The Domino Effect (14 page)

I told her about the restaurant Ronnie used to have in the old neighborhood, and how we used to eat there all the time.

“What happened to it?” she asked.

“It closed down.”

“No,” she said frowning. “Why?”

I loved Brenda. She could care about someone she just met a minute ago.

I shrugged as Ronnie approached with a pen and pad, glasses back down.

“So what can I get ya?”

“Menus would be nice,” I said with a wink.

“Ah, Domino,” he laughed, trying to bust some capillaries on my cheek with a pinch. “So much like your father.” He was tough on the cheeks, that guy.

“I’m just joking, Ronnie,” I said, rubbing my face. “What’s good here?”

“Everything!” he shouted. “We got some of the best Latin cooks in all of Little Italy.”

Brenda and I laughed.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “I’m the only Italian in the whole joint.”

“But the food’s good, right?”

“It’s fantastic,” he declared. “I arrange for all the food – I got beef coming in from Montana, you believe that? Montana! All these other guys around here are serving Jersey cows.”

“Good thing” I said. “Because Brenda won’t even look at a cow from Jersey.”

She kicked me under the table.

“What?” Ronnie asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just kidding around.”

“I thought maybe we had one them veterinarians on our hands.”

I opened my mouth, but Brenda kicked it closed with another shot to the shin.

“No, no, we’re good on anything, Ronnie,” I said politely. “What do you like?”

“Tell you what, just sit tight and I’ll take care of ya, how’s that?”

Brenda and I consulted without words and smiled back at Ronnie.

“Good, good!” he said. “I’ll get you started with some vino.”

We drank Chianti and shared a platter of olives, bread sticks, and prosciutto. The red wine was good, kind of fruity, and we sipped it as we ate our way through a plate of clams casino that was thick with garlic and lemon and crumbs. We wiped our plates with warm bread. After washing down a bowl of Bolognese with more wine, Brenda was unable to hide the smile that kept turning up her wine-stained lips.

“What?” I asked, putting my glass down on the table. “What is it?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, trying to appear innocent.

“Come on, I can see the wheels turning over there.”

“I’m just having fun,” she said, shifting her eyes toward the window.

She watched the locals and tourists walk by, but her smile kept coming back.

“Still just having fun?” I asked.

“Sure am,” she said, then added, after a pause, “Domino.”

“Oh,” I moaned. “Thought you might have missed that.”

“No chance.”

I sipped some wine.

“So?” she asked, with her eyebrows up. “What’s it all about, Domino?”

“Oh,
marrone,”
I mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, Danny,” she said, putting her hand on mine. “You never talk about your home or family, and I feel like I’m getting a chance to know you better, that’s all.”

“I don’t know much about your family either, Bren.”

We never talked much about our separate lives. We knew simple things, of course, but I didn’t dig because, to me, her past was full of boyfriends I didn’t want to know about. I didn’t want her to know about my history either, so we were still sort of strangers in a way. Not for long, though, thanks to Mr. Face Molester and his cries of “Domino!”

“You’re right,” she said, “you don’t know much about my family, but we’re here now with a friend of yours, who calls you by a secret name and says you’re just like your father.” She sat back and smirked.

“You’ve had too much to drink, right?”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

“You’re reminding me of Meeks right now, you know that?”

She didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“OK, Bren.” I pretended to be had. “My father’s name is Dominick, and people think I take after him and, in Italian, ‘ino’ is added to the end of a word to mean ‘little,’ like
uccello
is bird and
uccellino
is little bird, so they used to call me little Dom, or Domino. Domino.”

“That’s so cute,” she smiled. “You look alike, that’s it?”

“And maybe we’re both funny sometimes, too.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe there was more to it than that.”

“What can I tell you?” I said. “Now how about a little more wine?”

We continued our slow lunch, dripping honey over Gorgonzola cheese until we couldn’t eat another bite. I motioned to Ronnie but, instead of bringing the check, he showed up with a hunk of meat from Montana big enough to feed the whole state.

“
Bistecca per tre,”
he said, placing the gigantic platter on the table. “You guys don’t mind if I join you, do you?”

“No, no, of course not, Ronnie,” I said.

“Good. You want some roasted potatoes with this?” he asked, squeezing lemon wedges all over the carved steak.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve already had a lot.” I leaned back and patted my stomach.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “We’ll have beans.”

Ronnie stormed the kitchen and returned with some white beans in tomato sauce and another bottle of wine. He filled our glasses and plates and helped himself to a heaping portion. Brenda and I picked at our food while Ronnie cut and stabbed and chewed like a madman.

“So,” Brenda said to Ronnie after most of the steak, half the beans, and all the wine had been devoured. “Danny and his father look alike?”

“Those two?” he laughed, while I cringed. “Fortunately for this guy, he resembles his
mutha.”

“Really?” Brenda asked, with her eyes on me. “How so?”

“Don’t get me wrong, his father’s the greatest,” Ronnie said, still chomping away on the food, “but he’s a short guy, like me, and, you know, normal looking, I guess, but this guy’s
mutha…
this guy’s
mutha
is tall and skinny, like him, and what a looker, that one.”

My face prickled as my insides twisted.

“You know,” Ronnie continued, “around the neighborhood, people called her the Italian Audrey Hepburn!”

“Breakfast at Anthony’s,” I mumbled. It was the joke our family always made about that comparison.

“They don’t call her that anymore?” Brenda asked.

“They might,” Ronnie said, tossing a napkin over his bloody plate, “if they were still around.”

“Where are they?”

“Have him tell you,” Ronnie said. “Now who wants coffee or something sweet?”

“Just a coffee for me, Ronnie,” I begged.

“How about you, Doll?”

“Something sweet,” Brenda said.

“Thatta
girl,” Ronnie said, and was off for the back.

“What’s he talking about?” Brenda leaned toward me and whispered. “Is that why he doesn’t have a restaurant anymore?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“Why are you being so secretive, Danny?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are,” she insisted. “And it’s so annoying. I want to know what he’s talking about, about your name and the neighborhood, and don’t get clever.”

She was demanding and nervous, kind of like when she bugged me about the wrestlers. I didn’t want to talk about this subject, either.

“I’m just trying to save you from a boring story.”

Ronnie arrived with a tray full of coffees, liquor, and dessert.

“Allora,”
he said, sitting down. “What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” I said, splashing some Sambuca into my demitasse cup.

“Ronnie,” Brenda said, sitting up straight, her spoon stuck into a pale-green mountain of pistachio gelato. “Domino doesn’t seem to be in a storytelling mood, and I’m curious about what happened to all the people.”

“We left.”

“Why?”

“Because the Spics came into our neighborhood and took the place over.” He said it matter-of-fact, like he wasn’t the only Italian in the whole joint. I downed the espresso and asked for the check.

“Sure thing, kid,” he said getting up. “I know it’s late.”

We didn’t speak until Ronnie returned.

“No, no, no,” I insisted to Brenda as she reached for her black shoulder bag.

“That’s right, Doll,” Ronnie said. “Yours was free, and his was heavily discounted.” He gave me a folded-up piece of paper. I forked over the measly sum and thanked him for the meal.

“Hey, it was my pleasure,” he said, and patted the back of my head. “Tell your folks I was asking for them, and don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” I said, helping Brenda with her coat.

“Thanks, Ronnie,” Brenda said.

“Anytime, Doll.” He gave her a kiss. “Take care of yourself.”

We walked outside, but the cool air was little relief to the sickness that filled me. I had lied to Brenda about my name and got caught, which was bad enough, but she also got a taste of what happened back home, what scarred my head and convinced me to change my name in the first place. Wrenched by all these awful emotions and memories, I walked up Mulberry Street, steady as I could, for as long as I could. Then I ducked into an alley and tossed a heavily discounted lunch behind a dumpster.

“Danny!” Brenda screamed as my guts splashed on the asphalt.

I held my hand out to the side, to assure her everything was alright. After spitting the remnants of Montana from my mouth, I bought a club soda from a bodega and took it to a small park on Spring Street.

“Just tell me you’re OK,” Brenda said once we sat on a bench.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said after washing my mouth out.

“Did you drink too much?”

I’d been drinking around the table with my parents since I was 12 years old. I’d never been drunk, or sick, ever.

“It ain’t that,” I admitted. “But all that about my father and the neighborhood and everything.”

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“OK,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

I took some more water. The sun slanted high on the buildings and shadows covered the ground. Under the bare branches of a peeling Sycamore tree, in the cool of a lateautumn day, I told Brenda Divine the story of me and my old neighborhood. When I was finished with the first year of high school, I parted my hair and let her feel my scar with her fingers. She started to cry, right there on the spot. Then she crossed her arms, tucked into herself, and kept on crying, hard, rocking slowly back and forth.

“It’s alright, Bren.” I tried to console her. “You don’t have to cry for me.”

“I’m not,” she sobbed.

I looked around. “Who you crying for then?”

“All of us.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she said, wiping tears from under each eye. “Please tell me that was the end of it.”

I lied and told her it was, figuring the poor kid had heard enough of my sad story.

We sat in the park, with my arm around her shoulder, until dark spots started to appear. We grabbed a cab uptown to Grand Central, for her train to Connecticut and my subway to Queens. After we said our goodbyes and her train rolled away, I remembered she’d come to the city to talk to me. I’d feared that conversation, as soon as she’d brought it up, and figured, now, it couldn’t have been that important. I was wrong. Something had had an effect on her, something big, and I couldn’t be kept from that.

Chapter 8

O
n Sunday afternoon, after a subway to Grand Central, I caught a bus going west out of the city. Once the ride smoothed out on the highway, I stared out the window as we rolled along Route 80 and the horizon faded into the cool blue of late afternoon. The trees couldn’t go by fast enough. After dark, a reflection appeared in the window, the face of a kid on his way to the place where he belonged. I tapped my feet the rest of the way and practically jogged from the bus stop in town, across campus, and into the dorm.

I walked upstairs, opened the door, and hit the lights. I thought for a second that I had the wrong room. Everything was upside down, or broken, or torn. The mattresses had been stripped and pissed on, our clothes were all over the floor, our desks turned over, and our books and papers scattered like leaves. All my posters were in a crumpled pile in the corner, except for Christy Turlington, who was laid out neatly in the center of the room, a dry stain of pearls down her face and neck. Across the window, in soap, someone had scrawled “THEIR.”

I dropped my bags and went for Mr. Wright. He followed me down and frowned at the mess. He didn’t say anything for awhile, just rubbed his beard.

“OK,” he eventually said. “I will call the custodian and have him bring two new mattresses. In the meantime, Daniel, if you could be so kind as to begin cleaning this up. The van from the airport is due in at around 8. Mr. King can help you then.”