Chapter 73
Angie Made A Porno
When Teddy Kakaletris found out his new bride Angelina made a porno he blacked her eye: perfect, thorough, like the Little Rascals' dog. It was more than perfect to be truthful- it was purple, the color of blueberry pie & similar in circumference. Looking at the black eye got Tom Atari’s heart pumping: it was, after all, just a different kind of love bite, a romantic fingerprint that most misinterpreted.
You only hurt the ones you love.
Angie make shy on the sofa across from Tom, redirecting the beamer, her cat Speedo leap up to the coffee table between them. She pick up the brown and white puss & put it on her lap, stroking him, his hair immediately shedding all over her white dress. “Baby...”
The cat yawned.
They were killing time in the foyer of Teddy Kakaletris’ Greek revival house- now Angie’s house too. It was a palace… fluted stone columns out front, towering, to warn the world away, and inside white marble floors with embroidered rugs. The walls of the foyer, ochre, were decorated with gilded frieze: it was more than a mansion, it was a temple high on a hill.
If Teddy was a god then Angie was his new goddess. They had been married last month in a ceremony of Biblical proportions… Tom’s invitation must have accidentally been flushed down the toilet.
Angelina was a pretty girl, dark hair, nose of golden odor. She had been waiting tables at Gentleman’s West when she met Teddy. It was love at first sight, and when he found out she was also Greek he vowed to make her his wife. His third wife. But that’s another chapter.
The new Mrs. Kakaletris tried to look away when she talked to Tom, but he found the deep bruise on her face was magnetized, caught himself looking into her black hole, trying not to fall inside.
“Tom, can I get you a drink? You always liked Pepsi's cola, right?” Now Tom remembered: she had been a terrible waitress.
“Say hello, Speedo...” Angie raised the cat's paw. Tom, who didn't feel like playing, didn't.
“Isn't he beautiful, Tom? Isn't he precious?” Angelina stroked the cat's fur.
“I don't drink Pepsi.”
She scratched her nails down the cat's back slow. “He's really just a doll when you get to know him.”
Tom, back spasm: “I drink gingered ale.”
Angie looked up. “I'm afraid we don't have any ginger ale. Can I get you a coffee?”
“I'll take a water lukewarm,” his hand in his pocket, hoping to find an aspirin.
Angie drop the cat like a sack and walked off into the kitchen while Tom checked his watch, Teddy late as usual. Probably hiring a waitress or firing a busboy, his two favorite hobbies. Teddy owned & managed 5 diners in Sick City, the legitimate arm of the Brothers Kakaletris, who ran money through his restaurants, which Teddy would then soak, spin, & rinse clean. Short-order cooks come and go, but a dirty accountant is a gift from the heavens.
Angelina come back with a glass of water, “I hope it's lukewarm enough,” when the front door fly open & Teddy arrive, slim in spite of his swell belly, bald & shiny, Greek like a Kalamata olive. He wore tinted sunglasses that never came off, looking fine in a silver suit with a pink shirt. “Tom, I'm fucking sorry, I hope you weren't waiting long-”
And it was okay with Tom- he understood this man, or most of him, as much as one man can ever understand another. He shrugged.
Teddy pick up an envelope from the mail & drop it down absent-minded before turning back to Tom: “In my study?”
* * *
Tom & Teddy were joined by Andreas, a young man Teddy introduced as his nephew and apprentice. The kid wore a dark suit, had wispy thins of gray already visible in his black shock of hair even at age nineteen. Genetics. Or was he seeing things that were sending his hair white?
Andreas was sat on the love seat, Tom in a curule chair before the desk, but Teddy paced the room, bothered and anxious. The door was locked. Tom was uneasing.
“When I found out about the movie everything became… I can’t even describe it to you. Unreal. I doubted everything I ever believed in. My Angie... in a porno?”
Tom waited, lost, then: “You met her at a strip club...”
Teddy shake his head, wake up from the dream almost. “I know she’s no virgin, Tom… but on film... on film...”
Teddy let this hang like it was obvious & Tom saw the little boy in him. Young, helpless. With hair. He looked over to Andreas to see if maybe the boy understood his uncle. The kid’s pokerface was royal: he listened mute.
Ted had picked up on Atari’s confusion. “Don’t you know there’s magic in movies? In the light on screen in the darkness. What do you think goes on in there? What do you think people pay for? Part of your soul goes on that film. It stays there.”
Atari almost look over his shoulder to see if someone was watching, laughing, but thought better. Speedo strut into the room asshole up and bounce onto Teddy’s desk chair.
Tom had heard Teddy’s story on the phone: the rage, the shock, the loss of innocence & the fist to the socket but this soul part was brand new. Teddy couldn’t be serious, could he? He was currently looking at Tom and nodding in deep belief. Had the man lost his mind? What religion was this now?
And then Tom heard the click and got the angle: Teddy had to do this, to lay out the back story slow and deep to justify the job, to make his request to Tom much more reasonable. Tom already knew his answer would be no: he was not an assassin. He would not kill the man or men responsible for Angie’s major motion picture.
“I lost it, I popped her. I wanted to do worse. I thought about it... I know now that there’s only one thing to do to put this right, Tom.”
Inhale.
Teddy take a beat, looking into Tom’s eyes: “I want you to buy back the movie.”
Tom waited. He waited for the threats of cartoon violence, for the absolute insistence that these men be hunted, tormented, dismembered & obliterated. There was silence. Teddy meant it.
“That's it? You just want me to buy the movie back?”
Teddy, somber, “Find them and buy it back, yeah...”
Andreas, ready for the wax museum.
Tom exhale & take a sip from his warm water. Speedo come crawling by his ankles, mewing soft.
“Do I have your word that that's all you want? I won't kill anyone, I won't hit anyone, I won't threaten anyone. I will act as a broker for a business deal, but that is it...”
“That's all I want. I know you a long time, Tom. I'm not gonna put you in a bad spot.” He sat in his desk chair, surrendered.
“I hope not.”
“This is a business deal.”
“And nothing more.”
Teddy shook his head. “Nothing more.”
Speedo prowl the room slow, eavesdropping, striding slow...
Andreas like an El Greco.
Tom, eyes on the cat, mind far away, several steps down the road.
Teddy sit up. “Is that a yes?”
The cat stretching achy muscles... a hard life... a hard life...
Tom nodding, “I'll do it.”
Teddy smiled, shot a look to Andreas, who didn't move. “Wonderful! Have some ouzo with us,” he stood and called to the kitchen, “Angie!!!”
Tom smiled, “I don't drink.”
Teddy take off his jacket, relieved. “Then watch me have some. This is perfect...”
Kakaletris draped his jacket around the back of his desk chair, beaming. “When I found out my baby made a porno I lost control... my sweet little baby getting fucked on film- made my blood boil.”
Teddy, hands in fists, getting angry, unaware that the blood was boiling again. “Her naked soul up there on film. Can you fucking imagine?”
To the kitchen once more: “Angie!!!”
Tom, waiting, uncomfortable, getting nervous.
“What can you say about a woman who fucks on film, Tom? I mean what the fuck is wrong with a piece of fucking shit like that?”
Angie appeared in the doorway just in time to see Teddy kick her cat as hard as he could. Speedo was dead before he hit the wall, neck snap on the Greek’s white wingtip, and when he fell his lifeless body slid down unnatural funny, landing in a lump too still.
Andreas slide to the edge of the sofa, wide grin on his face, beaming lux, about to say something spectacular.
Tom was on his feet before Angelina's first teardrop. “I'll get you that movie, Ted..."
Angie wailed into the arches. "And I'll show myself out.”
