by J. J. Murray
It has been a slow year for sexy men. “The older ones keep dying off.” Shelley had told me, “and the younger ones just don’t seem to know anything about cultivating sex appeal.” Except for Denzel Washington in 1996, all the winners since 1985 have been white, with Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney winning twice. There has yet to be a single Italian winner, and I, for one, think Italians are very sexy.
Something about their eyes just moves me.
Shelley wants me to get a few good close-ups of Lattanza’s face before Tank “The Lion” Washington, the current undisputed middleweight champion and the man who originally took Dante’s title, splits it open and generally rearranges it during their rematch this December. “We can’t put bloody-faced Italian men in Personality” Shelley had explained. “Oh, I suppose we can if it’s a shot from a Sopranos episode or one of whosawwhatsit’s model boy-toys.”
I had to fly from LaGuardia to Ottawa and rent a car to drive 225 kilometers (about 135 miles) through the towns of Kanata, Carp, Golden Lake, Killaloe Station, and Barry’s Bay to this little strangely shaped lake. It was kind of like escaping Red Hook, where I live in a renovated warehouse at Reed and Brunt Streets with a lovely view of the East River, which my insane Realtor called “Buttermilk Channel.” It actually looks like buttermilk some days, but…it’s the freaking East River! Calling it something else does not make it any cleaner.
Now, I’m floating on Aylen Lake in front of Turkey Island, feeling like a flannelled turkey and waiting for a blonde-headed, freckled kid with selective hearing to—
Oh, there he is, and he’s carrying a…stopwatch? Is he going to time the gaps in his synapses?
“Dante will be by here in a few minutes,” the boy says.
“By here, as in here. He’ll be by this island?” I take a weather-beaten paddle and dip it in the water, pushing the boat away from the shore.
“Yeah. He comes right by here, eh?”
I look around. I see no boats, canoes, or sailboats on the lake, not a single person other than Towhead out on a dock, not even any of the moose, bear, or loons I’ve read about cavorting on the shoreline. “Really?”
The kid points to a rocky outcropping bathed in sunlight and jutting off the northeast shore maybe a quarter mile away. “He’s about to begin.”
I look at the outcropping and don’t see anyone. “Begin what?”
“The last part of his workout,” the kid says. “He broke his record by twelve seconds yesterday.”
I get my camera ready anyway, screwing on a telephoto lens. “You don’t say? What exactly am I going to…see?”
Then I see a man diving off the rocks at least thirty feet above the water. He wears what looks like a parachute or a backpack on his back. That’s Dante Lattanza? He’s also a cliff diver?
The kid starts the stopwatch. “He’ll swim across the channel to the point of our island, run across to the other point, swim the other channel to that cottage over there, run up the hill, ring a bell, run down the hill, and swim back.”
I zoom in on a man’s arms furiously cutting through the waves, his head bobbing up every ten strokes. “What’s on his back?”
“Twenty kilos in a backpack,” Tow Head says. “He has weights on his wrists and ankles to. It adds a total of thirty kilos.”
This means absolutely nothing to me.
I snap a few shots of Lattanza’s flailing arms, the sunny outcropping in the background. He is an extremely strong swimmer, cutting through the water like…well, like a man carrying an extra thirty kilos, practically disappearing underwater occasionally. These shots won’t do. I couldn’t sell these to even the most desperate tabloids. Lattanza isn’t, however, exactly tabloid material. He’s practically unknown.
And then…
Lattanza reaches the northeast point of Turkey Island, rising out of the blue-green water like a cut sculpture, tanned and toned and looking like Carrara marble. He sprints down the somewhat sandy shore in bare feet. I click away on auto as he glides closer.
“Ciao, David,” Lattanza says with a smile as he passes the dock.
“Ciao, Dante,” David says.
I keep my finger on the trigger, so to speak, taking Lattanza in, keeping him framed until he dives off the other point into the water. I sit and review the pictures I’ve taken and see a man defying nature. Lattanza is forty-two but hasn’t an ounce of fat on him. His entire body is cut like one of Michelangelo’s models. He has such dark eyes, dark eyebrows, dark stubble, and thick, wavy black hair. His signature high cheekbones make his smile even more effective because of his squint. I can’t believe Shelley and the rest of the editorial staff only have him at number thirteen.
I’d, um, I’d put him in the top…seven. But then again, I’ve been single a long time. When was the last time? Who was I with? Who was president? Ooh, look at his—
“Hey,” David says.
“Yes?” I look up briefly. Lattanza has a seriously interesting butt, as if he has two huge fists back there. Our readers will rejoice. I my damn self may rejoice a little bit later. He has a nice, muscular booty.
“Listen for the bell,” David says.
“What bell?”
“Shh. You’ll hear it, eh?”
I look at the southeast shore about another quarter mile away and see Lattanza rise from the water onto a dock, run up some steps, and disappear into the woods…
A bell rings.
Then I hear shouts, “Yoo-hoos,” and car and boat horns honking. What’s all this about?
“He’s ahead of his record,” David says.
“What was all that noise?”
David grins. “I’m not the only one timing him, eh?”
So at least the residents, vacationers, and cottagers on Aylen Lake know they have a celebrity among them. This must be the highlight of their day. Whoopee.
I see Lattanza bouncing down the steps to another dock and zooming off. Thirty kilos extra and he’s flying like that. Tank Washington may be in for more of a fight than he has imagined. Lattanza will still lose, but maybe the fight won’t be the bloodbath Las Vegas is predicting and HBO Pay-Per-View is counting on. They’re already touting the rematch as “The Lion vs. the Legend—Twice in a Lifetime.” The first fight was Ring magazine’s “Fight of the Year” ten years ago. The two had combined for over eighteen hundred punches, eight hundred of which connected—five hundred or so to Lattanza’s face and body. Most folks, though, don’t expect a repeat performance, especially from Lattanza. The experts think he’ll run out of gas after the third round.
I see Lattanza using his legs now, hairy things, strong kicks, no letup as he comes back, silhouetted against the sun, powerful, virile, truly not number thirteen. I let the camera fire away. With that background, that face, and that body, he should be at least in the top five. I’ll have to talk to Shelley about his placement. Unlike many on this year’s list, every bit of Dante Lattanza is real and as God made him. He has no blonde highlights in his hair, no calf implants, no caps for his teeth, and no sex appeal based on whom he’s sleeping with, adopting children with, or dating. In addition, he doesn’t need a personal trainer because he’s his own personal trainer.
I am witnessing an atypical typical boxer’s workout. My graddaddy fought in the amateurs, getting pretty far in the New York Gold Gloves, and he maintained a boxing workout throughout the rest of his life at Gleason’s Gym, so I know boxing. Granddaddy ran in the morning, went to work, then picked me up after school to spend a few hours in the gym shadowboxing, pounding the heavy bag, popping the focus mitts, peppering the speed and double-end bags, jumping rope, and sparring whenever he could. Yet here’s Dante swimming a total of a mile or so and playing a hunchbacked lifeguard on Baywatch.
Lattanza is on the island again, and he’s not slowing down. He only nods at David, shoots—is that a grin?—at me, and again he’s crunching down the beach to the point and flying into the water again.
I check to see if I snapped the grin, and I did. It�
��s a nice grin. I’m not sure if all those teeth are originally his, but…Nice. The squint makes his eyes twinkle. On the other hand, maybe they just twinkle and the squint…
Listen to me. Daydreaming about a photograph.
Hmm.
Okay, top three.
David runs out onto the dock. “This is my favorite part.”
I zoom in on the rocks, expecting Lattanza to stop to catch his breath. He doesn’t. He literally leaps from rock to rock, handhold to handhold, almost hopping up that rock formation to the top where he rings another bell.
David clicks the stopwatch. “He beat yesterday by fifteen seconds!”
More noise, yelling—what is this “Yoo-hoo!” business?—horns blaring.
“He’s going to get that title back for sure,” David says.
Not.
Lattanza turns, addresses the noise, and bows, sunlight drenching him in amber.
Damn. I forgot to keep shooting. I click one of him taking off the backpack and raising his arms into the air. It reminds me of a scene from Rocky. That scene gave me goosebumps.
I look at my arms. They are long brown goosebumps that end with nails that desperately need a manicure.
Well.
Hmm.
Lattanza’s bow would have been a cheesy shot, but I wish I had taken it.
Hmm.
I may have to, um, make the interview last longer than my usual thirty minutes. You know, stretch it a bit. I need to make sure I probe this man and get to his essence. Except for Heavy Leather, Lattanza has been out of the spotlight for ten years. This is an important interview. Readers will want to know why he’s been hiding for so long.
I also, um, have to check out his abs up close.
My last short-lived boyfriend, whose name still escapes me (Chuck? Howard?) had love handles, which turned simply to fat, and I quickly returned to a single life.
Dante Lattanza has love ripples.
I wonder what those feel like.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2006 by J. J. Murray
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5713-0