a long time to make sure it’s a girl. Right?” He rested the side of his face on his hand. “She’s four foot eleven and she got tiny little hands, so now I’m sure this is like a female. So Amal goes up and he starts talking to her, man. And I’m just like hanging back, waiting for him to bring her over. I’m dancing to Bobby Brown and just hanging.”
He closed his eyes and twitched his shoulders, savoring the memory of the beat.
“But then I look up and Amal’s got his arm around this girl. So I’m like, ‘Yo, Amal. What’s up with this shit? What am I payin’ you for, man? I ain’t payin’ you to hang around flirting with girls.’ I was disgusted. I was really disgusted, man. I walked right out and went to my car. My brand-new Porsche, right. And some like homeless guy is scratching his name on the side with a rusty key.”
“Oh no.” Rosemary started to laugh.
He went on, “I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?” he asked in appalled falsetto. “And he’s like, ‘This is Terry Mulvehill’s car.’ I’m like ‘Fuck, I am Terry Mulvehill. Stop writing on my damn car.’”
He shook his head, mortified. “Damn,” he said. “I don’t never have fun no more. It’s got so I don’t trust no one. I’d rather be by myself.”
He touched his erection again and became very still. To Rosemary, he seemed like a confused child trapped inside a warrior’s body.
“That’s all right,” Terrence said, rolling over on his side. “I don’t mind being alone. I just close the curtains and stay in bed all day. Only time I get out is to train.”
Rosemary crossed her legs and lit a cigarette. The tinfoil packet of cocaine was on the ivory-colored bureau next to her. “I read that once,” she said. “I read how when you’re an athlete you’re not supposed to sleep with anybody the night before.”
“Man, that’s bullshit,” Terrence told her, putting both hands behind his head and doing half a sit-up. The musclesin his stomach bulged like oranges packed tightly into a crate. “When I was married last year, I fucked before every fight I had and I knocked every one of them suckers out. That don’t have nothing to do with it. It’s just they all bitches, man. Every one of them. Even my mother. They just after the money. My mother didn’t even call me ’til I got the title. My father brought me up and taught me how to fight. He taught me everything I know about women. And I love and respect the man for it. Otherwise them bitches would have all my money by now.”
“You always have to watch yourself,” said Rosemary.
In the mirror across the room, she saw herself swinging one leg over the other with the cigarette burning down in her hand. His erection never wavered, she noticed. Men were all the same. You’d have to strap a stick of dynamite to it to truly get their attention.
“That’s why when you called, I say ‘come on up.’” He smiled eagerly, “You ain’t gonna charge me, right?”
“Nope, this one’s a free ride,” she said in a tired voice.
“Yeah, yeah, see. And I know you like being with me, just to be with me. Right? Like you like me ’cause you a natural freak. Right? You don’t want nothing from me. You just like to fuck me.”
He was so sincere, so anxious to be liked, it was almost painful to listen. She caught sight of herself in the mirror again, guiltily tapping out her cigarette in the ashtray.
“See, that’s why I let you up, when you called before,” said Terrence. “Because I know I can trust you. And we just gonna hang and have a good time. Right?”
She forced herself to smile. “We’re gonna do the do, Terry.”
“Yeah, yeah. ’Cause otherwise I think I’d just rather sit by myself in the dark.”
He looked down at his penis sorrowfully as though it were a wounded pet.
“That’s kind of depressing.”
“Yeah, it do get lonely sometimes,” Terrence said. “I get to feeling so bad, I think I never find no one wants to be with me. Like sometimes I think I’d rather be dead. Just the other night, you know, I was standing right out on that balcony over there, thinking what it’d be like if I threw myself off.”
He stared at the window ten feet across the room, as if he was still considering jumping. Then he lowered his eyes and balled up part of the bedsheet in his fist. His left knee came up protectively in front of his groin.
“But then you called,” he said. “And things got much more better.”
He smiled and his gold incisors flashed at her. “Anybody ever tell you, you got like beautiful eyes?”
“Gee, I, uh, yeah, I guess so.”
“Well like don’t tell anybody I said that to you, ’cause they might like think I’m gettin’ soft. I’m supposed to be the Monster, you know.”
She forced another smile as she picked up the tinfoil packet from the bureau top. “I like you too, Terry.”
“So can we like do it now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still kinda nervous. You sure you won’t get high with me first?”
39
“YOU BELIEVE THIS?” said Teddy.
He sat on a bed in the Atlantic City Medical Center a few days later, wearing a large white hospital gown with blue polka dots on it. An IV needle was stuck in his right arm and a catheter tube ran under the covers into the head of his penis. He regarded both of them miserably.
“Prostate cancer,” he said.
“I thought it was your stomach,” said Vin, sitting by the bedside.
“They still don’t know what’s the matter there. I got that cough too. Every fucking thing is breaking down at once. That’s why they wanted to operate right away.”
Teddy held his mouth shut, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with all the bile he’d accumulated inside. An elderly man’s voice groaned behind the beige canvas curtain that divided the room. Vin turned on the radio on Ted’s night table to drown out any potential wiretaps.
“Vin, I got one question for you,” Teddy said with a loud racking cough. “Where are we going?”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.” Teddy coughed again and looked at the radio playing “Greensleeves.” “A couple of days after I got pinched, I had a sit-down with my lawyer Burt Ryan. He tells me about this contract for fixing the City Hall parking lot. Turns out Lenny Romano got it. You know, Nat the bookmaker’s son, from over Margate. ‘Why’s that?’ I ask. ‘Oh,’ says Burt. ‘I thought he had your permission.’ Like I’m an asshole and I don’t know what’s going on. He says he thought Lenny was a ‘friend of ours.’
“Of course,” Vin assured him, running the Ace comb once through his hair.
“Plus, I got Danny Klein borrowing thirty large from me and not telling me who it’s for. You see, Vin, it’s no good. We can’t have that. We can’t have a circus. All these little factions are running around trying to conquer the market under our flag. It all comes down to the same thing. Where are we going? I mean, not for nothing, but your own son Anthony . .. You know I don’t like Anthony. I love him. And he loves me. I know that. Every time he sees me, he says, ‘Teddy, I only got one love, you.’”
“Right,” said Vin, though he didn’t look too sure.
“So why do I have to hear from Burt that Anthony’s getting involved with some fight at the Doubloon this fall?”
“I don’t know nothing about that!” Vin looked stricken. “Burt musta got his facts wrong. Anthony wouldn’t get involved with anything serious without clearing it with us.”
“Vin, I given that kid every chance in the world. I bankrolled his entire life. If I find out he’s been making money without putting anything in the elbow ...”
Vin jumped up. “It’s not true! Anthony’s pledged the first dollar he makes to you. But the kid’s broke. You seen how he’s living.”
“Vin, look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
