The Real Thing (6 page)

I put the books away, not she-wolfing it anymore as I replace them, and sit next to Lelani. “What are they playing to?”

“They play till the next fight and keep a running tally,” she says. “They've been playing for close to two months now. Someone usually wins by hundreds, even thousands, of points.”

“What does the winner get?” I ask.

“Bragging rights.”

That's all? I fake a pout. “Don't they ever invite you to play, Lelani?”

“Me? I am strictly a poker player.”

Figures.

“Whenever Evelyn visits unannounced—meaning that Red and I can't escape in time—they play partners,” Lelani says. “Red and Dante—always—and DJ and his mama.”

That also figures. “Who wins?”

“DJ and his mama.” Lelani shakes her head. “I think sometimes Dante and Red lose on purpose, and now they're trying to make up for all those losses by playing cutthroat.”

I make a power decision and stand. “It's time for me to play.”

She blinks. “You're not going to try to take Evelyn's place, are you?”

“Oh no,” I say. “I could never do anything like that.” I smile. “I don't intend to play cards, Lelani. I just wanna play, you understand?”

“I dig,” she says. “Go play.”

I go directly to DJ and look over his shoulder. According to the scorecard, DJ is over nine hundred points behind Dante, who is around two hundred points behind Red.

“I bid . . . nine,” DJ says.

No wonder this child is losing. He has a potential Boston in his hand. If he plays his cards right, he can take all . . . eighteen books. They're playing with the jokers, and he has
both
jokers and the ace and two of spades. Taking all eighteen is next to impossible in cutthroat, but with this hand, DJ has a chance.

“Do you play that the two of clubs leads?” I ask.

Red nods.

DJ has no clubs. This is perfect. I fan out DJ's cards and see a gold mine of spades. “You're a little too conservative, DJ, don't you think?”

“No coaching,” Red says.

I put my nose on the top of DJ's ear and whisper, “Bid eighteen.”

“What?” DJ says.

Red puts his hand flat on the table. “She said, ‘Bid eighteen. ' ” Red takes his spades seriously.

“Goin' for a Boston,” I say, smiling at Dante.

Dante doesn't smile. “We are not in Boston,” he says.

I wink at him. “That's why we're goin' for one.”

Dante does not appear to be amused. He pulls a tennis ball from under the table and squeezes it. Hmm. Keeping his hands strong. I like that in a man.

“We don't have to call it a ‘Boston,' ” I say to DJ. “We can call it an ‘Aylen.'” I crouch next to DJ's seat, aiming my booty in Dante's direction. “C'mon, DJ. What do you have to lose? You're already dragging nine hundred points.”

“I'll, uh, I'll take them all,” DJ says softly.

Red squints at me. “I'll take . . . two.”

“Uno,”
Dante says with authority.

“Let's set 'em both, DJ,” I say, holding my breath.

Red throws out the two of clubs, and Dante tops it with the ace, the card making a little slap. DJ trumps it with the three of spades. He can run them now! I point to the big joker.

“Now?” DJ asks, about to throw an ace of diamonds, which someone could conceivably trump.

“No coaching,” Red says again.

“Who's coaching?” I say. “DJ, look at your hand, man.”

“That is coaching,” Dante says.

I shrug and hold out my hands and do a bad impression of Robert De Niro. “What? I just ask him to look at his hand. That is all. I do not tell him what to do with his hand. That would be coaching. I just ask him to look. Is that such a crime?”

I catch Red smiling. Dante only rolls his eyes.

DJ studies his hand. “Oh.” DJ smiles. “Oh, yeah. They'll all—”

“Andiamo,”
Dante says.

DJ plays eleven consecutive spades, the ace, king, queen of hearts, and the ace, king, and queen of diamonds, collecting all eighteen books.

Take that!

Red smiles.

Dante scowls and says,
“Per caso.”

“It was just the luck of the draw,
Papino,”
DJ says softly.

“Where I come from,” I say, “if you run a Boston, or in this case an Aylen, you win the entire game.”

“We are not in Boston,” Dante says again. He snaps up the cards and shuffles, the cards sounding like machine-gun fire.

I squeeze DJ's shoulders. “Don't ever be afraid to go for it,” I tell him. “Just don't be afraid.
Tenere provare.”

Dante blinks. Yeah, king of the house, I can speak your language. A little. I only remember the phrase because it sort of rhymes.

I linger for a few more hands, mainly hovering over DJ and Red, and then I leave the screened porch and wander through the kitchen and up some back stairs. I look in the first room on the second floor and see a scary sight—it is a
clean
teenager's room. The wood floor is spotless, the bed is made, the clothes are put away, and the toiletries on a dresser (deodorant, shaving kit, Chap Stick) are lined up perfectly. I know if I open the dresser I'll see all of DJ's socks paired and lined up, his T-shirts and maybe even his boxers folded. DJ also has his own full bathroom. Where are the video games, the TV, the stereo, the pictures of rappers, and the uneaten food becoming science experiments? Where are the DVDs, CDs, and game magazines? This is so uncommon.

I go out into the hallway and see only one other door. I open it, thinking it's just a closet.

It isn't.

I pull a string, and a small room lights up. The walls are bare except for a crucifix, a few clippings—all mine—and a wedding picture of Dante and Evelyn cutting the cake. Once again, his eyes are on her while hers are elsewhere. He looks so fine in that tuxedo, and her dress had to cost a fortune. On the floor at my feet rest a sleeping bag and a pillow. There are no windows. There is no mattress. A single lightbulb dangles from the ceiling. Creepy. This is where Dante sleeps? All this relative opulence and he sleeps in a windowless, airless closet?

Or, is the guesthouse
really
where he stays, and he just threw this stuff in here because of me?

Wait.

The clippings are here. Red said the clippings were hanging up in “his room.” Maybe it's a superstitious thing. Dante is an athlete, and athletes have superstitions. It feels so cramped, so claustrophobic. It's maybe one-third the size of a boxing ring. Why would anyone want to sleep in here for close to four months of training?

I am definitely going to ask him about this room.

I look again at the wedding picture. He uses this for motivation, too. Dante is so naive. He thinks he can recapture the past. He thinks he can have a successful rematch with the woman who dumped him. I'm sure it happens, but it has to be rare. What's the old saying about second marriages? Isn't a second marriage “the triumph of hope over experience”?

You'd think Dante would have learned from his mistake.

I close the door and return to the great room, the fire dying away to embers, Lelani snoozing on a couch. The game still rages on the screened porch, so I walk in and announce, “I'm going to bed.”

No one speaks. How nice.

I look at Dante. “Um, four-thirty, right?”

“DJ will wake you at four,” Red says while Dante only stares at me.

At . . . four? Is he kidding? “I'll be ready.”

I leave the main house and go into the guesthouse, closing and—there are no locks. Why are there no locks? Hmm. I guess I'll be safe. After brushing my teeth and donning a pair of Evelyn's tight shorts and a tighter T-shirt, I snuggle under the covers and make some preliminary notes on my laptop:

He
is
a handsome man. He
is
sexy. The pictures will take care of that for me. I won't have to state the obvious in my article.

I close my laptop, set it above me on the headboard, and turn out the light. Starlight streams in through the slats in the blinds despite the curtains on the window, but that's all right. I wonder what 4
AM
looks
like. I'm not usually up that early, even when I'm traveling a long way to do an interview. Even when I was younger and hit the clubs, I never stayed out past 2:30
AM
.

The wind rustles the trees around me, and I hear their branches brush the roof. It smells so nice, like Pine-Sol on crack. This is so far from the “madding crowd,” so peaceful, so still. Was that a loon's call? I hear they mate for life. . . .

I drift to sleep like the waves kissing the shore outside, dreaming of lonely loons, lightning lefts, and a
corpo provocante
.

Chapter 7

A
soft knocking sound awakens me.

It has to be a tree limb rubbing against the guesthouse. It can't be 4
AM
yet. I turn over.

There it is again. I sit up.

“Miss Artis,” a voice whispers. “Christiana, we're leaving in half an hour.”

It's still dark. The fish have to be sleeping.

“Miss Artis?”

I rise, wrap a quilt about me, and open the door. A blast of cold air hits me in the face. “I'm up. I'm just going to take a quick shower.”

DJ smiles at my bare feet. “Right. Don't forget to dress warmly.”

I shut the door. “Thirty minutes,” I whisper. “What's so special about four-thirty? Are the fish only biting at four-thirty? Geez. Can the fish even see the bait when it's this dark?”

I stumble to the bathroom, flip on the light, and stare at the tub. There's no showerhead here. How can I take a quick shower if there's no showerhead? I've never heard of anyone taking a quick bath. It would take five minutes for the tub to fill up.

Wait.

I'm going fishing.

Who's gonna know if I'm stank?

Besides me.

The fish won't care.

While I search Evelyn's clothes for anything heavy, fur-lined, and Arctic, I tell myself to be as
not
-
Eve
lyn as possible today. DJ says she doesn't like it here. Maybe she absolutely loathes this place. Therefore, I have to act as if I can't get enough of this place. Yes. I have to suck up so Dante will open up.

I put on layers of clothes starting with shorts over my underwear, fleece sweatpants over the shorts, and—
geez!
—tight-ass wind pants over the sweats. I can barely bend over to tie my hiking boots.

I should not eat anything for breakfast.

I'm almost out the door when I realize I haven't brushed my teeth. I have no precedent in my life for this. I have never brushed my teeth this early before. When the icy water hits my teeth, they start to grumble.

And it's still dark.

I lurch through the birch and pine trees to the kitchen, where Red is already awake and cooking something on the stove. It smells delicious, but I can't possibly eat zipped up as I am. He sees me and points at a cup of coffee.

“Thanks.” I take a sip, and my teeth settle down.

He flips a bun of some kind onto a plate and slides the plate down the counter. “It's called a Chelsea bun. You'll like it.”

Good thing I'm standing while I eat it, and it is yummy. “Red?”

“Yes?”

“Why is it so dark?”

Red wipes at his eyes. “Dante likes to get up early.”

I sip some more coffee. “So, is it dark because, hey, it's four-fifteen, or is it dark because Dante likes to get up early?”

“Both.”

I see DJ walk through the screened porch wearing a floppy tan fishing hat. “Red, I need a hat.”

He leaves the kitchen and returns with a Boston Red Sox cap, settling it on my head. “It fits you,” he says, “in
so
many ways.”

“I don't root for the Sox,” I say, taking it off and setting it on the counter. “I'm a Yankees fan.”

“So is Dante, the poor man,” Red says. “I would have gotten you an
Aylen
hat, but I think this
Boston
hat says it much better.”

I put on the hat. “Cuts him two ways, huh?”

Red nods.

I nod. Anything to infuriate Dante, especially since he got me up at the crack of freaking
doom
to go fishing.

Red pulls several circular Styrofoam containers from the refrigerator and places them in front of me.

“What are these?” I ask.

“Worms and leeches,” he says.

Lovely. I shouldn't have asked.

Red wraps up several Chelsea buns, and then pulls several bottles of water from the refrigerator and puts them in a little cooler. “Remember,” he says, “Dante takes fishing seriously.”

I am tired of hearing that. I pull the cap down close to my eyes and frown. “Is this serious-looking enough?”

“Just catch some fish, okay? You have to replace the fish you stole from his stomach last night.”

I roll my eyes.

“And don't talk on the boat. Don't even make a sound.”

“It will be as if I'm not even there.”

I carry the leeches, worms, and cooler down to the dock, a trillion stars still dotting the sky. Mist covers the water, and I can barely see Dante or DJ in the fishing boat. I get into the boat—without a word—and hand the containers and cooler to DJ. Dante unties the boat, backs us out, and we're on our way.

And it's freaking cold! It can't be much above freezing.

The wind bites the tip of my nose and my earlobes as we haul ass down the lake. I clamp the windbreaker's hood to my head, pulling the strings tight. My eyes start to water, so I close them, listening to my windbreaker ripple like thunder.

After what seems like twenty minutes, we glide into a spot and float a bit. I can barely see the shore, an indefinite sunlike glow threatening the horizon. DJ hands me a pole, and while I remove my hood, I watch him put a leech onto his hook. It doesn't look too hard. He hands me the container of leeches.

They're . . . swimming. I didn't know leeches swam. They're like overgrown black sperm. Ew. Which one, which one . . . that one. He's stuck to the container. I choose him, give a little tug, and bring him directly to the hook, spearing him twice with the barb. I turn and face the shore, firing a cast into the mist and the darkness. Not bad, not great. I can still do this. I have no idea where I just cast my line, but at least my overgrown black sperm is in the water.

“Rocks over there,” DJ whispers.

Shit. How am I supposed to know? There aren't exactly any signs out here, you know? We're fishing in a black hole! I start reeling in faster when BAM! I must be stuck. I pull, and the line shoots off a different direction.

I'm not stuck. That's a fish! I wish I could see it! I mean, I hear it—

That was a splash. It jumped in all that mist, and now I'm fighting it.

DJ moves closer to me. “Big?” he whispers.

How the hell should I know? It feels big. I nod.

It takes me five more minutes to get the fish close to the boat as the sun's rays finally creep over the tops of the trees. Whoa. That is a big fish.

Dante, who has yet to get a line in the water, stands holding the anchor line while DJ gets a net. The closer I work the fish to the boat, the harder it fights. In my head, Granddaddy is screaming, “Keep the rod tip up, Tiana!”

After an interesting dance DJ and I have with him sliding around me a couple of times with the net, he leans over the boat and . . .

The fish is in the boat.

I caught that. Uh-huh. I do a little strut. Looky there, Dante. Huh? Huh? What you got that I don't got? Huh?

DJ removes the fish, drops it into the live well, and tosses my line back into the water. “You still have your leech,” he whispers. “That one was at least
four
pounds.”

I still don't know what I caught. I hope it was a smallmouth bass. Red will cook it up for
me,
and Dante will have to ask
me
for a few bites, which I
may
not give him. I need to fatten Lelani up, don't I?

I reel in my line a little bit and cast to the same spot again, this time seeing the leech hit the water. A split second later and I get another
BAM!

Dante still hasn't moved. He's still fiddling with that anchor rope.

The sun peeking over the trees now, I take off my windbreaker while fighting—geez, this one's bigger!—and keeping my rod tip up. When the fish hits the surface, it starts to dance before crashing to the water again. At least
eight
minutes later, DJ and I do our little dance, he nets the fish, and I rest on a seat. He pulls a scale from a tackle box and weighs this one.

“Five pounds, three ounces,” he whispers, his eyes as big as donuts.

I nod. I knew it was bigger. I roll my neck. Yeah. I'm bad. Uh-huh.

“You'll need another leech,” DJ whispers.

Dante still hasn't gotten a line into the water.

Yeah, Mr. Get Up Early, I'm kicking your ass, aren't I? I straighten my Red Sox hat. Who's the champ now, huh? And who's the chump?

I put on a new leech and cast out to my spot. Dante finally gets with the program, ties off the anchor rope, and casts a long silver lure just to the left of my cast. Uh-huh. Going where the action is, huh? Trying to move in on my spot. Okay. We'll see about that.

Something swirls at his lure and misses.

Dante grimaces.

Ha!

Then something hits mine, maybe the same something that missed his lure, and I'm fighting again. This one is smaller, though, and I have no trouble bringing it in and netting it myself. I even take it off the hook and drop it in the live well with
my
other fish all by my damn self.

While DJ has to rerig after breaking his line and Dante watches in agony as fish swirl and miss a lure as big as they are, I make my fourth cast—and catch another fish.

I spin my hat around my head once, bending the bill slightly. This Red Sox player is four for four in less than thirty minutes. After netting this one and adding it to my collection, I remove my wind pants and windbreaker and turn my cap around like a catcher.

That's when I catch Dante smiling at me.

I like it when he smiles.

None of us catches another fish for over an hour, but I am content. The sun burns off the mist, and I have to take off my sweatshirt and sweatpants. There's something almost mystical about casting into a pool of sunlight, not a single ripple on the water, the only sound the gentle rocking of the boat, a loon calling somewhere in the distance.

“They have left,” Dante says.

“Or Christiana caught them all,” DJ says.

I bite my lips together. I want to say something so badly! I want to tell Dante that his huge chunk of metal scared the fish away.

Dante pulls up the anchor, and we cruise a short distance away to a sandy beach. DJ takes off his shoes, socks, and sweats, and hops into the water, pulling the boat up onto the sand. I leap off the boat holding my wind pants and windbreaker while Dante saunters over to the live well and looks inside. I catch his lips saying, “Wow.”

Wow. I'll take that as a compliment.

I slip into my wind pants and zip up my windbreaker. The bugs haven't been too bad, but I'm taking no chances. When DJ hands me a can of industrial-strength bug repellant, I spray my hands, my clothes, and my hat. The smell is anything but feminine, but at least I won't be breakfast for something that buzzes, bites, or stings.

Dante drops off the front of the boat, zipping up his jacket.
“Andiamo,”
he says, nodding at DJ.

Andiamo,
I say to myself. Let's go.

One task down, four tasks to go.