“Vincent’s going to become a lawyer so he can keep us out of jail.” Jared laughed. “We only need one college boy in the family, Logan.”
“Whoa, hold on. I’m a far way from law school.” Vincent’s voice was gruff, though I could see the hope in his eyes. Vincent’s dream had always been to go to law school. He had this idea that if he got into the system, he could change it. I didn’t really want him to go become a lawyer; I felt it would distance him from me. But I wanted the best for him. His dreams were important to me, more than my own worries and concerns.
“You’ll make it, Vinny. And Jared, you get your ass working on that college application.”
“Shit, Logan, I’ve got two months until the deadline.” Jared rolled his eyes at me, and it took everything in me not to deck him.
“That’s what you said last year and you missed it.”
“How was the pier tonight?” Jared changed the subject, and I turned away from him with a shrug.
“Okay. I got a Corolla.”
“I noticed, sweet ride.” Jared laughed.
“Stay away,” I warned him.
“You taking it to Marty?” he questioned me.
I shook my head. “Nah, not this one.” I kept my voice monotone and jumped up to grab a beer. Marty was an old friend of my dad’s. He ran a mechanic shop in River Valley and always took the cars we gave him. He either used them for parts or sold them through an auto dealer magazine. However, recently he had been paying less and less and acting shadier and shadier. I think it was because he didn’t like dealing with me. He was used to my dad, who just took the money and shut up. By the end of the night, Marty would have most of the money back, either in his belly as free beer or as winnings from poker night with my dad and some of their friends. I didn’t participate in either of those activities and Marty wasn’t too happy about it. So now he offered less and less. In fact, the last time I had taken him a car, he had given me a veiled warning: take the cash offered or the car might make its way to a police parking lot in the middle of the night, and he’d hate to see them catch the thief due to fingerprints. I took the money instead of socking him in the jaw because he had his two henchmen next to him. But I knew after that, I couldn’t take another car to him.
“Where you going to take it?” Jared questioned me.
“I’ll have to see.” My voice was rough and strained. “Anyways, I gotta help Vinny now. You go wait on the pizza and we’ll talk later.”
“Shit, I better go outside and wait before Dad goes crazy at the pizza guy for ringing the doorbell again.”
“Yeah.” I nodded in agreement. “Do that.” I watched as Jared walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and out the front door, and I let out a deep breath.
“What’s up, Logan?” Vinny’s voice sounded worried.
I looked up at him with a weak smile. I had forgotten he was still in the room with us. “Nothing.”
“Something going on with Marty?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be okay.”
“He’s shady as fuck, isn’t he?” Vincent sighed and I saw that his fists were clenched. “You let me deal with him, or all of us can. You, me, Jared, we should go down there and show him that the Martelli brothers don’t play.”
“We can’t go down there and intimidate him, Vincent.” I shook my head, trying to talk reason into him, even though his idea sounded good to me.
“I wasn’t talking about intimidating.” Vincent smiled a wicked smile. “I’m talking about using him as a punching bag and not stopping until he cries like a bitch.”
“We’re not going to do that, Vinny.”
“Pussy.”
“Watch your mouth.” I laughed. “You can’t afford to get caught for anything anyway, you know what the judge said.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We got enough money for rent next month?” I could hear the concern in his voice and I was angry. Angry that we were in this position, angry that I hadn’t been able to do anything to make our lives better.
“We got enough,” I lied, not wanting him to worry. I knew what he would do if he knew I was worried, and the last thing I wanted was for him to go to jail.
“But not much more, huh?” He sat back, still worried but less stressed. “You think you’ll be able to sell the Toyota?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“We could always ask Joey …?” Vincent’s voice trailed off, as I glared at him.
“We don’t do business with Joey.”
“It can’t hurt to do it this once.”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “We don’t deal with the likes of him.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“I’m not going to discuss it again. I’ve told you and Jared already. We don’t mess with Joey and his boys.”
“Okay, okay.”
“You wanna go over this math now or what?” I opened the book back up, and as far as I was concerned, the subject was closed.
***
I heard Vinny and Jared snoring as I walked to the bathroom. The TV was still blaring downstairs; it sounded as if my dad was watching Jerry Springer. I checked my watch and realized it was four a.m. It was more likely that he had fallen asleep on the couch with the TV on. I ran down the stairs so I could turn it off, but saw that he was sitting on the couch wide-eyed and staring, as if in a trance.
“Dad?” I walked into the room hesitantly. “You okay?”
“Just getting ready for the day.” He looked up at me, but I couldn’t tell if his eyes were really focused.
“You want me to help you up to your room?”
“I was just watching TV.” He blinked at me and rubbed his eyes. “There was a lady that looked like your mom.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, same blond hair.” He stared at me. “You’re the only one who looks like her.”
“I know. People always wonder if I’m really Vinny and Jared’s brother,” I joked about their dark hair and features. They took after my dad.
“She had such long blonde hair,” he continued. “She was the love of my life.”
“And you were hers.” I gave him a wide smile. I knew the routine by now. We’d had this conversation hundreds of times since she had died.
“I failed her.” He shook his head. “She should still be here.”
“I know.”
“They f**king killed her.”
“I know.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, wanting to go back to sleep.
“Have you ever been in love, son?” His words sounded coherent and lucid and I looked up and saw the very real question in his eyes.
“No.” I shook my head. Love was for fools. I was many things, but I wasn’t a fool.
“I never wanted to fall in love,” he laughed. “It just kinda hit me, like a deer in the night. Your mother was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about her.”
“And she couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“No.” He shook his head. “She couldn’t. She loved me when she shouldn’t have. But she couldn’t help herself.”
“Yeah, some women are crazy.” I shook my head, and an image of Maddie crossed my mind. “Some women are mad.” I laughed at my joke, and looked up to see my father staring at me curiously.
“You’ve met someone?” He leaned forward and a beer can fell to the ground. I watched in dismay as the liquid seeped into the already-dirty, tattered, stained brown carpet.
“No.” I shook my head vehemently.
“You’ve met someone.” He laughed and sat back, his beer belly showing as his T-shirt rode up. “Who is she?”
“No one,” I answered quickly, my heart beating fast. I was scared that he would figure it out. That somehow he would be able to read my mind and know.
“Must be someone special.”
“She’s not special,” I retorted and then realized my mistake. “There’s no one.”
He peered up at me and gave me a sweet smile, a smile that almost reminded me of the man he had been when I was a child. The man my mother had fallen in love with had been a fun, handsome, wonderful man. And then the smile turned into a bitter look and he pointed at me. “You better not f**k around and let this chick take your mind off of what’s important.”
“There is no chick.” I stepped back, not wanting to get into it tonight.
“I told you, women ain’t shit. You got a family to take care of. Me and your brothers need you.”
“I know.”
“Go and get me another beer.”
“It’s late.”
“Who you talking to like that?” He made to get up, and as I stared at his slovenly body, a shudder of distaste ran through me. How I hated this man who was supposed to be my father. It didn’t matter that there were moments of sorrow and sympathy and that there were glimpses of the man he used to be. All he was now was a sorry old drunk. I just wanted to walk out the door and never come back. How I hated this place, this town, this house, my life. But it was all I knew. And all I could do, or try to do, was help Vincent and Jared achieve their dreams so they weren’t stuck in this shithole forever, like I was.
“I’m going out.” I looked at my father, who had fallen back against the couch, and I walked to the kitchen quickly and grabbed the keys to the Corolla. It wasn’t smart for me to take this car. It had likely been reported as stolen already, and the police would be sure to be on the lookout. I got all the way to the car before I stopped myself. I couldn’t take the Corolla. I would have to borrow Vincent’s Mustang. I knew he would be pissed, and I knew I just didn’t care. I ran back in, grabbed his keys, and headed back out and started the engine.
This 1977 red Mustang was Vincent’s pride and joy. He had restored it himself and paid for all the parts with money he had made delivering pizza in high school. Most people couldn’t believe it when Vincent got the job. They assumed he would just follow in my footsteps and be a thief, but I had made him get the job. If he wanted a legitimate car, he had to buy it with legitimate money. The cops were all over us as it was; there was no way he could drive a few weeks in his own car without having a money trail.
I started the engine and listened to it purr before quickly reversing off of the overgrown grass that made up our front yard. I revved the engine and peeled off down the road, rolling the windows down so I could feel the cold fresh air on my face. I didn’t know where I was going and it didn’t even matter. I just needed to be out of the house before I did something I would regret.
It had been a long night, and I felt anxious and angry. I hadn’t felt this bad since my mom had died. I was so unsure and screwed up. And it wasn’t because of my dad. It was because of Maddie: stupid, beautiful, wild and crazy Maddie. I didn’t want to think about her, but the memory of her begging me to take her kept playing in my mind like some broken record. The feel of her skin next to mine, so soft and supple, aching for my touch, aroused my thoughts, and an image of her vivid blue-purple eyes flashed in my mind. My God, she was beautiful. Perhaps one of the most beautiful women I had ever met. And definitely the most unique. She was definitely a woman who was there to be admired and taken notice of, and she knew it. She was under my skin, she was in my skin, and I wanted to rip her out of me. I’d only known her one day—not even a day. One night. One night and already she was causing confusion in my life. And she was the enemy.
It was as if the car were telling me where to go. I felt like Michael Knight in Knight Rider as I drove towards Manor Road. I knew the way well as I had taken the exact route so many times. I pulled up to the street about twenty minutes later and parked in the same spot my dad had every time he drove us here.
I stared at the house for what seemed like the millionth time. It was so big that as a child, I had always wondered what people did with houses so big. Did they sleep in a different room every night? It was so different from what I was accustomed to. So grand and alluring. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place like that. To make enough money to afford a house that rivaled any Beverly Hills mansion. I sat back in the seat with the engine off and just stared. I thought about all the other times I had been there, and the vitriol my dad had spewed about the mayor and his family. The vitriol that had been the foundation of my hate for Maddie and her family. Only, as I sat there, I found it hard to hate her.
“That’s what these worms do,” I berated myself. “These parasites try and pretend to be someone else and then they f**k you over.” I was mad at myself, I was mad that I was wondering and concerned about how Maddie was feeling. I didn’t want to care about how she was feeling. She deserved everything that she got. She was a spoiled bitch. Who tried to find some guy she didn’t know and then sleep with him. She was crazy. She’s not that crazy and she’s not a bitch, another voice whined inside my head. I jumped out of the car, confused and angry at myself.
I grabbed some gravel from the side of the road and ran up to the house, throwing it at the front door. My aim was off and I heard the sound of windows cracking as the small rocks slammed into them. I saw a light come on, and I stood there defiantly. I wasn’t scared and I didn’t care what happened. It was time for me to face the mayor. I needed to let him have it, and I didn’t care if I was arrested in the process.