The Family Corleone (12 page)

“Sure,” Eileen said. She poked her head out into the hall, looked around, and then kissed him, a peck on the lips. “Be gone with you, now,” she said, “and be careful driving home.”

“Wednesday,” Sonny whispered.

Eileen watched Sonny as he went off down the stairs. He held his hat in his hand as he took the steps two at a time. He was big and broad-shouldered, with a thick head of gorgeous curly black hair. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped to put on his hat, and the streetlight through the glass panes of the door caught the soft blue of the crown as he pulled it down toward his eyes. In that moment, he looked like a movie star: tall, dark, handsome, and mysterious. What he didn’t look like was a seventeen-year-old boy and a friend of her brother’s since they were both in knickers. “Ah, Gad,” she whispered to herself as Sonny disappeared onto the street. She said it again, one more time, out in the hall, and then added, “Ah, Jesus,” before she closed and locked her door.

K
elly tapped the window’s bottom rail with a ball-peen hammer in an attempt to break the paint seal. After she had been at it for a while, tapping and banging, she placed the hammer on the floor at her feet, wedged the heels of her hands under the lower sash on either side of the lock, and pushed. When it wouldn’t open, she cursed it, plopped herself down on a wooden stool, and contemplated her choices. Wind rattled the glass panes. Beyond the window, the trees crowding the backyard bowed and swayed. She was in Luca’s house off West Shore Road in Great Neck, just over the city line on Long Island. This place was nothing like the crowded apartment in Hell’s Kitchen where she’d grown up, the youngest child and only girl among three brothers, but still it brought her life in that apartment to mind, her life waiting on her brothers and her parents like she was born a slave just because she was a girl. Everything in that apartment was rattrap and rundown thanks to her miserable father, who was forever pissing himself wherever he collapsed and stinking up everything, and her mother wasn’t much better, the pair of them. A girl couldn’t have anything nice in a place like that. And what did she get for a reward after making everybody’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner? A backhanded slap from her mother and a rough word from all the men except Sean, who was a big baby. They thought they were through with her when she took up with Luca—after
they threw her out like trash—but she was the one done with them, all of them. She could have better in life than they ever would let her. She was enough of a looker to be in the movies. Everybody said so. She just needed to get free of stinkin’ rattraps like this one, and she could with Luca because there was nobody tougher than Luca Brasi—and now she was going to have his baby, though he still didn’t know it. He could go places, Luca, and he could take her with him, only he made her crazy sometimes how he had no real ambition. Look at this place, for example, the way it was falling apart around him. It made her angry.

The farmhouse was ancient. It dated well back into the last century. The rooms were all big, with high ceilings and tall windows, and the glass in all the windows was somehow wavy, as if it had melted a little. Whenever she was out here, Kelly had to remind herself that the city was only a half-hour drive away. It felt like a different world, with woods all around them and gravel roads and an empty stretch of beach that looked out over Little Neck Bay. She liked to take walks down to the water and then come back and look over the farmhouse, imagining what it could be like with some work and attention. The gravel driveway could be paved. The pocked and peeling white paint could be stripped away, and a fresh coat of maybe light blue could turn the neglected clapboard exterior into something fresh and colorful. The interior, too, desperately needed a paint job, and the floors needed to be refinished—but with work the place could be lovely, and Kelly liked to stand at the head of the driveway and imagine how it could be.

At the moment, though, all she wanted to do was open a window and let some air into the house. In the basement an ancient coal-burning furnace grumbled and moaned as it cranked out heat. The radiators gurgled and hissed, and when the furnace was just getting going, sometimes the whole house shook with the monumental effort of keeping it heated. She found it impossible to regulate the heat. It was either sweltering or freezing, and this morning it was sweltering—even though it was windy and cold out. She pulled her robe tight around her neck and went into the kitchen, where
she found a butcher knife in the sink. She thought she might slice through the paint to free the window. Behind her, Luca came down the stairs from the bedroom barefoot and bare chested, in striped pajama bottoms. His hair, short and dark, was pressed flat on the right side of his head where it had been mashed against the pillow. A series of sleep scars ran all the way along his cheek up to his temple. Kelly said, “You look funny, Luca.”

Luca plopped himself down in a kitchen chair. “What the hell’s the racket?” he asked. “I thought someone was trying to bust down the door.”

“That was me,” Kelly said. “Should I make you some breakfast?”

Luca held his head in his hands and massaged his temples. “What’ve we got?” he asked, looking at the tabletop.

Kelly opened the icebox. “We got some eggs and ham,” she said. “I could make you that.”

Luca nodded. “What was the banging?” he asked again.

“I was tryin’ to get a window open. It’s boiling. I couldn’t sleep with it this hot. That’s why I got up.”

“What time is it anyway?”

“About ten,” Kelly said.

“Jesus Christ,” Luca said. “I hate getting up before noon.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said, “but it was boilin’.”

Luca watched Kelly, as if trying to read her. “You makin’ some coffee?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure, honey.” Kelly opened a cupboard over the sink and took down a bag of Eight O’Clock coffee.

“Why didn’t you just open the bedroom window?” Luca asked. “That one opens easy.”

“ ’Cause then the wind blows right on us. I thought if I opened one down here it might cool the whole place a little.”

Luca glanced behind him, to the empty room off the kitchen, where a wooden stool rested beside the window, a hammer on the floor next to it. He went into the room and slammed the window casing a couple of times with the heel of his hand. He struggled with it briefly before it flew open all the way and a cold wind swirled
past him and out the door to the kitchen. He lowered the window, leaving it open an inch. When he went back to the table, Kelly was smiling at him.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” Kelly said. “You’re just so strong; that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Luca said. Kelly’s hair was especially red in the light through the kitchen window. She was undressed under her robe and he could see the sides of her breasts in the V of terry cloth falling from her shoulders. “And you’re a pretty snappy-lookin’ dish.”

Kelly beamed and gave him back a coquettish smile before she broke two eggs into a frying pan and scrambled them up with a slice of ham, the way he liked. When breakfast was ready she put it on a plate and slid it in front of him, along with a glass of fresh orange juice.

“Aren’t you having anything?” Luca asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Kelly said. She prepared the coffee, turned the gas heat up under the pot, and stood beside it, waiting for it to perk.

“You don’t eat enough,” Luca said. “You don’t eat more, you’re gonna get skinny.”

“Luca,” Kelly said, “I was thinking.” She turned to face him and leaned back against the stove.

Luca said, “Uh-oh,” and started in on his breakfast.

“But just listen.” She fished a pack of Chesterfields out of the pocket of her robe and leaned over the gas burner to light a cigarette. “I’ve just been thinking,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke into the window light. “Everybody knows there’s nobody tougher than you in the whole city. Not even Mariposa, though, sure, he’s too big. He runs the whole city practically.”

Luca stopped eating. He seemed amused. “What do you know about this stuff?” he asked. “You been stickin’ your nose where it don’t belong?”

“I know a lot,” Kelly said. “I’m always hearing things.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So all I’m sayin’ is, you should be runnin’ things, Luca. Who’s tougher than you?” The coffee boiled over and she took it off the
burner, turned down the heat, and then put it back to perk a few more minutes.

“I do run things,” Luca said. “I run things just the way I want them.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said. She moved behind Luca and massaged his shoulders. “Sure. You do a robbery here and there, you run some numbers… You do a little bit of whatever you feel like doing for you and your boys.”

“That’s exactly right,” Luca said.

“See, what I’m sayin’, Luca, is you should organize. You got to be the only guinea in New York still workin’ solo. All the rest of your people, they work together. They make a fortune compared to what you make.”

“That’s also true,” Luca said. He stopped eating and put one hand over Kelly’s, where she was kneading his shoulder. “But what you’re leaving out, doll, is that those guys all take orders.” He turned around in his chair, wrapped his arms around Kelly’s waist, and kissed her belly. “Those guys,” he said, “even somebody like that jerkoff Mariposa: He’s gotta take orders too. His friend Al Capone tells him to crap in his hat, he craps in his hat. And everybody else, they all have to do what they’re told. Now, me,” he said, and he held Kelly at arm’s length, “I do whatever the hell I want to do. And nobody—not Giuseppe Mariposa or Al Capone, or anybody else alive—nobody tells me what to do.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said, and ran her fingers through Luca’s hair. “But you’re cut out of all the big money, baby. You’re cut out of all the big dough.”

“What’s the matter?” Luca said. “Don’t I take care of you? Don’t I buy you nice clothes, fancy jewelry, pay your rent, give you spending money?” He went back to eating his breakfast without waiting for an answer.

“Ah, you’re great,” Kelly said, and kissed him on the shoulder. “You know that,” she said. “You know I love you, baby.”

Luca said, “I told you not to call me baby. I don’t like it.” He put his fork down and offered Kelly a smile. “My boys snicker behind my back they hear you call me baby, okay?”

“Sure,” Kelly said. “I forgot is all, Luca.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat across from Luca at the table, and watched him eat. After a minute, she took a plastic ashtray down from the top of the icebox, stubbed out her cigarette, and carried it with her to the table, where she put it down beside her coffee cup. She got up again, turned on the gas burner to light another cigarette, and then sat down at the table again. “Luca,” she said, “remember we talked about getting some nice furniture for this place? Really, honey,” she said. “The bedroom’s practically the only room that’s furnished. Practically all you have in the whole house is a great big bed.”

Luca finished off his breakfast. He looked at Kelly but didn’t say anything.

“We could fix up this place nice,” she pressed, gently, but pressing nonetheless. “I saw a beautiful living room set in the Sears catalogue. It’d be perfect for us. And, you know,” she said, gesturing around her to the house, “we could put drapes on the windows—”

“I like the place the way it is,” Luca said. “I already told you that.” He took one of Kelly’s cigarettes and lit it with a wooden match he struck against the kitchen wall. “Don’t start already,” he said. “Give a guy a break, Kelly. We’re not even out of bed and you’re starting.”

“I’m not startin’,” Kelly said. When she heard the whimper in her voice, it made her angry. “I’m not startin’,” she said again, louder. “Things change is all I’m trying to tell you, Luca. Things can’t always stay the same.”

“Yeah?” Luca said. He tapped the ash off his cigarette. “What are you talking about, doll?”

Kelly got up and walked away from the table. She leaned against the stove. “You don’t fix this place up, Luca,” she said, “ ’cause you’re practically livin’ with your mother. You sleep there more than you sleep here. You eat there all the time. It’s like you’re still living with her.”

“What’s that to you, Kelly?” Luca pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’s it to you where I sleep and eat?”

“Well, it can’t keep going on like that.”

“Why not?” Luca asked. “Why can’t it keep going on like that?”

Kelly felt tears coming, so she turned her back to Luca and went to the window, where she looked out at the gravel driveway and the road beyond it and the woods that lined the road. “All you got in this place is a big bed,” she repeated, still gazing out the window. She sounded as if she were talking to herself. Behind her she heard Luca push his chair back from the table. When she turned, he was stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Sometimes I think all you’ve got this place for is a hideout and somewhere to sleep with your whores. Ain’t that right, Luca?”

“You said it.” Luca slid the ashtray across the table. “I’m going back up to bed,” he said. “Maybe when I wake up you’ll be in a better mood.”

“I ain’t in a bad mood,” Kelly said. She followed him and watched him walk away from her, up the stairs. From the bottom of the flight, she called up. “How many whores do you have anyway? I’m just curious, Luca. I’m just curious, is all.” When he didn’t answer, she waited. She heard the mattress creak and groan with Luca’s weight. In the basement, the furnace banged to life with a series of moans, and then the radiators started hissing and gurgling. She went up to the bedroom and stood in the doorway. Luca was on his back in bed, his hands under his head. On a night table beside him, a glass of water rested alongside a black telephone, the receiver dangling over the dial at its base. Luca was gazing outside, where wind whipped through the trees and whistled at the window.

Luca said, “Don’t start, Kelly. I swear to God. It’s too early.”

“I ain’t startin’,” she said. She watched him where he lay, his long, muscular arms white against the dark wood of the headboard; his feet under the covers all the way at the other end of the mattress, touching the footboard. “I just want to know is all, Luca. How many whores do you bring out here?”