The Real Thing (9 page)

Chapter 12

W
e face each other in the middle of the ring.

“I will play southpaw,” he says. “Shadow me.”

I try to mirror him as best I can, my legs unsteady at first, but eventually I'm moving forward, backward, and side to side like him a full beat after him. He throws a right jab, and I throw a left jab. He throws a right hook, and I throw a left hook.

“Chin down,” he tells me.

Ow. Even that hurts.

“Bene,”
he says, even though I'm not snapping my punches anymore.

“Molto bene,”
he chuckles when I nearly corkscrew myself into the canvas trying to throw a left hook.

While we literally dance, he says
“lentamente”
and
“ot-timo”
and
“seta.”

“What's
seta
mean?” I ask.

“Silk,” he says softly. “You move like silk . . .”

His voice is like silk, too.

He switches back to his normal, conventional stance, and DJ joins us in a game that reminds me of Twister. Red says, “Double jab cross,” and we do it. “Right jab left hook . . . Chop some wood . . . Jab uppercut cross . . .”

“Time!”

I am beginning to love that word. It is a good word.

“Now, we rest,” Dante says. “DJ, check the gas in the ski boat. If it is low, go to the landing and fill it up.”

DJ nods and leaves. He is such a dutiful son.

Dante helps me with my gloves and starts sweeping pine needles and dust from the canvas with an old broom.

“I'll do it,” Red says. “There's some fresh lemonade down there.”

Sugar. I need sugar.

“Shall we?” Dante nods down the hill.

“Sure.” I take a step. “
Andiamo,
right?”

He smiles.
“Andiamo.”

After I suck down several glasses of lemonade, Dante leads me to the outcropping, sitting on a bench made out of half a log and two stumps.

“Tell me about Red Hook,” Dante says. “I am sure it has changed since I was there last.”

“It's always changing,” I say.

“From the beginning,” he says.

“From the beginning . . . of time?”

He smiles. “Your time. Since you were
femminuccia,
a little girl.”

“Oh.” He wants my life story. I guess that's okay. “Well, I grew up on ‘the Front.'” The Front is the nickname for Brooklyn's largest housing project. Over half the residents of Red Hook live there.

“You lived in the Red Hooks?” he asks. “Wasn't that
pericoloso
?”

“For most of the time I lived there, it wasn't so bad,” I say. “I lived on Lorraine, what folks called ‘Peyton Place.' The village raised the kids back then. Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and black families made sure we were safe and inside for dinner, to do homework, to get to bed early.” I sigh. “That was until the late eighties when crack exploded onto the scene. Before crack, the cops used to play with us on the ball fields. Afterward, they only watched us and arrested us.” In 1988,
Life
magazine ran a story about Red Hook ice-cream trucks dispensing crack and candy stores selling drug paraphernalia. “It was an ugly scene and the reason I did everything I could to get out.”

“I had heard it was getting better,” he says.

“Well, most of the grass is gone,” I say. “Lots of concrete and walkways going everywhere like a labyrinth. Unemployment is still around thirty percent, the schools are near the bottom in achievement for all New York City schools, most families barely make ten grand a year . . .” I shake my head. “We still only have one McDonald's and one bank for eleven thousand people, but . . . murders, robberies, and assaults are down considerably, so I guess things are getting better.” I smile. “I don't live on the Front anymore. I live on ‘the Back.' ”

“Ah, you are on the waterfront,” he says. “So you like it up here at Aylen Lake then?”

“Very much.” And I'm not just saying this to suck up to him anymore. I do like this place. It's rough, raw, and incredibly beautiful.

“I remember going to Red Hook as a boy,” he says. “It was all cranes and old red brick, gray wood, narrow cobblestone streets, arched windows and doors.”

He has Red Hook down pretty well. “It's still all that, but we have culture now.”

“Really? There is culture in Red Hook? I have been away a long time!”

I ignore his sarcasm. “A few years ago I went to see Puccini's
Il Tabarro
performed outside on the
Mary A. Whalen,
a tanker at the Marine Terminal.”

He knits his eyebrows together. “They performed Puccini outside on a boat?”

“Yes. Seagulls were hovering over the performers' heads for most of the night.”

He smiles.
“Pericoloso.”

“Definitely.” I finish my lemonade and set the glass on the ground.

“What else can you tell me?” he asks.

“There's so much to tell.”

He touches my hand. “I miss Brooklyn, okay? I have not been home in ten years. You have just been there, what, yesterday? Tell me of my home.”

I look at my hand, and
his
hand is still there. Then, I start to ramble about Red Hook. I tell him about the carousel horses made of scrap metal, cherry tomatoes at the Red Hook Community Farm, barbecue smoke rising on Old Timer's Day, and the imploding sugar factories and other brick castles making way for the “Great Blue Wall of Beard Street” (aka the Ikea furniture store).

“It is really a great blue wall?” he asks.

I nod, watching his hand slide away.
Come back!
I whisper in my head.

“Who would think of such a thing?” he asks.

I describe a particular German shepherd–pit bull I often see searching for food on the Erie Basin. “If there's any animal on earth, that animal represents Red Hook best.”

“I do not understand,” Dante says.

“He's a mutt, a big mutt, and somehow he's surviving in a less than nice place.”

“Oh. Yes. I see.”

I remind him of the brine, the smell of diesel, the natural gas fumes drifting over from Bayonne, New Jersey.

“Make me hungry,” he says. “Tell me of the food. What does Red Hook taste like?”

It is the most amazing question anyone has ever asked me. “It tastes . . .” I turn to face him. “Red Hook tastes like day-old cookies sold two-for-a-penny at Larsen's Bakery.”

“Ah. Day-old. The best kind.”

“Red Hook tastes like
moussaka
from Mazzat,
venduras relleno
from Alma, spicy brownies from Baked, the Red Hook Burger from Hope and Anchor, and a Swingle”—a frozen mini Key lime pie dipped in chocolate—“from Steve's Key Lime Pie.”

He holds his stomach. “You are making me hungry.”

“Red Hook
is
an Italian hero from Defonte's.”

“Oh, you are killing me.” He laughs. “Please continue.”

I smile. “Did you ever go to Red Hook Park on a weekend?”

He grabs my hands fiercely. “
Sì
. The vendors! I ate so much, and so cheap!”

I grab
his
hand this time. Then I remind him of the
baleadas, mixto ceviche,
and huaraches the Central and South American vendors serve to long lines of people from all over New York every summer.

“I remember watching softball and eating
pupusas,
” he said. “The line was so long I was afraid they would run out!”

I throw out a series of names like Fuentes, Carcamo, McCann, Novakovich, Lopate, Jerard, O'Connell, Lam, McGettrick, Hellerstein, Masri, Balzano, and Hammer. I tell him about Markita Nicole Weaver, a ten-year-old who was making snow angels in a snowbank near PS 15 when a snowplow killed her.

“So sad,” he says. “So tragic.”

I talk to Dante Lattanza, my long-ago neighbor from Carroll Gardens, for thirty minutes straight, and he listens the whole time, sometimes grabbing my hands, sometimes talking with his hands. He focuses, you know? He isn't just asking questions to be polite. And the way he grabs my hands with those big ol' mitts of his . . .

“Why don't you go back?” I ask.

“I don't know.”

“I mean, just before the fight,” I say. “Go for a walk-through like the politicians do.”

He shakes his head. “No one will recognize me.”

“Are you kidding?” I say. “They'll have to close the streets.”

He only pats my hands this time. “You are too kind.”

“You're still a hero in Brooklyn, Dante,” I say. “I mean that.”

He looks out over the water. “Maybe I was once.”

I am looking at the perfect shot for
Personality
. “Um, don't move, okay?”

“Okay.”

I run to the guesthouse, wrestle my camera from its bag, and return, snapping away before Dante knows I'm there. When he turns, I stop. There is sadness on his face I haven't seen before.

“Um, could you walk out there?” I say. “The, um, the sky is . . .”

He stands and drifts to the edge of the outcropping. I keep firing away, capturing him from his waist up, that vulnerable, sad look in his eyes, his body framed by the bluest sky I've ever seen.

“You do not have to swim across the lake with me,” he says.

I stand next to him, peering over the edge. “How far down is that?”

“Twenty-five, thirty feet.”

I can see the bottom! “How deep is it?”

“The same. Maybe deeper.”

If I can survive the jump, I know I can make it across.

“Andiamo,”
I say.

He looks me up and down. “But you are not dressed.”

Shit. I don't have a swimsuit. I hope Evelyn has one in there. I cringe inside. If she does . . . Oh, man. I can't wear another woman's swimsuit! I mean, I can wear her clothes, but her drawers?

“Are
you
ready?” I look at his shorts and T-shirt.

He nods. “I just need the weights.”

“I'll be right back.”

As I run to the guesthouse, I realize something: I haven't gone swimming in years.

That left hook must have knocked me senseless.

Chapter 13

T
he only swimsuit I can find is too small. It would almost be like wearing a thong, not that I've ever worn one. I know I'd look behind and see my crack smiling up at me, and in front, I'd see my breasts squirming to be free. What did I do when I was a kid? Oh yeah. I wore an oversized T-shirt to cover me.

I look at what I'm wearing. A T-shirt, bra, and shorts. They'll just have to do.

When I return to the outcropping, Lelani and DJ have joined Dante, who now wears the heavy backpack.

Lelani's mouth drops when she sees me. “You're going with him?”

“Sure,” I say. “How much is in that backpack?”

“More than sixty pounds,” DJ says.

Whoa.

Lelani pulls me aside. “You have any idea how cold that water is?”

“I'm in Canada, Lelani,” I say, straightening up my T-shirt. “I'm sure it's very cold.”

“Girl,” she whispers, “it's the kind of cold that can stop your heart. Are you crazy?”

I nod. “I'm from Red Hook.”

I leave her and stand next to Dante.

“It is a long way down,” Dante says. “You must jump feet first.”

I pray that the lessons I took at Sol Goldman Pool will come back to me. “Feet first?
You
dive out.”

He smiles. “I tried jumping in, and the weight took me very deep. I dive out so I do not sink.”

I look down again. If I jump feet first, this T-shirt will fly up over my head and strangle me, my bra will fly off, and the shorts will shoot up my crack and become a thong. I take a deep breath and look at Lelani. “Maybe I should use a life preserver or something.”

Lelani nods and takes my arm. “I'll get you one.” She pulls me toward the stairs.

I pull away. “I'll wait up here.”

She ducks her head close to me. “You can't dive or even jump off wearing a life vest.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Ever use a bobber when you fish?”

I see a bobber hitting the water and popping up to the surface in my head. “Yeah. So?”

“At that height, the life vest could strangle you or at least make your girls very uncomfortable.”

I like my girls. “I'll, uh, I'll just swim around then, huh?”

She nods. “Come on.”

Down at the boat, she fits a life vest to me. It's snug, but I feel a lot more confident now. She points around the outcropping. “Swim around to the bottom, but watch out. You don't want an Italian landing on you.”

Oh, but I do. Repeatedly. “I'll try not to drown.”

I dip my big toe into the water. Ow. It's so cold I wince. Instead of wading in, I drop off the dock feet first. The second I hit the water, my heart skips several beats. Lelani wasn't kidding about the cold. I check myself for anything missing, feel one breast bobbing out of my bra, secure it, and start to swim around the outcropping. As I turn the corner and look up, I hear a bell ringing, see a flying Italian, and hear an ear-splitting splash, as if a whale's tail just struck the water.

“Are you all right?” Dante asks, swimming beside me.

“Yeah.
Andiamo.
”

I keep pace with him for about ten seconds, eventually settling in to a decent freestyle rhythm. I just want to finish. I look up and see Dante's arms flashing in and out of the water like dolphins, well, really
fast
dolphins. He gets to the island first, but instead of sprinting across to the other point, he waits for me.

How sweet. He has stopped to watch me drown.

“Go on!” I yell.

He shakes his head and beckons to me.

I pick up the pace, cruising up to him with my lungs on fire, my toes ten icicles demanding to be thawed. As I come out of the water, I look down at my toes, expecting to see fewer than ten. They're all there.

“
Andiamo,
Christiana.”

As we pass David and his trusty stopwatch, he says, “You're way behind yesterday, Dante.”

Dante throws his head back and yells, “I have extra weight today.”

Ha ha. “Don't wait for me.”

He gets to the other point and waits. “It is okay. You worked me out good today. I need to slow down.”

Then . . . we swim
together
to the other side, my body so numb it isn't cold anymore. I know that makes no sense, but that's how it feels. He helps me up onto a dock, we take some stairs, ring another bell—

No “You-hoo” today. Hmm.

We swim back at a snail's pace, and I can barely stand when we reach the point a second time. I stagger with him down the beach.

“You aren't going to beat Tank Washington with times like this,” David says.

“I will beat him anyway,” Dante says. “You will see.”

I am so tired I can barely put one foot in front of the other. “You go on,” I tell Dante. “I need to catch my breath.”

“I will send DJ back with the boat,” he says.

He points across to the rocks. “The rocks are tricky. They would hurt your feet.”

I won't feel the pain.

We get to the other point of the island. “You are shivering,” he says.

I hadn't noticed. I thought I was just having a seizure.

I look across. What is that, a hundred yards? It's not that far. Okay, it's far, but I didn't come this far to quit now. I didn't fish, hike, clean fish, cook, work out, spar, and swim to stop three hundred feet from my goal. “How far is it?” I ask.

“Hmm, maybe a hundred meters,” Dante says.

I step into the water, and for some reason, it feels warmer. “It's warm.”

“Sì,”
he says. “The air temperature is dropping. It is best to be in the water.”

So . . . I start swimming to the rocks as the sun starts to set, mainly doing the breaststroke, occasionally floating on my back. He helps me navigate the rocks, boosting me higher and higher. At the top, I want to fall flat on my face and die, but his strong hands hold me up.

“Go ring the bell,” he says.

I peel off the life preserver and ring the hell out of that bell, using that little string to keep me vertical. I return to the outcropping to survey the distance I just traveled. I had to be completely out of my damn mind to do that, to do any of this. I should be in traction.

Dante raises my right arm and says, “You are the champ.”

I raise my other arm about halfway and stare into the sunset. I am Nike, goddess of victory. Hear me roar!

All I can manage to say, however, is a feeble, “Yay.”

But when I turn and look at Dante's face, at the sun shining off him and those dark, dark eyes, I know I am looking at a god.

I sneak a peak down at the prodigal breast and find it's out and now has a twin.

But Dante isn't looking at my breasts. He's looking into my eyes.

I am now a nearly naked, frozen, exhausted goddess.

I see his hand in mine as he lowers his arm.

I'm holding hands with a god.

This . . . I could get used to this.