Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

to shrug and light a Camel. “I don’t know. They seemed... unconvinced.”

“What do you mean?”

Another shrug, blowing smoke into the wind. “I don’t know, they seemed—what’s the word? Non-committal? Like they didn’t buy the whole husband-hiring-a-hitter story.”

Oswald rubs his mouth. “They’ll get over it when they see the price of beach-front condos down there.”

Gerbil puffs her smoke thoughtfully. “Golden sunsets and golden showers for life.”

Oswald nods. “Seven down and one to go.”

“Speaking of showers,” she says, “can we please get the hell outta here? I need a bath, like, immediately.”

“Yeah, um…” Oswald looks at her. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can we wash up first?”

She turns and starts toward the parking ramp, but Oswald gently grabs her arm. “One second, Gerbil, hold on, I need to say something first.”

She pauses and smokes her cigarette.

Oswald searches for the words. “Um…”

She waits.

He chews the inside of his cheek, agonizing over the proper way to put this. “Lemme ask you something. Didn’t you once say you always dreamed of opening up a little tattoo parlor?”

“What?!”

“A tattoo parlor, you know.”

She stares at him. “What in God’s grey earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about one of those little bohemian places where you hang out and stick each other with needles and talk about how much you hate society.”

She shakes her head. “How in the world do you come up with this shit?”

“I swear to God you told me this one time. Goddamnit, you told me one of your dreams was to open up a goddamn tattoo parlor.”

“I was stoned, Ozzy, I don’t know.”

“What’s so bad about opening up a tattoo parlor? I think it’s a great idea.”

Gerbil lets out a sigh. “What’s wrong, Tonto? What’s the matter?”

Oswald takes a breath. “Look. Here’s the thing. This last one. Number eight—whatever it turns out to be—I’m gonna go it alone.”

She cocks her head at him. “Not this shit again.”

“Just listen. It’s not what you think.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

He takes a deep breath. “After this last one... I’m getting out.”

She drops her butt and grinds it into the pavement. “Out of town? Out of state? What are you saying?”

“I’m getting out of the life. Outta the game. For good. I’m gonna—”

She looks at him. “What. You’re gonna what? Become a tattoo artist? Work in a hardware store? Teach kindergarten?”

He reaches out and touches her cheek. “I’m sorry, kid, but this is how it’s gotta—”

“What are you doing?” She removes his hand, which has lingered on her cheek far too long.

He pulls his hand back like it’s burned. “I’m sorry, sorry.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I shouldn’t have—” Oswald looks away. “I need to get organized.”

“Can we get outta here?”

He looks into her eyes. “It’s over. All of it. You and me. It’s over.”

She sees something in his eyes she doesn’t like. “What are you saying?”

A long pause here. “I’m trying to tell you something here, something I never—”

He stops. He can’t say it. He can’t tell her. He can’t do it.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Gerbil’s eyes are shiny in the sodium light.

“Nothing’s the matter with me. I’m trying to tell you something here.”

“Spit it out, Tonto.”

“It’s over. You’re out. You’re done. Pink-slip time is what I’m saying.”

Oswald watches her fight the tears. His guts clench. A fiery pain blooms in his side. His scalp crawls at the sight of her quivering lip.

“You know what? Fuck you. Okay?” She quickly wipes her eyes.

Oswald looks at the ground. A taxi roars past them, the sky hissing with the white noise of dirty jets on their glide paths.

Gerbil starts to walk away, grumbling over her shoulder at him. “Just fuck you and your fat ass and your woo-woo Indian bullshit.”

“Where the hell are you going?” Oswald calls after her, feeling empty all of a sudden.

She flips him the bird over her shoulder without even looking.

Oswald assumes this means she’ll be taking a taxi home.

29.

That night, around a quarter to 8, they start with an antipasti course.

The waitstaff—three buxom matrons hand-picked by Bocci’s executive chef, Armando Rutti—come through the swinging doors and into the private room like synchronized swimmers in starched white uniforms, carrying silver trays laden with tender nuggets of mortadella, rows of capacola sliced so thin they’re transparent, proscuitto-wrapped fingers of honeydew melon, escarole leaves beaded with twenty-year-old balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil hand-pressed in a monastery on the Amalfi Coast.

Under the flickering, festive light of antique signal lanterns from the old Galena and Chicago Railroad, the trays are laid out on the long, teak deacon’s table. Jovial dancing shadows play across the walls, which are lined with sepia stills of old Mob Chicago—images of bootleggers cracking kegs and Weegee portraits of Capone, Dillinger, Machine Gun Jack McGurn, and Papa Daley—all of it sharing space with model train paraphernalia. The old man loves toy trains. He has since his childhood. Around the uppermost edge of the ceiling, mounted on brackets along the ornate crown molding, is an actual working O-scale track. Throughout the night, the a softly clacking toy train circles the room, a dozen boxcars as long as a kite’s tail ticking under the murmur of conversation.

At last, around 8 p.m., a rare 1947 Rossi di Montalcino is uncorked and poured, and the old man at the head of the table levers himself up onto his ivory cane.

“To the Morelli brothers,” he croaks in his feeble alto, raising a glass with a palsied hand. “Come all the way down here from Newark to help brainstorm on this thing.”

The other five gentlemen seated around the table lift their crystal and mutter confirmations like supplicants at a mass. Three of the guests (the ones just in from New Jersey) sit on the old man’s left. Two of them—the Morelli brothers—are dressed in sport coats and open-collar shirts. The third—Freddy “.45” Felson—is in a V-neck sweater with a gold St. Christopher medallion around his neck.

On the other side of the table, to the old man’s immediate