Virgin Heat(3)

Louie's brother A1 was the first to notice the new arrivals.

"Louie, Rose!" he bellowed, standing up and shoving a shirttail underneath his belt. "Look at yuhs! Those tans! I hate yuhs, ya pineapples!"

He came lumbering around an end table topped with nut bowls and alabaster eggs, hugged his younger brother, coolly kissed the wife. "Great ta see ya, great ta see ya," he went on. "Ya seen Paulie yet?"

That had always been the first question, Louie thought. Did you pay your respects to Paulie? Not just because, tonight, Paulie happened to be the guest of honor and the host. No. Because Paulie was the oldest, the big shot, the money man. "Hey," said Louie nervously, "I just walked in."

A1 looked over his shoulder, the torsion pulling his shirt out of his pants again. "Where's Paulie? Louie wantsta say hello."

"Must be onna phone or somethin'," shouted back the other brother, Joe.

"Get comfortable," said Maria, Paulie's wife. She was handsome, stern, gracious by custom though her heart was all dried up. "Please, you'll have a drink."

A1 led them through an archway to the dining room. Bottles were arrayed on a sideboard that small planes could have landed on. On the prairie of the mahogany table a vast buffet had been laid out—a bleeding beef, a turkey hacked and reassembled, wedges of cheese the size of splitting mauls.

Al made Rose a Manhattan, poured Louie a glass of Bardolino. Then he patted Louie's cheek, the bulbous place just below the cheekbone that gave Louie the look of a clown. Apropos of nothing, he said, "Louie, kid, you're still my favorite."

That's the kind of family it was. Everybody had a favorite, but the feelings were seldom symmetrical. What did Al see in Louie? A jumpy sweetness, maybe, a comparative innocence. Louie was the only brother who didn't hurt people for a living, who had never been to jail. To Al, those things made him lovable. As for Louie, he thought Al was a buffoon and a slob who spit when he talked and couldn't keep his shirt tucked in. His own favorite was his niece, Angelina, Paulie's only child. He loved her for her strangeness, her distracted gentleness, a certain feeling she gave off, like she was only partly where she was. What did Angelina think of him? With Angelina it was impossible to tell, though Louie strongly suspected she viewed him as a harmless fool, a smiling nobody.

They went back to the living room, staked out places on a couch. A heated conversation was underway, Louie gradually realized it was about salami. One brand, the pepper was too coarse, it hit that thing at the back of your throat and made you cough. Another label, the rind stuck, yanked off half the meat with it. Then there was mozzarella.

"Ya want mozzarell'," Joe was saying, "ya go ta Arthur Avenue."

"Ya don't think it's the exact same mozzarell' they got up here?" somebody challenged.

"No," said Joe, "I don't."

"Come on," somebody said, "ya see the signs in every deli: Bronx Bread. Ya think they bring the bread but the cheese they don't bring?"

"I am telling you," Joe said, "that me, my opinion, okay, the way it tastes when it's in my mouth, not yours, big shot, the mozzarell' tastes better if I go to Arthur Avenue and see it wit' my own eyes sittin' inna . . ."

Joe fell silent. Louie twisted his sunburned neck and saw his brother Paul returning from the bedroom wing.

Prison seemed not to have disagreed with him, though the truth was that, beneath the robust exterior, tubes were silting up, pumps growing sluggish, filters clogging. But he still had his mane of wavy silver hair, the dramatic upswept eyebrows, the power to stop conversation when he walked into a room. His shoulders were still broad and square, the stomach ample but not fat—imposing rather, imperial. The skin was ruddy beneath the careful shave, the strong nose Greek in profile, bridgeless. His pearl-gray suit hung as timeless as the drapery on a statue.

Louie felt himself rising, moving in a kind of trance to greet his brother. Was it love or obligation, awe or fear or just a quailing habit from a lifetime of being the youngest, the weakest, the least important? He let Paulie hug him, smelled the clove and citrus of his aftershave.

"Louie."

"Paulie, ya look great."

"I feel okay. And how's the plumbing business?"

The younger brother flushed, shrank within himself. In a family of big shots, he sold elbow joints and toilet snakes and plungers. Paulie's question— was it concern or an old need to keep him down, humiliate? With family it was hard to tell the two apart.

"Business is fine," said Louie softly. "We took vacation."

"I see the tan," his brother said, looking at his peeling head.