“I gotcha, kid.”
If he had really been speaking to Aaron, my brother would have reached through the phone and strangled Murray for calling him kid. Aaron was born an old man and always hated being referred to as son or kid. And once Aaron hit twenty-one and could vote, forget about it. He was the only person I knew of my generation who liked being called mister.
“You do?”
“Sure. You want me to track down those plates for you, so you can approach the drivers and see if you can reach some sort of ‘arrangement.’” Fleisher made the word arrangement sound dirty, like it should have been wrapped in brown paper. “While what you’re asking me to do is not strictly kosher, it’s a clever move, kid. No one needs their premiums to go up for some stupid fender bender, right? Your dad always said you were the shrewd one. How’s that lazy brother of yours?”
“Still lazy,” I screamed. “So you’ll do this for me?”
“Sure, why not? Here’s the thing, kid. I want you to think about coming to work for old Murray. I’m telling you, a clever fella like you could make us both rich.”
“I’ll definitely think about it, Mr. Fleisher.”
“What?”
“I’ll think about it, Mr. Fleisher.”
“Murray, kid. Call me Murray. After all, we’re practically partners, right?”
I ignored that. “So, when should I give you a call, Mr. — I mean, Murray?”
I swear I could hear his smile. “Tomorrow afternoon should be good.”
“Until then,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Besides having to top off Aaron’s gas tank and get the car washed and waxed before he got home, I had to buy him a suitable gift as a thank you. Because no matter how full the tank or clean the car, my brother would eventually check the odometer and go apeshit on me. Somehow I doubt that when he tossed me his car keys on Sunday night, he had anticipated I would do a Poconos round-trip and spend the following day driving all over Queens and back. Given that he was going to be pissed at me anyway, I decided to put my few remaining hours with the car to good use.
Samantha Hope’s old apartment was in the basement of an attached brick house on Avenue U between West 10th and West 11th Streets in Gravesend. It was only a short walk from her place to the Gelato Grotto. I remember she confided to me that she ate most of her meals there. We laughed when I told her she had my sympathy. I had been to her pad with Bobby many times, and twice for small parties she’d thrown. I’d also been there once on my own. I didn’t like thinking about that time. In fact, I’d kind of pushed it so far back in my memory I wasn’t sure it had really happened. Even when I was at her graveside and in her childhood home, it hadn’t come to mind. It did now.
When she invited me over, I didn’t think anything of it. She was my best friend’s girlfriend. We were friends. We spent all kinds of time together, and if Mindy could have stomached her, we would have spent nearly all our time together. It was a Wednesday night, and we’d all been hanging out over at the old Burgundy House apartment on Foster Avenue when Bobby stood up and announced he had to split.
“Business,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, blowing a kiss at Sam.
I was used to this from Bobby. He always had lots of irons in the fire, but rarely discussed them. I could tell that Sam didn’t like Bobby just taking off without an explanation of why he was going or where he was going to. That was the paradoxical thing about Sam: she was so with it and cool, so free-spirited, except when it came to Bobby. She always wanted to keep track of his whereabouts. She even used to bug the rest of us guys about where Bobby was and what he was up to. Sam’s jealousy, if that’s what it was, seemed strange in a woman as beautiful and worldly as she. I had tried to reassure her every way I knew how that Bobby loved her like he had never loved anyone else. She wouldn’t be reassured. I guess there was something about Bobby that made her feel vulnerable.
That night, the night Bobby just got up and split, Sam asked me if I wanted a lift home. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t live more than ten minutes from her apartment and I didn’t feel much like schlepping my half-drunk self home on the subway at midnight. But she didn’t take me home, not directly. She asked me to come over for a while, that she was feeling sad and needed to talk.
“Sure,” I said, “why not?”
It was fine at first. We had a beer, smoked a joint, listened to some Donovan. When Sam excused herself I was still trying to figure out what an elevator in the brain was all about and why, if Donovan was Scottish, he hadn’t used the word lift rather than elevator. Grass did that to me. When I was stoned I would latch onto a lyric or something a person said and I would dissect it, parse it, spin it around in my head, play with it. I think it’s the only part of getting high I really enjoyed. When Sam came back in the room I was on the floor, back against the couch, head resting on the cushion, eyes closed. Then I felt her straddle me. When I opened my eyes, I was stunned to see she was naked.
She pressed her lips against mine, not softly, and when she pulled her head back, she said, “I’ve wanted to do that for almost as long as you’ve wanted me to.” Her voice was a breathy whisper.
She kissed me again and I let her. This time I opened my mouth. She opened hers. She grabbed my wrist and put my hand on her breast. When my fingertips brushed against her nipple, she sighed and arched her back. I knew that if I didn’t stop then, I wasn’t going to stop at all. I took my hand away from her breast, turned my head away, and gently pushed her aside.
I jumped to my feet. With my voice cracking, I asked, “What is this, Sam?”
“Inevitable,” she said. “You know we’ve been headed for this from the day we met.” Then she spun around on her knees and rubbed her hand on the crotch of my jeans. She looked up into my eyes, a come-and-get-it smile on her mouth. “Sometimes men should listen to what their bodies are telling them, Moe.”
I brushed her hand away. “Stop it, Sam. I’m taken, and Bobby’s my best friend.”
She put her hands on my belt. “That’s like something our parents would say. Besides, Moe, no one’s taken … not really. And this, the two of us here, now, isn’t going to change what Bobby and I have.” She skillfully undid my belt, the button of my pants, and slid the zipper down with an aching slowness that made promises I was tempted to let her keep. “You’ve been curious about what it would be like to be with me, and I’ve been just as curious about you.” Sam placed both thumbs inside the elastic band of my BVDs, and at that same deliberate pace brought my underwear down to my thighs. She stroked me, first with the back of her hand and then her curled fingers and palm. “Let me, please, Moe. Let me.” She didn’t wait for an answer, putting me in her mouth.
Her mouth felt like I dreamed it would, better. It was warm, moist, and soft, her tongue eager and deft. I pushed her away, maybe less gently than I should have. “Stop it, Sam. Cut it out,” I said, pulling up my underwear and redoing my pants. “Sure, I want you. I have from the minute I met you, but you picked Bobby. Bobby always gets who he wants, and maybe I even resent him enough to let myself do this. So I guess it’s a good thing I feel more for him than just resentment. Maybe doing this won’t change things for you, but it’ll change everything for me.”
Sam looked up at me, her vampy smile replaced by something more earnest. “But if we don’t do this now, we never will. If we don’t scratch this itch, Moe, it will eat away at us.” She hugged my thighs. “Please, Moe, let’s do this. We’ll have this one night together. We’ll do anything you’ve ever wanted to do to me or to any woman, and then we’ll let that be enough.”
I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but I knew from what little of her I’d already experienced that if I went ahead with her plan, one night together would never be enough. The kisses, the feel of me in her mouth had already nearly blinded me to my responsibilities to Bobby and Mindy. If I let this go any further, I’d be destroying the things I relied on most in my life: loyalty and friendship. And what had Mindy done to deserve any of this?