The Real Thing (5 page)

“C'mon,
and
your body.” And those eyes. She should be an eye model. Do they have those? “Did you ever do a Hawaiian Tropic calendar?”

She blinks. “That was ages ago, when I was twenty-five.”

“Ages ago?”

“Girl, I'm forty.”

I
hate
her! I hate her a
lot
. Hawaiians must never age. “I never would have guessed it.”

“I love getting carded.”

I rarely get carded! Life is so unfair. Forty! That's just not fair. She has the flawless skin of a teenager but without the acne and baby fat, not a single wrinkle or worry line, and her body is sculpted. Hey, wait a minute. “I've been thinking of having a breast reduction.” Not. “Have you ever had any work done?”

“Like implants or Botox?”

I
knew
it! She brought up the B word, not me. “Yes.”

“No.”

I
hate
her! I hate her even
more
than a lot! Some women have all the luck. Wait. They're not married. Hmm. Maybe there's trouble in paradise. “So why aren't you two married?”

Lelani sighs. “After twelve years you'd think we'd be married, but we're not. We came into this thing with no preconceived notions of how a relationship was supposed to be. We were both raised by single parents, so we had no firsthand knowledge of what a good marriage was.”

And neither do I.

Granddaddy raised me, and most of the couples I witnessed as a child in Red Hook were unmarried. They seemed to drift into a relationship, fight a lot during the relationship, and fight even harder to get out of the relationship. And even when the relationship ended, they
still
fought. I don't remember anyone so much as holding hands—during the day, now—in Red Hook. Edgar and Marion Moody were the only married people Granddaddy and I knew, and they lived just across the hall from us, where they fussed and fumed all week, slamming doors and probably each other. They only seemed to love each other on payday over a couple bottles of wine. Then Edgar would have one drink too many, Marion would remind him of the previous week's mayhem, and they were at each other's throats again, their screaming matches echoing long into the night. “Them sure are some
moody
people,” Granddaddy used to joke, and it wasn't long before I associated marriage with moodiness and screaming matches. “I'm never getting married,” I once told Granddaddy, “cuz I wanna be happy.”

Lelani places another plate in the cabinet. “Red and I even have an agreement that if either one of us wants out, it's cool. No reasons or explanations necessary.”

I don't know if I like the open-endedness of that. Just . . . poof! I'm out! Later! Gotta go! “But twelve years has to prove something to you, right?”

“I don't think I'll ever get tired of Red,” she says. “And I guess, so far, he's not tired of me.”

Red would be out of his mind if he ever tired of Lelani. They make the most handsome couple. “Didn't you ever want children?”

“I couldn't.”

I shouldn't have asked that. “Oh, you can't have—”

“I'm sure I can. I just couldn't very well have a child if there were no guarantees her father would be in her life, right?”

Beautiful and smart. Lelani is a lethal combination. “So . . . Red doesn't want children.” I am getting far too nosy, but I can't help myself. It's in my blood.

“Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't. You see, Red's main loyalty lies with Dante, not with me.”

“And you're okay with that?”

“Not completely, but, yeah, I'm okay with it. It's something I can count on in a world where there isn't much written in stone, you know? I can always count on those two being friends. Always. They have been through so much together. All those victories, those defeats, the divorce, the comeback. I'm just fortunate to be along for the ride.” She smiles. “I have been to so many places with Red, so many . . .” She laughs. “So many restaurants. I think he chooses cities for their cuisine. We've been to New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Boston, New York, Memphis, Toronto, Pittsburgh—”

“Pittsburgh!”

“For the Polish food. I am getting a North American education in food, and Red is my tour guide. We'll be going to Montreal sometime this month.”

And she doesn't gain a single ounce. Have I mentioned that I hate her?

“I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's,” she says. “I've been happy for quite a while, thank you very much.”

“And to think Red said you were jaded,” I say, handing her a glass. “You're anything but.”

“Oh, I just don't know you yet.” She bumps me with one of those teenager's hips of hers, and it hurts a little. I'll probably bruise. Does she work out, too? Geez! I need to get into shape just to do the dishes around here.

“I'm not going to be here that long,” I say.

“Oh, you'll be here at least for two more days, right?”

I nod.

“I'll get cynical soon enough. I mean, here I am, a wahine ten thousand miles from home, a glorified gopher for the most brilliant sous chef in New York who's
not
working as a sous chef in New York because he's a boxer's gopher, best man, trainer, and confidant. The folks in Barry's Bay still think I'm a Chippewa Indian. How could I
ever
be jaded? I'm just a small town
kaikamahine
from Maui.”

I bump her back, and I'm sure it hurts me more than it hurts her. I like Lelani's attitude and personality, but that forty-year-old body of hers needs a dent or something. And I bet that if she had even one kid, she wouldn't get a single stretch mark. “What's ka-ka-ma-he-nay mean?”

“It means ‘girl.' A wahine is a lady or woman. I'm still just a girl.” She tosses back her mane of black hair.

“I hate you,” I say.

She laughs.

“Did I say that out loud?”

She nods.

“Don't you age?”

“I try not to.”

I raise my eyebrows. “It must be Red's cooking.”

“Yeah, he can cook.” She bites her lower lip. “But I'd like to think it's more than that. Most of the Canadians I've met don't look their age. It must be all the fresh, clean air and water up here.”

I may have to retire here if I can look like a teenager for the rest of my life. I may even get some purple contacts. I doubt I could ever grow my hair out as long as hers. What that must be like to take care of!

We finish up and go through the dining area into a great room filled with sofas and chairs semicircled in front of a huge stone fireplace, a flat screen TV attached to the stones above the mantle. A fire roaring, soft music playing, stars twinkling in the sky—this is one romantic room. But where are the men? I look past the dining area and see a screened porch where Red, DJ, and Dante are playing cards.

“What are they playing?” I whisper to Lelani, who drops onto a sofa and kicks up her long, toned legs.

“Cutthroat spades. It's all they ever play.” She digs for and finds a remote control beneath the cushions. She clicks on the TV and tunes into the Food Channel. “I can sometimes tempt Red away from the game by watching this channel.” She looks at her man. “Probably not tonight. He must be losing.”

I peer at the screen, expecting to hear French. Nope. As rustic as this place is, it definitely has all the comforts of home.

I'm in a snooping mood, so I browse a bookcase full of scrapbooks and photo albums, each with a date on the spine. I pick the one with the earliest date and curl up near the fire where I can shoot glances at Dante and keep my feet warm at the same time.

The first scrapbook contains some ancient black-and-white pictures of scary-looking Italians with thick moustaches and serious-looking Mafia hats.

And those are just the women!

I'm kidding.

A little.

I think those are women.

I
hope
those are women.

Some of the men have bundles of rags on a cart. Others have carts filled with junk. There aren't any names or captions, so I assume they're some of Dante's ancestors. I can't tell where these people are, but it could be old New York City or Palermo or Rome or—

There is so much that I
don't
know about Dante Lattanza.

Ah. A baby picture. Dante was cute, squinting even then. His nose was actually straight once? Amazing. Those eyes of his were penetrating even then. A family portrait takes up the entire next page. His mother is a frail-looking thing, his father a beast with hairy arms and eyebrows, a tuft of hair billowing up from under his shirt. The man probably had to shave his chest.

The next page contains a picture of his father in a military uniform. I do some mental math. I'll bet his daddy served in Vietnam. Two more pictures of Dante and his mama follow. I flip through the rest of the book and see no more family pictures of any kind, just collages of Brooklyn scenes, some vaguely familiar. No brothers, no sisters, no aunts, no birthdays. Just . . . scenes. No more family portraits either. Did his daddy run off? Did he die in Vietnam? Did he stop taking pictures? What?

I smile at Dante's first boxing picture. His red gloves are as big as his head, and he is so skinny! His shorts pass his knees, and his wife-beater T-shirt is three times too big. But those eyes . . . I've seen those eyes before. Those little black dots. I chuckle. His left hand is at his hip. That man hasn't had a jab or any kind of defense from the very beginning.

I look up and catch Dante's eyes flitting away from me. Hmm. He has been checking me out. I had better give him more to see then. Leisurely and she-wolflike, I go to the bookcase to get as many scrapbooks as I can carry, almost clearing out a row, flexing my butt and getting a little hippy on my walk back to the couch. Lelani taught me well. As I sit, I feel Dante's eyes piercing me. That fire sure is hotter than it was a few minutes ago.

Is he still looking . . . ? No.

Fewer pictures and more clippings fill the next scrapbooks I open. I see Dante winning the Golden Gloves and . . . Is that the Olympic trials? I didn't know he tried out for the Olympic team. It's quite an honor just to be part of the trials. I glance from a picture of him at eighteen to the forty-two-year-old playing cards. He really hasn't aged that much either. The air up here has been kind to him as well.

The next scrapbook, thicker than all the others, chronicles his pro career. Clippings from
Ring, Newsday,
the
Times, Sports Illustrated,
and
Sporting News
abound and include some of my old articles. What do you know? I actually praised the man a few times. I also notice that I used the phrase “vaunted left hook” in three different articles. Well, it used to be vaunted. I must have liked that phrase, not that I'll ever use it again. I run a phrase through my head: “Undaunted and with a haunted look in his eyes, Dante wanted to flaunt his left hook. . . .”

Shelley would
taunt
that phrase to death.

Look at all these . . . Wait a minute. Where are his wedding pictures? I check the date on the spine. If DJ is sixteen, then there should be wedding pictures or at least a few shots of Evelyn in this one. Maybe there's a separate wedding album somewhere. I flip through and see nothing but clippings and articles. Maybe Evelyn has the album. Either that or Dante put it away after the divorce.

The last article is win number forty-seven, but the rest of the book is blank. I can tell his two losses were once in here, bits of tape covering newsprint in the corners. I'll bet my last few articles were in here once, and now they're hanging in Dante's room.

Hmm. I have to find that room. I may have to do a little recon . . .

The last scrapbook records his comeback. Three fights, pictures of his bloody face brooding in one corner while the referee counts down his opponent in the other. I count fifteen different articles after the third fight, one of which details his rematch with Tank Washington.

The rest of the book is blank, but stuck in between two pages is a picture of Evelyn and Dante. My heart flutters a little because it looks so recent. This might be a shot of one of their dates. I wish I could say Evil Lynn was anorexic with a white booty, no hips, bug eyes, bony arms, and a bad perm, but she's actually a nice-looking woman. She doesn't look anything like a diva or a shrew. Dante's eyes are only for her in the picture, and his smile is . . .

Damn.

He still loves her.

I've
never
had a man look at
me
like that.

Her eyes, though, are straight ahead, as if she's in charge of the universe. Maybe she is. She still seems to be in charge of Dante's universe. Coiffed and dressed to perfection, Evelyn is beautiful in a Dorothy Dandridge's skinny half-sister kind of way. Paparazzi wouldn't necessarily swarm this woman if she was an actress, and though I don't know her at all, I'm sure she'd have plenty of interesting things to say. I can see why she wouldn't like it up here. Other than present company, there's no one to see her, to walk behind her to hold her train, to bask in her queenly aura.

And Red says I remind him of her? Red needs glasses. I don't have a face like hers. When I turn sideways, people still see me.

I riffle through the scrapbooks again, and I get an idea. Dante's life would make a nice book, maybe an “as told to” autobiography. These pictures—well, maybe not the last one that's stressing me out so much—would be interspersed throughout, and these scrapbooks already form the outline of the book. It would be an easy write. He has to beat Tank Washington, however, for it to sell. If he can become champion again, it could be a best seller. It's a nice idea, but . . .