“No, I mean am I wrong to ask the question? Is that such a bad thing?”
“No,” Ashley admitted. “It’s not a bad thing at all.”
But instead of pursuing it even further, Monk, as usual, moved on. “What do they think about you around this place?”
“What place? My home, or my town?”
“Both,” Monk said.
Ashley knew it wasn’t anything good. She shrugged her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. “The usual, I imagine.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m dumb. That all I like to do is party. That when my brother Donny and I opened a convenience store off of the interstate, everybody was saying they just knew we would fail. I guess that’s what keeps us going.”
“To prove them wrong?” Monk asked.
Ashley nodded. “Yup.”
“Nope,” said Monk, shaking his head.
Ashley looked at him. “Why would you say no?”
“That’s never a good reason to live your life,” Monk said bluntly. “You live your life for yourself, on your own terms. Fuck what they say. Why you worrying about what they say? Fuck’em! If you and Donald want to run a store, then run the store. But don’t run it to rub it in. Just run it because you want to run it.”
Ashley was staring at him. How could a gangster-looking man like him speak with what sure sounded like wisdom to her? And suddenly she liked the idea of hearing his advice. “And if we fail?” she asked him.
“Yeah, that seems to be a theme with you,” Monk said.
Ashley was confused. “What seems to be a theme with me?”
“Failing. Your fear of failing. But as they say, ‘nothing beats a failure but a try.’”
An old soul was right, Ashley thought with a smile. “Which means?” she asked him.
“At least you’re trying. At least you’re out there trying to do what you can do. And who knows? You might succeed.”
“And I might not,” said Ashley.
Monk nodded. “You might not.”
“But if I fail, then what?” she asked him.
Monk frowned. “Whatta you mean, then what? Then you get your ass up, and either try again, or try something else. Just keep it moving,” Monk said.
Ashley smiled her biggest smile yet. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”
But it was something about that smile that caused Monk’s stomach to tighten. And he realized something right then and there. He realized, if he didn’t leave her alone and leave her alone like now, she just might have what it took to upset his life.
He’d lived his entire life on a very strict proposition: he was never putting himself out there like that. Nobody was ever breaking his heart.
He stood up, walked over to Ashley, and extended his hand. “Nice meeting you, Ashley,” he said.
Ashley, surprised and confused by his sudden turn, shook his hand. “Nice meeting you, too,” she said. She wanted to ask if she should call him Frank, Frankie, or Monk, but he didn’t give her a chance.
“I’d better get on back inside,” he said.
“Okay,” Ashley said. She was a little disappointed, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. But he just stood there.
“My coat,” he said.
“Oh! Of course.”
“Unless you still need it.”
“No,” Ashley said and quickly removed his coat and handed it to him.
He smiled, said goodnight, and then headed back toward the house. Just like that. Ashley was as confused as she was floored.
But she also realized something very profound. No man, in all her years of dating man after man after man, had ever asked her about herself.
Not one.
But she couldn’t take much joy in knowing that Frank had asked her because, by his sudden departure, he apparently wasn’t all that impressed with what he heard.
Which was fine by her. She didn’t like him anyway! He was too brash and blunt for her taste. Too insensitive. Why would she care what a man like that thought of her?
But as she slowly made her way back toward the house, too, she realized another profound truth. His rejection was bothering her. It was bothering her as if she did care. But why would she?
But when she made her way back into the house, it was all water under the bridge anyway. Monk and Teddy were already gone, and nobody but Donny wanted the details.
CHAPTER SIX
He watched her face as he did her. Moving his body up and down her small frame, and watching her in awe as she gladly took the weight of his body, and the weight of his massive penis inside of her. She was groaning with every push in. She was sighing every time he hit her spot. But the thing about Monk, he kept hitting her spot. Because it wasn’t about him. He never made love to her to please himself. He always had to please his woman.
His woman? What woman? When did she become his woman?!
It was such a shock to his system that he woke up suddenly and lifted up on his elbows ready to curse the darkness. When he realized it was just a dream, he laid his head back down on his sweat-drenched pillow. He could barely regulate his breathing.
When he was able to, he threw the covers off of his naked body and sat up on the side of the bed, his feet touching down on his marbled tile. It was a dream, alright, but it was the same dream he’d been dreaming ever since he left Jericho. He was always in a different room. Sometimes in a different house. But always making love to Ashley Sinatra.
Ashley Sinatra, he thought, as he got out of bed and made his way to his bathroom. It had been nearly two weeks since he left her parents’ home. Two long weeks. And he still had that woman on his mind? Why? All this shit he had to deal with, and she was occupying his thoughts, not just during his waking hours, but in his sleep too? He’d be damn if that was going to happen!
He went to the sink in his huge bathroom and threw a big handful of water on his face. And then his hair. His whole body was drenched in sweat. He looked up, at the mirror over the vanity, and saw a man he hardly recognized. He looked like some kind of lost, lonely bulldog. What the fuck was that? He had only seen her once, just one time, and what? He wanted to see her again? Her? What the fuck for? He didn’t fool with women like that. He saw what a woman did to his old man, and to every man he’d ever known, and he wasn’t going out like that. They weren’t controlling him. They weren’t turning his life upside down with all their nagging and arrogance and neediness.
Even his boy Teddy, a man as strong as he was, fell in love and then started acting strange. Even on their way back from Jericho, Teddy wanted to stop by a florist to buy his old lady some flowers. Flowers, he said. Two of the baddest motherfuckers to ever walk the streets of America at a flower shop! Monk couldn’t believe it.
And, now, even he was acting strange after just one encounter with some woman too young and wild for him anyway? And she didn’t fool him. All of that sweetness she was displaying in that backyard while they were talking? He knew better than that. He knew she was wilding out. He knew her type a mile away.
“Then why is your stupid ass dreaming about her if she ain’t but rat shit to you?” Monk asked out loud as he stared at himself in the mirror. “She’s not dreaming about your ass, you’re dreaming about her! Why is that, Mister They’ll-Never-Break-My-Heart? Why are you dreaming about her?”
Then Monk placed both hands on the sink and leaned his head down. Truth was, he didn’t know why. He couldn’t understand it either.
But it was a fact. Two weeks he’d been away from her. Two weeks straight he dreamed about her. And don’t get him started on how many times he thought about her during the day!
“Ah, fuck it!” he said angrily, walked over and turned on the water tap inside the stall, and took himself a long, very cold, very lonely shower.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Yeah, baby-baby, that’s how you do me. That’s how I like it. Oh, yeah, baby. Oh yeah!”
“Ash.”
“No, not there. Yeah. Go back there. Right t
here.”
“Ash!”
“That’s how you do me. That’s how mama likes it.”
“Ash!”
Donald pushed her so hard she nearly fell off her bed. But it was enough to wake her up.
When she realized she had been dreaming, and that Donald, no doubt, heard her talking in that dream, she frowned. “What’s wrong with you, boy, barging in my room like this? What are you doing in my room?”
“You woke me up with all of that ooh baby nonsense. That’s why!” Then he stared at her as if he couldn’t believe it was Ashley. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked her.
“There’s nothing wrong with me! What’s wrong with you?”
But Donald was too concerned to let it go. “Ash, please tell me it’s not true.”
Ashley was still too embarrassed to do anything but continue to frown. “What’s not true?” she asked him.
“Please tell me it’s not Monk you’re dreaming about.”
Ashley was no liar, so she didn’t respond to her brother. She, instead, pulled her covers up to her neck.
“I’d rather you be laying up here dreaming about Flint than Monk Paletti,” Donald said.
Ashley looked at him. “Why, Donny? Not that it matters to me, because it doesn’t, but what’s so terrible about him?”
“Monk? Ashley, he’s a crime boss.”
Ashley knew he looked like a gangster, but a boss? “A boss?” she asked him.
“Well, yeah. I mean, on paper they claim his father is the head of the Bonaducci family.”
Ashley frowned. “The who?”
“The Bonaducci Crime Family. Sort of like Uncle Mick, but not as big.”
“Oh,” Ashley said.
“On paper, they say his father runs that family, but I heard Daddy tell Bobby last night that it’s not true, and that Monk runs the show because his father is slipping.”
“How would Daddy know about that sort of thing?”
“What do you mean how?” Donald asked her. “He’s Uncle Mick’s big brother. I heard Uncle Reno once say it was Daddy who taught Uncle Mick everything he knows.”
Ashley didn’t believe it. Donald was just running his mouth. He was just trying to scare her off of Frankie. But then she caught herself. Why would she need to be scared off? She didn’t want him anyway!
“I just don’t want you hurt,” Donald admitted to her. “That’s all. Because he’s a worldly guy, Ash. He’s not like these boys around here. They chew you up around here, just like the girls do me. But that’s all they do. But with a worldly guy like Monk? He’ll chew you up, and spit you out. You don’t want to be messing with a guy like that.”
Ashley knew what he meant. She’d already reached that conclusion herself. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said to her worried brother. “He’s not my type anyway.”
“Yeah, right, Ash.”
“He’s not! I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but I don’t like big, muscular guys. They’ll crush you in bed.”
Donald laughed.
“I like slim jims like you, which he is definitely not.”
“Flint isn’t all that slim,” Donald said.
“But he’s not big like him! Did you see the muscles on that guy? And did you actually take a good look at him?”
“Yeah, I looked at him. I’ve seen him before, unlike you. So what? He’s a good looking guy,” Donald said.
“He’s an old looking guy,” said Ashley.
“Ah, come on, Ash! Monk’s in his thirties. He’s Teddy’s age. He’s not old.”
“I didn’t say he was old. I said he looks old. He’s old-looking. Do you realize some people call him Pop because he acts like their daddy?”
Donald grinned. “Really?”
“I’m dead serious.”
“Who told you that?”
“He told me! He said he was always an old soul, as he put it. I said ugh to myself when he said that. What I look like wanting some old soul? Please!”
Donald started to say an old soul was exactly who she might need, but he didn’t say it. He wasn’t about to encourage her to start a relationship with a mobster like Monk Paletti. He nodded instead. “I get your point now,” he said.
“Now that you get my point,” Ashley said, “can you get your behind out of my room?”
Donald laughed. “It’s late in the day anyway,” he said, heading for the exit. “You need to get your butt out of that bed. Daddy already said you be late one more time and he’s firing you.”
“Whatever, Donny,” Ashley said with a smile, as her brother left her room and closed her door.
But then she thought about what Donny had said. And he was right. It wasn’t Flint she was dreaming about, but was Frankie or Monk or Pop, or whatever his name was. Why was she dreaming about him of all people? A man she just met! A man she didn’t even like that way.
And, suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore.
CHAPTER EIGHT
His old man’s diner was in Niles, New Jersey, on the outskirts of Elizabeth, next to a pawn shop his old man also owned. Late that evening, after checking on all of the businesses Monk owned around town, his Mercedes SL convertible stopped at the curb in front of his old man’s businesses. He sat there, behind his wheel, looking at the diner.
His old man was sitting inside on the bar stool as if he was running the world from where he sat. Regular guys were working their nine-to-fives with pride and joy, while his old man was sitting on a bar stool working too. Only his work wasn’t shuffling papers. His work was to appear as if he was one of those regular joes each and every day. To appear as if running a diner and a pawn shop was actually how he made his living. Which took more work than those regular guys could ever do. Born and raised in the mob, that was the only life his old man knew. Just like Monk.
And he looked at all of those dusty old Italian men sitting outside of the pawn shop smoking their cigars and laughing at each other’s stale jokes trying to make it through another day. All of them had mob connections too. All of them devoted their lives to a cause that overtook their lives until the cause itself became the life. And Monk knew, if he didn’t turn it around, he was going to be one of them one day.
He hated this shit, he said to himself, but he was knee-deep in it. There was no getting out for him. Especially with a father and a brother like he had, both of whom were always getting caught up in craziness they needed him to get them out of. Which brought Monk to that missing girl. Who the fuck was she? Why was she missing? And, most importantly to him, what was his old man’s involvement in her disappearance?
But just as he was about to open his car door and get out, fuck all of those head trips he’d been on lately, his head pulled another trip and he thought about Ashley. Ashley Sinatra. Why in the world did he keep thinking about that girl? He wasn’t even into black chicks per se, or any other chicks for that matter, except Italian chicks because they knew the culture. Ashley was raised in an Italian household, but she wasn’t born that way. That made a difference where he came from.
But for some reason, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. The way her family treated her just because her star sister had shown up bothered him. And the way she was so down on herself, and so unwilling to see the magnificence he saw when he first laid eyes on her. She was the real star, if you asked him, but nobody seemed to realize it.
He knew why. They judged her, not on her heart, but on those bad decisions she undoubtedly made time and time again until they confused her bad decision-making with who she was. They couldn’t see the girl inside because they were too busy seeing the girl outside, the one doing all the dumb stuff. When she was so much more than the sum of her parts. And Monk, for some strange reason, saw it as clear as day.
But even if he did see the good side of a bad girl, so what? He’d seen it before in other women and he didn’t have wet dreams about them or couldn’t stop thinking about them. He didn’t give a damn about any of them. But he definitely gave a damn about Ashley
. Even he could see that. And he also could see that he wanted to get to know her better. He needed to know if his interest was just some fluke from out of left field, or the real thing.
A knock on his car’s window broke up his daydreaming and caused him to almost pull out his weapon. Until he looked and saw Whiplash, one of those street hustlers who liked hanging around mobsters. He pressed down his window.
“Hey, Frankie, what’s up?”
“What’s up with you?” Monk asked him.
“Nothing up with me. Been going here and there. Been doing this and that.”
“Keeping your ass out of trouble, I hope.”
“You know me, Pop! Staying out of the way is my middle name!”
“Yeah, right!”
Whip laughed. But then he got down to the brass tacks, as Monk saw it, and leaned closer to the window, as if he still had some pride left. “I was wondering if you could let me hold a few,” Whip said.
“What’s a few?” Monk asked.
“Couple hundred. Just to tie me over until a few things I got going come through.”
“Money don’t grow on trees, Whip,” Monk said. “You know I don’t fuck around with my dough.”
“You’ll get it back. I always pay you back. When I ever not paid you back? You know I’m good for it, Pop, come on! Just a couple hundred.”
Monk didn’t like giving money to hustlers because it usually meant he was being hustled. But Whiplash was a reliable hanger-on. You could always count on him when you needed him. For that reason alone, Monk pulled out a thick wad of cash on a money clip, pulled out a couple hundred, and handed it through the window. “Don’t fuck with me,” he nonetheless warned the hustler as his cell phone began ringing.
Whiplash smiled. “You’ll get it back in no time,” he said happily, and then took off.
Monk exhaled as he put his money back in his pocket. He really hated this shit. And then he looked at his Caller ID, saw that it was his boy Teddy. He answered the phone. “Teddy T,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing up,” Teddy said on the other end of the phone. “Just checking to see if you found that girl yet.”
Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra Page 5
