and it doesn’t go to one of Teddy’s people. That’s why he’s upset about it.”
Paulie looked down his remodeled nose at me. “Well if Teddy’s got a problem, why doesn’t he come talk to me himself?”
I guess maybe he’d retained a few cop instincts. But I was still determined to try to bluff him out. I figured that if I acted like I had Teddy’s support, Paulie might go back to his people at the union and find me some work.
“Teddy doesn’t need to talk to you himself,” I said. “He knows he can rely on me. I’m married to his niece.”
“Oh, that’s bullshit!” said Paulie, spraying me with spit on the
“No.” I met his eyes. “I’m just saying what Teddy wants.”
Teddy had been dominating my whole life. I thought I should get something out of the association.
In the ring, the redhead threw the blonde against the ropes and got ready to kick her in her midsection. Paulie watched them a minute and then gave me his full attention.
“Let me tell you something, Anthony. Teddy ain’t such a big man anymore. In fact, as far as this union’s concerned, he’s out and Burt Ryan’s in. It’s a lawyer’s game now. So I wouldn’t go throwing around Teddy’s name like it meant something.”
“I’m not throwing his name around.” I frowned. “You know, you shouldn’t be so disrespectful, Paulie. My family goes back a long ways with you.”
“Listen, you little fuck,” he shot back. “I know all about you. I know how you got this act where you come on like you’re Mr. Nice Guy trying to make a buck and then you turn around and screw your partners into the ground.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Oh yeah?” He gripped his champagne glass like he was about to crack it. “What about them cigarettes?”
“What cigarettes? I don’t smoke cigarettes.”
“This fuckin’ guy.” Paulie leaned back to include his brother in our conversation. “He gets three thousand dollars off our cousin Bimmy and says he’s got a line on a truck full of untaxed cigarettes off an Indian reservation. Then he takes the money and leaves Bimmy waiting for the cigarettes.”
He was talking about a scheme Teddy and my father got me involved in years ago, back when I was in high school. They had me go to an albino grocery store owner named Bimmy and tell him I could get him the cigarettes for forty cents a pack. Then they took his money and gave him nothing in return for it. And now I was getting the blame.
“Look, Paulie,” I said. “That was a long time ago. I don’t do that type of thing anymore. And besides, I didn’t even know that guy was related to you.”
“You’re another fuckin’ con artist just like your old man,” said Paulie. I could smell the champagne excretions on his breath. “You’re both grown out of the same dirt even if you don’t smell the same. You’d fuck your grandmother if you could get a contract out of it. The only difference is you don’t have enough balls to squeeze a trigger when you have to.”
In the ring, I saw the blonde pick herself up off the canvas and give the redhead a stiff elbow to the jaw. I knew that if she was in my position, she wouldn’t take this type of abuse from Paulie.
All of a sudden I got a very cold feeling inside. “What do you know about my father?” I asked Paulie.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Hey.” I stuck a finger in his face and kept it there awhile. “Don’t you ever talk about my father.”
It was one of those moments when I was so mad that all the sound in the room cut off and all I could hear was the pounding in my head.
Whatever look I was giving, it sobered Paulie up. He turned pale and started fooling with his bracelet.
“You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t know about,” I said.
The blonde girl in the ring was getting kicked in the stomach again, but it didn’t slow her down. It just made her mad. There was something special about her, I decided. She wasn’t beautiful exactly. She had a little meat on her hips and some kind of weird scar down by her navel. When she tossed her hair, you could see the roots were dark. But you couldn’t take your eyes off her. It was the way she moved. She put her whole body into everything she did. When her hip went by you, it was like a force of nature passing through. In a funny way, she reminded me of Vin and Elijah. She was the kind of person who never quit. And in a flash, it came to me that I should’ve married someone like her instead of my wife.
Paulie moved his chair back and tried to give me a smile like we were really still friends after all.
In the meantime, the bell was sounding that the fight was over. The referee was holding up the redhead’s arm. The blonde girl was looking over at them with a mixture of disgust and determination. Like she’d known the fight was rigged all along, but she’d given it her best anyway. She was someone just like me. Who’d been put down all her life and had to struggle just to stay on par.
Seeing her fight had inspired me to stand up to Paulie, who was hunkered down at the table like some mean old toad protecting his stool. I knew he wasn’t going to help me get any contracts, but I wasn’t ready to take any more shit from him either.
“Just watch yourself, Paulie,” I said, standing up and giving him a pretty good knock on the shoulder. “Your cousin got what he deserved. No one gets taken who wasn’t greedy in the first place. If he’s got a problem he should talk to me himself. Otherwise I don’t wanna hear it. I’ve got no respect for people who can’t take care of themselves.”
10
HER STOMACH STILL HURT where that other girl hadbeen kicking her all night long.
As she looked in the dressing room mirror, she saw parts of her face were bruised too. That bitch. Who told her to throw anybody around like that for sixty dollars a night? You made more getting your ass pinched serving drinks at the casino. At least there the black-and-blue marks didn’t show.
There were two knocks on the dressing room door. “The sign says do not disturb,” she called out. “The bathroom is downstairs.”
She wriggled out of her bathing suit and put two sticks of gum in her mouth. Pain shot through her jaw as soon as she started chewing and she had to spit it out right away. The whole time she was married she never caught a beating like this. But then that was all mental torture, after he closed up inside. Long stony silences over dinner and mornings shooting up in the bathroom. She still remembered waiting for him in bed and staring out the window at a gray sky where the seagulls looked like eraser marks.
It was awful to abuse yourself like that. Not that she’d mind a drink herself, her jaw aching like it was. But everyone was on her to watch her weight these days. It was bad enough she had the cesarean scar showing when she wore a bikini. She told the shift manager, just let me wear the one-piece. But he said, no, fuck it, wear the bikini, the customers are too drunk to notice the scar. But watch the cellulite, he told her. A customer wants to see cottage cheese thighs, he can go home and look in the mirror. Maybe she could get herself one of those Richard Simmons exercise videos and a can of Ultra Slim-Fast.
What did they all want from her anyway? She was the only girl over thirty on her shift and as far as she knew the only one with a kid. So for all that, she didn’t look too bad, did she?
There was the knock at the door again. A little more urgent this time. Probably some drunk trying to use the bathroom.
“Sir, are you hard of hearing?” she called out. “The john is downstairs.”
She pulled on her blouse and jeans and began brushing her hair up while looking in the mirror. She was starting to hate these little in-between moments. They gave her too much time to think about how things were going.
On good nights, a secret dream of moving out west and finding a new career kept her alive. On bad nights,
