He closed his eyes and bit the interior wall of his mouth. What was this world coming to?
35
THE SKY HAD NEVER seemed so low and the Atlantic Ocean had never looked so cold. I was standing next to Rosemary on the Boardwalk, watching the parade before the Miss America Pageant.
“This is it,” I said. “My life is over. They’re going to cut my heart out and throw it in the ocean.”
“Can’t you get your money back?”
“It’s already spent.”
With Frank Diamond kicking us out of the fight, I now owed Teddy over a hundred thousand dollars and had no way to pay it back.
“Maybe you could sue the promoter,” Rosemary said. “Breach of contract.”
“By the time the lawyers got through, my corpse would be rotting.”
Miss Virginia rode by in a red convertible, kicking a leg out of her blue satin gown, so the crowd could see the whole of her thigh. Rosemary’s daughter Kimmy ran up and down in front of the spectator seats on the other side of the Boardwalk. I half wished the police would ride up and arrest me for killing Nicky, to spare me the agony of what would happen next.
“You know, Terry Mulvehill came by the club again me other night,” Rosemary said.
I found myself wincing. “Yeah? What’d he want?”
“The usual. Go back to his hotel, screw our brains out, get high on cocaine.”
Just the words made my stomach hurt. “So what’d you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t want to do that. I’m with you.”
The back of my neck was burning. “You know, I oughtto tell those boxing commission people he gets high. They’d probably take the title away from him.”
“So why don’t you?” She looked through her handbag for her daughter’s sunblock.
“Who’d believe me?”
A dozen men dressed as turkeys walked by strumming “You’re a Grand Old Flag” on banjos.
“It just makes me so mad.” Rosemary rubbed her hands together and pulled on her fingers. “Maybe if I went up there and got high with him, they’d believe me,” she said casually, as if she was talking about renting a car. “They have those tests to prove it, you know.”
I just looked at her. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. That’d be like making you a whore again.”
She took a deep breath and put on a pair of sunglasses. “Look, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“What?”
“I want to have everything straight between us.” She peered around, looking for her daughter, and then turned back to me. “That ship has already sailed. I’ve been with him before.”
She might as well have cracked me across the face with a baseball bat.
“When was this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” She tried waving Kimmy over, but the little girl was having too much fun dancing up and down in front of the grandstand. “It was a long time ago. Before I met you. Back when I was turning tricks.”
“So you’d go back up there now?”
The corners of her mouth turned down as she began to think about it seriously. “I don’t know ... I was just talking before ... I really just wanted to get it off my chest about Terry and me, because we’re starting to get close ...”
“You know, it’s not a bad idea,” I interrupted.
Now she was frowning. She hadn’t really thought I’d take her up on her offer, but she didn’t understand how truly desperate I was. I’d been lied to, betrayed, and hustled by everyone I knew, including her, it seemed. I was in a corner and I needed to get out.
Miss Iowa drove by in a red Ford, followed by a man dressed as a frankfurter.
“I know somewhere I could score some coke,” I said.
Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but her hands were still torturing each other. “Oh, I don’t know, Anthony,” she said in a squeamish voice. “The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t seem right. We’re talking about blackmail here.”
“No, we’re talking about people who broke an agreement with me three weeks before a fight and put my neck on the chopping block. Literally.”
“So you want me to sleep with him again?”
The old guy wearing a Budweiser hat in the deck chair next to us looked up, realizing this was getting to be a pretty unusual conversation.
“Keep your voice down. I’m not saying you have to sleep with him. I’m just saying you could drop by and see what he’s up to. That doesn’t require you going to bed with him, does it?”
She rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Oh Anthony, how could you be so naive?” But I wasn’t being naive. I knew what I was asking. I was just trying to sugarcoat it.
With each thing I’d done in the last few weeks, I was taking another step away from the person I wanted to be. It was as if by breaking faith with Carla, I’d broken through my own skin. Killing Nicky, borrowing money from Danny Klein, and pimping my girlfriend were the secondary infections. Now I was sick and I didn’t know how to get better.
“You know what it would require,” she said with her mouth drawn tight. “Is that what you’re about, Anthony?”
“What?”
“Being a shakedown artist. Like your father. You want me to go by there and get him to do some blow with me, so you can blackmail him with a drug test and get your fighter back in the ring. It stinks, Anthony. And you know what really stinks about it? You always say you’re not going to be like the people in your family, and here you are, pulling the exact same kind of scam.”
“I didn’t make the world the way it is,” I said. “I take it the way I find it. All I want is for them to keep to their agreement to fight Elijah. This is the only way I know tomake them do it. If my father had been a used car salesman, maybe I’d know how to sell cars.”
“And that is bullshit!” Rosemary said vehemently, kicking the railing. “You are responsible for everything you say and do in this life. You can try to make all the excuses in the world, but the truth is no one else can make you live in the gutter if you don’t want to.”
“Well, maybe that’s where I belong.”
She clamped her mouth shut and steam seemed to rise from the top of her head. Miss Nevada drove by in a Cadillac, coyly flashing a giant set of playing cards.
“At least think about it,” I said.
36
ROSEMARY STOOD AT the Boardwalk railing, watching Anthony play with her daughter in the wash and drain of the surf.
She felt nothing.
The Miss America Parade had been over for an hour or so, but there was still a beautiful day going on, probably the last one like it for the summer. With the sun casting a bright, clarifying light on everything below.
But Rosemary didn’t care about that either.
Anthony picked up Kimmy and held her over his head so their faces were just a foot apart. She laughed like a little homicidal maniac and Anthony kissed her on the nose.
How could he be so good with her kid one minute and ask her to do this terrible thing the next? What kind of man was he? After all the time they’d spent together, she still couldn’t quite get a handle on him.
And then there was the matter of that guy Nicky who’d turned up dead under the Boardwalk. But she’d made a definite decision not to think about that anymore and she had to stick to it.
One of those old wicker rolling chairs went by behind her and a voice with an Irish accent asked if she wanted a ride. She didn’t bother answering.
Anthony had Kimmy by the ankles and was swinging her around like she was a propeller. She screamed with glee. This would be a day she’d remember for years, especially if they bought her some saltwater taffy later. Her own father never took her out and played with her like this. Just looking at Anthony, you’d think he’d be the perfect stepfather.
Rosemary felt as though she was watching the whole scene from somewhere very far away. It was the same way she feltsometimes when she used to dance on top of bars. Like her
body wasn’t really her body. It was just a thing she could rent out for other people to look at awhile.
Maybe she could do this thing she was talking about with Anthony.
Someone with a bullhorn nearby was announcing that tickets were still available for the Miss America finals at the Convention Center tonight. Miss America. They took these girls from all over the country, they made them up like dolls, and they brought them here. To hold their contest and lengthen the summer season. They brought them from Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and a million other places she’d probably never go as long as she lived. Girls who were young like she used to be. Who didn’t make all the wrong decisions. Who didn’t drop out. Who didn’t marry junkies. Who didn’t end up supporting their husbands’ habits in the backseats of Hondas. Who didn’t live in housing projects. Who didn’t have a kid to look after by themselves. They trained, they smiled, they gave speeches about how they wanted to help others less fortunate. They performed in the talent competitions, they gave interviews, and they modeled elegant evening wear. And in the end, they used their bodies to get what they wanted. That was the deal they made with themselves.
So who were they or anybody else to sit in judgment on her?
Anthony caught Kimmy in his arms and hugged her as the little waves lapped around his thin white ankles.
Rosemary came down the Boardwalk steps and walked across the beach toward them. She took off her shoes and hard cracked shells in the sand cut into the soles of her feet. Kimmy was looking over Anthony’s shoulder, waving and smiling with the gap in her teeth showing.
“Hi, Mommy!”
Maybe in the end she wouldn’t remember any of this. Maybe it was just another day of being four and seeing the boats on the water. And the other children with pails and shovels building dribble castles in the sand. And in a little while, she’d have front teeth and forget everything that happened this afternoon. Maybe by then they’d be in Seattle with the sprinklers and the wading pool in the backyard.
So what did it matter what you did at any given moment or any given hour in your life? Just as long as you got by and went on to the next thing.
Anthony turned to face Rosemary, with Kimmy still hanging over his shoulder, looking the other way.
“So what do you think?”
“I don’t know, Anthony. The whole thing gives me a very bad feeling. But if I go ahead and do it, I want half of whatever you end up making from the fight.”
It was just another deal she was making with herself. To get something, you had to give up something. The only question was, how did you live with yourself afterwards?
“Good.” Anthony smiled. “I’m glad you came to a decision right away. Life’s too short.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Rosemary. “And I’m not too thrilled about it either.”
37
TEDDY SAT IN Dr. Josephson’s office after the exam, staring at the edge of the brown oak desk. He felt vaguely ashamed about what the doctor had done to him.
“Mr. Marino, are you a man who can handle bad news?”
“That’s my trade,” said Teddy.
“Then let me be straight with you. I did find a nodule during the examination. And I think we need to proceed with the tests to determine whether you have prostate cancer.”
The words barely registered with Teddy. They were just pebbles falling in a deep well. He stared directly at the doctor, waiting for correction or clarification.
“I see no reason to wait,” said the doctor. “So I’d like to schedule you for a PSA, an ultrasound, and—if it’s necessary—a biopsy within the next week or so.”
Teddy blinked. “What’s a PSA?”
The doctor leaned back in his leather chair and shrugged. “It’s a blood test.”
“And what about that biopsy?”
“Well, hopefully it won’t be needed. It’s just to determine whether you have a malignancy.”
Teddy stiffened, feeling the words come closer and closer to his heart. The pebbles in the well turned into huge boulders, hurtling down. “And how do you do it?”
“Do you really want to know at this stage?”
“I’m telling you, be straight with me!” Teddy demanded, anxiety finally beginning to get the better of him.
“We usually go in through the rectum with an eighteen-to twenty-four-inch needle,” the doctor said reluctantly.
Teddy’s eyes began to water and the floor began to swim under his feet. His head felt light and he started to list heavily sideways, tipping over his chair.
He hit the floor before the doctor could say he hoped surgery wouldn’t be necessary.
38
ROSEMARY CAME OUT of the bathroom wearing a black rayon teddy with nothing on the bottom.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said, “but I’m feeling kind of shy.”
Terrence Mulvehill was still lying on the bed waiting for her. He was a powerfully built young man, standing five foot ten, weighing 170 pounds. Muscles wrapped around his arms like steel cables and stretched across his chest like dark armor. He turned his body and casually threw back the sheet, as though he was used to having his physique studied. Thick dreadlocks fell over his eyes.
“Listen, like, I really wanna fuck you. You know?”
“I know, but I’m all nervous.”
“Can I tell you something?” he said in a high, delicate voice. “I ain’t been out in about a month. I stopped trying to fuck anybody. Now when I go out to a club I gotta have three bodyguards around me all the time to keep the women away. Because you never know when someone’s gonna like sleep with you and then say it was rape. Right? There’s a lot of bitches and hoes out there.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Rosemary sat on a pink chair in the corner of the room and looked a little pale.
“Like the other night, right, I went out to this club in New York. The Palladium. Right? I’m dancing with this girl and she’s beautiful, you know. The ass was like right on time and she had the kinda titties you see in them magazines. Right? So just when I’m about to ask her to come home with me so I can make it with her, my bodyguard Amal comes up and says, ‘Yo, Terry, that’s a guy.’ I’m like, ‘Get the fuck outa here.’ And he says, ‘No, man, that’s Jack Pearson. I went to school with him at De Witt Clinton.”
“No shit,” said Rosemary.
“No shit.”
Terrence sat up and the covers fell back from his erection. “So then like I see this other girl and I look at her a long time to make sure it’s a girl. Right?” He rested the side of his face on his hand. “She’s four foot eleven and she got tiny little hands, so now I’m sure this is like a female. So Amal goes up and he starts talking to her, man. And I’m just like hanging back, waiting for him to bring her over. I’m dancing to Bobby Brown and just hanging.”
He closed his eyes and twitched his shoulders, savoring the memory of the beat.
“But then I look up and Amal’s got his arm around this girl. So I’m like, ‘Yo, Amal. What’s up with this shit? What am I payin’ you for, man? I ain’t payin’ you to hang around flirting with girls.’ I was disgusted. I was really disgusted, man. I walked right out and went to my car. My brand-new Porsche, right. And some like homeless guy is scratching his name on the side with a rusty key.”
“Oh no.” Rosemary started to laugh.
He went on, “I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?” he asked in appalled falsetto. “And he’s like, ‘This is Terry Mulvehill’s car.’ I’m like ‘Fuck, I am Terry Mulvehill. Stop writing on my damn car.’”
He shook his head, mortified. “Damn,” he said. “I don’t never have fun no more. It’s got so I don’t trust no one. I’d rather be by myself.”
He touched his erection again and became very still. To Rosemary, he seemed like a confused child trapped inside a warrior’s body.
“That’s all right,” Terrence said, rolling over on his side. “I don’t mind being alone. I just close the curtains and stay in bed all day. Only
time I get out is to train.”
Rosemary crossed her legs and lit a cigarette. The tinfoil packet of cocaine was on the ivory-colored bureau next to her. “I read that once,” she said. “I read how when you’re an athlete you’re not supposed to sleep with anybody the night before.”
“Man, that’s bullshit,” Terrence told her, putting both hands behind his head and doing half a sit-up. The musclesin his stomach bulged like oranges packed tightly into a crate. “When I was married last year, I fucked before every fight I had and I knocked every one of them suckers out. That don’t have nothing to do with it. It’s just they all bitches, man. Every one of them. Even my mother. They just after the money. My mother didn’t even call me ’til I got the title. My father brought me up and taught me how to fight. He taught me everything I know about women. And I love and respect the man for it. Otherwise them bitches would have all my money by now.”
“You always have to watch yourself,” said Rosemary.
In the mirror across the room, she saw herself swinging one leg over the other with the cigarette burning down in her hand. His erection never wavered, she noticed. Men were all the same. You’d have to strap a stick of dynamite to it to truly get their attention.
“That’s why when you called, I say ‘come on up.’” He smiled eagerly, “You ain’t gonna charge me, right?”
“Nope, this one’s a free ride,” she said in a tired voice.
“Yeah, yeah, see. And I know you like being with me, just to be with me. Right? Like you like me ’cause you a natural freak. Right? You don’t want nothing from me. You just like to fuck me.”
He was so sincere, so anxious to be liked, it was almost painful to listen. She caught sight of herself in the mirror again, guiltily tapping out her cigarette in the ashtray.
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