A Matter of Love in da Bronx (50 page)

--Because every living thing in the world is made from the same pattern that fits the same cycle, and that machinery is programmed to peak real hot just once. Humans only think we're special because we don't fuck just once, we do it all of our lives and whenever we please, inlike the lower orders that do it only once in a lifetime--like the bee that wins the race that screws the queen then gets stung in return--or once a year like the rutters, and so on. That's why I stay away from love, and stick to the humping.

--You're a cynic.

--So? Where'd love get you? Heartsick and dead. Or is it all part of the love game, the highs the lows, the laughs the tears, the dreams the dreams Ah! The dreams! You can have it. No fool I...just fooling.

On suicide:

Suicide is more appealing in concept than in reality. Replacing one mode with another alters the state found to be unacceptable, unbearable or worthless. What one hopes to leave behind is a critical factor, generally taking leave with a sense of smug satisfaction that there are raised lots of sympathy, or revenge, or misery. No one ever left a note behind saying they were glad to leave the happiness and joy of living. Lou, how do you commit suicide?

--The most peaceful, painless, satisfying way?

--Yah.

--They say you're closest to death when one is coming so pray for a fantastic orgasm with the answer plainly: jerking off.

On jerking off:

--Lou?

--Go watch the monkeys in the zoo.

Mary came to a head early-on. Sam started to repeat, quite remorsefully, every single detail concerning the rendezvous and its potential effect as the cause of the stand-up, by Lou cut him short. There was to be no speculation, a stupid exercise at best. If Sam was there because Mary told him to go fuck himself, that was one thing. Sam would get his support, loyalty and friendship to help pull his through. But on the mere chance that it was a slip-up, a mistake? No dice. He wouldn't listen. Such wailings were too embarrassing, not so much then, but the next day when they proved to be for naught. --You want to talk to me about Mary? You tell me about her erogenous zones. That she makes you come for ten minutes at a time. I don't want to hear about heartbreak, and treating you like shit, and committing suicide. I can't stand that nonsense unless we're talking about the real thing...

--...but she knew I was waiting for her there, and she wouldn't so much as half turn towards me! Like she knew! She knew! It would kill me!

--You stupid fuck; I'm not going to speculate! I'm not going to play that game! I told you that!

--Just this once, Lou. One time, why wouldn't she look at me! She knew I was there!

--Okay. This once. Sure she knew you were there. Now, let's suppose she's going with the guy--whatever his name is--against her will. Suppose if she looked and saw you it got to her so badly she started crying, he sees this, and knows something's up. So, she's sad enough, she doesn't want to be sadder and see you standing there waiting, knowing one second later you're going to be confused and angry at her, and then at yourself, so she doesn't want to see that. I wouldn't look either.

--But...

--
Ba va f'in cuolo!
I don't want to play that game! I told you. Guys in love make me sick. When are you going to wise up? You know divorce is a woman's invention for upward mobility, a form of revenge for being considered a mere possession. A guy picks a woman like he does a car: it looks appealing, provides a lot of comfort and performs like crazy. She's something that suits his image of himself, wants to be seen with, and something he does better with than without. Really, she does the choosing--I take him, or him, or him. She does that not with knowledge or experience; but with a wish, a guess and a prayer. She hopes the son of a bitch doesn't turn out to be a dud.

--Yo! Lou? You sound like a guy that's been burned in a love affair.

--...and it hurts still.

It came to Sam when he stopped talking and thinking about his own immediate concerns, after his mind turned easy under Lou's ministrations, that he noticed his friend, for the first time, literally, in a strange light. Sam rubbed his eyes, attributing the vision to the late hour. Or, it had to be the beer. For the third time that day, he had to do battles with his perceptions of people he really and truly cared about. In each case, the truth was as obvious as his attempts to hide it. Each time he chased his thoughts into and out of cul-de-sacs until he accepted it for what he really knew it to be.

He wondered how long it had been there, and why he hadn't noticed it before, or earlier. Lou had an aura. Loaded with autumn browns, accompanied by Grieg.

Jesus Christ! Lou! What are you doing to me? Is it contagious? Did I bring it to you?

THE ENTRANCEMENT began at the steps leading up to the room, the room in the bar, the room Sam thought they shouldn't use a week? God! Ages! Ago! Beyond Sam's already beleaguered sensations of tentative knowing--unlike nailed-to-the-wall knowing--which he felt even before he met Mary that evening, was the rush he got as he took the first step following the two women. He knew now somewhat the feeling Lou described that came with snuffling powdered cocaine. To Sam, it felt like every nerve in his body was suddenly assaulted with rutilantian explosions. In his throat, an umbrella boomed open then flicked closed with each step. The door seemed so far away. Leading was the woman with the thin cigarette stuck smack in the middle of her lips who tended the bar, and who still had the bluish aura about her. The woman was absolutely noncommittal in mean or manner, though a hint of Da Vinci's brushwork misted her face. In fact, it stirred the macho in Sam. Just ahead of him was Mary. Mary! Mary! Mary! Look at us! The ascent to Paradise! Lord! Should this be a dream, take me! But, once the ostiary left them in the room, her hand guiding the door to the click of the close, to Sam the sound acted as an incendiary reinflagrating every sensation, every phantasy, every tingling nerve in his body as Mary stopped, turned, then rushed into his outstretched arms. --My darling! My darling! He barely had time to utter the words as their lips melded together. He wasn't aware he'd stopped breathing. His mind split to a different level. He knew only that he had Mary in his arms, with the taste of her, sweet, precipitating, blossoming throughout his being. Rapidfirestarbursts in his brainpan as she hardsucked his tongue out of his mouth, deep into her soul. The magic was theirs. They were about to slit the black veil of ignorance, losing their innocence, burst into the brilliant wonderment of full and true love. The moment was theirs.

Incredible. Life was absolutely incredible to Sam. In the last dozen hours he had moved violently to the extremes of his emotions, raging at the madness that overtook him in the only way he knew how, he imbedded his whole self in work. If he had been given a sledge and the task of demolishing the Empire State, he felt he could do it in a day. Several factors took him almost to the pin of his depths. It began with seeing Mary go off with Vito. Then, learning the full breadth and depth of his father's intransigence concerning all aspects of the Dolorosso family relationship. Finally, Lou. For Sam to deny what he knew to be true would be to walk a lie he would never believe. Something was going to happen to Lou, something bad, and there was nothing, nothing, nothing Sam could conceive that could change it. Whatever it was, he was going to just watch the fucking thing happen, a dreadful aspect of his gift. He didn't know when, and for that insignificant fact he was grateful.

He suffered this pall from the time he walked from Lou's in the breaking hours of the morning until he reached the shop to start his work. The effect was to have him perform so unlike himself, unmethodically, uncaring, dazedly. He painted, checked the mail, answered the phone, sold supplies, talked to customers. Precisely nothing registered...until the call.

Her call. Mary's...

--Mary! Mary!

--Sam, listen...

--Mary! I died! I actually died and went to
camposanto.

--Sam, will you please listen...?

--I will, I will! You love me, you love me! Just say it once. You love me!

--You love me.

--Yes, I love you! I'm madly, passionately, desperately, frustratingly in love with you. Now say that you love me!

--I love you.

--You do? I mean, you do! She does! Oh! Glorygloryhalleluleah!

--Sam, I'm helping my mother...you know...the Saturday morning chore she does. I don't have a lot of time. Don't you want to know what happened last night?

--You're talking to me, and you love me. I couldn't care less what happened. I died last night, and you give me back my life this morning.

--I'll give you more than that when I see you tonight...

--You mean... He knew what she meant because his penis started to grow harder and harder. We'll still meet, just like last night, by the Santini place? Then, we can go...someplace. I can use some of the money I took in here at the shop, but I don't like to do that. I've never done that, but I will for us, for tonight...

--You don't have to. The treat's on me. You just find the place. We really can't be choosey, but I'd rather not a motel...you know...it would make me feel...funny.

--Like cheap, not the special thing it is. I know. I'll think of someplace. Oh! Darling! Whatever kept us apart last night was a miracle because it's given us so much more to look forward to today! I'm just like a schoolkid. My heart, banging...fast...madly. Oh! Mary! I love you so much. I thought, I really thought I lost you last night. I couldn't understand anything; the world just went upside down. I wanted to be a kid so I could cry.

--Oh! My love, I'm so sorry. There wasn't anything I could do. Vito...he got to the house earlier...told my parents we had a date. He came back, and wouldn't leave. My father said if I didn't go with him, I couldn't go out again at all because I'd just be out whoring around. I knew I needed to get out just once to be with you, that's all we need sweetheart, then no one can ever make us part. We'd be like the smoke from two close fires, joining into one, together, you and me, always, right to heaven.

--You talk like the angel you are...

--I knew I could handle Vito, and I made him take me home early. I knew you were there when we left, I didn't dare look; but coming home I hoped I'd see you...somehow...

--No, I was doing funeral services. And, darling, it's not just for us, but it's important I see you. It's about Lou. I have to tell you...I don't know what to do. I'm ecstatic with your voice, but a part of me is despondent; like my heart is holding fire and ice.

--Darling...?

--No, sweetheart, I just wanted to alert you; in case when we met tonight you detected something you misconstrued as directed to you. See, how in this short time, we have grown to depend on each other...

--Yes, yes!

--Yeah, like two drunks...

--You dirty rat!

--I love you.

--I love you. Think of me until we hold each other tonight.

--I wouldn't dare. The way things are standing up, I wouldn't have anything left by tonight. Mary...he whipsered...I want you so bad...

--You mean badly...

--No, when it's this hard, and hurts this much, it's bad.

--Mary fix.

--Ohhhhh! Jesus!

--For now I'll blow you a kiss, tonight I'll give you both.

--How you talk. I think I just lost the upper quandrant of my skull--right through the skylight.

--Tonight, till I love you, my love.

Sam let out a warhoop that almost took off the paint he had just put on the outside wall. He didn't remember it, however. Nor did he remember completing the painting, cleaning everything up, nor anything else he did until he got to the bathroom at home where he spent an inordinate amount of time giving his whole self a wax and shine. That was when he decided they'd go back to the bar and take the room they were offered, which he had filled in the interim with a thousand and one fantasies of Sam, The Lover, and Mary, The Lovee.

When Mary walked up to the Santini doorway that evening, they were both riding such expectant highs they didn't kiss, just one sweaty palm grasping another sweaty palm.

They walked to the park near Louisa's where they stood in the dark of a tree, and kissed tenderly, easily; holding back the passion they both knew had been driven by hot desires to the force of a tornado waiting to be unleashed. Lou arrived first, then Louisa; the four of them not saying a word once Sam gave Lou directions.

Seated in the booth in The Family Dining Room, the woman in black waited by the doorway, as if she knew the scenario beforehand.

Lou turned to Louisa: --Shall we stay and have dinner down here...first? She nodded, trying to keep a straight face.

Sam and Mary got up, fighting to keep themselves from running headlong up the stairs.

In Sam's mind, he had decided beforehand that if he could do it, he wanted to remember every single moment, every touch, every breath, every sensation, every utterance. And if he couldn't? Again, the strange experience of talking to and about himself as a second individual to a third, surprising himself by his own lasciviousness: --We'll just have to do it over and over until we remember! So, when Mary broke apart from the kiss to command throatily, --Hurry! Darling, hurry! he pulled her tighter to him, kissing her hard, pulling her by the cheek of her ass against his bulging erection.

--Oh! Sweetheart...!

--Darling!...

--I want to savor every moment...

--Yes! Yes! She threw her head back; her fingers digging into his body as he first kissed, then sucked, then bit her neck. Oh! Darling! The sensations are like bolts of electricity!

He released her to undo the front of her blouse. She helped him with the bra catch at her front, then, with it undone, her breasts spilled out to all their fullness, nipples pointing out hard demanding attention. So beautifully curved, so artfully formed, they filled his eyes with their wonder. He could see the softness, like eider in shadow. Though he would recall he stared at them for hours, it was only a moment before be sprang to encapture them both in his hands, the giving of them going straight to his gonads, his lips surrounding a teat, pulling it hard into his mouth as his tongue stroked it roughly.