Chapter 73: Angie Made A Porno



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 look down at the carpet in the study... mustard-brown... deep... it was innocence & indulgence, the kind of carpet he wished he could afford to sink his bare feet into, to feel between his toes as he sat at a desk, poke at a typewriter, writing a novel, or a love letter, or a suicide note.

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.”






Chapter 65: Soda Girl


Chapter 65

 Soda Girl




Tom Atari watching Leah lick her lips, awkward, her eyebrows bunching ugly under black-rim glasses, her face register new flavor, her head shiver involuntarily. She stepped back against the wall, her breast overflow against the lace of her uniform, knock the baseball signed by Stan Musial, rolling lonely on the shelf above her midnight locks while Leah’s tongue came out to make yuck. These were the moments.

This is why Tom drinks ginger ale.

The boy, the idiot, Stevie... Tom watched him watch Leah’s reaction and smile. Stevie, teenaged, her age, wanting on Leah so hard that even Atari had to smile. He remembered adolescence: one thing on your mind and no clue how to get it. Leah knew- women are born with it- and Tom could see from five miles that Stevie would never have it, would never know the joy and release of knowing her close, the fabulous guilt of making her moan, the surprise of her shiver against his skin...

“That’s disgusting!” She handed the cup back to Stevie, his latest experiment in soda, his attempt to find the recipe. Stevie smiled empty as she walked away: something had happened, or maybe not, but most likely he was closer to her heart and hole than he had been before, right?

Right?

“Can I get you another ginger ale, Tom?” Leah leaned against the counter, different from talking to Stevie, different from other customers even. “You look like you had a hard day, did you?” She backed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, momentarily bold, familiar if only to let Stevie see that some men might be worthy of her time. She looked over at the boy, still clutching his cup of rejected nectar.

On most nights Tom would have taken the compliment and run, gone on about his business and let the ginger settle his stomach, but tonight...

Tonight.

Tonight Tom was tired of running- out of energy for building bridges and asking questions and solving mysteries that were only mysterious because most people walked through their days with their eyes wide shut. He was bored with the tough guys, or of cowardly guys acting tough so they could see if he was a coward. Or however that went.

He looked around the soda shop, at the kid with a fever waiting for his momma to come back with the medicine. 

He looked at the lesbian truck driver drinking coffee black and chewing on a steak.

The cash register said ching and Tom couldn’t deny it: he wanted Leah. Here. Now. Tonight. Her red lips meeting and mouthing, her uniform a glorified apron, the musical valley of her voice, sensing how much there was inside... don’t believe it. Get skeptical.

He folded the paper: “Police Arrest Lipstick Killer” and one of the june bugs that found its way inside lit up, cast a bouncing glow from beneath the brim of his hat.

Tom smiled at Leah.

Leah smiled back, afraid for the first time in her life.

Stevie called her over to scoop ice cream for two teenage girls in love with love, and Tom, through the bottom of his glass, saw the milk flesh of her inner thigh as she stood up to reach for the cones.

.

Chapter 64: Donnie Seaky Story


Chapter 64

Donnie Seaky Story







The man's name was Donnie Seaky, fucking a woman who wasn’t his wife, thrashing her on the hotel mattress, pounding downtown thunderous like a worker on the clock. The woman- a whore known as Gloria- naked, angry slop, head smash against the headboard, taking the cranial abuse with a mixture of indifference and nonchalance. Tom watched from the window, shoes in the dirt, his camera click in time between thrusts, wanting for a ginger ale, wondering if his favorite soda girl would be working to pull on the pump and pout like she do. He loved the way-


Donnie Seaky threw the hotel chair out the hotel window, shattering glass above Tom’s head, cutting his face jagged nasty while asymmetrical shards collected on his hat brim. Seaky naked- his member at attention and still dripping with affection- flying to the open window- and in the split of the instant Tom understand old.

He didn’t always feel this way: at one time, years gone by, he had been invisible: cat lapping at a sloe-gin fizz. He could take pictures in broad daylight and not draw an eye, he could slip into a building without waking the doorman. But time had worked him over with the back of its hand, his body sore, his mind a library with all the books on the high shelf. And today this dumb muscled kid, this adulterous Donnie Seaky- no more than thirty years- had spotted him through the window, figured him out and tried to kill him in the time it takes to think of ginger ale.

Atari was slowing, maybe, time to buy that bakery, but right now it’s time to stay alive: cheating husbands fight hard.

Glenda Seaky, country girl in a summer dress, freckles on her droop cheeks, begging with her eyes for Tom to take her right there on his desk, begging with her mouth for him to follow her husband Donald Junior on the way to work, to confirm her worst fears and tell her whether the man she loved had his fingers in anybody else’s pie. Tom, desperate for cash, nodding, “yes, I will do this... I will find out... I will let you know,” wearing his funeral face, playing Johnny Honesty for money.

Maybe whore is a two-way street.

Tom dropped the camera in the mulch and Seaky saw it fall, ran past the proof in pursuit of Atari, which meant trouble: Donnie angry/mad enough to want blood. Tom was not in the mood to donate.

And so they were across the parking lot of the pastel Packard Motel, Seaky sic upon Atari like an august dog, bare feet bunching up the green spring grass, onto the scratch and blister heat of the cracked pavement, where his hardened heels begin to bleed.

He was a construction guy, this Donald, according to his wife, and ‘a good man but I think he takes his chances.’ It was her polite way of calling him a pussy bear. Atari, running, felt his lungs try to escape through his mouth. His brain- charred- his synapses misfiring, seeing in his mind’s eye a beautiful nurse named Diane, from long ago, from his days in med school, handing him a chart and a secret smile, her eyes full of moon, telling his heart to beat. “This way, Dr. Atari...”

Tom turning at the corner, making the sign of the cross, praying to God for victory, praying not to go to the gun and end another life. Without looking back he knew Don was more than serious: he could hear him pounding out every step, knew he wasn’t gonna stop to think when he finally got Atari in between his angry knuckles.

On the boulevard Tom ducked into a candy store where they don’t let naked men. Take a breath now, think of sugar...

Donnie at the door, yank wide, six foot of fury in his finest first birthday suit. Tom dashed and Donnie followed, his flaccid cock flopping wild, slapping the bag of candy from a little girl’s hands, spilling her cherry delights to the floor. Her jaw hung open, broken. No comment on the penis.

Tom, overturning glass jars of red hots- shatter- lemon sours- glinx- wild blueberry juju abba zabba slo-poke caramel molasses jelly slice- the floor of the sweet shop a minefield- but the bad boy kept coming.

Atari busted out the back way, into the train yard, spitting distance from the church, Donnie after fast, his feet full of sweets and shatters, lightly salted with blood.

“You catch me fucking!”

Words don’t mean a thing.

Tom, tumble on the tressle, falling to his knees, just a few hundred yards from the holy glow of St. Jude’s, ready to accommodate, prepared to atone. “Your wife hired me... I won’t say a word!”

In the old days Atari would have put a bullet in the boy’s skull, give him something good to think about. But today, for reasons he could not yet understand, he was ready to die before taking a life. Maybe it was time.

Donnie, eager to destroy, stepped onto the tracks as the train came immediate, both men deaf to all but the howl of their overworked hearts. The locomotive struck the construction worker and it was no contest: Seaky was obliterated on schedule, his atoms scattering even among the overgrown grass.

Tom waited in the dirt after the train plowed out of town, feeling the throbbing in his hip, holding out hope for a happy ending, the minor of a punchline.

All he got was a train whistle in the distance. And he knew that it was true.

He stood up, dusty- limping- older than eight minutes ago, decided to go to church, to pray for forgiveness, to humbly beg for guidance.

He wound up getting a ginger ale, watching the girl pour.

.