The Lonely Lady (31 page)

“Do it for me, baby. We got to keep up the standards. We can’t afford to fuck up.”

All the floors above the third were reserved for members only. I decided to look into the health club. There were a few men lolling about in the raised swimming pool and some girls sitting around the edge looking bored. They paid absolutely no attention to the fact that the men were nude.

Tony came out of his little office. “Quiet,” he said. “There’s nobody in the steam or sauna.”

The gym and massage parlor floor above was just as empty. Only one of the little booths had the curtain drawn. “It’s dead tonight,” Rocco, the trainer, said. “Nobody’s got a hard-on. They’re all staying home with their wives.”

I laughed.

His face was serious. “It’s not funny. The girls are beginning to practice on each other. I caught Joan giving Sandy a massage.”

“You can’t let that happen,” I said with a straight face. “You’ll have to make some sacrifices and let them practice on you.”

He stared at me in disbelief. “My wife’ll kill me!”

I laughed and went upstairs. There was absolutely nothing happening on the sixth floor, which had private rooms for guests who wished to stay the night. Gianni and his two girls were playing gin. I waved and went up to the office.

I put the checklists in a time box for the bookkeepers, lit a cigarette and went to Vincent’s office. He hadn’t come in yet. That was strange. When I had left his apartment just before eight o’clock he had said he would be in by ten. Since there was nothing else for me to do at the moment, I thought I might go down to the disco and check out the new D.J. A hip D.J. made all the difference. The right music for the right crowd kept the room jumping.

But I made no move to go. I really wasn’t in the mood. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. It wasn’t easy having to smile at people all the time, pretending to be interested in what they were saying.

I ground out my cigarette. What I really wanted to do was get stoned. But I couldn’t do that either. The rules were very strict. No grass, no coke, no drugs on the premises. “We take absolutely no chances,” Vincent said. “Everybody’ll be looking to bust us if we make it. We make sure we don’t give them a handle.”

But at his apartment it was different. He had everything from grass and angel dust to poppers, which he loved to use while we were balling. But there was never anything on him. I used to wonder sometimes how the stuff got there but I didn’t ask. There were some things I just didn’t talk to him about and that included his family.

I remembered the only time I had seen his father and his two older brothers. They had come in one night shortly after we opened. There were two other men with them. Vincent took them right up to the office. About a half hour later they came down and Vincent gave them a tour of the club.

I happened to be at the entrance as they were on their way out. Vincent saw me but made no move to introduce us. His father was a thin gentle-looking little man with iron-gray hair and black, impenetrable eyes. Vincent bent over him and kissed him on each cheek.

The old man smiled, gently touched Vincent’s face and nodded. “It is good, my son,” he said. “We are proud of you.” Then he turned and left, followed by the others.

Vincent glanced at me and, without a word, took the elevator up to his office. A few minutes later I followed him.

There was a bottle of scotch on his desk and he was refilling his glass as I came in. I had never seen him take a drink at work before. “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “It’s okay.”

But I noticed that his hand was shaking as he carried the glass to his lips. He took a swallow of the drink. “I want to fuck you,” he said.

There was a strange expression in his eyes. Somehow I knew he was afraid of what my answer would be. “Okay,” I said.

“Right away.”

“Shall I lock the door?”

“Not here. At my place. Change your clothes.”

Minutes later we were on our way. We didn’t say a word until we walked into his apartment, which was only a few blocks from the club on Sutton Place, overlooking the river.

He turned on the light and crossed to a built-in bar. “Do you smoke?” he asked.

I nodded.

He lit a joint for me and another for himself. It was sweet stuff. Very easy. Usually it took only two tokes for me to get stoned but this time it didn’t seem to be working.

“Come on,” he said.

I followed him into the bedroom. He turned toward me, taking off his jacket. “Strip.”

I put the joint in an ashtray and began to undress. I bent down to unfasten my shoe straps, and when I straightened up he was naked. He stared at me for a moment, then opened a drawer in the night table beside the bed. He brought out a yellow box, a small white vial of powder and a tiny gold spoon. He came toward me with the vial and spoon.

He took the cap off the vial and spooned out some white powder. Then he held it to his nostril and snorted. Afterward he took a deep breath and repeated the process under his other nostril. His eyes began to lighten. “Bang,” he said, holding out a spoonful of powder to me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Coke,” he said. “Take it. It won’t hurt you.”

He held the spoon to my nose. I snorted. The powder made me sneeze. He laughed and held the spoon under the other nostril. I snorted again. This time it only stung a little.

“How is it?” he asked.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You will,” He laughed. “Takes a few minutes.”

He was right. Already my nostrils were numbing and there was a dryness in my mouth. Suddenly I was up there. He had been watching me. “Good?”

“Way out.”

He put down the vial and pulled me toward him. His mouth was rough and bruising and I could feel his hands gripping hard into my arms. We stumbled and almost fell across the bed. I felt his teeth biting into my breasts, hurting my nipples. I moaned in pain and he raised his head.

His eyes stared into mine. “I’m crazy about you. Do you know that?” he said, almost angrily.

I shook my head. My pain seemed like nothing compared with his. His world of pain was far beyond me.

He reached across to the little yellow box and pulled out an amyl nitrite capsule. Holding it in his hand, he pushed my legs back in a jackknife position against my chest and rose to his knees, poised over me. His entire body seemed like a tense steel spring.

There was a strange faraway glaze over his eyes. Then, before I had the chance to be frightened, he fell forward across me. I could feel the length of him pushing into me and at the same time he broke the popper.

My head seemed to explode with the rush of blood and heat to my brain and at the same moment his orgasm began. He raised himself away from me suddenly, digging his arms into the mattress on either side of me. His eyes were closed and his face contorted.

“No! OH, Christ! No!” he almost screamed, trying to control his spasms. “No, no, no!”

I pulled him down to me. “Don’t fight it, don’t hold it back. Let it come.”

He shivered for a moment more, then it was over. He lay very still, his chest heaving against me. Then abruptly he began to cry. Hard, racking sobs.

I held his head to my breasts and stroked his hair. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”

He raised his head to look at me. His eyes were wet with tears. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Damn them!”

I waited for him to go on.

“They finally got what they wanted,” he said. “They wanted me in the family business, and like it or not I’m in it.”

“Don’t talk about it,” I said. “It will be all right.”

“No. The club was supposed to be mine. They loaned me the money for it. But now they don’t want the money back. We’re all partners. After all, aren’t we family?” he asked bitterly.

“Is that why they were at the club tonight?”

He nodded. “I would have been better off if it had bombed. At least that way they would have forgotten the whole thing. It would have been just another of Vincenzo’s crazy ideas.”

“I didn’t know they were like that. From everything I’ve heard, Italian families always kept their word to each other. No matter what happened.”

“Except when it comes to money and power. Cosa nostra is just a word for the newspapers. My father got rid of his brother in order to become the head of the family, and when he’s gone my brothers will kill each other to take his place.”

I was silent for a moment. “What happens now?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I run it just the same as before. Only now we cut the profit four ways.”

“What happens to the money they loaned you? The two million dollars. Do you have to pay it back?”

“Of course not. It’s the family business now. The business will pay it back out of their share.”

“Then you’re ahead,” I said, looking at him. “My father was a banker and I remember he once told me that any loan you did not have to repay personally was a clear profit. You just made yourself a half million dollars clear.”

Finally he began to smile. “You’re a strange girl,” he said. He swung his legs off the bed. “Care for a drink?”

“No, but if you have another stick I’d like it.”

He came back into the bedroom with a cigarette box full. I lit one and leaned back on the pillows inhaling gently. This time it worked. I began to feel very mellow.

He was standing at the side of the bed looking down at me. I passed him the joint. He took a few tokes and then I reached up for him.

“Come here,” I said. “You owe me one.”

He came down into my arms and this time we made love. The next day I moved everything except my typewriter and papers into his apartment. I didn’t give up the apartment, because I always wanted a place to go to where I could work.

Chapter 22

By the time I went back down to the disco it was jammed. There was just about enough room on the floor to move up and down in time with the beat. The rest of the room was filled with people huddled around tiny tables without an inch of space between them.

Dino came over to me, a wide grin on his round face. “The new boy’s good,” he said. “He keeps them movin’.”

I looked across the dark room to where the D.J. was working at two turntables which were raised on a platform slightly above the floor. He was a tall slim black boy, dressed in an outlandish costume—safari wide-brimmed hat, hand-made chamois shirt and wide bell-bottomed chinos. He held an earphone to his ear while he laced a new record on the second turntable and marked the disk. When he finished he put the headset down, looked at me and smiled.

There was something vaguely familiar about his smile. I nodded and made my way through the crush of people to the turntable. When I stopped in front of the stand, he smiled again. “Hello, JeriLee,” he said shyly.

I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “Fred! Fred Lafayette!”

He grinned. “You remembered.”

I held out my hand. “I can’t believe it,” I said.

“Yep. Here we are. Right back where we started. Me up on the stand, you down there on the floor, workin’.”

“But your singing,” I said. “What happened?”

“You know, girl. Mellow singers like Nat King Cole just ain’t cuttin’ it today. The world is rock happy.” He let go of my hand. “How long has it been? Ten years?”

“Just about.”

“I used to read about you in the papers,” he said. “Then I sort of lost touch. You divorced that man, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“You look real good,” he said. “You grew up pretty.”

“I feel old.”

“That’s no way to talk. You’re still a kid.”

“I wish it were true,” I said. “My father died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. He was a nice man.”

“Yes.”

“I saw you when I came into work an’ thought I recognized you.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” I asked.

“When I checked to see if I was right I was told to keep off. That you were the boss’s lady.” His eyes searched mine.

“That’s true. But you should have said something anyway. After all, we’re old friends.”

Before he could answer, Dino was at my side. “Vincenzo just came in. He wants to see you right away.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked up at Fred. “I hope you like it here. Maybe we could get together for a cup of coffee sometime.”

“Sure,” he said. He picked up the earphone and began placing another disk. “You let me know when.”

I pushed my way back to the door and went up to the office. Vincent was on something. The expression in his eyes was too bright. His voice was angry. “What the hell were you doing holding hands with that nigger?”

“We were shaking, not holding hands,” I said. “He’s an old friend. He saved my life once.”

“I don’t give a shit what he did. I’m going to fire the cocksucker!”

“You do,” I said, “and you fire me too.” Fred had been more right than he knew when he said we were back where we started. It looked as if I were going to cost him another job.

Vincent suddenly calmed down. “He really saved your life?”

“Yes,” I said. “A couple of kids were beating me and trying to rape me. He got me away from them just in time.”

Vincent was silent for a moment. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“I guess it’s all right then,” he said. “You really are old friends.”

I didn’t answer.

“Change your clothes,” he said. “We’re gettin’ out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Over to El Mo. I’m on to something. We’re goin’ to meet some people there.”

“About what?”

“About a movie,” he snapped. “How long do you think I can stand a stinking joint like this before going crazy?”

“Does your family know about it?”

“No. And I don’t give a damn! Now change your goddamn dress and stop asking so many damn questions.”

***

We walked into El Morocco and it was like a rerun of the first time we had met. The Paoluzzis were at the best table. Only one thing was different. Instead of the Italian lawyer there was a hard compact medium-sized man in a dark suit who was introduced only as Frank.

Paoluzzi kissed my hand in that strange way he had and Carla Maria pressed her cheek to mine.

“Everything settled?” Vincent asked as we sat down.