Cruel Summer (14 page)

“Friends or business,” J.J. murmured. “Which one comes first for you?” He sounded vacant, but the question actually had some depth.

Max sipped slowly and thought about it. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“How good the friend and how good the business.” He drained the rest of the drink and made a quick decision to hit Prive, the massive club with a higher hot-girl quotient than the Playboy Mansion. Nightlife queen and Madonna-ex Ingrid Casares had put it on the map. Door patrol was fierce. To get in, a guy should be rolling with at least two drop-dead beauties. But for Max, his own smoking looks and the last name Biaggi were enough. It’d be open sesame to the VIP lounge, to the drinks, to the pretty girls. Like always.

Meanwhile, J.J. continued to venture. “So if the business potential was strong enough…”

“Then, yeah, I’d rethink the friendship,” Max said impatiently. “Look, man, I’m sick of talking in circles. If you’ve got a deal you want me to consider, then bring it on. You know where to find me. Otherwise, I’m out of here. You’re free to crash, but don’t crap on the rug, okay?”

With that, Max grabbed his Sidekick and raced up the stairs, into the sunroom, and directly onto the pool deck. What he saw next made the tequila rumble inside his stomach.

At the shallow end of the pool, Breck was stretched out with his pants unbuttoned, finger-combing Shoshanna’s hair like Vidal Sassoon while she eagerly kissed her way down his stomach. “Yeah, baby girl,” he moaned thickly. “That’s it. Go south. You know what to do.”

Max fled the scene, trying to erase the disturbing memory from his mind as he rushed into the house and headed upstairs to change clothes. With a rising anxiety to be someplace else,
anyplace else,
he quickly tossed on top-level club gear—a Robert Graham button-up Oxford with contrasting placket and undercuffs, Da’Mage jeans, and Gucci motorcycle boots.

On the way out, he encountered his stepmonster at the bottom of the stairs. She lingered there, swaying back and forth, balancing a fresh martini in her hand, obviously not her first one of the night.

“Going out?” Faith Biaggi, spouse number two of the trophy wife variety, unleashed those words with a hostility that must’ve been building up for hours.

“Yeah,” Max said. He didn’t have much to do with her. She didn’t have much to do with him. As far as he was concerned, monosyllabic answers were conversations that went on too long.

“Well, if you happen to see your father out there tonight, do me a little favor and tell him to go straight to hell!”

“No problem,” Max said. “That’s my message for the son of a bitch, too.”

And then he dashed out of the house, made a beeline for the garage, and forced himself to look away from any lewd acts happening at the pool.

All of a sudden, a vicious plot came to mind. He doubled back to the driveway and body slammed Breck’s Jeep, setting off the motion alarm, then slipped quietly into the garage, laughing as he heard Breck muttering curses and struggling to fasten his pants over his erection. Idiot jizz bag.

Of course, there might be one good thing about Shoshanna’s X-rated antics. The pool boy didn’t show up until Monday, which meant their father would be taking his early morning swim with Breck’s DNA contaminating the water.

This brought a smile to Max’s lips as he hopped into his Porsche, turned over the key, and revved the engine. Impulsively, he thought about calling Pippa. Maybe she wanted to join him for this impromptu clubland adventure. Deciding that he needed a few good laughs that only a wild girl like Pippa could provide, he activated speed dial.

No answer. Then voicemail.

Feeling a pang of loneliness settle in, he tried Vanity.

Same shit.

“Screw it,” Max muttered, pushing away the sudden melancholy.

He’d go alone.

He’d get drunk.

He’d get laid.

And then he’d sleep until noon and start the whole thing over again tomorrow. Isn’t that what the little redheaded bitch Annie loved to sing about?

The sun’ll come out tomorrow…

V
anessa Medina dropped down the dish of tamales, egg surprise, and chorizo with a loud
thwack.
It landed on the table like a cluster bomb. The gooey scrambled casserole slurped about. A hunk of the Mexican pork sausage slid onto the table. Amazingly, most of the food was still there to eat.

Dante looked at his mother, emptied some hot sauce onto the plate, and started shoveling it in.

“You want something to drink?” Her Spanish accent was thick, clipped, and seething with oppressed anger.

“Coke,” he answered, his mouth full.

A few seconds later the soda can crashed in front of him.
Bam.

“Thank you.” His tone was sunnier than the moment called for, and in the Medina household, even the slightest hint of sarcasm was considered full-scale mouthing off.

Vanessa shot him a glare, stomping out of the kitchen and into the living room of their two-bedroom apartment. She stacked a few pillows onto the ottoman to elevate her feet, eased into her battered recliner, and clicked on a tape of the previous week’s
Amor Descarado,
her favorite soap opera on Telemundo.

As son and man of the house, Dante was acutely sensitized to his mother’s revolving moods. Tonight she was pissed off. Yesterday, she’d been the same way. Ditto the day before that. He tried to pinpoint the possible reasons why, then gave up. Silence had always been her preferred smoke screen. When she felt ready to talk, conflicts would get resolved. No sooner. No later.

Dante wolfed down his favorite dishes, guzzled the Classic Coke, and indulged himself with a loud, disgusting belch that felt fantastic after the heavy meal. “Excuse me,” he murmured.

“Pig,” Vanessa grunted.

Dante grinned. That kind of acknowledgment was potentially a good sign. Any minute now she might decide to vent her issues with him. But then again the silent treatment could stretch on for days.

Their relationship was claustrophobic—close living quarters, unspoken grief about her husband and his father, the inevitable mutual emotional dependency that went along with that, and the disconnect of him wanting a better life and her being passively, some psychiatrists might say depressively, content with the one that seemed to provide her little happiness.

Dante’s cellular chimed to the ringtone of Pretty Ricky’s “Grind with Me.” He saw
MAX CALLING
and picked up right away, needing to lighten the mood that was too heavy for a Saturday night. “Hey, man.”

“What’s up, Snoop Dogg? Let’s get wasted.”

Dante smiled. It sounded like the perfect medicine. “You don’t have to twist my arm.”

“How does Mansion sound?”

“Never been, but I’m game.”

“Oh, man, you’ll shit when you see this place. It’s one of those multilevel city block clubs that could cram in three thousand people but is still choosy at the door. Real Gothic vibe. And the girls are freaking unbelievable. If a bitch is half-dressed at Mansion, she might as well call herself an Eskimo in a blinding snowstorm. Put it this way, man—underwear is an accessory that just gets in the way.”

“I’m in,” Dante said.

“Okay, man, get your beauty rest. Party starts after midnight. If we show up before then, we’ll end up mixing with the tourists.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Dante cracked. “Maybe you could hook up with a respectable young lady for a change.”

“I’ve tried that,” Max said. “And trust me—there’s no bigger freak than a girl who’s ditched her church group. I prefer women who openly advertise their slut factor.”

Dante laughed. “Are the girls coming?”

“Pippa’s in, but Vanity’s got a morning photo shoot at sunrise. Not sure about Christina. Her mother was all over the news yesterday screaming about gay kids ruining America. JAP girl’s probably in a psych ward somewhere. I sure as hell would be.”

“What’s up with that?” Dante wondered aloud. “Her mom’s coming off like a Malcolm X for the antigay crowd.”

“I don’t get it, man. I’ve lived in Miami long enough to get a read on its problems. Shit, there are plenty to throw your weight behind. But I’ve never thought boys who know the lyrics to every Kylie Minogue song was one of them.”

Dante laughed again. “I hear you, man.”

“Hey, how’s Omar’s duct tape repair job working out? Can you still drive that piece of shit?”

“Yeah, man, I’m still rolling,” Dante said.

“Good. Later, barrio boy.” Max hung up.

Dante stepped into the living room. For a moment, he just stood there quietly, observing his mother, who was watching the overly dramatic
telenovela
unfold with a strange detachment. Usually these shows provided her a great, perhaps singular, joy, her delight in their sweeping emotions and twisting plots palpable on most evenings. But not this one.

Dante zeroed in on the twenty-inch TV with the cracked speaker and fading picture. His mother deserved more. It seemed so unfair, her settling for this shit while the Biaggis had televisions in guest rooms that were bigger, better, and never used.

“We should get a new TV,” Dante said. “The color tube’s about to go on this one.”

“It’s fine,” Vanessa said dismissively. “I can see what’s going on.”

“Mom, all the colors are dark,” Dante argued gently. “It’s no fun to watch it that way. Maybe we should open up an account at Best Buy. They have a deal going where—”

Vanessa shook her head, cutting him off. “This TV is good enough for me.”

Dante glanced down at the crushed diamond watch blinging on his wrist. Sometimes it made him feel so guilty that he felt the impulse to chuck it into Miami Bay. His mother didn’t wear any jewelry at all. Years ago she’d hocked her wedding ring to buy a used car that would get her back and forth to work. Today the only adornment she entertained was a plastic Timex with a stopwatch feature that kept her housekeeping tasks efficiently humming along.

He fingered the ice on the bezel, imagining how much he could get for it and the nice things he could buy for his mother with the windfall. But then he disregarded the notion entirely. That was ghetto logic. This watch didn’t represent fast access to a pile of cash. It represented the dream he went to bed with at night and woke up to each morning—becoming a hip-hop star.

And why couldn’t it happen to him? Dante heard stories all the time about young artists who one day had a few hundred dollars folded into their pockets and the next day were scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do with a million. That was a problem he wanted to have.

If it came to pass, though, he could see his mother spoiling all the fun. There were sports stars who splurged on expensive homes in rich neighborhoods for their mothers, only to see the houses go uninhabited as the once-poor-always-poor women stubbornly refused to move from their familiar surroundings. Vanessa Medina would be like that.

She despised hip-hop and called it devil’s music. Instead of encouraging Dante, she slammed his musical pursuits as immature and constantly badgered him to pick up a trade like his cousin.

Raoul Medina had gone to a strip mall school for one year, earned a certificate, and now worked as a computer tech at Jackson Memorial Hospital. And she acted like he was freaking Bill Gates.

It was hard to hold on to a dream when you had a mother who wasn’t in the dreaming business. But no matter how much that chasm separated Dante from Vanessa, he still felt a deep, abiding, and undying connection to her. And he never questioned her love for him.

An aching sadness slowly tore away at him, though, because life had dealt Vanessa such a bad hand. She didn’t possess the optimism to want better, more exciting, seemingly impossible things, not for herself and not for her child, either. If Dante hadn’t developed—against all odds—the simple luxury of daydreams to occupy his mind and feed his vision of the future…Jesus, he didn’t even want to think about how broken and miserable he might be.

“I’m going out later, so I think I’ll take a nap,” Dante said, rubbing his full stomach and stifling a yawn. He leaned over to kiss his mother’s rough cheek. “Don’t worry if I’m not here when you wake up.”

“Where are you going?” Vanessa asked.

Dante paused. She rarely hit him with questions like that. The less she knew, the better she felt. After all, her idea of a frank discussion about sex had been putting a box of condoms in his room when he turned thirteen. “To a club.”

“With Vince?”

“No, Max.”

Vanessa’s lips fell into a hard line of implicit disapproval.

“Vince works all the time,” Dante explained. “And his girl just had a baby, so he’s strung out. I don’t see much of him anymore.”

“And Max has all the money and the fancy car,” Vanessa said coldly.

“It’s not that. He’s cool. We get along.”

Vanessa’s feet flew off the pillows and landed squarely onto the stained carpet. She stood up and turned on Dante, anger blazing from her tired eyes. “I don’t like what’s happening to you.”

The shock of her outburst wiped his face clean of expression. He didn’t get this. Most mothers would be happy to hear that their son was spending less time with a friend who’d just knocked up his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and slaved away at a dead-end fast-food job. But his mother was pissed about it.

“You’re not rich, son,” Vanessa told him bitterly. “You’re poor. Stop pretending. It makes me sick how you let these people pay for your private school and fix your car and give you expensive—”

“Wait a minute,” Dante cut in hotly. “I applied for that scholarship just like every other student.”

Vanessa shook her head at him as if he were a simpleton. “Do you actually believe that? Miss Faith saw your name on the application, and she brought it to me. I said, ‘Yes, that’s my son,’ and she said, ‘Thank God, you just saved me from going through the stack.’ It was a handout.”

Dante didn’t know this. But he also didn’t care. “So what? I got a break. I had a connection. Big deal. That’s how the world works, Mom. That’s how people get ahead. Even
rich
people. They get into schools and they get jobs and they get fat contracts with the government because somebody knows somebody. And I should feel guilty or undeserving or something else just because I got a free one-year ride from the Biaggi Family Foundation? Hell no! That’s bullshit!”

“Don’t speak to me that way!” Vanessa screamed.

“No, don’t
think
that way!” Dante screamed back. “Jesus Christ! I know that I’m poor.
We’re
poor. But the difference between you and me, Mom, is that you’re not just poor at the bank, you’re poor in your
mind.
” Dante drove his point home by tapping his temples with his index fingers. “Everything is
fine
to you. My old public school is
fine
as long as I get a diploma and don’t get shot at. And if I went to a trade college for five minutes, learned how to work on cars, and got a job doing oil changes at Jiffy Lube, well, shit, that’d probably be
fine,
too!”

“Your father talked this way,” Vanessa cried, tears welling up, her voice rising. “And he let those navy recruiters talk him into signing up for that stupid war, because when he got out, they were going to pay for his college and he’d get a big job and a new car and a brand-new house! But he didn’t get any of that! My stupid husband got killed! And he didn’t even have to go over there! I begged him to stay here with me! With his son! I had a feeling, Dante, I had a terrible feeling that something was going to happen to him!”

She was sobbing now, her face buried in her hands, her body shaking with raw emotion.

Dante had never seen his mother break down like this before. It scared the hell out of him. He moved toward her with every intention of providing comfort.

But Vanessa stepped out of reach and just looked at him as she gathered her composure and wiped her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was fragile. “Your father went against my wishes. He trusted those recruiters, about what the government would do for him, about what the government would do for
us
if anything happened. But they didn’t do right by this family. And you know that.”

Dante strained to hear more. She never talked about his father. But he wanted to know about his dreams, not the aftermath of military bureaucracy. Who did his father want to be? What did he want to do?

“I don’t like you working for all these millionaires,” Vanessa went on. “This man who gave you that watch—he’s rotten to the core. I know this. What’s wrong with Tony Roma’s? That was a good job, yes?”

Dante managed a rueful grin.

“I don’t like what I see at the Biaggi house, either,” she continued. “I don’t like the time that you’re spending with Max. It gives me that feeling again…that something terrible is going to happen.”

Dante moved in to embrace her.

And this time Vanessa accepted his arms, hugging him as tightly as her strength allowed. The emotion was back in her voice. “You’re a good son, Dante. But you’re so much like your father that my heart never stops breaking.”

His mother had never told him this before, and it explained the sadness that never seemed to leave her. Dante could run up and down the scale of emotions. But crying never came easy.