Her father, however, was more circumspect. “Why did you leave him, since you love him so much and he’s not tied up in the mob life? Why did you leave?”
Trina certainly wasn’t going to tell them what Reno had revealed to her. “It just all got kind of too much for me, I guess. So I left.”
“He knows you gone?”
“Yes. Jazz, that’s a friend of mine, she left a message on my cell phone. She think he’s coming here.”
“Coming here?” her mother said, jumping to her feet. “You ain’t bringing no mafia in my house! You gots to get out of here, un uh, I ain’t having it. Cecil tell her!”
This was exactly why she stayed away so long, Trina thought as her mother went on and on. She and her parents just never quite got along. It was nothing she could point to, just a matter of personality she guessed, of her doing her own thing. But they were so different from her that sometimes she wondered if they were even related.
“Is his heart right, baby girl?” Cecil asked her, instead.
Trina looked at her father. He was always the more reasonable, the more charitable, of the two. “Yes,” she said. “Very much so.”
He nodded. “Then if he comes, talk to him.”
“Are you crazy?” Earnestine asked her husband. “You telling your own daughter to romance some mob boss! What kind of sick, perverted piece of trash you are?”
Cecil gave her daughter one of those if this woman don’t get out of my face looks that made her smile. Then he stood up. “If he comes,” he said again, “talk to him. A man like that don’t grow on no trees. You listen to your mother if you want, and you’ll end up right back at that strip joint, struggling for the rest of your life.”
“Oh, so because he got money,” Earnestine said, “that means she supposed to put her life in jeopardy?”
“Her life ain’t in no jeopardy. If this man is anything like she’s claiming, he will be her protection. I don’t think she’s even worried about that.”
“I’m not,” Trina said.
“Then what you worried about?” her mother wanted to know.
Trina sighed. “Him,” she said.
And that, to Cecil Hathaway, said it all. “I got to go to work,” he said, hugging his only child. “We’ll talk this evening.”
Trina smiled. She appreciated his support.
Only, when the evening rolled around, and they had had dinner and was sitting out on the porch, a tried and true southern tradition, not a word was spoken. The crickets could be heard, and the cicadas, but the three adults on the porch simply sat and rocked and looked at the trees rustling in the field across the street.
A car stopped in front of the house a good two hours after they had retired out there, and Trina’s heart began to pound when Reno got out and headed toward the porch. Although he was in one of his expensive suits, it looked as if it had been slept in, well-worn.
“That him?” Cecil asked her.
“That’s him,” Trina said.
“What a good looking man. Tall, built strong, tough-looking. You done good, baby girl.”
Trina wanted to smile at her father’s assessment of Reno, but her emotions were too raw. She simply stared as Reno approached.
“Good evening,” Reno said as he walked up the steps.
“Good evening,” Cecil replied, standing to his feet.
Reno’s eyes kept cutting to Trina as he went up to shake Cecil’s hand. “You must be Mr. Hathaway.”
“Reverend Hathaway,” Trina’s mother said.
“Oh, Reverend, I’m sorry. Trina never mentioned. . .”
“Never mentioned the fact that her father is a minister of the gospel?” Earnestine said. “I know. That’s how she is.”
Reno looked at Earnestine. “You have a fantastic daughter,” he said, amazed that she didn’t realize it. “I’ve never met a woman more kind, and caring, and considerate.”
Although Earnestine was defensive, Cecil was staring at Reno.
“I didn’t say she wasn’t kind,” Earnestine said. “She just do her own thing and don’t consult us about nothing. Did she tell you about Jeffrey Graham, that good-for-nothing?”
Reno looked at Trina. He didn’t care about any Jeffrey Graham or any other man in her past. All he cared about, right here and right now, was doing whatever it took to get her back. “Hey,” he said to her. “What, you trying to give me a heart attack over here, leaving like that?”
Trina didn’t respond. Reno exhaled. “I’m sorry, all right? I just. . . I shouldn’t have said what I said, and I’m sorry.”
Trina looked at him. She could see how distressed he was. “You look awful,” she said.
“Thanks a lot,” he said with a smile. “Just what I need. A self-esteem boost.”
Trina smiled weakly too. And she knew it was just an exercise in futility. She looked beyond him, at the car in front of the house.
“A rental?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“How did you get here?”
“Company jet.”
“This trip is costing you a lot of money.”
“It’s only money. But you, on the other hand.” He said this with a smile.
“Well,” Cecil said, smiling too, “will you two excuse me and my wife? It’s getting pretty late.”
“Nice meeting you again, sir,” Reno said, shaking Cecil’s hand again. “Maybe soon we can sit down and have a conversation.”
“I’d like that,” Cecil said. Then looked at his wife. “Come on, Earnestine,” he said. “They don’t need an audience.”
Earnestine huffed again, but she got up and left.
After they did, Reno sat next to Trina. “So,” he said, glancing at her and then at the quiet neighborhood, “this is Dale?”
Trina didn’t respond.
“Why did you leave like that, Tree,” he asked her, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “You know I was just talking, just upset.”
Trina looked at him. “So there’s no revenge hit planned?”
Reno leaned back. “What do you want from me?” he asked her. “That fucker killed my father and my brother. What you want me to do? Look the other way? Pretend it didn’t happen? Let him get away with it?” He asked the last question with a lift in his voice, as if that would be the worse result of all.
“I don’t know what you should do, Reno,” Trina admitted. “But I don’t know if I can live like that.”
Reno’s heart dropped. “Like what, Tree? You ain’t gonna be involved in none of this.”
“But you will be. Don’t you understand that? That’s as bad, if not worse, than me being involved. You could go to prison--”
“I’m not going to no prison.”
“Or they could come after you--”
“They ain’t coming after me.”
Trina stared at him. “How can you be so certain?”
Reno’s temper flared. “Because if I hit those motherfuckers, I’m gonna hit’em so hard, and so decisively, that there ain’t gonna be nobody left to hit back!” Then he settled back down. “If I were to go down that particular road, that is. I ain’t Joey. I ain’t Dirty and Carmine. It ain’t gonna be no warning shots, no message-sending, no shoot to miss. They didn’t miss Pop, and my baby brother. Who would shoot Joey? He was just a kid, just a snot-nosed kid who didn’t know his dick from his ass. And they kill him? And you think I’m not gonna at least be what you call concerned about that?”
By the time Reno settled back down and looked over at Trina again, anguish had gripped her face. He leaned back, ran his hand over and over through his hair, bunching it up into a messy pile. “What you want from me, Tree,” he asked with a plea in his voice. “I’m no saint. I’m not gonna be a comfortable husband who works a nine-to-five and comes home to his adorable housewife. That ain’t me. I wish it was, for your sake,” he said this as he stood, began to pace. “But that ain’t me.”
He eventually leaned against the banister, facing Trina. “I took the company jet
to get here. We had to land in Jackson, and then I drove over, in that rental car. While I was driving, I kept thinking about how in the world could I make this sell. How in the world could I convince you that I’m worthy of you, of your heart, of your life.”
Then he paused, and it was a long, pregnant, anguished pause, his already devastated face turning grim. He looked at Trina. “But I couldn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t make the case. Because I am not worthy of you.” Tears began to form in his eyes, which made Trina teary-eyed too. “I’m not worthy of you, Tree. When I look at you, I see an angel, a special lady that deserves nothing but the best of everything. When I look at myself, I see my father, and his father before him. A thug in the long run. A man who can’t do right because he’s not fated to do right.”
Another pause of anguish. “But this thug, this fated man, loves an angel. And I don’t know what to do about that.”
Before he could finish his last words, Trina had already made up her mind. She made it up as soon as he declared himself unworthy. Probably made it up before she left Vegas. If he came for her, if he proved to her, once again, just how much he truly loved her, she was taking love. And going back with him.
She stood up, walked over to Reno, and fell into his arms.
They just stood there, hugged together, with Earnestine and Cecil staring at them from their living room’s old style picture window. Earnestine was shaking her head in disgust. Cecil was grinning from ear to ear.
They finally moved apart, but only just enough to see each other’s face. When Reno smiled, showing those lines of age that these trying times undoubtedly had exacerbated, her heart melted. She was his, no matter what.
“How about we take a little ride?” he asked her.
She smiled too. “Where will you be taking me on this ride, Mr. Gabrini?”
“Well, Mrs. Gabrini, or at least soon to be, I thought we’d go to the best establishment in town, wherever that may be, with a certain type of accommodations that would allow me to stretch you out, relax you, and then take this Herculean rod of mine and bang your brains out.”
Trina laughed. “You are such a meek and mild man, did anybody ever tell you that?”
“Nobody,” Reno said, his swagger back. “And they better not, either. Meek and mild. I got your meek and mild right over here.” He pointed toward his midsection. “Right over here, Tree.”
Trina laughed again. Said goodnight to her parents, and took that ride with Reno.
SIXTEEN
They ended up at the Grand, the best hotel in town, which, Trina admitted when they walked into the room, wasn’t saying much.
But the state of the room wasn’t an issue for them. Because they were kissing, and falling onto the bed, before they could even inspect the place. It had been their first time since Paris, since all those romantic Paris nights when they made love so often that Trina once joked that they were becoming freaks about it. Reno had joked back, “becoming my foot, we’re already there,” and banged her mercilessly.
And now, in Dale, Mississippi, he wanted her just as desperately. He removed her blouse, thrilled to see she was wearing no bra, and began kissing her chest and breasts. As he did, Trina was undressing him, his shirt and his pants, and then lifting herself up so that her remaining clothes could be removed, rendering them both completely naked.
But Reno couldn’t stop kissing her. He’d move down, from her breasts to her stomach, but kept moving back up to her lips. He loved the way she tasted. So much so, that he moved all the way down, to her thighs, to between her legs, and tasted her so long, and so expertly that Trina was having an orgasm by the time he entered her.
He entered slow and easy, totally in control, his rod throbbing for her before he got halfway in. But when she began to throb back, from her orgasm, his control broke, and he pounded.
For what seemed like hours, but were actually good, long minutes, he pounded. The bed began squeaking as if the springs were going to pop, as the sound of the silence was enveloped with the sound of flesh pounding on a bed that might not be able to take it much longer.
They were so explosive that they nearly ended up off of the bed from the intensity, as Trina’s small body kept arching to take him in fully, kept moving as the feel of him so deep within her caused her to want to scream. She wasn’t giving this up, not for anybody else this world had to offer, and she knew it now like she knew her name.
When they finally stopped, when the bed squeaking finally eased, he let out a long, exhausted exhale, kissed her on the lips again, and rolled off of her. Now they were laying side by side, both amazed at how right they were for each other, although they appeared, to the world, to be so wrong. Reno took Trina’s hand, and held it against him.
After laying there longer, both embracing the power of harmonious love, Trina looked at him. “Are you plotting to kill Frank Partanna?” She asked him this without blinking, without stuttering, without any signs of outward distress.
Reno sighed. His distress was more readily seen. “I cannot allow that asshole to think that he can kill my father, that he can kill my brother, that he can just take what my father took a lifetime to build and claim it as his own, and expect me to just turn my back and walk away.”
Trina looked away. “It’ll be like a betrayal,” she said and Reno, amazed, looked at her.
“That’s right, Tree,” he said. “I’ll be betraying my father’s memory if I walk away.”
“But what about the moral point, Reno? How can you say you love God, and take a life he put on this earth?”
“I understand what you’re saying, I do. And I know that a part of me, a moral part of me, may be lost forever if I go down this particular road. But they bought this fight to me, Tree. I wasn’t bothering nobody. My old man wasn’t bothering nobody. Goodness knows Joey wasn’t bothering nobody. But they bothered us.” He looked at Trina, his blue eyes stormy and drained. “I can’t let that stand or it’ll be open season on the east coast, on men like my father. And Carmine and Dirty will be sitting ducks. I can’t allow that, Tree. The east coast families, my father’s friends, can’t allow it. That’s why we were meeting. To plan this with precision. I wish this wasn’t my fate, I wish I wasn’t put in this position. But I’m in this position. I hate it, but I’m in it.” Then he added, to make certain she understood: “I’m no saint, Tree. I’m telling you I’m not.”
Trina seemed to take it all in. Already Reno was seeing a change in her. “When’s the hit?” she asked him.
He stared at her longer, and then looked at the Cartier watch on his wrist. “In exactly two hours and eight minutes.”
“When it all goes down, you will be questioned, you know that?”
“I know.”
Another kind of taking it all in pause from her. “Okay,” she finally said, getting out of bed, “let’s give you an alibi they can’t refuse.”
Reno looked at her, was happy and saddened that she now was completely onboard, but took her lead and got out of bed, too.
***
Frank Partanna is in a private room in his restaurant in south central LA, drinking with his men and laughing at this cockeyed female he once fell in love with. It’s eight in the evening, the sun is just beginning to set, and Frank is at peace with the world.
“I didn’t know if she was looking at the wall or at me, but it didn’t matter,” he says. “That dame was a wildcat in bed, she was even growling when I fucked her.” The men laugh. “Growl, growl,” he says, gesturing like a cat.
Back in Dale, Mississippi, just after ten at night, and Trina and Dale are standing at the altar in Cecil Hathaway’s small church. Earnestine is the witness, although it’s obvious she’d rather not participate. Cecil is standing before the couple, the Bible in his hands.
“Dearly beloved,” he says, “we are gathered here today, in the sight of God, to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.”
Back in LA, while Frank is laughing his head off, Gooch, one of his lieutenants, come
s running into the private room. “We got trouble, time to boogie!”
There’s no hesitation. These men know how to respond to trouble. Frank is immediately grabbed and ushered down a long, narrow hallway.
In Dale, Reno looks at Trina. Although she’s in pants and blouse, and even he’s in a wrinkled suit that had seen better days, she couldn’t look more beautiful to him.
“Do you, Katrina Marie Hathaway, take this man, Dominic Gabrini, to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love, honor and obey, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”
Trina looks at Reno. She isn’t smiling, she isn’t doubtful, she’s dead serious. “I do,” she says.
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