Chapter 5
DANTE didn’t bring up the porno thing again, so Griff convinced himself he’d dropped the idea. He just kept slipping money into Dante’s walet and buying dinner and beer.
September was almost over. Dante didn’t mention money or bils, just spent his days off working extra construction. Griff assumed that he’d put the mortgage problem to bed. Dante was back in the black, and Griff had stopped him from peddling his meat to that HotHead creep. For six days, he rested easy, knowing he’d kept Dante safe.
A fish stew proved him wrong.
A week after the money argument, Griff had worked a realy rotten shift, picking up a Saturday for a buddy who had twins getting baptized. About six hours in, three stations had been caled to a bad warehouse fire made worse by the dry summer and old barrels of paraffin someone had stored on the second floor.
By the time he got rotated off duty, his hair and skin stayed smoky even after two showers. Al he wanted to do was go home and faceplant on his bed til the next sunup. But Dante had left a message that for dinner he was making cioppino, Griff’s al-time favorite, and he knew it took a day to prep and cook. Dante would have driven to the fish market before sunup.
Wanna come over, G?
Griff wanted to kil him.
It was such an obvious peace pipe that it could only mean one thing: Dante had hauled his hot, dumb ass out to Sheepshead Bay and gotten naked on camera and whacked off for that skeezy Russian pornbroker. Dante’s cockamamie X-rated salvation scheme was underway.
Maybe no one would see; maybe he was overreacting; maybe it didn’t matter.
Bullshit.
Griff walked to Dante’s from the Red Hook Station and tried to cool off as the sun sank behind buildings into the hidden river. He knew why Dante had done it: to prove he could, to show off, to shock him and anyone else who found out. Stupid bastard.
He couldn’t figure out which was worse, the guilt or the temptation. He hadn’t been able to stop his best friend from making this ridiculous mistake, and the literal man of his dreams had made a crazy-hot video that he could easily watch as much as he wanted.
Help.
Griff turned the corner; he realized he’d forgotten to bring beer or wine or a barrel of lube. Yeah right. But by the time he’d had the thought, he was clumping up the steps to the glass of the front door. Dante always kept his house lit up when he was home.
Dante started the fight the minute he tugged the door open, chalenging Griff right there on the stoop before he got a word out. Pow.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t start. I jerked off! Like it matters? Plus the Russian guy gave me eight hundred bucks, and I just sat in this fancy leather chair and burped the worm.” Dante was flushed and happy as a sweepstakes winner as he headed back into the house.
Griff folowed him toward the tiled kitchen. As he stepped in, he could smel the cioppino: brine and garlic and something else green mixed in. He knew that Dante knew he’d fucked up; the cioppino was supposed to make them both forget.
“The Internet doesn’t go away.” Griff couldn’t keep the clench out of his comment.
Dante washed his hands and dried them roughly. “Big fucking deal. And he said I did real good, huh? That Alek guy. And I can do more. Next time maybe he’l pay me to bang a broad. Two broads. Twenty chicks tickling me with a poodle. Whatever the hel. Around my schedule. Sick, right?” Dante raised his hand for a high-five that never happened.
Griff stayed stil. His gray eyes stayed locked on Dante’s.
“It’s cool, huh? I’m proud of my body. Aren’t you? Hel, we bust our changs to stay built.” Griff opened his mouth and closed it. Opened it further, then closed it in a frown.
Dante started slicing scarlet tomatoes with an old knife on the scarred counters, pretending to be reasonable and rational. “Look, I just need some cash to float me over, G. For the house note. I gotta. It’s nothing else. I’m not a drug addict. I’m not gonna get a disease diddling myself.” Swoosh— the diced tomato went into a bowl. Dante licked his finger.
“For jerking off.” Griff took deep breaths and tried not to imagine his best friend unzipping and getting the job done.
Dante’s fist yanked an imaginary salami in the air. “Yeah. Like I don’t do that like clockwork anyways.” He rummaged in cabinets and snagged a jar that had some kind of aromatic twig in it.
“And that’s al.”
Dante chewed on one of the twigs and nodded, reassuring Griff as if he was the crazy one, as if he was ignoring the obvious. “Showed up. Tickled the pickle in my turnout gear. Ka-ching!”
Worse and worse. “Your gear?!”
Dante chopped some twigs, and the licorice smel was strong. “The website’s whole gimmick is hot straight guys in uniform. Soldiers, cops, EMTs. I dunno, mailmen.” Dante’s olive brow wrinkled. “Does anyone fuck mailmen? Wel, yeah, where else do mailmen come from?” The twig bits went into oil in a pan.
Griff’s stomach growled. He was having a hard time trying to forget the name of the HotHead website, trying to forget how easy it would be to have Dante’s sweet eyes staring at him on the screen while he pumped his meat. Even through Dante’s clothes, Griff could imagine what the body looked like. He tried to stay disgusted and stepped away.
“And if you get caught? You could get fired for using the suit ‘in a manner unbefitting’, blah, blah.”
“See! I thought of that. Right?” Dante cracked his neck, pacing the room, happy energy crackling out of him. “So I taped over the numbers. No one’l know.
Wel, someone might, but if someone sees me it’s not like they’re gonna advertise being a member of an amateur pornsite.” Holding a fist of peeled garlic cloves, Dante stopped in front of Griff to rol his eyes at the idea.
Griff squinted back in reply. “Who do you think watches that?”
Griff had to ask; he knew Dante wasn’t asking anyone anything. This was like arguing with a Martian, a Martian with a head injury and the sexiest lopsided smile.
“Who wouldn’t? Hel, I’m gonna watch it next time I got a girl over. Fuck her in the ass and the eyes. I’m a porn star.” Dante squeezed the lump under his buckle so hard Griff could make out the plump ridge through the denim.
Griff rubbed a hand over his eyes. He’s gotta know what he’s doing when he does that.
“Dudes go to those sites, D. Think! I don’t care what they told you. It isn’t horny housewives, man. Men are gonna tug the pug while they watch you. Gay guys in the privacy of their homes who get off on you… doing your, uh, thing.” Griff held out his hands like he was bracing for a colision.
“More power to ’em. What do I care? My ‘thing’ is a thing of beauty. And being this hot is a terrible responsibility.” Dante flexed one perfect arm til the olive bicep strained against his T-shirt’s sleeve like a grapefruit. He licked it.
Griff almost smacked him.
Dante winked, proud of himself.
Griff smacked him.
“What are you, my granddad? Don’t you fuckin’ judge me. Some of us don’t have hang-ups.” Dante’s face grew hard, almost wary. He held one hand up as if ready to block a punch. “Look, Griff, I figured out a solution for myself. One I can live with so I keep my place.” He turned his ful attention to his knife and slicing garlic paper thin with exaggerated care, his face baffled and sad.
“I hope your family and the FDNY can live with it too, D. Guys get fired for that shit.” He wants me to be happy for him. If I didn’t want him, I would be.
Griff walked into the parlor to stand at the bay window, looking down into the dark street. The room was furnished with hand-me-downs and junkshop furniture. He counted to ten and breathed. He stil stank of smoke from that warehouse.
I’m acting crazy because I’ve been lying to him, and that’s not his fault.
Up the block, a stocky Latino in his fifties was walking a pit bul. Actualy, the pit bul was walking the man, puling at its leash hard enough to yank his arm out of its socket. A Korean delivery guy on a bike pedaled the wrong way up the street. A grumpy teenager was putting garbage in the cans out front of his house.
The night sky was cloudy over the other brownstones, no moon and no stars.
Nothing to do. Nothing to do.
He heard Dante enter the parlor cautiously.
Griff had a sudden impulse to turn around and confess everything to his best friend right then: his lust, his panic, his grief, his hope…. He could feel Dante’s quiet confusion pulsing in waves from behind him— G, what’s the big deal?
Explain that one, genius.
Stepping closer to him, Dante sounded cautious. “He doesn’t even seem, y’know, queer. I think he’s just in it for the money too. Seriously. This business is like all profit.”
Griff kept his eyes on the street, his voice hard, his arms crossed so tightly that his forearms bulged against his chest. “Anastagio, he’s queer. I am here to tel you.”
“So? What? Are you prejudiced or something?”
“No!” Again Griff had the demented impulse to confess al, which he crushed. “No. But he is not running a gay porn website and watching straight guys pump the stump ’cause he likes the pension. He wants to fuck you in your bony, hairy ass. While you sit here right now gloating over a couple hundred bucks, he is thumping one out with ten milion other guys watching you do the same.”
If I had any balls, I’d be watching too.
“Fuck you. My ass isn’t hairy.” Dante managed to look genuinely insulted as he sat on the battered couch facing the window.
“Jesus.” Griff scratched his head hard with his hands— scritch-scritch-scritch. Why couldn’t he explain properly? He left the window and sat down on the floor, not against Dante’s leg, but close.
“I don’t know about his ass. He’s Russian, so maybe, but I’l never have to know. And it was eight hundred bucks.” Griff could feel his brain boiling, scrambling for a solution to something his best friend didn’t see as any kind of problem. “I’m trying to look out for you, huh?” Dante slid off the couch onto the floor next to him and bumped their shoulders together. He smeled like lemon juice and pepper. His arm was so warm against Griff’s. “Thank you. Realy, G. Thanks. But I’m good. This is good. This dude runs a clean shop. Trust me.” Griff wouldn’t budge. “Sure. But no way do I trust that ugly skinhead scumbag pimp. You tel him for me: if he fucks with you, if he lays one Russian knuckle on you, your buddy is coming after him and someone’s gonna need a screen door to fish out the pieces.” He could feel the murder rising off him like heat on a highway.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He needed a drink and a think before he split open.
“Okay, Griffin. Okay. I promise.” Dante patted his shoulder with a cautious hand like he was facing a rabid dog, trying to smooth the psychosis into something normal. He raked a hand through his midnight curls and let out a ragged sigh.
Griff knew he sounded crazy. He sounded batshit, but he had to say it and he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re my brother, man. We both know they’re dickless insects taking advantage of you ’cause you’re in a jam. I fucking hate it. If I had the money—”
“You don’t. It’s fine. Don’t worry so much. Sheesh, you’re gonna have a heart attack. And then I’m gonna have a heart attack.” Dante pushed himself to his feet and offered a hand to help Griff up.
Griff stood, turning his back to him, determined not to apologize for giving a shit. “Your life needs an airbag. I swear, Anastagio, you should have come equipped when you were born.”
Just then Dante leaned against him, brow between his shoulder blades for a moment, so tentatively Griff held his breath. His voice was almost sheepish. “Nah.
Everyone knows I was born defective. They didn’t instal you until later.”
Griff turned and looked at him in surprise, his face warming, not sure what to say, which didn’t seem to matter. The moment stretched awkwardly like they were both waiting for the other to say something, do something.
He must know, right? Man up, Muir.
Dante smiled.
Griff blushed.
The doorbel rang.
SHANKED by the bell.
Griff felt like he was going to die of blushing. As if al that blood had drained out of his head until he’d black out with embarrassment or an overactive erection.
Dante puled the door open and found a tearstained Loretta pacing on the steps, gripping her daughter, who was four, maybe five years old. Nicole was petting her mom’s brown curls, trying to calm her.
Join the party.
“It’s okay, honey. I’m okay,” Loretta lied, her voice hoarse.
Griff wondered why she was so upset and why she’d come over to her brother’s house on such short notice. But mainly, he wondered if he was going to be able to talk like an adult person after what almost happened.
What almost happened?
“Hey.” Loretta’s smile didn’t reach her whiskey eyes.
Dante’s did. “Hey. C’mon in.”
Had Loretta heard anything out on the stoop? Had he said anything… bad?
Her eyes were puffy and her hands were shaking. “I didn’t mean to hijack your whole boys’-night-in deal.” Griff choked. The place on his back where Dante’s face had rested felt scorched. “Uhh.” Dante covered smoothly. “We were talking business. I got, uh, an investment I cashed in and Griff thought it was a dumb move.” Loretta wasn’t listening to her brother teling something way too close to the truth. She headed back toward the cooking smels, and the guys folowed her.
Nicole squirmed in her arms, too old to be hauled around like that anymore.
Loretta and her husband Frankie had probably had another phone fight. He was under civilian contract in Baghdad, and Loretta hated him being gone so much, but the money was great and his gig was nearly done. They were planning to buy a place with enough rooms for their growing family if he didn’t get blown into chowder. She had plenty of reasons to be upset.
In the dark hal that went past the unfinished dining room, Nicole finaly wriggled to the floor and took Dante’s hand. They al folowed Loretta into the steamy kitchen.
“Are you idiots eating fish heads? Gross!” The horror on Loretta’s face was operatic, her corkscrew curls wild around a tragic, mascara-smudged mask.
Everything was so big and nutty with Loretta, al her reactions. She used tantrums like a sedative. Griff found it kind of endearing, but he knew that her hysterics wore the family to a frazzle. For two seconds, Griff thought she was actualy about to open her mouth and sing a crazy aria about fish heads while waving a cleaver around her brother’s stainless kitchen. He smothered the smile that he felt creeping across his face.
“What?! ” Loretta turned, wide-eyed, to glare at Griff, even more crazed now, even more like she was onstage at the Met wearing a horned helmet over her brown mane while a fish head palace burned down around her.
Griff couldn’t help but let the laugh out. “Nothing, nothing. No. We don’t eat the heads. Your brother’s making broth for the stew.” Dante stirred the pot with a wooden spoon, then added a handful of black pepper. “Cioppino. Or cacciucco, depending on what vilage. Mishmosh fish soup.
Nonna used to make it.”
Griff nodded at her, his cheeks stil burning. “Cheap and tasty. It’s like one of my favorites. Whenever your brother makes cioppino, he lets me come over and test for poison. Extensively.” He tried to smile so the lame joke would land and he’d start to feel normal again.
“Sounds like a total pain in the ass. Who can cook for that long?” Loretta finaly put her enormous shoulder bag down on a chair and leaned over the pot and the sauté pan to take a deep breath of the savory steam: lemon and pepper. Nicole wiggled and sort of slid down her front, landing on the floor with sturdy little legs.
“Cioppino is poor people’s seafood. Junk fish, realy. And crab. Olive oil. Fennel. Tomato. Garlic. Some other bits which are seeee-cret.” Dante’s mouth worked as fast as his hands juggled his ingredients, which was saying something. The pans hissed on the burner as he flipped the diced onions into the mix.
“You’re so effing irritating.” Loretta crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself. “Out of al of us, you’re the only one who could cook and the hottest, and you’re a dude.”
Griff knew that was a sore point with her. “It’s the firehouse. Dante cooks ala time so he gets practice.” After wiping on the towel draped over his shoulder, Dante held Nicole up to the sink, washing her chubby hands with practiced ease. He’d helped a lot of younger Anastagios do the same growing up. “It takes no time. The shopping is the longest part. And there’s more than enough, as long as we trank Griffin or chain him up in the garden.”
“Hey! I’m not that greedy.” But Griff smiled at the ribbing.
Dante smiled back with a wink. “You’re worse than that, my man.” After drying Nicole’s hands, Dante held her against his chest and kissed the top of her head while she yanked on his long hair. “Nope. No hair in the soup.” He stirred the pot and tasted the wooden spoon, passing her off to his buddy. “Pester Uncle Griffin.”
Griff felt awkward holding a little person and looked it too, lifting her a little away from his body like a sack of broken glass. He couldn’t remember anyone picking him up as a child. It would never occur to him that someone would want to be picked up. It seemed so easy to drop them or hurt them. None of the Anastagios present seemed nervous about the danger, so Griff looked at the kid to find out what he was supposed to do.
“Juice?” Little Nicole looked at Griff patiently, as if she knew she was talking to a giant halfwit.
Loretta rummaged in her overstuffed bag without looking, stil on autopilot; a juice-filed sippy cup appeared. Nicole claimed possession immediately and slurped fiercely.
Thumpa-thumpa. Dante was squatting in front of the refrigerator digging in one of the drawers, his lower back exposed where that old navy sweater rode up. He stood up holding yelow onions and another tomato in his caloused fingers.
Griff tried not to look at those beautiful hands. Or think about complete strangers watching Dante use them on himself on the Internet. He could smel Dante’s hair and skin hovering there under the cooking. Getting the counter between them, Griffin plunked Nicole on a high breakfast stool and stood next to her to make sure she didn’t fal to her death or catch on fire or anything. He hadn’t been around smal kids even when he was a smal kid, so what did he know? Maybe this was normal.
Nicole seemed hypnotized by the vegetables faling into slices under Dante’s flashing knife.
Griff was too, but for more embarrassing reasons; he coughed, wondering if his family had ever done this, just cooked in the kitchen while he watched as a little boy. He didn’t remember it, but then it would have been a long time ago, so maybe. He hoped so, for his sake. Maybe when his mother was alive. Maybe he wasn’t a complete freak, raised by wolves.
“Dante, she ain’t gonna eat seafood. Right now, Nicole won’t eat anything but peanut-butter-n-banana on rye and chocolate pudding.” Loretta puled a wrapped sandwich and a pint of Kozy Shack pudding from her bag and put them in the fridge.
“Bulsh—yes, she wil. Wanna bet?” Dante handed Nicole a raw squid to play with, which she did with glee.
“Wow-wow! Skish.” Nicole tugged at the little critter as if it were made of rubber, fascinated by the legs, petting the skin. “Cool.”
“Wow! S’like a little monster. Huh, Nicole? See the suckers?” Dante’s pirate smile widened as he turned to his sister. “See? Kids wil eat a boot if you make them curious. Trust me.”
A smile stole across Griff’s face; seeing Dante like that made his heart do somersaults.
For a moment, Griff imagined that this was their kitchen, that Loretta had come to their house. He bit back the urge to lean over and kiss his best friend on the cheek.
Loretta took the little squid away before it went in her daughter’s mouth. “I pity the woman who marries you, Dante Anastagio.”
“Wel if you let me cook the boot, my wife would eat it too.” Dante boned the snapper and cod, which went into a sauté pan for browning. The kitchen smeled like buttery seaside heaven.
Loretta started to pour a glass of wine from the bottle Dante was using for the stew, but he shook his head.
“Nah. That’s too sweet for drinking. G, you wanna…?”
Griff’s stomach rumbled. “I’l grab a bottle, and you want some beer for the fridge?” Dante nodded thanks and started to ask Loretta what was going on.
Griff left them talking in low voices.
GRIFF clumped down the rough stairs into the celar where Dante kept his storage freezer and another fridge stocked with drinks for his parties. It was always cooler down here, and a little damp. He knew exactly the Chianti Dante would want, and he also tugged out a twelve-pack of Guinness, but before he climbed the stairs, he paused.
He figured he should kil time so brother and sister would have a little time to talk. He put the wine and beer on the steps and sat down on a trunk labeled
“SKI SHIT” to count to a thousand.
Had Dante been serious about going back to the porn thing again? It seemed too crazy to be real, but then again Dante was too crazy sometimes. He wouldn’t let that Alek guy touch him, right? Dante wouldn’t actualy have the bals to….
Yes, he did. Jesus. Of course he did. Dante had plenty of bals.
Griff was a coward, but Dante had no fear and no shame. Hel, he’d flashed his pecker at his English teacher in high school just to hear her shout. Detention be damned. And everyone knew he always wandered around his house bare-assed; he’d been the same way as a teenager. Mr. and Mrs. Anastagio had fits making sure he wore pants when people came to visit. Thing was, Dante knew how fucking gorgeous he was—that sleek muscle, that tawny skin, the crow’s-wing curls, and those eyes glinting black-black-black like the ocean at night.
Griff had another erection. Great. He pinched under the head to make it go down.
Jealous. Horny. Ashamed. Weak. E) All of the above.
There had to be a catch in the HotHead deal. That website wasn’t going to just fork over thousands of dolars for Dante to jerk off over and over the same way. What if this Alek pushed for more? What if Dante agreed? Dante yanking it for some Russian was one thing, but what about al the guys watching from al over, members of HotHead.com who’d log on to type pervy shit to him and encourage him and dare him to go further?
And Dante would. Griff didn’t doubt it for a second. The dare was too tempting, like a burning building. He’d just run in without thinking. Dante would say yes and give in to those Internet dirtbags to prove he had the bals.
Suddenly Griff was so jealous he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit stil. He stood up and wiped his hands on his cargo pants, not caring if he left dusty streaks.
He wanted to punch something, maybe something Russian.
Asshole.
Not sure if he meant Alek or himself, he scooped up the wine and beer and stomped back upstairs, making enough noise that no one would be surprised and Loretta would have time to finish al her high notes.
IN THE kitchen, Loretta was chopping some kind of leaf and had almost stopped hyperventilating. That was a good sign. Maybe she was just lonely and bored tonight, trapped at home with her man on the other side of the planet, trying his best not to die in the desert. Griff could sympathize.
Nicole was seated on the counter carefuly puling parsley apart and sprinkling most of it into the pot with her tiny fingers.
- Thwack -
Dante cleavered a crab into perfect chunks, puling the white meat free of the iridescent shel and plopping it into the simmering pot. “This is lazy man’s cioppino. Now that it’s cooked down, we get rid of the shels so little sea monsters won’t choke. No tools required.”
- Thwack -
Dante winked at Griff and nodded that everything was okay. “It’s a mix. And the fish has to be fresh—real fresh, like just-off-the-boat, flopping-around fresh. Which means local. I go up to the Fulton Fish market. They moved it uptown but the place in the Bronx is way cleaner than South Street Seaport. You can even buy barracuda from a couple stals. Barracuda! RRawwrrr-rraurrrr.” He bared his lower teeth to Nicole, who giggled at his growls.
- Thwack -
The thought struck Griff that his best friend would make an amazing dad if he’d ever let himself grow up enough to have a kid. Griff looked over at Loretta leaning against the pantry door and knew she was thinking the same thing as she watched her brother cook, a crooked smile on her face.
- Thwack -
Dante looked handsome and happy in the steamy light, as if he should live right here in this kitchen making cioppino for the rest of time.
Griff had to swalow, and then he was thinking about the goddamn website again. He jerked the fridge open and cracked a beer before he started to get angry. HotHead-dot-com, my ass. Where could he come up with a couple thousand dolars that fast? Maybe he could get a loan at the bar?
He plunked onto one of the high breakfast stools, which let him watch the kitchen and kept his traitorous anatomy out of sight.
Moving around the kitchen with efficient grace, Dante kept chopping and growling and chopping and growling until he finaly got his niece to grimace, showing her tiny baby teeth and growling back at him.
“Ba-rra-cu-da!” Dante crowed in triumph and shoveled chopped cilantro into the pot with his knife.
“Rrrr. Bahcuda.” Nicole was growling through her teeth and climbing onto her knees on the scarred wood of the counter, trying to see what fascinating weirdness Uncle Dante was up to across the kitchen.
Loretta scooped up her snarling darling and roled her eyes at her brother. “Knock it off, fathead. She gets enough bad habits from me.” She looked to Griff for support.
Griff shook his head in sympathy. “Feel lucky. At least he ain’t teaching her to swear or shoot tequila.” But a baby barracuda had been born. Nicole and Dante continued to growl at each other as he chopped and fed her garlic and sips of broth off a battered spoon.
“Umm-grrood. Rrrarrrrr.” Nicole’s little face squenched up with pleasure, loving her funny uncle.
“Told you she’d eat seafood.” Dante pointed at Loretta with his spoon. “Graawrr.” He turned back to strain the pot of fish heads and crab shels, pouring the aromatic broth into the cioppino.
“Grauwr,” Nicole growled back and laughed, then growled again for good measure at the other boring grownups who weren’t her uncle.
Loretta ignored her brother and the teasing, but for once there was no opera in her eyes. “Griffin, you must be cooking these days?” She’d always hated Leslie for some reason.
Griff shook his head with a grimace. “Nah. I mean, I can do pancakes and macaroni, but mostly I defrost. The guys are always bummed when it’s my turn at the station.” Griff could tel she’d punched a hole in her panic and smiled. “I am a champ at washing up.”
“And chili.” Dante appeared at their elbows with a spoon for Loretta to taste.
“Yeah, I can do chili pretty good. Meat. Packet. Onions. Course that’s a recipe for a building with fifteen guys farting al night. Oh! Sorry.” Griff glanced to Nicole with an apology to her mom, but everyone seemed unfazed. Guess that’s normal too.
Dante stirred the pot firmly. Without turning his head to look at his sister, he spoke quietly. “If you need to crash tonight, I got plenty of room. With floors and wals even!”
Loretta laughed and shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m just a pain in the ass.”
Griff hoped he wasn’t the reason. “You should, Loretta. And I’l get going after supper.”
“G! It’s not even seven. What’s your damage?” Dante looked offended at the idea that Griff might feel unwelcome.
Griff shrugged at the cioppino and his stomach rumbled again. “Or I’l stay.”
“Good. Good thing someone’s hungry.” Dante stirred the pot one last time and nodded. “Soup’s on! Rahhh!” On the counter, Nicole reached for Griff, and he picked her up and set her down on the floor. She wobbled around at their knees, growling at Dante and occasionaly stopping to have conversations with her hands, like they were puppets.
Kids. Weird.
Griff opened the cabinets and puled down the big stew bowls Dante kept high on the fourth shelf. They looked deep enough for Nicole to drown in. He grabbed a smaler dessert bowl for her.
“Thanks.” Loretta took al four bowls and swiped up stainless from the drawer. Her hands had stopped jittering, and she was keeping it together. “I got the table.”
Dante bent to hand Nicole napkins and the pepper for the table, saluting her. She roled her little girl eyes at him, completely opera-free, and headed for the dining room to supervise her mom. Obviously, she was no dummy.
As soon as they were alone in the kitchen, Dante gestured Griff close and muttered an explanation. “Phone fight with Frank out in the goddamn desert and he hung up on her. She’l get over it. I think he was right and she knows it, and she just wants to be mad for a while.” His breath was warm on Griff’s neck.
Griff nodded and stepped back and tried to figure out if there was anything he could carry. There was nothing but the cioppino left.
Dante slipped the apron over his head and hooked it inside the pantry door and held up empty hands. “I got nothing for ya, mister.” He dropped an arm over Griff’s meaty shoulder and squeezed it. “Let’s go get you something to eat.”
“WHO is she?”
Dinner was done and Loretta Anastagio didn’t waste one second. Dante had taken the kid into the kitchen for something sweet. The minute his sister had Griff alone in the dining room, she griled him like a thick T-bone.
Griff didn’t say anything; he kept his face blank like he hadn’t heard her ask him what he knew she was going to ask because she knew him so wel. She’d known him his whole life and had calmed down enough to notice his silence.
The pause got long enough to be weird. Griff squirmed and pretended to be listening to Dante clanking in the kitchen in the hopes he could bluff his way out.
“Who?”
Loretta smacked his head, smiling. “What am I, an idiot? The girl! You got some piece you can’t stop mooning over.”
“You’re crazy.”
“And you’re stupid, but you’re so good-looking we al have to forgive you.” Her nails tickled his beefy forearm. “I know that look, Griffin. Al through high school I hoped you’d give that look to me, so I always knew when you were getting goofy over somebody.” Griff shifted his butt in his chair, not sure what to say. Yeah, only this time it’s your brother. “I’m not goofy.”
“Al wounded and hopeful. Shit.” Loretta roled her eyes, grabbed her big purse, then tossed it into the parlor like a scorpion. “I want a cigarette so bad my lungs hurt. But Dante would kil me.”
“Because of Nicole?”
“Nah! ’Cause of his floors. These took him, what, a month? Brazilian cherry.”
Griff remembered that. It had taken so long because they’d done it in pieces. Other guys from their firehouse had come over whenever they weren’t with their families or girlfriends, passing through after tours to help Dante out.
Griff had spent every day helping where he could, and it had almost broken him—Dante in cutoffs offering him a bottle of lemonade; Dante on al fours with a malet pounding the boards into place; Dante, covered in stain and glue, stripping in the hal for a shower and holding his junk protectively with both hands. By day three, Griff was jerking off in the downstairs bathroom just to keep his shit together.
“There!” Loretta was suddenly right in front of him with her wild curly mane. “You’re doing it again. Your eyes get al gooey-silver when you think about her.
Sheesh! Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
Griff fled for the front room, wishing there were more dishes for him to clear so he could escape to the kitchen, away from Loretta’s affectionate probing. But she just ambled after him, her nose for drama twitching. This was the way to crack criminals: sit them down for fresh cioppino and talk gently to them til they begged for mercy.
He looked out the window. “I should get home. My dad is probably waiting.”
“Bulshit. Your dad? C’mon, Griffin, be straight.”
Yipes.
Griff could barely move, even though he knew what she’d meant. He sat down before he said something dumb.
Loretta’s eyes shone caramel-sweet at him. “I want to be happy for you. You’ve been so lonely since Leslie left. Before she left even.”
“You never liked Leslie.”
“She never liked you. So who’s this girl? She likes you, huh.” Loretta nodded knowingly.
Griff stood up, wanting to escape the tender inquisition. Loretta folowed him into the parlor and onto the couch and stared til he spiled.
“Not like that. I don’t think it’s anything. At least, if it is, I’m crazy and it can’t ever happen.”
“She married?” Loretta reached down to pick something up under the coffee table, a bent nail. She spun the nail, her eyes locked on his. “Is she a cocktease?”
“No!” Griff spread his sturdy hands, smoothing the air between them. “Look, there’s no girl. I promise. I’m just happy right now.”
“You don’t look happy. Wel you do, but happy-miserable. Like a hero in an opera, kiling himself over some diseased hooker.” That made him laugh, hard enough that she looked confused. He didn’t even try to explain what he’d been thinking when she arrived looking like a Staten Island Valkyrie. He just laughed because it felt good, and then she joined him even though she didn’t know what was so funny.
Family.
As they fel quiet again on the couch, Loretta’s eyes scanned his face so closely that for a second he was afraid she would be able to read the truth there under his skin. As if his longing for her brother were written in raised letters on the bones and the muscles.
“Loretta?” Griff looked through the dining room toward the kitchen. He could hear the sounds of the tap running and Dante chatting baloney with the baby.
He smiled at Loretta, and his heart felt hot under his sternum.
She play-poked at him with the bent nail. “We worry about you. My brother especialy.” She tipped her head toward the sound of Dante crooning. “We al want you to be happy. If you can’t be selfish for yourself, be selfish for us.”
“I wish I could be.” Griff felt even worse teling her these near-truths than just lying outright, if such a thing were possible. Ugh.
Loretta wasn’t buying it, not totaly. She knew him and he knew it. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve you. If I wasn’t such an asshole, I would’ve built a perfumed tiger pit in high school and claimed you for myself.”
Griff stiffened, suddenly aware of how close they were sitting—just what he didn’t need. “Gah! You’re like my sister.”
“I am not your sister, Griff.”
“Okay….”
“Stop. I don’t mean it like that. But believe me, I was not thinking sisterly thoughts about you in those footbal pants. Oof.” She brushed imaginary crumbs off his shirt, remembering something. Loretta had been wild in high school, a couple years younger. “That red hair. We used to cal you Gingerbread. Spicy sweet.” She laughed at the nickname, and at herself fifteen years ago.
“Bulshit.” Griff felt like a cartoon dupe conked on the head with an anvil. Seriously?
“Girls kept pictures of you. Serious.”
“I didn’t know.” He couldn’t imagine anyone having a crush on him back then; he’d been such a quiet hulking mess. In every picture, he’d been stuck at the back, towering over people with his flaming hair, silently begging to be invisible.
“You didn’t want to know. You don’t always pay attention to the right things, Griffin Muir. Which is why you were a perfect crush: you were on hold for no good reason and gorgeous to boot. Stil are, huh?”
“I’m not on hold. I’m happy, Loretta.”
“Pfft! Clocks don’t stop for anyone. And now I’m happily married to a telephone cal and eating at my brother’s ’cause I get scared being alone every night.” Loretta stood up and tracked down her purse over near the bay window. On the way back, her caramel eyes kept digging in his for the truth. “I mean, maybe this chick is waiting for you to make a move.”
Dante and the baby laughed in the kitchen; the sound hovered between them in the air, high and bright. Loretta was silhouetted in the window. A car passed outside; its headlights swept over the ceiling for a second like someone was xeroxing the entire block.
Griff watched her rummage for something in her bag. “I don’t think so, Loretta. I think this one’s waiting for me to get over it and move on and quit being a moron.”
“I’m just saying, don’t waste time, Griffin.” She dug out a pack of Luckys and slid one free, setting it on her lip to dangle. Standing there, she looked like a film noir poster in the tight dress and the wavy hair, except the mystery that needed solving was beating under his ribs. Where is Humphrey Bogart when you need him?
Griff nodded and even smiled some.
“Listen to me.” She jabbed two fingers at him like a sexy accusation. “Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Swim out to it.” She slipped out to the front hal, pausing by the coatrack to turn back to him.
He could only see a slice of her face in the shadows by the door as an oath passed between them.
She pointed at the unlit cig in her mouth. “Just don’t tel anyone. For crissakes don’t tel Dante. Promise? He’d kil me.” And she was gone.
He’d kill me.
“Same here,” he whispered to the empty room.
Griff listened to Dante murmuring nonsense in the kitchen. He could smel the day’s smoke on his skin and the sweet musk of Dante in the cushions. And through the enormous windows, he could see the bright orange dot of the cigarette as his almost-sister inhaled-inhaled out there like she was in a horned helmet getting ready to sing herself to death.