“Where’s Ava? I called her at work, and they said she went home. Is she okay?”
Donnie covers the phone with his hand, talks close to the mouthpiece. “Ava’s terrific, bud. Best she’s been in a while. I ate her pussy until she howled.”
“Jesus Christ. Leave there now.”
“Nah. You got a stepdaddy now, bitch.” Donnie laughs and hangs up.
He goes back to the table and snags a rainbow cookie from the box and shoves it in his mouth whole. It’s soft, fresh, fucking delicious.
He sits in the chair where all the action went down. He pulls closer to the table and looks up at the fluorescent light overhead. It makes green dots in his eyes. He remembers, as a kid, thinking that staring at a light like this would give him some kind of X-ray vision. He wanted to see through walls, through clothes. He wanted to see the whiskey tucked into the sock band of his least favorite nun at school. He wanted to see skin. He wanted to see heat. That and the ability to stop time, those were the big desires of his childhood.
Ava comes out in a terry cloth robe. She doesn’t sit. She goes over to the sink and puts her ring back on. “Did you answer the phone?” she says.
“I did,” he says.
“Who was it?”
“No one. They hung up. Probably thought they had the wrong number.”
“If it’s important, they’ll call back. Probably work. They’re helpless without me.” She studies him in her dead husband’s jeans and shirt. “The clothes look good on you.”
“A little tight, but not bad.”
“I can get you something else.”
“It’s fine.”
The phone rings again. Donnie’s sure it’s Nick, and he’s not sure what exactly will happen, what Nick will say and how Ava will react.
“Hello?” Ava says into the phone.
But it’s clearly not Nick. She’s listening. He’s listening to her listening.
“I know, Alice,” Ava says, rolling her eyes to tell Donnie she’s got to deal with this. “Some harebrained scheme. He hasn’t been in touch?” And then, after a beat: “I’ll tell him to call you as soon as he gets home. Yeah, I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” She hangs up.
“Who was that?” Donnie says.
“Nick’s girlfriend. I think I mentioned her yesterday. Alice.”
“Sure.”
“She’s looking for him. He’s . . . forget it.” She points to the coffee she poured him, the cup she carried over on a saucer with her blouse off. “Your coffee’s cold. Let me heat it up and pour you a fresh cup.”
“Okay. If it’s not a hassle.” He’s honestly—despite the fact that it wasn’t Nick on the phone after all—surprised that Ava’s not giving him the boot.
But Ava seems pretty content. He thinks the tears must just be about the ring. He wonders if she considers what she did cheating. Some women would. Women are strange.
“You don’t need to wear it,” he says.
“Excuse me?” she says.
“The ring. You don’t need to wear it anymore.”
“I’ve been told.”
“You didn’t cheat on him. You can’t cheat on him. We were just having fun. Don’t feel guilty about it.”
“I don’t work that fast. I shouldn’t. It’s not right.” She fidgets with the ring on her finger. “Poor Anthony, he’s probably rolling over in his grave.” She goes to the stove and turns the gas back on under the coffee. She empties his old coffee in the sink and rinses the cup.
“I, for one, had a great time,” Donnie says, smiling. “Can I tell you something?”
“What?” Ava says, not looking at him.
“You just do something to me. You’re the first woman I can think of in a long time that’s true of. It stopped with my ex-wife pretty early on. You’re classy, you’re smart. The way you smoke. Your voice. You know who you remind me of? Susan Sarandon. The actress. You know? She’s half-Italian. Her mother’s name was Criscione. You see that White Palace? She’s hot in that. Mid-forties and she’s got them all beat.”
“I’m older than Susan Sarandon,” Ava says, obviously flattered.
“What’s a few years? You look good.”
“I look worn down.”
“Let’s go to your bedroom. I’ll show you how good you look. I can be ready to go again, you want.”
Something of a smirk from her. He wonders what she’s got on under that robe, if she left on her bra and underwear or if she’s naked underneath. He’s surprised she put on the robe at all. He was thinking she’d come back out fully dressed, shaking off the encounter and deciding to head back to work for the afternoon.
When the coffee’s boiling again, she shuts the gas and pours them both cups. She brings them over, no saucer for him this time, and sets them on the table, fanning out napkins like cards. She sits across from him and picks at the shell of a cannoli.
“I wasn’t going to have anything,” she says.
“But you worked up an appetite.” He paws up another rainbow cookie and devours it. He sips his steaming coffee. “Eat the whole thing. You deserve it. I want to see you licking up the filling.”
“Don! You’re bad. Everything is dirty with you.”
“Not everything.”
But she does pick up the cannoli, balancing it on her palm, nibbling at the shell mouselike, finally tonguing up some filling, her lips dusted with powdered sugar.
“See, that’s sexy right there,” Don says.
“This is so good,” she says, and she doesn’t stop. Her bites get bigger. Soon, it’s gone, just a scatter of crumbs remaining in her palm, her mouth full of the pastry, chewing in a way where her whole face seems to be moving, her eyes closed. When she finishes, she washes it down with some hot coffee.
“Look at you,” he says.
“I’m such a pig. I can already feel that in my ass.”
“Have another one. I like to see a woman eat.”
“Are you sick in the head?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll just try one of the S cookies. Dunk it in my coffee.”
“There you go.”
She dunks the cookie in her coffee and then brings it to her mouth, holding it over her outstretched palm. It’s spongy from the coffee and in danger of falling apart. She takes a big bite, half the cookie, and the rest wilts in her palm. She laughs. She eats the remaining coffee-soaked half from her palm like she’s on a desert island and it’s the first food she’s seen in months. She laughs as she chews. “I’m disgusting,” she says, her mouth full of cookie gristle.
“I love it,” Donnie says. “Go for broke.”
“I’ll explode!”
“Today’s the day of living dangerously.”
She takes a pignoli cookie out of the box this time.
“That’s the stuff,” Donnie says. “Melt in your mouth.”
“Anthony liked these,” Ava says, and she seems to catch herself too late. “I don’t need to tell you everything Anthony liked. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s the texture. Nothing better.” Donnie shakes his head. “Eat up. Put it on your tongue like a communion wafer.”
“That’s blasphemy!”
“Is it? I bet Christ’s real body tastes just like that.”
“Don’t say things like that.” Ava draws back, slumps her shoulders, seems genuinely hurt.
“It’s a joke. I’m sorry, hon.”
“Don’t call me hon.”
“You with the don’ts. It’s starting to feel like we’re at the end instead of the beginning.”
“Two don’ts. That’s all. Two.” Ava finds her Viceroys and lights one. “Let me tell you about my history with hon.”
“It’s a term of endearment.”
“Not the way a lot of men use it. All fucking day. Excuse me. I don’t like to curse. All day. Hon this and hon that. ‘Who are you calling hon?’ That’s what I want to say. You’re the maintenance man. You’re the whatever.”
“Leave the maintenance
man alone. He’s got it tough. His mother just croaked. His wife’s banging a gangster named Z-Bone.”
Ava takes a long draw off her smoke, looks at him with quizzical eyes. “What are you even talking about?”
“I’m imagining a life for the maintenance man. His name’s Luis.”
“His name’s not Luis, the guy I’m talking about. It’s Ted. Ted Nowak. He’s a Polack.”
“Okay, okay.” Donnie puts his hands up in surrender. “I’ll leave the maintenance man alone.”
“Then, forget it, there’s the other guys. The guys that think they’re somebody. The doctors. They’re the worst.”
“No more with the hon. I get it.”
“Can I ask you something?” Ava says, leaning forward on her elbow, her cigarette perched between her fingers, the wedding ring seeming to glow.
“Oh, boy,” Donnie says. “Maybe I need another cookie.” He takes an S cookie and turns it to mush in his coffee and eats it just like she did, over his palm, catching spongy dark crumbs. “Okay. Shoot.”
“What happened, how do you feel about it?”
He looks around, at the walls, at the light overhead, searching for her meaning. What he did?
“Well, Ava,” he says. “I like it. It’s a good place to be, down there between your gams. Warm. A great little rut to dig around in. Makes me feel like a squirrel.”
“Not that.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Your son.”
Donnie leans back. That. How’s she know? People just know things, he guesses. A neighborhood like this, word gets around. More likely, she didn’t know or at least didn’t put two and two together and then her son remembered, told her everything he could think of, the whole public file.
Ava blows smoke away from him. “Did you go to church about it?” she says.
“Why?” he says.
“Maybe you should. Father Borzumato at St. Mary’s, he’s a good guy. I talked to him a lot after Anthony died.”
“Me and priests don’t get along great. You want me to tell you all about Father Pepe and Monsignor Vallone and how they beat the shit out of me when I was an altar boy?”
“I remember Father Pepe and Monsignor Vallone. They were kind.”
“Yeah, if kind’s getting loaded and knocking the shit out of some of us. And Vallone, his tastes ran more deviant with some of the effeminate boys.”
“You’re saying what?”
“Why you think they moved Vallone so hush-hush?”
“No. Not that.”
“You put your trust in these fucks. They got their end games. Some of them, it’s about trying to throw a bang on one of their nun pals. The others, they’re into the boys. They never tried to fuck me. I want to make that clear.”
Ava stubs out her cigarette in the Cento can, picks a tobacco fleck from her lip. “How come I never knew you growing up?”
“You’re a little older, I guess is why.”
“I was probably in seventh grade when you were just starting out. Did you have Sister Bernadette for kindergarten?”
“She was the worst. She looked like a rat.”
“I liked Sister Bernadette. I saw her not that long ago at church.”
“She must be two hundred.”
“She remembered me. She said I was one of her favorites.”
Donnie takes a cigarette. Ava lights it for him. “There any of that scotch left?” he says.
“Let’s just talk,” Ava says. “Did you have a favorite year?”
“Second grade wasn’t the worst.”
“Who’d you have?”
“Miss Schwartz.”
“I must’ve missed her.”
“Jewish lady teaching in a Catholic school, you believe that? Only lasted a couple of years. She lived on the same block as the school. Just a nice lady. Had the blackest hair. She wasn’t like the nuns. I saw her one day sitting on the front stoop outside what must’ve been her apartment building, just listening to music and polishing a pair of shoes. She gave me the biggest smile and wave. That’s one of my favorite memories from being a kid. I felt like I was somebody.”
“That’s so sad,” Ava says.
“What’s sad?”
“A kid should have a lot of great memories. Not just a stranger waving at him.”
“She wasn’t a stranger.” His turn to draw deep on his smoke. He crinkles his forehead, looks past her at the radio, which he wishes was still on. All this goddamn talk. “I’ve got good memories with my folks and my aunts and my uncles. Big Sunday dinners. My old man taking me on the train to the Bronx to see the Yanks.”
A hard minute of silence. Just the sounds of them smoking. A clock ticking in another room, barely audible, a tiny heartbeat for the house. He hadn’t noticed it before now.
“Being a cop must’ve been hard,” Ava finally says.
“It was what it was. I got in young.”
“Talk to Father Borzumato. Just talk to him. You’re not signing up for anything.”
“I don’t think so, Ava.”
ANTONINA DIVINO
Antonina is waiting at the pick-up spot on Bay Thirty-Second. When Ralph arrives on foot, she’s taken aback. He’s carrying a gym bag, sweating hard in his tight-fitting polo shirt and wrinkled chinos, out of breath. He looks all around, watching to see if anyone’s watching him, and says, “Pags took my car. An emergency.”
Antonina nods. It feels strange to be in the neighborhood with him outside of his car. In the Bronx, she feels comfortable. In the car on the Belt, she feels comfortable. Here, she feels exposed. She’s sobered up after the early drinks, and her nerves are frayed, which doesn’t help.
“I’m sorry,” Ralph says.
“It’s okay.”
“I just want to give this to you right now, anyway.” He hands her the bag. “Maybe we can meet later when I get the car back and go to the Bronx?”
“What is it?” she says, inspecting the outside of the small bag. It’s one of those small tubelike bags, black with white handles, and it’s got rings of dust etched into the fabric.
Ralph whispers, “I came into some bread today. I don’t need it all. I want you to have some. For your future. Maybe it’ll help, with college and everything.”
Antonina doesn’t need to unzip the bag to believe him. “How much?” she asks.
“Ten thou,” he says.
Panic sets in. She’s standing on Bay Thirty-Second with a dirty cop, ten thousand bucks in a gym bag she’s holding that he gave her. Who knows where he got it? Lots of things to say race through her mind. I can’t take it. Why me? Where’s this money from? Did someone die over this?
Instead, what she says is simply, “Thank you.”
“There’s more, and I don’t need all of it,” Ralph says. “I fly solo. You’re a special girl. I want you to have every opportunity.”
Money makes the future look different. She’s thinking—in a flash—college isn’t a bad idea. She’s got this money. She doesn’t have to depend on her parents. She can go to a state school and learn to make movies or something. She can get out of this neighborhood, out of this city with its broken sidewalks and groaning buses and muggers and people getting killed on the train for sneakers, go see some trees and lakes and mountains and shit like that. Mikey had told her how nice it was in New Paltz, how sometimes he’d just walk off into the woods with a sleeping bag and a bottle of wine in the spring and sleep on the ground.
Ralph reaches out and touches her hair, taking a couple of strands between his fingers. “I ever tell you I like the pink?” he says.
She’s thinking of changing it. She got a color called Psychedelic Sunset last time she was at Manic Panic in the city with Lizzie.
“I’m gonna go,” Ralph says. “I’ll call you later. Two nights in a row, we’ll go to the Bronx. This one’ll be a celebration. We’ll toast to your future.”
She honestly doesn’t know what to say. She nods and smiles.
Ralph leaves, walking back
toward Benson Avenue.
She races home—her mother’s still not there—and goes into her room, locking the door behind her. She unzips the bag and empties the money on the bed. Ten thousand dollars doesn’t look like as much money as she thought it would. Ten banded stacks of ten hundred-dollar bills. She touches the edges of the money. She tries to think of where she should hide it. In her closet? Under the bed? Maybe she can get her own safe deposit box at the bank. Or maybe that’s dumb. It’s dirty money, and the bank is equipped somehow to sniff it out. She imagines herself buying a car at Flash Auto with cash, paying for her college tuition with cash, buying more dyes at Manic Panic and more movies at Kim’s Underground.
She hides most of the money on the top shelf of her closet in a half-empty box of tampons, keeping out three hundred so she can have some fun, and then she stuffs the gym bag under her bed. She doesn’t like seeing the gym bag because she doesn’t know who it belonged to. She’ll have to remember to toss it in the trash.
She goes to the phone and calls Lizzie, who picks up after four rings. “You want to go to the city?” Antonina asks.
“Your parents won’t be pissed?”
“No one’s around. I’ve got some money. We could go to the movies, go get drunk, and then go hear music.” She’s thinking it’d be cruel if she’s not here when Ralph calls, but she can’t worry about that.
“Hell yes,” Lizzie says. “I’ll meet you at Bay Parkway.”
Antonina locks the door from the inside and goes out on the fire escape, thinking that when her mom comes home and finds her door locked, she’ll just think she’s not feeling well and let it be. She smokes a cigarette. In a few minutes, she’ll descend the ladder into the yard and run to meet Lizzie at the train.
NICK BIFULCO
Nick looks at the payphone in Spanky’s Lounge and shakes his head. That can’t have been real, Donnie at his house with Ava. It must’ve been some sort of auditory hallucination. He’s heard of that. It’s a real thing. He called, Ava wasn’t home, the phone just kept ringing, and then he imagined the conversation with Donnie. But, of course, he knows it is real.
Before that, he’d gotten through to Phil Puzzo. They’d made plans to meet at Nick’s house in an hour or two—Phil owed his parents a visit anyway, and he could use a home-cooked meal. He said he’d stop by for ten, fifteen minutes, until his mother had the food ready. Nick had given him a quick pitch, and Phil said he was familiar with the Donnie P story, but he wasn’t sure it’d be enough for a script or a book or anything. Donnie’s a nobody, he said, and no one will give a good red shit about neighborhood melodrama. Nick would have to dig deeper. Still, maybe he—Phil Puzzo, neighborhood god—could give Nick some pointers on how to fill it out.
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