Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

by Todd Robinson

  In the morning, I woke up and got to work on the car. I had no choice. I would’ve loved to chase my money at Belmont, but I was broke and had rent and bills to pay. Business had been slow lately and if I hadn’t run into DiMarco at the track, I didn’t know what I would’ve done for money.

  I lived in a ridiculously small apartment in Brooklyn, above a deli on Avenue M off Flatbush. It was on the second floor of a tenement-style building. There was one room—my combination living room, dining room, and kitchen—and a tiny bathroom. I couldn’t meet clients there, so I did most of my business at diners, bars, and racetracks. I had no overheard and I didn’t run ads. My business was all word of mouth and by referral. My only equipment was a laptop, a digital camera, and a gun. I usually left my gun at home, knowing firsthand what kind of trouble those things can get you into.

  The DiMarcos lived in Mill Basin. When I got to the house again, I realized how badly I’d fucked up by only asking for a thousand up front. The house was three stories, had to be worth a couple million.

  But I already had an idea how I could make that lost money back and then some.

  He said his wife went to the gym every day at seven fifteen and, sure enough, at seven fifteen she left the house. Man, she was even better looking in person. She had great legs, like she could’ve been a model, and looked like she was thirty, tops.

  She got in her shiny red Merc and drove to the gym DiMarco said she’d go to on Ralph Avenue. I was in sweatpants and T-shirt and followed her inside. I watched her head towards the women’s locker room; then I went to the desk and told them I was thinking about joining and asked for a free day’s trial. The guy tried to make me fill out a form and wanted me to go into the office for a sales pitch. I didn’t want to let Debbie out of my sight, so I promised the guy I’d listen to his spiel after I worked out. Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

  While Debbie used a StairMaster, I was right behind her, using an exercise bike. Let me tell you, it was a nice place to be. She was in great shape and spent about forty-five minutes on that thing. I was pedaling as slow as possible and I was still winded.

  She did a half hour running on the treadmill while I did some pull-ups and very slow rowing. After she did about twenty minutes of abs and stretches, her workout ended, thank fucking God. If it went on any longer I probably would’ve died.

  She went into the locker room again, and came out about a half hour later looking all spruced up and perfect. Meanwhile, I was a sweaty mess because I didn’t want to wash up and risk missing her leave the gym.

  She got back in her car and I thought she was heading back to her apartment, but she turned down Avenue N and double-parked in front of a dry cleaner’s. She came out with the clothing, got back in the car, and then drove to Flatlands Avenue. She pulled into a gas station, filled up, then went inside to pay. Then she got back in the car and drove home.

  So far the tailing had been a big bust. I was on DiMarco’s tab, but I liked fast cases. I wanted to get my money, ideally today, so I could make it up to Yonkers for the early double.

  For all I knew, she was going to stay in her house all day and I would just have to give up and come back tomorrow morning. But after about an hour, she left the house and got back in the car and I followed her onto the Belt Parkway, heading south. She was driving fast, weaving in and out of traffic. A couple of times I thought I lost her.

  She exited near Brighton Beach and I figured she was just going to do some shopping or something. But instead she drove into the parking lot of a motel right off the Parkway. Suddenly things were heating up.

  She got out of her car and went right to a room. My camera was zoomed in, ready to shoot. The door opened and, as she planted a kiss on the guy’s lips, I started snapping pictures, getting at least four good ones before the door closed.

  So it had turned out to be an open and shut case after all.

  The guy she’d met seemed familiar, and then it clicked—he was the mechanic I’d seen her talking to earlier at the gas station.

  I smiled, then said out loud, “Guess she likes to get her tires rotated every once in a while.”

  It wasn’t exactly hard to connect the dots of Debbie DiMarco’s story. She married a rich guy, got bored, and started screwing the hot young Guido at the gas station.

  I took out my cell, about to call Andy DiMarco, when I suddenly had a better idea.

  If I gave DiMarco the pics, he’d pay me the balance due—a thousand bucks, plus another hundred for expenses. But I had rent and bills coming up, and the way my luck was going, that eleven hundred bucks wasn’t going to last very long. I needed more than eleven hundred bucks and I knew exactly how to get it.

  I drove back to the DiMarcos’ house and parked right in front. A couple of hours later, the red Merc pulled up into the driveway and Debbie DiMarco got out. As she passed by on her way toward her house, I said, smiling, “Have a nice afternoon, Miss DiMarco?”

  She stopped, turned, and looked at me suspiciously.

  Before she could say anything, I said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  She started to walk away.

  “I think you’re gonna want to take a look at these,” I said.

  She looked back slowly and saw me holding up the digital camera. “Who the hell are you?”

  I laid it all on the table—told her I was a PI, that her husband had hired me, and that I had pictures of her and the mechanic.

  “Let me see them,” she said.

  She came over, looking at the slide show on the LCD screen.

  “Why’re you showin’ me these?” she finally asked, her voice trembling.

  “Because I’m a nice guy?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Hey, is that a nice way to talk to a guy who might be able to save your marriage, or at least your ass in a divorce settlement?”

  “The fuck’re you talking about?”

  “These are your two choices,” I said. “I can give these photos to your husband and he can divorce you like he’s going to, or we can go on to plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “I don’t give them to your husband. I delete them and you do the right thing and fix your fuckin’ marriage.”

  “And how much is that gonna cost me?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “I like to call it ‘a favor.’”

  Of course she bit, why wouldn’t she? Nothing like making a quick, easy five g’s. I felt like I’d just hit the fucking triple.

  She got back in her car and I followed her to the nearest Chase bank and she made the withdrawal. Before she gave me the money, she said, “Let me see you delete the pictures.”

  I deleted them one by one. Satisfied, she gave me the five large.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, Miss DiMarco,” I said.

  The next afternoon at the bar at Belmont, I met Andy DiMarco.

  “Got good news for me?” he asked.

  “Depends what you mean by good.”

  I handed him printouts of the photos I’d taken. Before I’d deleted them from the camera, I’d uploaded them onto my laptop. I guess I could’ve played it straight and told him his wife wasn’t cheating on him, but I’d already lost most of the five grand I’d gotten from Debbie DeMarco and I wanted the one-grand balance from Andy DiMarco. In other words, I wanted to soak this thing for all it was worth.

  Looking at the photos, DiMarco said, “I can’t believe it. I feel like such a fucking idiot. I go into that gas station all the time.”

  “Hey, it happens to the best of us,” I said.

  DiMarco gave me the thousand balance and expense money, which of course I’d jacked up by a few hundred bucks. The first race was going off soon and I couldn’t wait to go play it.

  DiMarco was saying, “Funny thing is, things were getting better the last couple of days. We’ve been talking more, spending more time together. It seemed like we were working things out.”

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sp; He looked like he was about to start crying again. I couldn’t take it and said, “Good luck to you,” and headed for the betting windows.

  A few weeks later, I was in A.C., at The Taj—broke, losing my balls—when I ran into Big Mikey by the slots.

  We bullshitted for a while; then I said, “Oh, I meant to tell you, thanks for that client rec.”

  He looked lost.

  “You know,” I said, “the guy from Mill Basin with the slut wife?” For a few seconds I couldn’t remember his name; then I said, “DiMarco. Remember, last month you put him in touch with me, told him he could find me at the track? I did a job for him, caught his wife with another guy.”

  Big Mikey’s eyes widened.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You didn’t hear?” he said.

  “Hear what?”

  “It was in the papers.”

  “The only paper I’ve been reading is the fuckin’ Racing Form.”

  “Holy shit, you really don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Couple weeks ago DiMarco came home from work and shot his wife a bunch of times, then shot himself. It was a fuckin’ bloodbath. Sucked too, because he was a big client of mine. He didn’t know shit about football, dropped five g’s a week like clockwork. And baseball, forget about it. You say you found dirt on his wife?”

  I felt sick, knowing if I’d kept my word to Debbie DiMarco she’d probably still be alive.

  “Yeah,” I said, “a little.”

  “That’s fucked up, but it’s kinda funny too. I mean, when you think about it. You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “I’m just getting the shit kicked out of me on the tables, that’s all.”

  “Join the fuckin’ club,” he said. “I’m tellin’ you, gambling’s a lot more fun when you’re on the other side of the action.”

  Big Mikey told me a story about this big hand he’d lost in seven-card stud at Bally’s, but I was barely listening. I really needed to bet, to clear my head, and I told him I’d catch him later.

  I dropped another few hundred in slots, played a few more losing hands of BJ, got the shit kicked out of me in craps, then walked away in disgust. At least I wasn’t thinking about that other thing anymore.

  On the way out of the casino, I passed a roulette wheel and put all the chips I had left—about four hundred bucks—on black.

  Guess what came in?

  The story of my fucking life.

  Like Riding a Moped

  Jordan Harper

  …And now, the last bad thing about being so fat: my fingers can’t find the bullet holes. They’re there, because they brought me down and now there is sticky blood mixing with the sweat all over, but my clumsy hands can’t find what kind of holes just got poked into my body. Are they just little puckers in the flesh? Or is it worse than that? Are scoops of me missing?

  Somebody will write about this on the Internet. I bet they call the article “Fatty and Clyde,” or something like that. Everyone will read it and chuckle. And everyone will look at me and see something else, which is what always happens. That’s how Benny got to me when I should have known better. He looked right at me.

  Men sit next to me on the Metrolink and talk about women like I’m not even there. I’m just the thing taking up two seats when the train gets crowded. Everyone shifts their body away from me. Nobody looks and nobody points and laughs unless there’s a kid. Then the mom can try and shush the little kid and maybe smile an apology and then look away, tell the kid it’s not polite to stare. Honest, it’s okay when the kid stares. At least it stops me from feeling invisible.

  The others, the adults, they look and they just see other things. They picture me sitting at home, a pizza box open in front of me and me eating with the lazy mania of a zombie in a horror movie. They see my chomping jaws and glazed eyes, dipping crusts in ranch dressing, how only one slice lives to make it to the safe haven of the freezer—me eating so much that for the next hour every burp will send a chunk of half-chewed dough back into my mouth, so I have to swallow it again.

  Maybe they wonder about my shower, about how I have to lift the three folds of my belly and point the handheld nozzle to try to clean out the gunk that forms there. They wonder how I wash my back, if I own something like the rag on a stick in that Simpsons joke.

  They imagine the underwear hidden beneath my clothes, both wispy and huge, a negligee knapsack. Maybe they think of the way the panties must smell when I peel them off at the end of the day, like a swamp or a beer left open.

  All these things are true.

  All these things are true, so when Benny puts his tray across from mine at the Galleria food court, I don’t believe him for a second. But he is so pretty, really, like Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise. Later on I’ll learn that he’s from Springfield, down in the opposite corner of the state, same as Brad. And once he’ll even try to tell me that they’re cousins. Yeah, right, I’m sure Brad Pitt just has dozens of relatives who work for the St. Louis mob. What kind of cousin, I ask, like your mother’s brother or what? And he says, No, I mean cousin cousin, like that means something.

  But all that comes later. When Benny sits across from me I’m sitting in a corner of the food court with my fried rice and egg rolls, thinking about the store. I want to be a salesgirl. Mr. Nesbitt laughed when I told him, and said he didn’t know what he’d do without me working the computers. The salesgirls—like Amanda, who sits in the middle of the food court eating a salad—don’t know half what I do about carats and cuts and clarity, but they look like the kind of woman you want to drape in diamonds. And now I’m replaying the conversation in my head, the way Mr. Nesbitt won’t look at me while he laughs at the idea. And then there’s Benny staring straight into my eyes and asking if this seat is taken.

  So he sits across from me talking and smiling, and I’m trying not to stare at him. The napkin I put over my General Tso’s chicken is turning orange from the grease it’s drinking, and there’s still my crab Rangoon under that napkin. As soon as this gorgeous dip gets up and leaves I’m going to dip it in the General Tso sauce and suck out the cream cheese. But he doesn’t leave, and after one lame joke he tells he actually winks at me. I wonder if the girls at Nesbitt’s maybe hired this guy or something.

  I mean, I’ve met chubby chasers, and this guy isn’t one. Guys like that like to say something about my size right away, to try and make me feel comfortable. Oh God, like how they like a woman with some meat on her bones. Great image, right, like maybe they’re planning on cooking me up later.

  Most amazing, he’s not looking around the room while we talk. Most men, when they end up in a conversation with me in a bar or something, they’re always looking around. Maybe they’re looking for better options, but mostly, I think, it’s because they’re afraid someone might see them. A friend told me this joke once, I guess it’s a joke men tell to each other:

  Why’s a fat girl like a moped?

  They’re a lot of fun to ride, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you on one.

  Benny looks right in my eyes. His eyes are clear blue, and I don’t see myself reflected in them at all.

  He asks if I want to go see a movie after work. I never told him that I worked at the mall. I could have been shopping. This is something I don’t think about until later. At the time I can hardly think at all. But later on, it will come back to me and make perfect sense.

  Back at the store, Amanda corners me. Her skin is the color of Arizona dirt, and it’s stretched so tight you can see three sides of her collarbones. She asks me who I was talking to. Just some guy. Pretty cute, she says back, the way you’d say it to a niece who has not yet admitted to liking boys. Whatever, I say, just like your niece would.

  After work, I stop at Lion’s Choice and pick up a few roast beef sandwiches and eat them while I drive, barely chewing at all. He’s taking me to dinner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to the restaurant hungry. He’s not really going to show up, I tell mysel
f as I drive and swallow. There’s no way. Maybe he’s just into fat chicks, I tell myself. But that doesn’t feel right. To a guy like that, a fat chick is like Renee Zellweger clocking in at 130 pounds for that stupid movie.

  Maybe he’s hogging, I think, and the roast beef lumps in my throat. I read one time about guys who will all set out to pick up the fattest thing they can find, and they all show up someplace and the guy with the biggest girl wins. Wins what, I don’t know. Respect? I can see in my head a table full of women like me, all of us knowing what was going on and not a one of us doing a thing about it while the men get drunk and laugh at us. And for the hundredth time I cancel the date in my head and then remind myself that I don’t even have this guy’s number. So one way or another, my fate, at least for the night, is sealed.

  It takes me about three hours to get dressed, an hour of that in the shower, getting everything, shaving my legs, even that patch down by my ankle. I have to hold my breath to reach it. I’m lucky I don’t break my neck. Choosing a dress takes longer. Lane Bryant of course. Black, of course. Black’s slimming, you know, so I only look big as a townhouse. I put my makeup on using a mirror and trying not to actually look at myself, which of course is hard. Then I eat a pint of Cherry Garcia standing over the sink thinking he’s not going to come and if he does then that might be even worse and that there’s something wrong, there must be something wrong but even if there is I don’t care because at least that kind of wrong will be something new.

  When the doorbell rings, I just about bite through the spoon.

  We eat Italian on the Hill, and I get fettuccini with white sauce and laugh at his jokes, which aren’t very funny. He tells me he works in contracting, and I ask him what that means, and he fumbles a bit. So we drink more, and I let myself get drunker than I should on a date, because if I don’t I’m going to jump out of my skin. Which wouldn’t be so bad.

  After the dinner, after I refuse to have dessert, just say no, when he asks me if I want to go to his place, I say yes. I breathe in deep, trying to see if my nervous sweat has kicked up any of the smell, but I don’t smell anything. And the way Benny smokes, I’d be surprised if he can smell anything at all. So we go to his place in the Central West End and it’s done up in that way that looks tasteful but just means that you bought everything at the same store. And I’m looking around and he puts a hand on my shoulders and it’s like someone set my insides on puree.