“I want you to know that I’m not asking you for anything, but...” I said.
“But what?” There was a lot of satisfaction in those two words.
“I’d like to come over.”
“I understand,” she said with no underlying gratification. “Come along.”
I walked there. The whole time I was thinking about how foolish it was to pursue a woman like that; a woman as dangerous as any killer I’d gone up against.
I was so wrapped up in these thoughts that I bumped into a pedestrian waiting for the light at Seventy-third and Broadway — a very large pedestrian male.
White, short-sleeved, and generously tattooed, the man made a sound like the one in my chest.
He said, “What the fuck’s wrong with you, nigga?”
We live in a brave new world. Many white people in their thirties, and younger than that, take the derogatory slang from the music they listen to with no notion of insult based on race. I felt, however, that this particular individual had learned his slurs behind bars and under guard; at close quarters and in situations that were life and death on a daily basis.
I smiled broadly and held my upturned palms near shoulder level.
“Bring it on, my brother,” I said. “Bring it on.”
The tattooed man moved his left shoulder to put himself in an advantageous position for fighting. My smile deepened. He took me in with well-trained eyes, and the anger he carried around like a weapon suddenly faded. The light turned and he walked away at a pace he hoped I wouldn’t try to match.
If there was anything that should have dissuaded me from going to the Hotel Brown it was that ex-con’s reaction to me at that moment in time.
Marella and I didn’t speak until after 4:00 that morning. With her eyes, teeth, and clawlike nails (both hand and foot) she dared me to do things to her that most women have no stomach for. And no matter how far I went she was ready for more. It wasn’t fun and it certainly was not love but more like an operation to amputate a gangrenous limb or to excavate a diseased organ. We were doing each other for survival, not edification.
When it was over I wondered how far I’d have to go to get back to some version of civilization.
“I know a man in New Orleans named Gregor Vincent,” she said as she was washing the sex off both of us with a warm hand towel.
“Yeah?”
“He thinks I’m a virgin.”
“And?”
“His family owns half of South America and they do business in gold, not currency.”
“Sounds like your kinda guy.”
“We could make enough off him to take a five-year vacation and not even feel it.”
“Why you need me?” I asked, turning the notion of a criminal on holiday around in my mind. “I mean you’re the whole business on your own.”
“It’s good to have a strong man in the wings,” she said. “And even people like us need somebody to talk to from time to time.”
Despite my better nature, my desire to make up for my transgressions, I was tempted by this woman. She had touched a part of me that I hadn’t even known existed.
“We could take a piece of the next score and set up a trust fund for your wife and kids,” she offered.
“You don’t really care about the money,” I said, experiencing a sudden epiphany.
Marella smiled.
“Money’s nice,” she said. “It’s necessary, too, but... But I like to feel alive, you know? Love and money are fine but they’re only useful if they bring you to life.”
“And do you love me?” I don’t think I’d asked that question since my single-digit years.
“That’s not really a possibility for people like us now is it, Lee?” she said.
She reached out and took my damp penis in her left hand. As it engorged, her smile broadened. Looking in her eyes I realized that I was ready to go with her, to leave my family and office, loved ones and enemies to fend for themselves.
She had me, so to speak, by the balls.
Her stare brought to bear a will that was bending me like she was my dick. I didn’t resent her power any more than a bear resents the warmth of the sun waking him from blissful hibernation.
It was 5:00 a.m. and Marella was my escape hatch, my enlistment papers for the Foreign Legion.
It was 5:03 and the tune of the song “Seventh Son” played on my cell phone.
I reached for the phone while Marella clung to my erection.
“Twill?” I said on a hollow breath.
“Hey, Pop.”
“What do you need?”
“From the sound of it maybe what you gettin’.”
One of the reasons I loved Twill was that I couldn’t hide much from him. With this thought I realized that I did have the potential for love. My erection waned and Marella released her hold on me.
“Where are you?” I asked my son.
“At the front of your hotel. That GPS shit work like magic.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“Are you leaving me, Lee?” Marella asked as I was pulling my pants up.
“I got to get downstairs and see about my son.”
“You know what I’m asking.”
“When I was your age, Mar, I did everything you’re doin’ now. I stole and cheated and lied and worse. Meeting you makes me realize that I miss those wild days. I miss it. I got friends that miss it. But I know, and you should know, that one day one of us would have to stab the other in the back — have to. That’s as much a fact as Gregor Vincent’s gold.”
There was a feral genius glowing in Marella’s eyes. She nodded ever so slightly and then shook her head.
“A few nights like the one we just had might be worth a knife in the back,” she speculated.
“Not if you see it comin’.”
“Will I see you again?” she asked.
“I’ll fix this thing with your DC ex,” I said. “And I’ll come spend the night again if you still want that.”
She kissed me with a fierce passion and then kissed me harder.
29
Twill was parked in front of the hotel in my 1957 dark green Pontiac. I smiled at the young man and the car; both boy and machine were classic in their own way.
When I was putting on my seat belt Twill handed me a paper cup of black coffee.
“Thanks,” I said. I took a big gulp of the bitter liquid, burning my tongue and groaning.
“What’s wrong, Pops?”
“Burned my mouth.”
“No, man,” he said. “You still actin’ kinda off.”
I had brought Twill on as a trainee detective to keep him honest; but if the truth be told he, more often than not, performed that function for me.
“I feel like a kid when his testicles have just descended. Nothing’s the same and somehow I know that it never will be again.”
He turned over the engine, pulled away from the curb, and asked, “She that good?”
“You know you should respect your father.”
“Cecil’s?” he asked instead of taking the bait.
“Sure.”
Down in a part of Chinatown that used to be Little Italy is a workman’s coffee shop simply called Sicily. It opens every morning at four thirty and serves breakfast until just about twenty past eight. Over time the people that frequented the diner began calling it Cecil’s.
The restaurant had a counter that sat nine, and six tables. Tomas and Donna were the owners, cooks, janitors, and dishwashers of the establishment. When they opened the place, sixty years earlier, they had been married but then Donna had an affair with a wannabe gangster named Michael. Tomas divorced Donna, who in turn married Mike, who was then gunned down by a real gangster.
Tomas and Donna still ran the breakfast joint. I only ever heard them talk about the work they were doing. Once, when he was nine, Dimitri asked me if Tomas and Donna were still in love.