“Excuse me,” Nancy muttered. “Excuse me for driving over here, doing your dishes, your laundry, blowing and then fucking you.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining about that last one while your legs were up in the air.”
They stared at each other until Louis glanced at his watch.
“Don’t you have to pick up your kid soon?”
“I guess I’m being pushed out the door again,” Nancy said. “That last call a warning from the next Marilyn Monroe, little Miss Ohio? Is it her turn to service you now?”
“It was Oklahoma and she was a runner-up.”
“Whatever.”
“I have things to do, Nan. I’m just reminding you about your son, the one you always claim you need a vacation from, even though he’s always at his grandma’s. He there now?”
“Fuck you, Louis. He’s there a few hours a day a few days a week. And John’s mother, the bitch, she’s no piece of cake either. I swear that old bag moved to Queens just to haunt me.”
“Except it’s a good place to dump the brat off when it’s convenient, right?”
Nancy slid to the edge of the bed, stood up and headed for the bathroom. “I’m gonna shower,” she said. “Asshole.”
Louis slapped her on the rump as she passed.
Nancy stopped in her tracks. “That hurt,” she said.
Louis winked at her. “You love it,” he said.
Nancy tried but couldn’t suppress a smile.
Louis liked his ex-wife’s perky ass and the fact she was still a looker. She’d had a kid but there was no way to tell from her body. At thirty-five, her stomach was still flat and her breasts had remained firm.
“Talk to the man,” he said. “Find out how much money he’s collecting for those guys.”
“Why do I sense your wheels are turning?”
“Because they are.”
“Okay, but John really does hate you.”
“He’s just jealous is all,” Louis said. “Probably knows I still get to nuzzle up to that little landing patch of yours, which I believe I’ve come to fall in love with again.”
“Yeah, well, you might visit it more often.”
“I might,” said Louis, winking at her again. “Find out how much money your ex collects every week and I just might.”
It was a few minutes past eleven when John finally stopped at a diner to eat. His stomach had been growling the last two hours and his head had started to ache. He told the hostess he’d sit at the counter and took a seat at the end nearest the kitchen.
It had been a tough night and it was starting to feel like it would never end. After bypassing an accident on the Southern State Parkway by taking the Meadowbrook across the Island instead, John had run into emergency road construction: three lanes forced into one. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. When he finally made it to the LIE, weekenders returning from the Hamptons made it worse.
Then John had caught shit at the bar from the guy he’d like to punch in the face someday. Nick Santorra was a wannabe with an attitude John was sure was one big put-on. Sonny Corleone, John had thought the first time he met him, what Santorra was shooting for with his tough-guy routine.
“The fuck is this?” the punk had asked after recounting the receipt money earlier.
“My stops say it’s slowing down,” John had told him. “Pretty much everybody has seen the movie already.”
“Or maybe your guys are skimming,” Santorra said. “Or maybe you are. It’s humid enough. Maybe you stopped off and bought yourself a new air conditioner. Maybe I should come out to your car and check the trunk?”
John had stared the guy down then. It was when he had wanted to hit him the most.
“Be my guest,” he had said instead. “It’s the ten-year-old Buick with the dented fender across the street.”
Santorra had turned to smirk at the bartender then. “A wiseass,” he’d said. “I tell you what, wiseass. You can do the head counts at your stops next week.”
“How’m I gonna do that? I have seven stops. I can’t be at all seven at the same time.”
Santorra had turned red then. He looked at the slips of paper attached to each stack of money and pointed to George Berg’s from Massapequa. “Start with this one,” he’d said. “Then go to the next worse.”
“He sees me he won’t skim,” John had said.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll send somebody else you don’t know. Just in case you’re both jerking us off, you and this guy in Massapequa.”
John had wanted to laugh in Santorra’s face. The guy didn’t make sense. He was barking for the sake of making noise. “Whatever,” he’d said.
Then he’d left.
By the time he had finished with business in Brooklyn it was way too late to see his son. He’d called from the bar and caught an earful from his ex-wife about being late with the payments and not seeing his son and who the hell did he think he was calling the house so late anyway?
John had hung up on Nancy mid-rant. He’d catch hell for it again the next day when he dropped off the money he owed, but at least the rest of the night was his. He was looking forward to some soup, a cup of coffee and maybe liver and onions when he stopped at the diner on Queens Boulevard.
“Tough night?”
John had been holding his head in both hands and hadn’t seen the waitress standing there.
“Sorry,” he said. “Something like that.”
The waitress smiled. “What’ll you have, hon?”
“Soup, anything but chicken soup. Liver and onions after that. And a cup of coffee?”
“Skip the liver. I think it’s from the eighteenth century.”
John appreciated the tip. “Thanks,” he said. “Hamburger deluxe?”
The waitress winked. “Coming right up.”
She turned to pour a cup of coffee and John glanced at her backside. He looked away when she turned to set the coffee on the counter. He looked again when she headed for the kitchen and watched her wiggle away until the swinging kitchen doors blocked his view.
He had sat at her station before. Her name tag read Melinda. She looked about his age, give or take a few years; between thirty-three and thirty-six, John guessed. She was a pretty woman with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He liked the way she had looked into his eyes when she spoke. He hadn’t seen a ring and was wondering what her deal was when there was a commotion behind him at the cashier counter.
John watched it in the mirror’s reflection behind the coffee urns. It looked to be an argument over a check. Two men were giving the cashier a hard time. John thought he recognized one of them before a busboy blocked his view.
It got loud fast. John recognized one of the voices, Sonny Corleone himself, Nick Santorra, cursing a blue streak.
“What are the odds?” John whispered.
“Fuck your mother’s cunt!” Santorra yelled.
John saw himself cringe in the mirror. He turned his head to watch the action over his left shoulder.
“Please leave,” he heard the hostess say. “Forget the check. You’re disturbing our customers.”
“Fuck your customers!” Santorra yelled.
“Please, sir. Just leave.”
And then they were gone.
“Don’t you hate assholes like that?”
John turned back around. It was the waitress, Melinda. She set a small dish of coleslaw and a cup of vegetable soup on the counter in front of him.
“I hope his wife is packing her things and running off with the plumber,” she said.
“The plumber?”
“Or the kid who delivers their pizza. The gardener, if they have one. The insurance salesman’ll do, too. Anybody.”
John put his hand out. “I’m John,” he said.
She pointed to her name tag. “I’m assuming you can read,” she said.
“It’s a pretty name,” he said. “And, yeah, I do hate assholes like that. More than you could know.”