Bloodbrothers (3 page)

Chubby automatically swallowed and felt a half-dozen painful lumps as the saliva went down his gullet.

"They put in a rubber tube," she said, still tapping.

"He's prob'ly happier where he is now," he offered.

"How do you know?" she asked. She cupped his hand between her palms and lowered her head to light another cigarette, forgetting the just-lit one in the ashtray. The dry warmth of her fingers gave him a hard-on. He motioned to Banion for another drink.

"Cancer's a real bitch," he said.

"My whole family had cancer," she said. "My father had lung cancer, my mother had ovary cancer, my sister had stomach cancer." She counted off on her fingers. "And me..." She stopped counting and stared at him. "I got cancer of the rectum."

Chubby closed his eyes and felt himself falling off the barstool. He saw the walls rushing past him and the floor zooming up into his face. When he opened his eyes a second later he was still sitting on the barstool, his cigarette between his fingers. Pearls of sweat formed at his hairline.

"They just keep cuttin' and cuttin' and cuttin'..." Sylvia droned on.

Chubby jumped as he heard the whine of Banion's wheelchair. Sylvia touched Chubby's hand. He jerked away from her touch. He looked into the mirror for Tommy. The bar was deserted. He jumped off his stool and looked around frantically. Sylvia's face managed to look sharp and cold in the soft shadowy light. "Motherfuckin' bastard!" Chubby clenched his teeth, looking for his brother.

"It's not contagious," Sylvia said in a weak yet bitter voice not even directed at Chubby.

Chubby kicked open the "Gents" door and saw Tommy doubled over with laughter by the urinal. Tommy tried to whinny but he was laughing too hard. Chubby took a swing at him. Tommy caught Chubby's fist with his own big hands but the force of the punch knocked him down anyhow.

Tommy kept laughing. "You—you shoulda seen your face." He pointed at Chubby.

Chubby pulled back his leg to kick him in the ribs. Chubby's skin was gray and his hands were trembling. Tommy saw the kick coming and rolled away. Chubby suddenly smiled. The color came back to his face and he turned, moving swiftly into a stall, and emerged two seconds later with two sopping-wet balls of toilet paper that he threw at Tommy, hitting him in the face with one and in the crotch with the other. Tommy jumped up and ran into the other stall. Chubby ran back into the first stall. In less than a minute they were laughing and yelling, having a toilet paper war, covering themselves and the walls with gray clots of wet tissue until they were both exhausted. Laughing weakly and panting, they staggered from the bathroom, through the bar, ignoring Sylvia, who stared rigidly at her hands, and out into the street.

***

"Did you really ball her, Tommy?" Tommy cruised slowly down Central Avenue, Chubby sprawled in the shotgun seat.

"Nah." Tommy popped a piece of Dentyne that was on the dashboard into his mouth. "I was talkin' to her Friday night. She tol' me like she tol' you. I almost fell through the floor." Tommy never took his eyes from the road. Chubby stared at the swaying brown-beaded rosary knotted and dangling from Tommy's mirror.

"She ain't never gonna get picked up tellin' guys
that
shit about herself." Chubby yawned.

"Banion's is startin' to give me the creeps, with Sylvia there startin' to hang aroun' an' Banion in his goddamn wheelchair," Tommy said.

"Maybe we should find some new place."

"How about this here?" Tommy slowed the car as they approached a low, rambling roadside discotheque—the 88 Club. More than a hundred cars were parked across the road. Tommy pulled the car over by the parking lot on the shoulder of Central Avenue. Six teen-age girls came out along with a blast of live rock and roll music. The girls trotted across Central Avenue to the parking lot.

"Oh Jesus, look a' that one!" Chubby gawked.

"Hey, Miss! Hey, Miss!" Tommy yelled out the car window. All six of them turned their heads.

"You need a ride?" Chubby leaned out his side.

They kept walking.

"Jesus Christ, look a' that one." Tommy pointed to the tallest one, who had a skirt up to her crotch. "I'd eat a mile a shit if it led to
her
asshole."

The girls piled into a Mustang twenty feet in front of Tommy's car. When the tall one bent over to crawl into the back, her skirt hiked up, flashing flowered panties in Tommy and Chubby's direction. Chubby grabbed Tommy's arm. Tommy flicked his brights on and off. One of the girls shot them the finger as the Mustang backed out onto Central Avenue. Chubby jumped from the car, whipped out his cock and started running after them, yelling and laughing.

"Looks like a prick, only smaller!" one of the girls shouted out the window as the driver shifted into forward, burning rubber.

Chubby stood on the shoulder of the road wiggling his dick in the wind, laughing and shouting. More kids left the 88 Club. Tommy started the car, drove to Chubby and pulled him inside.

"Oh, Tommy, that one likes me!" Chubby was out of breath. "Le's follow 'em!"

"Nah, c'mon, they're kids." Tommy pulled onto the road.

Chubby tried to catch his breath.

"You wanna get pneumonia?" Tommy asked.

"Hah?"

Tommy looked over at Chubby's crotch. Chubby looked down. His dick was still hanging out.

"Shee!" Chubby arched himself, lifting his ass out of the seat, and shoved his dick back in. "That's a nice place there, that 88 Club." Chubby zipped up his fly.

"Too young," Tommy said. "That's for Stony, not us."

"Stony," Chubby chuckled. "He gettin' any a this?" he asked, making a loose fist and shaking it like he was going to roll dice.

"What, a' you kiddin'?" Tommy laughed. "He got that hot little girlfriend a his."

"That little blonde with the big tits?"

"Cheri," Tommy said.

"I wouldn't mind a piece a that myself," Chubby said.

"Hey, don' tell Stony that, he'll tear ya heart out."

"He got it bad, hah?" Chubby lit a cigarette.

"I think she cheats on him too." They passed an open diner. "You hungry?"

"Nah. So she's a little tramp, hah?" Chubby nodded sadly. "Poor fuckin' Stony. I love that kid. He deserves the best."

Tommy cruised through a red light on the deserted road, and turned left up a hill into an expensive residential section. "Every time I go through here," Tommy said, maneuvering the car on narrow winding curves and peering at the darkened brick and stone mansions, "every time I go through here I feel like a fuckin' kid, you know? I feel like sayin'...when I grow up
this
is where I'm gonna live... an' then I remember I'm fuckin' forty-five an' I ain't never gonna live here. I live in fuckin' Co-op City an' that's straight life." He stopped the car in front of a fortresslike house with a widow's walk and lead castings on octagonal windows. "Here, this is my fuckin' favorite." Tommy winced. "I would give anything to live here."

"Hey, you know what kinda land taxes this guy must pay?" Chubby said.

"When you got a place like this you don' fucking care about no land taxes."

"Bullshit. These guys are all prob'ly up to their asses in mortgages." Chubby flicked his cigarette out the window.

Tommy started driving again.

"I dunno." Chubby squinted. "I like Co-op City, no hassles, no utilities, you got a Chinese restaurant right there, air conditioning in every room, you can take yogi classes in the community center, no niggers."

"You got plenty a niggers."

"Yeah, but they're the ones that moved outta the old neighborhood because of the niggers movin' in, they're almost like us."

Tommy turned onto the Parkway going to the Bronx. "You know, I bet Stony's gonna have a house like that one back there," he said, flooring the accelerator on the deserted, unlit Parkway. "If he comes in the local in July, you know? He puts in his four years apprenticing he'll be... lessee twenty-two when he turns journeyman, right? Four years from now journeyman's base'll be up to ten an hour I'll figure... so that's like maybe... with time-and-a-half after twenty-five hours... it'll come to... I dunno, fuck, let's say twenty grand a year, O.K.? I give him two years he'll be straw boss 'cause he is one smart bastard that kid. So I figure at twenty-four, he'll, say twenty-five, he'll be makin' twenty-five grand. Another five years he'll be a goddamn foreman pullin' down forty a year like Artie Di Falco. So figure when he's thirty I come an' visit my son in fuckin' Scarsdale, New York."

"I thought he was gonna college?"

"Nah. He got into this dipshit school in Louisiana. Cracker State or somethin'. He'll go into the union. He don't need college. What'll he do? He'll fuck aroun' down there four years, then get a job jerkin' off a pencil for eight grand?" Tommy turned on his brights. "He's too smart to go to college. He knows where the action is."

9:30 F
RIDAY NIGHT,
Stony stood bathed in the soft red light of D'Artagnan's, leaning against the bar. The walls were white stucco with crosshatched beams of dark wood. Over his head was a black-light poster of a voluptuous nude chick with an enormous Afro standing spread-legged in a jungle clearing. Her eyes, nipples, the lush vegetation around her and the legend "Lilith" gave off a sinister phosphorescent gleam.

Stony was waiting. Every once in a while he glanced at the tables to his right. Three guys sat there checking out the scene. One of them, Mott, kept staring at Stony. When Stony looked over that way, he would lock eyes with Mott for a second, then they would both feign disinterest and look away. Stony kept clenching and unclenching his fists. His gut was rippling. He was chain-smoking and chugging seventy-sevens. The slick mixed crowd of whites, blacks and PRs shook the floor to Al Green's "Love and Happiness." Stony heard the music as if it was three rooms down. At the end of the song, Butler staggered off the floor, his silky flowered shirt sopping wet. He stood beside Stony, wiping away a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose. "Mother-
fuck!
" He gasped and collapsed hunched over the bar. "If that bitch can hump half as good as she can bump..." Stony ignored him, staring grimly at Mott. Butler looked at him. "You hear what I say?"

"Huh?" Stony turned as if just noticing Butler's presence. Butler looked over at Mott. He punched Stony in the arm. "Hey! You gonna do a number tonight or what?"

"Nah... nah." Stony's gaze turned back to the table.

"Hey look, I'm not gettin' in a fight tonight... you know? You promised."

"No sweat."

Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" played over the PA. Butler took a deep gulp of air and plunged back onto the dance floor. Stony finished his drink as Cheri walked in dressed in tight dungarees and a white silky blouse, the shirttails pulled up and knotted under her tits. Stony dropped a load. He could see her nipples stand out from ten yards off. She came up to him, ran a hand up his rigid arm and kissed him on the cheek. He didn't respond. She saw Mott and smiled. Her teeth glowed ghostlike under the black light. Stony wanted to crack her in the mouth.

"Whadja do, burn your bra?"

She looked at him, her face collapsing in exhaustion. "Stony, gimme a break."

"Where do ya wannit?" He sniffed.

She started walking away. Stony grabbed her arm. "Where you think you goin'?"

"I wanna dance, you mind?"

"Then dance with me." He pushed her to the dance floor. They both danced in a rage, out of rhythm, stiff. Halfway through the number, Cheri walked off the floor. Stony stood there, panicked. He pushed through the dancers after her, grabbing her arm again back at the bar.

"I love you, Cheri." Sweat streamed down his face. Her features relaxed for a moment.

"I love you too, Stony, but you promised," she pleaded.

"I know, I know." He winced. He stared at her thin, dark face bordered with long plaits of black hair. Her huge brown eyes searched his face for parole. He let go of her arm. She smiled, kissed him lightly on the nose and walked over to Mott's table. Stony watched in horror as she sat down next to him, kissing him full on the mouth. Stony clutched his forehead and staggered blindly away from the bar.

Butler stopped him. "What happened?"

"I'm gonna kill 'em both."

"What?" He looked at Mott's table. "Oh Christ, Stony, I knew this was gonna happen."

"I'm gonna kill 'em both."

"Stony, give her some slack. You can fuck around too, you know."

"I don't want to. I don't
need
to. She don't need to either, fuckin' cocktease." He was panting, staring off wildly.

"C'mon, let's go to the Third Rail."

"I wanna stay here!" He stabbed a trembling finger at the floor.

Butler exhaled wearily. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "Hey, Three-Finger Annette said she was goin' to the Camelot tonight. Let's go ov—"

"I don't need no town
pump,
Butler, all I need's right in that corner." He pointed.

"Hey, Stony! Howya doin'?"

Stony grunted a hello to the bouncer, a tall black guy with long bow shoulders and a high Afro. "Butler, what's shakin'?" He slapped Butler on the back.

"Jump back! Don't give'm no flak! The man with the tan! It's Chili Mac!" Butler slapped palms with Chili Mac. Stony turned away annoyed.

"What the fuck's with him?" Chili Mac jutted his chin in Stony's direction.

"Ah, Cheri's breakin' his balls."

"Whada you mean?"

"She started swingin' with Mott."

"Mott the Bear?"

"In his underwear."

"B.V.D.s?"

"Gimme a break, please."

"Nice an' easy?"

"Don' make me queasy."

"You guys are real fuckin' comics. Yah oughta be on Broadway," Stony spat.

"Uh! The man don't joke," Mac said to Butler.

"Hey, Mac, howdja like a crack?" Stony asked.

"In front or in back?"

"Will you cut that shit!" Stony looked as if he were halfway between tears and murder.

Chili Mac eased off.

Stony shook his head sadly. "Her funeral an' my trial."

Mac raised his eyebrows. "Whyncha go over to the Camelot tonight. I heard ol' Three-Fingers is gunnin' for you."