Power & Beauty

by Ritz, David

“That’s Irv’s call, not mine. Look at it like this, Power. When you start a chess game you can’t plan a strategy in advance. You move according to however someone’s moving on you. You act and react according to what’s happening in real time. You in real time.”

  “I’m in real pain.”

  “Pain passes. Now ain’t that the fuckin’ truth?”

  “So what you’re saying, Slim, is that if I come back—”

  “You ain’t coming back. Not now. You got shit to learn and it seems to me you’re learning it. Now shut up, and stop whinin’ about all that good pussy you getting.”

  Slim broke out with another big laugh and then hung up. One thing about Slim—he was always smooth and knew how to calm me down. I watched some stupid reality show about knuckleheads living on the Jersey Shore and fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, it was midnight and Irv Wasserman was sitting on a stool at the marble countertop in the kitchen area. He was sipping tea out of a huge glass mug.

  “I just bought the mug at Starbucks,” he said. “I didn’t know they still made mugs out of glass. Tea tastes better when you drink out of glass. I bought you six mugs. Use them in good health.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Tea is better for you than coffee. Coffee winds you up and gets you thinking too fast. The thing about thinking is that you can overthink. Overthinking is no good. For years, kid, I was an overthinker. I can feel that you’re overthinking right now.”

  “I . . . I just woke up—”

  “You’re thinking, What the fuck is old man Irv doing here?”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Wasserman, I was thinking that I just talked to Slim, who told me not to think.”

  Irv allowed himself one of those rare smiles.

  “That Slim’s a thinker, ain’t he?”

  “He’s been good to me.”

  “And I been good to my daughter. You know that, don’t you, Peter?”

  “Paul.”

  “Sorry, Peter used to be my broker. Peter didn’t see people, he saw numbers. But you’re Paul. They call you Powerhouse, right?”

  “Power.”

  “Right, you’re the power man. Power is good. Except what the fuck is it? We got the power to have kids by sticking our dick in a woman and squirting the seed. That’s a powerful thing. The kid is born, and we think that we’re God ’cause our seed caused all that. The kid is our seed. We watch the kid grow up. If it’s a boy, we hope he’ll get strong and plant his seed somewhere good so we can have grandkids. Grandkids are beautiful. I don’t have any. I had one daughter late in life. I waited because I cared. I waited because I wanted to find the right woman. It’s easy to find the wrong woman. My dick led me to many a dumb broad. I got in, I got out, and then I thought, This is getting me nowhere. This is no one I can talk to. This is no one who understands me. This is no one with a heart and head for Irv Wasserman. So I waited. Patience is my strong suit, kid. You’ll find that out. You’ll see. You’re looking at a patient man.

  “I was, what? Forty-seven, forty-eight years old when I met Ginny Calzolari. Many men that age look for girls in their early twenties. I can understand that. There are advantages. But I looked at the drawbacks. I didn’t want young. I wanted mature. I wanted Ginny because, even though we came from different backgrounds and had different faiths, I could see she was quality. I knew her father from business. He owned restaurants all over Chicago. Ginny was the hostess at his best restaurant, Le Beef. If I took you there tonight, you’d pay eighty dollars for a steak and you wouldn’t complain because the steak is that good. Ginny’s father is famous for how he ages beef. He’s a good man. I could see that his daughter, a real beauty, was a good woman. I could see by how she treated the customers. She had class. Class is important to me. Ginny Calzolari spoke very well. She had gone to college for a year. She had studied business. Her father told me he had plans to make her manager of the restaurant where she was hosting. That’s a big job, kid, because that particular restaurant has served the president of the United States of America. This is a top-grossing restaurant. I went there six, seven times, just observing her. Then I decided to ask her out. She knew who I was, of course, and she saw I was ten years older, but ten years’ difference these days between couples is like ten days. She accepted my invitation to go to the opera. Personally, I hate the opera, but her father said she liked it. Her father was on my side. I sat through all that screaming singing. I asked her about sports and she said she liked soccer. I like boxing, but I took her to soccer. Box seats to see the Chicago Fire, a cute name for a soccer team but a dull sport. I sat through it. I saw she liked shopping. All women like shopping. We shopped at the Water Tower Place. It’s a mall on Michigan Avenue. You’ll see it soon enough. I bought her things she liked. She liked how I listened to her when she talked about running a restaurant. She wanted to know if I thought women could run things. I said yes. I’m a modern man. I know women fly jumbo jets. I’ve seen Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila, a beautiful woman, fight in the ring. She fights like a tiger. These are things I don’t deny.

  “Long story short, we marry. A rabbi and a priest take my money and do a joint ceremony. Three hundred people. A month later, she says she’s pregnant. I’m thrilled. Six months later, her father dies. There’s a fight in the family. Her older brother gets greedy and wants all five restaurants, including the one that Ginny manages. I say that’s not fair. Ginny says she’s no longer interested in working. She just wants this baby. I watch nine, ten million dollars walk out the door. Fine. Let’s have this baby. Let’s call her Judy. Let’s get a house in Evanston with a pool and a tennis court. Let’s be happy and forget the ten million dollars. It might have been eleven or twelve million. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. We have one baby, a girl. I want to have another baby. I ask God to give me a son. But we don’t have a son. The fuckin’ truth is that we don’t have sex. At first I’m patient. You have to be patient. After all, she just had a baby. But then how long do you wait for the sex to start? Four months? Five? A year. After a year, it’s too much. You have to discuss it. You have to know why. I was told there is no why. She didn’t feel like it. Well, she felt like it before. She liked it after the opera or the soccer game or the goddamn fuckin’ shopping at that Water Tower Place. ‘Something happened, Irv,’ is all she said. ‘I don’t have the desire.’ ‘Well, I see you don’t have the desire to rightfully claim the restaurant that your father wanted you to have. So what do you have the desire to do?’ She wouldn’t say, but I saw. She had the desire to spend money. That was her job. Buy a new car. Fix up the house. Get one of those landscape geniuses and give him a hundred thousand dollars to plant a few bushes. That she had the desire to do. And so do you know what I did, kid? I let her. I sat back and fuckin’ let her. For the sake of our little baby, I wasn’t going nowhere. I wanted to be Daddy. So I stayed. I said, ‘Live and let live.’

  “I lived. I found a way to satisfy the needs that God put in my body. I didn’t argue with my wife. I moved on with my business. The someone who satisfied my needs was discreet. A lovely girl. We had an arrangement like millions of people before us. Such arrangements are commonplace. I never bothered my wife. I let her write her checks. She had her side of the bed, I had mine. She had no complaints. As a father, I was there for my daughter. There was nothing I missed—not a holiday, not a birthday, not a soccer game or a graduation ceremony. I took her to prizefights and she learned to love the sport. I took her to Wrigley Field and she loved the Cubs. Always box seats. Always the best. Maybe I did too much. Maybe I went overboard. Maybe I held on to resentment about her mother. Any fool knew that her mother married me for two reasons—for money and to have a child. Once the child came, the sex stopped. When the sex stopped, the love stopped. But all this anger I kept inside me because the ‘someone’ I had found gave me comfort. Every man needs comfort. Life went on until Ginny discovered the ‘someone.’ I had no apologies. I did what I did and I admitted it. Ginny flew into a rage. She hi
red a Rottweiler lawyer to go after me and my money. I hired my own Rottweiler, bigger and meaner than hers. I mauled the bitch. Financially, I had her where I wanted her. The prenup was ironclad and I could have left her penniless. But I didn’t. For my daughter’s sake, I could not throw her mother into the street. Judy wanted to live with me, but I knew her mother needed her more than me. I was generous, kid. I was more generous than I needed to be. Generosity is my downfall.

  “See, my generosity has hurt Judy. Out of guilt, I gave too much. I spoiled her something awful. I saw it coming, but I couldn’t help myself. Ginny was poisoning Judy’s mind against me. I had to prove to my daughter that I wasn’t poison. So I bought and bought and bought. I bought for Judy like I had bought for Ginny. Jewelry and clothes and cars and any little thing her heart desired. I couldn’t deny her. And look what happened . . .”

  Irv paused. He took a long sip of tea, closed his eyes, and sighed. When he opened his eyes, he got off the stool and walked across the room to look out the window. There was nothing to see. The cloudy sky blocked the moon. There was nothing but darkness. He looked into the darkness for a long while before turning his back to the window. When he looked at me, his eyes were softer.

  “Judy is trouble, kid,” he said. “I think you know that. You see how she is. I thought a girl would be easier than a boy, but I was wrong. Judy was never easy, not as a little girl, not now. She isn’t even twenty and she drinks like a fish. Drugs—I don’t want to know about the drugs. But I do know, and that breaks my heart. This is my little girl we’re talking about, Peter—”

  “Paul.”

  “Sorry, Paul, but Judy is my seed. You understand. You also understand that I have talked to Slim about you. I don’t want to open wounds, but he has told me how you lost your mother. He has told me how you were treated at school. He has told me that you are a young man of tremendous integrity. He used the word ‘integrity.’ Slim is a hard man, and for him to care for you the way he cares for you, for Slim to speak of your character and of your future, well, that is a beautiful thing. And then you come here and meet this crazy woman Evelyn Meadows. Evelyn Meadows is crazy out of her goddamn fuckin’ mind. You getting in the way of this crazy woman killing me is almost more than I can comprehend. I can only come to one conclusion. You were sent here to help me. And because I can’t help Judy by myself, you were sent here to help her too. This boyfriend of hers, the one with the run-down gym I bought, he is no good. He sells drugs out of the gym. He takes drugs himself. I’d shut down this meathead and his whole operation in the blink of an eye—if I knew it wouldn’t enrage Judy. So I have to be careful. I have to work in a way that promotes her welfare. You aren’t a drinker, Paul. Power Paul, that’s who you are. Power Paul is not a drug taker. Power Paul is a good influence. I knew my Judy would like you. I knew she’d see what was good in you. It is not an easy job I’ve given you. I’m asking you to be a man when you’re still a teenage boy. I’m asking you to watch over a woman who’s still a teenage girl. All this is a little crazy. I know it is. But sometimes crazy isn’t as crazy as it seems.”

  Irv stopped talking. He walked over to where I was sitting, bent down, and put his right hand on my shoulder. He patted my shoulder two times, then turned away and walked out of the loft.

  Winter

  Chicago in February is no joke. The howling wind comes off that lake and body slams you against the side of a building. The snow hits so hard and thick that you can’t see where you’re going. The deep frost has you shaking and shivering like a stray dog. You gotta wear hats and sweaters and boots until you can barely walk down the frozen streets. And no matter how careful you are, at some point the ice will put you on your ass. I’d slipped more than once. As I carefully walked along the slippery streets looking for the restaurant, I reminded myself how much had happened since I arrived here during the summer. Fall had flown by and now it was winter. The city had turned white.

  I made it to Le Beef, where Judy had asked to meet me. This was the restaurant Judy’s mother used to own, the same place now run by Judy’s uncle Marsh. It took up the entire ground floor of one of those old office buildings from the twenties. The décor was super-plush old-school, chandeliers and heavy leather booths.

  I had on a nice suit underneath my coat and scarf. Judy was already seated at a table by the window. She was wearing a deep blue turtleneck cashmere sweater. Her tits always looked sensational. But her eyes were sad. I knew she’d been crying.

  “I think my father killed him,” she said.

  “How can you think that?” I asked. “Irv would never do anything to make you unhappy. The man lives to make you happy.”

  “He didn’t like him. He never liked him.”

  “Judy, he bought him a gym, didn’t he?”

  “Daddy didn’t buy Dwayne the gym. He just let him run it. But he didn’t do that for Dwayne, he did it for me.”

  “That’s just my point.”

  “I don’t believe it was just a deal gone bad. Dwayne was too smart for that.”

  “Any deal can go bad. Especially when you’re selling high-priced steroids out of the gym to high-profile trainers and jocks.”

  “I don’t believe Dwayne was doing that,” said Judy.

  “I saw it with my own eyes. It was obvious.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

  “I did. You weren’t listening, Judy.”

  “It didn’t seem all that important. Don’t all the athletes take steroids? What’s the fuckin’ big deal about steroids?”

  “They’re illegal. And they cost a lot of money.”

  “But no one’s gonna kill someone over steroids,” said Judy, getting all emotional. The tears started to fall. “No one’s gonna break into your apartment in the middle of the night and shoot you in the head over some goddamn steroids.”

  “I think he was dealing more than steroids, Judy. And I think you think that too.”

  “He used to. But then he stopped. How long has it been since I got out of Betty Ford?”

  “About a month.”

  “Well, even before I went in, he stopped dealing. He cut off all those connections. He swore off grass and blow when I swore ’em off. He did it to help me.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just sat there.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” asked Judy.

  “If you want the truth,” I said, “here’s the truth—Dwayne never stopped getting high. The whole time you were in rehab, he was blasted.”

  “You’re saying that because my father told you to say that.”

  “Bullshit! I’m saying it because it’s true.”

  Judy broke down crying. I got up and put my arm around her. For all her craziness, I had come to like her. Back in the summer, when I told her I flat-out refused to be her boy toy and have sex with her, our relationship got good. She saw that I was willing to do whatever it took to help out in the salon. I worked like a dog. I did all the grub work asked of me. And when the place was finally built, I flew Wanda Washington up from Atlanta. She stayed for a week. Wanda’s Wigs was one of the best-run stores anywhere, and I knew Wanda would make sure Judy was putting a good system in place. They got along like mother and daughter. Wanda saw that some of the older women advising Judy were not making sense. With Wanda’s help, Judy put her staff together and hired three great hairstylists.

  Wanda was a blessing, but when I asked her questions about Beauty, Wanda said she hadn’t heard a thing. I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want to press her. She had come to Chicago for Judy, not me. Once we got the shop opened, I was installed as the cashier. I felt funny at first. In a beauty salon, that job is usually given to some middle-aged overweight lady. But everyone thought it would be a good addition to have a young man behind the counter collecting the money. They thought the customers would appreciate it—and they did. Even Irv came by to see the place and was pleased to see me handling the cash and credit cards.

  “Collection is everything,” he said w
ithout the hint of a smile. “If you don’t collect, you starve.”

  I didn’t mind. I liked the electronic sounds of the high-tech register. I liked sliding the credit cards and waiting for approval. I liked lording over the money. I liked being trusted.

  I also liked being around all those women. A few of the young customers slipped me their numbers. A few of the older ones too. Once I made it clear to Judy that I couldn’t be screwing her, I got next to a few of the young ones. I was still looking to find that one woman who would remove Beauty’s image from my imagination. But even the finest one, the one who showed the most passion, couldn’t do it. In the end, in my mind, I was always loving on Beauty.

  When summer turned to fall and fall became winter, it was clear that Judy was spinning out of control. Benita, the store manager whom Wanda had hired, was running the operation. If Judy showed up, it wasn’t until late afternoon. She and Dwayne were deep in their drugs. Finally, in December, she fell out. She was on the phone in the back room of Hair Is Where It’s At when we heard a loud thump. I ran back and saw Judy passed out on the floor. I called an ambulance. When we got to the ER, Irv was already there. Two days later, the doctor talked about the drugs they found in her system. That’s when she promised her father that she’d go to Betty Ford.

  Now, some four weeks after her release, I was trying to comfort her at Le Beef. I told her it was okay to cry. Crying was good for you. Ever since she got out of Betty Ford, Judy had been crying like crazy. She talked a kind of psychobabble that was hard to follow. She said she was in touch with feelings she never knew she had, but when she described those feelings they all came out like anger.

  “Why the fuck should my father have stuck me with my mother?” she asked. “Why couldn’t he have taken care of me? He knew she was a bitch. He knew that it was hell living in that house. He could have gotten me out of there. And so what happens—he dumps me and she takes all her goddamn bitchiness out on me. I’m just a nuisance to him.”