"He has some problems, doesn't he?" said Debbi.
There was something in her tone that Bert had not expected, something knowing, serious. It instantly pulled him out of his old routine. "Yeah," he said. "He has some problems."
"Cataracts," said Debbi. "Probably arthritis."
Bert looked at her more closely. Red hair, probably perked up from a bottle. Long fingernails perfect as wax apples. Nose-cone boobs scoring a dramatic but temporary victory over gravity. So far, standard equipment for a woman traveling with the Ginos of this world. Still, there was something in the blue-green eyes that didn't fit the mold. Bimbos' eyes—you could look at them but never into them, they were blank and opaque, like the paint on a car. But Debbi's eyes invited you in; behind the colored part was a room as comfy as a paneled den. "He's got other problems too," confided Bert.
"Like what?" asked Debbi.
Bert glanced at the salad bowl, the glistening tomatoes. "You ladies are about to eat," he said. "It ain't the pleasantest subject."
"Tell me," Debbi said. "Maybe I can help."
Bert looked at his sneakers, pulled an earlobe. "Well," he said, "ya want the truth, he's constipated somethin' awful. I can't think the last time he had what you could call a successful walk."
"Poor puppy," Debbi said. She said it to the dog, and the dog lifted up its white and ancient head. It weakly shook its whiskers, a ray of hope seemed to flash in its milky eyes like dim lightning buried in the clouds. The pet groomer reached out and felt the creature's abdomen; it was hard and nubbly as a potato. "There a health food store around?" she asked.
The old mobster found the question droll. "Debbi, I live on meatballs, sausage. I smoked t'ree packs till I was sixty-five and had a haht attack—"
"There's one on Southard Street," said Sandra.
"Get some flaxseed," Debbi told Bert.
"Flaxseed?"
"Just ask for it. Take a tablespoon of it, slow-simmer it in a quarter cup of mineral oil—"
"How 'bout olive oil?" asked the Shirt.
"Whatever," Debbi said. "Simmer it like half an hour, let it cool, mix it with his dog food."
Bert was leaning forward now, avid at the prospect of a cure. "Yeah? Then what?"
"Wait an hour, take him for a nice relaxing stroll, and sing to him."
"Sing to 'im?" said Bert.
Debbi petted the dog. "That part I made up. But the rest, really—"
Bert looked hard at her, took the measure of her wisdom. Then he said, "How you know all this?"
Debbi felt suddenly bashful and only shrugged.
"You're a clever kid," Bert told her.
She looked down at the tiled floor. "No," she said, "I'm really not."
Certain things you could only do when your hair was white, when your teeth were loose, when the sleeves of your shirts flapped like hung laundry around your shrunken arms. Bert reached out a hand and lifted Debbi's chin. "Don't contradict an old man," he said. "I tol' ya you're a clever kid."
Out in the garden, the Godfather was trimming bougainvillea. Streamers of the stuff hung over him as he worked, he half disappeared behind a curtain of fuchsia flowers and wicked ocher thorns. Fallen petals lodged in his straw hat that was unraveling at the edges, a line of sweat traced out his backbone beneath the old blue shirt. He was barefoot, he had a red bandanna tied around his stringy neck, and he was too immersed in his task to see or hear Bert the Shirt approaching. He kept right on clipping until his old friend gave a low chuckle and said, "Vincente, Jesus, no offense, but ya look like a real paisan."
The Godfather brushed aside a strand of vine and turned around. "Bert, what could I tell ya—I am a real paisan."
He stepped out from the canopy of flowers, put his shears point down in the soft imported dirt, and raked a forearm across his sweating brow. As he did so he felt Bert's eyes on his naked feet, his soiled insteps.
He shook his head and said, "Poor fuckin' immigrants, huh? They get shoes that pinch, they try ta grow basil onna fuckin' fire escape; they get a job wit'out a window, their wives start wearin' girdles. They tell themselves they're doin' good, but down deep. . . . Ah, screw it. What's up, Bert?"
"Siddown a minute?"
Vincente didn't answer, just started walking toward the low table on the patio. It bothered him to take a break, but since his fainting spell it bothered him less. This surprised him, and he thought, Thank God that people—some people—got less pigheaded when the alternative was dropping dead, that they could give some ground without totally losing pleasure in the things they loved to do.