She started to sing.
“Going to the cha-pel, and I’m gonna get married…”
TWO
Michael Cicero moved very slightly under his bedding. It was hard to move a body like his lightly. He was built for the boxing ring, not subtle ballerina-like shifts. But this morning he was motivated to try and shuffle lightly out of bed. For one thing, he had a hangover that was threatening to blow up his skull, and he figured that if he moved carefully enough, he might appease it. For another, there was a naked girl in his bed. On the face of it, that was not too bad a way to wake up. The trouble was, he couldn’t remember her name.
He put his foot down gingerly on the bare hardwood floors of the tiny apartment. Glancing to his right, he saw two discarded rubbers about a foot from the bed. He grinned. One less thing to worry about, he thought, as he picked them up and threw them away. His place was minute, and not in the smartest area of town, but he kept it immaculately tidy. It was a matter of respecting yourself. Michael was big on respect; it was part of being Italian. He guessed it would be respectful to remember this chick’s name.
He scratched his dark head, but he still had no clue. What was the last thing he remembered? The Five Leafed Clover on Hudson, about eight P.M., St. Patrick’s Day and already a little buzzed. He must have picked her up there. Maybe she was Irish. The whole of Manhattan got a little bit Irish on March the seventeenth.
Michael padded to his bathroom, which was sectioned off from the rest of his studio apartment by a dark wooden screen, and retrieved his robe. It was thick navy toweling. He did not like to be seen nude in the mornings by women he didn’t know in any sense other than biblically. Cicero wasn’t vain, and he had no idea how good he looked in the robe. The dark color picked out his hazel eyes, a legacy from his French mother, rimmed with thick black lashes that were pure Italian. He would never be a pretty boy; his nose was crooked from where a Second Dan black belt had smashed up the bridge one Friday night, and he was big, too, with weightlifter’s arms and thick kickboxer’s thighs. The type of teenage girl who doted on Leonardo DiCaprio never looked twice at him.
But that was OK, because he didn’t like them, either. Michael liked women. Juicy, curvy girls like the one in the bed. Her face was buried in the pillow, but she had a nice handful of breasts and a gorgeous tight ass curving out of a flat midriff. He felt his groin stir slightly. Even drunk, his radar for women was pretty good. She had dyed hair, which he normally didn’t like, but with a body like that, he could excuse the lapse.
The dehydration started to kick in. Michael took a seltzer from the fridge and drank it straight down, barely pausing for breath. He felt slightly more human, and set the coffeepot to brew while he took a quick, quiet shower. The girl was snoring softly; she had probably been as out of it as he was. He shaved and looked at himself in the small mirror, then dressed in a white shirt and black suit. It wasn’t perfect, but it fit. He had six suits, all the same make and cut, three navy and three black. That way you didn’t have to worry about what you wore in the mornings.
Michael liked efficiency, especially when he had to get in to work. It was his own firm, so nobody was going to fire him; but that was no excuse for slacking. He reported to the mirror, and Michael Cicero looked like a tough boss. He was thirty and was going to make his business work, or drop dead trying. It might be small, but it was still his. He dressed and acted for what he wanted his publishing firm to be.
The coffee finished perking as he fixed his cuff links. He got the shirts sent over from a woman in England, an old girlfriend, married to another man now but still a little in love with him. Michael preferred the European style of shirts, with holes in the cuffs for links to pull them together. He had to walk up six flights to his studio apartment, but his shoes were shined once a week, his hair was short, and his dress was as smart as it could be without any real money.
You didn’t mess with Michael Cicero, in his office or out of it. He poured two mugs of hazelnut coffee, black and steaming, and took one over to the woman, shaking her awake gently, holding the liquid under her nose.
“Wake up, sugar.” He grinned at his own foolishness. You really didn’t need a name at all. All girls had the same name. Sugar, aka Baby. It worked with everyone from old ladies to high-school cheerleaders.
“Ohh.” She groaned, and sat up, which made her small tits sway in a manner that almost made him decide to be late for work. “Where am I?”
Michael wrapped her fingernails around the mug. They were too long. He couldn’t stand the vogue for girls to have these take-your-eye-out monstrosities at the ends of their hands. He was scratched all along his back, the soap had stung this morning. Guess she had enjoyed herself.
“You’re on Leonard Street, downtown between West Broadway and Hudson.”
“Sure,” she said, uncertainly.
Her eyes focused and she gave a little start, like it was coming back to her. Her nipples hardened into tiny pink buds, and she drew back her shoulders and tossed her long hair.
“Oh Mikey, you were so great. I don’t think it’s ever been like that.”
He passed his rough hands over her skin, cupping her breasts, and kissed each nipple. Hell, it was only polite. She gave a delicious little shiver and threw back the cotton sheets invitingly. There was a nice curve to her leg, but her toenails were painted, which was a bad sign. She was the kind of girl who was great to fuck, but not to talk to.
“You flung me over your shoulder and carried me right out of Mick Rooney’s!” She giggled. “You’re very strong.”
Memory flooded back. Her name was Denise. Great. He hadn’t been wearing beer goggles last night, but it looked like he’d had beer earmuffs on. She was giggling and pouting and she used a breathy, little-girl voice that was very annoying.
“Thanks, Denise. You were great, too.”
Her face fell. “It’s Elise.”
“I said Elise. But drink your coffee now, baby. I’d love to stay and play but I have to get to work.”
“Can’t you take the day off?”
“No,” Michael said, bluntly.
He was remembering the sex now. It had been OK; he’d moved her around the room pretty good. She had clutched and moaned at him. At the time he had hardly noticed her scratching him.
Elise stood up and bent over, picking up her scattered miniskirt and ankle boots and tight vest and jean jacket. Michael moved closer to her and rubbed his hands over her ass. She had a great ass, definitely. She was eager and thrust back against him while he played with her.
“Can I see you again?”
“Sure. Get dressed, and I’ll go get a pen.”
She obediently tugged on her clothes, not bothering to take a shower. Michael winked at her as he made a big show of writing the number down, then walked her to the door, opening it firmly as she clutched at him.
Another ship in the night he never wanted to see again. He drank a second straight mug of black coffee, letting it slightly scorch his throat to wake him up. He was late, and he fought back the queasiness from the toxins swimming around his system.
The early rush hour traffic beeped and honked faintly six floors below him. Welcome to another morning in Manhattan.
*
Green Eggs Books was Michael’s dream. His father had a restaurant out on City Island, a popular place serving real southern Italian food, no Caesar salads, just herby bread and olive oil. He always left the bottle of Sambuca on the table with the espresso when his customers were done. It was a real good business, and his gelati were famous enough that he was thinking of adding an ice-cream parlor to the trattoria. He could have used the help, but Michael had doggedly gone his own path, so doggedly that the old man had given up. He complained, but he was proud. He liked the kid’s bullheadedness.
The fact was that Michael Cicero, unexpectedly, unusually, liked books. He had never read any as a kid; his dad was big on softball but not so big on the local library. When Michael’s mother died of breast cancer, he wa
s only four, and his father had struggled to bring up the boy and his two sisters and keep food on the table. They shopped cheap for the last cuts of chicken and meat that the stores discounted toward the end of the day, and Francesco cooked everything up in a few pots and the four of them dined like princes even though they lived like paupers. One day an aunt dropped by the apartment, and left a smoked ham and an old encyclopedia she didn’t want. Michael was bored, and he started to read.
Within a few months he had soaked up most of it. He was like a sponge, and outpaced most of the kids at Junior High School 124, a mundane name for a mundane school in the Bronx. After that it was a scholarship to St. Jacob’s and a mile walk with another on the bus, there and back, every day. Michael loved it. He was out of the apartment, and he really got a chance to read. He had a passion for stories. Ancient Roman histories, translations of Alexander the Great, fantasies, novels. He read Les Miserables in ten days straight, doing nothing but reading, staying up sometimes till two A.M. using a candle by his bedside instead of the flashlight which might have alerted his dad.
College would have been nice but Michael was white and male and free of obvious disabilities, unless you counted a disastrous haircut and a passion for Kung-Fu movies. He lost scholarship places to women with worse grades than his, and his natural sexism deepened. There were always enough girls hanging around for him to be cocky and arrogant; though he was bookish he was also tough. He didn’t enjoy team sports because he was too much of a loner, but he started curling his first weights at nine years old and never really stopped.
When he was thirteen Michael took up karate. There was no point wasting time with hockey and ball when the school gang beat him up for his lunch money every second day. Two months into his training, Michael kicked the hell out of the ringleader, and never got bothered again. He even beat up a few kids himself. If he ever looked back he might have been ashamed, but Michael didn’t waste too much time examining his conscience. That was then: that was life on the street. Kick or be kicked.
The girls spoiled him. They did his homework, and tidied up his room. He had a way of blunt speaking some chicks seemed to enjoy. He paid on dates, even if a date consisted of a soda and a candy bar at the local five and dime, but he didn’t compromise. If a girl complained about his karate schedule, they broke up. It never bothered Michael, because there was always another honey right there to take her place.
He thought of women as weak and pretty, future wives and mothers. He didn’t mind if a girl was smart. In fact, he couldn’t stand stupidity. He wasn’t great at the bar pickup game, because if a girl was stupid, Michael had an irresistible urge to tell her so.
Last week he’d hit some place on the West Side with his friend Big Steve who lived out in Westchester. Big Steve was still teasing him about the way the chick of the night had sat next to him, put her hand on his forearm and, gazing into his eyes, spilled out the story of her screwed-up life. Michael turned to her and said, “You know, I really don’t want to hear your sob stories. I just met you.” She was offended. Too bad. He was no good at pretending to be interested in bullshit.
The fact that women took the scholarship places when they had lower grades made him angry, but he took it on the chin. Columbia offered him a place to read political science, but he hated the attitude of the professors, so he left. In the end he attended a local college, and worked four jobs to pay for his tuition. His father hung Michael’s diploma on the kitchen wall in his restaurant. It meant even more to Francesco than to Michael; his father had been a peasant from Naples right off the boat, and now his son was a Master of Arts. He backed off from the restaurant idea. His daughters, Maria and Sophia, had both made good marriages. Francesco was sure that Michael would do well, too.
Michael had taken out a bank loan and founded a tiny publishing company, for children’s books, operating out of the East Village. He had faith that there was a huge market for children that just wasn’t being reached. Kids like himself, kids who would love to read if only they got the opportunity, if they could be taught about letters by something other than Sesame Street. The market was out there for sure. He just had to find it.
He hired one assistant and talked to a friend from college, Joe. Joe’s father owned a printing press and agreed to put out a small print run if Michael could come up with something to print. That was the trouble. He advertised for writers in the Village Voice, and got flooded with rubbish, full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. It was a huge mistake. Michael got his phone number changed so he didn’t waste all day telling so-called children’s novelists why their stuff wasn’t going to make it.
After two months he had impatient creditors, a bored secretary, and not much time. The truth was, he knew nothing about publishing.
Francesco gave him the idea that saved him.
“Sure, there’s good stuff out there,” he said, considering it pretty hard for a man who mostly read menus. “It’s just most of the good writers are dead. They died hundreds of years ago. Nobody writes like that anymore.”
It was the answer. Michael bolted from his seat and drove back to his office. He could re-issue children’s classics, and never have to pay the writers a cent. Edward Lear was as dead as a dodo, and after a while his stuff went into what was called “public domain”—you didn’t have to pay for it. It took him a week to find Seth Horowitz: a smart, gay kid at NYU with an incredible talent for drawing. He knocked out a version of The Owl and the Pussycat in three days. Joe’s father gave them a break on the printing run, and Green Eggs had its first book.
Then all he had to do was sell it.
He didn’t have a dollar for advertising, but he had passion. Michael loaded up copies of Owl into a knapsack and cycled around every kindergarten and library in Manhattan. For every nine “no”s, he got one “yes.” After a month he had sold every copy.
About now, Michael was earning just enough to pay his assistant, his overhead and his rent, and even afford small luxuries like decent coffee. His big break could not be far away. He knew it. He walked down the rickety stairs of his pre-war apartment building to the street to spend one more day looking for it.
THREE
Diana settled back against the black leather of the chauffeur-driven Mercedes, squeezed her husband’s hand, and thought about New York.
Her things, what little there were of them, had already been shipped: real lavender bags and other small reminders of England, some new things from Chloe and Hussein Chalwar, and her wedding dress, dry-cleaned, boxed and pressed, to be presented perhaps to a daughter should she and Ernie ever get a minute to themselves to start working on one. Apart from that, she took very little. Only the Prada and Chanel had survived the move. What more perfect excuse could you have to start your wardrobe from scratch than emigrating to a new country? Ernie was still buried in his new reports and balance sheets for Blakely’s and just signed off whatever Diana wanted. And to conquer New York, nothing but the latest stuff would do.
Her engagement ring, a not so subtle diamond rock, now glittered next to a thin band of platinum. Diana glanced down at it smugly. Her status had taken rather a leap. She was now Diana Foxton, Mrs. Ernest Foxton. In fact, there was a large box of creamy Smythson writing paper in the boot, zipped away in her Gucci luggage (Louis Vuitton was so yesterday), with her new name emblazoned all over it. Diana crossed her legs under her sage-green Joseph suit, her string of pearls at her neck, and tried to get used to it. To be honest, she preferred her maiden name. A part of her missed being Diana Verity. But that was silly; married women in her circles didn’t keep their own names, particularly when they weren’t going to work.
“Do you think they’ll have got our place ready, darling?” she asked. “I need a really good bath when I get off a plane. I always feel so sticky and bloated.”
“’Course they will.” Ernie had his nose in a report and answered her absently. “I told you, the supervisor’s hired us a temporary maid. She’ll have done everything, even stocked
the fridge.”
“I bet there won’t be any bubble bath,” Diana pouted. “I should have stocked up before I left.”
“I can’t be expected to sort out your toiletries,” Ernie said, rather shortly.
“I know that, sweetie.”
Diana glanced out of the window as London swept past and wondered how much she would miss it. Susie had given her a big hug at the end of the reception at Brown’s, and told her the scene would never be the same. She might miss Catherine Connor and Emma Norman, her girlfriends who used to drink with her at the Groucho and Soho House. But there was only so many times you can go to the Met Bar, and that old Liam and Patsy, Jude and Sadie, Tara and Tamara thing was just … played out. I want fun, Diana thought impetuously, pushing her dark hair back from her blue eyes, sweeping a soft hand finished with a plain French manicure across delicate cheekbones dusted over with a sheer tinted moisturiser and just a hint of bronzing powder. Her reflection in the rear-view mirror showed that the Stila lip gloss she had chosen for today was a definite improvement on her old matte look. She resolved to wear nothing but lip glosses from now on in. Or at least until she got bored with them.
So the clubs were done. What about London’s culture? There was an awful lot of it, but what Londoner ever bothered to go? The British Museum, the National Gallery … just pretty piles of stone you drove past on your way down to the King’s Road. She might miss her family, but Daddy had been pretty sour once the wedding bills had finally come in, and Ma was still bugging her about Ernie not being the right chap, and her sisters Iseult and Camilla both thought she should get a job, which was insanity, of course. Why should one get a job when you could, instead, spend your days shopping and lunching and having fun?
Diana batted away all the criticism. It was mostly due to jealousy, anyway. Ernie was so dashing and so successful, the sad fact of the matter was they just couldn’t handle it.
For All the Wrong Reasons Page 2
