Virgin Heat(2)

Ziggy made the drink He made it with riffs and flourishes it never dawned on him were his alone.

Although he wore a short-sleeved shirt, he began by flicking his wrists as if shooting back a pair of cuffs. When he inverted the teaspoon to float the Chartreuse on the 'Buca, he extended a pinky in a gesture that was incongruously dainty, given the furry knuckle and the broad and close-cropped fingernail. Grasping the bottle in his right hand, he let his index finger float free; mangled long ago from an ill-thrown punch, that bent and puffy digit refused to parallel the others. He didn't bring the bottle directly to the glass, he banked and looped it in, like a plane approaching an airport. Slowly, with the pomp of mastery, he poured a layer of purple cassis over yellow Chartreuse, green créme de menthe over purple cassis. He topped the gross rainbow with a membrane of grenadine, then delicately laid in a cherry that sank with a portentous slowness, carrying with it a streaky red lascivious rain.

He slid the drink across the bar to the tourist who had ordered it. "Five dollars, please," he said.

He took cash, glanced around. The videocam had been switched off, for the moment everyone was happy.

A light breeze shook the bougainvillea on its trellis, the papery flowers rattled dryly. A woman, a nice woman probably, from Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, fumbled in a big purse for a cigarette. She didn't have a match, she looked at Ziggy. Damp inside his faded shirt at the beginning of that season when things got only damper and only stranger, he snapped his lighter and cupped his hands and lit her up. She smiled, then blew twin streams of exhaust through her nose. If she was out to misbehave, and if she could stay awake till closing time, and if she didn't get a better offer in the meanwhile, maybe she would misbehave with him.





2


A week later, in the chill and sniffly north, a tardy spring was still struggling for a toehold.

Confused crocuses poked up through drab gray grass spiky with winter; forsythia strutted its early blooms against a bleak, gnarled backdrop of naked branches, hopeless twigs. In Pelham Manor, a sliver of lower Westchester that had learned its table manners in the Bronx, on an oak-lined street called Hillside Drive, the lawns were squishy with unseen thaw, yet patches of crusty snow still lingered under boulders; the early evening streetlamps made them blue.

Louie Amaro drove to the street's highest point, parked his car at one end of his brother Paulie's grandly curving driveway, which was glutted with vehicles newer, bigger, sleeker than his own. He switched off his ignition, said fretfully, "Everybody's here already."

"So everybody's here," said his wife Rose. "So what?" She flipped down her sunshade. It had a lighted mirror on the back, she checked her thick red lipstick.

"Why are we always last?" said Louie.

"Plenty a times we've been first," said Rose. "You don't like that either."

"First I like," he said. "First shows respect."

"Your big-shot family, they always make you nervous."

"They don't make me nervous," Louie said. "You make me nervous. D'ya bring the cassette?"

"It's right here in my bag." She blotted on a Kleenex. He watched her. Maybe they bickered, maybe she picked on him, but he still took pleasure, felt a thrill of intimacy, watching Rose do things like that. "Big shots," she went on. "Big shots when they're not in jail somewhere."

Louie raised a cautioning finger. "We don't talk about that, Rose."

"Don't talk about it? How do we not talk about it? The man's been in prison nine years, he's been out for a week. Whadda we talk about, the lottery?"

"He's been away. He's back. End of story."

Rose shook her head, emphatically buffed her makeup.

Louie's unsure pride swelled in the silence. "And lemme tell ya somethin'. My brother Paulie, he's a big shot even when he is in jail. Don't kid yourself. My tan—I'm still tan, right? I look relaxed, ya can tell we took vacation?"

The house was an enormous Tudor, with tall chimneys sticking up like organ pipes and a cluster of different-height brown roofs bunched together like a field of mushrooms. Security cameras panned across the pathway leading to the door. Louie rang the bell, then watched his breath until a buzzer let them in.

In the entryway they hung their cloth coats on top of the furs and cashmeres already piled on the racks. Louie took his hat off; he stood before a huge smoked mirror and raked his sparse hair left to right; translucent flakes of skin drifted off his sunburned head. Then they walked down the long hall with its armoires and its torch lamps, to the living room.

The living room was brightly lit and very big and noisy. From hidden speakers came the aged rasp of Frank Sinatra, the ravaged voice buoyed up by brass and strings. In one corner, a huge television set was blaring; half a dozen fat children watched it, tickling each other's ribs. In the middle of the room, three overstuffed gold couches defined a conversation nook; Amaro blood relations and in-laws sat back against the yielding cushions and perched on the pillowed arms.