Sat, Sep 5
Johnny
I’m going nuts in this bar. The talent’s out of this world, and my cock’s hard as steel. But I can’t avail myself of any of it.
There’s a brunette sitting over at the end of the counter. Tall and sleek with tits that could knock a man’s eyes out. She’s been checking me out for the last twenty minutes, sucking on her straw, pulling her tongue in and out. Sure, she got my cock hard doing it. And yet all I’ve been thinking about is Nicole. My bad-boy only recovered a few days ago. She really took me to town last weekend, and I was walking like John Wayne for a few days. I noticed so was she, but I said nothing.
Oh great, the Brunette’s coming over.
My, she really is a fine piece of ass. And tits. And stomach.
I look away.
“Hey there.” She sits right up next to me, and I almost expect her to put her hand on my leg. “Buy me a drink?”
I look over at her. She has gorgeous green eyes, full lips. And she looks classy. Maybe late twenties. “I don’t think so,” I say. No time to be polite.
“I’m Jennifer.”
I nod at her.
“Well, why don’t I buy you a drink?” she says.
I shrug. Who am I to say no to a free drink?
I look over at the mirror and think of Nic.
“Jennifer” calls the barman over and orders “two of whatever he’s having.”
The barman looks at me. “Maker’s forty-six,” I say.
“Mmmm, like your bourbon, hmm?” she croons.
I shrug.
And then it happens. The classic move. Her hand. My thigh.
Goddamnit.
Slowly, trying not to offend her, I move my hand down and take hers off my leg. Put it back on her own thigh...
...which is bare. Smooth. And the bitch keeps my hand there for a second!
I feel her skin break out into goosebumps. And I pull my hand away.
I swing to face her. I’m sure she can see that my cock’s hard. But getting a hard cock doesn’t mean you’re gonna do it with a broad. “Look, Jennifer, I’m involved.”
“I don’t see a ring on your finger, big boy.” She eyes my biceps out.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How ‘involved’ could you be if you have no ring?”
I don’t feel like arguing with that ‘logic.’
Our drinks arrive, on the rocks. She grabs hers, shoots it down. I do the same, feel the burn of the world’s greatest whiskey rush down my chest. Portugal lacks good bourbon. Only wine, wine, wine.
Jennifer raises a finger to the barman, then sticks two fingers out, and gestures to the empty glasses. Two more.
Maybe she wants to get me drunk. This could be fun. And I have been a little bored the last few days waiting for Nicole. She texted me earlier today, telling me they’d be back on Wednesday.
“So, where you from?” Jenny-dearest asks.
“Long Island.”
She frowns. “Bullshit. You have an accent.”
I’m really not in the mood to play the “get-to-know-each-other” game with a broad who I have no intention of sleeping with. So I lie. “Lebanon.” My skin’s got a slightly dark tan to it. Might work.
She raises an eyebrow. “Bullshit.”
I shrug.
“Say something in Arabic.”
Now it’s my turn to cock my eyebrow. I grin. She caught me out.
The drinks keep coming. Every time a new set arrives, she downs it, and I do the same, unwilling to lose face in a drinking game with a babe.
On the fifth one, I’m starting to lose touch with my senses. And so is she. She’s laughing a lot. And I’m...thinking of things I shouldn’t be thinking of.
I know how it goes with me—pass that barrier and I’m in trouble. Forget morals or commitments, I just can’t keep my wits about me when I push the drinking beyond a finite limit. So far, that limit is ten shots for me. Ten shots, and I’ll fuck a mustached babe of three-hundred pounds. Twice.
And I’ll also forget who I’m with, and that I’m involved.
It happened with Marina, with Liliana, Susana, Joana.
No, I didn’t cheat on any of them. But I wouldn’t have landed in bed with any of them if I’d been sober either.
Jenny dearest here sucks down her seventh shot and inhales deeply, running her hands up her voluminous tits as she leans her head back and cries out, “FUCK!” A dude behind her looks at her, grins. The guy’s twice my size, twice my age, but looks like he has half my IQ. He nods at me, raises his eyebrows like we’re buddies and he’s congratulating me.
“You’re not drinking anymore?” Jennifer asks, eyeing my drink.
When I look at it, it sways, and I catch myself before it goes too far.
Not to Nicole. I won’t do this to Nicole.
Heck, not to Cat, either. Because screwing over Nicole would screw all of us over. It’s a bad move. A bad idea all around.
“No,” I say, shoving the drink over at this sexy-as-a-goddess chick in front me who I won’t fuck today or any other day.
She grabs the drink, shoots it down.
“Think you should chill on those now?” I ask her. Her hair’s loose now, falling to her sides. The classic drunk-and-ready-to-fuck look. I’m sure she’d do it with me in the bathroom.
“What, are you my daddy now?” She smirks, lifts the drink. Downs it. Raises a finger to the bartender.
I turn to him, shake my head. “I think you’ve had enough,” I say to her.
She scowls, straightens the finger out to the bartender. Gestures frantically for another drink. I look over at him. He shrugs, brings over another two whiskeys. “No more for me,” I say to him.
The bartender shrugs. “She ordered two, she gets two.”
I pull a wad of cash from my wallet, include an extra twenty in there in addition to the tip. “This is to not bring any more,” I say to him. “It should cover what else she’d get down before passing out.” In a typical I-don’t-care bartender style, he takes the wad of cash and shrugs.
When I turn back to Jenny-dearest, her glass is empty. Her eyes are rolling, and she looks drunk as a skunk. She puts her elbow on the table, makes a fist. And drops her head onto it. “Drink up,” she says. Zhrink-uhp. She looks at my drink.
The tall and bad-ass looking dude behind her looks down at her. I catch his hand moving on the other side of her...and he starts rubbing her leg. She’s so out of it that she doesn’t notice it initially. And when she does, a look of drunken confusion washes over her face. Finally, she turns to the guy, almost falls off her seat. “Why, hello sailor!” I grab her arm, turn her back to me.
“I’ll drink this,” I say. “But then I’m taking you home.”
She doesn’t register this, either.
Sailor Man next to her says, “Don’t worry, Sonny Boy, I’ll give the missy here a ride home.” He thinks his joke was funny.
How the fuck did I get into this situation?
I do a quick calculation. Seven shots of good bourbon, and my legs feel a little weak. I’d be slow if I got into a fist fight with Sailor Man. Jenny here is not my problem. And yet...
Ah, fuck!
She is my problem. I got her drunk, in a way. And Sailor Man there is going to take advantage of her. At least with me, it looked like she wanted to do me when she was sober. I don’t believe she’s in the right frame of mind to decide whether or not to go down on Mr. Marlon Brando Biker Boy here.
I’m pretty certain I’ll get my ass kicked. But at least then the cops will be called, the chick will have sobered up by then and be able to make a rational decision.
Decision made.
I throw her off the stool.
And I swing.
Maybe I should have tried the conversation method first, tried to reason with the guy, see if he’d be afraid to take on someone half his age. But I’ve already mentioned that whiskey cuts my senses in two. Lucky I stopped at seven, because at ten I would’ve swung for the chick herself.
To my surprise, my swing lands. With a crunch. I didn’t use my fist. I used my elbow. The man’s nose cracks and blood spews across the counter in buckets. It lands on Jennifer’s dress, on my tank top. The stools.
The dude doesn’t even put up a fight. He just crumples to the ground.
And it’s over.
Jenny-dearest accompanies me to the cop shop. If I was trying to get her off my back, I failed. I think she’s just fallen in love with me. And that’s not me trying to sound macho. She’s suddenly kind and caring and asking if I need anything. “Some coffee? A soda? Thanks so much, Johnny.” (I’ve since told her my name.) “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.” Gone is the slutty, smooth, fuck-me-hard-and-fuck-me-sideways bad girl from earlier. The girl in front of me now is a broken soul, a chick who could have gotten into a rough situation. It’s almost as if her entire body shape has changed as well. She’s not poking her tits out any more. Her shoulders have slumped, and she looks barely twenty.
Monster Bad Boy changes his mind out of nowhere and doesn’t press charges. Which worries me. It worries me more than Tiago not pressing charges. Tiago was someone we knew, someone who probably realizes he had it coming and so took it like a man. But this guy...
I don’t know him from anywhere. Nowhere. Which means he’ll take things into his own hands. I’ll need to talk to Thunder about this. I can fight, but I’m not street smart. I might need some help to have my back watched.
I get outside the cop shop and Jennifer’s there, on the steps.
“Can I get you a coffee?” she asks.
I sigh. “Look, Jen, I...”
She waves her hands in front of me. “No, please. I know. I know. I came on too strong earlier. Way too strong. It’s not like me. And...honestly, I went out looking for... All I’m trying to say is I just want to take you out for a non-alcoholic drink as a thank you. OK? I don’t wanna get into your pants anymore. I promise.”
“You don’t?”
Damnit, why did I say that? I’ve been in the game a year, playing it, playing the field. The automatic responses are still kicking in.
“No, I don’t!” She laughs, and the bottoms of her eyes are dark, like she’s been crying.
We walk over to Dino’s Coffee on 7th Street. On the way there, Jennifer decides to tell me her life story. I don’t ask for it. She just starts talking. She just got out of an abusive relationship with a guy who was more violent than the godfather. She left him three months ago, but he kept chasing her. Eventually, he flipped, hit her a few times on the street. And she got a restraining order on the dude. “I was feeling lonely tonight,” she says. “Just...lonely. Vin was the only guy I was ever with. I was with him for years. And, well...”
Her dad’s got cancer, is on his way out one of these days. And she hits the bars to try and forget her problems for a night. We finish our coffee and I offer to pay for her taxi home.
“Johnny,” she says to me before jumping in. I step away from the door, and she gives me a hug. “If this girl you’re with ever takes you for a ride, give me a call. She takes out a pen, writes her number on a scrap piece of paper, pushes it into my hand. She’s about to get into the cab when she turns abruptly and, out of nowhere, yanks my head down and shoves her tongue inside me! By the time I’m pulling away, she’s already done. “I just had to,” she says. “Call me. Anytime.” She hikes her dress up so I can see her thigh as she gets in. And just like that, the Jennifer of earlier is back in character.
When the cab pulls away, I hear a voice. A deep, rumbling voice.
“We need to talk.”
I turn to look at Thunder.
“The guy you beat up on was one of mine.”
I stop walking. “And he just happened to be there?”
“No,” says Thunder. “I had you followed.”
I feel my eyebrow twitch just a bit.
“Tiago,” he says. “I took what you said to heart. And I did some digging. Seems the boy is well connected down in Cocaine land.”
“He’s from Brazil.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said Cocaine Land. That’s Columbia, far as I know.”
“What, are you the fuckin expert on the distribution and dissemination of the coca plant now?”
I shut up, duly chastised.
“Anyway, turns out the boy’s got connections the likes of which would make Godfather Corleone nervous.”
“So you’re babysitting me now?”
“I’m watching my investment. I can run a club, sure. But I don’t want to. I’m counting on you to take my capital and turn me a hundred percent profit in the first year of business.”
“No pressure,” I joke.
“None whatsoever.” Thunder lights up a Marlboro and we start walking again. A tattoo parlor on the right advertises Ink Shouldn’t Stink. A dark-haired girl with one wicked arm-tat walks past us. “Glad to see you didn’t screw the brunette,” he says.
“Was she part of your plan as well?”
He shakes his head. “No, and I wouldn’t care if you did either. Your business is your business. I only care if you screw things up with Nicole and Catherine.”
“Wouldn’t screwing Jenny pretty much do that?”
He stops again, inhales and exhales deeply so that smoke covers his cheeks and eyes. “Jenny? You’re on first names with her?”
I don’t answer. The guy’s not my father. He seems to get that. “Fine, whatever,” he says. “That’s not my business. So, Tiago. I’m covered, Johnny. But you...”
“I don’t need taking care of.”
“Oh, yes you do, son. We’re talking major gang warfare here. This isn’t some schoolboy brawl. This’ll be men with Berettas and a bullet through your skull. Maybe even through your sister’s skull.”
That one stops me. And for a moment I feel an icy coolness all through my chest.
“Scary, right?” Thunder says.
“And far-fetched,” I say, whistling past the graveyard.
Thunder shrugs. “Have it as you will. If you don’t want protection for your family—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ah,” he says slowly. He flicks the cigarette down, stands on it. “You just don’t want protection for yourself.”
“I think you’re being overcautious,” I say. “But...as far as Daniela goes, well, I’d be overcautious about her as well.”
“So...you’re asking me to...?”
“To...protect...them. Yes.”
He nods, looks across the street. “Good, that’s why I took the liberty of setting up for you already. Did you know Alice’s old place still hadn’t been sold?”
I stare at him blankly.
“Well, I bought it. We’ll be there, eyes right across the street. Hey, what are you smiling at?”
“Bikers? In a Long Island neighborhood? You don’t think that’ll stick out?”
“Trust me, boy. When I want to be hidden, I stay hidden. And so do my boys. You didn’t know Murphy was watching you, did you?”
“Murphy?”
“The guy whose nose you broke.”
“Good point.”
“They won’t look like bikers. But they’ll watch over your family.”
“What about...Cat?”
Thunder looks at me skeptically. The question was too quick, too desperate. “She’ll be fine. I don’t plan on going nowhere for a while. And I’ll keep tabs on Mr. Tiago after he leaves the hospital as well.” He changes the subject. “Did you meet with the builders?”
“I did.” I tell him about the renovation plans for Abre, and that we could open in about four to six months.
“Let’s aim for six,” he says. “I’ll get some guys to do some renderings. Maybe we can start sending out invitations for opening night already.”
The thought doesn’t excite me. Thunder’s right that I’ll have the place make money. Making money isn’t a problem for me, neither is keeping a business going. Even while I’ve been here I’ve kept tabs with Abreu Logística back home.
It’s not money that troubles me.
It’s brunettes. And redheads. And blondes who dye their hair chestnut brown.
“You do know that none of this would have happened if your man Murphy kept his hand on the job and not on Jennifer’s leg,” I say.
Thunder sighs. “He’s been dealt with.”
I don’t even ask what that means.