Romeo of the Streets (11 page)

Romeo said nothing. Another unpleasant side-effect of having a meeting so high up in the building was the amount of time it took for the elevator to touch ground on the way back down again.

Lana looked at him, her blue eyes wide and searching as she studied his face. “But Romeo—Don—you have to get real. You think I’m saying this just to annoy you? Whatever you do you
cannot
get involved with that Guilianno girl.”

“Oh fuck you Lana,” Romeo said, “you hear me? I know what I can and can’t do and I’m keeping my distance.”

“What about that student bar last night? You met her there and then walked her back to her door? What kind of distance is that?”

“It was a favor for her brother Lana, that’s all.”

“That’s exactly what I mean! Favors? It’s not your job to do favors for these people.”

Romeo swung to face her, the vein on his sleek temple pumping with anger. “Of course it is,” he said, “I’m supposed to
be
one of them now, aren’t I? And what—you were having me watched last night? What the hell are you doing Lana, you could break my cover with that shit!”

Lana looked up at him, her chest heaving with passion. “I was worried about you, ok you asshole? Worried that you were losing it, getting involved with that girl…”

Romeo stared back down at her and, as the elevator pinged for the ground floor, she stepped forward against his body and pressed her lips up onto his.

The elevator door wooshed open just as Lana stepped back from Romeo, her breathing shallow and fast with excitement. Outside, the main lobby was already busy with agents and office workers moving to and fro across the gleaming marble floor, although none of them noticed the man and woman staring at each other in the single open elevator with expressions of such glaring intensity.

“Lana… what the fuck?”

“Oh come on Don,” she said, her eyes turned downwards and a bitter frown on her lips, “you know how I feel about you.”

“This… this is too much,” Romeo said. He backed out into the lobby. “Keep your damn tail off my back when I’m out there in the field Lana. From now on I do things my way. Jesus, I could report you for that shit…”

“Go ahead then,” she said, reaching out to press the elevator button again. “See if I care.”

The doors closed and Romeo was alone in the crowded lobby, feeling like a man a million miles from home.

“Oh! Here he is: Mad Mancini—New York’s favorite son!”

Eyeball and Lou chuckled at Ferret’s greeting to Romeo as he approached them across the pool-hall and nodded in acknowledgement.

“Whose round is it?” he asked as he joined them.

“Little early, ain’t it?” Eyeball said.

“It’s a bar, ain’t it?” Romeo shrugged in reply.

“True,” Eyeball said, “Ferret, get the drinks.”

Ferret swung on them from his place by the pool-table, a look of immediate outrage on his rat-like face. “Oh!” he said, “we’re made guys Eyeball, these two jokers should be serving
us
.”

“Get the drinks Ferret,” Eyeball repeated and his partner, instantly defeated, sauntered over to the bar.

“Mine’s a double Jim Beam,” Romeo called after him and then leaned into Lou. “So how’s things with you and Lisa?” he asked.

“She said she’ll meet me for lunch later,” Lou said, “she says we’re on probation, whatever that means, but she’s speaking to me so it’s a start. I’m just glad I’ll get to spend
some
of the day with her at least, even if it is only on probation. If I missed it I think she’d never forgive me.”

Romeo laughed. “Shit,” he said, “probation? I’ve been on probation before, it’s no big deal. You ever been on probation Eyeball?”

“Hell,” Eyeball said, “I’m on probation right now
paisan
…”

“Seriously though,” Lou said, “whatever you said to Sandy Romeo, it really did the trick. I owe you one. I think I’m going to try to do something really special for Lisa today, properly make it up to her. Eyeball says he can hook me up at a fancy restaurant tonight, but if it wasn’t for you I’d be spending it alone, a romantic night for one—takeout pizza and internet porn.”

“Fuggedabout it,” Romeo shrugged, “you want to know the truth? Sandy would barely talk to me. Lisa must have come to the decision all on her own. She probably wants to spend Valentine’s together as much as you do.”

Ferret returned with the drinks and Romeo tipped his back immediately, draining it all in one swift gulp. He stepped up to the pool table and picked up a cue.

“Ok,” he said, “which one of you gangster assholes wants to face me? I’ll take you all down.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon drinking and shooting pool. At one o’clock Lou left to go meet Lisa, to much drunken jeering and encouragement from the friends he was leaving behind him, and after another few hours Eyeball’s beeper signaled a message from Sal. He went out to find a pay phone and then returned to inform the guys that he and Ferret were urgently required elsewhere—a meeting for made guys only—and so Romeo was left alone again. He said goodbye to the others and then went in to the bar area, taking up a stool and ordering a drink. He checked his phone and saw that he’d received a message from Lana at some point over the past few hours. Ignoring it, he scrolled down and saw a message from Sandy. Raising his eyebrows he clicked to open it.

“
ROMEO
,” it read, “
TRY AS I MIGHT I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU
.
PLEASE COME OVER ASAP. I’M AT MY PLACE XX.
”

He stared at the message for a good five minutes before signaling to the barkeeper. “Get me a pitcher of water and ice,” he said, “and a cup of coffee.”

Thirty minutes later, still groggy from the bourbon and wondering what the hell he was doing, Romeo stepped up to the door to Sandy and Lisa’s apartment. He reached out to press the bell and then waited. A moment later, she appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide and excited as she looked up at him, her shoulders heaving with breathlessness.

“Romeo!” she said, “well I guess you better come in.”

The next day I had classes off for the entire afternoon, so early that morning I stopped by the hospital to see how Gino was doing and to go over the arrangements for the special night we had planned at the café that evening. Since it was Valentine’s Day (and by the way, I really could have cared less) we’d organized for a professional caterer to come in so we could put on a romantic dinner for the locals and continue what was a long standing yearly tradition in the area. Despite Gino’s protestations, I had assured him that I would be happy to come in and waitress, provided he could bring in the chef (after all, the potential profits were too big to miss out on, especially now that we needed it so much), and because I had no plans anyway he had eventually acquiesced.

Now, he was still bed-bound but according to his doctors he was well on his way towards a speedy recovery, taking to the physio work with the vigor and determination of a man half his age, and when I arrived into his room he erupted with delighted laughter to see me. I told him how we were doing at college (good) and how the café was surviving now that it was mostly only open on weekends (also good, all things considered) and I promised to thank Lou and Romeo again for giving him the loan to help pay for his hospital bills. This time he didn’t press me or tease me any about Romeo, which was a good thing because I actually felt a little bit guilty about the fact that even though I was there to see Gino, my thoughts during the visit kept straying over and over again to Romeo, wondering what he might be getting up to on that bright and sunny Valentine’s morning.

When it was time to leave again, Gino gave me a single white rose to pass on to my mother (I could only guess where he’d gotten it from, one of the nurses maybe) and I smiled and told him that she would be delighted with it. Mom’s dementia was such that she rarely recognized me or Lou these days when we came to visit her—still imagining her children to be at diaper-wearing age—but her memory of the distant past was still largely unscathed, which meant that she often asked how Gino was and if he would be coming to visit soon, almost as much as she asked about the whereabouts of her husband, a question neither me nor Lou ever had the heart to properly address.

The rose in hand, and promising to see him in another day or two, I left Gino’s room and made my way back down the floors of the busy hospital to get a bus to take me back to CCU. At the bus stop the white rose held thoughtfully in my grip (not to mention the wistful expression I probably had thinking about Romeo) invited more than a few curious glances from strangers, but I was too distracted to notice. I was playing the events of the night before over in my head, scrutinizing every fleeting glance and ambiguous smile on his face for clues to the nature of his true intentions. I was still no less in the dark about who he really was or what he wanted from me (if anything) but after our meeting I felt sure now that I had connected with him on a deeper level than most did, that I knew him in a way that was almost a privilege, as I sensed that few others had ever been allowed to get that close to him.

I felt certain now that there was kindness to him as well as a danger, that somehow his heart was in the right place even if the rest of him was actively seeking out criminal behavior. But that alone was not enough to redeem him and redeeming him certainly wasn’t my job either. It was bad enough with Lou but I knew that if I let myself get emotionally involved with Romeo then I would be right back to what I’d been running from my entire adult life—back in that world that I would have given anything to escape from.

And of course, I was also unsure if persuading Lisa to give Lou another chance had really been the right thing to do after all. Yes, she had been miserable and I believed Romeo when he said that Lou was equally distraught, but was it not somewhat hypocritical of me to encourage Lisa to forgive Lou while I myself refused to overlook Romeo’s criminal activity? Was I not simply postponing what would inevitably amount to a bigger heartbreak for her in the long run? Perhaps, but then again if I’d thought that Lisa actually really
had been
finished with Lou then I might have done differently. But no, she was crazy about him and there was nothing I or anyone else could do to change that. Romeo had been right, it was obvious that she would take him back sooner or later, so we might as well just let them get on with it and help them escape from their misery at being apart.

So that morning when I got back to the apartment and Lisa, having now had a few days’ space to think things over, asked me for my honest advice I told her to think about what she really wanted; life with Lou or life without Lou. Those were the only two options—it was Lou, complete with criminal tendencies, or no Lou at all.

“Can’t I have Lou with no criminal tendencies?” she asked, scrunching up her nose, and I laughed.

“Believe me,” I said, “if there was a way, I would have figured it out by now.”

Well it was obvious after that that she was going to forgive him, so I did what I could to ensure it would be on
her
terms, advising her to keep things on probation for a while and make sure that there would be a few new ground-rules in the relationship—like making sure that Lou’s gangster crap never infringed on her day-to-day life ever again. She went in to her bedroom to call him up and when she returned (her whole face glowing with a smile that could have lit up an Alaskan night in winter) she informed me that they’d arranged to meet for lunch where she would lay out her terms to him in earnest. Score one for the good guys.

After that I hit the books, although I found myself repeatedly distracted by thoughts of Romeo, wondering where he was that day and what he might be doing while I lay on my bed and leafed through my business books. Whatever it was, I imagined it would be a lot more exciting than studying for an exam and I found myself curious if he ever thought about me as he went about
his
day. Probably not, I sighed, turning over a fresh page of boring but necessary jargon to learn.

An hour or two later Lisa arrived back from her meeting with Lou. I heard the door swing open with a bang and then her battle-cry of “Where are you, you bitch!” and I immediately sat up straight, eyes wide with terror. Uh-oh, this didn’t sound good…

Without knocking, she burst through my bedroom door and marched straight over to me, standing with hands on hips as she looked me up and down.

“Well Lou was happy that I finally decided to give him another chance,” she said.

I let the book close casually over my thumb. “Was he?” I asked.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Lisa nodded.

“Well that’s good, did you lay out your ground-rules?”

“He told me that he didn’t know what Romeo had said to you to make me change my mind but he was sure it must have been good.”

Oh crap. Lou you moron…

I let the book drop to the bed and sat up straighter. “Lisa…”

“Well,” she said, “was it? Was it good?”