Sunburn (9 page)

She shifted in her chair; the metal frame rang slightly with her squirming. "Trouble at home," she said. "Boring stuff."

She waved it away, then felt herself retreating, shrinking back. She stared off toward the pool and the low stars that dangled just above the aralia hedge. "I wonder what they're talking about in there," she said.

Arty Magnus shrugged. "Must be something very important."

He said it deadpan, it wasn't meant to be a test and yet it sort of was; she would either get it or she wouldn't, would choose to be a party to his secret wry subversion or would play it safe and let it pass.

She hesitated just an instant, then she crossed her arms against her midriff, gave her chin a gutsy and rambunctious tilt, and met his eyes. Something like a smile happened. Palm fronds scratched and rattled like maracas, light and shadow poured in waves from the illumined shrubs, and from the house came sharp contentious voices that were drowned in the outdoor mildness like scorpions in the swimming pool.

"Gino," Vincente had begun, "it's like extremely obvious you got a hard-on and it hurts, so g'ahead, you talk first. I'm listening."

The three of them had settled into Joey Goldman's study. It was a Florida study, airy and sparse. There was a glass block wall where up north there might have been a fireplace, recessed lights on dimmers filled in for old silk-shaded lamps, the chairs were upholstered in white cotton where you might have expected cordovan leather. Still, it was a serious and manly room; it had a globe and it had liquor. Gino had asked for a bourbon, and Joey poured him three fingers' worth. Then the younger brother backed away, propped himself on the arm of a settee, and let the urgent Gino have his say.

But Gino didn't find it easy. He dropped his head so that his chin went double, pawed the floor like a bull. "Awright, Pop," he began, "it's like this. While I been heah, heah in Florida, up in Miami, Key West, ya know, I been goin' back and fort'—"

With his glass he gestured up and down Route 1; then he took a swallow. His father propped his elbows on Joey's limestone desk, rested his chin on his folded hands, and waited.

"Ya know," Gino went on, shuffling his feet, "I been seein' you, visitin', I figured, Hey, lemme do some business, get somethin' taken care of, make a few dollahs. So what I'm saying--"

He broke off, scratched his neck, felt a brute frustration that in his rough mouth language shredded up, scraps of it peeled worthlessly away like when you start a roll of off-brand tape.

"So this Miami business," he labored on. "Pop, I think you'll be proud a me, I was doin' a right thing, standin' up for the family—"

Vincente did not look proud. "Gino," he said, "fuck kinda business ya doin' in Miami?"

The son stared at his father, saw the bristly brows roll down to shade the sunken eyes, and a hint of panic now chopped his speech into even more shapeless pieces. "Miami. Ya know. Cholly Ponte."

The Godfather's voice grew no louder but it rumbled, seemed to soak into the walls and work its way under the tile floor. "Cholly Ponte's a boss. Ya talk ta Cholly Ponte wit'out ya ask me?"

Gino's face caved in a little more, lost its luster and went cockeyed like a dented hubcap. "Pop, I knew ya got a lot on your mind, I didn't wanna bother ya."

"Well, y'are botherin' me. You're botherin' me a lot."

Gino swigged his bourbon, paced a step in one direction, a half-step in another, measuring the box he was building for himself. Suddenly he was mad.

"Pop," he said, "it ain't fair I should get grief from you on top a the shit I been takin' for the family. Miami, I been insulted, jerked around, I'm gettin' like zero satisfaction—"

"Gino," said Vincente, "stop bitching, slow down, put the drink away, and tell me what the fuck is going on. Joey, bring a chair over for your brother."

The recessed lamps threw disks of light, broke the room into sectors a little bit like circus rings with arcs of shadow in between. Joey slid a chair into the bright circle opposite his father, then made a point of slipping back into the darker place himself.

"OK," said Gino as he sat. "OK." He took a deep breath, glanced over at his whiskey glass. It glowed a tasty amber. He told himself if he got through this conversation he could have it. "Cholly Ponte, he's got this racket, he runs stolen cars, rent-a-cars mostly, ta South America."

The bulky man tugged at the collar of his shirt; the cloth bit into the rolled flesh of his neck. He looked longingly at his bourbon. "Since when?"

"You know goddam well since when," his father told him. "Since a year or so ago, when I cut that deal wit' Emilio Carbone. We keep the International, the Fabrettis get the locals."

Gino chewed his lower lip, looked down at his lap. He knew there was something he shouldn't say, and he knew he was about to say it. "That wasn't a deal, Pop, that was a giveaway."

The son braced himself to get smacked. A crack like that, in the old days it would have earned him a brisk backhand across the cheek, not hard enough to leave a mark, not hard enough to really hurt, but placed artfully so that the eye would tear, and in that involuntary squirt would be a ritual and necessary surrender. But now Vincente didn't hit him, didn't even visibly rile, just frowned and said, extremely slowly, "Gino. Big man. Putz. Now ya tell your father what's a deal and what ain't a deal?"

In some peculiar way Gino was infuriated, humiliated not to get belted. My dad can lick your dad. The childhood taunt had for him become the first article of a lifelong creed; it shook him to his roots, made him quail inside, when his father declined to kick ass. He pushed his thick chin forward and egged the old man on. "A deal, Pop, is ya give somethin', ya get somethin'. Fuck we get for givin' up the locals?"

Vincente's mouth was slack, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes looked waxy. His voice was soft, it sounded like someone dancing on sand. "A little peace a mind," he said.

There was a pause. For Gino, the answer might as well have been Chinese; for Joey, silent in the background, hardly breathing, it seemed no more than obvious; and it was strange but natural that the two brothers' understandings were so different. A father didn't really teach his sons; his life threw lessons in the air like scraps to gulls, and different mouths latched onto different morsels.

After a moment Gino went on the attack again. "So Cholly Ponte, he tells me he's already payin' tribute ta New Yawk, ta the Fabrettis, he doesn't have to pay double."

"He's right," Vincente said.

"Maybe," said Gino. "But what I'm thinkin', this deal you made wit' Carbone, it died wit' Carbone."

Vincente shook his head, and the sinews in his stringy neck rose and fell on either side. "The deal's between the families."

Gino waved away that notion. "Messina, that geek, I don't see what it's got ta do with him."

Vincente had nothing to add. He sat there very still.

"Listen, Pop," said Gino. "Here's what I wanna do, and I want ya ta back me on it. I wanna go ta Ponte, tell 'im things are back the way they were, he pays us again."

The Godfather put his hands flat in front of him and leaned a little closer to his son. He cocked his head; the angle put his eyes in shadow. "Gino, you fucking deaf? The deal stands. Leave it alone."

Gino sucked his gums. He looked down at his lap, watched his meaty fist flex and unflex against his thigh, felt his palm grow slick with oily sweat, but he was taken by surprise when his hand flew up in the air and came down hard, made a bruising, stinging sound against the cool stone of the desk. When he spoke, outrage and helplessness were wrestling to a strangled stalemate in his throat, his voice was pinched and shrill. "Pop, you're lettin' people walk all over us, they're losin' respect, you're lettin' 'em take what's ours—"

Vincente raised a single finger and spoke in a voice that seemed to rumble up from underground. "Ours?" he said. "Gino, listen a me. Ya live long enough, an' if there's anything left ta run, maybe someday you'll be running things. But that day ain't heah yet. So do like I tell ya. Stay outa Miami. Keep outa Cholly Ponte's way. And fuhget about that fuckin' union. Ya got that, Gino?"

Gino didn't answer. He sat there hangdog, brooding, taking weird solace from the pins and needles in his smarting hand; the sting was some evidence of action, proof of contact, some rub against his father's strength. He wrapped that aching hand around his glass and sucked the bourbon down; too bad if his old man didn't like it.

The silence went on too long, too long even for family, and finally, from the shadows, Joey Goldman said, "Pop, ya said there was somethin' ya wanted ta talk t'us about."

Vincente raised a heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrow, managed the beginnings of a small smile devoid of pleasure. He'd almost forgotten. It was supposed to be an evening of talking to Arty, his writer, an evening of cleaning out, of shedding garbage, not taking garbage in. Air whistled in the old man's nose, came out as a hissing grunt. "Another time," he said. "I'll tell yuhs another time. I had enough aggravation for one night."

The next morning a cold front came through, one of those unwelcome reminders that not even Key West was totally removed from the embarrassing and frozen continent above it, that appalling people and rotten news and lousy weather could still plop down from the mainland like droppings from some gargantuan internal beast. The wind veered till it was due north and carried foreign smells of pine and granite. Smeared and moody clouds raced through the sky; fronds and leaves tore loose from trees and landed in roiled swimming pools.

The Godfather, drained from the conversations of the night before, stayed in bed till Joey and Sandra had gone to work. Then he rose, washed, dressed. Drinking coffee, he looked out the window. The chill and the gloom reminded him he had some calls to make. He went to Joey's study, sat down at the limestone desk. Usually circumspect about the telephone, here Vincente felt secure. This was Florida, not New York. His son Joey had a spotless record; he was a respected businessman. No judge would sign off on a warrant to tap the phone. Besides, what did Vincente have to talk about that was so awful? Petty things, administrative things. Things where a few soothing words and a couple dollars could keep the peace. Of a mobbed-up shop in the garment district:
Our guy gets six-fifty and car?
the Godfather would say; So
give
their
guy six-fifty and a car.
On a rigged construction bid in the Bronx:
Bring the steel down three percent, you'll make it back on the cement.

Referee of greed—that's what his job really came down to. Keeping the larceny within sustainable limits. Now he picked up the phone to cajole a certain supermarket boss to give more space to a certain brand of chickens.

Vincente didn't answer right away; he was distracted by a just-noticed dripping in the bathroom down the hall. "One thing at a time," he said at last.

"The meat cutters," stressed the supermarket man, "they have big cleavers. I don't like to see 'em unhappy."

Vincente heard another drip. It seemed suddenly more pressing than chickens. "The union thing," he said. "I'll look into it."

He hung up the phone, went down the hall. Sure enough, the faucet in the bathroom sink was leaking, a bulbous drop just then growing at the end of it as at the tip of an old man's nose. For a moment the Godfather watched the drop, confirmed that it would fall. When it did, a secret joy suffused him, the quiet joy of simple purpose. He was alone in his son's house. He felt he'd been a burden, a bother, a taker. Suddenly there was some small thing he could offer in return, an honest useful project a man could do with his hands.

In a gesture almost worshipful, he fell to his knees in front of the sink. He opened the cabinet, took out towels, toilet paper, scouring powder. He arrayed things neatly around him on the cool tiles of the floor, then looked in past the drainpipe, which swooped down and up again like a saxophone, to the oval handles of the intake valves. He'd close them; then he'd get tools to take apart the faucet. He'd remove the bum washer, keep it to show to Joey. They'd go to the hardware store together to get a new one. That would be nice: a father and a son together in the hardware store.

Vincente leaned in under the sink. His neck ached as he craned it; the floor tiles were hard and cold against his knees. It was an awkward reach toward the handle of the valve, his shoulder complained at the angle of it. But finally the thing was in his hand. He tried to turn it but it would not turn.

He shifted his knees, dropped into a lower crouch, and tried again. That was when the throbbing in his head began. It started as a warm and not unpleasant pulsing at the top of his neck, then crawled upward to the bony place behind his ears, the place that still remembered the childhood pain of German measles. He wrestled harder with the unmoving valve handle, small grunts escaping past his teeth. The throbbing crept up both sides of his head, moved up almost soothingly, like hot fingers on his scalp. The light was bad under the sink, Vincente couldn't see the red rust and green corrosion that glutted the valve's old threads. He only knew that it was meant to turn, that a man was meant to be able to turn it.

He was sweating now, his legs were cramping. He began to be dizzy. He pulled back for a moment to summon strength, blinked around the tiled bathroom, but saw only a shrinking tube of brightness. He hunkered down again, stretched his neck, seized the handle like the windpipe of a deadly enemy. The throbbing crested at the top of his head and now was pushing outward from behind his eyes. He gave a final twist and a whimper of frustration, then, he didn't quite know how, his hands had lost their grip and he had gone from kneeling to lying backward on the tile floor. The floor sucked warmth away from his flank. He saw a white glare smeared with acid yellow; it was ugly, and he was grateful when his eyes fell closed.