Virgin Heat(59)

Frustrated, spiteful, Amaro smashed the dresser mirror with his gun butt. Then the would-be killers left.

At Raul's they learned from a jumpy manager that Ziggy had not showed up the past two days, no phone call, nothing, their entire schedule was all screwed up, and he'd better have a pretty damned original excuse if he ever planned on coming back to work.

Out on the glaring sidewalk once again, Paul Amaro tried to think, but found that he had nothing of substance to think about, and so his mind burned and rumbled like an empty stomach looking for something to digest.

Just around then, in Carmen Salazar's garden, the telephone rang. It was Tommy Lucca, and he was pissed.

"Carmen," said the man from Coral Gables, "just one question: Paul Amaro been back to talk to you?"

Innocently, maybe even with the slightest hint of bragging, Salazar said, "Yeah. A couple times."

"That's all I fuckin' need to know," said Lucca, slamming down the phone.

Slowly but uneasily, Salazar hung up, stared off at the tangled shade of natal plum and passionflower and philodendron and aralia. His garden, his operation, his life—in that instant they all seemed incredibly puny and totally precious, because Salazar was realizing he had somehow got himself in the middle of things he didn't really understand and that could easily undo him. He tried to think of the juncture when he'd begun to lose control. He couldn't pinpoint a moment when it happened or a decision that brought it on. No matter. Even if he had it to do all over again, he would have done the exact same thing, because he had always wanted big-time friends. Now he had them. Big-time friends, and big-time headaches.





36


That evening the hostages of naked city had Cuban food.

Michael brought in rice and beans and picadillo, and a double order of fried plantains whose ample grease soaked through the bottom of the bag. He brought in six-packs of beer and a liter of tequila, and for dessert he found a mango torte—the only thing with mango in it that wouldn't melt in the stubborn warmth of early evening.

But for all the food and alcohol, dinner was anything but festive. Ziggy and Angelina had reached a new and mutually grumpy stage in the long slow dance that they were doing. Thwarted desire had put a dull but unremitting ache in Ziggy's loins; the distant pain made him mostly silent, and sarcastic on the rare occasions when he spoke. As for Angelina, some mix of pride and tactic and confusion was making it difficult for her even to meet the eye of the man she'd wanted for so long. They hated each other that evening, and yet it was the merest membrane of restraint and doubt that kept them from falling berserkly into each other's hot and gripping arms. Their standoff, with its musky smell of strangled lust, made Uncle Louie thoroughly uneasy, and flung Michael back into the throes of his own recent heartbreak and humiliation.

So they ate with meager appetite, their faces toward their plates. Ziggy, from the start, was drinking heavily. He'd rub a wedge of lime on the meaty place between his thumb and index finger, then salt the spot, then lick it, then toss back a swallow of tequila, followed by a good long suck of beer. Uncle Louie, to his later sorrow, became intrigued by this technique and tried it on his own. He liked it.

The sky dimmed, a half-moon brightened near the zenith. Michael and Angelina finished eating, threw away their Styrofoam plates. Ziggy and Louie surrendered their plastic forks and knives but not their glasses. Locusts buzzed. Michael got up to leave, and rest, and then go out to look again for romance, reassurance.

"Thanks for dinner," Louie said, eyeing the sweet glaze on the mango cake still perched on a snack table.

Michael smiled and withdrew. Angelina followed him, saying only the tersest of good nights. Ziggy bitterly watched her hips as she walked around the pool.

He kept drinking. Louie tagged along. For a while there was not a word of conversation. Ziggy was in a sulk, and he was one of those men who had a gift for it, a boundless stamina, so that, for him, a funky mood could dig itself broader and deeper until it became something bleakly spiritual, a morbidly ecstatic meditation on the subject of gloom and festering resentments. Uncle Louie, however, had no such talent for silent, self-glorifying woe; drinking made him chatty, curious, emboldened him to inquire into things that, sober, he would only meekly wonder about.

After a time he heard himself saying, "Ziggy, no offense, it's none a my business, but I gotta tell ya, the way you're being so cold t'Angelina, I just don't get it, I think you're acting like a putz."

Ziggy blinked, turned his head very slowly, and said in a brooding monotone, "Fuck asked you how I'm acting?

Uncle Louie said, "She loves you. Don't you see how much she loves you?"