Brotherly Love Page 10

  His uncle opens the door and gets out. “Wait here,” he says. He looks back into the car a moment, deciding something, and then says, “Get in the back.”

  Peter gets into the back seat. His uncle closes the door and crosses the street. He stops at a door next to the bar’s, and then opens it. He has his own key.

  Peter waits, listening to the pitch of the voices inside the bar. A dog walks past, then a drunk. He is unnoticed, sitting in the dark of the back seat.

  A light comes on in the apartment over the door, and then the curtains in one of the windows are pulled aside and he sees a woman looking down at the car. She lifts her hand to her mouth and then Peter sees the point of her cigarette glow red. The smoke rises like another curtain.

  His uncle appears behind her. The boy sees him in silhouette, almost as a shadow. He sees him touch her.

  The woman turns then and disappears into the room. In a moment, two men come out of the bar, arguing, one of them holding a bottle.

  “I told you a hundred fucking times,” says the one without the bottle. “How many fucking times I got to tell you?”

  The other one does not answer. He stands in one place on the sidewalk, claiming it.

  “You hear me? I ast you a fucking question, John. I ast you a fucking question, you say the answer, right?”

  The man without the bottle moves closer as he says that, his right hand is a fist hidden just behind his leg, as if it were a weapon. The man with the bottle waits; and in the car, Peter waits too.

  “I’m givin’ you one more chance,” says the man without the bottle. As he says that, he takes a step closer, into the place on the sidewalk the other one has claimed. He lifts his hands, as if to sing.

  “You’re my brother,” he says, “so I’m giving you one more chance …”

  And as he says that, the bottle arcs in the air and comes down across the side of his face. He staggers and turns halfway around, as if to walk away, but then turns back, lowers his head and charges.

  When the door leading to the apartment opens, the two men are lying on the sidewalk, locked into each other’s headlocks, hitting each other without leverage, biting each other …

  The woman stops for a moment to watch them. She is wearing a housecoat and hairy slippers, there is a cigarette between her fingers, lipstick marks on the filter. Peter sees every detail. The men yell and roll one way, then another.

  “Youse two again,” she says, and walks around their bodies and then crosses the street. She opens the back door without looking inside, and he smells her perfume even before she is in the car. She does not look at him until she has closed the door. Black specks of mascara hang in her eyelashes and there is lipstick on her teeth.

  “You smoke?” she says.

  He shakes his head no.

  She puts the cigarette against her lips and as she pulls the smoke out, her face glows. She moves the cigarette away and then, using the same hand, she reaches across Peter’s chest and touches the far side of his neck, pulling him. Her fingers are cold and the heat of the cigarette is somewhere under his ear. He allows himself to be pulled.

  He smells her perfume, and then her hair spray, and then her lipstick. Her hair is stiff against his face. Her eyes move across his and then he feels her mouth pressing against his, and then feels her tongue in his mouth. Then her tongue is gone, and in the hole that leaves she blows the smoke in her chest into him.

  She moves away slowly, straight back, looking into his eyes. She is smiling. “So now you smoke,” she says.

  She puts a hand on his chest and pushes him back until his head is resting in the corner between the seat and the window. “What else don’t you do?”

  He shakes his head, not knowing what to answer. On the periphery of his vision, he sees the two men still lying on the sidewalk. They are fighting quietly now, without words. Her housecoat falls open and he sees bruises, and then the tuft of hair between her legs; he notices the color of her fingernails.

  Her hand moves up his leg, touching his penis through his pants, then opening his zipper. “Jesus,” she says when she has it out, “you’re bigger’n your uncle already.”

  He stares at her hand, the painted fingernails. The feel of her cool hand. A bead of liquid appears at the mouth of his penis, then breaks and slides down the side. She lowers her face into his line of vision.

  “Don’t tell him I said that, okay?” she says.

  He shakes his head no.

  “That’s the kind of thing might piss him off,” she says. She shakes her head. “You never know with Phil.…”

  She leans back until her hair spreads out across the seat and then, still holding him by the penis, she lifts her legs over his shoulders and pulls him down on top of her.

  “Your uncle’s scary when he gets mad,” she says.

  She moves his penis until he feels it touching something wet. “You know what that is?” she says, teasing him now.

  He nods his head.

  “That’s a nice wet pussy,” she says. “Your uncle said you didn’t know what a pussy was, wanted to start you off with the best there is.”

  She watches him a moment, waiting. He doesn’t know for what. “Push,” she says finally.

  And he pushes in, and she closes her eyes.

  And someplace behind him, he feels his uncle watching.

  Peter looks down at himself in the dark, and sees the glistening of moisture on his penis as it moves back and forth into the opening in this woman; he realizes this is the place his uncle puts his penis too.

  And he closes his eyes, holding that idea, and the idea of his uncle somewhere behind, watching, and pushes as deep as he can into this hole.

  Poisoning him.

  That is his thought.

  “Jesus,” he hears her say, “you’re a natural.…”

  She leaves the car with no more ceremony than she entered it. She closes her housecoat when he has finished, fits her feet into her slippers, and gets out. He watches her cross the street and then, before she reaches the door of her apartment, she kicks at the two men still lying on the sidewalk.

  “Would youse two move it somewhere else for once?” she says. And then she steps over them, walks through the unlocked door, and is gone.

  Peter steps outside the car, feeling the cool air on his face. The men lie motionless on the sidewalk. He hears music from inside the bar. He is tired and a disappointment settles over him. He wonders if that is really the best pussy there is. He doesn’t think so, it struck him as ordinary.

  He stumbles onto the idea that all women may think their pussies are the best. How would they know?

  It is another half hour before his uncle appears in the doorway. He hikes his pants as he steps onto the sidewalk, and stops halfway across the street to light his cigar. Peter gets back into the car to wait for him.

  The smell of her is everywhere. Her perfume, her hair spray, her pussy. It stirs him, he cannot understand why. It seems possible to him now that pussy is better before and after than it is when you’ve got a penis in it.

  He wonders if that is the secret.

  His uncle smiles at him a moment—waiting for some sign, as if there is an agreement to seal. He reaches across the seat and rubs the top of Peter’s head. Peter feels the weight of his rings. His uncle puts the key in the ignition and starts the engine.

  “So,” he says, “I suppose now you want to drive my car.” Peter doesn’t answer. His uncle laughs and pulls into the street.

  “My first piece of ass,” he says a few minutes later, “I was fourteen years old. How do you like that?”

  The boy shakes his head.

  “Went to a house up on Diamond Street and caught a dose first time out of the gate.” His uncle drives quietly a moment, smiling, remembering it. The streetlights pass over his face and throw shadows across the pockmarks.

  “I always said my kids wouldn’t have to go to a whorehouse to find out about pussy.”

  He looks at Peter then in a strange w
ay. “That’s what people want for their kids,” he says, including Peter, “a better life than they had themselves.”

  The car is quiet a few blocks.

  They miss the light at Broad, and somehow, in the absence of motion, the silence between them is agonizing. Somehow in the absence of motion, there is nothing there in the car but the man and the boy, and the thing the man has done to him.

  “You’re a quiet kid, you know that?” his uncle says.

  Peter can’t think of anything to say; he says nothing.

  “When I got pussy the first time, I couldn’t stop talking about it,” he says. He waits for Peter to answer. The light changes, the boy’s uncle does not move to cross the intersection. He sits, looking at the boy, waiting for him to say something. Getting mad. The boy searches for words and there aren’t any there.

  A horn blows behind them, his uncle ignores it. “Sometimes, I think I brought you two up all wrong,” he says. “That you don’t do nobody no favors making things easy.”

  The horn blows again, and his uncle slams the car’s transmission into park and steps outside, leaving the door open, and stands in the headlights of the car behind them. The horn goes silent, and his uncle gets back inside.

  The traffic light turns red, and his uncle drives through the intersection.

  “What you like,” he says, calmer now, almost back to the house, “is to know where somebody stands.”

  Peter looks at him and knows what he is asking.

  “I mean, I don’t care if a guy’s quiet or loud, as long as I know whose side he’s on.” His uncle looks at him again, making it a question.

  Peter doesn’t answer.

  “Things get tense, the guy you got to think about isn’t your enemy, it’s the guy you don’t know if he’s your enemy.” He looks at Peter. “I’m telling you this for your own good,” he says. “That’s the guy that gets you, the traitor.”

  “I’m no traitor,” Peter says.

  His uncle stops the car in front of the house. His cigar has gone out and he lights it, cupping his hands. The smoke rises to the ceiling, looking for a way out. His uncle smiles.

  “I never thought you was,” he says.

  A month later, late at night, the house begins to fill. There are men from the roofer’s union, who work for Peter’s uncle, and there are Italians. The young ones who have come to the house before to complain about the old man Constantine.

  Who want to take what he has away from him, but don’t have the balls to try.

  The first tap at the front door wakes Peter up. He lies still, staring at the ceiling, and listens to the voices downstairs.

  “It’s done,” the man says.

  “No fuck-ups?” his uncle says.

  “No fuck-ups.”

  In a moment there is another noise at the door, and Peter edges out of bed and walks barefoot over the cool floor to a spot near the top of the stairs to listen. He presses his back into the wall, hearing the breath come in and out of his mouth. “No fuck-ups?” one of the Italians asks.

  “No, everything’s good,” his uncle says.

  Another knock at the door.

  His cousin comes out into the hallway then, and makes his way down to the place where Peter is standing. He smells of cigarettes and hair oil.

  “They was outside the place on Twelfth Street,” someone says downstairs. “Never seen a thing.”

  “What about the others?” his uncle says.

  “The others ain’t a problem,” the Italian says.

  “Jesus,” Michael whispers. Peter turns to look at him. “They did Constantine.”

  “Bullshit,” Peter says.

  He is telling the truth, though. Michael makes up things he would like to be true, but this time Peter sees it’s happened.

  His cousin smiles at him in the dark. His voice is trembling and happy. “We did Constantine.”

  Peter hears his uncle’s voice again and it is trembling too, but in a different way.

  “What do you mean, they ain’t a problem,” he says.

  “They ain’t a problem,” the Italian says. “They’re all old men. Let them move to Arizona and buy green pants for the golf course.”

  The room downstairs is suddenly quiet. Peter feels his cousin smiling at him in the dark. “What did I tell you?” he whispers.

  “The deal’s still the same.…” his uncle says.

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  But something has changed. Peter hears it.

  “We run our business, you run yours,” his uncle says. “Nobody comes around wanting to be consultants.”

  It is quiet again.

  “As far as we’re concerned,” the Italian says.

  “What about the old guys?” his uncle says. “They’re out of it too, right? You’ll take care of that.”

  “Shit, they’re a hundred years old.”

  “What’s that mean, they’re a hundred years old?”

  “It means you did us a favor with Constantine, we leave you alone,” the Italian says, getting angry. “It don’t mean we hold your fucking hand. You got a problem with the old guys, you take care of it yourself. It’s your business.”

  Peter waits while that settles.

  “Look, these guys are tired,” the Italian says. “With Constantine gone, all they want now is nobody does them too. Let ’em alone, maybe throw them a bone once in a while, everybody gets along. There ain’t no reason to go hurting a bunch of old men.…”

  “Shit,” his cousin breathes, “we got Constantine.” Peter puts his hand over his cousin’s mouth. He listens to the men downstairs talk, convincing his uncle that the old Italians are harmless now.

  “Things are going to be different,” his cousin says. Peter looks at him again, and his cousin whispers, “We can do anything we want.”

  Nick hears of Constantine’s death at seven in the morning at Ed’s Diner. The place is full of smoke and all the booths are taken. Ed comes out of the kitchen wearing a clean apron and spots him sitting at the far end of the counter.

  Nick has wrapped his hands around a hot cup of coffee, trying to get them warm. Ed moves past Phyllis, his morning waitress, who is bent over behind the counter looking for something in her purse. He lifts his stomach with his hands to squeeze past her bottom, and then gives her a pat on the fanny on the way past.

  “Ed, I’m warning you,” she says. She comes up red-faced, her lips fastened around an unlit cigarette. She leans into one of the gas stoves to light it, then picks up an order of eggs and scrapple, trying to remember whose it is.

  “You got scrapple and eggs, Nick?” she says.

  “Nick don’t eat breakfast,” Ed says, “you know that.” She sets the food down farther up the counter and Ed stands in front of Nick and wipes his hands on the apron.

  “How ’bout Constantine,” he says quietly.

  Nick looks up. Ed checks both directions, as if he were afraid of being overheard.

  “They got him over on Twelfth Street last night, parked right in front of his house.”

  “Who?” Nick says.

  Ed shrugs. “The Young Turks, I guess. The old guys been holding off the young guys a long time now.”

  Nick doesn’t know any of the Young Turks.

  Ed says, “One behind the ear and then one in the eye.”

  “He was alone?”

  “The bodyguard’s got a concussion on his head, says they must of knocked him out first.” He shakes his head and the men are both quiet.

  “You wonder where does a guy like that—the bodyguard I mean—where does he think he’s going to hide?” Ed says.

  Nick takes a drink of his coffee.

  “They must of put him in a corner,” Ed says, meaning the bodyguard. “Somebody puts you in a corner, you can’t tell what you’re going to do.”

  Nick thinks about that, about worrying over what you should have done. Who you should have done. He thinks that people in Constantine’s business must worry all the time. “What a way to live,
” he says.

  Ed looks around his diner. “Myself, I’d rather just work for a living, drive home in an Oldsmobile.”

  Nick nods and sips at his coffee. Phyllis squeezes behind Ed, carrying two plates to the booths. “You don’t mind moving your ass, Ed,” she says, “there’s people come in here to eat.” He smiles at Nick and backs into her a little, moving his behind against her stomach.

  “Ed, I’m warning you,” she says. “I’m going to put these fucking eggs down your pants.”

  Ed turns to look at the plates, considering it. “What are they,” he says, “over easy?”

  Nick goes back to the shop, carrying a cup of coffee in a paper bag. An old Ford Fairlane 500 is sitting in the garage, its hood open, the engine cold and black. Nick opens the bag and puts the coffee on the fender and then hangs a light from the hood release and turns it on.

  The car is as old as Harry. The engine is caked in grease a quarter-inch thick, stone cold, and he reaches in and chips at the battery cables where they connect to the posts, trying to knock off enough of the yellowed crust of iron oxide so he can fit a wrench there and loosen the cables.

  The man who owns this car lives in a row house with his wife and her mother three blocks from the garage, and has never changed the oil. He doesn’t believe in changing oil, he believes in adding one quart when the engine gets two quarts low. He says changing the oil is like having relatives move in; he says it upsets his engine.

  Nick clears away enough of the iron oxide to get his wrench around the nut and then presses until feels it give. He pulls the wrench toward him until it hits the engine block, then regrips the nut, and pulls it back again. When it is loose enough, he reaches in with his hand and twists the cable off. Then he begins on the other post.

  He hears water running upstairs, the old man in the shower. Nick tries to remember how long he has been up there; he thinks it is probably a month.

  Nick isn’t sure if he wants him to leave or not. He’s clean at least. He keeps himself clean. And if he’s upstairs, Nick doesn’t have to worry about what happened to him after he left.