Chances

  There was nothing Gino could do. He had agreed to give her the evening, he couldn’t back down on his word. She had taken him for a fool though. One fuck of that bony body was supposed to be payment enough. One fuck, as though she was measuring how much the evening was worth.

  “Do whatever she wants,” he said. “I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  Mrs. Richmond would learn the hard way. Gino Santangelo was nobody’s fool. She would have her gala charity evening, just the way she wanted it. One day she would pay. When he was ready for her to do so.

  “Any news about Lucky?” Marco asked.

  “I just got here. I’ll let you know.”

  “Cigarette, Dario?” inquired Eric.

  “Thanks.” He took the cigarette, lit up, and lay back on the sun bed that took up most of Eric’s cramped terrace.

  The small apartment was a few miles from the school in San Diego. Dario had arrived on Saturday morning by bus. Eric had met him at the bus station. They had spent a pleasant enough day driving around the town, shopping, browsing the bookstores and a few art galleries. Now that they were back in the apartment, Eric hovered like an attentive blowfly.

  Dario had to admit that he was enjoying all the attention. At school, any attention that came his way was hostile. At home, if Lucky was around, she took center stage.

  “There’s a rumor at school that your father is Gino Santangelo,” Eric said, clearing his throat nervously. “Is that true?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think… well, I mean I shouldn’t think that you even would, but, I… er…”

  He grinned. He felt a lot older than his age. He felt knowledgeable and worldly. “It’s O.K., Eric. I’m not going to tell him that I’m here.”

  Eric breathed an audible sigh of relief. “It’s just that—”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  Eric clutched his hand, their first physical contact. Dario allowed his hand to be held. His heart was beating fast. He knew what Eric wanted. He wasn’t that naive. Whether he was going to let him do anything was another matter.

  “You’re such a beautiful boy,” Eric gasped, his voice throbbing with emotion. “I noticed you the first day you came to my class. I saw you and I thought, that boy is different. That boy has known much pain and sadness. Was I right?”

  Their hands were hot and sticky together, yet Dario had no desire to pull his away. He felt a sexual stirring, the same kind of stirring he had felt when seeing Marabelle Blue in bed with his father—sneakily watching Lucky undress—viewing the other boys in the shower. “Yes,” he said, enjoying a romantic vision of himself as someone who had experienced great pain and sadness. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? His life had been very lonely….

  Eric’s mouth was descending upon his. He felt no revulsion, only a strange blank curiosity.

  “I think I could love a boy like you,” Eric was saying, his words muffled and blurred.

  Dario surrendered himself to the kiss. Surrendered himself to what followed….

  For the first time in his life he felt loved, wanted, and totally secure.

  Dimitri Stanislopoulos was a large beak-nosed man with a mass of thick white hair, wild roaming eyes, and an annoying habit of prefacing each sentence with a terse “I think….”

  After fifteen minutes in his company, Gino was thoroughly fed up with what he thought.

  Together they visited the housekeeper at Dimitri’s Paris residence. The elderly woman was surly and unintelligible, her slight mastery of the English language deserting her totally when faced with the two men.

  Dimitri spoke to her in rapid French, his arms flailing around like windmills.

  She replied in a gruff resentful mumble.

  “Stupid crow!” Dimitri complained. “She’s nervous I’m going to blame her, boot her out.”

  “What did she say?” Gino asked impatiently.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. Olympia took the car last Monday. Said she was going to visit her mother.”

  “That’s five days ago. They could be anywhere by now.”

  I think you will find the firm of detectives I have employed will trace the car today. They are the finest. And let us face it—two pretty young girls in an expensive automobile should not be hard to trace.”

  At three o’clock in the afternoon Dimitri Stanislopoulos’s firm of investigators had news of the car. It was a wreck, a write-off. It had been involved in a serious accident on a narrow road above Cannes. In the car was the body of an unidentified female.

  Gino and Dimitri were on a plane to the south of France within the hour.

  Lucky

  1966

  Clouds were spreading a pattern in the sky, and the sun was eclipsed. A biting wind began to blow.

  “Mistral,” Warris said crossly. “Goddamn! It’ll ruin the party.”

  “Why?” pouted Olympia.

  “Because, my sweet, a great big storm is going to blow up, and who is going to want to come riding up into the hills?”

  “Oh, what a shame! I was looking forward to a fantastic party, weren’t you, Lucky? Lucky?”

  “What?” She jumped. She had been thinking of Bel Air. The huge cool house with the immaculate gardens. Her room, big and white, with a television, her collection of records and books, and all her old toys. “I think I might go home,” she said casually.

  “Whaaat?” Olympia’s eyes widened.

  “Yeh, really.”

  “Come on. Why?”

  She shrugged vaguely. “I don’t know…. I just kind of feel like it.”

  Olympia’s piggy eyes narrowed. “But you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t, that’s why. We started off this adventure together and that’s the way we have to finish it—together.”

  Lucky scowled. “Not necessarily.”

  “But this morning you promised me you’d stay.”

  “I didn’t promise. I want to go.”

  “You’re so selfish,” Olympia pouted.

  Ha! She was selfish. Ha! All morning Olympia had been closeted in the bedroom with Warris. It was two in the afternoon, and they had only just emerged. She was fed up with feeling like the odd one out. “Listen,” she said, “I’m going. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Warris watched the two girls, and as he watched he realized for the first time how very striking Lucky was. He had never really looked at her before, but beneath the tumble of jet hair and deep olive skin was true wild gypsy beauty. To think he had been living in the house with her all this time and never really seen her. She was far more attractive than Olympia, who was really quite ordinary if you took away the tits and the long blond hair. There was nothing ordinary about Lucky.

  “You’re giving me a headache. I’m going to take a nap,” Olympia snapped at last. “Talk some sense into her, Warris, explain that if she goes back she’ll just get shoved into another dumb school. Tell her!” She flounced off to the main bedroom and slammed the door.

  Warris and Lucky sat in the storm-darkened living room, silently staring at each other.

  “Why’d you want to go?” he asked at last.

  “I don’t have a reason,” she replied tartly. “And. she’s not keeping me here.”

  Warris stood up and stretched. “When Pippa gets back I’ll drive you to the airport if you want. How are you going to pay for your ticket?”

  “I’ll figure that out when I get there.” She paused and eyed him suspiciously. “Will you really take me?”

  He moved slowly toward her. “Sure. Why not?”

  She was sprawled on the floor, her long tan legs stretched out in front of her. She had on shorts and a knotted denim shirt.

  He stood over her and held out his hands. “Get up. We’ll figure out a way to pay for your ticket.”

  She took his hands, and he pulled her to her feet. “How?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  He did no
t let go of her hands. He moved very close, and before she had a chance to stop him he was kissing her.

  “Hey,” she objected, shoving him away. “Will you cut that out?”

  “Why?” Suddenly his hands were everywhere. “I’ve noticed the way you’ve been watching me and Olympia together. Don’t you think I know that you’re hot for me too?”

  “You’re full of shit!”

  “Say that when I’ve got you pinned down, when I’ve got my cock inside you, when I—”

  She kneed him as hard as she could. He was momentarily stunned, bent double with pain, holding onto his balls as though his life depended on keeping them intact. “You bitch!”

  She watched him warily. She wanted to laugh, he looked so funny.

  Then again, she knew that would only infuriate him more, and who knew what the creep would do then?

  He fell onto the couch, still bent double. “Why don’t you fuck on off to the airport?” he mumbled. “Because I’m not taking you—no fucking way. And the sooner you go, the better it’ll be for everyone.”

  “What am I supposed to do, walk?”

  “Who gives a shit what you do.”

  Inexplicably her eyes filled with tears. How had she got into this mess? Trapped in a villa in France with Olympia and this horrible man? If it wasn’t for him they would be having a marvelous time. He had spoiled everything. She stared out the french doors and thought about what she could do. The rain had started, a deluge of water falling heavily from the black clouds. How she wished she was a little girl again with someone to take care of her and tell her what to do.

  “Don’t worry,” she muttered, “I’m going. As soon as the rain stops, I’ll be out of here.”

  She left him lying on the couch and went to pack the few clothes she had brought with her.

  Screw him. Screw her good friend, Olympia. She was going and nobody could stop her.

  The thoughts that went through Gino’s head on the flight were not pleasant ones. What if the body in the car was Lucky? What if it was his little girl?

  He tried to remember their last meeting. The New York apartment. A stilted dinner. He had one eye on the television while she mumbled something about not wanting to go back to school. He hadn’t listened. He wished that he had. The next morning she had been whisked off in the usual black limousine; he hadn’t even gone with her. Well, shit, he was still angry about Switzerland. What was he supposed to do, give her a kiss and a hug and ignore the fact that she had been caught naked with a boy in bed? Fifteen years old. Fifteen, for crissake.

  Dimitri Stanislopoulos maintained a healthy silence too, deep in thought, wondering why God had seen fit to bestow a daughter on him who was more trouble than all his ex-wives put together.

  At last the private plane landed at Nice airport. A car had been sent out onto the field to meet them. It was raining hard, black storm-clouds whirling around in a strong wind. Gino consulted his watch. It was seven o’clock at night. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten all day, but who could eat at a time like this?

  He climbed in the car, his heart heavy, dreading the drive that would take them straight to the morgue.

  Lucky debated with herself about what to do. She had packed her things, then sat and waited all afternoon for either Pippa to get back or the rain to stop. It was now seven o’clock. The rain was as heavy as ever, and there was no sign of Pippa.

  Olympia had emerged at four o’clock and busied herself with removing dust sheets and putting out glasses in preparation for the party. She and Lucky studiously avoided talking.

  Warris slept on the couch, his snoring aggravating both girls.

  At six Olympia lit the house with candles, woke Warris, and said, “Where the bloody hell is your girl friend?”

  He was sulky and bad-tempered, his balls still aching from Lucky’s well-placed knee. “She’ll be here,” he mumbled.

  “She’s certainly taking her time.”

  “She’ll be here, I said.” He got off the couch, and the two of them went back in the bedroom, slamming the door behind them.

  Lucky sat staring out the window, watching the sudden flashes of lightning and the relentless rain sweeping down and flooding the garden. She was depressed. It was bad enough being cooped up, but now she felt really trapped.

  It was with relief she finally saw the lights of a car approaching. If Pippa refused to drive her, she would just take the Mercedes and go. It was as simple as that.

  She picked up her small bag, flung open the french doors, and hurried outside.

  The rain enveloped her, turning her into a drowned rat as she ran toward the car.

  Too late she realized that it was not Pippa, it was not the Mercedes. Holy shit! It was Gino. It was her father!

  Steven

  1967

  Zizi loved to go out dancing—Steven preferred to stay at home listening to music. He liked jazz, a little rock, but his particular passion was soul. He could sit for hours with the stereo full blast, drowning in the sounds of Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin.

  Zizi preferred strident disco music and Latin-American sounds. They fought constantly about what record should be on the turntable. “I hate the shit you listen to,” she would complain. “Where’s the beat? The fire? Let’s go out and dance it up.”

  Her favorite place was in Spanish Harlem. Small, crowded, noisy. She was always the center of attention. Steven would watch her undulating around the tiny dance floor with one of a dozen different partners, and he would do a slow burn. They had been married a year, and the jealousy he felt wasn’t getting any better.

  Zizi loved it. She taunted him, enjoyed watching him lose his cool, was thrilled if he punched a guy out.

  “You have a very destructive relationship,” Jerry told him one lunchtime. “What kind of a lawyer goes around starting fights? You’re going to end up in one of your own courts. How do you think that’ll grab the judge?”

  “You’re right. But what can I do? She’s in my blood, Jerry. I love her.”

  “Love! Who are you kidding? She’s got you by the rocks and she’s squeezing.”

  Steven picked absently at his salad. “You’ve been talking to Carrie.”

  “Of course I have. How do you think she feels?”

  “The trouble with my mother is she’s too straight-laced. If she had her way I’d have married a twenty-year-old black virgin with a college degree, a diploma in domestic arts, and a good family.”

  “Are there any twenty-year-old virgins with college degrees?”

  Steven sliced at his steak. “I wish you’d talk to her, maybe arrange a meeting between us.”

  “I’ll try.” Jerry knew it was impossible, knew that as each week passed, Carrie became more and more determined to have nothing to do with her son until he got rid of “that garbage,” as she referred to Zizi.

  “I’d appreciate it,” Steven said. “You know, sometimes I feel like I’ve got no friends any more.”

  “What am I, a chicken sandwich?”

  Steven laughed. “You’re a good friend. The only one I’ve got.” As he said it he realized it was true. He had his work. He had Zizi. That was it.

  “You given any thought to my offer?” Jerry asked casually over coffee.

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and don’t think that I’m not flattered, but private practice just isn’t my bag.”

  “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.”

  “I’m not. All I’m saying is that it’s not for me.”

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind.” Jerry gestured for the check.

  “It’s my lunch today,” Steven said quickly.

  “Forget it,” Jerry said, reaching for a credit card. “It’s all deductible.”

  “I may only be working for the city,” Steven said tightly, “but I can still pay for lunch.”

  “You like?” questioned Zizi, standing, legs splayed, in front of Steven’s work desk in their small apartment.

 
He was absorbed in some papers, his mind clicking this way and that, preparing for the following day’s case. Abstractedly he glanced up.

  She was in a gold lurex dress split to the crotch. “Nice, huh?” she crowed.

  It was the worst dress he had ever seen. Flashy. Hookerish. Cheap. “I hate it,” he said.

  A dull flush suffused her face. “It cost you one hundred and twenty bucks,” she spat, “so you’d better like it.”

  His mind was still on the case he was preparing, absentmindedly he said, “Take it back, they’ll refund your money.”

  He was totally unprepared for her fury. She sprang, upsetting all his papers, scratching his face with long fingernails. “You hate everything I do!” she screamed. “You criticize me all the time, you prick! What makes you think you’re so hot?”

  He restrained her, clamping her arms to the side of her body. “What’s the matter with you?” he began. And then it was upon him, as it had always been upon him every time he came in contact with her. The world’s greatest hard-on. At least it felt like that.

  He was pushing at gold lurex, screwing it up around her waist, not caring if it was spoiled. And she was encouraging him, hot, throaty little moans and sighs. Jerry was right. She had him by the rocks and she knew it.

  “This way, Mrs. Berkely. Beautiful, darling! Beautiful! Show me those teeth—just a grimace—not too much. Perfect!”

  The photographer clicked happily away while Carrie went through her repertory of expressions and poses. It was second nature. She had done it so many times before.

  It was funny, wasn’t it? You could become a celebrity—a name—without doing anything at all. Talent was not needed. Only money, style, and the right husband.

  She had married two “right husbands”—only Bernard had been a warm and giving human being, while Elliott was a humorless snob. It often amazed her that he had ever married her. She was black—he loathed blacks. To him they were inferior people. He never saw the color of her skin, only her style and panache. She was his own genuine African Princess. God! If Elliott ever knew the truth about her background he would probably kill himself—and her.