“What about that casino guy, Donald Trump?” I said, thrusting a finger into the air like I was trying to win over a stadium full of doubters. “Or Dan Bishop.”
“Oh, don’t bring up Dan Bishop again.”
“Why not? He started off just like me, running numbers in the Inlet, and now he owns one of the biggest casinos in Vegas. Just last year he got the banks to loan him twenty million when he didn’t have the assets to cover it. It’s the exact same situation. He had to get people to make the leap and believe in him.”
“Yeah, but Anthony, he had a name. His name was worth something.”
“And one day my name will be worth something,” I blurted out.
We were both quiet a minute. I started jiggling my knee and pulling at the edge of the lace tablecloth. It wasn’t real lace, but some vinyl substitute she’d picked up at Caldor.
I caught a whiff of that cat smell that’s always haunted our house. The lady who used to own the place had one of her cats get run over by a car. The one that was left behind was so distraught he went around spraying the floors for a year. The smell permeated the wood, and there was no way to get it out. So now we had to live with the memory of a heartbroken cat for the rest of our lives.
“Anthony,” my wife said slowly. “What do you think would happen if you defaulted on this loan?”
“I’m not going to default.”
“But if you did,” she said a little louder. “We’d lose this house.”
“I just told you. There wouldn’t be any default.” Hell, if this thing worked out with the fight I’d clear five times what I owed them at least and finally be able to pay Teddy off.
“Anthony,” she said, using my own name to beat me over the head. “If we lose this house, where are we gonna live?”
“We’re not going to lose the house.”
“Where would your children live?”
“They’d live better than they ever did.”
It was like I was having to defend a dream against the daylight.
“We’d end up on welfare, like the coloreds your father’s always complaining about.”
“I would never let that happen,” I said, dropping my napkin and starting to stand up. “I would never allow that.”
“Yes, you would.” Her lips began to tremble.
“What kind of man do you think I am? What’re you doing married to me in the first place?”
“You’d sacrifice all of us for some idea you had.”
“And you want to keep me down. Because you’re afraid I’ll leave you behind if I start to get anywhere in my life.”
I saw her eyes get wide and then start to recede back into her head. It was like watching somebody get stabbed.
“I don’t know, Anthony,” she said in a voice like a little ship heading off into the fog. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you no more.”
That night I went to sleep on the couch. Carla was in the next room snoring. I couldn’t get comfortable. There were crickets outside and little Anthony kept calling me to get him a drink of water. Every time I got back to the couch, it seemed like it had gotten a little shorter and narrower. Finally I drifted off at about a quarter to one.
I don’t know how much later it was that I heard something stir. I looked up to see Carla staring down at me. It was still dark outside, except for the street light, and the leaves on the sycamore by the window cast a shadow over her face. With the light like that, she looked young again, the way she did when we went on those midnight swims.
“Anthony,” she said. Her voice felt soft and downy in my ear. “I don’t see why we gotta fight like this.”
“I don’t see why either,” I mumbled.
“This ain’t the way it was supposed to be,” she said. “It was supposed to be me and you against everybody, like we was the last gang in town.”
I started to wipe the crust of sleep off my eyes. She had her nightgown open. Her breast was floating just above my head. And for a second I forgot all of our problems. That breast was as young and perfect as the moon above the Boardwalk. I didn’t even mind the cross lying next to it. A little more of that feeling I used to have for her came back. I began to think about how it would be if we patched up our lives again.
I guess even after what I’d done and said about leaving her behind, she still wanted to be with me. I reached up to touch her breast, just to let her know I still cared, but then her eyes caught the street light coming through the drapes and my fingers froze. Those eyes reminded me of the type of motel rooms where guys go alone to blow their brains out. I didn’t want to go there with her. I knew right then that if I stayed with Carla, I’d never get out of this place.
“Hey,” I murmured. “Maybe another time. Maybe we can talk in the morning.”
I turned away, so I wouldn’t have to see her looking disappointed. She must’ve stood there another minute or two watching me, because that’s how long it was before I heard her trudging back to the bedroom.
I opened my eyes one more time and saw the bright red casino sign way beyond the boarded-up house across the street, burning the words TAKE A CHANCE against the dark sky.
I didn’t hear from Carla the rest of the night. And of all the awful things I’ve done since then, turning her away like that may be one of the three or four I regret the most.
15
“LAW AND ORDER, VIN,” Teddy Marino was saying. “We gotta have it. Gotta have it.”
“I absolutely agree,” said Vincent Russo.
“It’s like taking care of a car or your body. Once you let one thing go, the whole package is in trouble. You got problems with your ignition, eventually it’s going to get in your engine. Something goes wrong with your stomach, it’ll end up in your heart. Right? This is how things break down.”
“Of course,” said Vin. “A hundred percent.”
“Here,” said Teddy. “Take part of this thing. I don’t wanna eat it all myself. I’m turning into a fat pig.”
He handed Vin half his twelve-inch-long salami and Swiss sub sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers.
They were sitting in a booth at the White House sub shop on the corner of Arctic and Mississippi Avenues. The tourists at the next table all wore Baltimore Orioles baseball caps. Celebrities like Jerry Lewis and Susan Sarandon smiled down from photos on the walls. The line of people waiting for sandwiches went out the front door. Others sat hunched over their food at the counter, like auto workers on an assembly line.
“Where are we going?” said Teddy, taking a bite out of the half sandwich he’d kept. “By my count we got problems at three of the unions now.”
He ticked them off with his fingers. “We got that punk from New York trying to horn in on Ralph Sasso and the hotel workers. Number two, I got Paulie Raymond not returning my calls at the construction union. I told you, you can never trust a cop no matter how much jewelry he wears. And number three, I hear from the roofers’ that your boy still hasn’t come by to pick up the envelope.”
“He hasn’t?” Vin put down his half of the sandwich.
“This is how we break down.” Teddy reached across and took the sandwich back. “We let things get out of control. That’s why we have to bring back law and order. Just the other night, we had a card game robbed at the Ocean Club. Would that have happened last year?”
Vin stared at him vacantly.
“I don’t know either,” Teddy said. “But if I find out that fucking kid Nicky had anything to do with it, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands. I tell you, Vin, we should’ve whacked that kid and his father at the same time.”
Vin stared down at his empty plate a moment and scratched at his wild tangle of gray hair.
“Jeez, Ted,” he said, tearing paper from the edge of the plate and putting it in his mouth. “I didn’t know that about Anthony not picking up the envelope. I’m gonna have to have a talk with the kid about it.”