Welcome to Paradise (13 page)

She wore a bra that lifted her breasts but
didn't cover them, and panties that cinched her waist and thighs
but left her sex exposed, made a lewd frame around a picture
rendered vivid and obscene by lack of context. With effort she
approached the bed. She didn't mind being looked at; usually she
enjoyed it. There was a kind of power in what she had to show. But
now it didn't feel right.

It would not have taken much to put her at
ease—a compliment or even just a smile would have sufficed. But Big
Al couldn't manage it. He seemed aroused yet annoyed that she was
there. Dressed but for his shoes, he leaned back on a stack of
pillows and gestured for her to join him in the bed. Then, without
a word or a touch, he used the remote to start the movie.

In the film, a man with muscles and a pointy
beard was teaching a woman to submit. Leather straps bit into
flesh. Wrists stretched in metal rings. Buttocks were pinkened as
slaps combined with whimpers on the soundtrack. Cruel things were
done to nipples.

Above the tinkle of chain and the crescendo
of moans as pain imitated pleasure, Katy said, "I don't like this,
Al."

He watched the film. He didn't answer.

"Come on," she said, "let's watch something
else."

Al made no reply.

On the screen the woman's hair was being
pulled, her loins assaulted with a device that looked medieval.
Katy wondered if Al would notice if she closed her eyes. She didn't
want to watch but she didn't want to make him angry. She narrowed
her lids just far enough to make everything a blur, and amid the
sounds of cursing and slapping, she watched a movie of her own. She
saw the beach, a bright horizon flecked with distant sails. Green
wavelets topped by tiny curls, silver foam sizzling and
disappearing through a sieve of cool coarse sand.

When the film was over, Big Al took off his
clothes and climbed on top of her. He wasn't kind; he wasn't
unkind. He just started, then he moved awhile, and then he
finished.

Katy Sansone surprised herself by feeling
nothing. Nothing bad, nothing good. Still, the nothing that she
felt had content. It was made of shame and frustrated caring and a
tardy anger that was finally starting to ripen.

When he was done with her and had rolled
aside, she walked slowly to the bathroom to wash. She faced herself
in the mirror, regarded herself with curiosity but no expression.
She realized after a moment that what she was looking for was
something to be proud of. She studied her own eyes, she firmed her
jaw. Then she took off the things that Al had bought her, the
cupless bra and the panties that put her on display, and dropped
them in the trash.

Al Tuschman didn't leave his room that
evening.

He was wrung out, his chest hurt, and he was
half afraid that if he showed himself, yet another ludicrous and
dreadful thing was bound to happen. His confidence was badly
shaken, and in some primitive, unreasoning way, his feelings were
hurt, as if he'd been cast out by all the world, turned into a
pariah. He felt like he'd forgotten how to get along with people,
how to do the simple things that got a person through the day. Like
a voodoo curse, his rim of bad luck spooked him, and thereby
brought on more bad luck.

He took a shower, scraped his belly on a
splinter that had somehow become embedded in his bar of soap. He
ordered in a pizza, burned his mouth on cheese. He cut up a slice
for the dog, and the two of them ate in mopey silence beneath the
picture of the greenish women with the greenish breasts. Then they
crawled, defeated, into bed. Al watched the slow and mollifying
rotation of the ceiling fan, and let his mind go numb.

But there's no medicine like sleep, and in
the morning everything looked cheerier.

The salesman blinked through his window, saw
giant philodendron leaves, pendant coconuts turning yellow, soft
mist rising from the hot tub. Perspective returned. Pariah? Come
on—he was a well-liked, friendly guy who'd had a few bad breaks.
His luck would turn; he knew it. He was on a mission to be
happy—Jesus Christ, he thought, when did I really start believing
that?—and one way or another he was going to pull it off.

Exercise, he decided. In sweat was sanity and
peace. Always had been; always would be. He'd take a good long
run.

He pulled on a jock; there was youth and
vigor in the feel of the straps against his butt. He almost touched
his toes a couple times, then put Fifi on her leash and headed out
the door, past the topless woman doing yoga on a towel, past the
European threesome already giggling over thimble muffins, past the
desk clerk, dozing with his hand around a mug of coffee.

He ran up Elizabeth Street, crossed the road
that had brought him into town. He tried to think of his grimace as
a smile, tried not to notice that none of this was easy anymore.
His knees and spine didn't cushion his brain the way they used to.
His eyeballs bounced. He sucked air past the lingering tickle in
his lungs, past the weight of last night's pizza, and kept on
going.

He reached the county beach, traced out its
zigzag path, then headed north along a row of condos. Fifi's paws
made a pleasant ticking on the pavement, and, for a while, it hurt
less as he went. He remembered what it was to win, to break into
the open with a football spinning toward him and the goal line
chalked on matted grass. The sun got higher and seared his
hairline. Without breaking stride he pulled off his shirt.

At the beginning of the long promenade that
led on to the airport and the houseboats, he began to feel that he
should turn around. His temples throbbed; there was a squish in his
sneakers that might have been blood from his blistered feet. But
his course was just reaching its most beautiful, with the green
water of the Straits stretching away toward Cuba, and
emerald-tinged clouds stalled above the Gulf Stream.

So, mouth parched and ankles clicking, he
pressed on. Young women passed him effortlessly on Rollerblades.
Old hippies scudded by on junky bikes whose fat tires hummed
against the concrete. He plodded along and his thoughts whooshed by
like distant traffic. Sex. Archaic ball games. Sales pitches
finding their apotheosis in commissions. Mostly he just wanted to
keep on moving. Beyond worries, explanations. Past the need to
figure stuff out. Onward to the time when this eerie and unsettling
vacation would be over and he could ease himself again into the
womb of the familiar.

*

It wasn't that Big Al Marracotta didn't know
he'd been a prick. He knew; but he'd started on a downward spiral
and he just couldn't turn the thing around.

Over breakfast in their room, he watched Katy
sulk, and he dimly understood that something different had come
into her sulking. It was no longer a ploy. She wasn't doing it for
attention or to get her way. She was doing it because she felt
lousy and wanted to be left alone. She sat there with her bathrobe
pulled in tight across her collarbones. She hadn't bothered to
smooth her spiky hair, and her gaze floated without focus toward
the curtained window.

Big Al looked down and stabbed his eggs. He
knew the situation could still be rescued. He could apologize, and
she would understand. But there's no way he would do it. An apology
conferred status, gave a certain power to the person receiving it.
He wasn't starting down that road. What about the next time he
acted like a scumbag—would she throw it in his face? Would he have
to apologize again? Till respect was whittled away to nothing? No
way ... Not that he absolutely had to apologize. Not in so many
words. He could probably get things back on track and still stop
short of that, just sort of slide around it. Tell her he had a lot
on his mind; she'd fill in the rest. .. . But why give her that
much information, that much satisfaction? Start confiding in
someone, and they started feeling close, and that bred
expectations, and that made the whole thing a big pain in the
ass.

The little mobster gnawed at buttered toast
and realized he was getting mad at Katy. Last night he'd been a
bastard; he had to justify it somehow, so today he was digging in
his heels. He slurped coffee and turned a hard eye on her. He
decided she wasn't that pretty. Her eyes were undramatic and when
she pouted her mouth looked sharp. She was moody, sometimes she was
lukewarm in the sack, and when vacation was over he'd probably
break up with her. Enough already. Be a sport, pay a couple months'
rent on the studio in Murray Hill, and have it over with.

Thinking that, he felt restless in advance.
He pushed his plate away, said, "Come on, let's take a drive or
somethin'."

"Fine," said Katy, even more eager than he to
be out of that hotel room.

As if it were her fault, he added, "I mean,
Christ, we been here days and haven't seen a thing."

She almost answered that, then realized there
was no point. Silently, she blotted her mouth on her napkin and
moved off someplace private to get dressed.

Carlo Ganucci was surprised how readily Tony
Eggs had agreed to sit down with Nicky Scotto. He thought he'd say
a flat-out no, or at least demand to be persuaded.

Sitdowns were a nuisance. It was always
someone bitching, and in the end you didn't give them what they
wanted, and they went away madder than they were before; or you
granted what they asked for, which almost always meant that someone
else got mad and started looking for a meet.

So when, the evening before, the
consigliere
had passed along Nicky's request to get
together, he'd done so in the offhand manner of a man expecting a
terse and bothered refusal. But Tony Eggs had not seemed bothered.
In fact he'd almost smiled. Dry lips twitched briefly back from
yellow and insecurely rooted teeth, and his eyes took on a
gratified gleam. "Good," he'd said.

"Good?"

"Good. Tell 'im ten tomorrow morning."

Now it was the appointed time, and Nicky
Scotto, plucking at his cashmere turtleneck and smoothing the
lapels of his slate-blue mohair suit, had just walked into the
social club on Prince Street.

He was trying to look casual and confident.
He waved to a couple of goombahs playing poker in a corner, kidded
with the lackey behind the coffee counter. But when his espresso
was handed to him, he couldn't quite keep the cup from chattering
against the saucer. He squeezed it hard to hold it still, before
moving to the inviolable table at the rear, where the two old men
were sitting.

He waited for a nod from Tony Eggs, then
almost daintily hitched up his trousers and joined them. Raising
his demitasse, he said, "Tony. Carlo. Thank you for your time.
Salud
."

He swallowed some coffee, struggled to put
the cup down cleanly. A silent second passed, and he quickly
understood that no one was going to help him keep the conversation
going. Carlo Ganucci looked sleepy and feeble, the thin skin sallow
and papery around his eyes. Tony Eggs appeared as inclined toward
chitchat as a tree. Nicky cleared his throat, made a theatrical
gesture of blowing into his hands, and said, "Fuckin' freezin' for
November, huh?"

Neither old man answered that. Tony Eggs
pulled his tongue down from the roof of his mouth. It made a
clicking sound that seemed very loud.

Nicky tried again. "Okay, why I'm here, the
reason, it's about the market."

Nobody responded. Carlo looked down at his
crumbling yellow fingernails.

"I'm really happy to be runnin' it again,"
said Nicky. "Wanted to thank you for the opportunity."

"Who said it's an opportunity?" Tony Eggs
Salento rumbled forth at last.

This flustered Nicky. He reached for his
espresso cup, put it down again, tried a couple times to get a
sentence started. Outside, horns honked and cabbies cursed each
other.

Tony Eggs, suddenly loquacious, went on.
"Hey, Nicky, how much that suit cost?"

"Eighteen hundred." He tried to keep the
pride out of his voice, almost managed. He loved that suit. It
wasn't just the money he'd been able to pay for it. It was that the
guy who made it was in great demand, and wouldn't tailor clothing
for just anybody.

The old boss pursed his lips. His own suit
cost two- fifty off a downtown rack, and he'd had it twenty years.
"Do me a favor," he told his young lieutenant. "Take the jacket off
and stomp it."

"Excuse me?"

"If you'd like this meeting to continue, put
the jacket onna goddamn floor and walk all over it."

Nicky licked his lips, glanced from
underneath his brows at one old man and then the other. Maybe this
was some kind of a test, or better yet a joke. But he saw no whimsy
in their eyes. He waited an instant longer for a reprieve that
would not come, then stood up, hesitated, and finally slipped out
of his jacket and dropped it to the floor. For a moment he regarded
it with heartbreak and nostalgia, as though it were a dying pet.
The old linoleum was dusty and cracked, with tarry fissures that
would claw at a gray silk lining. And who could say what
unspeakable residue of fish slime or dog shit might be clinging to
his shoes?

His legs trying their damnedest to hold him
back, he sidestepped onto the swath of custom-tailored mohair. He
made a weak, little grinding motion then stepped off again.

"More," said Tony Eggs.

"More?"

Gingerly he stepped again onto his jacket;
then, with a perverse and mounting energy, a cresting wave of
debasement and inchoate rage, he stomped the precious garment. He
marched on it, he ran in place; he improvised a cha-cha, launched
into a sort of demented Mashed Potato. His chest grew warm, his
face flushed. He ground his heel into a sleeve, heard a seam rip
open under the unsprung fury of his war dance. A drop of sweat
broke free from a sideburn and trickled down his cheek, and he kept
jumping on his jacket for several seconds after Tony said to him,
"Okay, Nicky. Now siddown."