heard of some of the guys, knew they were mobsters.
She remembered Jack Tocco, the don, coming in Club Leo one time with his entourage, and the whole place stopped, people looked like they were frozen, the men, her father included, paying homage to the man, the boss of all bosses.
She said, "Joey, what the hell do you do? You connected?"
He said, "To what?"
"The Mob?"
He never answered the question. They were on his boat called Wet Dream, that's how imaginative he was, looking out at the lake, a couple miles offshore, Canada somewhere in the distance, sun setting, red highlights on the horizon, Sharon thinking she'd gotten herself in too deep and shouldn't see him any more. He got up and went below and she was trying to think of what to say to him.
He came back on deck with a bottle of champagne and two flutes three-quarters filled and handed one to her.
She said, "What's the occasion?"
Joey said, "I've been thinking about this for a while. I hope you have, too."
He put the bottle in a cooler that was on deck. He got down on one knee and looked up at her.
"Will you marry me?"
He clinked her glass and took a sip. She did, too.
"Be careful," he said. "There's something in there."
Sharon saw it at the bottom of the flute, floating just above the stem. She knew what it was.
"It's our anniversary," Joey said. "Five weeks from the day we met."
Joey was a party boy. This was the last thing she would've expected. She said, "I've got to tell you I'm a little surprised. I thought you were seeing other girls, too."
"Not since I met you, babe. When I saw you I got hit by a tornado, a fucking hurricane."
She didn't know what else to do so she drank the champagne and felt the ring tickle her mouth, bobbing in the bubbles. When her champagne was gone, she turned the glass upside down and caught it, a diamond ring, a big one.
He said, "Put it on."
And she did, the biggest engagement ring she'd ever seen.
"Three fucking carats," he said.
He was grinning, holding his champagne glass by the stem. "Had it made special. What do you think?"
Chapter Four
McCabe waited at the bus stop on Via Trionfale with a heavyset gray-haired woman wearing a black dress. She was holding hands with a young girl in a school uniform who looked nine or ten. The woman wore dark translucent stockings and he could see the hair on her legs matted against the fabric.
Two tradesmen in blue coveralls were smoking, a slight breeze blowing it toward the woman. She glanced at the men, fanning her face. They dropped their cigarettes on the sidewalk and stepped on them as the bus pulled up. The doors opened and people got off and McCabe and the others got on.
The bus was packed, siesta over, people going back into the city to work. McCabe stood leaning against the rear window, looking down the aisle, the air thick with the smell of body odor. At times it was so heavy he had to breathe through his mouth.
He watched traffic approach, looking out the rear window, helmeted riders on Vespas and Lambrettas coming up close to the bus then gunning their motorbikes, hearing the throaty whine of their engines at high rpms as they whipped by. The bus drove down Via Cola di Rienzo, over the river and through the giant arches of Flaminia and stopped in Piazza del Popolo. McCabe got off and walked across the square to Rosati.
He sat at a sidewalk table, sipping a Moretti in a stemmed glass, taking in the scene, studying the obelisk that was brought to Rome by Augustus after the conquest of Egypt, appreciating the simplicity of it. Beyond the obelisk was the Porta del Popolo, a giant arch carved out of the Aurelian Wall, the original perimeter of the city.
He watched pigeons land in the piazza in front of the churches, strutting and bowing on their little red feet, blue- gray feathers flecked with red. He once saw a show on pigeons on the Nature Channel and remembered some amazing pigeon facts: they could fly fifty miles an hour and they came in seven different colors and when they had sex, the female bent down and the male climbed on top, flapping his wings for balance, saying "Coo roo-croo coo."
At a table to his right, a balding old dude in a suit was having a conversation with a young girl who looked like a model, a bottle of wine in an ice bucket next to the table. Rosati was known as the place wealthy Italian men brought their mistresses during the week, and their wives on weekends. He watched two stylish girls, early twenties, get out of a taxi and move past him on their way into the cafe. He turned and checked them out and they turned back and smiled, and sat a few tables behind him. He was thinking about buying them a drink when he saw a girl coming across the square.
Fixed his attention on her moving toward him from
Canova. And although cars and motorbikes zipped around, all he saw was the girl coming toward him like a scene in a movie. The girl wearing sunglasses and tight black capris and a white tee-shirt, hair combed back, tied in a ponytail. She reminded him of Manuela Arcuri, Manuela with streaked hair. McCabe held on her, gaze locked on her as she came closer, maybe fifty yards from where he sat at a front table.
He saw a motorcycle appear, entering the square from Via del Babuino conscious of the throaty brat-brat of its exhaust, muffler going bad. It made a ninety-degree turn, coming fast behind the girl, two riders on it. She heard it too, and switched her bag from her left shoulder to her right, the motorcycle coming up behind her now, going right, surprising her, the passenger on the back grabbing the bag, yanking it off her shoulder, the girl trying to hang onto it, and then letting go.
McCabe got up and moved between two BMWs parked in front of the cafe, and went into the square as the motorcycle approached. It was heading for Via di Ripetta. He stepped in front of it, and as the bike tried to swerve around him, he reached out and grabbed the passenger's arm and pulled him off the back and took him down on the cobblestone surface. The guy was trying to get up, but McCabe was bigger and stronger, knees on his chest, holding him down, a skinny teenager with a big nose, wearing a striped soccer jersey, looking up at him, stunned and afraid.
McCabe pulled the girl's purse out of his hand and now the girl ran up and started kicking him in the ribs, swearing in Italian. McCabe got off him and watched her. The kid tried to cover up and then scrambled to his feet, running, the girl going after him, letting him go. She yelled something in Italian, but the kid didn't look back.
McCabe handed her the purse, a black shoulder bag that said Prada Milano, silver metal in a black triangle on the side. She stared at him, studying him.
"What you did was very courageous. How can I repay you?"
McCabe could think of a few ways. He said, "Have a drink with me." She was better-looking up close, about his age, early twenties.
All He Saw Was the Girl Page 3
