He glanced at his watch: 7:45. Their reservation had been for seven thirty. Jesse went on at eight.
"We should be waiting for my dad instead of my brother."
Gia took his hand and gave a gentle squeeze. "I wish that too." Tears glistened on her lids. "God, I can't believe…"
"Yeah. I know." He looked around. Still no sign of Tom. "You know, if he doesn't show by the time we finish these, maybe we should take off."
"He's your brother, Jack."
Jack fiddled with the paper napkin that had come with the beer.
"Yeah, well, we never got along growing up and I don't see us getting along any better as adults."
"What did he do to get you so down on him?"
Jack thought of the first line of The Cask of Amontillado.
"If I may paraphrase Poe, 'The thousand injuries of Tom I had borne as I best could…'"
"Oh come on now, aren't we exaggerating just a little?"
He didn't want to tell her that Tom was the most self-centered human being he had ever known. Jack imagined him being pissed on 9/11 because the fall of the World Trade towers had preempted his favorite Tuesday night TV shows.
Okay. A little harsh. Tom would have been as aghast as everyone else.
He hoped.
"He was ten years older and when he wasn't ignoring me he was hassling me. A little example. I was maybe eleven and I loved pistachios. As I remember, they were all red back then. Anyway, I didn't like to eat them one at a time. I liked a bunch at a time. So I'd shell a couple of dozen and then gobble them in one big bite. I remember it was summer, Tom was home from college, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, doing the work of accumulating a pile of shelled nuts. Tom breezed along, grabbed them, shoved them into his face, and walked on. If he'd done it as a tease it would be one thing, but he acted as if he hadn't the slightest doubt about his right to them or that anyone would refuse him anything—as if I'd been shelling them for him."
"And what did you do?"
"Well, they were already in his mouth so I didn't want them back, and he was twice my size so I couldn't attack him. And I was too old to go whining to my folks. So I had to let it pass."
"Since when do you let things pass?"
"I was a kid, so I did. Then he did it again."
"Uh-oh."
"Yeah. Uh-oh. I was insane. Once was bad enough. Twice was intolerable. I decided to put a stop to it."
"Do I want to hear this?"
Jack smiled. "Of course you do. So I went to Mr. Canelli, this sweet old Italian guy up the street who had the town's best lawn in his front yard and a big vegetable garden in the back. I asked him if I could buy a couple of his hottest—hottest peppers."
Gia nodded. "I see where this is going."
"Need I say more?"
"Well, did it work?"
"Oh, it worked. Mr. Canelli could eat hot peppers like candy, but he said he had one tepin plant that produced peppers so hot he could only use a tiny bit at a time. Two or three times hotter than the red habanero. He gave me some—half a dozen tiny red things. I crushed them and coated about twenty shelled pistachios with the juice."
"Ouch."
"Ouch to the hundredth power." Jack laughed at the memory. "Tom came by, snatched them up, stuffed them into his mouth, and kept moving—for about five steps. Then it hit him."
"Did he turn red?"
"Red? Ever see someone washing out his mouth with a garden hose—for half an hour? It was two days before his tongue was something he wanted in his mouth."
Gia laughed. "Now I've got to meet him."
Jack sobered. "I don't know if you should. I'm still not sure we should even be here."
She frowned. "Where else should we be? Home? Doing what?"
Good question. The options were to go home alone or hang around Gia's house and be morose.
"Wallow?"
"You really want to do that?"
He shrugged. He didn't know what he wanted. "I guess not, but being here seems somehow disrespectful… almost sacrilegious."
Gia shook her head. "I didn't know your father, but from what you've told me I can't see him wanting you to do that."
"You're right. He wouldn't."
"And besides, you promised this fellow Jesse Bighead—"
"Jesse Roy—Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois."
She made a face. "He doesn't have hydrocephalus or anything like that, does he?"
"No. It's a bluesman thing to have a tag with your name. 'Blind' seems to be the most popular: Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, and the guy with the double whammy, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Then there's Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Gatemouth Brown, T-Bone Walker, Pinetop Perkins—the list goes on and on."
"But how do you wind up being called 'Bighead'?"
"I asked him that once and he told me it was his mother's doing. He'd been a big baby and whenever anyone would mention childbirth, his mother would go on about what an awful time she had passing his head."
"Think I'm sorry I asked."
"He may have got the 'Bighead' from his mother, but not the rest. She named him William Sutton, and he grew up as Willie Sutton."
"Like the safecracker?" Gia shook her head. "That might be interesting, but Jesse Roy Bighead DuBois is definitely more picturesque." She nudged Jack with her elbow. "Still not going to tell me how you know him?"
"Told you: I did a fix-it for him a few years back."
It had been a simple fix, but Bighead had been impressed, and had never forgotten.
"Which tells me nothing. It's not as if you're a priest and he told you something in confession."
"Yes, it is."
Jack looked around again. Where the hell was Tom?
7
When will I learn to keep my big yap shut? Tom thought as he extracted himself from the cab. I should be back at Joe O's, feasting on John L. Tyleski's tab.
Instead he was going to get stuck with a three-meal bill in a midtown restaurant.
He slammed the cab door and looked around. Jack had given him a West 42nd Street address but nothing here looked like a restaurant. The Lion King… the biggest McDonald's he'd ever seen with a huge, Broadway-style flashing marquee… Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum… all so different from what he remembered.
Back in his late teens and early twenties, this block had been lined with grindhouse theaters showing grade-Z sleaze.
Then he spotted it: a marquee with B. B. KING scrawled across the top in big red letters. The place looked like a converted movie theater. Probably—no, most likely—one of those grindhouses from the earlier days. Even had a ticket booth out front.
But Jack had said this was the place. Lucille's—anyone who knew anything knew that B. B. King called his guitar Lucille—had to be inside.
If nothing else, the music should be good.
And he was dying to see what sort of floozy Jack had hooked up with. Maybe she had a friend…
Tom entered to the left of the ticket booth and found himself in a small souvenir shop. He asked the T-shirted girl behind the counter for the restaurant and followed her point down a wide circular staircase. He spotted "Lucille's Grill" in red neon over a doorway and walked through. Before the receptionist could ask about a reservation, he spotted Jack and a blonde at the bar.
He pointed. "I'm with them."
He approached from the rear. He couldn't see the woman's face, but he noticed that she dressed on the conservative side, and that her short blond hair did not appear to have originated in a bottle.
Surprise, surprise. Jack had latched onto a babe with a little class.
"Sorry, I'm late," he said.
Jack and the woman turned. Jack's expression remained neutral, but the woman smiled and Tom felt as if he'd run face first into an invisible wall.
That smile, those blue eyes, that face and the way her hair framed it and curved into feathery little wings… it seemed as if he'd stepped into some kind of cosmic shampoo commercial where ever
ything dropped into slow motion as he approached her. He tingled, he flushed, he buzzed with an instantaneous chemical reaction.
A corny, old-hat question burned through his brain: Where have you been all my life?
He was blown away. Blown. A. Way.
Her lips moved. She was saying something. Had to come out of this, had to focus and hear that voice…
"… not believe this!"
"Believe what?" Jack said.
"How much you two look alike. My God, it's incredible."
Her voice… like liquid, like liquor, sending a gush of warmth into his belly.
Jack said, "Tom, this is Gia DiLauro. Gia, my brother, Tom. But you seem to have figured that out already."
She extended her hand. Her skin was like silk, her touch a revelation. He sensed every nucleotide in his DNA drawing him toward her.
Gia… even her name was beautiful… soft, smooth, sensual…
Her azure eyes locked on his. "If Jack had told me he was an only child and you'd sat down at the other end of the bar, I'd have thought you were his long-lost brother."
Okay. She wasn't perfect. She obviously needed glasses. He and Jack looked nothing alike.
Jack shook his head. "You know, that's the second time today we've heard that. I don't get it. We couldn't be more different."
"When was the last time you saw yourselves side by side? Before the night's over, go into the men's room and look at yourselves in the mirror."
Tom figured he'd pass on that.
8
They'd moved to their table, a half banquet in a rear corner with a good view of the stage. The backrests were done in alternating sections of black and white; their table sported pieces of blond and brown wood done up in an art deco-ish pattern.
Tom looked around. Only half the tables were occupied. His brother's reservation had been redundant.
Canned music—nondescript blues—was playing too loud. Tom nursed his second vodka while they waited for their appetizers. He'd had a couple of pops at the hotel bar before coming over and so he could take it easy now. Didn't want to get sloppy in front of this woman.
"Where's this band you came to see?" he said.
Jack shrugged. "It's blasphemy for a blues band to start on time."
Tom hoped they never came on. He wanted to talk to Gia, learn all about her. Something he couldn't do if the band really cranked up.
"Do you like blues?" Gia said.
"I like all kinds of music."
Her eyebrows rose. "Really? How about opera?"
"Love it. Tristan and Isolde is my favorite."
Not necessarily true. He used to hate opera, but part of the politics of his judgeship included attending an endless line of functions and fundraisers. Too many of them included nights at the opera, or the ballet, or at an art museum. Boring as all hell, but his wives, all three, had loved the affairs, loved mingling with Philadelphia's haul monde. Those were the times they appreciated being the wife of a judge.
Along the way, mostly through osmosis, Tom had managed to become an esthete manque, absorbing enough culture to blow highbrow smoke when the situation called for it.
As Gia's eyes lit, he sensed this might be one of those situations.
"I love that one too," she said. "The Merry Widow is another of my favorites. It's at the Met now." She cocked her head at Jack. "But try getting your brother to go. He hates opera."
"Don't listen to her," Jack said. "I like opera just fine… it's just the singing and all the gesturing I don't like. Lose those and do it in English and I could be a major fan."
Gia laughed and leaned against him. "Stop it."
Jack turned to him. "Gia's an artist—she sees things in opera and ballet that I can't."
"That's because you don't lend yourself to the experience," Gia said.
"Artist?" Tom said. "Have you had a show?"
Still smiling, she shook her head. "I hope to someday, but it's commercial art that pays my bills—advertising, book covers, that sort of thing. Between assignments I'm working on a series of fine-art oils for an eventual show."
Time to score some points, Tom thought as he nodded.
"Speaking of fine art, Gia, may I say that you are a vision straight out of a Botticelli."
Her cheeks colored. "What a sweet thing to say."
He didn't mention that he was trying to picture her posed as Botticelli's Venus.
"Botticelli…" Jack said, snapping his fingers and looking perplexed. "Botticelli… isn't that the tropical plant place down on Sixth?"
"Ignore him," Gia said with a laugh. "He loves to play the philistine."
"Are you sure he's playing?"
Her fingers wrapped around Jack's hand. "I'm sure."
Tom repressed an insane urge to grab those intertwined hands and yank them apart. Gia should be holding his hand.
He took a sip of his vodka and forced himself to lean back.
What was the matter with him? Why was he so… so smitten with this woman? Yes, that was what he was: smitten. He'd been under her spell since the instant he'd laid eyes on her. Why?
Maybe it was genetic. Jack was obviously smitten too. Maybe Gia emitted a pheromone that interacted with the genes they shared.
She added, "But he really does not like opera."
"Or ballet," Jack said.
Gia noddled. "Right. Hates ballet."
Jack said, "Hold on now. I don't know about hate. Don't I go to The Nutcracker with you and Vicks every year?"
"And every year you doze off during the first act."
He shrugged. "It's always the same story. I know how it ends."
Gia looked at Tom. "And to be honest, your brother's not too crazy about modern art either."
"I like lots of modern art. I just don't like linoleum patterns and drop cloths passing as art. Who's that guy who does all those big splatters?"
"You don't mean Jackson Pollock?" Tom said, trying to worm his way back in.
"That's the one. Pollock. Gia can paint rings around him."
Gia gave Jack an appraising look, then turned to Tom. "I take that back. He is a philistine."
And then the two of them leaned together and laughed. The sound was acid, etching the chambers of Tom's heart.
The way these two looked at each other, laughed with each other, and seemed to communicate on their own private wavelength filled Tom with a boundless longing. He'd never had that sort of easy intimacy with a woman—no, not just intimacy . . .friendship. He'd never thought it mattered, never cared enough to miss it. But seeing his brother so bonded to a woman like Gia, sharing something precious, timeless, and so uniquely theirs… it awakened strange feelings within him… strange because he'd never experienced them, never known they existed, wasn't even sure what they were.
One feeling he did recognize: envy.
He wanted that for himself. He couldn't remember any woman ever looking at him the way Gia looked at Jack. But he didn't want just any woman to look at him that way, he wanted Gia.
The waiter arrived then with the appetizers. Tom had ordered the craw-dad soup—crayfish in a thick brown broth he couldn't identify.
Delicious.
"A delightful decoction," he said. "Anyone wish to partake?"
Gia's eyebrows rose. "Decoction? Really?"
He'd used the term loosely and she'd caught him. Obviously she knew her way around a kitchen.
Before he could backtrack, the house lights went down and a voice announced Jesse Roy Bighead Dubois and his band. As the musicians filed onstage and picked up their instruments, a tall black man took the microphone and introduced himself.
The singer said, "Our first song is dedicated to a fellow in the audience. No, wait. Not just dedicated—about. I wrote it for him and about him. I won't point him out because his deal is slipping through the cracks. He's a ghost, my friends. You don't see him unless he wants you to. But he's out there now, among you. The song's called the 'R-J Blues.' The music comes from Elmore James, but the words ar
e mine. This one's for you, Jack."
A piece of cajun shrimp stopped halfway to Tom's mouth.
Jack?
He looked across the table and knew immediately from his brother's tense posture and uncomfortable expression that he was the Jack Bighead was talking about.
Jack… a ghost who slips through the cracks? This was going to be interesting.
Bighead gave his band the count and then they ripped into an up-tempo blues. Tom immediately recognized the wailing slide riff of Elmore James's version of "Dust My Broom."
Then Bighead started to sing.
I wake up ev'ry mornin, feelin troubled all the time
You know I wake up ev'ry mornin, feelin troubled all the time
Gotta find me a repairman, who can fix my worried mind
Goin down the corner, find this guy I heard about
Gonna drop a dime on Ma Bell, call this guy I heard about
Gonna tell this guy my problem, see if he can help me out
Well I give him all my money, every cent and that's all righ
Yeah, the repairman took my money, every cent but that's all right
He went and fixed that problem, and now I sleep so good at night
Don't go messin with this fella, or you'll find a world o' hurt
You mess with the repairman, you could find a world o' hurt
You may think you're havin' dinner, but you'll get yo' just desserts.
This guy might be an angel, but he could be the devil too
Yeah, Jack might be an angel, or he could be the devil too
Only thing I know is, you don't want him mad at you.
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