"Are you sure we can afford a house?"
"Of course," he said playfully, stroking her shoulder. "And that's just one of the perks being married to a wildly successful businessman like myself."
Sandy looked up at him and blinked her emerald eyes. "Is that what you are, Frank?"
"Most of the time."
"What about all the other hours in the day?"
His hand slid down into the crack of her ass. "Whatever I need to be."
"I need to know that you're all right."
"I'm fine, honey," he said, after a moment. "It's just that what I do can be difficult at times."
"Want to tell me about it?"
Frank kissed her forehead. "No."
"Why do you shut me out like that?"
"With knowledge comes responsibility, Sandy. I don't want you exposed to the business. Trust me, it's better this way."
She sighed, and Frank felt her hot breath against his skin. "But it's such a big part of your life now. I've spoken to Charlie Rain a few times on the phone, but I've never even met him. I don't know any of the guys you work with."
"They're not your kind of people."
Sandy rolled over onto her stomach, squashing her breasts against him. "I know I haven't been terribly supportive, but I'm not asking you to make me your business partner, Frank. All I'm saying is that I'd like to be more involved in your affairs. The way it works now, you take a call here at home now and then, go off to the office, pack your bags and take off for a week or two, and then you come home and throw a few thousand dollars at me. You've never discussed even the most trivial aspects of what goes on."
"It's not always pleasant."
"That much is clear."
Frank winced. "Is it that obvious?"
"It's written all over your face."
A while later he spoke again. "There's good and bad in it like anything else, but I love the business."
Sandy's eyes had not left him. "Do you?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "I'm just not sure that's necessarily a good thing. If a couple of years ago you'd asked me if I were capable of some of the things I've already done, I'd have sworn I wasn't… But it's like we've got our own little world, you know? The only rules are the ones we make, and that can get dangerous in a hurry."
Her hands cupped his face. "I don't want to lose you to that world, Frank. If – God forbid – anything ever happened to you, or if you got into serious trouble with the law and had to go to jail, I… I don't know what I'd do."
"It's nothing that dramatic," he assured her, disturbed by the ease with which he'd lied. "A good deal of the business is turning your head and looking the other way."
"But where does that end?"
Frank found cigarettes on the nightstand and lit one. "Once we're more established," he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke across the room, "I won't have to spend so much time on the road, which means I won't have to be involved in the things that go along with it. We plan to put a TV show together soon, and that'll not only increase business, it'll make us more powerful. In another year or two the ECPWL will be a national promotion – eventually even international – and when that happens you and I will be set for the rest of our lives."
She smiled. "I could quit my job."
"You can do that now."
"And what if things don't go according to plan?"
"They will."
"But what if – "
"They will."
Sandy nodded, casually tracing the outer edge of his nipple with her index finger. "I miss you when you're gone."
"I don't like being apart any more than you do, honey."
"Sure," she joked. "You've probably got a girlfriend in every town."
He slapped her bottom. "Do be ridiculous. Every other town."
"Asshole."
Frank ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. He and Vincent had decided to wait to make their move on Turano until after the next tour had ended. The tour itself was scheduled to run three weeks, and it would probably take approximately the same amount of time to amply prepare for the move against their rival. The risk of things getting rough was still a couple of months away.
"The Saturday after I get back from Indiana, Charlie and his wife are having a party at their place," he said rather hesitantly. "Do you want to go?"
She eyed him with uncertainty. "Was I invited?"
"I wouldn't be asking otherwise."
"Is Vincent going to be there?"
"No."
"How about Gus?"
"No, just a few couples."
"New York's a long way to go for a party."
"It's just over the Connecticut border." Frank shrugged. "Charlie offered to put us up for the night. It's no big deal, I just though I'd mention it."
"Sure," she said. "Let's go."
Music began thumping through the wall from the apartment next door. Sandy rolled off of him and strode to the closet for her summer robe. "What was that? You want to take me out for dinner? Let me take a quick shower and I'll be ready in ten minutes."
"Deal."
Frank heard the rumble of the shower, the rattling of pipes in the wall, the incessant beat of the funky tune next door, and decided he'd call the real estate agent personally.
Gus picked Kathleen up out in front of her apartment in New Bedford's south end, parked at the corner and hit the horn as he always did. He'd asked her several times to let him go to the door and call on her properly, but she'd explained that she and her daughter shared the place with a roommate, another working girl who didn't take kindly to strangers. Although the awkward arrangements made him angry, it had been several years since he'd had even a legitimate date with a woman, much less an ongoing relationship of any value with one, and Gus didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize things between them.
As he waited, a junkie who had been watching him from across the street since he'd arrived staggered up to his GMC Jimmy. "Hey, buddy, you got a quarter?"
"Yeah," Gus smiled. "Got a couple of them. Fuck off."
The door to the apartment building opened and Kathleen appeared on the front steps looking as if she hadn't gotten much sleep. Gus jumped from the car and bolted around to the passenger-side door so he could open it for her.
"Hi, babe," he said, kissing her on the cheek.
She climbed into the Jimmy and lit a cigarette. "What the hell was so important that you had to see me so fucking early?"
"Come on, hon, watch the language, that's no way for a nice girl to talk."
She stared at him, bleary-eyed. "Are you fucking kidding me? Tell me you're fucking kidding me. What are you, a retard?"
Gus got back behind the wheel and headed for the highway. Frank and Vincent had left for Pennsylvania the night before and he knew that until nine o'clock, when the secretary and two telemarketing salespeople working under him showed up, he'd have the office to himself. "I thought you might like to see where I work."
"I know what an office looks like, Gus."
"After I show you around I thought we'd go get some breakfast. Sound good?"
"Sure," she moaned. "Whatever."
"I decided to skip this tour. I'll probably check in on things from time to time just to make sure nobody's slacking off, but I'm too damn busy running the business to go on the road. Besides, after what happened the last time I've got to be real careful. After the show in Connecticut me and the boys stopped to get a bite to eat and ran into a load of trouble."
"Yeah?" She yawned.
"Five rednecks decided to give us some shit." He shook his head in disgust and tried his best to recall the details of the story Vincent had told him about the incident in the diner. "Naturally, everybody looked to me to handle it, being the muscle and all. Anyway, took one guy's knee out with a thrust kick, broke another guy's jaw with a spinning back-fist. That was enough to convince the other three guys that they'd picked the wrong dude to fuck with."