by J. J. Murray
“Pittsburgh!”
“For the Polish food. I am getting a North American education in food, and Red is my tour guide. We’ll be going to Montreal sometime this month.”
And she doesn’t gain a single ounce. Have I mentioned that I hate her?
“I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone’s,” she says. “I’ve been happy for quite a while, thank you very much.”
“And to think Red said you were jaded,” I say, handing her a glass. “You’re anything but.”
“Oh, I just don’t know you yet.” She bumps me with one of those teenager’s hips of hers, and it hurts a little. I’ll probably bruise. Does she work out, too? Geez! I need to get into shape just to do the dishes around here.
“I’m not going to be here that long,” I say.
“Oh, you’ll be here at least for two more days, right?”
I nod.
“I’ll get cynical soon enough. I mean, here I am, a wahine ten thousand miles from home, a glorified gopher for the most brilliant sous chef in New York who’s not working as a sous chef in New York because he’s a boxer’s gopher, best man, trainer, and confidant. The folks in Barry’s Bay still think I’m a Chippewa Indian. How could I ever be jaded? I’m just a small town kaikamahine from Maui.”
I bump her back, and I’m sure it hurts me more than it hurts her. I like Lelani’s attitude and personality, but that forty-year-old body of hers needs a dent or something. And I bet that if she had even one kid, she wouldn’t get a single stretch mark. “What’s ka-ka-ma-he-nay mean?”
“It means ‘girl.’ A wahine is a lady or woman. I’m still just a girl.” She tosses back her mane of black hair.
“I hate you,” I say.
She laughs.
“Did I say that out loud?”
She nods.
“Don’t you age?”
“I try not to.”
I raise my eyebrows. “It must be Red’s cooking.”
“Yeah, he can cook.” She bites her lower lip. “But I’d like to think it’s more than that. Most of the Canadians I’ve met don’t look their age. It must be all the fresh, clean air and water up here.”
I may have to retire here if I can look like a teenager for the rest of my life. I may even get some purple contacts. I doubt I could ever grow my hair out as long as hers. What that must be like to take care of!
We finish up and go through the dining area into a great room filled with sofas and chairs semicircled in front of a huge stone fireplace, a flat screen TV attached to the stones above the mantle. A fire roaring, soft music playing, stars twinkling in the sky—this is one romantic room. But where are the men? I look past the dining area and see a screened porch where Red, DJ, and Dante are playing cards.
“What are they playing?” I whisper to Lelani, who drops onto a sofa and kicks up her long, toned legs.
“Cutthroat spades. It’s all they ever play.” She digs for and finds a remote control beneath the cushions. She clicks on the TV and tunes into the Food Channel. “I can sometimes tempt Red away from the game by watching this channel.” She looks at her man. “Probably not tonight. He must be losing.”
I peer at the screen, expecting to hear French. Nope. As rustic as this place is, it definitely has all the comforts of home.
I’m in a snooping mood, so I browse a bookcase full of scrapbooks and photo albums, each with a date on the spine. I pick the one with the earliest date and curl up near the fire where I can shoot glances at Dante and keep my feet warm at the same time.
The first scrapbook contains some ancient black-and-white pictures of scary-looking Italians with thick moustaches and serious-looking Mafia hats.
And those are just the women!
I’m kidding.
A little.
I think those are women.
I hope those are women.
Some of the men have bundles of rags on a cart. Others have carts filled with junk. There aren’t any names or captions, so I assume they’re some of Dante’s ancestors. I can’t tell where these people are, but it could be old New York City or Palermo or Rome or—
There is so much that I don’t know about Dante Lattanza.
Ah. A baby picture. Dante was cute, squinting even then. His nose was actually straight once? Amazing. Those eyes of his were penetrating even then. A family portrait takes up the entire next page. His mother is a frail-looking thing, his father a beast with hairy arms and eyebrows, a tuft of hair billowing up from under his shirt. The man probably had to shave his chest.
The next page contains a picture of his father in a military uniform. I do some mental math. I’ll bet his daddy served in Vietnam. Two more pictures of Dante and his mama follow. I flip through the rest of the book and see no more family pictures of any kind, just collages of Brooklyn scenes, some vaguely familiar. No brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no birthdays. Just…scenes. No more family portraits either. Did his daddy run off? Did he die in Vietnam? Did he stop taking pictures? What?
I smile at Dante’s first boxing picture. His red gloves are as big as his head, and he is so skinny! His shorts pass his knees, and his wife-beater T-shirt is three times too big. But those eyes…I’ve seen those eyes before. Those little black dots. I chuckle. His left hand is at his hip. That man hasn’t had a jab or any kind of defense from the very beginning.
I look up and catch Dante’s eyes flitting away from me. Hmm. He has been checking me out. I had better give him more to see then. Leisurely and she-wolflike, I go to the bookcase to get as many scrapbooks as I can carry, almost clearing out a row, flexing my butt and getting a little hippy on my walk back to the couch. Lelani taught me well. As I sit, I feel Dante’s eyes piercing me. That fire sure is hotter than it was a few minutes ago.
Is he still looking…? No.
Fewer pictures and more clippings fill the next scrapbooks I open. I see Dante winning the Golden Gloves and…Is that the Olympic trials? I didn’t know he tried out for the Olympic team. It’s quite an honor just to be part of the trials. I glance from a picture of him at eighteen to the forty-two-year-old playing cards. He really hasn’t aged that much either. The air up here has been kind to him as well.
The next scrapbook, thicker than all the others, chronicles his pro career. Clippings from Ring, Newsday, the Times, Sports Illustrated, and Sporting News abound and include some of my old articles. What do you know? I actually praised the man a few times. I also notice that I used the phrase “vaunted left hook” in three different articles. Well, it used to be vaunted. I must have liked that phrase, not that I’ll ever use it again. I run a phrase through my head: “Undaunted and with a haunted look in his eyes, Dante wanted to flaunt his left hook….”
Shelley would taunt that phrase to death.
Look at all these…Wait a minute. Where are his wedding pictures? I check the date on the spine. If DJ is sixteen, then there should be wedding pictures or at least a few shots of Evelyn in this one. Maybe there’s a separate wedding album somewhere. I flip through and see nothing but clippings and articles. Maybe Evelyn has the album. Either that or Dante put it away after the divorce.
The last article is win number forty-seven, but the rest of the book is blank. I can tell his two losses were once in here, bits of tape covering newsprint in the corners. I’ll bet my last few articles were in here once, and now they’re hanging in Dante’s room.
Hmm. I have to find that room. I may have to do a little recon…
The last scrapbook records his comeback. Three fights, pictures of his bloody face brooding in one corner while the referee counts down his opponent in the other. I count fifteen different articles after the third fight, one of which details his rematch with Tank Washington.
The rest of the book is blank, but stuck in between two pages is a picture of Evelyn and Dante. My heart flutters a little because it looks so recent. This might be a shot of one of their dates. I wish I could say Evil Lynn was anorexic with a white booty, no hips, bug eyes, bony arms, and a bad perm, but she’s
actually a nice-looking woman. She doesn’t look anything like a diva or a shrew. Dante’s eyes are only for her in the picture, and his smile is…
Damn.
He still loves her.
I’ve never had a man look at me like that.
Her eyes, though, are straight ahead, as if she’s in charge of the universe. Maybe she is. She still seems to be in charge of Dante’s universe. Coiffed and dressed to perfection, Evelyn is beautiful in a Dorothy Dandridge’s skinny half-sister kind of way. Paparazzi wouldn’t necessarily swarm this woman if she was an actress, and though I don’t know her at all, I’m sure she’d have plenty of interesting things to say. I can see why she wouldn’t like it up here. Other than present company, there’s no one to see her, to walk behind her to hold her train, to bask in her queenly aura.
And Red says I remind him of her? Red needs glasses. I don’t have a face like hers. When I turn sideways, people still see me.
I riffle through the scrapbooks again, and I get an idea. Dante’s life would make a nice book, maybe an “as told to” autobiography. These pictures—well, maybe not the last one that’s stressing me out so much—would be interspersed throughout, and these scrapbooks already form the outline of the book. It would be an easy write. He has to beat Tank Washington, however, for it to sell. If he can become champion again, it could be a best seller. It’s a nice idea, but…
I put the books away, not she-wolfing it anymore as I replace them, and sit next to Lelani. “What are they playing to?”
“They play till the next fight and keep a running tally,” she says. “They’ve been playing for close to two months now. Someone usually wins by hundreds, even thousands, of points.”
“What does the winner get?” I ask.
“Bragging rights.”
That’s all? I fake a pout. “Don’t they ever invite you to play, Lelani?”
“Me? I am strictly a poker player.”
Figures.
“Whenever Evelyn visits unannounced—meaning that Red and I can’t escape in time—they play partners,” Lelani says. “Red and Dante—always—and DJ and his mama.”
That also figures. “Who wins?”
“DJ and his mama.” Lelani shakes her head. “I think sometimes Dante and Red lose on purpose, and now they’re trying to make up for all those losses by playing cutthroat.”
I make a power decision and stand. “It’s time for me to play.”
She blinks. “You’re not going to try to take Evelyn’s place, are you?”
“Oh no,” I say. “I could never do anything like that.” I smile. “I don’t intend to play cards, Lelani. I just wanna play, you understand?”
“I dig,” she says. “Go play.”
I go directly to DJ and look over his shoulder. According to the scorecard, DJ is over nine hundred points behind Dante, who is around two hundred points behind Red.
“I bid…nine,” DJ says.
No wonder this child is losing. He has a potential Boston in his hand. If he plays his cards right, he can take all…eighteen books. They’re playing with the jokers, and he has both jokers and the ace and two of spades. Taking all eighteen is next to impossible in cutthroat, but with this hand, DJ has a chance.
“Do you play that the two of clubs leads?” I ask.
Red nods.
DJ has no clubs. This is perfect. I fan out DJ’s cards and see a gold mine of spades. “You’re a little too conservative, DJ, don’t you think?”
“No coaching,” Red says.
I put my nose on the top of DJ’s ear and whisper, “Bid eighteen.”
“What?” DJ says.
Red puts his hand flat on the table. “She said, ‘Bid eighteen.’” Red takes his spades seriously.
“Goin’ for a Boston,” I say, smiling at Dante.
Dante doesn’t smile. “We are not in Boston,” he says.
I wink at him. “That’s why we’re goin’ for one.”
Dante does not appear to be amused. He pulls a tennis ball from under the table and squeezes it. Hmm. Keeping his hands strong. I like that in a man.
“We don’t have to call it a ‘Boston,’” I say to DJ. “We can call it an ‘Aylen.’” I crouch next to DJ’s seat, aiming my booty in Dante’s direction. “C’mon, DJ. What do you have to lose? You’re already dragging nine hundred points.”
“I’ll, uh, I’ll take them all,” DJ says softly.
Red squints at me. “I’ll take…two.”
“Uno,” Dante says with authority.
“Let’s set ’em both, DJ,” I say, holding my breath.
Red throws out the two of clubs, and Dante tops it with the ace, the card making a little slap. DJ trumps it with the three of spades. He can run them now! I point to the big joker.
“Now?” DJ asks, about to throw an ace of diamonds, which someone could conceivably trump.
“No coaching,” Red says again.
“Who’s coaching?” I say. “DJ, look at your hand, man.”
“That is coaching,” Dante says.
I shrug and hold out my hands and do a bad impression of Robert De Niro. “What? I just ask him to look at his hand. That is all. I do not tell him what to do with his hand. That would be coaching. I just ask him to look. Is that such a crime?”
I catch Red smiling. Dante only rolls his eyes.
DJ studies his hand. “Oh.” DJ smiles. “Oh, yeah. They’ll all—”
“Andiamo,” Dante says.
DJ plays eleven consecutive spades, the ace, king, queen of hearts, and the ace, king, and queen of diamonds, collecting all eighteen books.
Take that!
Red smiles.
Dante scowls and says, “Per caso.”
“It was just the luck of the draw, Papino,” DJ says softly.
“Where I come from,” I say, “if you run a Boston, or in this case an Aylen, you win the entire game.”
“We are not in Boston,” Dante says again. He snaps up the cards and shuffles, the cards sounding like machine-gun fire.
I squeeze DJ’s shoulders. “Don’t ever be afraid to go for it,” I tell him. “Just don’t be afraid. Tenere provare.”
Dante blinks. Yeah, king of the house, I can speak your language. A little. I only remember the phrase because it sort of rhymes.
I linger for a few more hands, mainly hovering over DJ and Red, and then I leave the screened porch and wander through the kitchen and up some back stairs. I look in the first room on the second floor and see a scary sight—it is a clean teenager’s room. The wood floor is spotless, the bed is made, the clothes are put away, and the toiletries on a dresser (deodorant, shaving kit, Chap Stick) are lined up perfectly. I know if I open the dresser I’ll see all of DJ’s socks paired and lined up, his T-shirts and maybe even his boxers folded. DJ also has his own full bathroom. Where are the video games, the TV, the stereo, the pictures of rappers, and the uneaten food becoming science experiments? Where are the DVDs, CDs, and game magazines? This is so uncommon.
I go out into the hallway and see only one other door. I open it, thinking it’s just a closet.
It isn’t.
I pull a string, and a small room lights up. The walls are bare except for a crucifix, a few clippings—all mine—and a wedding picture of Dante and Evelyn cutting the cake. Once again, his eyes are on her while hers are elsewhere. He looks so fine in that tuxedo, and her dress had to cost a fortune. On the floor at my feet rest a sleeping bag and a pillow. There are no windows. There is no mattress. A single light-bulb dangles from the ceiling. Creepy. This is where Dante sleeps? All this relative opulence and he sleeps in a windowless, airless closet?
Or, is the guesthouse really where he stays, and he just threw this stuff in here because of me?
Wait.
The clippings are here. Red said the clippings were hanging up in “his room.” Maybe it’s a superstitious thing. Dante is an athlete, and athletes have superstitions. It feels so cramped, so claustrophobic. It’s maybe one-third the size of a box
ing ring. Why would anyone want to sleep in here for close to four months of training?
I am definitely going to ask him about this room.
I look again at the wedding picture. He uses this for motivation, too. Dante is so naive. He thinks he can recapture the past. He thinks he can have a successful rematch with the woman who dumped him. I’m sure it happens, but it has to be rare. What’s the old saying about second marriages? Isn’t a second marriage “the triumph of hope over experience”?
You’d think Dante would have learned from his mistake.
I close the door and return to the great room, the fire dying away to embers, Lelani snoozing on a couch. The game still rages on the screened porch, so I walk in and announce, “I’m going to bed.”
No one speaks. How nice.
I look at Dante. “Um, four-thirty, right?”
“DJ will wake you at four,” Red says while Dante only stares at me.
At…four? Is he kidding? “I’ll be ready.”
I leave the main house and go into the guesthouse, closing and—there are no locks. Why are there no locks? Hmm. I guess I’ll be safe. After brushing my teeth and donning a pair of Evelyn’s tight shorts and a tighter T-shirt, I snuggle under the covers and make some preliminary notes on my laptop:
Dante Lattanza is misogynistic, arrogant, stubborn, head-strong, mean, authoritarian…“whipped” by ex…probably still in love with ex…juvenile, infantile…a sore loser…rude…nice abs…naive…has a tennis ball fixation…
He is a handsome man. He is sexy. The pictures will take care of that for me. I won’t have to state the obvious in my article.
Lattanza had a humble upbringing, maybe father not around much, frail mother (dead? In a home? Wouldn’t she be here?), loyal, devoted to son, handy, fit…all that hardness, those cuts…ferocity is a necessity for a boxer…fearlessness may make him appear vain…is vanity necessary for a champion? Or is he feigning invincibility?
I close my laptop, set it above me on the headboard, and turn out the light. Starlight streams in through the slats in the blinds despite the curtains on the window, but that’s all right. I wonder what 4 AM looks like. I’m not usually up that early, even when I’m traveling a long way to do an interview. Even when I was younger and hit the clubs, I never stayed out past 2:30 AM.
