For the longest time, Sonny didn’t know what he had witnessed. It took him years to put all the pieces together.
Across Eleventh Avenue the curtain fluttered over the barbershop, and then it was yanked open and Kelly O’Rourke, framed by the window, looked down over the avenue like a miracle—a quick shock of light on a young woman’s body surrounded by black fire escapes, dirty red brick walls, and dark windows.
Kelly looked off into the darkness and touched her stomach, as she had found herself doing unconsciously again and again for the past several weeks, trying to feel some flutter of the life she knew was rooting there. She ran her fingers over the still-tight skin and muscle and tried to settle her thinking, to pull together the stray thoughts careening everywhere. Her family, her brothers, they had already disowned her, except Sean maybe, so what did she care what they thought anymore? She had taken one of the blue pills at the club and it made her feel light and airy. It scattered her thoughts. In front of her there was only darkness and her own reflection in the glass. It was late and everyone was always leaving her alone all the time. She flattened her hand over her stomach, trying to feel something. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t pull her thoughts together, keep them still and in one place.
Tom stepped around Kelly and closed the curtains. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “What do you want to do that for?”
“Do what?”
“Stand in front of the window like that.”
“Why? Worried somebody might see you here with me, Tom?” Kelly put a hand on her hip and then let it drop in a gesture of resignation. She continued pacing the room, her eyes on the floor one moment, on the walls the next. She seemed unaware of Tom, her thoughts elsewhere.
Tom said, “Kelly, listen. I just started college a few weeks ago, and if I don’t get back—”
“Oh, don’t whimper,” Kelly said. “For God’s sake.”
“I’m not whimpering,” Tom said. “I’m trying to explain.”
Kelly stopped pacing. “I know,” she said. “You’re a baby. I knew that when I picked you up. How old are you anyways? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Eighteen,” Tom said. “All I’m saying is that I have to get back to the dorms. If I’m not there in the morning, it’ll be noticed.”
Kelly tugged at her ear and stared at Tom. They were both quiet, watching each other. Tom wondered what Kelly was seeing. He’d been wondering about that ever since she’d sauntered over to his table at Juke’s Joint and asked him to dance in a voice so sexy it was as if she were asking him to sleep with her. He wondered it again when she invited him after a few dances and a single drink to take her home. They hadn’t talked about much. Tom told her he went to school at NYU. She told him she was currently unemployed and that she came from a big family but she wasn’t getting on with them. She wanted to be in the movies. She’d been wearing a long blue dress that hugged her body from her calves to her breasts, where the neckline was cut low and the white of her skin flared in contrast to the satiny fabric. Tom told her he didn’t have a car, that he was there with friends. She told him that wasn’t a problem, she had a car, and he didn’t bother to ask how an unemployed girl from a big family has a car of her own. He thought maybe it wasn’t her car, and then when she drove them down to Hell’s Kitchen, he didn’t tell her that he’d grown up a dozen blocks from where she parked on Eleventh. When he saw her place, he knew the car wasn’t hers, but he didn’t have time to ask questions before they were in bed and his thoughts were elsewhere. The events of the night had proceeded rapidly and in a way that was foreign to him, and now he was thinking hard as he watched her. Her manner seemed to be shifting by the second: first the seductress and then the vulnerable girl who didn’t want him to leave, and now a toughness was coming over her, something angry. As she watched him her jaw tightened, her lips pressed together. Something in Tom was shifting too. He was preparing himself for whatever she might say or do, preparing an argument, preparing a response.
“So what are you anyway?” Kelly said. She backed up to a counter beside a white porcelain sink. She lifted herself onto it and crossed her legs. “Some kind of Irish-Italian mutt?”
Tom found his sweater where it was hanging on the bed rail. He draped it over his back and tied the sleeves around his neck. “I’m German-Irish,” he said. “What makes you say Italian?”
Kelly found a pack of Wings in a cupboard behind her, opened it, and lit up. “Because I know who you are,” she said. She paused dramatically, as if she were acting. “You’re Tom Hagen. You’re Vito Corleone’s adopted son.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. Behind the veil of smoke, her eyes glittered with a hard-to-read mix of happiness and anger.
Tom looked around, noting carefully what he saw—which was nothing more than a cheap boardinghouse room, not even an apartment, with a sink and cupboards by the door on one end and a cot-size bed on the other. The floor was a mess of magazines and pop bottles, clothes and candy-bar wrappers, empty packs of Wings and Chesterfields. The clothes were far too expensive for the surroundings. In one corner he noticed a silk blouse that had to cost more than her rent. “I’m not adopted,” he said. “I grew up with the Corleones, but I was never adopted.”
“No difference,” Kelly said. “So what’s that make you? A mick or a wop, or some kind of mick-wop mix?”
Tom sat on the edge of the bed. They were having a conversation now. It felt businesslike. “So you picked me up because you know something about my family, is that right?”
“What did you think, kid? It was your looks?” Kelly flicked the ashes from her cigarette into the sink beside her. She ran the water to wash the ashes down the drain.
Tom asked, “Why would my family have anything to do with this?”
“With what?” she asked, the smile on her face genuine, as if she were finally enjoying herself.
“With me taking you back here and screwing you,” Tom said.
“You didn’t screw me, kid. I screwed you.” She paused, still grinning, watching him.
Tom kicked at a pack of Chesterfields. “Who smokes these?”
“I do.”
“You smoke Wings and Chesterfields?”
“Wings when I’m buying. Otherwise Chesterfields.” When Tom didn’t say anything right away, she added, “You’re getting warmer, though. Keep going.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “So who’s car did we drive here in? It’s not yours. You don’t own a car and still live in a place like this.”
“There you go, kid,” she said. “Now you’re asking the right questions.”
“And who buys you the classy threads?”
“Bingo!” Kelly said. “Now you got it. My boyfriend buys me the clothes. It’s his car.”
“You ought to tell him to put you up in a nicer place than this.” Tom looked around as if he were amazed at the tawdriness of the room.
“I know!” Kelly joined him in appraising the room, as if she shared his amazement. “You believe this rathole? This is where I’ve got to live!”
“You ought to talk to him,” Tom said, “this boyfriend of yours.”
Kelly didn’t seem to hear him. She was still looking over the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “He’s got to hate me, right,” she asked, “making me live in a place like this?”