"Synonym," said Sandra.
"What the hell," said Gino. "Anyway, she don't like cheap stuff. Do ya, baby?"
Vicki shrugged her shoulders with an effect that was seismic. "Who does? I mean, if people liked it, it wouldn't be cheap no more."
"Hey, that's good," said Gino. He said it looking at Joey and pointing a thick finger at Vicki. "Well, hey, anybody hungry?"
They looked at menus and decided to order lobsters from Maine.
"Seems crazy," Vicki said, when the waiter had re-filled the champagne glasses and vanished. "I mean, here we are right by this ocean just full of a zillion kinds of fish, and we have lobsters flown in from Maine."
"There's nothing like Maine lobster," said Gino with finality, and Joey realized, in spite of himself, something he admired or at least envied about his half brother. Gino knew what he liked. He enjoyed things. For him, everything fell into a list, and you went for the things at the top. Drinks, that was champagne. Champagne, that was Dom Perignon. Food, it was lobster. Women, big tits and high hair. Shoes, suits, cars, watches, hair tonic, olive oil, whatever. There was always something that was the best, and if you could have that thing, you knew you were doing good.
Then, too, lobster was a great equalizer. Everybody was a slob eating lobster, and so Gino, who was a slob eating almost anything, didn't especially stand out. Or rather, he stood out unmistakably as the leader in a ritual of gusto. Too strong, with not enough grace, he crushed shells so that juice went squirting out of every crevice, hitting his waxed bib with a sound like soft rain on a tin roof. Vicki, hampered by her long nails, plucked at her lobster with the patient murderousness of a gull. Sandra was, as ever, methodical, her small neat hands coaxing out the flesh as efficiently as if she were counting out twenties at the bank. And Joey, who was perhaps too tentative at many things, was tentative as well in his attack on his dinner. He didn't get all the meat out, for fear of twanging a sinew and having it fly off, for fear of flicking a speck of lobster at a tablemate—for fear of being like Gino.
"More champagne?" the older brother asked.
"Not for me," said Sandra.
"Maybe one glass," said Joey.
Gino summoned the captain with a wave of a hand covered in lobster slime and ordered up another magnum.
"So Gino," Sandra said, "all the time I've known you, I've never once heard of you taking a vacation. How come all of a sudden you are?"
Did Gino flinch at the question, or was he just yanking off a stubborn lobster leg? "Just due for a break, that's all. Besides, Vicki here, she's been such a good kid, I thought it would be nice to take a trip with her."
"I wanted to go to Aruba," Vicki said. "Ya know, where there's duty-free. But no. Gino says he's got some business down here anyway."
"Shut up, Vicki. What she means is I wanted to visit you guys."
Sandra dabbed her mouth on her napkin. Around the dining room, plates clattered and corks popped.
They finished the lobsters, had mango ice cream and coffee, and the captain brought the check nestled in a leather sleeve on a silver tray. "I trust everything was satisfactory, Dr. Greenbaum?"
"Yeah, terrific," said Gino, signing. "Here's a little something for you." The captain retreated, backing and bobbing, and Gino dropped his napkin onto the table. "Walk onna beach?"
Outside, a yellow half-moon was perched over the Florida Straits, and a light south breeze that smelled of dry shells and seaweed was just barely rustling the palms. Underfoot, the trucked-in sand felt cakey with the moisture of the evening. Gino handed Joey a cigar and unwrapped one for himself. The gesture was enough to make Sandra and Vicki fall in side by side, leaving the men to trail behind, wreathed in their blue and nasty smoke.
For a couple of minutes they walked in silence, and Joey, to his own surprise, found himself slipping into a state of mysterious contentment. To walk next to a bigger, older, stronger brother was a comfort. It almost didn't matter what you thought of him, it only mattered that he was there, like a roof, like a wall, like anything big and solid that protected you or surrounded you.
"I'm sorry I didn't come see ya before I left," said Joey. "I shoulda."
"Don't matter," said Gino, waving the apology away with a red flash of his cigar. "But kid, ya shoulda gone to see Pop. I think ya hurt his feelings."
"Maybe I wanted to."
"Hey, ya wanted to, ya wanted to. But that don't make it right."
And they walked. Gino's shoes plowed over the sand with the heavy assurance of wide tires. His thick chest blacked out a broad swath of the Atlantic. The women, walking with the grim purpose of after-dinner exercise, had gotten almost out of sight.