The Real Thing (3 page)

I stop on the path and smile at him. “Such as?”

He looks at my boots. “Most of it was nice.
Molto graziosa.
He thinks you're very pretty.”

My heart thumps. “He said a lot of things down there. What else?”

He frowned. “He says you're
pericolosa.
”

I repeat the word slowly. “I'm . . . perilous?”

“Dangerous.” He steps past me under a pine tree.

“What's, um,
‘corpo provocante'
mean?”

DJ turns slightly. “Um, it sort of means sexy body.”

My heart thumps again. Dante's right, of course. I am dangerous, and I do have a sexy body.

I can't believe he called me that in front of his son!

People have told me I have a cute face, that I don't look my age (thirty-five), that my eyes are penetrating. Below that, though, I have a smoking hot body and booty. I smile.
Pericolosa, molto graziosa,
and
corpo provocante.
I am a very dangerous beauty with a sexy body, which may make me a femme fatale to Dante Lattanza.

“So after this full workout that will probably drown me,” I ask, “what's next?”

DJ stops in front of the guesthouse and opens the door, flipping on an interior light. “Then you . . .” He frowns. “I've forgotten the fourth thing. The last thing you'll do is go waterskiing. After that—”

“I have never been waterskiing in my life,” I say, rooted in the doorway.

“Dad will teach you,” DJ says. “He's a good teacher.”

I get another vision, and this time Dante's strong hands hold me in the water . . . before the boat rips me through the water at a hundred miles an hour, my head the only appendage still attached after—

“After all that, you'll get your interview,” DJ says.

Personality
doesn't pay me enough to do this. “What if I, um, what if I fail?”

DJ turns away. “Then you'll know how he felt.” He looks up at me in the shy way that teenaged boys sometimes look at
molto graziosa
women. It touches me. “I'm sorry. Just . . . try, okay?
Tenere provare,
he might say. It means to try it, to keep trying. He says it all the time to me. That's all he really expects you to do. He doesn't expect you to succeed.”

Now
that
was a challenge. “You're really protective of your daddy, aren't you?”

DJ nods. “He's my
papino
, my dad, you know?”

He flips on a light, and I see a nice guestroom with whitewashed furniture contrasting against dark pine walls. A queen-sized bed sits in a corner, a single lamp on the headboard, next to a huge wardrobe, the bathroom just beyond in the shadows. A massive eight-drawer dresser rests under the only window, a Sony TV on top. A phone on its own stand and a cozy-looking chocolate recliner command the corner closest to the window.

“Dad built it for my mama,” DJ says. “She never likes coming up here, so he made it as modern as he could.”

“Why
didn't
she like coming up here?” I ask, emphasizing the past tense.

He counts out on his fingers. “She doesn't like the bugs, the cold water, the lack of entertainment, the silence, the cold air, Barry's Bay, did I mention the bugs? Um, the weather, the fish . . .”

He's still talking in the present tense. She
still
visits? Maybe it's simply to be with her son. “Your daddy built all this?”

“Yeah. Red and I helped some.”

“Who's Red?”

DJ smiles. “Red Gregory, Dad's best friend. You'll meet him at dinner.” He opens the wardrobe revealing stacks of blue jeans, sweaters, sweatshirts, and several jackets and windbreakers. “Um, Mama always leaves a bunch of what she calls ‘Canada clothes' up here.”

Clothes she doesn't mind getting dirty, I suppose.

“They might fit you, I don't know,” DJ says. “Dad said you could wear them.” He points at stacks and stacks of sweatpants and sweatshirts. “You'll need to dress warmly when we go fishing.”

I check a label on one of the pairs of jeans. Size six? Is she anorexic? If I hold my breath and butter my thighs, I might be able to wear them—for about a minute.

“Dinner's at six sharp,” DJ says. “Don't be late.” He nods once and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

I haven't worn a size six since I was in the eighth grade. They look worn enough, though, and if she didn't dry them in a dryer . . .

I pull the blinds and drop out of my size tens. I have a decent figure, but I prefer my clothes to be a little baggy. If I can get into . . .
geez
! . . . these tiny
little
. . . hold breath, zip, button . . . c'mon button! . . . exhale.

Whew.

I walk into the bathroom, standing on the toilet seat to see my butt in the mirror above the pedestal sink. Whoa. You could read a newspaper through these size sixes. I can't feel my toes.

I look over at the shower curtain, parting it to see . . . Damn. Is that a whirlpool tub? It's a two-seater with candles and potpourri already on the ledges. Maybe Dante's ex doesn't visit just to visit, and the two of them come out here to have some ex-sex.

I hope there's some Lysol somewhere. It looks clean enough, but I'm not taking any chances.

The top button of the jeans is cutting off circulation to my legs, so I remove the pants and put mine back on. My toes throb back to life. I take off my flannel shirt and put on an oversized black sweatshirt with a howling wolf on the front.

I check the time. Five-fifteen.

Time to prowl.

Chapter 4

I
'm almost out the door when I remember Shelley. I should check in to tell her that I won't be back in New York tonight or tomorrow. I get my cell phone from my laptop bag, flipping it open.

No signal.

I wave it around the room, even returning to the bathroom to stand on the toilet seat again.

Nothing.

I glance again at the tub. Maybe if I stand in there I could . . . No.

I settle into the cozy recliner and look at the old-fashioned yellow phone. Hmm. Dante's number is listed right there below the buttons. I put his number in my cell phone. You know, just in case I need to check some facts with him later.

I pick up the phone, dialing a zero. I used to have a calling card, but who uses those anymore? After a pleasant chat with an operator who is
so
excited to place a call “all the way to Manhattan,” I get a hold of Shelley, who had to be minutes from leaving her office.

“I'm here,” I tell her.

“Where's ‘here'?” she asks.

“Aylen Lake, Canada. I'm in Dante Lattanza's guesthouse.”

“Wonderful!” Shelley gushes. “Did you already interview him and he's letting you stay?”

I explain to her about my five tasks.

“Sounds like the seven labors of Hercules to me,” she says. “That's so . . . strange. What are Italians doing in Ontario anyway?”

“I'm black and I'm not in Africa.”

“True,” Shelley says. “What's he like?”

How much do I tell her? Do I tell her anything she doesn't already know? “He's almost exactly like you told me. He's vain. He's temperamental. He's proud.” He's hot, handsome, sexy, and probably still having mad whirlpool sex with his ex.

“All the things you are, too,” Shelley says.

“I'm not that vain.” Temperamental, yes. Proud, yes.

“Look, I need to see this ASAP, Tiana,” Shelley says. “How soon can you send it?”

Deadlines, schmedlines. The “sexy man” issue won't hit the stands until late November or early December, and it's only the beginning of September. With computers these days, you can almost insert a story ten minutes before the printing presses run. “I ought to finish capturing him by midnight tomorrow. I'll send you some pictures as soon as I can.” Do they have Internet service this far north? Hmm. “I may have to bring them in to the office. You'll love them. They're of him working out.”

“Lots of testosterone, huh?”

“Yes.” And sweat. And winks. And that cute little squint. “If all goes well, I may have a longer piece for you in December.”

“Hmm, just before the fight,” she says. “I like it. It might be the last ink Lattanza gets for a while.”

I roll my eyes. “I'll give you the skinny for the sexy man issue by Thursday and expand it later for the issue before the fight.”

“I love to watch him fight, but I wince a lot,” Shelley says.

That was so . . . random. A wave of garlic blows through the screen in the window. “Whoa. I gotta go. I think dinner's almost ready.”

“Is there something you're not telling me, Tiana?”

She always thinks there's “more to the story.” There is, but I don't have to tell her. I decide to be temperamental. “You know how I feel about these puff pieces, right?”

“Yes, but we all—”

“Have to start somewhere,” I say, finishing her favorite line. “I know, Shelley.”

“I could still have you writing obituaries,” she says.

I growl. Six months I wrote advance obituaries for the richly famous and the famously rich. It's about as morbid a writing job as there is. I'm not as superstitious as my predecessor, who once wrote an obit for a rapper who died the next day. “I just like being busy, Shelley. I'm like any boxer who's been out of the ring for too long. My writing gets rusty if I'm not writing every day.”

“Do you feel busy now?”

“Yes. I feel . . . professional, you know? Like I did at the
Times.
” I add the last bit to threaten her, though I know she can replace me with a phone call. “They still want me back, you know.”

I hear Shelley sigh. “Do you really want to go through that grind again, Tiana? All that racing around?”

“I miss the adventure, the grit.” And the full use of my brain. How hard is it to ask a starlet how big her house is and does she have a vacation home that doesn't have seven and a half bathrooms gilded in platinum?

“You're in Canada, Tiana,” she says, “the adventure capital of North America.”

Hardly. The only adventure I've had so far is watching my boat swivel back and forth at a dock. But tomorrow . . . tomorrow should be interesting.

“Hey, before I forget, what do we have on Dante's ex-wife?” I ask.

“Dante, huh? You're on a first-name basis already?”

I sigh. “Do we have anything on her or not?”

I hear a series of clicks. “Nope. Nothing in the archives. You, um, trying to replace her, Tiana?”

“What?”

“You like him, don't you?”

“What's not to like? He's one of the sexiest men alive, right?” This year, anyway. I had a few fantasies about number seven last year, another Italian (go figure!) who had a minor role in a pirate movie and who has since married the princess of Slobobia or something.

“Just don't send me a ‘he's the greatest thing since the toaster' article, okay?”

I bite off a curse before it hits my lips. “I never write those kinds of articles, and you know it.”

“Well, it sounds as if you're getting involved,” Shelley says. “You're at his guesthouse, aren't you?”

I describe it to her. She particularly likes the sound of the tub.

“Why would it have two seats if it was only built for her?” she asks. “Can you explain that?”

I can't, and I don't want to. “So she likes to prop up her feet or something, I don't know.”

“I'll bet he still loves her,” Shelley says. “That's how those Italian men are. They
possess
their women, even after they break up. You remember
Married to the Mob
. That woman, wasn't it Michelle Pfeiffer? That was before her lip implants, of course. Dreadful things, aren't they? Like two worms wrestling with each other. Anyway—”

“Dante is not in the Mafia, Shelley,” I interrupt, “and they've been divorced going on ten years.”

“A little possessive yourself, aren't you?” I know Shelley is smiling. She believes I should already be married and have a teenager by now.

“Shelley, I'm here to do an interview and that's it,” I say. “He's only a job. He's only a paycheck. He's a handsome man, but he's obviously not over his ex. I'm not here to—”

“Keep telling yourself that, Tiana,” Shelley interrupts. “You've always struck me as someone who wants something more. Dante Lattanza is definitely all that and then some. I wouldn't blame you in the least if you . . .”

“If I what?”

Shelley doesn't answer.

“I'll have the puffer to you in two days,” I say angrily. “Good-bye, Shelley.”

She thinks she knows me. She thinks she knows what I'm after. She thinks I'm on the prowl.

I look at the wolf on my shirt, a moon rising just above my left breast.

Maybe I am.

And if playing a she-wolf helps me to get a decent story, I will be the best she-wolf I can be.

Chapter 5

I
slink or skulk or however wolves move from the guesthouse through a canopy of pines to a side door. Opening it, I step into an amazing kitchen, pots hanging on hooks suspended from the ceiling over a massive butcher's block, top-of-the-line Sub-Zero appliances, a double sink big enough to swallow four turkeys, and . . . Is that a brick oven? It looks as if it belongs in a pizzeria or a bakery.

“Nice, isn't it?”

I turn and see a tall black cook in maybe his early fifties, with a shiny forehead dominating a head of tight gray and graying curls. He wears the requisite jeans, boots, and a stained chef's apron over a green sweatshirt. He's skinny as a rail, sports a few freckles under his huge brown eyes, and has shovels for hands.

“Hi, I'm—”

“I know who you are,” he interrupts. “No introductions are necessary, Miss Artis. I'm Red.”

This
is Dante's best friend, and he's Dante's personal cook? “Where's Dante?”

“Answering his fan mail,” Red says, rinsing several green and red peppers. “He still gets hundreds of letters, and he answers them all himself.” He cracks open a green pepper with his fingers, removing the seeds. “You like linguini?”

“Sure.”

He slaps the green pepper on the butcher block and dices it as fast as lightning. In less than a minute, he has sliced and diced three green and two red peppers. He places them in a huge pot on the stove, stirring them in. He pulls a plastic spoon from a cabinet and dips it into the sauce. “Let me know what you think.”

I take the spoon, blow on the chunky sauce, and taste . . . heaven. “This is good. This is really good. What all's in it?”

He crosses his arms and nods. “You tell me.”

I look down at the spoon. “Green and red peppers.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Garlic. Sausage.”

“What kind?” he asks.

“The good kind?”

He laughs. “It's fresh sausage from a farm near here. What else?”

“Well, tomato sauce, of course.”

Red squints.

“Homemade tomato sauce with real tomatoes,” I say quickly. “Um . . .” I only know one kind of tomato. “Roma?”

He smiles. “Right. Been cooking it since sunup.” He leans in closely. “Let's get this out of the way quick,” he whispers, handing me an apron. “I sent you the letter with this address, okay?”

I tie on the apron. “Why?”

“A few years back, you wrote some articles, including that op-ed piece where you said, let me get this right, ‘too many champions are spoiling the soup of boxing.' Wasn't it called ‘Alphabet Soup'?” He tosses me a head of lettuce. “For the salad.”

I crack open the lettuce and let water run through it. “Yeah. I wrote that. I can't stand all those stupid acronyms.”

Red nods. “WBA, WBO, NABF, WBC, IBF, IBA . . . BFD.”

I laugh. “I read a
Ring
article that said it better. It said that there's only one world, so we should have only one world champion. I was trying to say that all those acronyms were metaphors for mediocrity. It seems as if every fighter has a belt. Isn't there a midcontinental something belt out there, too?”

“Yeah. Which midcontinent, no one knows.” Red starts skinning several carrots at once. “I liked that line. Metaphors for mediocrity. I told Dante, and he liked it, too. He also liked three other articles you wrote. He has them posted in his room.” He whips out a huge clear salad bowl from under the sink, setting it near me.

I start tearing the lettuce and dropping it into the bowl. “I'm waiting for the ‘but.'”

“But,” he says, dicing seven carrots at once with a weaponlike cleaver. “The last two you wrote . . .”

“They were kind of harsh.” I drop the last shreds of lettuce into the bowl.

Red scoops the carrots into the bowl and begins chopping radishes. “But they were honest. Dante values honesty. Don't ever try to lie to him.”

“I won't.”

He waves the cleaver in the air. “Dante liked those harsh ones, too.”

I keep both eyes fixed to that cleaver. “He couldn't have.”

“He did. He said you have brutal honesty. He tacked them up in his room as well. I know he reads them every day and every night to motivate himself. What was that line? Oh yeah. ‘Dante Lattanza is not just over the hill. He's at the bottom of the mountain and couldn't see the top even with a telescope.'”

I wince, wiping my hands on my apron. “I was just disappointed he didn't unify the middleweight title. That would have been the only unified title that year.”

“I liked the way you worked in Simon and Garfunkel's ‘The Boxer.' It was a classy piece,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

“It wasn't the usual boxing story, you know? It had a human element to it.”

I still have it first in my professional writing portfolio.

“How'd you, um.” He pauses. “You don't strike me as the type to cover boxing matches. You're a knockout, don't get me wrong, but . . .”

I explain about my granddaddy, and Red nods often. “I was also dating a guy back then who was really into boxing, so I had a bunch of working dates. Then I learned he was working one of the card girls on the side, so . . .”

“Hawaiian Tropic girl?”

Is this guy psychic? “How'd you know?”

“My girlfriend Lelani was once one of those, and she's really from Hawaii.” He looks out the window over the sink. “She ought to be back from town any time now. She's getting more groceries. We eat a lot here.” He frowns at the salad. “Mushrooms.” He points to a closet. “In there, the portobello, sliced thick.” He opens a drawer, takes out a knife, and lays it on the butcher block.

I go to the closet and find several varieties of mushrooms, one variety the size of my fist. I return to the butcher block and begin slicing the portobello.

“You and Lelani will get along,” Red says. “You're almost as jaded as she is about boxing.”

There's something strange going on here, but I can't quite figure it out. “Um, Dante knows I wrote those articles, yet he's letting me stay. I don't get it.”

“I do. I knew you'd motivate him. Just you being here will do that.”

“How? How will my mere presence motivate him?”

He smiles broadly. “You are, to put it bluntly, his
worst
fan. He's already trying to prove to you that he's not over the hill.”

I push the mushrooms into the salad. “If he isn't careful with Washington, he may be under the hill.”

He nods. “Keep saying stuff like that, Christiana. He needs to hear it.”

“So . . . you knew he'd give me grief about the interview, but you also knew he'd allow me to stay.”

He nods.

“You're pretty shrewd, Red.”

“One of us has to be,” he says. “For all of Dante's good qualities, and he has a ton of them, he's still a little naive. He thinks he can win by sheer willpower. We both know that's not the case these days. I believe that Dante is letting you stay because he wants to prove he's not only on the mountain but nearing the top again.”

I look away from Red and roll my eyes. “You don't really think he's capable of beating Tank Washington, do you?”

He rests against the butcher block. “Boxing is a young man's game, and Dante has always been young at heart, but there's only so much heart can do for you in the championship rounds. If he's still standing after the final bell, that's a victory in my book.”

Hmm. Even Dante's best friend has his doubts. “Tank has been on a tear, though. Seven knockouts in a row, all before the fifth round.”

“Tank is fighting against inferior competition, and I think he's finally realized it. Though he beat Dante the first time, he really hasn't had a victory over an elite fighter since Dante.”

I nod. It's true. Tank has been fighting the “almost” champions.

“Not one of Tank's opponents had any kind of heart,” Red says. “Dante has heart enough for five men. But that's also the problem. He doesn't know when he's licked. He can't see that he doesn't have the skills necessary to be champion. Instead of covering up, he'll keep swinging and get his face peppered. You have never questioned his heart or his will to win in anything you've written about him. How'd you put it? ‘If heart were all a fighter needed . . .' ”

“ ‘Dante Lattanza would be the pound-for-pound best fighter the world has or will ever see.' ” I look at the wood floor. “But I ended the piece badly.”

Red nods. “‘Heart just isn't enough anymore.'”

“Yeah.” Yet, here I am, the one who wounded Dante the most with the truth and counted him out. I need to change the subject. “Red, how long have you been . . . What exactly do you do for Dante?”

“Check the bread, please.” He hands me two huge white oven mitts.

I open the oven, the door as big as the hatchback for a car, and see golden brown Italian bread—what else?—resting on long wooden paddles, hot garlic wind rolling over me. “I think they're done.” I pull out the first paddle and rest it on the butcher block where Red slices the loaves rapidly.

“Butter's in the fridge, top shelf, right side.”

I find the butter and a butter knife and begin buttering the cuts in the bread.

“So what exactly do I do for Dante?” Red says. “I've been cooking for Dante during his comeback, and even a little before that. Just after the divorce actually. I'm kind of his cook, trainer, guru, and gopher. Mainly, I'm his friend. He lost all his friends after the Cordoza fight. His former trainers, excuse me, ‘nutritionists,' fed him all that roughage and bran, like he was already over the hill and couldn't take a dump. All that bran slowed him down. And all that weightlifting Johnny Sears put him through at Gleason's Gym only tightened him up. He was strong, but he was slow. Pasta seems to speed him up. So does the air up here. He works out so hard that he's always three to four pounds around his fighting weight, so it doesn't really matter what I feed him. Happy stomach, happy man. Can you cook?”

This is beginning to feel like an interview. “Yes, I can cook.”

“Do you own a microwave?”

“Only for popcorn and hot tea.” And leftovers. I wince. There are leftovers in my fridge right now that I should have thrown out before I came here.

Red smiles. “Good. That . . . that woman never did cook.”

I don't want to talk about the woman whose ass has been in my two-seater tub, maybe on both seats. “Red, I'm curious. Why did Dante hire you?”

He turns to me with a withering stare. “I can cook. He can eat. He pays well. What could be better?”

Oops. “I don't doubt you can cook, I mean . . . You're not exactly Italian, and here you are preparing an Italian feast.”

He sighs. “I used to be one of his sparring partners a long time ago. Trust me, I had no ambitions beyond sparring. I'm too tall, too skinny, and I can't keep an ounce to stick to me. That was when I was trying to make a name for myself in Manhattan. I was working as a sous chef at the Four Seasons when Dante hired me away and brought Lelani and me up here.”

I blink. “The Four Seasons on Fifty-second Street?”

“You know any other?”

I shake my head.

“Sous chef was as far as I got, probably as far as I
could
get. I mean, what restaurant would hire anyone named Red Gregory from Brooklyn for its main chef? Unless I changed my name to, oh, Benito—and
only
Benito, mind you—and I somehow turned my Brooklyn accent into something Mediterranean, I was stuck. After . . . that . . . woman divorced Dante, he called me up, Lelani and I moved up here, and I've been cooking for him ever since.”

Now that's a commitment. “Year round?”

“Yeah.”

I shiver.

“It gets cold up here, right?” he says. “It's a cold that has teeth and clamps down on you. We usually take most of the worst part of winter off to go south. Dante has a place similar to this down in Virginia.”

At least Dante isn't hurting for money. “So he's still, um, financially stable?”

Red nods. “Unlike some boxers whose promoters took unhealthy cuts from their purses, Dante has been in charge of his own finances from the beginning. He does all the negotiating, and he's good at it. He can afford to be generous. He built me this kitchen from my specifications. Brick oven, the right pots, the right tools. He also built our cottage next door.” He checks a large pot of noodles, stirring them slowly with a wooden spoon.

“And the guesthouse.”

Red sighs and shakes his head. “That was a
waste
. There's a carbon copy of it down in Virginia.” He seems to shudder. “I don't want to talk about her. I don't want to live in the basement tonight. I'm going to live in the balcony, okay?”

A strange extended metaphor, but I get it. “Living in the balcony. I like it.”

He nods at the lake. “You handle a boat well.”

“Hey, I'm from Red Hook,” I say. “It goes with the territory. My granddaddy taught me.”

“You must have done some fishing in the Hook, too, huh?”

Not that I'd ever eat anything from the East River. “Yeah.”

“Good. I hear you'll be fishing in the morning. Dante takes his fishing seriously.”

“So DJ told me.”

He holds me with his eyes. “You have no idea. Serious to you and me is silly to Dante. He is as fierce an angler as he is a boxer. And he believes that eating fish is good for him. There will be smallmouth bass filets on the table tonight, at
his
end. He eats them like most folks eat potato chips, so I wouldn't ask him for any.”