look good doing it. One leg was drawn up in front of her as she applied a final coat of red to her toes. When the phone rang, she looked up at me where I was lounging on the bed, my eyes half closed, watching her go through her ritual with more pleasure and peace than I’d felt in a while.
“You know that call’s not for me, Benny,” she said quietly. I reached for the receiver with my good hand and brought it to my ear.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Benito,” Sal greeted me.
“Uncle.”
Esther screwed the lid on her little bottle and fanned her toes, but her shoulders had stiffened.
“I heard about Detroit. I thought maybe you wouldn’t come,” Sal said. “Plans haven’t changed?” He was guarded, talking in generalities the way he always did over the phone.
“No . . . Plans haven’t changed,” I answered. Esther’s eyes were heavy on my bruised skin.
“Are you all right?” Sal asked.
“I’ll heal.”
“Can you . . . still play?”
“Maybe not as well as I used to. But still better than anyone else.”
He grunted once, a suggestion of a laugh. “Jack would have liked that answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Esther’s with you?” he asked.
I hesitated. I didn’t like the question. Sal knows everything.
“Yes.”
Sal took the phone from his mouth, talking to someone in the room with him. Tony? The sound was too muffled to make out specifics. It sounded like he was at the bar. Clinks and laughter and faint music found their way through the line.
“I want you to come downstairs. You and Esther. We’re in the lounge. Everyone’s here. I’ll introduce you. You can sing a couple of songs for us. Let everyone see you. Let everyone see her. The two of you, together. I’ll give you my blessing, right out in the open, so no one can misunderstand. Maybe we can put an end to this.”
“You’ll give us your blessing?” I gasped.
“A line was crossed, Benito. Whoever did this didn’t just insult you, they insulted me.”
“How so?”
He was silent so long, I thought we’d been disconnected, but when he finally answered, his fury singed the hair in my ear, and he spoke as plainly as I’d ever heard him speak.
“They didn’t just try to kill you. They purposely maimed you. They knew who you were, and they tried to take it. They wanted to take away your ability to make a living, to make a name. You don’t do that to a man. Kill him, fine. But don’t take away his ability to be a man.”
He sounded like my father. If a man can’t protect and provide it’ll make him mean . . . or it’ll drive him crazy.
“You sound like my pop,” I repeated out loud. And just like that, a wave of grief rose up and knocked me over, and I tumbled in the surf of Sal’s fury and my own devastation. I tried to recover by shrugging it off, using levity to find my balance. “But they didn’t take my manhood, Uncle. I still have my dick.”
“Yeah. And I still have mine. This ends tonight, Benito. But I need you to come downstairs.”
“You want all your friends and associates to see me with my face bashed in?”
“Yeah. I do. Show them you can’t be intimidated. Show them you’re one of us.”
Show them you’re one of us.
I was silent, and Sal sighed. His voice dropped, like he didn’t want anyone around him to hear.
“Everything I do is a statement. You think I don’t know my own business? I own three clubs, Benito. I know how to put on a show.”
“So what’s the statement tonight?”
“You don’t kill or spook very easily. You do what you want, with any woman you choose, and you do it with the whole world watching.”
It was essentially my own plan, read back to me, but now Sal was on board. And if Sal was on board, he would make himself captain of the whole ship. He would call the shots. I was so goddamn tired.
I wanted to hang up the phone and cover my aching head. But that wouldn’t solve anything.
“Benito?” Sal was getting impatient.
“All right, Uncle. We’ll be down in . . .” I looked at Esther, trying to gauge how much time she would need. She was already taking out her pin curls and waving her toes in the air to help the polish dry.
“I can be ready in five,” she said. “My toes will be ready in ten.”
“Give us fifteen minutes,” I told Sal. “We won’t stay