Cut & Blow: Book 1 Read online

  I watch her getting on with her life while mine wastes away slowly.

  * * *

  She’s standing against her car puffing on a cigarette, and I want to rip it from her and stomp on it. She’s far too beautiful to be smoking, it’s a filthy habit and should be reserved for me only. Stubbing out my own cigarette butt I know I am wrong to judge her, but she’s mine and I don’t want anything ruining her.

  They are all dressed up for their usual Saturday night of partying and drinking. Tomorrow she will nurse the world’s biggest hangover, and stay indoors all day with the curtains drawn so I cannot see her. I loosen my tie and top button, climbing back into my car as she peels off out of the car lot.

  I know where they will go. Such a predictable little bird she is. I drive down to the marina and park on the street. She wouldn’t know it as mine anyway; five years of watching her and not once has she noticed. Ailee is so consumed with her defiant choices that she is blind to everything else.

  They first eat at the quayside restaurant below the nightclub that my cousin owns, the drinks already flowing freely, her inhibitions falling to the floor with every passing hour. When all her work friends and their partners, boyfriends and girlfriends have joined in and they have had a good meal, the party upstairs is swinging.

  I know because I came inside a short while ago when they called for their bill. With a seat in the closed VIP area, behind one way glass, I have the perfect perch to see what my wife is doing. I spend most Saturdays here, watching her grinding up against strange men, wearing not enough clothing and drinking too many cocktails. But I can see how happy she is, how carefree her life is, and I am both intrigued and envious. As much as I know I will need her to come and be my wife, I don’t want to take this from her, I don’t want to steal her happiness and make her as miserable as I am.

  “Rain.” My cousin greets me as he takes a seat at my table, clicking his fingers at a waitress to bring him a drink. “How are you?”

  “Vicki, I’m good and you? How’s things?” I greet him. We are cousins but were raised like brothers. Our family is one big unit, doesn’t matter who you belong to, you belong and that’s what matters.

  “Ugh, you know business is slow. We had cops sniffing around last week so my dealers are scared. We slowed things down to make sure they had no reason to look around, but I have to keep the jailbait out of the doors now. All I need is an underage drinks charge and then they uncover more.” The waitress places two glasses down on the table, but I don’t drink so I just push it to his side of the table. “I let her in. Luckily she’s the youngest of the lot so there isn’t an issue.” He points at Ailee through the glass.

  “I appreciate that. Do I need to worry about this thing with the cops? Why did no one mention it to me or my father yet?”

  We should have been told, the club being one of our distribution points. Not only do we store and move drugs from here, we wash our money through the books here too. Police looking around isn’t my idea of ‘nothing to be concerned about’.

  “They were looking for some youngster on an assault charge. I gave them what they needed and they left. I hope they find the runt and stay away.”

  He doesn’t seem worried so I let it slide, and look down at the dance floor where the flashing lights and bodies move to the thudding noise of the music. The sea of people becomes one creature that pulses to and fro, like the music joins them together into this thing.

  The waitress comes to remove his empty glass. “Can I get a soda water with plenty of ice please?” I ask her, before she bounces off again.

  “You are such a cheap round.” Vicki mocks my sober habits, but I’m used to it by now so it doesn’t even register. What does have my attention is the muscle-bunny dry humping my wife on the dance floor.

  “Vick, do something about that won’t you, please.” I tap on the glass and he peers down, a frown on his face.

  Catching the eye of the bouncer at the door, he calls him over and they exchange words, and he points at the floor below. The giant of a man nods and disappears out of the door, closing it behind him.

  I watch as they subtly remove the man from the dance floor with a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in the ear. He tells Ailee he’s sorry, I can read his lips as he follows them off the floor and up the stairs. The young man is ushered in through the VIP door not long after, and ‘entertained’ for the rest of the evening by the house ladies.

  “Thanks, Vick.”

  He is leaning back in his chair on his third drink since he joined me. “You know, if you just took her home and chained her to your bed, this would be easier for all of us.” He takes a dig, like they all do.

  “Your wife wasn’t a child when you married her, you don’t understand it. If I told you that Franco was going to marry your little sister, how would you feel? Huh? Because that’s the age difference, and that’s how old she was. Vicki, I couldn’t do it then. I don’t need you adding to the ‘pick on Rainieri about his wayward wife’ club, thanks. This way I can focus on work.”

  Shaking his head in disbelief my cousin just looks at me. He knows what I am saying. He knows other things about me and why my wife is down there and me up here. We are only a few months apart in age, and he’s my closest friend as well my cousin.

  “I get it, Rain, I do. But, how long before your dad, or the old lady steps in?” I don’t want to think about it. “You can’t just follow her around, watching her forever.”

  “If that’s what I want to do, I can, Vicki.” I know I can’t really, but this constant pressure about her is making me a little crazy and reckless.

  The rest of my cousins, and some of the other men from the family join us, as the night goes on. We talk and they drink, and I watch her. It’s the usual Saturday night ‘business’ meeting where they get drunk and go home late.

  As late night turns to early morning I see her stumbling around drunk, her friends holding her up as they call for their tab at the bar. She is laughing, I can’t hear it but I can see her face. She pulls her wallet from her purse and hands the barman her bank card. She shoves it back into her purse loose and zippers it closed as they head out the door. When I see her car keys jingling from her finger I go to the bouncer myself and have him make sure they don’t drive. Any of them.

  I say goodnight to family and friends at the club. None of them look like they will be going anywhere soon and I am tired, a little irritated, and want to go home to bed. It has been a long week and today has left me in a mood best just slept off.

  * * *

  Sunday morning starts with a call from the bank. Ailee used the card I gave her for that bar tab last night.

  It’s the first time she’s ever used it for anything and they thought it might be fraud, while I find it ironic that the first time she’s ever taken anything from me was on our anniversary. I approve the charges, and get up to go to church with my father and Nonna. All good Masters attend church on a Sunday; it makes us look innocent.

  I drive past her apartment on my way, but it’s closed up, just like I knew it would be. She’ll be nursing a seven hundred dollar hangover all day. I know, this time, because I paid for it. Satisfied, I drive to the church where we were married and park on the street for Sunday mass.

  All of my family, and most of hers are arriving, greeting each other with cheek kisses and manly hugs on the steps outside, before we go indoors. Nonna needs help up the steps and I offer her my arm. She’s closer to ninety than eighty and getting frail, but she’s still feisty as fuck. Pissing off the old lady is ill advised and will get you whacked in more ways than one.

  “Ciao Nonna.” I kiss her wrinkled old cheeks and we walk up the stairs, and inside.

  She crosses her chest and smacks me across the ear hole because I don’t do the same. I quickly check myself and do the spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. We sit three rows from the front, same as every week, and go through the motions.

  Filing out after the service, Nonna asks me, “You coming
for munch?” Her raised eyebrow says my answer is yes whether I want to or not.

  “Si, Nonna.” I nod and help her down the steps to my Dad’s car.

  I really don’t feel like going to family lunch, but sometimes I have to suck it up and show face to keep them all happy. Climbing into my Mercedes, I follow the family procession to my Dad’s house, the line of dark cars with blacked out windows looking like a funeral is underway as we weave through the streets.

  Every open seat in the house is filled. The youngsters run riot up and down the passage and out onto the back porch, the women are all in the kitchen and setting the tables, needing all of them when everyone is around. The house hums with the gruff voices of men and the laughter of woman, whom, I have no doubt, are having a fat gossip in the kitchen.

  The smell of home cooked food filters through the house to where I sit with my father and uncle on the porch out back, where they are allowed to smoke. My cousin Sam’s kids are playing ball on the lawn while we enjoy hot coffee served by my Zia. This is what being part of an Italian family is, we are always together, all the time. Some days it’s the best thing in the world, on others I want to run for the hills waving my arms above my head, screaming like a banshee.

  The big patio-table is set with plates and glasses and my father sits at his place at the head of it, my uncle to his left, and me to his right. We talk about business and they talk about old friends who seem to be dying like flies around them.

  When the serving bowls start arriving and the children are baited to the table inside the kitchen, the seats fill up and my Nonna sits at the other end of the table, facing us. Her apron is stained with tomato and semolina flour, from cooking the feast before us.

  My uncle says a prayer for the food and we tuck in, bowls are passed across and along the table as we fill our plates with pasta, bread, and salads. This is just the beginning; we start with pasta, then, by the smell coming from the kitchen, we will be having lemon chicken.

  We will go home stuffed full, needing a full week of gym just to burn off this one meal. I drink water while others fill their glasses with wine and ‘salut’ to everything. I watch them, all so happy, and have to work hard to cover the depression which gnaws at me daily.

  “Rainieri.” My sister Viv, the youngest of the twins, calls me over the table. “When are you going to shave that hideous beard off your face? It’s so out of fashion, don’t you know that was two years ago?” Val, twin number two, snorts and just about has wine coming out of her nose.

  I run my hand over my beard and scowl at them. “I like it.” I don’t, but I am too lazy to shave every day, or any day for that matter. The beard just sort of happened.

  “Well, it’s gross and you should totally take care of it. I’ll shave it off for you.” She says it with an evil little-sister smile on her face. Somehow I think that would end in me suffering some sort of injury and bleeding out.

  “Viviana, leave your brother alone.” Nonna pipes up from the end of the table. “He can go get his wife to shave his face if he wants it shaved, at least she’s qualified to do it.”

  The old lady’s vicious comment and stinging glare tell me I am in for an afternoon of all the reasons I disappoint them so much. Days like these make me wish I drank.

  I glare daggers at my sister because she’s opened a can of worms now, and go on eating my dinner listening to the men’s conversation.

  Three

  Snip

  AILEE

  Why, oh why dear God, did I drink so much last night? My tongue feels like sandpaper and the entire percussion section of an orchestra is banging inside my head. Chels is sleeping on my arm and it’s stinging with pins and needles, and I try to pull it out, but she’s like a lead weight on me.

  I can smell myself; I have sweated so badly in my leather jacket which does not make for good pjs.

  “Ugh.” I try to force her to roll over. “Chels, move man, I need to pee.”

  “Just pee,” she says, half asleep, not moving. “But don’t talk.”

  I yank my arm free as she moves a little, pulling a pillow over her head to keep out the morning light filtering its way in through the drapes.

  “I can’t pee in the bed, you chop.”

  I roll until I am at the edge, then force myself upright and take a few seconds to stop the swaying feeling. I am never drinking again. Well, not ’til next Saturday.

  Emptying my bladder and drinking from the tap in the sink, I look up at my reflection and it’s a little scary so early in the day. I consider brushing my furry teeth, but instead crawl back to bed to sleep longer.

  That’s what Sunday’s are for anyways, sleeping off Saturday night, coffee, morning sex if I’m lucky and Chels isn’t in my bed, and a greasy breakfast.

  * * *

  When we do surface it’s closer to lunch than breakfast, and Chelsey makes the first pot of coffee while I shower and put on yoga pants and a t-shirt. She passes me on her way into the shower and hands off a cup of the good stuff to me, the tar strong in my favorite mug, and I take it to the living room so I can sit and enjoy it in my spot on the sofa.

  I listen to her singing – really badly – in my shower while I flip through the news channels to see if anything important is happening anywhere. I am completely invested in a news piece about pandas in a zoo when Chelsey comes in, her hair dripping wet on her shirt.

  “We going to go get some food?” she asks, and my stomach grumbles quietly in response. “Because I am starving and so is my hangover.”

  “Great idea, let me find my bag and shoes.” I get up and look for my purse, it must be here somewhere.

  Eventually I find in under the sheets on the floor next to my bed, needing a minute to remove the unnecessary stuff and find my wallet and bank card, I remember wildly flinging it.

  I start sorting everything out onto the bedside table. Lipstick, eyeliner, hairbrush, Starbucks loyalty card, and bank card, shit that’s not my card! I panic and think that the bartender gave me someone else’s card when we paid our tabs at the same time last night.

  My card is red. This shiny black one is definitely not mine, it must be someone who was with us. I’ll just read the name and get it back to them. I pull it close to my face, because my contacts aren’t in yet so I’m still blind as a bat. When I get it close enough to decipher the silver lettering, I have to read it a few times over to realize what I have done.

  Shit.

  MRS A. CALLIGARIS

  In shiny capital letters across the card, motherfucker, I used the card that Rainieri sent me. The one I swore blind I would never touch. Oh God, and that bill was huge.

  I am about to hyperventilate and panic when a thought comes to me: why am I even worried about this?

  Why don’t I use the card?

  Fuck it. Happy anniversary to me.

  He hasn’t once showed up and so much as spoken to me in five years, he can pay for drinks on our anniversary.

  I pack my purse back in order, shove my feet into a pair of sneakers and pull on a hoodie; I’m ready for breakfast at the diner down the street. My morning revelation has put me in a pissy mood on top of the drum band playing in my head.

  “Let’s go,” I bark at Chelsey when I’m back in the living room.

  She hustles to grab her things and we walk the short block to the diner that has become our hangover cure these last two years. You can smell the oil as the door swings open, and the coffee that has its own unique taste from being brewed in the same jugs for thirty years or more.

  “Morning girls.” The gray haired waitress, who is as old as the institution itself greets us as we sit down at the window in what has become ‘our booth’, her friendly face and soft voice always what we need after a night out. “Had a rough one, did you?” she asks with a smile, pouring coffee without even asking.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Chelsey giggles.

  “The usual then? Breakfast special with extra bacon.”

  She’s my spirit animal. “Yes ple
ase.”

  She nods, and scribbles it down on her little notepad before going to place our order.

  “I feel like death warmed up.” Chelsey states the obvious, a pair of huge sunglasses on her face, shading her from the sunlight and the world from the bags under her eyes. “I think we should watch Netflix and eat shit all afternoon. I literally cannot do anything else. Please.”

  “I am on board with that plan. Reality TV and chocolate will cure this.” I point to my head.

  I fish out a bottle of Advil from the bottom of my bag and swallow them with the last sip of my coffee. The local radio station plays in the background, not loud enough to offend my headache, but just enough to drown out the people around us. “I’m never drinking again.”

  Chelsey laughs at me. “You said that last Sunday morning.”

  Our food is slipped onto the table and the waitress giggles. “You sure did,” she says.

  “Ay, whose side are you on here? If I don’t drink who will tip you twice the going rate on a Sunday morning?” I joke back and forth with her. I always tip her double on a Sunday; other people run double time on Sundays, why shouldn’t she?

  “True, you keep drinking then.” She winks and leaves us to devour the greasy magic of breakfast.

  We walk home after, and watch reality shows and laugh like teenagers, napping in between. Chelsey leaves my apartment at around six in the evening, her sister coming to fetch her.

  I’m all alone for the evening. Tomorrow is another day of work, on my feet all day, and I prepare by soaking in the bathtub way too long, then curling up on my bed with a book.

  * * *

  Mondays are notoriously slow in the salon, but it’s also the day that the boss-lady, Gina, comes in to check on things, and by check I mean yell and scream and bitch about everything she lays eyes on.