by Thomas Pluck
They hadn’t taken him as a man of his word.
Verdad’s word was bond, and he earned a triple life sentence to prove it.
A wiry little Latino awaited Jay in his new cell with full lips and soft skin. Sprawled in the orange plastic chair, chatting about Madonna with another queen two cells down. Wore a red bandanna and lipstick, a tied-off shirt, and jeans cut so short the white pockets showed. When Jay stepped in, Rene winked and pointed her perkies his way.
Jay set his box of things on the table and eyed the top bunk, where a Snickers bar sat on the pillow.
“This yours?”
“Welcome home, papi.”
“Thanks. Name’s Jay.”
“Rene.”
Jay reached to shake. Rene offered a hand knuckles up. Jay obliged with a gentle squeeze. “I hear you need a friend.”
“I need a papi, that’s what I need.” Rene licked her lips, showing small, chipped teeth.
Jay took a sheaf of magazine pages from his box, and held out one of a model who reminded him of Ramona. “You got nice ones, buddy. But I like hers better.”
Rene peeked at the picture and sat cross-legged in the orange chair. “Those titties look like fake plastic fruit,” he said. “Besides, she’s paper and my fresh peaches are right here.” Folded her arms together, making a snug little cleavage. “Tell me you don’t wanna stick it between these peaches.”
Jay gave an appreciative nod. “You make a strong argument.” He stacked his paperbacks on the desk.
“You the kind who’s gotta take it, aren’t you.”
Jay grabbed Rene by the shirt. “I ain’t gonna be your papi, but we’re gonna act like it,” he whispered. “Gift from your brother.”
Rene’s eyes went wet. “Mi hermano.”
“You want your candy bar?”
They split it.
“Shit, why didn’t you tell me sooner,” Rene said, and sank back into the chair with a heavy sigh. “Been giving you my best bottom game.”
“It was fun watching you work, Peaches.”
After lights out, Jay gripped himself and thought of Ramona while Rene gave an Oscar-worthy performance in the bunk below. The line of jocks gunning for Rene’s peaches evaporated when word went round that the sister had hooked up with the crazy Cajun who’d put Feature and his entire crew in the dirt.
When the Brotherhood stomped Verdad’s woman in the parking lot, Jay held Rene while she cried. The hacks said they should’ve backed the ambulance over her, put the woman out of her misery. Verdad let it be known he wanted the kind of revenge that only a riot could bring. Jay traced his warrior-rune tattoo, and told Okie he had an idea how to start one.
Chapter 22
Jay got to the garage before sunrise. The door was locked, and Tony nowhere to be found. He took Andre’s tomahawk out to the back and practiced throwing it at a stump. Steel rang as he found the ancient muscle memory, the weight in the shoulder, the snap of the wrist.
The Hulk Truck rumbled to the lot. Jay waited for Tony to mosey through his opening-up routine before joining him, leaning on the corner of the desk, and sipping his lunch-truck coffee.
“What’s on your mind, Tee?”
“Nothing,” Tony said. “Just the life of a businessman.”
“You can keep my pay. Put it toward what I owe.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Tony said. “Thought we went over that. I owed you, now we’re even. So don’t insult me.”
“Okay then.”
Tony jabbed at the keyboard. A familiar beat came out of the tinny speakers. An old INXS song that had remained Tony’s mantra: “Don’t Change.”
“Nothing else bothering you?”
Tony blinked and pursed his lips, getting words ready to spit.
“Me and Ramona, ain’t it?”
Tony sighed, as if Jay let the air out of his tires. “It’s good having you back, pallie. Really it is, but this old shit, I thought I was done with it, you know? Now we got the reunion, and I wanted to go and show everybody I’m not Tony Baloney anymore, but now I’m thinking it’s not the best idea. Bobby Algieri’ll be there, shooting off his mouth. Nicky Paladino, too.”
“I’ll make sure Nicky stays home. He ain’t no cop.”
“Then it’ll be somebody else. It wasn’t only Bello and his crew, you know. The whole school went along. We were Tony Baloney, Hormona, and the Redneck Runt.”
“I forgot about that one.”
“Yeah, well good for you. Not all of us can. What did Joey call Billy?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Think he just called him Brenda, like his brother. Then said ‘Oops, wrong faggot.’”
“Sounds about right.” Jay took a bite of his buttered roll. “You want to grab that pizza tonight?”
“Nah, you know what, I’m busy,” Tony said. His chair hit the shelf as he stood. “Maybe I should’ve gone to prison, so I’d be over this shit.”
Jay chewed his lip to keep from speaking his mind. He’d seen big fellas like Tony do their time. Most begged for protective custody.
“And you can take the day off,” Tony said. “Not that you’re here half the time anyway. I need some time alone.”
“Tone,” Jay said.
Tony stopped by the door. “You fucking her?”
Jay narrowed his eyes and sipped his coffee. “You can be a gentleman or we can talk outside.”
“Yeah, thought so.” Tony stomped into the service bays. A tool clattered to the floor, and a mechanic swore in Spanish.
Nicky Paladino stood by the tall front windows of the ShopRite, flashing his gap-toothed smile as he handed an old lady rolls of quarters, then returned to staring at the pert little ass of the girl working lane five.
Jay watched through a pair of cheap sunglasses from the lot across the street, between bites of a ripe peach. Pimply teenagers wrangled the carts as the supermarket closed. Jay gnawed around the peach pit and spat it out of the car, then carried his shopping bag across the street.
The store employees parked on a roof lot atop the building. Nicky’s black Corvette straddled two spaces. Late ’90s model, but waxed pristine. Jay ice picked a front tire with Andre’s knife. The car settled off-kilter with a long hiss. He hit the other three corners, sheathed the knife, and waited behind a delivery van.
Nicky had been a stockboy in high school. Jay remembered helping Mama Angeline get groceries for a cookout, and Nicky grinning at the two watermelons in their cart. With Jay in earshot, he offered to help her carry her melons to the car. Angeline said he didn’t look strong enough, and grabbed Jay’s belt when he went after him. Said he wasn’t worth the trouble.
Jay slipped a twenty from her purse and bought two rolls of quarters. When Nicky followed them into the parking lot with two snickering cart boys, Jay punched him in the balls and whaled on him until the coins rained a jackpot.
Mama Angeline wasn’t pleased. “I can handle myself, son,” she said in the Jeep.
“I didn’t want you getting in trouble for using your Colt,” Jay said.
She chuckled. “That piss-ant ain’t worth a nickel’s worth of lead, much less the change you dropped.”
Nicky strutted toward his Corvette. He’d lost an inch of hairline but kept the same sneer on his face, like he had seen photos of you on the toilet, or had heard something involving your sister and a zoo animal.
The expression melted into an open-mouthed glower as he noticed his tires.
“When I find the dickless little shit who did this, he’s fired,” Nicky announced to the lot and dug out his phone.
Jay came around the van and sapped him in the kidney with a bag full of Campbell’s soup cans.
Nicky yelped and fell to hands and knees, phone skittering across the asphalt. Jay swung overhead, cans clanking as they hit doughy flesh. Nicky curled and whimpered.
Jay crushed the phone with three stomps of his work boot. “Face to the dirt, you piece of shit.”
“Take my wallet, take it,
take it.”
“I’m not here for your money, Nicky.”
Jay put a knee to the small of Nicky’s back and drew the hatchet from his belt. Yanked Nicky’s belt and sliced through his navy chinos, baring dingy briefs.
Nicky jerked and yelped as the spike pricked flesh. “Oh fuck!”
Jay ground his face into the ground with a knee. The soup cans rolled in circles around them.
Nicky blinked as a pine cone bounced off the pavement past his face. Then a second, and a third. “Fuck, oh fuck.” The fear left his face and his lip twitched like a cat scenting prey.
“Awful jagged, ain’t they? Except your ass is so wide I could kick one of those cans of Chickarina up there. You wanna play kick the can?”
Nicky gritted his teeth. “Do what you’re gonna do, fuckface.”
“Careful what you ask for, Nicky.” Jay gripped him by the hair and put the blade to his soft neck. “I’m here to talk about your rapist buddy from high school.”
“You killed him,” Nicky groaned. “What do you want from me?”
The blade rang as Jay scraped it over Nicky’s stubble. “Some might say I left the job half done. But your sorry-ass life ain’t worth a murder beef.” He let Nicky’s chin drop to the asphalt.
Nicky grunted. “You don’t scare me.”
“You don’t know me anymore. I ain’t the boy who left town. Now, what made Joey so scary, shitbird?”
“His father.”
“Scary enough you felt safe playing your sick games with the town hero’s son.”
“Mr. Bello has something on everybody,” Nicky said. “Joey said his father had his hand up Leo Zelazko’s ass like a Muppet.”
Jay peeked up like a gopher, saw no one, and crushed down again. “He’s still pulling Leo’s strings. Why?”
Nicky laughed. “Find out where Zee goes after work every day.”
“This ain’t no joke, freak. Unless you wanna walk home leaving a trail of shit and blood, talk.”
“Jesus,” Nicky said. “What you gonna take? Matty Strick took it all. I had a fucking business. I’m forty years old and I work with pimple-faced little shits who talk behind my back. If you’re gonna do it, get it over with, ’cause I’m fucked already.”
Jay read the psycho vibe coming off Nicky. In prison, the sickest had no fear. Pain was something that happened to other people. The strong inflicted it upon the weak, and threats rolled off them like piss on porcelain. Jay switched gears, spoke their language. “I don’t wanna kill you, Nicky. I like watching you suffer. When we were kids, you were on top. Now it’s my turn. Like you two did Brendan.” He jabbed the axe point between Nicky’s ass cheeks. “He brought it on himself. I turned out a lot of bitches like him in prison. You would’ve done real well in there.”
Nicky looked beneath the cars for approaching feet. Rested his cheek to the pavement when he saw none. Predatory daydreams swirled in his eyes. “Joey made it so easy. We got away with anything back then.”
Jay recalled Joey Bello’s all-knowing smile beneath the blue-ringed bulls-eyes of his fathomless stare.
“We did whatever he wanted, and people let us. It was better than sex,” Nicky said. “Like getting a blow job, all the time. The best kind, when they don’t wanna give it, but they know they have to, and they start to get into it, about halfway through—”
Jay bounced Nicky’s face off the asphalt. “I can’t believe you’re walking, and I went to jail.”
“You hacked my friend to pieces,” Nicky choked.
“So why should I follow Leo Zee. What am I gonna find?”
Nicky chuckled. “Know why I’m still alive? Because I know to keep my mouth shut. Joey never learned that, he liked to throw things in people’s faces. It’s better when they only think you know. You get to watch it fuck them all up inside.”
Hate rose in Jay like a fever. It would be easy to bleed Nicky out on the pavement. Or at least reacquaint him with those pine cones. But he had a feeling both of them might enjoy it. Jay wiped the blade on Nicky’s briefs, and tucked the hatchet away. “I want you to do something for me, shitbird.”
“Whatever you say,” Nicky said. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“You’re gonna tell the mayor that the one who really took the axe to his boy? He never served a day. I was paid to do his time for him.”
Nicky looked over his shoulder, trying to read his eyes. Jay had learned to lie from the best.
“You rat on me, I’ll toss your head into the Mud Hole with the snapping turtles,” Jay said. He punched Nicky in the kidney, and when his mouth gaped open he jammed a pine cone past his big white teeth.
He left Nicky gagging and spitting.
Chapter 23
Jay pushed off the wall of Ramona’s pool and swam to the shallow end without breaking for air. The water was heated, the pool bottom textured to mimic Caribbean sand. Perched on a ridge of the Watchung mountain chain, they overlooked a carpet-roll of forested hills terminating at the jagged teeth of the Manhattan skyline.
Ramona walked onto the sprawling patio holding two glasses. She sat at the pool’s edge, slow-kicking the water in a blue Jantzen swimsuit.
Jay surfaced between her knees.
“I hope Pappy Van Winkle is to your taste,” she said, handing him the glass. “We’re fresh out of Wild Turkey.”
Jay savored its slow fire. “It’ll do.”
Ramona sipped her negroni. “This won’t last,” she said. “You know that.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
They drank and counted birds crossing the patch of blue sky. “Did you hear about Stanley Carnahan?”
“I read in the paper that he took the lead pill.”
“That’s one way to put it.” She stared at him through her sunglasses.
“If he checked out from the guilt, he dug his own grave far as I’m concerned.”
“He’s still a person, Jay.”
“Ain’t we all?”
“Jesus. How bad was it in there?”
“Wasn’t no picnic,” Jay said. “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone, and they take everything. There’s not much you’re allowed to do, but there’s ways you work around it.”
“Kind of like us,” she said.
“Wasn’t the same.”
“You remember Mother. She wanted to control everything about me. It sure felt like prison. Maybe that’s why our trysts were so sweet. Forbidden fruit.”
“Well, our courtship wasn’t exactly encouraged, but I never got the ‘stay the hell away from my daughter’ speech. Your father liked me well enough.” Mr. Crane had invited Andre over for a beer. Said his own father had been a bricklayer, and he’d “carried the hod” for him summers as a teen. Had Andre build them a china brake, which he used as a liquor cabinet.
“What did you see in me? I was such a snotty little brat.”
“Attitude,” Jay said. “You flipped the whole world the finger.”
“I remind you of your mother,” she said, and drained her drink.
“And why’d you smile on a poor boy like me?”
“You were a little gentleman,” Ramona said, setting down her glass. “And you’re cute.” She marched to the diving board with that same defiant step and executed a perfect jack knife.
Jay swam to meet her halfway, and she surfaced in his arms. He held her as she kneaded his muscles, cataloging his new body. Water dripped down the scarred marble of his skin. The old constellation of burns, cut with ragged lightning bolts left from scratches and shanks and tussles. She traced them with short painted nails.
He flexed his arm around her waist, bringing her close. Put his lips to her widow’s peak, and she pulled him down for a long kiss that muffled their quiet shudders.
“Damn you, Jay,” she muttered, biting his ear, his neck. “Why.”
Deep down he knew that it never would have lasted, that he could never give her what she’d been born to. That no matter whether she cared or not, it would dig
at him, the way people’s eyes would pinch when seeing them together, as they measured what she must have thrown away for him.
But if she wanted to pretend awhile, so would he.
She pushed away and untied her top, and swam away with thin smile. He followed, and she swerved to brush and tease, shimmying out of her bikini bottom. Jay shucked his trunks and gave chase. The water muted colors like an old photograph, lensing them to their younger selves. She cut away and he followed, trailing behind. His power no match for her speed and grace.
She doubled back and he caught her in the shallow end, sliding against her sleek skin. She snapped her thighs around his erection and kissed him, fierce.
He carried her to a chaise lounge. The years had speckled her chest with freckles, tiger-striped her hips with stretch marks. He kissed each new landmark, and all the familiar ones, breathing her in while she gripped his hair and shuddered.
She tugged him up, and rolled to her elbows and knees.
A twinge, down deep. “I want to see you,” Jay panted, and nudged her hip.
She rolled to her back and crossed her ankles around his behind, heels pulling him in deep. He stared in her eyes, like the first time she’d kissed him and all the times after, where he was safe, rocking and matching her motions until he was lost, rippling, seizing, collapsing, burying his face in her neck.
She curled her lips back and freed a languid sigh.
His hands made lazy sweeps over her curves as the clouds scrolled by. When they first met, they spoke in dares and challenges. A tennis match of misunderstandings and appeasements. Now their language had become muscle memory, in the absence of anything to say. He traced the fine scar lines beneath her breasts.
“I had the reduction,” she said. “Tired of the judging. They’re the first thing anyone sees, and then they think they know all about you.”
“People always gonna judge you on something.”
“Imagine if you had to walk around with your cock length tattooed on your forehead.”
“Then everyone would call me 8-Ball.”