Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Once Upon a Crime...
Chapter 16
9 ReviewsSecrets and their keepers...
Chapter 16
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Sunday passed at a leisurely summer pace as they boys sat on the steps and watched the neighborhood in action. The children ran through the streets, ducking between the food carts and weaving between the people kicking a ball, a can, a rock or whatever they could find to use as a toy. The patrons handed their hard-earned money over to the mobile establishments and carried home their small victories to thankful families who were waiting on them. Gerard blushed at the normalcy of it all; their life. It was a proud place to be. This…was Belleville Harbor before the sun went down.
As the Jersey sun started to set though, he watched with his brother and best friend as the mood of the neighborhood changed and the happiness disintegrated with the daylight. The Unemployment Line shortened from around the block as needy people rushed homeward empty-handed, preferring the safety of their lives to the security of the livelihood they had been so desperate for earlier that morning. The carts shut down, folded up and pushed down the street in a hurry for their earnings to reach home without interference. Mothers called for their children from windows and stoops, waving their youth in for the night to ensure their safety to see another day of play. And as the sun slipped beyond the sky’s edge, Belleville Harbor plunged into darkness and a new clientele surfaced for undisclosed work in the night.
Gerard nodded to Mikey and Frankie as they too slipped inside and out of harm’s way, the lampposts lighting the streets while the alleys filled with shady characters and their secrets. Moretti’s men were clocking in for the nightshift and it was best to be indoors as they carried out their Business. Gerard turned and locked the door behind him, no longer relieved at this, the new normalcy they had all grown to know.
Bonnie sat the three down at the table, filling their bellies with homemade pie, still seeing them as the growing boys she wanted them to be. “What will ya do tonight?” she asked.
Gerard shrugged. “I’m thinkin of surprisin Anna. Maybe take her out.”
“Good Catholic girl, that one,” Bonnie nodded.
Mikey and Frankie chuckled behind their full mouths remembering them coming out of the confessional earlier one at a time as Gerard smiled. “That she is, Ma. That she is.”
Frankie looked to Mikey. “I guess that leaves the two of us then. Whatta ya wanna do?”
Mikey poked at his pie crust thinking it over. “Cards?”
Frankie nodded excitedly, “Cards for money!”
Everyone laughed and Bonnie slipped away to listen to her stories beside her husband who smoked and sipped his brandy in the den. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the boys were scrounging for money and always coming up short. There was no need to steal anymore. They had income and there was plenty to go around. So much so that they could trade it back and forth between them and give it freely over cards like it was nothing. The times truly were changing and they were happy to be changing with them.
Gerard tossed a smile their way and headed out the door, driving over to Anna’s house and hoping she would be surprised. He had not heard from her all day and he was fairly certain her brother was monopolizing the phone or overwhelming her with chores so that she could not reach him. Instead he would go to her and Gerard knew she would like that. He was prepared to go to her window and call to her in both a romantic gesture and a secretive protection so as not to get her into trouble with her overbearing family. Gerard was not at all prepared for what he found when he did though.
He tip-toed up the side to Anna’s window and hoisted himself up to peer inside. As his fingers reached to tap against the glass he froze in mid-air, his lungs in mid-breath. Anna was inside her room, on her bed but she was not alone. There was someone not only there, but on top of her. Gerard’s horrified eyes narrowed as he watched the older boy moving above her and pinning her arms over her head as she thrashed beneath him. He could see the puckered moan of her lips and he hated that Anna was enjoying it. He wanted her to hate it as much as he did and Gerard cursed her and her secret life. A small red glow off in the corner of her room appeared and lit up Johnny’s face as he watched them. Gerard dropped himself down from his clutch on the windowsill and stormed back to the car, revving the engine and tearing off into the night.
Anna whimpered beneath her brother’s friend as he pounded into her, barely needing to hold her down any longer since he had exhausted her body already. She could hear Johnny moving across the room, smell his smoke as it mixed with the scent of sex in the air. He lay down beside her, stroking her bare side with his fingernail while she wished she could shiver away. Anna could swear she heard the rumble of Gerard’s engine from somewhere far away in her mind but she was too far gone to imagine her savior coming to her rescue anymore. She had forced herself to give up on that delusion long ago, instead preferring the fantasy of simply being anywhere else than where she was when Johnny and his friends took her.
Johnny leaned down with a smirk, licking his warm tongue along her neck. “Don’t act like ya don’t love it,” he smiled. “I can hear it in your breath…see it in your movements…smell it in your sweat.” He grinned, licking her neck as she snapped her head in the opposite direction. He chuckled, looking up at his friend who was currently pounding into Anna. “Maybe that ain’t even sweat,” he laughed. Johnny grabbed Anna’s chin, forcing her face back to him though she kept her eyes clenched tight, hating to see him so close. “I smell approoooval,” he sneered, smashing his drunken lips down over hers.
Anna dug deeper into her mind, trying to pretend it was Gerard beside her and Mikey on top of her or the other way around so long as it was not who she knew it to be. But she couldn’t. Gerard tasted of cigarettes and liquor sometimes too but he did not have Johnny’s bitterness. Mikey’s movements were sweet and offering not forceful and taken from her. But Johnny and his friends knew how to twist Anna’s mind out of the depths she clawed for by changing their tempo, easing the pain, all just long enough to make her body enjoy it against her will. And as Anna’s body betrayed her and she began to moan again, the beast who thrust inside her returned to his mission to destroy her all over again. And as always, he was successful.
When he had gotten off and left Anna’s body broken and humiliated, Johnny and his friend stumbled their way to the living room to rejoin the party in progress. She pulled the sheet up over her body with trembling fingers, too disgusted with herself to see the shell they had left her to live inside.
Anna rolled to her side and curled her legs up to her chest as she cried into the pillow she held, pretending it was Gerard. She tucked a second pillow behind her and kept herself between them like the shield she pretended it to be, imagining Gerard and Mikey holding her safely. This was the only safety she could muster in a room that could not hold a lock for long enough. Anna only prayed she could hold on long enough to see a night where she did not have to fear the creak of her bedroom door and which of the many monsters would come for her through it.
Gerard marched up the front steps to his house and swung open the door as he stormed into the kitchen with a scowl on his face and a tremble in his fist. Frankie and Mikey lowered their cards at the table as Giovanni entered the kitchen to see what the fuss was about. “Game’s over boys!” he snapped. “We’re hittin the town tonight.” He looked up into his Father’s wondering eyes and sat down at the table, suddenly beaten from fighting his own anger. The hardest part was, he had not fought for her at all. Gerard had never realized his competition was actually so real. He had seen the evidence of it; even heard her say it in a round about way. But to actually see it defeated Gerard beyond what he could stand. And he was suddenly very tired. And then he told his confidants everything from start to finish about what little he knew about the girl he loved.
Giovanni let him get it all out before gathering the boys up and driving them into the City. He did not tell them where they were going. He hardly said a word after his son spilled his guts and laid his heart out on the table like the cards they were playing with. Games of the heart were so much harder to win and Giovanni wrestled with his conscience, wanting to tell him the rules but knowing it would be better to show him the game in play. If Gerard was removed from it, he may see it from another angle.
They pulled up in front of an old abandoned brick building that had no sign. Instead of heading to the chained door in the front, Giovanni led them to the side ally, down a small dark flight of stairs to another door; one that would be easily missed if they had not been looking for it already. Giovanni knocked three times and a small mail slot size rectangle opened as the person behind the door slid it back. It showed only his eyes and that was enough for the boys. They were large and beady with the curve of a furrowed brow just out of sight making his eyes droop although they were wide.
“How far does a crow fly at night?” the hefty voice grunted from behind the door as those wide eyes narrowed.
Giovanni smiled, completely relaxed and at ease. “As far as the moonlight will allow,” he grinned.
The tiny slot slammed shut and the boys looked to one another with wavering confidence. The sound of four locks unbolting wrenched and the door swung open to reveal the rest of the man behind the door. He was a sweaty pig of a man with a red wet face and burly shoulders. His smile made the boys uncomfortable as he stood aside and held out his arm to welcome them to the strange establishment. “Give the money to the ladies and keep your hands to yourselves,” he grinned. “Have a time, gentlemen!”
Giovanni nodded and led the boys inside as they looked around with every step, drinking in the foreign place they never could have imagined. The lights were low and shone in reds and yellows around the smoky room. Men were scattered about the basement room but their eyes were mostly all in one place; the same place the boys stopped dead in their tracks to observe. Nearly naked women were dancing on separated stages around the room. Some were free dancing while others worked with poles, sliding their bodies up against them like an inanimate lover. They wore nude scraps that created the illusion of nakedness in their matching skin tone fabrics. The boys tensed, certain they saw nipple before peering closer to reveal pink sequence dotting the women’s breasts over the material. A shiny slit was sewn over the mound between their thighs to pose as what they longed to see and as the ladies danced, it appeared to play tricks on their minds. There were small round tables high on their stilts with bar stools wrapped around them and Giovanni led them to one where they all sat down together.
“I was comin here anyway,” he laughed, shaking his head at the boys’ wide eyes. “Tommy and I have an…appointment,” he said, settling on the word.
Gerard wondered if that was code for ‘date’ but he shook it off, too enamored with the dancing girl who stepped across the stage to step up onto their firmly affixed table. She had long red hair and bright green eyes and although she did not hold a candle to Anna, she would pass as a suitable focus for his tired eyes for now. He turned to his Father angrily, disappointed in his own desire and desperate to know, “Why did ya bring us here? To show me that all women are like this?”
Giovanni shook his head, tipping his fingers to a waitress across the room. He turned back to his son. “Not at all. I brought ya here to show ya that they’re not,” he nodded.
Mikey’s wide eyes stared at the heavenly beauty above him as he smiled. “What is this place?”
Giovanni laughed. “They’re callin it a Gentlemen’s Club. Men can come here and let loose, take in the sights and go home to the Mother’s of their children with dirty minds and clean hands. The girls get paid, the guys get home and nobody gets hurt.”
Mikey sunk into the prop of his hands as his elbows rested on the table the girl danced on. He smiled, staring up at her in awe as she moved, watching him with a grin. “I think it’s wonderful,” he sighed dreamily.
Frankie nodded, his eyes glued to the dancer above him. “Me too,” he smiled.
Gerard hated all of it. There was so much smoke in the air he felt as though he could exhale it after only a few minutes. The music was lame and the dancers were too focused on the rhythm to look sexy at the same time. Was this what Anna was headed for? Was this her future? Gerard not only felt sad then, he was sick as well.
Giovanni could see the internal struggle in his son’s eyes while Mikey and Frankie gawked at the girl who danced above them. When the waitress came by, he ordered the beers and tipped her before the drinks or even the bill came. “Boys? I want ya to meet Cinnamon,” he smiled, looking up at the hot redhead who danced for them. She kneeled to the table she was on as her hips continued to sway to the music, offering her smile to each boy as well as a close look at everything that seemed far more interesting than her face.
“Hello boys. Any friend of Giovanni’s,” she smiled.
Mikey nodded with a smile, “We can be friends.”
Frankie grinned, “Um, you’re very…entertaining,” he nodded happily at a loss for how to compliment her with all the insulting responses that were running through his teenage mind.
Gerard said nothing. He waited for his drink to come and hid behind it like a moping child. Giovanni laughed him off and passed out the beers. “Cinnamon honey,” he smiled. “Tell these young boys a thing or two about life, will ya?”
The girl straightened back up as she danced, talking to them over the music. “Where to begin?” she laughed. “Talk with your eyes not with your hands. People will listen to eyes because even if they wander, they give ya away. Hands lie every time,” she nodded. Her nude leotard clung to her ripe body as she swayed in time to the music, thinking it over. “And keep your money under the mattress where it’s safe under your nose. Too many noses in the bank,” she laughed. “And keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,” she nodded wisely, never missing a beat to the song she danced to.
Gerard was listening now. He half expected the girl to be mute, her body as her only asset in life. And should she speak, he thought it would be in broken English and watered down verse. But Cinnamon was saying things Gerard believed. He had not planned to listen to her at all, assuming she would have nothing to say. He cocked his head in surprise and found himself listening intently to every word.
Giovanni patted Gerard’s back. “My son here is havin some lady trouble,” he told her.
Cinnamon frowned down at him. “Can’t imagine a sweet thing like you havin any trouble with the female sex at all.”
Gerard blushed and smiled, sipping his beer. “I bet ya say that to all the boys.”
“I don’t see any boys around here,” she smiled sweetly. “Just men.”
Giovanni watched his son fall for her kindness hook, line and sinker. “His girls’ been steppin out on him,” he frowned. “Any idea what might make a girl do that?”
Cinnamon nodded, still dancing as she kneeled again, her hips still in full action at eyelevel. Frankie and Mikey stared at her moving breasts as they shook to the beat and tuned out the words that were meant for Gerard’s benefit as they watched instead of listened. “Lots of reasons sweetheart,” she smiled. “And none of em probably have a thing to do with you.” She watched Gerard struggle to believe what she said. “It’s true ya know,” she nodded. “Some girls are just given a bad lot in life and they have to live through it to get to the other side of it. Me? I had a Dad who couldn’t keep his filthy mitts off me,” she said nonchalantly. “But I grew up, got out and got away,” she shrugged. “Now I’m here, which isn’t much better,” Cinnamon laughed while a confused Gerard tried to laugh with her. “But I’m working because I’m working towards something. I’m going to open a beauty shop in the middle of the City and people are going to line up at my door instead of my table,” she nodded certainly. “All this?” she laughed, spreading her arms out to the room. “It’s all temporary. A means to an end. These men come in here and they see tits and ass and take their hard ons home to their wives to stay faithful. But me? I’m faithful to myself,” she said assuredly. “I’m going somewhere,” she smiled.
Gerard wondered where Anna was going and what it was she was trying to get away from. “So you’re a dancer,” he reasoned. “As a job. Not a…”
“A whore?” she grinned smartly. Cinnamon laughed as he shied away in embarrassment. “No, honey. We’re not whores. We’re women living in the in-between just trying to get where we’re going.” She nodded to another equally scantily clad dancer nearby. “See her? She’s got a kid at home she’s making money for so she can raise him in the country instead of the City. And her?” she motioned to another girl. “She’s dancing here to keep limber for the ballet she’s going to be in when her big break comes. And that one? She networks in between songs with every gentleman in the clientele waiting for a club owner to come in and offer her a job singing in his restaurant or show. She’s got a voice that could make you cry,” Cinnamon smiled.
Gerard looked around the room, seeing the women behind the dancers, the stories behind their costumes, the will behind their façade. “Did they all have shitty fathers like you?”
Cinnamon shrugged, still smiling; still dancing. “Fathers, boyfriends, teachers who didn’t believe in them. People who paid too much attention to them or maybe not enough. People in their lives who just put them down until they were convinced they should stay there,” she shrugged. “They got promiscuous and then they got smart. But they’ve all got a story,” she smiled. “What’s your girls’ story?”
Gerard was ashamed to still not know. “I’m not sure yet. She hasn’t told me,” he sighed. “Not really.”
Cinnamon nodded while Giovanni and the boys drank. “Ahh, a secret keeper.” Gerard nodded softly with sadness. “The question is…does she keep her secret out of selfishness…or shame?”
Gerard’s head shot up from the wet ring on the table he had been staring at. “What?” He had never really considered that Anna could be ashamed of what she did. He assumed she was unfaithful because he was not enough for her. Was it possible that she too had a story she was hiding behind? Gerard began to wonder.
“She won’t tell me though,” he said over the loud music.
Cinnamon nodded. “She will when she’s ready. Or when it gets so bad she can’t hold it in anymore cause she’s got nothing left inside herself to keep it there any longer. But she’ll tell you,” she promised. “Nobody can stay alone forever. Sooner or later, she’ll either lean or she’ll fall.” She smiled, “Just make sure you’re still close by to catch her when she sways.” Cinnamon smiled brightly. “Catch a girl who sways…and I promise you she’ll swoon. Everybody just wants to be saved,” she offered, standing up again on her heels and dancing away to another table along the small catwalks that connected them.
Gerard was amazed by the strange interaction that had gone nothing like he imagined it would. He felt hope and promise in the woman’s words and he wondered if anything she said could be true. He hoped it was and he was determined to put it to the test. He would stay close to Anna and wait for her to reveal her story to him when the time was right.
The thought of her underneath anyone else burned through his memory as he tried to block it out, drinking deeply from his glass and trying to drown it away. Gerard would stay close, but if he was going to keep his dignity, he had to hold Anna at arm’s length in the meantime; close enough to catch, but far enough to still stand as a man. He was going to need to balance on his own while Anna lay down with others.
“How do ya feel now?” Giovanni asked.
Gerard nodded, a bit unsure but certain of one thing. “A little better. I don’t have a hold on it but I think I’ve got a grip on things.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s the most ya can hope for at any given time in this world, son.” He spotted Tommy coming through the door and nodded to him. “Tommy and I have things to discuss. You boys have yourselves a good time and I’ll come back when we’re through to take ya home.” He dropped a wad of bills on the table as Frankie and Mikey grinned to one another. “Enjoy but behave,” he laughed, walking across the room.
Frankie and Mikey watched the girls flock their way as they held up the money while Gerard stared at his Father and Tommy. They embraced casually and sat down together, snapping their fingers for drinks as they settled in at another table farther away. He tried to imagine the conversation between their smiles as they stared at one another and ignored the women who danced around them. Gerard wondered if they were talking Business or pleasure. What were the words like between them? Were they in love or simply greedy as they shared one another away from the world? Gerard was a mess of confusion and there would be no forthcoming answers. He instead joined his brother and friend as they watched the dancers around them and paid the way for the futures he honestly hoped they would reach one day.
At the end of the night, Giovanni collected the drunken boys and corralled them to the car so he could drive them home. He poured them into bed and left them with smiles after they thanked him for such an educational evening.
They lay in bed, side by side, drunk and still turned on by all they had seen but not experienced. Gerard, an initiator like his Father, was the first to creep his hand across the border between the boys. And as the fumblings began in the dark of the room, the boys participated in the acts of men who had no need to question their motives. They did what felt good and enjoyed one another as they too shared space and time, completely unaware of how fast it was all slipping away from them.
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Sunday passed at a leisurely summer pace as they boys sat on the steps and watched the neighborhood in action. The children ran through the streets, ducking between the food carts and weaving between the people kicking a ball, a can, a rock or whatever they could find to use as a toy. The patrons handed their hard-earned money over to the mobile establishments and carried home their small victories to thankful families who were waiting on them. Gerard blushed at the normalcy of it all; their life. It was a proud place to be. This…was Belleville Harbor before the sun went down.
As the Jersey sun started to set though, he watched with his brother and best friend as the mood of the neighborhood changed and the happiness disintegrated with the daylight. The Unemployment Line shortened from around the block as needy people rushed homeward empty-handed, preferring the safety of their lives to the security of the livelihood they had been so desperate for earlier that morning. The carts shut down, folded up and pushed down the street in a hurry for their earnings to reach home without interference. Mothers called for their children from windows and stoops, waving their youth in for the night to ensure their safety to see another day of play. And as the sun slipped beyond the sky’s edge, Belleville Harbor plunged into darkness and a new clientele surfaced for undisclosed work in the night.
Gerard nodded to Mikey and Frankie as they too slipped inside and out of harm’s way, the lampposts lighting the streets while the alleys filled with shady characters and their secrets. Moretti’s men were clocking in for the nightshift and it was best to be indoors as they carried out their Business. Gerard turned and locked the door behind him, no longer relieved at this, the new normalcy they had all grown to know.
Bonnie sat the three down at the table, filling their bellies with homemade pie, still seeing them as the growing boys she wanted them to be. “What will ya do tonight?” she asked.
Gerard shrugged. “I’m thinkin of surprisin Anna. Maybe take her out.”
“Good Catholic girl, that one,” Bonnie nodded.
Mikey and Frankie chuckled behind their full mouths remembering them coming out of the confessional earlier one at a time as Gerard smiled. “That she is, Ma. That she is.”
Frankie looked to Mikey. “I guess that leaves the two of us then. Whatta ya wanna do?”
Mikey poked at his pie crust thinking it over. “Cards?”
Frankie nodded excitedly, “Cards for money!”
Everyone laughed and Bonnie slipped away to listen to her stories beside her husband who smoked and sipped his brandy in the den. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the boys were scrounging for money and always coming up short. There was no need to steal anymore. They had income and there was plenty to go around. So much so that they could trade it back and forth between them and give it freely over cards like it was nothing. The times truly were changing and they were happy to be changing with them.
Gerard tossed a smile their way and headed out the door, driving over to Anna’s house and hoping she would be surprised. He had not heard from her all day and he was fairly certain her brother was monopolizing the phone or overwhelming her with chores so that she could not reach him. Instead he would go to her and Gerard knew she would like that. He was prepared to go to her window and call to her in both a romantic gesture and a secretive protection so as not to get her into trouble with her overbearing family. Gerard was not at all prepared for what he found when he did though.
He tip-toed up the side to Anna’s window and hoisted himself up to peer inside. As his fingers reached to tap against the glass he froze in mid-air, his lungs in mid-breath. Anna was inside her room, on her bed but she was not alone. There was someone not only there, but on top of her. Gerard’s horrified eyes narrowed as he watched the older boy moving above her and pinning her arms over her head as she thrashed beneath him. He could see the puckered moan of her lips and he hated that Anna was enjoying it. He wanted her to hate it as much as he did and Gerard cursed her and her secret life. A small red glow off in the corner of her room appeared and lit up Johnny’s face as he watched them. Gerard dropped himself down from his clutch on the windowsill and stormed back to the car, revving the engine and tearing off into the night.
Anna whimpered beneath her brother’s friend as he pounded into her, barely needing to hold her down any longer since he had exhausted her body already. She could hear Johnny moving across the room, smell his smoke as it mixed with the scent of sex in the air. He lay down beside her, stroking her bare side with his fingernail while she wished she could shiver away. Anna could swear she heard the rumble of Gerard’s engine from somewhere far away in her mind but she was too far gone to imagine her savior coming to her rescue anymore. She had forced herself to give up on that delusion long ago, instead preferring the fantasy of simply being anywhere else than where she was when Johnny and his friends took her.
Johnny leaned down with a smirk, licking his warm tongue along her neck. “Don’t act like ya don’t love it,” he smiled. “I can hear it in your breath…see it in your movements…smell it in your sweat.” He grinned, licking her neck as she snapped her head in the opposite direction. He chuckled, looking up at his friend who was currently pounding into Anna. “Maybe that ain’t even sweat,” he laughed. Johnny grabbed Anna’s chin, forcing her face back to him though she kept her eyes clenched tight, hating to see him so close. “I smell approoooval,” he sneered, smashing his drunken lips down over hers.
Anna dug deeper into her mind, trying to pretend it was Gerard beside her and Mikey on top of her or the other way around so long as it was not who she knew it to be. But she couldn’t. Gerard tasted of cigarettes and liquor sometimes too but he did not have Johnny’s bitterness. Mikey’s movements were sweet and offering not forceful and taken from her. But Johnny and his friends knew how to twist Anna’s mind out of the depths she clawed for by changing their tempo, easing the pain, all just long enough to make her body enjoy it against her will. And as Anna’s body betrayed her and she began to moan again, the beast who thrust inside her returned to his mission to destroy her all over again. And as always, he was successful.
When he had gotten off and left Anna’s body broken and humiliated, Johnny and his friend stumbled their way to the living room to rejoin the party in progress. She pulled the sheet up over her body with trembling fingers, too disgusted with herself to see the shell they had left her to live inside.
Anna rolled to her side and curled her legs up to her chest as she cried into the pillow she held, pretending it was Gerard. She tucked a second pillow behind her and kept herself between them like the shield she pretended it to be, imagining Gerard and Mikey holding her safely. This was the only safety she could muster in a room that could not hold a lock for long enough. Anna only prayed she could hold on long enough to see a night where she did not have to fear the creak of her bedroom door and which of the many monsters would come for her through it.
Gerard marched up the front steps to his house and swung open the door as he stormed into the kitchen with a scowl on his face and a tremble in his fist. Frankie and Mikey lowered their cards at the table as Giovanni entered the kitchen to see what the fuss was about. “Game’s over boys!” he snapped. “We’re hittin the town tonight.” He looked up into his Father’s wondering eyes and sat down at the table, suddenly beaten from fighting his own anger. The hardest part was, he had not fought for her at all. Gerard had never realized his competition was actually so real. He had seen the evidence of it; even heard her say it in a round about way. But to actually see it defeated Gerard beyond what he could stand. And he was suddenly very tired. And then he told his confidants everything from start to finish about what little he knew about the girl he loved.
Giovanni let him get it all out before gathering the boys up and driving them into the City. He did not tell them where they were going. He hardly said a word after his son spilled his guts and laid his heart out on the table like the cards they were playing with. Games of the heart were so much harder to win and Giovanni wrestled with his conscience, wanting to tell him the rules but knowing it would be better to show him the game in play. If Gerard was removed from it, he may see it from another angle.
They pulled up in front of an old abandoned brick building that had no sign. Instead of heading to the chained door in the front, Giovanni led them to the side ally, down a small dark flight of stairs to another door; one that would be easily missed if they had not been looking for it already. Giovanni knocked three times and a small mail slot size rectangle opened as the person behind the door slid it back. It showed only his eyes and that was enough for the boys. They were large and beady with the curve of a furrowed brow just out of sight making his eyes droop although they were wide.
“How far does a crow fly at night?” the hefty voice grunted from behind the door as those wide eyes narrowed.
Giovanni smiled, completely relaxed and at ease. “As far as the moonlight will allow,” he grinned.
The tiny slot slammed shut and the boys looked to one another with wavering confidence. The sound of four locks unbolting wrenched and the door swung open to reveal the rest of the man behind the door. He was a sweaty pig of a man with a red wet face and burly shoulders. His smile made the boys uncomfortable as he stood aside and held out his arm to welcome them to the strange establishment. “Give the money to the ladies and keep your hands to yourselves,” he grinned. “Have a time, gentlemen!”
Giovanni nodded and led the boys inside as they looked around with every step, drinking in the foreign place they never could have imagined. The lights were low and shone in reds and yellows around the smoky room. Men were scattered about the basement room but their eyes were mostly all in one place; the same place the boys stopped dead in their tracks to observe. Nearly naked women were dancing on separated stages around the room. Some were free dancing while others worked with poles, sliding their bodies up against them like an inanimate lover. They wore nude scraps that created the illusion of nakedness in their matching skin tone fabrics. The boys tensed, certain they saw nipple before peering closer to reveal pink sequence dotting the women’s breasts over the material. A shiny slit was sewn over the mound between their thighs to pose as what they longed to see and as the ladies danced, it appeared to play tricks on their minds. There were small round tables high on their stilts with bar stools wrapped around them and Giovanni led them to one where they all sat down together.
“I was comin here anyway,” he laughed, shaking his head at the boys’ wide eyes. “Tommy and I have an…appointment,” he said, settling on the word.
Gerard wondered if that was code for ‘date’ but he shook it off, too enamored with the dancing girl who stepped across the stage to step up onto their firmly affixed table. She had long red hair and bright green eyes and although she did not hold a candle to Anna, she would pass as a suitable focus for his tired eyes for now. He turned to his Father angrily, disappointed in his own desire and desperate to know, “Why did ya bring us here? To show me that all women are like this?”
Giovanni shook his head, tipping his fingers to a waitress across the room. He turned back to his son. “Not at all. I brought ya here to show ya that they’re not,” he nodded.
Mikey’s wide eyes stared at the heavenly beauty above him as he smiled. “What is this place?”
Giovanni laughed. “They’re callin it a Gentlemen’s Club. Men can come here and let loose, take in the sights and go home to the Mother’s of their children with dirty minds and clean hands. The girls get paid, the guys get home and nobody gets hurt.”
Mikey sunk into the prop of his hands as his elbows rested on the table the girl danced on. He smiled, staring up at her in awe as she moved, watching him with a grin. “I think it’s wonderful,” he sighed dreamily.
Frankie nodded, his eyes glued to the dancer above him. “Me too,” he smiled.
Gerard hated all of it. There was so much smoke in the air he felt as though he could exhale it after only a few minutes. The music was lame and the dancers were too focused on the rhythm to look sexy at the same time. Was this what Anna was headed for? Was this her future? Gerard not only felt sad then, he was sick as well.
Giovanni could see the internal struggle in his son’s eyes while Mikey and Frankie gawked at the girl who danced above them. When the waitress came by, he ordered the beers and tipped her before the drinks or even the bill came. “Boys? I want ya to meet Cinnamon,” he smiled, looking up at the hot redhead who danced for them. She kneeled to the table she was on as her hips continued to sway to the music, offering her smile to each boy as well as a close look at everything that seemed far more interesting than her face.
“Hello boys. Any friend of Giovanni’s,” she smiled.
Mikey nodded with a smile, “We can be friends.”
Frankie grinned, “Um, you’re very…entertaining,” he nodded happily at a loss for how to compliment her with all the insulting responses that were running through his teenage mind.
Gerard said nothing. He waited for his drink to come and hid behind it like a moping child. Giovanni laughed him off and passed out the beers. “Cinnamon honey,” he smiled. “Tell these young boys a thing or two about life, will ya?”
The girl straightened back up as she danced, talking to them over the music. “Where to begin?” she laughed. “Talk with your eyes not with your hands. People will listen to eyes because even if they wander, they give ya away. Hands lie every time,” she nodded. Her nude leotard clung to her ripe body as she swayed in time to the music, thinking it over. “And keep your money under the mattress where it’s safe under your nose. Too many noses in the bank,” she laughed. “And keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,” she nodded wisely, never missing a beat to the song she danced to.
Gerard was listening now. He half expected the girl to be mute, her body as her only asset in life. And should she speak, he thought it would be in broken English and watered down verse. But Cinnamon was saying things Gerard believed. He had not planned to listen to her at all, assuming she would have nothing to say. He cocked his head in surprise and found himself listening intently to every word.
Giovanni patted Gerard’s back. “My son here is havin some lady trouble,” he told her.
Cinnamon frowned down at him. “Can’t imagine a sweet thing like you havin any trouble with the female sex at all.”
Gerard blushed and smiled, sipping his beer. “I bet ya say that to all the boys.”
“I don’t see any boys around here,” she smiled sweetly. “Just men.”
Giovanni watched his son fall for her kindness hook, line and sinker. “His girls’ been steppin out on him,” he frowned. “Any idea what might make a girl do that?”
Cinnamon nodded, still dancing as she kneeled again, her hips still in full action at eyelevel. Frankie and Mikey stared at her moving breasts as they shook to the beat and tuned out the words that were meant for Gerard’s benefit as they watched instead of listened. “Lots of reasons sweetheart,” she smiled. “And none of em probably have a thing to do with you.” She watched Gerard struggle to believe what she said. “It’s true ya know,” she nodded. “Some girls are just given a bad lot in life and they have to live through it to get to the other side of it. Me? I had a Dad who couldn’t keep his filthy mitts off me,” she said nonchalantly. “But I grew up, got out and got away,” she shrugged. “Now I’m here, which isn’t much better,” Cinnamon laughed while a confused Gerard tried to laugh with her. “But I’m working because I’m working towards something. I’m going to open a beauty shop in the middle of the City and people are going to line up at my door instead of my table,” she nodded certainly. “All this?” she laughed, spreading her arms out to the room. “It’s all temporary. A means to an end. These men come in here and they see tits and ass and take their hard ons home to their wives to stay faithful. But me? I’m faithful to myself,” she said assuredly. “I’m going somewhere,” she smiled.
Gerard wondered where Anna was going and what it was she was trying to get away from. “So you’re a dancer,” he reasoned. “As a job. Not a…”
“A whore?” she grinned smartly. Cinnamon laughed as he shied away in embarrassment. “No, honey. We’re not whores. We’re women living in the in-between just trying to get where we’re going.” She nodded to another equally scantily clad dancer nearby. “See her? She’s got a kid at home she’s making money for so she can raise him in the country instead of the City. And her?” she motioned to another girl. “She’s dancing here to keep limber for the ballet she’s going to be in when her big break comes. And that one? She networks in between songs with every gentleman in the clientele waiting for a club owner to come in and offer her a job singing in his restaurant or show. She’s got a voice that could make you cry,” Cinnamon smiled.
Gerard looked around the room, seeing the women behind the dancers, the stories behind their costumes, the will behind their façade. “Did they all have shitty fathers like you?”
Cinnamon shrugged, still smiling; still dancing. “Fathers, boyfriends, teachers who didn’t believe in them. People who paid too much attention to them or maybe not enough. People in their lives who just put them down until they were convinced they should stay there,” she shrugged. “They got promiscuous and then they got smart. But they’ve all got a story,” she smiled. “What’s your girls’ story?”
Gerard was ashamed to still not know. “I’m not sure yet. She hasn’t told me,” he sighed. “Not really.”
Cinnamon nodded while Giovanni and the boys drank. “Ahh, a secret keeper.” Gerard nodded softly with sadness. “The question is…does she keep her secret out of selfishness…or shame?”
Gerard’s head shot up from the wet ring on the table he had been staring at. “What?” He had never really considered that Anna could be ashamed of what she did. He assumed she was unfaithful because he was not enough for her. Was it possible that she too had a story she was hiding behind? Gerard began to wonder.
“She won’t tell me though,” he said over the loud music.
Cinnamon nodded. “She will when she’s ready. Or when it gets so bad she can’t hold it in anymore cause she’s got nothing left inside herself to keep it there any longer. But she’ll tell you,” she promised. “Nobody can stay alone forever. Sooner or later, she’ll either lean or she’ll fall.” She smiled, “Just make sure you’re still close by to catch her when she sways.” Cinnamon smiled brightly. “Catch a girl who sways…and I promise you she’ll swoon. Everybody just wants to be saved,” she offered, standing up again on her heels and dancing away to another table along the small catwalks that connected them.
Gerard was amazed by the strange interaction that had gone nothing like he imagined it would. He felt hope and promise in the woman’s words and he wondered if anything she said could be true. He hoped it was and he was determined to put it to the test. He would stay close to Anna and wait for her to reveal her story to him when the time was right.
The thought of her underneath anyone else burned through his memory as he tried to block it out, drinking deeply from his glass and trying to drown it away. Gerard would stay close, but if he was going to keep his dignity, he had to hold Anna at arm’s length in the meantime; close enough to catch, but far enough to still stand as a man. He was going to need to balance on his own while Anna lay down with others.
“How do ya feel now?” Giovanni asked.
Gerard nodded, a bit unsure but certain of one thing. “A little better. I don’t have a hold on it but I think I’ve got a grip on things.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s the most ya can hope for at any given time in this world, son.” He spotted Tommy coming through the door and nodded to him. “Tommy and I have things to discuss. You boys have yourselves a good time and I’ll come back when we’re through to take ya home.” He dropped a wad of bills on the table as Frankie and Mikey grinned to one another. “Enjoy but behave,” he laughed, walking across the room.
Frankie and Mikey watched the girls flock their way as they held up the money while Gerard stared at his Father and Tommy. They embraced casually and sat down together, snapping their fingers for drinks as they settled in at another table farther away. He tried to imagine the conversation between their smiles as they stared at one another and ignored the women who danced around them. Gerard wondered if they were talking Business or pleasure. What were the words like between them? Were they in love or simply greedy as they shared one another away from the world? Gerard was a mess of confusion and there would be no forthcoming answers. He instead joined his brother and friend as they watched the dancers around them and paid the way for the futures he honestly hoped they would reach one day.
At the end of the night, Giovanni collected the drunken boys and corralled them to the car so he could drive them home. He poured them into bed and left them with smiles after they thanked him for such an educational evening.
They lay in bed, side by side, drunk and still turned on by all they had seen but not experienced. Gerard, an initiator like his Father, was the first to creep his hand across the border between the boys. And as the fumblings began in the dark of the room, the boys participated in the acts of men who had no need to question their motives. They did what felt good and enjoyed one another as they too shared space and time, completely unaware of how fast it was all slipping away from them.
Soooo much more to come!! I’ll be looking for your thoughts. Please have them ready! Haha Trespassers who lurk without rating and reviewing will be shot on sight. Haha Please don’t forget to R&R!! It’s bad karma to take and give nothing back! :P xoxo Harley
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