“And what did you tell them?” Gloria asked.
“I told them to get the fuck out of my face. Pop’s married. How I look like being my old man’s beard? But you know what I’m saying. I’m sure some of your girlfriends have been asking you to give them the hook up too. I just hope he doesn’t break Ma’s heart, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Daddy wouldn’t do that to Roz,” Gloria said again.
“Uh-oh, here he comes,” Joey said, looking toward the entrance. “And you better not call her Roz. He says that’s disrespectful, although he says nothing when Teddy calls her that.”
“Teddy’s in his thirties. We’re in our twenties. He’s closer to Roz’s age than we are,” Gloria said. “He can get away with it.”
Joey shook his head. “You are always defending Pop,” he said. “Always!”
But the conversation died down as they watched their father make his way toward their table. It was always odd to them whenever he entered the room. Because he was so tall and strong-looking, and because he wore such elegant suits, and because everybody else seemed to pay attention to him whenever he showed up, they felt as if he took all the oxygen out of every room he entered. As if their feelings didn’t matter anymore and it was all about pleasing him. They both detested it, but they both played to it too.
“Hey, Pop,” Joey said cheerfully. He even moved over slightly for him to sit next to him. But Mick, as Joey knew he would, sat next to Gloria. Next to the family princess, as Joey called her.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mick said.
“You aren’t that late,” Gloria said.
“But he’s late,” Joey said. “What would you like to drink, Pop? Beer or coke?”
“Get me a gin and tonic,” Mick said.
Joey glanced at Gloria with an I told you so look on his face, and then got up and headed for the bar, leaving her and Mick shoulder to shoulder on the small banquette.
Mick, feeling tight, placed his arm across the back of the booth seat to give his big, muscular body a little more room. “How was your day?” he asked her.
She nodded. It still felt strange to her whenever Mick tried to play daddy. He wasn’t very good at it even at that late stage. “It was okay,” she said. “Nikki said something about streamlining mid-level managers through her office, but I didn’t get what she meant.”
“She meant what she said,” Mick said. “All mid-level managers such as yourself will report to her as the final step, unless she’s the problem.”
“And if she’s the problem?”
“She’s compiling a list of VPs that will handle those situations.”
“She’s compiling it?” Gloria asked, surprised. “But she’s in Marketing. She’s not senior to all of the other VPs.” Then she began to realize what this little meeting might be about. “Or is she?” she asked.
Mick hesitated, but answered her. “Yes,” he said. “And part of her job in Marketing is to market S.I. staff. To make sure everybody’s in the best position to help the company.”
Gloria was stunned. Nikki Tarver, who just hit the scene, was already senior Vice President to the CEO when Gloria had been working for her father for years and was still just middle management. He even had the nerve to demote her from mid-level not that long ago. He reinstated her later, but it was so unfair to her still that she couldn’t even gather her thoughts. She just sat there and sipped her coke.
Until Joey arrived with their father’s drink, plopped it in front of him, and noticed her sister’s changed mood immediately. “What happened?” he asked.
“I now know what this meeting is about,” Gloria said.
“What’s it about?” Joey asked, puzzled.
“Nikki,” said Gloria.
“Her again?” Joey asked. “What now?”
“Pop put her in charge of everybody.”
“Not everybody,” said Mick. “But she is the reason why I wanted to meet with you two,” he added.
“I’m not in that part of your business,” Joey said. “Why should it concern me?”
“There’s been too much talking behind her back,” Mick said. “A lot of it has made its way into my company, and I’ll not have that.”
“But Pop, you’ve got to admit she came from out of nowhere and now she’s a vice president,” Joey said. “That’s fast. When I worked for you at S.I., you put me in the mailroom. And you demoted Glo once, and she’s not any vice president yet.”
Mick knew they both were shortsighted. Joey was placed in the mailroom to see if he had what it took to move up the ladder. He didn’t have what it took and was later fired. Gloria was demoted because she went in cahoots with a boyfriend that wanted to take over Mick’s company. They both deserved exactly what they received from him. Anybody else would not have gotten that consideration, and they knew that too. Gloria was now a manager, and Joey now ran the docks for Mick’s other company, although he had tried to shield him from that side of life. But Joey, like his father, was a thug to his heart.
“That’s why it’s weird to us,” Joey continued. “Nikki is Teddy’s old lady, true enough, and we get that you like her. And we know Teddy can do no wrong in your eyes, which only helps her too. But Pop, come on now. A vice president? That’s crazy.”
“It’s gotten crazier,” said Gloria.
Joey looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“She’s now senior to all the other vice presidents at Sinatra Industries. They all report to her now.”
That wasn’t what Mick had told Gloria, but he didn’t care enough to correct her. Nikki’s position in his company wasn’t the issue.
But Joey was shocked. “But she’s not qualified for that,” he said.
“That’s what I said,” Gloria said. “She doesn’t even have a degree in Business. Or anything else,” she added. “She was a bar tender in California when Teddy met her. Now she’s a senior VP for you?”
“I didn’t need somebody with a degree from Harvard, or with years of experience moving papers around.”
“Then what did you need?” Joey asked.
“Somebody strong. And able to handle an aggressive staff of likewise strong individuals. Nikki is that in spades. That’s what I needed, and that’s what she is. And the reason I wanted to talk to you two is to remind you that she’s my senior vice president, and you will respect her as my senior vice president. The talk will end. It undermines her ability to do her job. Cut that shit out and cut it out today,” he ordered both of them.
Gloria heeded the warning. She knew him too well. Joey knew him, too, but he couldn’t help himself. He was pissed that a stranger off the streets, the way he saw Nikki, was going to be that high up at S.I. “Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “Her pussy must be tight.”
Gloria’s eyes stretched wide. She couldn’t believe Joey went there. She only hoped he wouldn’t be foolish enough to take it any further. Mick was staring daggers at him, daring him to take it further.
But Joey, being Joey, crossed that line. “She must be putting it on you real good though,” he said to his father and his father, without hesitation, leaned over the small table and slapped the shit out of his son. He slapped Joey so hard that Joey was rocked sideways. Then Mick grabbed Joey by his oversized jersey and pulled him until they were face to face.
“Say it again,” Mick warned with clenched teeth. “Say that shit again!”
Joey was near tears. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said with a cry in his voice. “I was just talking, though. You treat her better than you treat us. Or better than you treat me, anyway. That’s all I was saying.”
Mick stared into his son’s beautiful, sad eyes and the guilt he still felt for neglecting them all when they were little, but especially a vulnerable kid like Joey, haunted him. Why wouldn’t Joey hate him, Mick thought? Why wouldn’t all of his children?
Mick released Joey’s jersey, and sat back down.
Joey jerked his jersey, as if he was the one pulling away from his father, then
his sadness got the best of him. Why was he always angering his father, the one person he loved the most in this world, as if he hated him? Why was he always blowing it? He didn’t know, but he knew it hurt. And not in the physical sense either. He hurried out of the booth, angrily knocking over his drink as he did, and left the bar altogether.
Mick had to calm himself back down or he would have gone after Joey and stumped him through the ground.
Gloria knew she had to calm him down too. It seemed like an overreaction to her. Not what Joey did. He deserved to be slapped for saying such a thing. But she wondered if there was more to the slap. He already snatched Nikki away from Teddy’s company. It made her wonder if he really did have feelings for Nikki that went beyond the norm.
But then she dismissed such nonsense out of hand. He loved Roz too much. He’d never hurt Roz that way, not for anybody.
Gloria, instead, focused on keeping Joey alive. “He didn’t mean what he said, Daddy,” she said to Mick. “You know how he’s always running his mouth. He knows you would never do anything like that. He knows it.”
“But yet he says it,” Mick said.
“You know how he is.”
“He’d better know how I am,” Mick said, still unable to suppress his anger. He, instead, got up too and looked at his daughter. “Nikki is good for the company. She’s exactly what I needed. And she will be allowed to do her job. The talking ends today,” he said pointedly, “or you’ll answer to me. Understood?”
Gloria knew him, and she knew he didn’t play. “Yes, sir,” she said. “But what about Joey?” She was worried, as usual, about her loose cannon of a kid brother.
She could see Mick’s jaw tightened at just the mention of Joey’s name. “If he keeps jawing that shit, he’ll answer to me,” he said, tossed a fifty on the table although they self-served, and headed for the exit.
Although Gloria knew Joey deserved the smackdown their father gave to him, she still was worried about him.
She pulled out her cell phone to call Teddy. She wanted him to once again protect their stupid brother from their own father. Which sounded crazy on its face. But was Sinatra normal.
CHAPTER THREE
The front gate security guard opened the electronic gate and the big Cadillac Escalade drove through and lumbered its way to the curb at the steps. Deuce hurried from behind the wheel, walked around to the back passenger door, and opened it for Roz.
Roz was still studying her script. She was that devoted to her craft. But when she realized she had arrived home, she stuffed that script into her oversized hobo bag, grabbed the bag, and got out.
“Same time tomorrow, ma’am?” Deuce asked her.
“Same time, Deuce. Have a blessed rest of your day.”
“You too, Mrs. Sinatra,” he replied, and Roz made her way up the steps and through the massive, iron double doors of the beautiful home that was once Mick Sinatra’s home alone, but now belonged to him, Roz, and their twin youngsters together. Roz had once thought, when she first married Mick, that she’d want to find a new place to live that would be as much hers as it was his. But the need faded as his place became just as much hers too.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Sinatra,” the African-American butler said as she entered the home.
“Thanks, Jackson,” she said as she handed her bag to him. Then she frowned. “What’s that smell?”
“The twins, madam,” Jackson said in his perfect English diction. “They thought it not robbery to take themselves into the kitchen and prepare a meal.”
Roz couldn’t believe it. “A meal? You have got to be kidding me. They’re babies!”
“I kid you not, madam. Your babies are cooking dinner. Or so they think.”
Roz shook her head. She knew better than that! “Where’s Meg?” she asked as she began to head toward the kitchen. Meg was the twins’ live-in nanny.
“She’s with them, as is the chef,” Jackson said. “But the twins are driving that train.”
Roz still couldn’t believe it as she made her way down the hall-sized foyer, across the massive great room, and down another hall that led to the newly renovated gourmet kitchen and family room combo. And Jackson was not exaggerating. Michello Sinatra, Junior, called Duke, and Jacqueline Sinatra, called Jackie, had Roz’s gorgeous kitchen looking like a flour monster had struck it and left its whiteness all over the floor and countertops. Drayvon the chef, and Meg the nanny, were also in the kitchen, as Jackson had said, and they both looked mortified as they stood there and allowed the twins to, as Jackson put it, drive that train. Or, as Roz saw it, train wreck. She hurried into the space.
“Michello?” she called. “Jacqueline? What on God’s green earth are you doing?”
Both twins looked at once, as they knew their mother was angry with them whenever she called them by their given, rather than nick names.
“Hi, Mommy,” Jackie said as she clasped her hands and a puff of flour floated into the already heavy air. “We’re cooking dinner for Daddy.”
“You don’t know how to cook,” Roz reminded her.
Jackie, stumped, looked to Duke. Duke hunched his shoulders. If he wasn’t looking more and more like a black version of his daddy every day, Roz thought, nobody could.
“Answer my question,” Roz said. “Why are you cooking when you know you don’t know how to cook?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Duke said, and then looked around at their mess. “We never dreamed it would be this difficult. It seems easy when Mister D does it.”
Roz wanted to smile. At least that was an honest answer. But that was Duke. Like his father, he didn’t bullshit around. “And what possessed you to decide to cook dinner for Daddy when you know he won’t be home until very late, and way past your own bed times?”
“He came home early,” Jackie said.
“That’s why we decided to do it,” said Duke.
Roz was surprised. “He’s home? Daddy’s home?”
Duke nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We were so happy! That’s why we decided to do it.”
Roz was stunned. That was not like Mick at all! He had been out of town all week, and she knew he was coming back home today. But he never came straight home to them. He always had to go to the office to handle some crisis there first, and would end up coming home to them late. Like after midnight late. But he was home already?
But this mess in her kitchen! She looked at her employees. “Meg, Dray, let me talk to you guys for a sec,” she said and made her way, with her two employees following her, out of the kitchen. When they arrived in the dining hall, Roz turned to them.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” she asked them.
“They said they wanted to cook their father a meal,” Drayvon said.
“So if they said they wanted to drive a car, you’d step aside, toss them the keys, and tell them to go ‘head on?”
“No ma’am,” said Drayvon. “But . . . “ It was obvious he was distressed.
Meg came to his rescue. “But we didn’t want to lose our jobs, ma’am,” she said.
Roz frowned. “Lose your jobs? What are you talking about?”
“If we say no to them, and they give us a bad report, we figured we might lose our jobs.”
“By saying no to them?” Roz asked. “Girl, you got life bent if you think me and their father would fire you for saying no to our children. You stand a better chance of getting fired saying yes to them than saying no to them! You know I don’t play that, Meg, and both of y’all know my husband doesn’t play that.”
“You’re right,” Drayvon said. “I’m sorry, but I just kind of panicked.”
Roz shook her head. “No child runs this household, okay? And no child determines who gets fired and who doesn’t. Do your jobs. Treat my children with respect, but don’t you dare spoil them. We aren’t raising rich, spoiled kids who get out in the world and destroy themselves or others. Do the right thing and you’ll have no problem with me or Mr. Sinatra. Got it?”
They both nodded and said that they did.
“And if you aren’t sure what to do, you call me or their father. If you can’t reach either one of us, call Teddy, or Gloria, or Joey. They’ll tell you what to do with any demands the twins put on you. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they both said.
“Should we shut it down now?” Drayvon asked.
But Roz shook her head. “Let them finish whatever they’re doing now,” she said. “Their hearts were in the right place. But then shut it down and keep it down,” she said.
After they said that they would, Roz made her way upstairs. The mess the children made was one thing, but the fact that Mick had come home early concerned her too. She was pleased and happy that he made it back in town, but she knew her husband.
Upstairs, she could hear the shower water running as soon as she entered their master bedroom. She sat on the edge of their bed, removed her heels, and then laid back, her feet barely touching the floor. She was so tired herself she could hardly keep her eyes open. She had so many opening night jitters, even though the play didn’t open until next week, but she was still worried. She couldn’t help it. And was Mick okay?
She sat up. When she saw that his thick wallet and his cell phone were on the night stand, she found herself staring at them. But curiosity got the best of her and she grabbed his cell phone. She knew his code: she saw him put it in too many times and took note of it. But when she was prompted to enter his code, she hesitated again. Why would she be checking his cell phone? Did she fear he was cheating on her? Why else would she be checking it?
And she couldn’t do it. If she couldn’t trust Mick, who could she trust?
She tossed it back onto the nightstand, and laid back down.
Several minutes passed, and she had dozed off by the time the shower was turned off and the bathroom door opened. When Mick emerged in the doorway, drying off his muscular, tanned frame, he felt a deep sense of affection when he saw Roz lying there. He even smiled, something he rarely ever did, when he saw her. It had been a week, and he missed her terribly, although nobody on the face of the earth would know it. But he knew it.
Mick Sinatra: Ice Cold Love Page 3
