Reno Gabrini: A Man in Full (16 page)

Lee extended his hand and Reno began shaking it just as Trina burst into the office.  Both men turned to the sound.  Lee was stunned.  Reno knew exactly why she entered with such urgency. 

Trina exhaled.  They were shaking hands.  She thanked God and exhaled again.

TWELVE

Dommi was running all over their private courtyard in a desperate attempt to evade his parents.  He would run one way, and Reno would chase him.  He would run the opposite way, and Trina would chase him.  And all the while Dommi was grinning so hard that it made Reno and Tree laugh too.

It had been nearly an hour of constant running and playing and Reno was beginning to feel it in his legs.  He ran his son around the yard a few times more, but then he sat down in one of the patio chairs.  But Trina kept at it.  Reno leaned back and watched her.  She always looked as if she was having the time of her life when she was playing with her son.  Reno loved to see it.  He loved the sound of laughter in and around his home nowadays.  In the past he took it for granted.  Now, as he was about to turn forty and felt as if he’d lived the life of a man twice his age, he relished it.

Oddly enough, it was Dommi, not Trina, who eventually ran out of gas. Dommi plopped his little behind on the courtyard, and then laid out exhausted.  Trina grinned and took a seat beside Reno.  She’d barely broke a sweat.

“You guys are so tacky,” she said jokingly.  “Let a female outperform both of you!”

“What are you talking outperform?  I’m taking a breather, that’s all.”

Trina laughed.  “Yeah, right, Reno.  Whatever you say, Reno.”

Reno smiled.  “My ass tired, you’re right,” he admitted.  Trina laughed.  “But it’s all good.”

“Dommi will be sleep shortly,” Trina said.  “Watch what I tell you.  That boy is one predictable young man.  I love that about him.  No surprises with Dommi.”

“Unlike his old man,” Reno said and then looked at her.

“Something like that,” she said with a smile.  Then she turned serious.  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you this,” she said, “but just before Shay made her crazy allegations, I went to check on Jimmy.”

“You checked on him?”

“Yeah.  I knew you and he talked about your previous relationship with Melita, so I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“I don’t think he showed up for work that next day.”

“He didn’t,” Tree said.  “But I found him.  At Melita’s house.”  She said this and looked at Reno. 

Reno looked at her.  “You went to her house?”

“I went there, yup.”

Reno continued to look at her.  “Was Jimmy okay?”

“He was fine.”

“What did you think about them as a couple?”

“Well, that’s the thing.  I think our son is very much in love.”

“And Mel?”

“Very much in lust,” Trina said.  “And I don’t mean sexual lust only, either.  But I’m beginning to think that your wealth may have something to do with her interest in Jimmy.”

But Reno shook his head.  “I already checked that angle.”

Trina looked at him.  “You did?”

“I did.  She’s doing alright for herself.  Her former boyfriend set her up with her own consulting firm and she’s riding pretty high.  I don’t think money’s it.”

“Then what can it be, Reno?  It sure as hell isn’t love.”

“You got that right.  That chick don’t know what love is.”

Sometimes Reno still sounded like the jilted lover to Trina.  But she also knew that he probably still felt like one on some level.  He fell for Melita.  Maybe hard for her.  While she fell hard for somebody else.  Maybe people could never really get over that kind of hurt. 

But the question Trina had been avoiding asking, needed to be asked.  “Do you think she’s trying to worm her way back into your life, Reno?  You think she wants you back?”

Reno smiled, and then laughed, causing Trina to smile too.

“What’s so funny?” she asked him.

“You and that crazy talk,” he said.  “That woman can’t stand me and I can’t stand her.  Trust me on that, Tree.”

“But what could she have against you?  She dumped you!”

“But she thinks I drove her to it.  I didn’t drive her to a damn thing, but that’s how she thinks.”

This interested Trina.  This went to the character of a man, as far as she was concerned. “Why would she think that, though?  Is it because you weren’t exactly faithful to her?”

  Reno looked at her.  He knew why she asked that question.  “I loved her, Trina, and it wasn’t an open relationship.  I was faithful to her.”

Trina inwardly sighed relief.  “Then what’s her problem?  Why is she bothering with Jimmy?”

Reno shook his head as Dommi looked over at his parents.

“Ready to go another round?” Trina yelled to him.

“No ma’am,” Dommi said as he continued to lay there, prompting Trina to laugh.  Then she looked at Reno again.  “You don’t think Jimmy’s in any danger, do you?”

“No.  He’s a Gabrini.  If there’s something like that around him, he’ll sniff it out.”

“And Shay and her allegations.  And for her to accuse Lee like that.   What is going on here, Reno?”

“I’ve been on the phone with everybody I can think of, with mob bosses from the west coast to the east coast and everybody in between.  And I got nothing.  There’s no heat underneath me.  There’s no chatter.  Nothing.  Which means nothing’s going on and Melita’s sudden interest in our son, and Shay’s sudden allegations against me, are just random events. Or it’s what we call a local situation.  It’s personal.”

“Personal?”

“It’s personal, Tree.  Somebody out there, with no connections to nobody else, may have some ax to grind.”

“Which means Lee isn’t off the hook?”

“Lee isn’t off the hook, Melita isn’t off the hook, Shay isn’t off the hook.  No fucker on my Security team is completely off the hook.  Something is up.  But it’s either so subtle I can’t see it, or so glaring I’m missing it.”

 “I heard Shay went abroad,” Trina said.  “At least that’s what the papers say.  They said she was taking some time off and staying out of the public eye for a change.”

“Yeah, she’d better keep a low profile.”  Then Reno exhaled.  “I don’t like when it’s murky like this, Tree.  I don’t like when I don’t know where it’s coming from.  So I have to assume it’s coming from everywhere.  I have to assume that nobody’s trustworthy, except for you and Jimmy.”

Trina smiled.  “Don’t forget Dommi,” she said.

Reno looked at that son of his, as he continued to recoup.  And he smiled too.  “And Dommi,” he said.  “If the world turns against me,” Reno added, “I know I’ll still have the three of you.”

Trina took her husband’s hand, and squeezed it.

Two weeks later and Jimmy saw her walking across the casino floor.

“Ma! Wait up!” he yelled as his tall, lean body hurried around blackjack tables and slot machines toward her.  He made a decision that he knew his father wasn’t going to like.  He needed her advice.

“Off duty already?” Trina asked as he approached her. 

“I want to get your take on something,” he said when he caught up to her. 

“My take on what?” she asked, as she kept walking.  They would have to walk and talk.  In addition to the meetings she had to attend on behalf of the PaLargio, she had to also attend to her store.  She had partners in Champagne’s, but Gemma, her main partner, was out of town, and Liz Mertan, her other partner, wasn’t reliable enough.  She had no time to waste. 

“So how’s it going?” he asked her.

She looked at him.  “It’s going fine, Jimmy, but I know you didn’t leave your station to ask me that.  You know how strict your father is when you guys leave your posts.”

“I know,” he said, and then hesitated again.  Although Trina was only thirteen years older than he was, and they did share a bond, she was his father’s woman through and through.  Which meant he could be honest with her, but only to a point.   He knew he had to proceed cautiously.

But when he didn’t proceed at all, Trina reminded him of the reality.  “Time is not on our side, Jimmy Mack,” she said. “I’ve got a meeting and you’ve got a job.”

“It’s Pop,” he said.

Trina smiled.  “Isn’t it always?”

Jimmy smiled too.  She had a way of relaxing him.  “That’s the truth,” he said.  “But he’s on my case about college again and why I’m taking so few classes every semester.  He’s trying to blame that on Melita too, but she has nothing to do with it.  I told him time and time again that I would rather learn the business and work here at the PaLargio than waste my time taking those courses, but he won’t listen to me.  He keeps saying he wants more for me.  And I’m asking myself what is he talking?  What more could any man want?  The PaLargio is the top of the heap!”

“But he wants you to do better than he did,” Trina explained.   “He doesn’t want you to be that rich man’s son who takes over his father’s business.  He wants you to do something exceptional on your own, the way he did when he left his father’s home at eighteen.  To a man like Reno, who has never seen the inside of a college for himself, he views a college graduate as the top of the heap.”

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s your father.”

Jimmy hesitated again.  “The thing is,” he said, “I’m thinking about dropping out of college.”  He said this and looked at her, to decipher her reaction.

But her expression was hard to decipher.  She looked at him.  “Dropping out?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.  I hate school, Ma.  I mean with a passion.  That’s why I only take like one or two classes a semester.  I feel like I’m wasting my time even when I take those.  But Pop, he don’t understand.  He doesn’t understand me at all.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.  He understands you.”

“He understands the person he thinks I am, but he doesn’t understand who I really am.”

Sometimes Jimmy could be so deep, Trina thought.  Too deep for a kid his age.  She stared at  him.  “What doesn’t he understand about you, Jimmy?”

“He doesn’t understand the way I do things.  Because I don’t go about it the way he thinks I should go about it, he acts like I’m not doing it right.  He acts like what I want doesn’t matter to him.  Sometimes it feels like it’s more about him than it is about me.”

Trina stopped walking and looked at her stepson.  “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said to the young man she loved as if he was her own.  “It’s never about Reno first.  It’s always about his family first.  Always.  He doesn’t want you to go to college to make his dream come true.  He wants you to go to college to make your own dream come true.  He wants you to be your own man, Jimmy, not a clone of him.  He wants you to make your own way.”

“Is that why you opened Champagne’s?” Jimmy asked her.  “To get from under his shadow too?”

Trina wasn’t about to discuss something with Jimmy that was really between her and Reno.  “He wants you to be your own man,” she said again, and began walking again. 

Jimmy continued walking with her, although he knew he was getting farther and farther away from his work station.  He tried to ask her questions about how he could get his father to see that he could still be his own man at the PaLargio, and how college wasn’t some necessary means to that end.  But so many people were coming up to Trina, and waving at her, and talking to her too that he could barely get a word in edgewise. 

Like most days, people inside the PaLargio complimented her on many things, but especially her attire.  Jimmy had noticed it too.  Today she wore a form-fitting periwinkle blue pantsuit with a white scarf, streaked in purple and blue, crisscrossed at the throat.  Her shoes, purple stilettos, rounded out the package.  

Trina thanked them for their compliments, although she never viewed her dress style as anything special at all.  But, to  Jimmy, that was precisely why they loved her style.  She carried herself with what they saw as an
effortless elegance
that she didn’t seem to realize she had.  So they complimented her the way they always complimented her.  And Jimmy asked for her advice whenever someone else wasn’t asking her something.  And it was a normal, super-busy day at the PaLargio. 

But then everything changed. 

Trina’s surefooted, high-stepping glide suddenly became an unsteady slide and she found herself moving sideways, as if she was falling.  If Jimmy Mack had not grabbed her to break her fall, she would have surely hit the floor.  The next thing she knew, because she wasn’t sure if she had momentarily blacked out, it was pandemonium in that section of the massive casino.  Patrons and employees alike were gathering around, Jimmy was sitting her in a chair at one of the slot machines, hushed whispers of
That’s Reno Gabrini’s wife
could be heard in her ears as if they weren’t whispering, but shouting out loud.

“I’m okay,” she kept saying, hating all the fuss, but they would not relent.  Reno Gabrini was their boss, and she was their boss’s wife.  They treated her, not like a woman who simply got a little weak and needed to sit down, but as if she’d been hit by a speeding truck and needed emergency care.

“I’m fine,” she said again as bottled water was shoved to her lips.  She drank it, because she did feel dizzy, but she hated the fuss.  “I’m just a little dehydrated,” she added as she drank.  “I’m fine.”

After several more minutes of trying to end the fuss with continual declarations of being fine, of being okay, of just being a little dehydrated but was now good as gold, she decided to take matters into her own hands.  These people weren’t listening to reason.  They wanted to impress Reno with their concern for her and was determined to make sure she understood that.  But enough was enough.

To the consternation of the crowd, she began to stand up.  She was stubborn as a mule when she wanted to be, and everybody who worked inside the PaLargio knew it.  But Jimmy knew it even better than they did.  That was why he didn’t dissuade her.

She clutched his arm as she stood to her feet.  “Get me upstairs,” she ordered him, even though she still felt dizzy.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, helping her away from the crowd.

“And don’t you dare tell Reno,” she added as they walked.