City of Margins

by William Boyle

  “Okay.”

  She hangs up and goes back out to the fire escape, bringing her Walkman with her this time, gazing down at Donnie’s house. She can see into the kitchen slightly. She’s seen Donnie sitting at the table there before, and she knows he’s seen her. But she doesn’t see Ralph now. She just sees a shaft of light hitting the linoleum.

  She wonders what it could be that Ralph wants to give her. She wonders what makes her act the way she acts around Ralph as opposed to the way she acted with Nick. She guesses it’s just that she could see through Nick and that Ralph’s a mystery to her. Nick’s just a loser who’s stuck between youth and middle age. She saw the way he looked at her almost immediately. But Ralph’s making a surrogate daughter of her. There’s something sweet about that.

  Headphones on now, she presses play. Lizzie’s mix. Gang of Four’s “Damaged Goods” picks up in the middle. She knows Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” is next. She likes knowing the tape inside out, its familiar transitions, the track list in her blood.

  DONNIE PARASCANDOLO

  Donnie’s thinking that wannabe-cowboy Duke, in his position as bookkeeper for Mr. Natale, had been skimming off the collections that came to him. Not too dissimilar from what Donnie was doing, ultimately. But Duke had been doing it on a larger scale, and Donnie has no idea how the hell he’s gotten away with it. There’s close to a hundred large in his diaper boxes.

  Donnie, Pags, and Sottile are back at his house, going over what’s turned into a major score. Donnie stopped for cigarettes on the way, and he’s refilled his case. He’s smoking now. He’d really been jonesing for one.

  The money is laid out on the living room floor. But there’s turmoil. His idea for the split is that the first ten goes to Big Time Tommy to cover the debt, and the rest they do fifty-forty. That’s fifty percent for him, twenty each for Pags and Sottile. Which means he’d get fifty large and they’d get twenty each. Pags isn’t happy about it, of course. They’re scrapping in the living room, while Sottile’s disappeared into the kitchen to probably call for a pedicure appointment or some shit. He won’t cry over the twenty.

  “Why do you deserve more?” Pags says.

  “It was my discovery,” Donnie says.

  “Your discovery, my balls. This is bullshit.”

  “So, do something about it.”

  Pags, who was a Police Athletic League boxer before he turned donut-belly, lashes out with a quick jab and hits Donnie square in the center of his face, knocking the cigarette to the floor, his nose taking the brunt of it.

  It hurts like hell. Donnie’s gushing blood all over his shirt. “What the fuck?” he says, as he scrambles for a rag or an old shirt to jam under his nostrils. He settles for a lace doily on an end table next to the couch—something Donna dressed the house up with.

  “I’m sorry,” Pags says. “I meant to pull the punch.”

  “Could be you broke my fucking nose, shitmook.”

  “Jeez. I’m sorry, man. I am. You’re really bleeding there.”

  Donnie scrambles for more doilies, a rag, anything. “Help me out. Find something I could use.”

  Pags scores a Daily News sitting on top of a pile of junk in the corner. He hands it to Donnie.

  Donnie shrugs and uses the newspaper as best he can.

  “You always put yourself first,” Pags says to him, sitting on the couch, acting mopey and crushed. “You got no fucking loyalty. You were that way with Donna, too. The people who do for you, you don’t look out for.”

  “You’re saying what?” Donnie says, the back sports page knotted under his nose, catching drops of blood. “Why’s my ex-wife’s name in your mouth? I got no loyalty? I wasn’t loyal, I would’ve cut you out of my life years ago. I need this moral-high-ground shit like I need a hole in my noggin.”

  Pags shakes his head.

  The doorbell rings, the ding echoing through the house. “Now who the fuck is that?” Donnie says. He goes over to the window and draws back the curtain.

  It’s Ava, standing there with a white bakery box. She’s wearing a gold blouse and neat black slacks and big earrings. She’s got makeup on. She’s primping a little, checking her hair with her free hand to make sure it’s not poofy. He thinks of how he looks in his jeans and blood-splattered Old Glory shirt, his nose mashed.

  Scanning the street, he sees the Olds Cutlass Ciera parked in a spot a couple of houses down. She’s come to say thanks. She’s brought cookies.

  He should just let it go. Let her keep ringing and think he’s gone even though his car is still there. Maybe she’ll figure he went up to Eighty-Sixth Street for groceries or coffee. Maybe she’ll leave him a note. Few hours, things’ll settle down and he’ll go to her.

  Donnie lets the curtain whisper closed.

  Ava rings the bell again.

  Donnie walks out into the hallway and stands by the door, putting his hand up to it. He swears he can smell Ava. A good dose of the kind of perfume a woman like her should be wearing. Flowery. Powdery. He wants to smell it across a fancy dinner table where there’s wine and brick-oven bread and veal marsala on clean white plates. He wants to smell it as he kisses behind her ears.

  “Don, you in there?” Ava says. And then a long pause. She’s so close he can hear her breathing. “Don? I just want to say thank you so much.”

  Something in her voice gets to him, and he opens the door with the chain on.

  “Don?” she says again, peering in through the opening. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” he says, taking the newspaper away from his nose and tossing it on the floor. The bleeding’s stopped. “Now’s not a good time. I’m sorry.”

  “I just wanted to say thank you.” She holds up the box. “I got you some cookies and pastries. It’s not much. What you did, getting this car for me, it was so thoughtful. And unnecessary.” She motions to where the car’s parked. “It’s right there. It drives beautifully.”

  “It’s not a junker,” Donnie says. “I’m glad you like it. Use it in good health.”

  Ava smiles. “Were you in a fight?”

  “Nothing too serious. Just some fisticuffs with a pal over a disagreement. He’s still here, cooling down.”

  “Do you need anything? I can go to the store for you.”

  “It’s the middle of the day. What happened to work?”

  “I said to hell with work for once.” Ava’s smile growing wider. Mischievous. “I sweat blood for them over there. I deserve a break.”

  Donnie takes the chain off the door and then opens it just wide enough that he can slip out. He pulls it shut behind him. He doesn’t want her to meet Pags or Sottile or to see the dough in the living room. He’s standing close to her on the stoop.

  She gasps. “Are you okay?” she says.

  He throws his hands up. “Fine. Just took a good shot to the nose.”

  “You’ve got blood all over you.”

  “I’m fine. Here, let me take that off your hands.” He snatches the box from her. He plucks at the string with his teeth.

  “You shouldn’t use your teeth,” Ava says.

  He chews through the string, unravels it, and then puts his face over the box, breathing deep. “These smell great. Been a long time since I had any of this. My parents loved savoiardi.”

  “They’re my favorite, too.”

  “You didn’t get any?”

  “They were out.”

  He paws out a pignoli cookie and shoves it into his mouth whole. “Oh, goddamn,” he says. “That’s so good.”

  “You’re just gonna eat them out here on the stoop? How about some coffee?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t have you in there right now. It’s my buddy. He’s a mess. The place is a mess.”

  “I understand.” Ava takes a step down.

  “You smell good,” Donnie says, letting the top of the box fall shut, the cookie worked to a paste in his mouth. “Better than the cookies.”

  Ava laughs a little. She takes another step dow
n. “You could just come back to my house,” she says. “I’ll make coffee. If you want, I can clean up your face. I have hydrogen peroxide. I could even wash your clothes, try to get the blood out so it doesn’t stain. I don’t have a dryer, but I’ll hang your jeans and shirt on the line, and you can wear something of Anthony’s. I have bags full of his old stuff in the basement. I bet you’re about the same size.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “I’ve gotta say,” Donnie says, “that’s about the nicest offer I ever got. I could stand being cared for a bit.” He looks back at the door, thinks about Pags and Sottile and all the dough. He thinks about Nick, who might just show his worthless mug at home while Ava’s patting him down with cotton balls soaked in peroxide.

  “That’s a yes?”

  He opens the box and grabs a sfinge, taking a monster bite, his shirt now dusted with powdered sugar and flakey pastry debris on top of the blood. “Let me just run inside for a sec. Wait here.”

  He goes back in and stuffs fifty grand in one of the boxes. “What are you doing?” Pags says. “Who’s out there?”

  “A friend of mine. I’m going with her.”

  “You’re something else.”

  Sottile comes in from the kitchen and sees Donnie with the box and says to Pags, “Where’s he going?”

  Pags goes to the window, looks out at the stoop. “He’s got some broad out there.”

  “And what’re we supposed to do?” Sottile says, looking distracted. “I got things I gotta take care of.”

  “You take the ten and drop it in the office at Flash for Tommy,” Donnie says to Sottile. And then to both of them: “Keep the twenty each for yourselves. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit what you do or don’t do.”

  “This fuck’s something else,” Pags says.

  Donnie carries the box up to his bedroom, locking the door behind him. He pushes aside the throw rug, removes the loose length of floorboard, and buries the fifty grand there in the plastic-lined hole. It barely fits. Pags stays behind, he’ll never sniff it out. Not that he’d have the balls anyway.

  He thinks about changing clothes, but he likes the idea of going with Ava all bloodied up. He thinks about her pulling his softball shirt off over his head.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Pags is waiting for him. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I like her,” Donnie says. “I’m going on a date.”

  “And the money?”

  Donnie reaches out and gives Pags a gentle slap on the cheek. “Don’t let the dough come between us, boyo. You got twenty large for doing nothing, zilch, jack shit. You already busted my nose as retribution. Hang out. Drink my booze. Celebrate.”

  “You’re an evil bastard,” Pags says, defeated.

  Donnie goes outside, and Ava’s still there, waiting for him. “I was getting worried,” she says.

  “Let’s go,” he says, a big smile on his bloody face.

  ROSEMARIE BALDINI

  This woman is poison, Rosemarie thinks.

  She’s sitting at the kitchen table, which she’s set for two. The chicken parm is getting cold on the stove. She made the ravioli despite telling herself she should wait, and it’s turned to mush. She’s bitterly angry. She can taste the bitterness on her tongue.

  A boy like Mikey, he’s sensitive, impressionable. This woman, this Donna, she caught him at a time when he’s especially fragile, pliable, and she’s bending him to her will.

  Mikey’s always liked girls, but this is different. This middle-aged woman wore her agenda proudly on her face: Corrupt and destroy.

  They were out there, women like that. Rosemarie had seen them her whole life. She’d had to beat them off Giuseppe with a broom in the first years of their marriage. Temptresses. Puttane.

  Forget the ones just after a buck. She could at least understand their motives in going after well-off guys.

  It’s the others who truly rattle her. The ones—like the bar tramps who pursued Giuseppe—who revel in breaking up marriages, in causing chaos. The ones—like Donna—who want to steal the sons of good women, to make something else entirely of them, to feed off their youth.

  Vampire bitch, that’s what this Donna is.

  Rosemarie says a prayer and crosses herself.

  Donna Rotante. She knew a Rotante back when she was a kid. Skip Rotante. They called him Skids. He ate glue and got in fights in the schoolyard. She wonders if Donna is related.

  She keeps her phone book in the hallway closet. She goes there now, retrieves it, and lugs it back, folding it open at the empty end of the table and searching the Rs.

  What was Mikey thinking? He must have known how he would devastate her. And leaving like that. He must’ve come home with this old tramp wanting an excuse to walk out. She should be as mad at him, but she knows he’s under a spell.

  How do you break a spell like that?

  She finds a Rotante, D on Eighty-Fourth Street a few columns into the Rs. She takes note of the address. She’s going to confront this woman and bring Mikey home.

  How she’ll do it exactly is the question. She considers, first, a lie that isn’t that far-fetched: Big Time Tommy is on her heels, and she needs Mikey’s help desperately. Or, even better, she brings the note from Antonina Divino and exaggerates the conditions of their encounter. Maybe she can lure Mikey away from this washed-up puttana with a young pink-haired beauty.

  She’s being crazy.

  He packed a bag, so what?

  Mikey seeing Donna and bringing her to dinner was simply an impulse thing. Rosemarie overreacted. She was rude. As a mother, she should’ve learned by now that it’s better to let things like this run their course naturally. Mikey likes the exoticism of an older woman, that’s it. How long could it possibly last? A week, a month? Then the luster fades. He sees Donna as not that different from her, his mother, and he’s skeeved out. And all of this for nothing. Maybe she should feel bad for Donna. Maybe this is what sad women do to try to find meaning in their lives. They don’t find it in church, so they try to recapture some kind of youthful recklessness.

  No, no, no.

  Now she’s being too nice. This Donna is a snake, no doubt.

  She thinks of the gun her brother brought her just a little while ago for protection. Things happen for a reason—she believes that. Of all days, he chooses this one to express his concern over Big Time Tommy by arming her? Say she goes to this Donna with the gun. Say she shows it to her. Nothing too over the top. Put a good scare into her.

  But what if Mikey’s there? She’s going to point it at him?

  Maybe he deserves that kind of lesson. Maybe he deserves to have some common sense scared into him. She’s his mother. She’s looking out for his best interest. She’s trying to steer him away from trouble, trying to teach him how to survive in this world. She has to threaten him to bring him home, where’s the sin? A little hard love is what he needs.

  She’s hidden the gun in a hatbox in Giuseppe’s closet on a shelf stocked with old cameras and electric razors wrapped in twisty cords and bottles of scotch he got for gifts and never opened. She takes the box down and brings it to the table and sits there with it in front of her. Eventually, she pushes aside the lid and looks at the gun.

  She’s being crazy. She’s being her own kind of dumb.

  Still. Sometimes a woman has to do things she never could’ve anticipated. She has to protect what’s hers. She has to fight.

  She touches the handle of the gun, traces her finger over the trigger and then the muzzle. She’ll do what she has to do.

  AVA BIFULCO

  Ava shows Don inside. She turns the light on in the kitchen and slips off her shoes by the door. She leaves her purse there, too. She places the box from Angelo’s on the table, the top lifting open a bit so that the paper and the sugared folds of pastries are visible.

  “Where’s your son?” Don asks, trailing behind her, looking around at all the quiet things.

  “God
knows,” Ava says. “He took off from school. I’m sorry he had so much to drink last night.”

  “He came to see me afterward, you know that?”

  Ava, on her way into the bathroom, pauses. “He what?”

  “He came by my house.”

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry he bothered you. He gets these big ideas in his head.”

  “He was encouraging me to see you again.”

  “He was?”

  Ava goes into the bathroom and gathers together an armload of first aid supplies. Hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, Q-tips. She comes back out and Don’s sitting at the table, leaning back in his chair. She puts down the supplies next to the box of pastries and cookies.

  “What now?” Don says.

  “I’ll put on coffee,” Ava says. “And then why don’t you go in the bathroom and take off your clothes? I’ll throw them in the wash and get you something to change into.”

  Don nods. “You’re like an angel from heaven.”

  “You’re the angel. Swooping down and saving me on the Belt. Getting that Olds. At first, I wasn’t sure, I didn’t think it was right to accept, but it was very nice of you.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  At the stove, Ava gets the coffee started. She fills the percolator with water, scoops some Folgers into the basket, turns the gas on. She likes the way the flame lights up the condensation on the bottom of the percolator.

  When she turns around, Don’s standing, pulling his bloody softball shirt off over his head. Ava gets a plastic Waldbaum’s bag and collects the shirt without touching it. She looks at him without his shirt on. Hair on his chest. Muscly arms. A little paunch. His jeans don’t have nearly as much blood on them, but there’s some. He has to take his boots off to slip out of his jeans. Ava looks away.

  “Thanks for washing these,” Don says, grunting as he struggles to step out of his jeans. He bunches them up and stuffs them in the bag with the shirt.

  “Who was it you got in a fight with?” Ava says.

  “My friend Pags,” Don says. “Tony Pagnanelli.”