I threw my arms above my head; they hit the wall. I turned on my side. I was on my bed again, and Carol was gone as usual, taking the car. It seemed lately she always got to it before I did. I seldom went anywhere; I walked to work. Yvonne had a new guy, Jerry Simonetti, and she was spending a lot of time with him. And, I was doing, what? Yeah, and Rhoda, my friend I worked with at Maxxie's, was totally right. Mike Leone was a gorgeous young stud and he had looked at me like I was a juicy peach. Now, thoughts of Mike were giving me the "fever," bad, bad, bad fever, just exactly like Peggy Lee said.
The phone rang downstairs, the only phone we had. I raced down to answer it, jumped at it. "Hello," I breathed into the receiver.
I'd just had this feeling, and I was right. Mike's voice came to me. "Hey, Anita, it's Mike Leone."
"How did you get my number?"
"Tina had it." Sure, I'd lived in our house all my life and our phone number had never changed.
"Ya wanna go for a ride?"
I tried to sound casual. "Okay."
"Pick ya up in half an hour."
Not much time, I charged up the stairs, into the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, smoothed some medicated cream on my face while it was still wet to moisturize my skin. I ran into the bedroom, applied some cream deodorant, dug through the top dresser drawer, pulling out a snug yellow t shirt. I put on a pair of red shorts, Bobby socks, red sneakers, a charm bracelet. I tied a yellow and white silk scarf around my neck. I fluffed out my hair; then, put a band on it, making it into a ponytail for the bike ride. I puffed on some Angel powder; I loved the clean sweet smell! And, I wetted the mascara cake with spit, swiped my lashes with the tiny brush, some creamy and shiny shocking pink lipstick from my elegant jeweled Futurama lipstick case,
a couple of dabs of Evening In Paris cologne under my ears, in the hollow of my throat and at my wrists. I pursed my lips, blinked my eyes, watching myself in the dresser mirror. Good enough. I grabbed my shoulder purse, actually one of those tan bullet cases that you can get at the Army surplus store; it was a fad to carry them as a purse and scratch your name and other stuff into the hard leather with a pin.
I raced downstairs to the porch, just in time to see Mike round the corner on his Harley. He wore a plain white t shirt and jeans, his motorcycle boots. Around each wrist were black leather straps, very cool. He came up the porch, grinning. There was a cut over his eye and a purplish bruise, turning a little green and yellow.
He saw me looking at it. "Boxin'," he said, "but, I won.
I raised my eyebrows. "The other guy?"
He was still smiling. "Worse than me."
"Ya got somethin' against the sport?"
"No," I said.
I shrugged. "Easy money," he added. "Ya ready?"
"Yeah."
"Ya look absolutely great, by the way, cute as hell," His fine pink lips were a fraction of an inch from the side of my neck. I could feel the warmth coming from them. I froze, but he did nothing. I remembered with a thrill that shot through my whole body the feel of his warm hard cheek against mine when we danced that one dance in the high school gym during lunch hour. "You smell nice, sweet an' clean," His breath on my skin.
"Thanks," I said. He smelled good too,so good, citrus-y.
We got on the bike, zoomed off. I didn't even ask him where we were going. I didn't care. I was a good enough rider to only rest my hands lightly on the sides of Mike's waist, but instead I hugged him, my arms around him. We pulled up to a restaurant that looked new. Over the door was a sign in bright blue letters, --- "Vic's".
"My friend Vic D'amico finally got enough bucks together ta open and he told me he had a pizza oven, so I said, 'I'll bring my girl by'."
"I'm your girl now?" I frowned.
He opened the glass door for me, smiling. "Ya wanna be?"
His eyes, those sensational blue eyes. I hardly knew what I was saying. "Sure." What the hell was I doing?
Mike nodded, quick as a flash, kissed my lips, his own slightly open. A thrill went through me, from the roots of my hair to my, uh, snatch. Mike put his arm around my waist; he was still holding the door, a toothy grin, I was Mike's girl. If we were in high school it would be said we were going steady and Mike would give me his class ring, which I'd wear around my neck, but he was no longer in school. We walked in Vic's; the cool air hit us, a window air conditioner! Our house was not air conditioned, no part of it, as many places weren't. We only had fans to take care of the summer heat and we spent a lot of time on the front porch on some days. The crummy, rickety little fan in my and Carol's room didn't do shit to cool it. We sat down at a table that had a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth, like they all did.
A waitress came over. "We ain't even got menus printed up yet. But, we got burgers, fries, hot dogs, and pizza." Mike said, "If I promised to write postcards ta the cookin' section of the 'Cleveland News,' or the 'Press' Vic said I could have a free pizza."
The waitress took her pencil from behind her ear, brought her little green order pad out of her apron pocket. You Mike Leone?"
"Yeah,"
"Vic told me you'd be coming by and what you looked like. "Okay, what do you want on your pizza?"
"What can we have?"
The waitress frowned. "See, we just opened two days ago, so this is a very new thing. Vic's Uncle Bruno was in Rome last summer and he ordered a pie, a pizza. It came with fresh tomato, red sauce, chopped garlic and melted cheese, but Vic thinks we should offer customers other stuff, so we got sausage, onions, peppers, fresh oregano and basil, three kinds of cheese, Provolone, Romano, Parmesan."
Mike gazed at me. "All that, okay, Anita?"
"Sure. Cool."
"What do you want to drink?," the waitress asked.
"Seven-up," I answered. "You have cherry syrup?"
"Yeah, you want some in your Seven-up?
"Yeah,"'
Mike took my hand in his. "Make it two," His hand was warm, dry, the palm smooth, but hard. His hand was much bigger than mine, but I have small hands. I liked the way fine hair grew sparsely along the muscled length of his forearm; the hair was golden. That forearm. It almost looked crooked because of the swell of muscle above and below it. I liked looking at it probably as much as he liked looking at the swell of my breasts. He turned my hand over, put it up to his mouth. His eyes closed, the lashes. He placed a kiss in the center of my palm, breathed warm on it. Then, he bit the mound of flesh under my thumb.
"Stop it!," I said. "Your teeth are sharp!"
He narrowed his eyes, playfully. "All the better to eat ya with!"
His eyes widened. "Okay, okay. Hey, I was just havin' fun. An', I'm a guy."
"I noticed." My eyes narrowed. Bring it on, I thought, bring it on. Even if I am your girl, I ain't no little piece of pink fluff to toy with and throw aside! And, ho-ho, believe me, I DID notice he was a guy!
His shoulders moved up, then down, rolled. My girly hormones were surging. His deep voice got very quiet, was even softer than usual, almost a whisper. I leaned forward. "Uh, really, seriously, Anita, maybe ya should know a little about me."
"I do." I was still partly on guard.
"Naw, naw, ya don't,"
"I know you're from New York."
"Right."
"Brooklyn, Bensonhurst."
"Yeah, sure, we lived there. But, mostly, we lived in Manhattan, in shitty Hell's Kitchen. I was born in Hell's Kitchen, not in a hospital, at home. My ma named me after the warrior angel in the Bible, the Archangel Michael."
"Oh."
"Yeah, but, nobody, but nobody would really wanna live in the westside of midtown Manhattan, in Hell's Kitchen. Madison Square Garden is there, but it's a lot different going to a sports event than living there." I didn't say anything. "Would ya wanna live in a place that was so miserable your parents got a big dog
so's he could guard your baby brother at night so the fuckin' rats don't chew his little fingers off?"
Yeah," Mike went on, "he was a real, real good pooch. His name was Beano. We gave him to the old lady who lived downstairs before we moved here. She just loved that dog too and she wanted protection too, after her husband died. Me tellin' ya that about the rats you can imagine how it was."
"Ain't that the truth.
"Yeah, a bad neighborhood, not just the gangs, hard ta live there an' grow up normal, makes people very angry, see?"
"Mmmm... Cleveland has slums too, Scovill, Woodland Avenue.
The Hough area, uh, Superior and Euclid Avenue, between East 55th and East 105th. It used to be where affluent families lived, the Houghs, who own Hough Bakeries, and the Severance family, who funded Severance Hall, where there's fancy concerts. But, now it's probably one of the most dangerous parts of Cleveland, and there's Collinwood. They're all powder kegs, waiting to explode."
"I don't think they're as bad as New York. Detroit's bad."
"I don't know. I've never lived in New York, or Detroit."
"Chicago's bad. All slum neighborhoods are bad. Maybe New York's just bigger.
So, ya might say I learned how to box the hard way. Hey, it was be good defending yourself or get creamed, ya know?."
"Didn't you have an older brother, uh, to sort of, uh, protect you?"
He shook his head. "Naw, I was the protection in the family. I saved my sisters Tina an' Diane from gettin' raped."
"You did?"
He nodded. "That's how I got this scar on my arm. I blocked a knife when I beat some guys to a pulp."
"Dead?"
"I dunno. We left. I'll hurt people to stay alive an' so's my family can stay alive too." He shrugged, "Diane sewed me up."
"You didn't go to a hospital, right?" "Right, you don't never go to no hospital for a knife or gun wound. Not unless it seems like you're gonna be D.O.A. It's like you finked if you go to a hospital because hospitals make reports an' that brings cops. An', cop snoopin' brings vendettas from gangs."
Parli Italiano?"
He grinned. "Si, molto bene. Italian was always spoken at home. A vendetta รจ molto soddisfacente."
"Revenge is, uh, very satisfying." Mob shit fascinates me. You know, not just fists and knives, but rumors of really bad, bad beatings with blackjacks, brass knuckles, with a garden hose, and Tommy guns, garroting, and torturing people with a blow torch, cutting them up in little pieces to be buried in shallow holes or dumping them in a ditch on a lonely road or in the woods, or even out to sea for the fishes to eat. They get rubbed out. Nobody ever sees them again. If you think I'm being dramatic you are an idiot, "done deals," as my pa called them. A corner of Mike's mouth went up. "Porta rispettu a lu locu unni stai."
"Sicilian."
"Yeah, it's an old proverb my nonna, my Nonna Tuccia, my nonna on my dad's side, used to say, --- "'Don't go castin' no dirt into the well that gives you water'. Or, I've heard it said, --- Don't shit where you eat. My ma's people are from Northern Italy, in the Aosta Valley. Maybe why I'm blond. Half my family is blond. My Nonna Anna and my Nonno Carlo Endrizzi, on my ma's side, spoke German and French too. They're dead, died way before I was born. Most people think all Italians have black hair. There are plenty of blond Italians, from the Alpine parts of Italy."
"Right."
Well, yeah. In the neighborhood we had Satin's Sons, the Young Lions, the Blue Devils, you don't wanna anger them gangs too much. It's bad enough what I did, but I had ta. I took some vicious crap from dumb scums for a while.
He shrugged, "I was the only one in the family with muscle, besides my tough ol' pa. My pa is is sixty an' he's still the strongest man I've ever seen; he's about my size. When he was in his prime at forty five he could bench press three hundred an' fifty pounds."
"How much can you bench press?"
"About two hundred an' eighty five pounds, now, maybe more later."
"Two hundred and eighty five pounds," I said. That sounded like a lot to me.
"Yeah, an', I worked ta keep that muscle too, make it more. Ya always have to or ya'll lose it, for sure. It was natural I fall into boxin', ya see?" he frowned. "Phil, like I said, ain't no protection. He was never strong, thin as a fuckin' pencil. He got those diseases kids get when they can't eat proper; we all sorta did. But, the rest of us kids got over them. Phil never did, don't know why. He had, still has a very weak chest, a hollow chest. And, there was always filth, no matter how hard ya try to keep clean yourself an' the place clean. My Nonna Tuccia died of the T.B. It got into her kidneys, wrecked them so they just didn't work no more."
"I didn't know T.B. could do that."
"It can. My Nonno Ludo, Nonna Tuccia's husband, on my pa's side of the family, died five years before her. I hated him. He was alcoholic, a miserable mean ass drunk. Nonno Ludo was the big reason why our family never had any money. He stole it. We all tried to keep him from doing that, but Nonno Ludo always found it. Then, he'd drink it away or gamble it away. He'd bet on anything. Nonno Ludo was why we had to live in such a shithole of an apartment, because some places in Hell's Kitchen are much worse than others. Still, my pa wouldn't throw my crumb-bum Nonno Ludo out. Family is family, no matter how awful they are. My Nonna Tuccia used to tell me how when Nonno Ludo was younger he used to beat and beat on her, put his cigarettes out on her an' my pa, until one day, when my pa was about fourteen, he told Nonno Ludo that he ain't never gonna hurt Nonna Tuccia or him again, because if he did my pa would lay him out flat."
"And, did he?"
"Naw, Nonno Ludo just turned around an' left, went to the crummy bar he almost lived in to get plastered. He was one funkin' cowardly piece of shit. He was plenty old when him and Nonna Tuccia came to live with us. I was glad when he died."
"It was a lot nicer at home without my nasty asshole Nonno Ludo. But, then Phil got real, real sick. We thought he'd die of the T.B. too, but no. My pa was makin' more money. Still, it wasn't never enough. My pa didn't want to work himself to death like so many others did on the docks. So, my folks was exhausted an' desperate to get outa New York City, an' a friend said he knew a guy my pa could work for, so we left for Cleveland."
Our drinks came and our pizza, smelling so wonderful. Mike took one of the plates, put a slice on it and offered it to me. Yum! It was practically the most delicious thing I'd ever eaten, not to slam my nonna's great cooking a bit.
The table we were sitting at was so little and now, looking over at Mike, looking close, there were those very, very fine scars on his face, around his eyes, on his cheekbones, and that one eyelid that was just a fraction lower than the other. He was strong and tough. I loved shape of his mouth. It's upper lip truly was a "cupid's bow," exactly curved like an archer's bow, even having the tiniest upward turning at the ends like a archery bow. Sometimes, he moved it in a tough guy way, --- "New Yawk" and "New Joy-see," --- ya know? I remembered that he wanted a wife. Me.
I squinted across the very small table. I grabbed his face, pulled him to me, kissed him, tenderly, then, with passion, hard, harder. His lips parted; he kissed back, again, again. Our teeth clanked together. I shoved my hands into his hair, massaged his scalp, that lively curling blond hair, his little mustache tickling! We broke it off, with the sound of smooching lips, the surprise in his eyes, he was breathing fast. A couple more minutes, we would have toppled the chairs and table and been rolling around on the floor.
He grinned. "Whoa, hot damn, Anita!"
I smiled back. "How's your heart?"
"Beatin' fast like a son-of-a-bitch."
I saw new respect in Mike's eyes. "Ya want dessert?," he asked.
"No, I think I just had it, --- Babe."
"Oh, no, no, no, you ain't! And, I like it when you call me Babe."
"Get used to it. A lot more is coming." I brushed my fingertips across his cheek. He grabbed them, kissed them. his eyes sparkling.
Then, he threw his head back and laughed. "Damned straight! Kissin' an' other things, lots an' lotsa other things, --- Tiger!"
I grinned. "Tiger?'
He grinned back. "Unless, ya like 'Tigress' better."
"It ain't got the same ring to it."
The waitress looked over at us, shrugged, like she'd seen it all plenty of times before. She was busy filling squeeze mustard and ketchup bottles.
--- Copyright by Antoinette Beard/Sorelle Sucere 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment