She steals a quick glance of him in his boxers. He sits back down, his arms up on the table. His elbows are dry, rough. She thinks about putting cream on them for him.
“I’m going to go put the wash on,” she says. “Watch the coffee. If it starts to perk, lower it so it doesn’t go over.”
“Sure,” he says.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to be bossy.”
“I can handle the coffee.” He smiles.
“When I get back, I’ll clean up your face.”
“Thanks, Nurse Ava.”
She goes down the hall and opens the basement door. She flicks on the light. The stairs are rickety. She holds the railing as she descends, clutching the bag.
At the washing machine, she takes out the clothes and dumps them in. She crumples up the bag and sets it in a white basket off to the side. She starts running the water. She puts in a cup of detergent. She wonders if she should’ve put stain stuff on all the blood. She digs into the cold water and pulls out the shirt first and then the jeans, and she dangles them over the edge of the machine so they’re dripping on the floor. She pauses the cycle. She takes down the orange bottle of stain spray and soaks them both and then stands there and waits, letting it go to work. Then she throws them back in and lets the cycle resume, the sound of whooshing water filling the basement. She closes the lid.
In the far corner of the basement, she finds the big black leaf bags full of Anthony’s old clothes. On her knees now, she works at the knot on the first bag. She gets it open and reaches in, pulling out a pair of flannel pajama pants. She holds them to her nose. Smell of mothballs. She remembers Anthony walking around wearing only these pants and his slippers. That was the last time a man who wasn’t Nick walked around without a shirt on in this house.
She digs farther into the bag and finds a matching shirt. Anthony never wore it that she remembers. It’s no good for Don. Next is a faded pair of Levi’s, also hung with the stink of mothballs. They’ll work. She folds them neatly and puts them aside. She reaches back in and hits a run of T-shirts. Mostly shirts Anthony acquired at various bar benefits or charity drives at the Knights of Columbus. Some from the casinos. She finds one that looks like it’ll fit Don well and isn’t too worn out. It says ATLANTIC CITY in red script. Under that, there’s a slot machine lined with fat 7s, a roulette wheel, a pair of dice showing snake eyes, and an ace-high royal straight flush of hearts. She folds it and puts it on top of the jeans.
It’s been a while since she went through Anthony’s things like this.
She searches in the bag a bit more, thumbing the well-worn fabric of an old work shirt and touching the gold buttons on a blazer he wore to weddings and funerals. She finds balled-up socks and frayed plaid boxers and white briefs with holes around the band.
She thinks again of rubbing cream on Don’s elbows.
She closes the bag, tying it off as snugly as she can, and she stands. She picks up the clothes for Don and heads back upstairs to the kitchen, shutting the light behind her.
She finds him hovering over the stove, watching the coffee.
“Looked like it was about to go over,” he says, “so I lowered it.”
“Thanks,” she says. “It makes a big mess when it boils over.” He’s practically naked at her stove. She thinks about Nick walking in right now. Her eyes find the floor for a second and then his feet, his legs.
“You got some clothes for me there?” Don says.
“I do,” she says. “Let’s get you cleaned up first, though. Sit.”
He sits down.
She goes to work, dabbing around his nose with cotton balls soaked in peroxide. She uses dry cotton balls to soak up the blood. “You poor thing,” she says.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Bastard just tagged me right on the nose.”
She’s almost straddling him. She’s looking down at his chest. Peroxide mixed with blood has made a pink froth and run down onto his stomach.
“You got any music?” he says. “It’s so quiet.”
“Not really. I can put the radio on. Nick has some tapes somewhere.”
“You don’t like music?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really listen to much. I like what Anthony liked. Dion. Frankie Valli. Sometimes it’s nice to hear the Beatles. What do you like?”
“Bon Jovi. You know them?”
“Not really.”
“I saw them in ’87 at MSG on the Slippery When Wet tour. They were great. That tape and New Jersey, I like those a lot. I had them around for a while. Probably still in my car. I don’t listen to music much anymore. I used to.”
“Slippery When Wet?”
“Right. ‘Livin’ on a Prayer.’ ‘You Give Love a Bad Name.’ You don’t know those?”
She shrugs. She throws out some of the used cotton balls. She goes over and turns the radio on. WCBS. Oldies. They’re playing “Seasons in the Sun.” Reception is crackly. She remembers when it was big in the mid-’70s.
“I don’t know this song,” Don says.
“It was a hit,” Ava says.
The coffee is perking at a steady low hum on the stove. She shuts the gas.
“I feel better,” Don says. “Thank you.”
“Do you want to put on your new clothes? We can have some coffee with cookies and pastries.”
“I’d rather you take your clothes off.”
Ava spurts out a laugh. “What?”
“Take your clothes off. Start with your blouse.”
“Excuse me. You’ve misunderstood my intentions.”
“Come on. Here I am.” He sits up and pulls down his boxers and kicks out of them and he’s naked on her chair in her kitchen with the smell of coffee in the air and Anthony’s old clothes piled nearby.
“You’re hurt. You must’ve gotten a good knock on the head.”
“I’m serious.”
“This is why you bought me the car?”
“No. Don’t say that. I like you. You like me. Look at me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
She gives him the once-over. His lower half is obscured by the table. His nostrils are edged with caked blood. She feels like she might bust out laughing. It’s irrational. She’s embarrassed, not scared. “Get dressed.”
“Take off your blouse and pour me some coffee,” he says. “Please. I want to see you walk over to me in your bra with a cup balanced on a saucer. That’s my dream right now.”
“You’re nuts.”
“I say what’s on my mind.”
“And what if Nick were to walk in?”
“He’s not walking in.”
Don’s right, whether he knows why or not. Nick’s off chasing some fantasy. Ava thinks back to the Wonder Wheel and the risk she took there and how she felt afterward. Would it be so wrong to give herself over to Don, to let loose a little, to have fun? She and Anthony had fun together. They played their little games. He even bought her a vibrator one time. He got it at some adults-only shop in the city. After seeing a movie one night at the Benson Twins, he gave it to her wrapped in a nice box like it was a diamond bracelet. She opened it and felt shocked. She remembers putting her hand over her mouth. She remembers him saying how he wanted to watch her use it. She felt silly, that bullety thing buzzing between her legs, but he seemed to like watching her with it. She was sprawled on their bed. He sat in the corner on her mother’s old sewing bench. This happened more than a few times. Nick was in high school and out most weekend nights. She started to really enjoy it. Anthony started to think she was enjoying it too much, more than she enjoyed him or even him watching, and he tossed it unceremoniously in the dumpster of the Mobil station on the corner of their block. She’s thinking of that now, and she’s thinking, Games are okay. Games are what humans do. Let yourself have fun. What the hell. She starts to unbutton her blouse.
“There you go,” Don says.
She feels her face flush. She slips out of her blouse. She stands there in her bra and slacks. The radio shifts to a loud, whoopy-voiced
announcer. He’s saying things about the song that just played or the song that’s about to play. She pours Don a cup of coffee in one of her nice china cups and clanks it down on the matching saucer. She carries it over to him slowly, methodically, and his eyes take her in so fully that she feels alive in some new way.
MIKEY BALDINI
Twentieth Century was a disco club back in the neighborhood’s Saturday Night Fever days. Now, from the outside, it’s just a vacant brick building on Bath Avenue nestled between a barbershop and a three-family house, the ghost of a flashy sign looming over its doorway. Big Time Tommy owns the place and, by all accounts, just kind of stretches out in there, using it as a base of operations. Mikey’s never been inside, but he’s heard things. That there’s a stained-glass dance floor. That a who’s who of celebrities and wannabes used to hang out and get high at the joint in its prime. That once a woman hanged herself from a disco ball and that she haunts Big Time Tommy’s crew.
When Mikey rings the buzzer, he’s not sure what to expect. He’s got a speech prepared, about settling his father’s debt first and foremost, about keeping his mother out of harm’s way. He won’t advertise the fact that he’s trying to make enough dough to take off and start a new life somewhere else. He’s just glad that Donna was so open to him, so willing to ignore what had happened with his mother and settle into something new.
Dice opens the door and smiles when he sees Mikey, his upper lip even more purple and swollen than it was the day before. He calls over his shoulder, “The kid’s here!”
Big Time Tommy’s voice bounces back from the darkness of the club: “Freak Show Mikey? Bring him in.”
Mikey follows Dice inside.
The club is wide-open and dank, almost feels like a warehouse. Pretty high ceilings. No glass dance floor remains that Mikey can see, but some of the far walls are mirrored, if layered with dust. Narrow standing tables are set up around carpeted beams that run from floor to ceiling, donuts of polished wood where people were once meant to set drinks. A drooping disco ball is suspended from a heavy-duty cord over the center of the room. It looks like a lone planet left from some sort of sad solar system display. It doesn’t reflect any light because there’s no light for it to reflect, but many of the facets no longer have a mirror surface, and the disco ball—which must have once seemed magnificent to dancers below—is patched with dark, empty spots.
Big Time Tommy is sitting at a desk with a half-eaten hero on white butcher’s paper in front of him. Mikey can see that it’s broccoli rabe and sausage.
No one else is around, as far as he can tell.
“This is kismet,” Big Time Tommy says, munching on a heel of bread, a stringy piece of broccoli rabe hanging over his lip onto his chin. “You know from kismet? Meant to fucking be, Freak Show.”
Mikey wastes no time: “I want to work for you. I want to clear my father’s debt.”
“That’s very good news.” Big Time Tommy pauses, plucks a piece of sausage from between the pieces of bread, and jaws it noisily. “But there’s now much, much more to talk about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Get our friend a chair,” Big Time Tommy says to Dice.
Dice grabs a folding chair that’s leaning against the wall next to the front door and brings it over to Mikey, popping it open and setting it close to Big Time Tommy’s desk. Mikey sits.
“I’ve got a crisis,” Big Time Tommy says. “And you, well, you’ve got demons you didn’t even know you had. I’m here to lay it out. We can help each other.”
“I just want to clear my father’s debt. Maybe make some extra money.”
Big Time Tommy holds up his hand. “I understand. But your old man, kid, he was the victim of independent antics. I said one thing, but another thing happened. I’ve covered for said antics in the interest of my own name, but those responsible no longer deserve the reprieve I’ve granted them.”
Mikey feels lost. “I don’t get it.”
“The ex-cop that fucked you up, Donnie Parascandolo, he and his pals, Pags and Sottile, they’re on my payroll. My issue now is I’ve discovered they’ve been skimming off their collections, culminating in the misguided decision to take a haul they weren’t anticipating from piece-of-shit Duke O’Malley, who turned out to be a more accomplished skim artist, and to keep it for themselves. I got the report straight from Mr. Natale, who Duke’s been ripping off. Short of it is, Donnie and his guys fucked me.”
“Again, I’m lost here.”
“Two years ago, that night you got clocked with the bat, your old man died.”
Mikey leans forward.
Big Time Tommy continues: “It was Donnie who did it. Pags and Sottile were there, but it was Donnie who dumped your old man off the bridge. It was not on my say-so. I had them going after him the next day. I had them kneecapping him, breaking an arm, something, anything to get him to pay up. Way it goes. I did not okay them clipping him. That was Donnie acting independently. I don’t know why. I don’t know if the beef with you set him off. I was not, in no way, interested in making a widow of your mother and leaving you without a father. I liked your old man. That’s why I’ve been trying to go easy on you and Rosemarie.”
“Donnie Parascandolo killed my father?” Mikey says, unable to wrap his head around it. If someone had asked him to draw a line from Donnie to Giuseppe, he wouldn’t have been able to, because there was no connection to make. You can live in the neighborhood your whole life and not know thousands and thousands of people. Mikey had never figured the incident with Donnie for anything more than coincidence.
“Listen, I’m no psychiatrist. Donnie’s kid killing himself really fucked him up. I’ve got sympathy for the guy—to a point. But now he’s gonna pay. And I’m giving you the opportunity to get the revenge you deserve.”
Mikey’s head is spinning so hard, he almost missed it. Donnie’s kid killing himself really fucked him up. Can’t be. Can’t fucking be.
“Donnie’s kid killed himself?” Mikey asks. “What was his name?”
“Don’t get soft out of the gate,” Big Time Tommy says.
“I’m not. I just need to know.”
“Gabe.”
Mikey repeats the name: “Gabe Parascandolo.”
They were hitched, Donnie and Donna. Sixteen years, she said? Jesus Christ. That on top of the fact that his father didn’t off himself and was actually murdered unjustly by this ex-husband of the woman he’s just fallen for. He’s in the heart of a fucking soap opera. He’s swimming in the blood of a fucking soap opera.
“You knew the kid, maybe?” Big Time Tommy asks.
“I didn’t,” Mikey says.
Big Time Tommy finishes his pitch as he finishes his hero, talking with his mouth full: “What I want you to do is to simply get your revenge on Donnie. Kill him, and your old man’s debt is erased. You and your mother are in the clear.”
“I’ll do it with my fucking bare hands,” Mikey says, anger filling him from the ground up. He pictures Donnie pushing his old man off the bridge. He pictures Donnie in bed with Donna. “I’ll choke that motherfucker until he’s blue.”
“I like the passion,” Big Time Tommy says, “but I think you should take a weapon.” He turns to Dice: “Get the trunk for Freak Show here.”
Dice disappears into what must’ve been the coatroom of the club and comes out pulling a steamer trunk behind him. He opens the trunk at Mikey’s feet. It’s full of guns, knives, swords, brass knuckles, nunchucks, other things Mikey doesn’t have names for.
Before Mikey chooses, Dice gives him a pair of black batting gloves to put on. “Get the bastard good for me,” Dice says.
Mikey doesn’t know from guns. He’s never even held one. His luck, he aims a piece at Donnie, the fucking thing backfires in his hand.
Instead, he takes out a machete. It’s got a black handle, about six inches long, and a blade that’s about three times that and sheathed in black leather. He wonders what he’ll look like walking through the streets wit
h a machete. A psycho on the loose. It doesn’t matter.
What matters now is getting Donnie. After that, there’s still the dream of escaping, of a life with Donna, and it’s actually possible now, even if he’d have to run from his crime straightaway. Who the hell cares? Life on the run could be great—his mother absolved, Donna at his side. He’s not mad at Donna for Donnie. He’s sorry for her, that a piece of shit like that guy had been her husband, that he’d been poor Gabe’s father.
He takes the sheath off the machete and looks at the silver blade, which zings a flash of light up at the disco ball.
“Good choice,” Big Time Tommy says. “Go with God.”
DONNA ROTANTE
Donna’s a mess, just sitting at her kitchen table with her head in her hands. She’s been a mess before, over Gabe certainly and over Donnie plenty, but this is a different kind of mess. Her life was one thing yesterday, and it’s a different thing today, all because she met a boy by chance.
And that’s what he is. A boy. She went to his house to meet his mother as if they were going to prom together. This is the kind of thing people do when they’re Mikey’s age—sleep together within twenty-four hours of meeting, fall in love—not when they’re almost forty. She must be losing her mind. Holding it together after Gabe died had been a carefully orchestrated balancing act of grief and routine. It’s gushing out now, the desire for change, the desire to live.
Mikey’s backpack is on the floor over near her records. She doesn’t believe he was being manipulative, but she does think a big part of him wanted that reaction from his mother, wanted her to act in a way that would make him leave the house on principle. Another form of behavior that makes perfect sense at twenty-one.
That woman was awful. The way she stared at Donna. The way she spit on the ground at her feet. Donna would like to cut her some slack for being a widow, but she can’t. She looked and acted demonic. That’s really what Donna’s still sick over. It’d be one thing if Rosemarie had taken Mikey aside and said, “What’s going on? She’s too old for you.” But going all Linda Blair was uncalled for. Donna was putting a lot on the line by being there, putting her trust in the moment, and to have it thrown back in her face like that was crushing.
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