"Nah," Sal shouted. "Outside the Midtown Tunnel. That's buses. Airline Diner, some dumb fuck in a U- Haul backed up and crushed the booth. How the hell are you, man?"
"Good," yelled Joey, "real good. How are things up there?"
"Quiet," hollered Sal. "Makin' a living. With Gino gone, ya know, it's pretty much business as usual."
"Well," Joey hollered back, "Gino ain't gone no more. This is why I'm calling, Sal. He should be in New York by now."
There was a pause, and Joey heard a truck laboring through its gears as it lumbered out of the tollbooth and started up the incline on the Queens side of the tunnel, the Empire State Building in its sideview mirrors. "He's back?" Sal shouted, and Joey had the feeling that maybe he was a little bit surprised that Gino was still alive. "What's with Ponte? What's with the stones?"
Joey was speaking from the far end of the lunch counter near the Parrot Beach office, the place where short-order cooks with shaved heads whipped up mango smoothies for young women in undershirts to suck through straws. This was not New York, where you couldn't even talk on your own phone for fear of being listened in on. This was Key West, where you could scream about gangsters and emeralds in a public place and no one bothered to turn around. "The stones are innee ocean," he shouted. "And Ponte, well, I'm like tryin' to work out a way to smooth things over with him."
"You?"
"Whaddya sound so fucking surprised for, Sal? Ya sound like my goddamn brother."
Sal waited for an ambulance to go careening past. "Hey, Joey man, don't get touchy. I didn't know you were involved, is all."
"Well, I am. Didn't wanna be, but there it is. But Sal, here's the thing. Right now I'm playing for some time. Ponte's goons, I don't think they know it yet that Gino slipped 'em. If they find out before I get things organized-"
Some jerk burned rubber coming out of the toll booth, and Sal Giordano interrupted through the screech. "Joey, whoa, I don't like the sounda this. I don't like you fucking with these guys."
"Sal, man, who's fucking? I'm just tryin' to straighten things out. You worry too much."
Sal considered this. He was a street guy from New York; of course he worried. "O.K., Joey, maybe you're right, maybe I do. But maybe you worry too little. Warm weather, sunshine-maybe it's makin' you calmer than is good for you."
Joey yanked his mind away from that possibility like a hand from a hot stove. "Sal, listen, right now there's nothin' I can do but what I'm doin'. So do me a favor. If Gino's dumb enough to show his face up there, tell him to hide it again. Can ya do that for me?"
"Sure, kid, sure." Joey didn't like the flat way he said it.
"And if he starts tellin' ya how brave and clever he was down here, don't believe a fucking word."
Sal laughed over the roar of an ancient Pontiac without a muffler. "I haven't for years," he screamed.
"Well, you're smarter than I am, Sal. Me, I only caught on inna last coupla weeks. How's my old man doing?"
There was a pause, and Joey could picture Sal shrugging, the way some of the flesh of his thick neck crinkled up and almost touched his earlobes. "Doin' O.K. He's under some strain, but hey, he's used to that."
"Tell him I said hello."
"O.K."
"Ya know, Sal, I been thinking. The way I left without seeing him, that was wrong. It was, like, small. You can tell him I said that if you want to. Or I'll talk to him myself one a these days."
Joey's friend said nothing. A cement mixer came galumphing into Queens. At the Key West lunch counter, a cook dropped a scoopful of shrimp salad into the hollow of an avocado.
"And what about you, Sal?" Joey resumed. "When you gonna get your pale ass down here?"
"One a these days," Sal said. It was that flat tone again, the tone that neighborhood guys used with people they couldn't protect, and Joey tried not to notice that it scared him.
"Those sunglasses ya gave me, Sal, I wear 'em every day."
"Every day?" shouted Sal. He sounded skeptical. "How' bout when it rains?"
"It don't, Sal. This is what I'm tellin' ya. It's fucking unbelievable down here."
— 39 -
Saturday evening was particularly warm, with a yellow sky smeared with wisps of unmoving purple cloud. Steve the naked landlord, his ashtrays and his beers in front of him, his shriveled genitals nested under the cliff of his belly, lingered especially late in the pool. He was standing there bare-assed when Zack and Claire arrived, and Joey had no choice but to introduce him.
"Hi, Steve," Zack said. "Whatcha reading?"
Steve turned the damp paperback over and looked at the cover to remind himself. The cover showed a large city breaking in half. "Earthquake," he said. "Los Angeles." Then he smiled.
Joey steered his guests toward a big bowl of raw vegetables on the outdoor table, and as he did so he studied Claire. Claire did not look like Joey expected. She was pretty enough, with tightly curled brown hair and hazel eyes, but she didn't have Zack's knack of looking just so without seeming to be trying. She appeared to be the type for whom blouses would not stay tucked in, for whom tabs on zippers would not lie flat. When she dressed up, the effort showed, kind of like a painting that had looked better as a sketch.
She plunged a celery stalk into a bowl of dip, and Joey watched with interest because he'd voted against the vegetables. "Sandra," he'd said, "isn't it a little much? I mean, we're gonna have that gigantic salad and all."
"Joey," she'd said, "women like that stuff. Just pour the drinks, grill the steaks, and let me plan the rest, O.K.?"
He'd shrugged. Giving a dinner party, like having a job, like reading a nautical chart, had its own rules, its own logic. If women liked raw vegetables on top of raw salad on top of cooked broccoli on top of melon balls for dessert, so be it.
Sandra had also lobbied for some dishes and some silverware that matched.
"It's a waste, Sandra. We're moving soon."
That was the first she'd heard about moving, and Joey let it slip as casually as if he'd said he was going out to gas up the car. Sandra didn't believe it, and besides, she hadn't had time to make it a discussion just then. "So we'll take them with us," she said. Practical, precise, and forward-looking as always, she added, "I'll save the boxes."
Again Joey had shrugged, and Sandra bought a set of plain white plates and some stainless with blue plastic handles. The matching stuff did make the table look better. Joey had to admit it.
Now he was asking Zack and Claire what they wanted to drink. They both said wine, and Joey wondered why he'd bothered buying all those different-shaped bottles of liquor.
When Bert the Shirt arrived, the two couples were sitting on the edges of lounge chairs, Claire with her feet dangling in the pool. The sky had faded, the palm fronds were drooping limp as flags. From halfway down the gravel path, Bert was motioning to Joey that he shouldn't bother getting up.
He looked splendid, Bert did. His white hair was combed back tight, and aside from the nicotine-bronze tinge in it, there was almost, in the dimming light, a suggestion of pink. His shirt was the purplish black of ripe olives, with bone buttons and pale blue piping the same color as the monogram. He held his chihuahua in the crook of his arm, and gave a stately little nod of his head when Joey introduced him.
Claire, a lover of all small animals, reached up to pet the pooch. "What a cute little dog," she said.
"He's not cute," said Bert the Shirt. "He looks ridiculous, he's a hypochondriac, and he's got a lousy-"
"Don Giovanni?" came a caressing voice from the far side of the pool. "He's very cute." The voice was Claude's. He and Peter had just emerged from their cottage. It was Dress-Up Night at Cheeks, and the bartenders wore lame. Peter's was silver, Claude's was gold.