He offered his hand and she shook it. It was warm and dry and wrapped around hers.
She wondered why a grown man would want to be called
Joey. "I'm Sharon Vanelli," she said.
"How do you like that? Two Italian kids meeting by chance, or is it fate?" Joey still working the horoscope angle, that being there at the same time was somehow pre-ordained.
Joey said, "Where'd you grow up at?" He gestured with his right hand, kept it going while he talked, like he couldn't talk without it.
"Bloomfield Hills."
"So you're rich and beautiful."
"My dad was in PR at Chrysler." She almost said Chrysler's, out of habit.
"You in PR?"
"I sell ad space in magazines." She finished her wine.
"How about another one?"
"Chardonnay," Sharon said. "Sonoma-Cutrer."
Joey raised his hand, got the bartender's attention, pointed to his glass and Sharon's. The bartender nodded and went to work.
"What magazines?"
"Heard of Rolling Stone?"
"No. What's that?" He grinned. "'Course I heard of it. Bought the issue had Jessica Alba on the cover."
"You like beautiful, tall, thin movie stars, huh?"
"Who doesn't?"
He puffed on the cigar, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.
"Not everyone," Sharon said and winked.
"She don't got nothing on you," Joey said, and winked back.
He wasn't going to be mistaken for a p-t laureate, but she appreciated what he was trying to say.
Joey said, "What do you listen to?"
"On the way here, the new Wilco CD." She had 3,500 songs on her iPod.
"I've heard of them," Joey said.
"What do you like?'
"Old stuff, Frank and Bobby."
Frank and Bobby. Using their first names like they were friends. He wore a blue button-down-collar shirt with the top three buttons undone showing chest hair and a gold chain with the letters "SJ" hanging from it. "What's SJ stand for?"
He grinned and put the nub of his cigar in the ashtray. "Swinging Joey."
"That's your nickname, huh? What's it mean, you like to dance, like to have a good time?"
"Something like that."
The bartender put fresh drinks in front of them. Joey picked his up, and clinked her glass and said, "Salute"
Sharon sipped her wine and said, "You from Sicily?"
"Huh?"
"Your name's Palermo," Sharon said. "Isn't that the capital?"
"I'm from St Clair Shores. Used to go to Tringali's with my mother, she'd buy her tomatoes, or Pete amp; Frank's."
She said, "Ever go to Club Leo?"
"Club Leo? We were there like every other weekend, weddings and parties. My dad and the owner were buds. We called him Uncle Phil. You went there too, huh? I wonder if we met before."
"It's possible," Sharon said. She pictured the place, an old Knights of Columbus hall, spiffed up, cinderblock on the outside, fake stucco inside. A dance floor and long tables and buffet food, three meats: baked chicken and pork chops and sliced beef that looked like shoe leather. The men drinking wine out of little juice glasses. "Remember dancing to Louis Prima? I can hear him doing 'Felicia No Capicia' and 'Buona Sera'." She remembered dancing with her uncles who smelled like cigars and BO.
Joey said, "When'd you graduate high school?"
"You want to know how old I am? Ask me. I'm thirty-eight."
"How old are you really?"
Sharon gave him a dirty look. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hey, take it easy, I thought you were like twenty-nine, thirty tops."
It was a line but Sharon liked hearing it.
"Ever been married?"
"Once. I'm separated." In Sharon's mind it was true. That's how she felt.
"Now I live in Harrison Township," Joey said. "Place on the lake."
Sharon could picture it, mammoth house on a postage-stamp lot, nouveau-retro. "Let me guess," Sharon said. "You've got a thirty-foot Wellcraft docked behind it."
"It's a Century," Joey said, "and it's a thirty-two-footer. How'd you know?"
How'd she know? He was a wop from the east side. "What do you do?"
"Little of this, little of that." He sipped his drink, looked like vodka on the rocks with a twist. "Want to go somewhere?"
Sharon was thinking, who was this guy lived in a five-thousand- square-foot house — not that his taste was any good — on Lake St Clair, had nothing but leisure time or so it seemed?
He called her four, five times a day, said, "How you doing?"
And Sharon would say, "Same as I was when you called fifteen minutes ago."
"Baby, I miss you. Tell them you're sick, we'll go to the casino." Or he'd be at the track or a Tigers day game, he'd say, "I gotta see you. Take the afternoon off, I'll send a car."
She'd been going out with him for three weeks and it was getting serious. They'd meet at noon, check into a hotel a couple times a week and spend two hours in bed, screwing and drinking champagne. It was something, best sex she'd ever had in her life. He did things to her nobody had ever done before. She'd say, where'd you learn that? And he'd say, you inspire me, beautiful. The only bad thing, he called her Sharona, or my Sharona. Everything else was great so she let it go.
They'd take his boat out on Lake St Clair and she'd sunbathe topless. Something she'd never done in her life and never imagined herself doing. She felt invigorated, liberated. He always told her she looked good, complimented her outfit. Showered her with gifts, bought her clothes and jewelry. She felt like a teenager again. They'd meet and talk and touch each other and kiss. She was happy for the first time in years. She had to be careful. Ray, the next time he came home, might notice something and get suspicious. Why're you so happy? she could hear him saying — like there was something wrong with it.
But this relationship with Joey also made her nervous.
Things were happening too fast. She was falling for him and she barely knew him, and she was married.
Joey drove a Cadillac STS with the big engine. He liked to drive fast, too, like a high-school kid, always flooring it, burning rubber. He'd have a few drinks, nail it and the tires would squeal and he'd get a big grin on his face.
She said, "What're you running?"
"469-horsepower V8," he said.
She said, "What's its ET?"
"Jesus, you know cars, huh? I don't know what its ET is. Never been timed."
Her dad used to take her to Detroit Dragway when she was a kid to see the nitromethane-burning fuel dragsters, fuelies that went zero to sixty in two tenths of a second. Nine seconds in the quarter mile, its ET, elapsed time.
Her dad said you could tell the guys that burned nitro. When they took off, it smelled like acid. Nitro isn't a fuel, it's an explosive. It would blow off cylinder heads like a hat off your head.
Her dad's interest: most of the stock blocks were 426 Hemis, an engine Chrysler made.
One day they went to Nino's for groceries and then drove to Joey's place, this atrocious-looking, fake brick neo-colonial. He popped the trunk and as they were unloading the bags of groceries, Sharon noticed a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger that was stained with something red. She said, "What's on your bat? Is that blood?"
He told her he played on a softball team and one of his teammates got hit in the face by a pitch. That's where the blood came from. She knew you didn't use a wooden bat to play softball, but didn't really think about it at the time. But then Joey had his friends over and everyone had a nickname.
There was Hollywood Tony.
Joey said, "Ain't he a good-looking kid?"
There was "Big Frankie" and "Cousin Frankie." They were cousins who looked like twins. Sharon said, "How do you tell them apart?"
"What do you mean?" Joey said. "It's easy."
There was "Joe the Pimp" and "Skippy" and "Paulie the Bulldog." "Fat Tony," who was thin, and "Chicago Tony," who was fat, and "Tony the Barber" who didn't cut hair. They all drove Caddys and had money and hung out with hot young girls who looked like models or strippers. Sharon had heard of some of the guys, knew they were mobsters.