Devilcountry (10 page)

They sat in the back, where it was lit nice.
 They had wine.  They laughed.  They stroked each other’s hands.
It was one of the most romantic nights of both their lives.  Carin started
talking about the pizza place where she had worked as a teenager back in
Brooklyn.  It was there she caught the acting bug.  Sitting on a
chair after the lunch rush.  Fifteen years old.  Watching old movies
with the cooks.  Humphrey Bogart fascinated her.  Lana Turner was
mesmerising.  Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard.
One of the cooks
and
part-owner
was Giuseppe.  
Older,
a decent man.
He had won big on the ‘69 Mets and bought a one-quarter
share from a loan shark in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn. If anything, Giuseppe
knew there’d always be work.  From time to time Giuseppe still had to deal
with the loan shark he’d gone into business with.  The shark would pull
out a huge
jelly roll
of hundreds and fifties and
flaunt it a bit too aggressively in front of Carin.  It made Giuseppe
nervous but he always tended to the shark with a smile.  He’d tell Carin
after the shark had left, “man I hate it when that shark comes in and starts flashing
his money like that.  It’s so rude.  Makes everyone else feel like
shit. You know?”  Carin nodded at Giuseppe. “Carin, if you ever come into
money...” Giuseppe corrected himself.  “I mean
when
you come into
money two things, one, don’t ever count your money in front of poor people and
two, gimme some of it.”  He smiled and winked as he made his second point.
 Carin smiled back.  “Sure thing Gyp.”

Giuseppe had married early, the first woman he
laid.  He never ever played around, they had one son who joined the army
and moved to Germany.  He pretended Carin to be the little sister.  
The daughter who stuck around.
They would sit and watch the
films together.  He schooled her on
Casablanca
.  
Some Like
It Hot
and Brando’s performance in Streetcar was mesmerizing to him.
 “The film is
kinda
girlie but Brando...fucken
Brando...that guy nailed it,” he’d say.  Carin took it all in.
 Sometimes there’d be adult situations or violence in one of the movies
but Giuseppe was cool about it.  He would talk to Carin like she was an
adult.  Carin had never experienced that before.  He noticed her
reading a book on acting by Uta Hagen.  He didn’t know who Hagen was but
he could tell she was interested.  He could tell Carin had talent and a
drive to succeed.  She wanted more out of life than pizza.  Giuseppe
encouraged her to act.

“Just do it.  Your old man is a
drunk
idiot.  
You got skills
,
kid
.  I say do it.
”
 
His voice was gravelly from years of
pizza and Cutty-water.  He’d go back behind the counter and start pushing
dough out.  “I’d do it if I were your age.  Work sucks.  Avoid
it like the plague.”  She’d laugh. On his advice she saved up her cash and
started in an acting class.   She caught hell for it from her asshole
dad, but it was worth it.  She was fantastic.  Head and shoulders
above everyone else, in talent as well as physical stature.  That first
class was mesmerizing to her.  She got the bug.  It was all fueled on
pizza cash.   

Dickie sat mesmerized by Carin as she told the
tale.  He said, “You should totally turn that into a movie.”  And she
did.  They screwed that night, hard.  
Real hard.
 In the morning, Carin was high on cock, love and the dream of bringing,
Ode
To Uta
to the screen.  Dickie was dreaming of reinventing himself as a
restaurateur, with famous friends.  He could see them all, hanging out,
laughing,
breaking
balls.  He convinced her to go
in on a restaurant.  Her money, his know how.  Beverly Hills was the
first location.  Two more stores followed.  Her dream project was
picked up by Universal with her and possibly Pacino attached.  She liked
the vibe at the store she now owned. It soothed her.  She would do some of
her best film work while behind the counter there between shoots.  Then
things got weird.  

As it turned out Dickie had lost interest in her
right after the William Morris Agency lost interest in her.  Dickie wanted
to be near the Hollywood flame.  Lots of people were like that.  They
had no talent whatsoever with the exception of charm.  Dickie wasn’t
stupid.  In fact Dickie was quite sharp.  He knew exactly what he
wanted and he knew how to get it.  Dickie fed on the buzz of being around
Hollywood players, producers, directors, actors, and most important, actresses.
 Even though he couldn’t act, he knew how to play a scene.  He could charm
an actress.  Pizza helped in this process.  He hired Mexicans to run it;
perhaps that was Dickie’s greatest talent.  He knew
who
to hire. That’s really all a good restaurateur had to be.  Hire your
people well and sit back. He knew Latinos could run everything.  He’d put
New Yorkers in certain key positions to make it look authentic but ultimately
he’d let the Latinos handle everything.  As long as the cash kept coming
in he could impress his next actress.  Carin was gone most of the time
anyways.  Dickie had no clue as far as whether or not he was in love with
Carin, or whether he was at all able to fall in love with anyone. Love got in
the way.  He was good at the setup, the courtship,
the
romance. But the follow through was problematic.  He wanted status.
 Not intimacy.

Giuseppe died the night after the premier.
 He had been having chest pains all week leading up to the event but was
too stubborn to do anything about it.  In true pizza man fashion he just
worked through it.  
The poster for Carin’s new film
posted in the corner by the door.
 He’d never felt more proud but
he was also a bit stressed. He wasn’t into the artsy chick flicks.  His
favorite movie at the time of his passing was
The Cannonball Run
. It had
been running on cable a lot and he always would catch a slice of it after
coming home from a shift.  Jamie Farr dressed up as an
arab
cracked him up.  And the cars! And Dino and Sammy in that Ferrari!
 The stunts!  The tits!  
furgeddaboutit
!
 He got through the premier, the red carpet, the photographers flashing
away and the two and a half hour-long movie all with a tingling and numbness
crawling up his left arm.  He grabbed onto his wife’s hand with his good
arm just so he could remind himself that he still had one good arm left.
 He knew what was happening and he knew what was coming.  After the
film ended he hugged Carin and smiled.  “Fucken’ booty-ful, Carin.”
 Carin smiled and hugged him tight.  She was the happiest she’d ever
been.  Giuseppe and his wife headed toward the exit.  He stopped
right at the door and looked at her.  Martha, fifty years of marriage, her
eyes still a crisp blue like the day they had met.  His heart, irregular
in its rhythm still melted.  Martha smiled back at him.  Giuseppe
looked back at Carin as she was laughing with Dickie and a well-lubricated Al
Pacino.  He snap-shotted the image in his mind.  
His
surrogate daughter laughing it up with Michael Corleone.
 Mind-blowing. He passed away in his sleep four hours later with the image
still fresh in his mind.  His spirit passed over Carin’s sleeping frame.
The smell of unleavened pizza dough wafting through her nose.

Pizza was going well and acted as a nice hub for
friends and folks to congregate, but for Carin, the booze took over after the
movie premier.  Carin’s phone had stopped ringing after
Ode to Uta
bombed.
 
Nominations all around, but no cash.
 

One really
mean
critic
whose casual sexual advances Carin had fended off more than once found out
about Giuseppe’s passing and suggested in his review that the film was the
reason.  Carin showed up to his desk dressed in all black, having just
come from the memorial and threw an ice coffee in his face.  Then she
punched him as hard as she could in the jaw breaking her wrist and fracturing
two of her knuckles.  The critic was in the hospital for a week.  The
critic’s fraternity brother was a
big-wig
at a studio
with her next film in development.  It all got shut down.  That’s why
William Morris gave her the stink eye.  That’s why she started hitting the
sauce.  That’s when Dickie’s eye began to wander.  Trips to Hawaii
alone, foreign perfumes, late night calls.  

Dickie warmed up with strippers, but he needed
to stay in the Hollywood fold and maintain his stake.  He met a soap opera
star who just needed some on-the-set trailer sex behind her boring husband’s
back.  Not bad, but he needed someone who’d go public with him.  Next
was a model-turned-actress shooting a pilot, followed by a
gorgeous-yet-dysfunctional stylist who turned out to be an escort ($450 for a half
and half party, well worth it.
)
There were others.
A coffee date with Ruth Buzzy just so word would get out around the
right circle of people.
 A Playboy playmate rumored to be a studio
head’s illegitimate daughter.  
Then her sister.
 Both of them had his eyes, brow and lust for underage men.
 Elizabeth Hurley, Hurley’s cousin,  (she’d just gotten an
inheritance), a world champion dyslexic gymnast from
eastern
Europe who kept saying, “we do the 96 now, yes?”
A Brooklyn
born co-producer and writer for a sitcom with Reba McEntire who would laugh way
too hard at her own jokes.
 They were at Jerry’s Famous Deli one
time, late when she decided to really go for it.  “...And then Reba said
that ain’t no bull, that’s my mother-in-law!!!!” Loud, self-laughing, permeated
the entire dining area.  Dickie put on a polite smile and checked his
watch as a general awkwardness came over anyone within earshot.  All of it
behind Carin’s back. Finally he found the cougar
who
lived in the Hills.  She was tall, filthy in bed, pre-menopaused, rich and
available.  Perfect.  He made his move.  He wanted to open new
stores.  Attract more celebrities, stay in their good graces.  He
needed the status.  The rush.  
The buzz of the biz.
And he needed money.  More than he had and more than he had already taken.
 

You could hear the scribbles through the table.
 Carin almost tore through one of the pages that entitled her to
arbitration.  Geraldo picked them up and placed them back into the
envelope as she proceeded.  He felt like Jimmy Smits on that law show from
back in the 80’s. It was dubbed into Spanish and would be on when he worked at
his Uncle’s restaurant.   Gino snorted his nose as he grabbed the
remote, switched the TV over to the Playstation and continued his game of
Killer
Cars of Awesometown - Woptown edition.
 It was a knock-off of
Grand
Theft Auto
he had picked up at a swap meet.  “It’s just as good”, he
would yell at anyone foolish enough to counter him.  It had just come out.
 Gino loved it.  He pushed the buttons in the appropriate configuration
in order to make his player exit his vehicle and beat a hooker to death with a
tire iron. Carin finished up.  Gino turned to Carin and looked up at
Geraldo.  “Geraldo, bring us back a large cheese with onions and a pepper
and onions.  
I’m  hungry
!...” He eye-balled
Geraldo as he said it (back to the screen) “YEAH, SUCK THIS, BITCH!”

Any reservations Geraldo had about tipping Carin
off about Dickie’s skim were now gone. “What would you like,
Carine
?”

“No-no.
We
’ll call in
the order and they’ll send a driver out.  Just get back to the store for
the dinner rush.  Thanks for bringing all these.  I’ll put it in the
mail.”  She smiled as she said it, and Geraldo’s eyes melted.  He was
so indebted to Carin he didn’t know how to properly show it.  He thought
about the Matterhorn ride for a second.  His heart broke, knowing she was
in pain from a divorce and having been hooked-in by Gino.  He could not
save her.  He blamed
El Ratone.
 He thought about Craig and
how he’d burned through so many jobs due to pulling stunts like this to try and
even the scales.  Still, he admired him for having some balls.  His
frustration turned to hope.  He could help her help herself.  He knew
Carin had too much ego to just let Dickie get away with it.  She just
needed to be tipped in the right direction.  He said a short prayer and as
he turned to leave after his goodbye, he reached into his pocket, took out the
packet, and placed it on the key table that was at the foot of the living room.
Near the plush white couch.  It was done.  

Perhaps she would see it and assume Geraldo had
dropped it out of his pocket on accident.  Perhaps she would assume he
left it there on purpose.  It was placed purposely on the key table, not
thrown to the carpet on accident.  Would she be able to fill in the blanks
and get the message?  If Dickie found out Geraldo would be terminated
instantly.  Perhaps Carin would be able to see what was really going on.
 It was a long shot on Geraldo’s part, but he felt compelled to do it.  She
needed to know the truth, but he could not risk vocalizing it.  

 
          
Carin
was on the phone to Pudgie back at the store ordering the food that I would
soon bring, ushering me into Carin’s world.  Geraldo stared back at the
little package and hoped Carin would find it, and it would explain itself.
 He got out of the apartment and hauled-ass to the elevator.  He did
not want to be in the building when she discovered it.

Thirty-five minutes later Geraldo was making his
way back.  Traffic was a nightmare.  He noticed me coming up the
other way, blasting strange music.  I was headed to Carin’s with all the
food she had ordered.  
Nervous for some reason.