Read Online Virgin Heat by Laurence Shames - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Laurence Shames
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behind the amber glasses toward Joe and Al and Funzie, and this, maybe, was a mistake, or maybe not; but either way it sent Paulie a message, told him they had talked, conspired, come up with something they thought needed saying, that only the underboss could say.
"Paul," he began, "there's something—I just want to ask if you've even thought about ... Sal Martucci."
The capo tightened at the name. Galuppi went on, pitiless as a surgeon.
"I know you'd like to find him. I also know—we all do, it wasn't any secret—that your daughter Angelina was very taken with him. Infatuated. So what I'm asking—has it occurred to you, Paul, have you considered, that just maybe, if you find either one of them, you'll find them both?"
Paul Amaro didn't answer, couldn't answer; his mouth hung slack at the outlandish suggestion, he was acutely aware of the weight of his jaw. His daughter run off with his betrayer? Unthinkable. Beyond insulting. If anyone but Galuppi had mentioned it, Paul would have gone for him, seized his lapels, spit in his face. As it was, he stood there dumbfounded, humiliated, stripped bare and foolish in his beautiful expensive clothes, eating the shame of the idea like it was rancid food forced down his gullet.
Outside, trucks went past, rattling the metal shutters. A chair leg squeaked on the linoleum. When Paul could finally lift his head, he saw that his brothers Joe and A1 didn't really want to meet his eyes and Benno Galuppi's amber glasses had turned an opaque brown.
11
A day and a half later, achy and discombobulated, Uncle Louie dropped his car keys in an ashtray, kicked off his northern shoes, fell back on his motel bed, and soupily gazed up at the ceiling fan.
The fan was turning very slowly, the canted blades seemed to be swimming through the air. The ceiling, like the walls, was a coral color, sickened by time and damp toward orange. The carpet was a shaggy beige, thinned and darkened by the tourists' treading between the door and the bathroom, the bathroom and the bed; and it held a smell—of sandy feet, and contented mold, and a tang like that of sun-dried seashells—that, more than anything, reminded Louie he was back in Key West.
Back in Key West! The bare illicit fact, now that he was fifteen hundred miles too far along to ignore it, made him giddy. He was quite pleased with himself, no doubt about it. He was also terrified, beset by the secret dread of the meek, who fear that even the smallest detour from routine could be the end of order forever, that even the mildest act of daring could call down monstrous consequences. Louie, in his mind, was risking all.
What would Rose say? Would she be furious? Furious enough to throw him out? Awful to contemplate, because, no matter how it looked to others, Louie deeply loved his wife.
Viewed through different eyes, their marriage might have seemed like one more joyless habit, one more self-imposed diminishment, but to Louie it was something else, a remembered exaltation that he cherished all the more because nothing but his cherishing was keeping it alive. There was a time when they were young and Rose was beautiful, more beautiful, with her full lips and arching eyebrows and terrific shape, than any woman he ever thought would be attracted to his bumbling manner and clownish cheeks and uncontoured arms and shoulders. He loved being out with her, could hardly believe the way she clung to his arm, laughed at his ill-told jokes. Even then he realized in some part of himself that she was drawn to him because she knew his brothers were big shots and imagined he would be a big shot too. It didn't turn out that way, and Rose had made him pay every day for thirty-two years.
But Louie didn't blame her; in fact, he blamed himself. He knew he wouldn't end up like his brothers, he'd known it all along; he should have set her straight. But he didn't. By omission, he'd made himself a fraud for the pleasure of her company, a fake for the flash of her eyes.
"Paul," he began, "there's something—I just want to ask if you've even thought about ... Sal Martucci."
The capo tightened at the name. Galuppi went on, pitiless as a surgeon.
"I know you'd like to find him. I also know—we all do, it wasn't any secret—that your daughter Angelina was very taken with him. Infatuated. So what I'm asking—has it occurred to you, Paul, have you considered, that just maybe, if you find either one of them, you'll find them both?"
Paul Amaro didn't answer, couldn't answer; his mouth hung slack at the outlandish suggestion, he was acutely aware of the weight of his jaw. His daughter run off with his betrayer? Unthinkable. Beyond insulting. If anyone but Galuppi had mentioned it, Paul would have gone for him, seized his lapels, spit in his face. As it was, he stood there dumbfounded, humiliated, stripped bare and foolish in his beautiful expensive clothes, eating the shame of the idea like it was rancid food forced down his gullet.
Outside, trucks went past, rattling the metal shutters. A chair leg squeaked on the linoleum. When Paul could finally lift his head, he saw that his brothers Joe and A1 didn't really want to meet his eyes and Benno Galuppi's amber glasses had turned an opaque brown.
11
A day and a half later, achy and discombobulated, Uncle Louie dropped his car keys in an ashtray, kicked off his northern shoes, fell back on his motel bed, and soupily gazed up at the ceiling fan.
The fan was turning very slowly, the canted blades seemed to be swimming through the air. The ceiling, like the walls, was a coral color, sickened by time and damp toward orange. The carpet was a shaggy beige, thinned and darkened by the tourists' treading between the door and the bathroom, the bathroom and the bed; and it held a smell—of sandy feet, and contented mold, and a tang like that of sun-dried seashells—that, more than anything, reminded Louie he was back in Key West.
Back in Key West! The bare illicit fact, now that he was fifteen hundred miles too far along to ignore it, made him giddy. He was quite pleased with himself, no doubt about it. He was also terrified, beset by the secret dread of the meek, who fear that even the smallest detour from routine could be the end of order forever, that even the mildest act of daring could call down monstrous consequences. Louie, in his mind, was risking all.
What would Rose say? Would she be furious? Furious enough to throw him out? Awful to contemplate, because, no matter how it looked to others, Louie deeply loved his wife.
Viewed through different eyes, their marriage might have seemed like one more joyless habit, one more self-imposed diminishment, but to Louie it was something else, a remembered exaltation that he cherished all the more because nothing but his cherishing was keeping it alive. There was a time when they were young and Rose was beautiful, more beautiful, with her full lips and arching eyebrows and terrific shape, than any woman he ever thought would be attracted to his bumbling manner and clownish cheeks and uncontoured arms and shoulders. He loved being out with her, could hardly believe the way she clung to his arm, laughed at his ill-told jokes. Even then he realized in some part of himself that she was drawn to him because she knew his brothers were big shots and imagined he would be a big shot too. It didn't turn out that way, and Rose had made him pay every day for thirty-two years.
But Louie didn't blame her; in fact, he blamed himself. He knew he wouldn't end up like his brothers, he'd known it all along; he should have set her straight. But he didn't. By omission, he'd made himself a fraud for the pleasure of her company, a fake for the flash of her eyes.
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