Belonging (9 page)

We visited for another twenty minutes
before I told them I had to go and rose to my feet. I invited them
both to Sunday dinner and told them, “Nana would love to see you
and there’s always room for a couple more.”

“Thanks, but we’ll have to take a
raincheck,” Christian said. “My appetite always takes a few days to
come back online after a round of chemo. Plus, I’ll be asleep by
nine, my energy’s shot. Maybe next Sunday, though. I’ll probably be
back to my old self by then.”

*****

“Please tell me you’re not souping
that up so it’ll go faster.” I’d returned home to find the limo in
the driveway with the hood up and Jessie partly stuffed inside the
big engine compartment.

He hopped out and looked up
at me with a smile. He was dressed in red Converse, denim cut off
shorts, and backwards-facing red baseball cap. The thing that
really made the outfit though was a bright yellow t-shirt with a
cartoon of a basketball and hoop that said:
Work it around the rim before you sink it
in
. “I’m giving the Nanamobile a tune up.
It might go faster by the time I’m done with it, but that’s not
currently the goal.”

“Not currently?” I repeated and his
smile got wider.

“I told you I’m not going to do
anything to endanger Nana, but come on, seventy-five? That’s just
weak.”

I suppressed a sigh and started to
head inside, but he called after me, “Oh hey, heads up when you
open the front door.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. Just be
ready.”

“That’s ominous.”

“Oh wait, I have something that’ll
help you.” With that he pulled a piece of fairly melted American
cheese out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Be sure to take the
wrapper off before you throw it.”

“Why the hell would I be throwing
American cheese?”

“You’ll see.” He was smiling when he
crawled back under the hood.

I knit my brows at him, then went into
the house and shut the door behind me. Nothing happened. What
exactly was I supposed to be ready for?

I found out about two seconds later.
I’d made it across the foyer and was about to climb the stairs when
something big and brown came barreling toward me from the back of
the house. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed as the thing (a dog? A bear? A
wookie?) jumped up on me, then tried to eat my shoes. I told it to
stop, but the creature totally ignored that, wagging its tail
wildly and grabbing my laces with its teeth.

As I struggled to remain upright, I
fumbled with the cellophane wrapper, which was, of course, stuck to
the cheese (why would Jessie put it in his pocket?!) and finally
managed to dislodge some and throw it onto my grandmother’s marble
floor. The thing inhaled it like a vacuum and tried to go back to
my sneakers. I scraped a little more cheese off with my fingernails
and said, “Go get it, Chewbacca!” I threw it farther this time, and
the creature went after it while I turned and bolted up the stairs.
As I ran, I got the last of the cheese off the wrapper. The dog
(probably) came bounding after me and really tried his damnedest to
trip me in his quest to eat my footwear. Somehow, I made it to my
bedroom door and threw the last of the cheese before diving inside
and slamming the door shut behind me. The animal stood out in the
hall whining as I pulled out my phone and called my
grandmother.

“Hi Johnnie, where are you?” Nana
asked when she answered.

“Upstairs. Do you know there’s a
bear-wookie hybrid in the house?”

“Do you mean Tom Selleck?”

“Tom
Selleck?
”

“The puppy! Isn’t he
sweet?”

“That thing’s a puppy? What
kind?”

Nana said, “The brown
kind.”

I fought back a sigh (I found myself
doing that a lot around my family) and asked, “Whose is
he?”

“Mine. I adopted him this
afternoon.”

“My God, why?”

“Why not?”

I had to ask. “Why did you name him
that?”

“Because he looks like Tom
Selleck.”

“He
really
doesn’t.”

“Sure he does,” Nana insisted. “Tom
Selleck is a total fox, and the puppy is such a handsome
boy!”

“He is?”

“Didn’t you notice?”

“No. I was too busy trying not to fall
flat on my face while he was eating my shoes. Do you really not
know what kind of dog he is?” I asked.

“He’s a mixed breed. Possibly part
Saint Bernard, and then something to give him that long hair. We’re
not entirely sure.” Nana swore and said, “I gotta go, my sauce is
about to boil over.”

“Do you need help cooking?”

“Nah. Dante and sweet Charlie are
helping me. You just keep playing with Tom Selleck.” With that, she
hung up on me. I shook my head and went to pick the cheese out from
under my fingernails.

*****

I ended up reading for a couple hours
after I got cleaned up, emerging when I heard the doorbell. The
house was completely still. Apparently the wookie was out somewhere
with the rest of my family.

Chance Matthews stood on the front
stoop, looking a bit uncomfortable. He wore a long-sleeved shirt,
tie, and dress pants, his normally shaggy dark brown hair neatly
combed. “Hey, Gianni. Your grandmother invited me for Sunday
dinner, but she hung up before telling me what time to be here. Am
I early?”

“Yeah, but that’s fine. We usually eat
at seven.”

“Oh! Shit, it’s only five-thirty. I’ll
come back later.”

“No, don’t go. Come on in and have a
drink with me so we can catch up. I haven’t seen you since the
cruise.” At Christmastime, Nana had gotten the whole family onto a
Hawaiian cruise and ambushed Vincent and Trevor with a surprise
wedding ceremony. Chance, who was a friend of Christian’s, had been
the photographer and I’d gotten to know him a bit during that week
at sea.

“Well, if you’re sure I’m not
interrupting.”

“You’re not at all,” I said as I held
the door open for him and he came into the foyer. “I was hiding in
my room because my grandmother adopted an incredibly rambunctious
dog. I guess they took it for a walk or something, since it’s not
attacking our feet right now.”

I made us some cocktails and we
carried them into the living room. As we settled onto the couch,
Chance looked around and said, “This place is amazing. I knew Nana
was well-off, but damn. This is the most beautiful home I’ve ever
been in.”

“It’s all very Nana,” I told him. The
living room was decorated around a huge Persian rug, picking up its
gold and deep red tones in the upholstered furniture and in the
artwork. That tasteful foundation all went a bit askew, because the
room was cluttered with family photos, random antiques and
knickknacks that appealed to my grandmother.

“I um...I heard your family is in the
mafia and that’s how you made all this money.” He seemed
embarrassed to bring it up. “That’s not really true, is
it?”

“It
was
true, for many generations. My
father started to move the family away from the illegal end of
things and my oldest brother Dante continued us on that path before
stepping back and letting our cousin Jerry run things. All three of
them have made a lot of smart investments and found ways to
generate legitimate income for the family, so overall, we’re not
really in that line of work anymore.”

“Overall?”

I took a sip of my drink and settled
back against the couch. “With a history as long as ours, you can’t
really throw your hands up one day, say ‘I’m done’ and then just
walk away. The Dombrusos made plenty of enemies over the years.
Because of that, there’s still a need to remain strong, if you know
what I mean.” He made an effort to take that in stride, even though
I knew how crazy it sounded.

After we chatted for a few minutes, he
glanced at me and said, “This is going to sound stupid, but would
you let me photograph you? I’m taking a photography class at City
College and I’m supposed to find a model and do a detailed study.
If you don’t mind me saying so, you’re incredibly good-looking and
I think it would be fun to do you.” When I chuckled at that, his
blue eyes went wide and he exclaimed, “Oh shit! I just meant it’d
be fun to make you the subject of the study.”

“I know,” I said with a
smile.

“It was dumb of me to ask, though. I’m
sure you have better things to do besides helping me with some
community college assignment.”

“I’d be happy to pose for you, and I’m
flattered that you asked.”

“Oh wow, really?”

“Sure. I have to ask, though. Why are
you taking a class at City College when you’re already a
professional photographer?”

“Oh, I’m not a professional. Far from
it,” Chance said. “I just lucked into doing that wedding
photography for Nana and some engagement portraits for Christian’s
friend Skye. That’s the only time anyone’s ever paid me to take
pictures. That’s my dream job though, so I decided to take some
classes and try to put a portfolio together so I can work toward
that goal.”

“Well, you could have fooled me. I saw
the wedding pictures you took and they were incredible. I doubt
that class is going to teach you much since you’re already so
talented.”

“Thank you for saying that.” He looked
a bit embarrassed by my praise.

“So, what do you do for a living?” I
asked.

“I...um,” he hesitated, but then he
looked me in the eye and said, “I’m a prostitute.” He squared up
his shoulders a little, as if planning to go on the
defensive.

Even though that wasn’t the answer I
was expecting, it didn’t really phase me. I smiled at him and said,
“You can relax. I’m not about to judge you for it.”

“Is that because you’re a prostitute,
too?”

I grinned at that. “No. Why, did
someone tell you I was?”

“Shit. Sorry. Nana did say something,
but it’s none of my business.”

“She tells people I’m a gigolo
sometimes,” I said. “It’s not true, but I guess in Nana’s mind,
that’s the only way she can make sense of me.”

“That’s exactly what she said. So
you’re not a male escort?”

“No, not at all. I have a habit of
dating older men and women, and some of them have happened to be
well-off. Since my preferences are totally incomprehensible to my
grandmother, she latched on to that idea as a way of explaining my
past relationships.”

Chance looked surprised. “And you just
let her keep thinking her grandson is an escort?”

I shrugged and said, “I don’t consider
it an insult, and she doesn’t condemn me for it. Besides, letting
her think that is so much easier than trying to explain myself to
her. Or to the rest of my family, for that matter.”

“You shouldn’t have to explain
yourself to anyone. So you prefer a certain type. That just is what
it is.”

“Exactly.”

The front door opened and my nephews
burst in, followed by my brother. “Hi Mikey,” I said as he came
into the living room. “Remember Chance? You met him on the
cruise.”

The two shook hands and exchanged
greetings as MJ ran past us into the kitchen, yelling, “Where’s the
puppy?”

“I think they took him for a walk,” I
said.

That was met with a big,
“Awwwww!”

“We wanted to meet him!” Markie
exclaimed.

“You will. They’ll be back soon,” I
told him.

“Can we go play in the treehouse until
the puppy comes home?” Mitchell asked, and when their dad nodded,
the three boys headed for the back door and ran outside.

“They’ve been begging me for a dog and
I’ve been resisting,” Mikey told us. “Now that Nana’s gotten a
puppy, it’ll probably kick their begging into
overdrive.”

“Resistance is futile,” I said. “Just
break down and get them a dog.”

“But what do we do with it while I’m
at work all day?”

“Hire a dog walker to come in and look
after it,” I suggested.

“Well, crap. That was one of my best
arguments against getting a dog and you just totally shot it down.”
Mikey looked through the kitchen and sun porch and said, “Is it my
imagination, or are there two rows of giant penises in the
yard?”

“This family is nothing if not
classy,” I said with a smile. When Mikey raised an eyebrow at me, I
added, “Apparently it wasn’t intentional. Nana just wanted round
hedges. Somehow, neither she nor Vincent put two and two together
until Cockhenge was a done deal.”

“And they’re leaving it that
way?”

“I think Nana kind of likes
it.”

Mikey said, “Why is it that I always
feel like I need a drink when I come over here?”

“We’re way ahead of you,” I said,
raising my glass. “Dive on in.”

“I think I will.” Mikey headed to the
kitchen.