A moment later, he emerged, thrusting a dozen roses toward her. She moved backward a step. Then she reached forward and accepted them. They kissed.
“Happy anniversary,” Michael said.
“I thought this trip was my present.”
“All part of the same package.”
He ducked back into the boathouse and came out carrying a striped beach blanket and a huge picnic basket covered with a red-checked tablecloth. Two long loaves of Italian bread poked out of the basket, like crossed swords. “Voilà!” he said. With his head, he pointed toward the clearing. “Lunch at the beach.”
Kay led. She set down her flowers and spread out the blanket.
They sat down Indian-style, facing each other. They were both overcome by hunger, and they dug in. At one point Michael dangled a bunch of grapes over Kay’s head.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll bite.” She bit off a grape.
“Nicely done,” Michael said.
She looked into the woods but could not see the men. “That wasn’t what I meant. That wasn’t only what I meant.” She paused. But why not ask? It wasn’t a question about business. He’d brought her here on a date. For their anniversary. “Where’d this food come from?”
He pointed across the lake. “I had it delivered.”
“Whose land is this?”
“This land? Here?”
She frowned.
“Oh,” he said. “I guess it’s yours.”
“You guess?”
“It’s yours.” He stood. He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. It was a photostat of the deed. Like everything they owned, it had her name on it and not his. “Happy anniversary,” he said.
Kay picked up her roses. That they could afford this, on top of the house in Las Vegas, both appalled her and thrilled her. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said.
Michael knew he shouldn’t have called this land an anniversary pres-ent, too. He was overdoing it. “Your last present,” he said. He put his right hand on an imaginary Bible and raised his left. “I swear. No more surprises.”
She looked up at him. She ate a strawberry. “You bought land here without telling me?”
He shook his head. “I have an interest in a real estate company that bought it. It’s an investment. I was thinking we could develop the land here, for us. For the family.”
“For the family?”
“Right.”
“Define family,” she said.
He turned around and faced the lake. “Kay, you have to trust me. Things are in a delicate place right now, but nothing’s changed.”
Everything has changed. But she knew better than to say this. “You move us to Las Vegas and then, before we even unpack, you move us again, up here?”
“Fredo already had things set up for us in Las Vegas. But in the long run Lake Tahoe is a better opportunity. For us, Kay. You can work with the architect, build your dream house. It may take a year, even two. Take your time. Get it right. The kids can grow up swimming in this lake, exploring the woods, riding horses, skiing.” He turned to face her. “The day I asked you to marry me, Kay, I said that if everything went right, our businesses would be completely legitimate in five years.”
“I remember,” she said, though this was the first time they’d spoken of this since then.
“That still holds. We’ve had to make some adjustments, it’s true, and not everything went right. I hadn’t counted on losing my father. There were other things, too. A person can’t expect everything in a plan that features human beings to go right. But”-he held up his index finger-“but: We’re close. Despite some setbacks, Kay, we are very, very close.” He smiled and went down on his knees. “ Las Vegas already has a certain reputation. In any version of this plan, we’ll retain our hotel and casino businesses there. But Lake Tahoe is different. This is a place that can work for us all, indefinitely. We have enough land here to build any kind of house you want. My mother, your folks if they want. Anybody who wants to be here, there’s room.”
He did not mention his sister or his brother. Kay knew him well enough to be sure this was probably not an accident.
“I can fly the seaplane in and out of here, and any size jet can fly into Reno, which is just up the road. Carson City is less than an hour from here. San Francisco is three.”
“ Carson City?”
“The capital.”
“I thought Reno was the capital.”
“Everyone thinks that. It’s Carson City.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been there on business, to the capitol building itself. You want me to prove it?”
“Sure.”
“It’s Carson City, Kay, believe me. How do you propose I prove it?”
“You’re the one who proposed proving it.”
He picked up an egg. He held it like a dart and flicked it at her.
She caught it and in the same motion threw it back at him. She missed. It sailed past him and two-hopped into the lake, and he laughed.
“It’s nice to see you like this,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain it.”
He sat down beside her. “There’s a lot I can’t explain, too, Kay. But I have a vision. It’s the same vision I always had, only now it’s a hell of a lot closer to reality, with our children growing up more the way you did than I did, all-American kids who can grow up to be anything they want. You grew up in a small town; so will they. You went to a good college; so can they.”
“You went to one, too. You went to a better one.”
“You finished. They won’t need to leave for any reason, and certainly not to help with my business. They won’t be influenced by me the way I was by my father, and living here will be a part of that. We’re distancing the family-”
Kay arched an eyebrow.
“Define it however you want, all right? The family. Our family. Ourselves. We’re distancing ourselves from all the”-he picked up a half-empty milk bottle and chugged the rest of it-“from let’s just say New York. That alone is going to chart a new course for us. Our holdings in the state of Nevada -this isn’t a very populated state, Kay, not yet-our holdings here will give us a means of reorganizing my business in ways that would have been impossible in New York. We’re already done with the hardest part of this. Mark my words: five years from now, the Corleone Family should be every bit as legitimate as Standard Oil.”
“Should be,” Kay repeated.
He sighed. If this was what she was like as a teacher, her students had been both lucky and doomed. “I apologize for it not being one hundred percent certain. What in life is?”
“Family, right?”
Michael chose to take that as playful. “What else can I do? Walk away? Even if I could do that and not make a widow out of you, what then? Take a job selling shoes while I go to night school and finish college? People depend on me, Kay, and while you and the kids come first and always will, I have other people to consider, too. Fredo, Connie, my mother, and that’s just the immediate family, not the business. We sold the olive oil company because we needed a sizable and completely government-approved amount of cash, but even after that we still have controlling interests in all kinds of other completely legitimate businesses: factories, commercial real estate, dozens of restaurants and a chain of hamburger joints, various newspapers and radio stations and booking agencies, a movie studio, even a Wall Street investment firm. Our interests in gambling and lending money can all be operated where it’s legal. As for what we spend to help get politicians elected-that’s no different from what any big corporation or labor union does. I suppose I could stop and sit back and watch it all fall apart, watch us lose everything. Or.” He raised an index finger. “Or. Instead, I could take a few more calculated risks and try to bring about a plan that’s already, I would say, eighty percent implemented. You know I can’t tell you the specifics of it, but I will tell you this, Kay: if you can just have fa
ith in me, five years from now, we’ll be sitting on this very spot, watching our kids-Mary and Anthony and maybe a couple more-swimming in the lake, and Tom Hagen, my brother Tom, will be two months away from getting himself elected governor of the great state of Nevada, and the name Corleone will have started to mean the same sort of thing to most Americans as the names Rockefeller and Carnegie. I want to do great things, Kay. Great things. And the main reason for that, first and foremost, is you and the kids.”
They gathered up their lunch. Michael whistled, and Tommy Neri came out of the woods. He said he and the guys had already eaten, but a snack would be great, thanks.
Michael showed Kay into the boathouse. Inside was a Chris-Craft, aquamarine with spruce panels. He extended an arm. Kay got in. She expected Tommy Neri to follow her, but he released the boat and stayed behind.
“I was wondering,” Michael said, backing the boat out into the lake. “What’s the traditional fifth-anniversary present, anyway?”
“Wood. Which reminds me.” She pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to him.
“Really?” he said. “Wood?”
“Really,” she said. “Open that.”
Michael smiled and pointed at the tree-lined banks of the lake. “Behold,” he said. “Wood.”
“Open the card,” she said.
When he did, a brochure tumbled out. He picked it up.
“Behold,” she said. “Woods.”
It was from the pro shop of a country club in Las Vegas.
“Woods and irons both. I got you a set of golf clubs,” she said. She squeezed his right bicep. “You have to go in to get measured for them.”
“Golf, huh?”
“You don’t like it? You don’t want to take it up?”
“I do,” he said, rubbing the side of his face. “It’s perfect. Golf. Like any all-American executive. I love it. I do.”
Michael put the boat into gear, and they started across the lake to town. Kay slid next to him on the bench seat, and he looped his arm around her. He opened the throttle all the way. She lay her head on his shoulder and kept it there for the twenty-minute trip.
“Thank you,” she said when they got to shore. “I love the lot. I love your plan.” She leaned toward him. “And-” She kissed him. Michael did not usually like to show his emotions in public, but something in her kiss shot right through him, and as she started to pull away he pulled her back toward him and kept kissing her, harder now.
When they finally separated, breathless, they heard applause. It was two teenage boys onshore. They were each with a girl. The girls apologized. “They’re retards,” one said.
“Can’t take them anywhere,” said the other.
They were all dressed as if they’d just come from church.
“No apologies necessary,” Michael said. “Say, is there a movie theater around here?”
There was, and they got directions. The boys lagged behind the girls, laughing and punching each other on the arm.
“I was going to say-” Kay said.
“You love me,” Michael said.
“You’re as bad as those boys,” she said. “And you love me, too.”
The theater was closed. The picture they were showing was one produced by Johnny Fontane’s production company, which was sixty percent owned by a privately held Delaware-chartered corporation in which the stock was held by fronts for the Corleone Family. At some point, Michael would (for a purchase price of symbolic money) buy the whole shebang. That’s if there was anything worth buying. The company had once been fairly profitable. This picture, like most of the recent ones, did not star Johnny Fontane. Michael rapped on the window.
“It’s closed, Michael.”
He shook his head. He knocked harder. Before long, a bald man in a cowboy shirt and dungarees came into the lobby and mouthed that they were closed. Michael shook his head and knocked on the door again. The man came to the door. “Sorry, mister. Sundays all we got is the one show at seven-thirty.”
Michael motioned for the man to open the door, and he did.
“I understand,” Michael said. “It’s just that my wife and I are on a date, and this”-he turned and glanced at the movie poster-“Dirk Sanders, he’s just about her favorite movie star in the world, isn’t that right, honey?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.”
“Well, you can see it tonight. Seven-thirty.”
Michael looked at the man’s left hand. “You see, though, we need to be home by seven-thirty, and this, today, is our anniversary. Our fifth. You know how it is, right?”
“I’m the owner,” he said, “not a projectionist.”
“Which makes your time all the more worthwhile. I wouldn’t expect you to do a favor like this for a total stranger. You know how to operate the projector, though, am I right?”
“Of course I do.”
“Could I just have a word with you, then? Alone? Just for a second?”
The man rolled his eyes, but Kay could tell there was something in Michael’s cold stare that affected the man. He let Michael in. They exchanged some whispered words. Moments later, Michael and Kay sat in the middle of the theater as the movie started. “What did you say to him?”
“Turns out we have some mutual friends.”
A few minutes in, as the lead characters literally bumped into each other in a Technicolor soundstage version of Paris, the theater owner brought them two sodas and a bucket of fresh popcorn. The man and the woman in the movie took an instant dislike to each other, signaling the dull inevitability of their falling in love. Soon Kay and Michael began making out in the dark, like kids. They couldn’t leave, not after getting the owner to show the movie just for them. They kept at it. Things escalated. “Behold,” Kay whispered, grabbing his cock. “Wood.”
Michael burst out laughing.
“Shhh,” Kay said.
“We’re alone,” Michael said. “All alone.”
A year ago, one of the two men pacing near the ticket counter at Gate 10B of the Detroit City Airport was a barber on Court Street in Brooklyn who made book on the side, reporting to a guy who reported to a guy who reported to Pete Clemenza. The other one had been a goat farmer in Sicily, near Prizzi. In the intervening years, loyalty and battlefield promotions and a frank shortage of labor had caused them to come up through the ranks more swiftly than a person could in times of peace. The barber was third generation, with terrible Italian; the goatherd still struggled with English. Their flight to Las Vegas was boarding now. There was no sign of Fredo Corleone. The goatherd held a phantom telephone to his ear. The barber sighed and nodded. What choice did he have? He went to a pay phone and started dumping quarters into it.
“Service,” said the voice in Las Vegas. Rumor had it that the girls at the phone service, this one and the one in Brooklyn, were nieces of Rocco Lampone’s, all of them gorgeous, but no one ever saw them or knew for sure.
“This is Mr. Barber calling,” he said.
“Yes, sir. And your message, Mr. Barber?”
“Our luggage,” he said, “has been misplaced.” He almost said lost, but lost would have been taken as killed. “It won’t be on the scheduled flight.”
“Yes, sir. Is that all?”
Is that all? When Don Corleone hears that Fredo’s new bodyguards lost him in a casino somewhere in the wilds of Detroit, yes, that’ll be all, all right. “Just say that me and Mr.-” The barber blanked. Goat in Italian was what? He put his hand over the phone. The goatherd was across the hall, getting coffee. “Come si dice ‘goat’?”
“La capra,” said the goatherd, shaking his head.
As if, growing up on Court Street, the barber had ever seen a goat, had ever had an occasion to learn that fucking word. “Mr. Capra and me are looking for it. We hope to be on the next flight out, luggage and all.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Sandra Corleone parked her Roadmaster wagon on the grass near Francesca’s dormitory.
“Oh, Ma,” Francesca
said. She slipped into her stylish new raincoat. “You’re not going to park here, are you?”
All the other cars were squeezed onto the pavement of the street and the loading zone.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sandra said, turning off the car and reaching into the backseat to wake Kathy. As if on cue, two other cars followed her lead. “People have to park somewhere.”
They opened the gate of the wagon, and Kathy loaded Francesca and Sandra up with boxes, which were all from the liquor store her mother’s fiancé owned. Most of the other kids had moving company boxes or steamer trunks. Kathy took only a table fan and Francesca’s Bakelite radio. “Someone has to get the door,” she said.
The front doors were wide open. Kathy punched the elevator for them. Already, their mother was drenched in sweat. She set her boxes down in the elevator. “I’m fine,” she said, too winded to say anything more. She was thirty-seven, ancient, and had gained a lot of weight since they’d moved to Florida.
“I can’t believe you’re making Ma carry the heavy stuff,” Francesca said.
“I’m not feeling that great.” Kathy smirked. “I can’t believe you’re wearing a raincoat.”
“You never know when it might rain,” Francesca said. Kathy knew full well it was the dress code. Francesca was wearing Capri pants. Female students in anything other than a dress were required to cover themselves. Most, Francesca had been told during orientation, chose raincoats. The dress code probably didn’t apply on moving day, but Francesca wasn’t taking any chances. She was the kind of person who followed rules.
When they got to Francesca’s room, Kathy set down the fan and the radio, flopped down on the bare twin bed, curled up, grabbed her abdomen, and moaned.
Francesca rolled her eyes. Because she rarely got cramps, she was skeptical about her sister’s ongoing problems with them. But complaining about it was as useless as Kathy was.
“Where are the sheets?” Sandra said.
“On the other bed,” Francesca said.
“Not those.” She pulled out a nail file and started slicing open boxes. Francesca made a trip by herself. When she got back upstairs the bed was made with pink sheets, and Kathy was propped up on the pillows from both beds, the fan trained on her, her eyes closed, a wet washcloth draped on her forehead, sipping a Coke through a straw, listening to jazz on the radio.
The Godfather returns Page 7