It was a huge thing, crowned with dormers, three chimneys poking up into the night sky like the points on the devil’s pitchfork. It was dark except for a jeweled window of yellow light, casting a radiant aura out onto one patch of the well-kept lawn.
I backed up a step, leaning against the pine I’d just walked by, and pulled in breath until it didn’t feel like I would run out of it anymore. I’d brought my hip flask. I took it out, uncapped it, and drank. Once it was empty, I dropped it to the ground. There: now I was traveling light.
I unslung the M-1 from my shoulder and hoped I wouldn’t have to use it as a crutch. More footsteps. They seemed endless. Parente didn’t own a house on the edge of town, he owned his own little hamlet belonging to him and grass.
I walked by the rectangle of light on the yard, step after step, stopping in a lean against the wall. I picked my way down it to the window and looked inside. The light came from a swank crystal chandelier. Everything it touched reminded me of the beach. Oblong blue-green rugs like tide pools, chairs and sofas that stood up like cushioned driftwood, a coffee table with an eglomise top that made it look like water-worn rock.
Parente wasn’t using his money to buy baseball cards. But then, this money probably wasn’t being used by him at all. It had a woman’s touch to it—a woman’s comfort. I imagined a lonely woman, in this big empty house, furnishing at least one room to her liking and then nesting herself in it, like the beauty there could even out all the ugliness surrounding it.
Maybe it was a flight of fancy. But the woman in the middle of the room had the kind of looks you dream about. She was young, unmoving, her eyes closed. Her face had a loveliness that was a little bit Spanish courtesan and a little bit New World priestess, thick lashes and brows an accentuation of her dark features, blue eye shadow competing with the brilliant red of her perfectly molded lips. Her bones were strong and fine and had just enough girl hung on them. You wouldn’t call her thin and you wouldn’t dare call her fat.
She wore a hunter green skirt and an ermine sweater. Her hips had just the right amount of pop to break from the line of her svelte body without being excessive; her waist was narrow in the same way. Not underfed, but the sleekness of a snake. You couldn’t accuse her of an hourglass figure, but her breasts were round and high and even a yawn was enough to show them off, and better than a stripteaser would display her goods at the climax of her act.
She was young enough to be Parente’s daughter or old enough to be his mistress, looking like she was just getting the hang of her twenties, and like she’d wear her maturity every bit as well as she had her youth. She must’ve been a terror as a little girl, but luckily enough, the things she tempted me into thinking were all legal.
She sat carelessly, slumping, with one leg up on the armrest, slim and lovely, a rounded calf tapering for as long as it took to get to her tiny ankle. A red high heel dangled from her airborne foot. One hand was on the armrest and the other was up by her face, tangling in her hair. Her fingernails were carmine. I wondered if her toenails were painted the same way.
I know that’s a hell of a lot of description, but she was one hell of a woman.
She didn’t move or open her eyes all while I looked at her and I wondered if she’d expired, there being so much of that going around these days. If she had, she made it look good. I didn’t think I’d manage to make anyone daydream about what color my toenails were when I passed on.
She looked so innocent… so much like the angel you hoped picks your soul up before the devil gets a say in it… that I abandoned thoughts of breaking in. There was a French door nearby, the glass panels in it so clean they might as well not have been there. I knocked on them gently, trying to will the sound to carry to the lady but not alert anyone else in the house.
Belatedly, I slung the M-1 over my shoulder. Maybe I could pass myself off as a hunter who’d gotten lost following an elk.
The woman didn’t do anything with the sound of my knock. She didn’t even seem to ignore it. I knocked harder. She opened her eyes and a sightless pupil wheeled around before hiding back behind her eyelid.
“What do you want?” she asked.
She had a faint Castilian accent. I recognized it from liberating Italy. I love my country, but I’ll admit we just don’t have the experience making girls that the Old World does. Her, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot… they all could’ve been turned out by God on a hot streak. Maybe trying to make up for how all those Europeans kept getting into wars while us in the States all got along and played football with each other.
“Can I come in?”
“Bring me a drink, huh? Bring me a drink…”
I took that as an invitation and let myself in. The door was unlocked. I guess Parente didn’t think anyone would take a swing at him: no guards, no fences, no dogs. And why would they?
He kept everything moving, everyone paid. Flaunting his money just enough that us cops came at him and kept finding nothing but air against our fists. He wasn’t worried about cops knocking down his door—he was barely worried about his lawyers calling him that a grand jury was being convened.
Inside the room, I found a drink cart, lost at sea. I opened a bottle of Buchanan’s Black and White and helped myself to a swallow. That would be another way to see myself out now that my engagement was over, but the sickness had spread to my taste buds. The only thing good about the drink was the warmth that ended up in my gut.
At least I was feeling something there. Half an hour ago I’d been heaving on nothing.
“What’ll it be?” I asked the woman, figuring I might as well relish any interaction with a woman I had left where she wasn’t wearing funereal black.
“Sherry… would love some sherry…”
I picked up a bottle of soda water. Maybe the night air had done me some good, but I probably still looked like death warmed over. The fact that she didn’t run away screaming was heaven for my self-esteem—still, she didn’t need to marinate anymore than she already had.
Her eyes were still closed, or maybe squinting under those heavy lashes. Getting a look at me without letting me have a glimpse at whatever soul shone through her peepers. Her lips were an intriguing little moue and her breath, now that she was awake, pushed her breasts out against her sweater like a breeze had picked up, seen how far it could lift a set of curtains.
I filled up a glass from the drink cart and brought it to her. I had to push it into her hand before she took it. Then she hugged the glass instead of drinking in. Maybe she thought she’d had one too many too.
“Thanks, love… mi amor… mi corazon…”
I hoped she was speaking to me instead of the glass. “I was driving by and my car broke down. I saw your light. Mind if I use your phone?”
“My phone…” she muttered in confusion, like she hadn’t learned that English yet. “My phone… what do you want with my phone?”
“I need to call a tow truck.”
“Oh… you could use my phone for that.” She had that radar that the experienced drunk gets—the unerring sense, when all else is fuzzy, of where her hooch was and how to maneuver it to her mouth. She used it and I could just about hear the reservoir inside her get some added volume.
Her impression of a lush was too good for me to need to bluff. I decided on the direct approach.
“Where’s your husband?”
“Husband?” She made it sound like another untranslatable term, which I didn’t hate, but I did hate the thought of missing out on Parente’s funeral because I’d swung gums with this souse for too long.
“Dominic Parente. The man of the house. He lives here. I need to see him.”
“What’s in this drink… anyway…?” she asked.
The empty glass introduced itself to the rug. Her chin dipped down until her hair fell in front of her face. Usually, I’d say it was a crime to cover up a mug as sultry as hers, but her raven hair looked so soft, so slick, that I wanted to run my fingers through it as much as I wanted to touch those ruby lips.
Poor girl. All dressed up and no one to see but pink elephants. I reached out, contenting myself with sliding her head back to the cushion so she didn’t wake up with a sore neck. I could think of a few girls who’d love to have come out of seeing me with that much to show for it.