The Real Thing (4 page)

“I won't.” But I probably will. I like fish filets.

Red starts getting out real china plates, not paper plates. “You're just here for the interview, right?”

What a strange question. “Of course.”

“Nothing more?”

“No.”

He shrugs. “You just remind me of his ex, that's all, except without the claws and fangs.”

Hmm. Red obviously despises this woman, and the way he keeps bringing her up, he obviously wants to discuss her. “What was her name?”

“Evil Lynn.”

“Huh?”

“Evil Lynn is what I call her. She tells everyone to call her
Eve
lyn.”

Still in the present tense. And what a pretentious name.

“You're Dante's type,” Red continues, stacking the plates on the counter and rolling silverware in red napkins.

“And what type is that?”

Red smiles. “You're a force of nature. You exude power. Dante gravitates toward clout and muscle.”

And, I have a
corpo provocante.
“He likes a strong woman. Is that what you're saying?”

He nods. “You hang around here long enough, and you might get something more than you bargained for.”

There's that phrase again. Something more? I don't want something more. If I have to flirt my booty off to get Dante to open up and give me meat for a better story, I will flirt like a champion.

“Dante is . . . he just
is
, okay?” Red says. “There's no one like him. He's . . . he's an amazing person. He's as amazing as Evil Lynn is not, understand? When she visits, Lelani and I hit the road.”

It's official.
Eve
lyn gets visiting rights, and maybe even conjugal visiting rights.

“And Dante lets her, that's what gets me,” Red says. “‘She will come back to me,' Dante says. ‘She is my
portafortuna
, my good luck charm.' It's a complicated relationship and arrangement. They both raise DJ—she gets him for the school year—and DJ's turning out fine. But when they get together . . .”

I have to ask. “So they still . . .” I wince for good measure, as if wincing is the international sign for sleeping together.

“Conjugate?” Red says. “Get busy?”

I blush and nod.

“No. Not that Dante doesn't try.”

Hence, the two-seater. Great.

“Christiana, Dante still thinks they're married,” Red says. “ ‘No papers will dissolve what God has blessed,' he says. He's old school like that. And when Evil Lynn comes up here to visit, she complicates everything. She throws off his training schedule completely. He's far too generous with her, and she treats him like dirt. She has the ability to completely silence an Italian man without saying a word.”

Frightening.

“She wouldn't even allow him to speak Italian in public or around DJ,” Red says with a shake of his head. “‘In English, please,' she says. When he was winning, she was only part shrew. He lost to Washington and Cordoza, she started losing interest, and she became all shrew.”

Therefore, that means . . . “Evelyn is a gold digger?” I say her name like a normal person does.

“She was an RN making nice money,” Red says, “I doubt she was ever a gold digger. I just try to stay away from her, understand?”

I nod. “Did she ever love him?”

“Oh, I'm sure she loved him in her own way,” Red says. “But when the losses came . . .” He shrugs. “I used to think the losses were what made him such a legend. ‘Blood and Guts,' right? He had no nickname before that. Forty-seven fights without a nickname. He was just . . . Dante Lattanza.”

“When did Evelyn finally give up on him?” I ask.

“A month after the Cordoza fight and she gave up on him entirely. She moved back to Syracuse and filed for divorce the same day. As soon as he got the papers, he quit boxing.”

“And DJ was what, six?”

“Yeah. It was such a tough time for him,” Red says. “He's come through it pretty well. They've kept it cool. Visits anytime anywhere. Lots of trips together. Christmases down in Virginia or in Syracuse. It has been a fairly peaceful life for DJ, you know? Almost a regular life.”

I don't know about that. “What changed? I mean, after ten years, he suddenly decides to start boxing again.”

He sighs for the longest time. “It's mostly Evelyn's fault. Dante one day got it in his head to win her back by making a comeback. He even made a deal with her. For every win in this comeback, they go out on a date. Should he win the title, and he has an even shot if Tank's off his game, Evelyn has agreed to try again.” He holds me with his eyes. “He's fighting to remarry the shrew.”

Now
that's
crazy! “No way.”

Red nods. “It's crazy. The way she treated him, and yet . . .” He shrugs. “That's Dante to the core.”

I can't believe this. “C'mon, Red. He can't beat Tank Washington. Tank's in his prime. Dante's too slow, has no defense, and has nothing left in that left hook of his. He's never had a jab.”

Red smiles. “Your granddaddy taught you about boxing, too.”

I nod.

“Dante knows he's up against it. He probably knows he'll lose, too. He hopes the attempt will be enough to win her back.”

Dante is dreaming the impossible dream here. “Is she, um, worth . . . No, I have no right to ask that.”

Red shakes his head. “Is Evelyn worth the effort?”

I nod.

“She ain't worth a damn,” Red scowls, “but there's no accounting for love.”

Amen to that.

He looks behind me.

“You checking out my butt, Red?”

Red nods. “You fill out her clothes a whole lot better than she does.”

I don't dare tell him these aren't her jeans.

“Go out there and ring that bell,” he says, pointing at a bell hanging under the eaves of the front porch. “Let's get our dinner on.”

Where, I hope, I can have some tasty conversation.

Chapter 6

T
he Italian food is tasty, but the conversation is foreign. Dante doesn't speak anything but Italian at the meal, which at first is sexy as hell but then becomes utterly rude. He and DJ talk at the other end of the table as if I'm not here. DJ isn't nearly as fluent as Dante is, and it seems as if Dante is correcting DJ every so often. DJ doesn't seem to mind, though. If it weren't so rude to me, I'd think it was charming the way father and son get along.

Red and Lelani whisper sweet nothings to each other for most of the meal, and I can tell they're still in love. I've never sat this closely to a real Hawaiian before, and she is stunning. Lelani has to be half Red's age. With her rounded cheekbones, jet black hair, and Asian eyes that I swear are purple with green accents, Lelani has an all-over tan darker than Red and me combined. She has no visible tan lines, so she has to sunbathe in the nude. I wonder where.

No, I don't. Life is embarrassing enough without the threat of accidentally stepping on a nude Hawaiian in the Canadian woods.

During the salad garnished with Red's homemade croutons, I catch a few phrases like
grazie
and
per favore
and
squisito
and
molto graziosa.
When Dante looks at me and says something something
cioccolata,
however, I get right upset. I'm not dark chocolate. I'm not even partially chocolate. I'm kind of average, run-of-the-mill, Crunch bar chocolate. I can't stand
not
interviewing the interviewee or at least breaking the ice for the real interview later. And there's something unseemly about the host excommunicating more than half of his dinner table.

I have to do something.

When I'm halfway through my pasta, I decide that enough is enough. I turn to Red. “Red, everything is so delicious. How's the bread, everybody?”

Silence reigns. Linguini twirling stops, spoons arrested in the air.

Direct questioning it is. “DJ, how is the bread?”

DJ looks first at Dante, hesitating.

Dante nods.

“It's good,” DJ says, returning his eyes to his plate.

“Not too buttery?” I ask.

DJ lifts his head.

Dante nods.

“No,” DJ says.

Hmm. The son has to get permission from his daddy to speak. I might as well try to give Dante whiplash.

“I wasn't sure how much butter to use,” I say. “And how was the salad, DJ?”

Same routine, Dante's eyes receding to two little dark dots.

“Fine,” DJ says.

I can't believe no one is talking about food at the dinner table. It's not normal. It doesn't fit into my stereotype of a typical Italian meal. Even commercials for the Olive Garden are noisy with conversation.

I stare into Dante's eyes. “May I try some of those fish filets? They look delicious.”

Dante doesn't even blink. He had already eaten most of them, leaving two small pieces on the platter.

“May I?” I ask, smiling. “I want to get the full Canadian experience.”

Dante still doesn't blink.

I smile at DJ. “DJ, could you pass the fish to me, please?”

DJ looks shaken. Sorry, big guy. I have to mess with your daddy. You just happen to be in the middle.

Dante eventually nods, but he
still
doesn't blink. My eyes would be completely dried out by now.

DJ hands the platter to Red, who holds it out in front of me.

“Grazie,”
I say, and I take one of the filets. I look up. “Does anyone else want this last little bit?”

Lelani's eyebrows rise slightly. I'll bet she has wanted some of these filets for years. I mean, she's from Hawaii. I'll bet she craves fish.

I dish out the last filet to her, and she gobbles it up the second it hits the plate.

I bite into the filet, and it is divine! Lemony, buttery, salty, and peppery—perfect. “You were right, Red. This is good. Bass, is it?”

Red nods. “Smallmouth that Dante caught this morning.”

I flex my arms. “I'm feeling stronger already.”

Red coughs.

After fifteen more seconds of silence, the forks and spoons resume their noise, but no one speaks English or Italian. I have silenced them with the simple “theft” of two smallmouth bass filets.

It is now time for shock and awe.

“So, Red, how is Dante's training going?” I ask brightly. “All I saw was his cliff diving and swimming exhibition.”

Red stares me down.

I roll my eyes. I know I wasn't supposed to talk, Red, but dinner isn't fun without some conversation. And if you haven't figured it out, I'm trying to get under Dante's skin. Some of my most effective interviews took off once I thoroughly pissed off my interviewee.

“His training is going well,” Red says, avoiding Dante's eyes.

I dab my lips with a napkin. “Will he be ready to go all twelve rounds?”

Red bites viciously into a piece of bread. “He could go fifteen rounds if he had to,” he says through clenched teeth.

Hmm. Dante doesn't seem to be fazed. I must not be pushing the right buttons yet. “So, for a boxer at his advanced age, would you say his stamina is poor, fair, or good?”

Red clears his throat and sips some ice water. “His stamina is excellent, Christiana.”

Oh. Throw in my name, as if it will shut me up. “Does Dante have a jab yet?”

Dante's mouth drops open. Good. My words are getting under his skin. The jab is his soft spot. Cool. I'll be jabbing at him all night now.

Red seems to choke and has to drink some more of his ice water. “He's, um, he's working on it.”

I wait for the silence to get louder. “So . . . he
doesn't
have a working jab yet. Don't you think he'll need it? Tank Washington didn't get his nickname from counterpunching. He roars straight ahead. Even a half-hearted jab slows him down. But then again, a half-hearted jab won't stop a man like Tank completely. He's good at wearing his opponents down. He's not very exciting to watch, but Tank is certainly effective.”

Dante finally blinks. He shuts his mouth.

Red glances quickly at Dante, then back to me. “He'll need his full arsenal of punches to—”

“Is Dante getting any stronger?” I interrupt. “His left hook isn't what it used to be. Sure, he knocked Avila out with it, but it wasn't a one-punch knockout. It wasn't even early in the fight. I think I counted
fifteen
left hooks over the first nine rounds before Avila hit the deck. But, Avila, what was he, fifty? He was way past his prime. What did he have, a hundred fights? I think Avila's grandkids were in the audience watching him.”

Dante throws his head back and laughs, shoots bursts of Italian to DJ, and smiles.

Finally. Not exactly the reaction I was expecting, but at least it's a reaction. “What is so funny, Mr. Lattanza?”

Dante nods and continues smiling. “You will find out firsthand tomorrow, Christiana.
Firsthand
. I make a joke.” He stands. “
Andiamo
,” he says to DJ, and the two of them leave, banging out the front door to the deck outside.

Red turns to me, grabbing my forearm. “What are you trying to do?”

I watch Dante, and sure enough, he looks back at me. “I'm just trying to stir the pot a little.” I turn to Red. “I haven't even begun cooking yet, Red.”

“I asked you here to motivate him, not to alienate him,” Red whispers.

“I know what I'm doing, Red,” I whisper back. We're being so clandestine. “And from the way he just laughed, I don't think I'm pissing him off too badly.” I clear my throat and raise my voice. “What were, um, he and DJ saying about me?”

“You don't want to know,” Lelani says. “Really.”

“Oh, but I do,” I say. “It's rude to talk about someone in
front
of their back, too.” Which almost makes sense.

Red sighs. “They were comparing you to
Eve
lyn.”

I smile. “How'd I do?”

“Until you opened your mouth, you were winning,” Red says. “You were beating her on points.”

“Really?” It's nice to be winning. “No knockout, technical or otherwise?”

Red gets up and leaves the table, joining DJ and Dante outside.

“Listen, Christiana,” Lelani says, “I don't understand everything they said about you, but Dante hasn't smiled this much in a long time.”

“He was smiling? All I saw was a man with his mouth open.”

Lelani giggles. “It must be a European thing. I have noticed European males do that all the time.”

“But he's from Brooklyn.”

“There are still lots of Europeans in Brooklyn, Christiana, aren't there?” She squeezes my arm. “Whatever you're doing, just . . . keep it up.”

“I plan to.” I look around. “Did I talk too much for real?”

Lelani nods. “You could be Italian.”

I guess there's a little Italian in every journalist. We don't talk with our hands, though. We couldn't write anything down if we did that.

“Why didn't
you
say anything?” I ask.

“This is a man's world,” Lelani says, stretching and patting her stomach. “Except when Evil Lynn's around, but I don't want to talk about her, Christiana.”

“Call me Tiana.”

She shakes her head. “Here, you are Christiana. It sounds Italian. Dante seems to like saying it.”

“Sheesh, Dante likes it. Dante this, Dante that. Is he the king or what?”

“Yeah,” Lelani says.

“Well, I didn't vote for him.”

Lelani giggles again. She stands and motions me to the kitchen. “This is his castle, he is the king, and we are his subjects.”

But he's a king without a queen. At least until his ex gets here.

Lelani throws me a dishrag as I enter the kitchen. “You wash, I'll dry.”

We are going to have a serious stack of dishes and plenty of pots to do. “That's not fair.”

She fixes me with those purple mood eyes of hers. “I know where everything belongs, and if Red can't find what he's looking for in any of these cabinets, I'll catch hell.” She sighs. “I do most of the dishes around here. It'll be nice to get a little break, okay?”

I turn on the hot water and wait for it to steam. Lelani adds Joy and a capful of bleach to the water. Then I wash the dishes as she brings them in from the table.

It's so
good
to be one of the king's subjects. I hold up a plate. Is this the king's plate? I had better clean it spotless for his highness.

Reporters should never do dishes.

After a lull and cringing at what the bleach will do to my fingers, I ask, “Lelani, how did you meet Red?”

Lelani groans. “Are you interviewing me, too?”

I flip a glob of suds at her. “Shoot. We're just two sisters talking while doing the dishes, and the boys . . .” I see Dante and DJ throwing rocks off the outcropping, Red fiddling with a pair of red boxing gloves. “Are they just . . . throwing rocks?”

“And talking,” Lelani says. “They talk a lot more than anyone I know.”

I smile. “Until you met me.”

She wrinkles up her lips. “True. I just think it's sweet. They are so close, all three of them. Red is almost DJ's grandpa, you know?”

I grab a plate and dunk it in the water. “Now that we're close and they're far away, I have to know more about you and Red.”

Lelani rinses a plate and immediately dries it. “You're curious how a Hawaiian wahine hooked up with a black brother from Brooklyn.”

How alliterative for her to say so. “Well, yeah. What were you doing messing with the men from my neighborhood?”

She smiles. “Red and I met in a kitchen, but not like this one. The one at the Four Seasons. I was working as a hostess slash waitress slash you-name-it.”

“Didn't you . . .” I mimic holding a round card over my head.

“Didn't I what?”

I take a few steps and turn, my hands still over my head.

“What are you doing, Christiana?”

I drop my arms. “Never mind.”

“Anyway,” Lelani says, “Red would fix me something special, new, and unpronounceable at the end of my shifts and offer it to me. When Felix wasn't around.”

“Who's Felix?”

“Felix was the queen of cuisine, if you catch my drift.”

“Drift caught.” I hand her another plate. “Naturally you ate all these exotic dishes.”

“Not at first, but eventually . . . yeah. The man can cook. Red won my stomach first. Back then I had been doing the card girl bit at Madison Square Garden—”

I raise my arms again. “I just asked you if—”

She laughs. “Is
that
what you were doing?”

I nod.

“Girl, let me show you how it is done.” She rolls up her shirt, revealing the flattest stomach I've ever seen, and raises a plate in the air, her face one bright smile. She then circles the butcher block, thrusting her chest forward, shaking her hips wickedly, and posing in front of me at the end. “You just weren't doing it right.” She puts the plate away.

“Oh.” If I ever did that, the cops would arrest me for soliciting.

“Anyway, on a night I was to go out between the third, seventh, and eleventh rounds, I saw Red in Dante's corner.” She shakes her head. “I felt kind of embarrassed, you know, me all in my almost nothingness, but there he was, his eyes never leaving mine. He had to be the only man in Madison Square Garden who
only
looked at my eyes that night.” She rinses a few more plates. “A few days later at work, he told me he liked me.” She looks at her hands. “He said he liked me. Since I was wearing a long coat and boots when he said it, I fell for him.” She flashes those purple eyes at me. “He likes me for my mind.”