Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

“Well, mine’s dead.”

“Mine may as well be.”

“Oh.”

She shook her head several times, a reaction to the alcohol. “So we love ghosts.”

“Yes.”

“Which makes us ghosts.”

“You’re drunk,” he said.

She laughed and pointed across the table. “You’re drunk.”

“No argument.”

“We will not be lovers.”

“You said that.”

The first time they made love in her room above the café it was like a car crash. They mashed each other’s bones and fell off the bed and toppled a chair and when he entered her, she sank her teeth into his shoulder so hard she drew blood. It was over in the time it took to dry a dish.

The second time, half an hour later, she poured rum onto his chest and licked it off and he returned the favor and they took their time and learned each other’s rhythms. She had said no kissing, but that went the way of their not being lovers in the first place. They tested slow ones and hard ones, kisses with nips of the lips, kisses in which only their tongues touched.

What surprised him was how much fun they had. Joe had had sex with seven women in his life, but he’d only made love, as he understood the definition, with Emma. And while their sex had been reckless and occasionally inspired, Emma had always held a part of herself in reserve. He would catch her watching them have sex while they were having it. And afterward, she always withdrew even further into the locked box of herself.

Graciela reserved nothing. This left a high likelihood for injury—she pulled at his hair, she gripped his neck so hard with her cigar roller hands he half-worried she was going to snap it, she sank her teeth into skin and muscle and bone. But it was all part of her enveloping him, pushing the act to the edge of something that, to Joe, resembled vanishing, as if he’d wake up in the morning alone with her dissolved into his body or vice versa.

When he did wake that morning, he smiled at the foolishness of the notion. She slept on her side, with her back to him, her hair gone wild and overflowing on the pillow and headboard. He wondered if he should slide out of bed, grab his clothes, and get gone before the inevitable discussion of too much alcohol and muddy thinking. Before the regret cemented. Instead, he kissed her shoulder very lightly, and she rolled his way in a rush. She covered him. And regret, he decided, would have to wait for another day.

It will be a professional arrangement,” she explained to him over breakfast in the café downstairs.

“How’s that?” He ate a piece of toast. He couldn’t stop smiling like an idiot.

“We will fill this”—she was smiling too as she searched for the word—“need for each other until such time as—”

“‘Such time’?” he said. “That tutor taught you well.”

She leaned back in her chair. “My English is very good.”

“I agree, I agree. Outside of using dangered when you meant endangered, it’s pretty flawless.”

She grew an inch in her chair. “Thank you.”

He continued to smile like an idiot. “My pleasure. So we fill each other’s, um, need until when?”

“Until I return to Cuba to be with my husband.”

“And me?”

“You?” She speared a piece of fried egg.

“Yeah. You get to return to a husband. What do I get?”

“You get to become king of Tampa.”

“Prince,” he said.

“Prince Joseph,” she said. “It’s not bad, but I’m afraid it doesn’t quite fit you. And shouldn’t a prince be benevolent?”

“As opposed to?”

“A gangster who is only out for himself.”

“And his gang.”

“And his gang.”

“Which is a type of benevolence.”

She gave him a look somewhere between frustration and disgust. “Are you a prince or a gangster?”

“I don’t know. I like to think of myself as an outlaw, but I’m not sure that’s any more than a fantasy now.”

“Well, you be my outlaw prince until I return home. How is that?”

“I would love to be your outlaw prince. What are my duties?”

“You must give back.”

“Okay.” She could have asked for his pancreas at this point and he would have said, “Fine.” He looked across the table at her. “Where do we start?”

“Manny.” She held him in dark eyes that were suddenly serious.

“He had a family,” Joe said. “Wife and three daughters.”

“You remember.”

“Of course I remember.”

“You said you didn’t care whether he lived or died.”

“I was exaggerating a little bit.”

“Will you take care of his family?”

“For how long?”

“For life,” she said, as if it were a perfectly logical answer. “He gave his life for you.”

He shook his head. “With all due respect, he gave his life for you. You and your cause.”

“So…” She held a piece of toast just below her chin.

“So,” he said, “on behalf of your cause, I would be happy to send a bag of money over to the Bustamente family just as soon as I have a bag of money. Does that please you?”

She smiled at him as she bit into her toast. “It pleases me.”

“Then consider it done. By the way, anyone ever call you anything but Graciela?”

“What would they call me?”

“I dunno. Gracie?”

She made a face like she’d sat on a hot coal.

“Grazi?”

Another face.

“Ella?” he tried.

“Why would anyone do such a thing? Graciela is the name my parents gave me.”

“My parents gave me a name too.”

“But you cut it in half.”

“It’s Joe,” he said. “Like José.”

“I know what it means,” she said as she finished her meal. “But José means Joseph. It does not mean Joe. You should be called Joseph.”

“You sound like my father. He would only call me Joseph.”

“Because that’s your name,” she said. “You eat very slowly, like a bird.”

“I’ve heard that.”

Her eyes rose at something behind him and he turned in his chair to see Albert White walk through the back door. He hadn’t aged a day, though he was softer than Joe remembered, a banker’s paunch beginning to form over his belt. He still favored white suits and white hats and white spats. Still had that saunter that suggested the world was a playground built to amuse him. He walked in with Bones and Brenny Loomis and picked up a chair as he came. His boys followed suit, and they put the chairs down at Joe’s table and sat in them—Albert beside Joe, Loomis and Bones flanking Graciela, their impassive faces fixed on Joe.