He put his hand up and stopped her. “My father is outside. He wants to talk to you two.” He was pointing at Junior and I. “I’m eating.” Junior said.
Little Vito just looked at him like he was brain-damaged or something.
“Why don’t you tell him to come in? Have some coffee or something.” Now I was looking at him like he was brain-damaged too.
Then he looked up at Little Vito and burst out laughing. “I’m only fucking around. Where is he?”
“Like I said, he’s outside in the parking lot.” He was looking at his watch, a big gold job. “Let’s go, we don’t have all day here.”
I flicked my finger at Junior and said, “Come on.” Then I turned to the girls and said we’d be right back. Angela went to get up. “I’ll come too.” She said, but Little Vito told her to stay. “We’ll only be a minute and then maybe Daddy will come in.”
As we walked out of the diner I could feel people looking at us. I hoped they didn’t notice that my leg was sort of jiggling nervously, or maybe it was just my imagination. I mean, Vito had nothing against us, right? Anyway, I was watching little Vito walk ahead of us, which was like being in the wake of a tugboat when it occurred to me. How did they know we were here? I asked Junior the same question and he just shrugged and looked at the floor.
“Look at me.” I said, grabbing his shirt. “How did they know that we’re here?”
“What? You think I called them, or something?” He said, brushing my hand off of his shirt. He still wasn’t looking at me. For all his, whatever you want to call it, criminality, he had never lied to me before. Not that I knew of anyway. Sure, I’d seen him lie a million times, and usually, I was probably lying with him. But he never was anything but honest with me. “You’re fucking lying I said.”
“Fuck you. You’re just worked up. Look, maybe Angela called him, you think of that. I mean, they are related.”
“She does what she wants I said. She doesn’t need to be calling home.” I was kind of whispering now because I could see Vito standing there in the parking lot. He was smiling, standing there with two guys. When we walked up to him, he dismissed Little Vito with a wave. “Go home.” He said. “Wait for me there, this isn’t for you.” Little Vito nodded and got in a car exactly like Angela’s and drove away.
“I got a surprise for you two.” Vito said. “I think you’ll like it. We brought a friend of yours along, thought you’d like to say hello.”
I looked into the car they were standing besides but didn’t see anyone. The men with Vito saw me looking in the car and started to laugh. “Not in there, you fucking shoemaker.” He said. Then he knocked on the trunk of the car. ”Hello, anyone home in there?” No one answered. But hell, I wouldn’t answer the door if I saw Vito knocking, but that was beside the point. “Open it.” Vito said.
One of the guys opened the trunk and Vito stood there like a game show host with his hand extended. “You know this guy?” He asked.
I almost puked up my “Lumberjack Special” It was Melo laying there with his hands tied behind his back and part of his head missing. His brains were pooled under his head like a pillow, or something. I just stared at him until I had to turn away.
“Shit, I’m surprised he had brains.” Junior said. “The way he acted, I thought he was some fucking mental case with like cardboard in there, or something.”
“Shut it.” Vito said. “Before someone sees something they’re not supposed to see.”
Vito looked at us both of us before telling the guys he was with to get going. “Put this guy somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine.” He said. It looked like he wanted to say something and then decided to wait until the other guys left with Melo’s body.
Then, before he got in his car he turned to us and said. “That’s it, it’s over.”
Vito looked like the kind of guy you would want to believe but some in my head was saying, “My ass, it is.”
Chapter Thirteen
Isn’t there something in Mexico called like “The Day of the Dead” or something like that, some holiday, or something? They must be fucked up down there because let me tell you that after experiencing my own personal “Day of the Dead”, me, I fainted.
It must have had something to do with seeing Melo in the trunk like that with his brains blown out and everyone acting like they were looking at a spare tire or something. Even Junior didn’t seem to care, never mind Vito, who thought that it was a big joke. I mean, who were these people anyway, a bunch of fucking ghouls? Jesus, and I wasn’t Cinderella either. I’ve seen my share of crazy things, dead people in the street, guys getting shot, stuff like that. Once, I was coming out of a store and this old lady was just lying there on the street. Her face was like completely blue. Not fake blue or kind of blue -- but blue. That freaked me out, I’ll tell you. This was back when I was a kid and I remember not being able to forget how she looked. Actually, I’d forget all day but every night just as I was ready to fall asleep she’d appear. It was real freaky the way she just knew when I was about to go to sleep. I must have been going through a phase or something because right at the same time I used to see the Virgin Mary appear too, and when she did, she always had a nosebleed. Scared the shit out of me. Some choice, right, either a blue old lady or a bleeding saint, or whatever she was.
So anyway, maybe I was smoking too many cigarettes but just as we were walking back into the diner after Vito left, I fainted. It was like flat-out. I don’t remember a thing, nothing. Later, Junior told me he thought someone had shot me. He said the first thing that he did was check me to see where I was bleeding. The guy is a fucking drama-queen, I’m telling you. Then he says that he was crouching over me with his gun out checking the parking lot and asking me where I was hit. What a retard. He says some old guy got out of a car and he almost shot him. He said he was this close to pulling the trigger. Later, when he was telling me all this I was kind of thinking, so what if he shot the guy. I mean, who cares. It would just be another dead body on “The Day of the Dead”. This is afterwards, right, and I’m still woozy. I mean, I wasn’t actually rooting for people to die.
Like I was saying, I don’t remember shit. I passed out and Junior somehow woke me up and then went inside and got the girls. He claims he basically carried me across the street to the motel but then remembers that they put me in the car and drove me. The next thing I know it is morning and I wake up in this strange motel room. I mean, like the place is a fuck-palace. Usually you get a room for four hours, party, fuck, and then go to the diner. Everything was backwards, I guess.
So, like I said, I wake up and when I turn my head I see Marty on the bed across from me. Basically, I’m thinking I had died and gone to heaven. She was lying there without a shirt on and with a sheet twisted around her waist. Her hair kind of covered her face but I still recognized her. Then I felt someone stirring in the bed next to me. It was Angela. She sort of smiled and wiped the sleep from her eyes. “You feeling better?” She asked.
I didn’t know how I felt. It was like a fever just broke or something.
Mainly I was confused. That’s when I realized I was naked. “Who undressed me? What happened? Jesus.” I said.
Junior’s head popped up from behind Marty. It looked like he was standing in a hole beside a sleeping woman. “I did.” He said, I’ve always wanted to see you naked.” He laughed.
Angela pulled at my shoulder. “Don’t listen to him, I undressed you. You were sweating and probably had a fever.”
I looked at her under the covers and saw that she was naked too. “Who undressed you?” I asked her.
“I know how to do it myself. Usually, if a guy faints my clothes just come off by themselves, like magic.”
I put my head back down on the pillow. I still felt kind of sick. Mostly it was because I was thinking about a million things. But this one thought kept coming back to me. It was pulsing like a neon sign in a bar. Brooklyn is a Monster. Brooklyn is a Monster.
I looked at Marty’s tits agai
n and could feel the warmth of Angela beside me. But how could that be? I almost said it out loud. “How can that be?” Look at this shit. I must be blessed or something. And then that kid from the roof seemed to be scooting around the room with his arms out like wings and Melo’s shot-to-shit head was on the floor next to me and gunshots were ringing out and my mother was blowing smoke in my face and Big Mike was dead in the trunk of a car having sex with two girls. Shit, maybe they were putting smack in those Lumberjack Specials. At least that would explain something.
“Let’s go take a shower.” Angela said. “It will make you feel better.”
I heard what she said but it was all echo, the words were like wrapped in cotton or something, like they were bandaged up. “What?”
“I said, let’s go take a shower, you’ll feel better. Trust me.”
I didn’t answer her but just nodded my head. I stared at Marty on final time, hey, you never know, right. I mean, I might never see those again up close and followed Angela into the bathroom. Junior whistled at us as we passed and looked like he was going back to sleep.
I don’t know why I was so fixated on Marty because as Angela leaned over to turn the shower on my breath sort of was stuck. I wasn’t sure which direction the air was going in, if you know what I’m saying. She was just as attractive as Marty, maybe even better looking. I mean, they were different looking and all but man…
When the shower was nice and hot, we both got in. I hadn’t heard many good ideas lately but this finally was one of them. First, I stood behind her and washed her back and soaped up her hair. Then. I cupped the soap in my hand and ran it across her breasts and stomach. Brooklyn may be a monster but that wasn’t getting in the way of me getting hard, which Angela noticed. “Fuck me.” She said, without turning around to face me.
I still was sort of weak-kneed and everything but when she bent over slightly I sort of just glided into her. As the water beat into my face, she slowly waved her hips from side to side and I held onto her hair like it was a rope holding me up. You know where this all leads and basically it did. She was moaning and saying stuff and banging against me like she wanted to knock me over backwards and I was holding on to her for dear life. I mean, I was weak, the shower was slippery, and she was rolling her hips like they weren’t connected to anything. It was like I was fucking an angel who was hovering off the ground except this angel started cursing like a truck driver. I won’t repeat what she was saying but had certain effect on a certain something. Then I actually did slip and she came crashing down on top of me pulling the shower curtain down with her. And while sitting there covered in plastic, with her arms high in the air, we finished as she pounded herself down on me while she whimpered and cursed.
Chapter Fourteen
The neighborhood was filled with guys who had fought in Vietnam. Most of them were junkies now and a lot of them were junkies before they left. There was always a guy from Brooklyn or the Bronx in almost any war movie you watched. That’s kind of funny when you think about it. I mean, how come there isn’t the guy from California, or the guy from Maine? What is it about this place anyway? Usually, they make it seem like he’s stupid or something, stupid but brave. Maybe, they know something, right? I mean, those Hollywood people must know something.
Anyway, I was sort of feeling like one of those guys who’d been in Vietnam for a year or two. When I looked in the mirror, I had the same dazed look on my face. It was like my eyes were dead. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing Brooklyn to Vietnam or anything but Christ you have to admit that my life sort of turned into a war zone.
That’s pretty much why I went home and stayed in for a week. I basically slept a lot, getting up to eat once in a while, watched television and smoked cigarettes with my mother. She didn’t even seem to notice that I was smoking now. But so what, she had her own problems. Angela came over a couple of times and we’d disappear into my bedroom. She understood without making a big deal of things. All she’d say was, “You’re sensitive. That’s why I like you.”
And I have to say, boy she must really like me because, well, never mind. Afterwards, we’d come out to get something to eat and Rainie would be sitting waiting for us. She’d have a big smirk on her face and next thing you know, start bugging me about smoking.
“Why you smoking like that all of a sudden?” She’d ask me, over and over again.
“I’m not. I’m not.” I’d say back to her, lighting another cigarette.”
“What’s that then?” She’d say.
But soon enough something would interest her on television and she’s stop bugging me.
One night I was sitting on my bed talking to Angela. She asked me what I was going to do now?
“What do you mean?” I asked her back.
“I mean now that this stuff with this guy is over.” She said.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, all this stuff, all this crazy shit comes down and what’s the end result? I tell you, nothing, I mean, nothing changed at all. Yeah, Melo is dead but so what. It just means that Rainie isn’t getting slapped around and I can walk down the street if I want. Big deal.”
“I’m beginning to think that there isn’t that many streets I want to walk down around here anyway. You know what I’m saying. This place is played out as far as I’m concerned, I’m just tired of all this shit. It’s endless, I’m telling you. Tomorrow is always just waiting for you, waiting for you to fuck up. I mean what’s the point of even waking up?”
“What about me?” She asked. “Isn’t that something to look forward to?”
“Yeah, but you don’t understand. It’s not you, or Junior, or any one thing. It’s everything. Like, once I had this dream after smoking this like crazy weed and it was like I could see how the universe was built. It was all these little mirrors, millions and millions of them. It was amazing. And all these mirrors depended on the other mirrors because they were useless by themselves. You see what I’m saying? I mean, what good was a mirror by itself, right. But all together they’re like perfect.
“So like Brooklyn is a mirror or something?”
“Nah, I don’t know how it fits into things. But like the point is that if everyone around you is just bound to fuck up, I mean like even if they didn’t want to they couldn’t help it. They were like cursed or something. I mean, sooner or later you’ll fuck up too. It’s too easy. I mean, all you have to do around here is look at the wrong guy funny, or something. It’s not even like you have to fuck up. It might be that your just not paying attention. You see what I’m saying.”
Angela nodded but I could tell I wasn’t really making myself clear.
“Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Don’t listen to me.”
“I want to listen to you.” She said. “I like that you think about things. Look at my father. I know what he is. I know what he does. I know he probably had Melo killed. I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did it himself. Not that he’s like that at home but I’m not blind. I see that when people are being nice to him it’s not because they like him, it’s because they’re afraid of him. But what are you going to do? Hide your head in the sand?”
I just shrugged. “Junior has been lying to me.” I said. “I don’t know what he’s up to but it’s something.”
“I know.” Angela said.
“What do you mean you know? You know something? Are you hiding something from me?” I asked, starting to get jumpy again.
“It’s not like I know the specifics or anything but I heard him on the phone with my father. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about but I’m sure he was talking to Junior.”
“That’s crazy.” I said. “There’s like a Junior in every neighborhood, sometimes there is a couple of them.”
“I know. I have two cousins named Junior. Fat Junior and Skinny Junior.” Angela said.
“So how do you know he was talking to my Junior, the guy that’s been my best friend like forever?”
“Trust me, it was Junior.�
�� She said. “I know.”
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