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“Glass coffee table,” I said. “And pretty much.”
“Well, welcome to my Philly house.”
“Wait, you don’t even live here,” I said. “Who stays here when you’re in New York?”
“Nobody,” he said. “When I’m in town, this is all mine. But mostly it’s just empty.”
“You have an entire empty house all for yourself,” I said.
“Pretty much.”
“And I live in a tiny studio apartment in a bad neighborhood.”
“You went into the wrong line of work, journalist.” He grinned and walked to the kitchen. “Want something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
As he rummaged around for a glass and a bottle, I looked at the pictures on the wall. Most of them were fine art prints of famous landscapes, pretty generic and simple stuff. But a few of them were guys I didn’t recognize, young men with lean faces and hungry looks. I spotted a young Vince in one of them, smiling and surrounded by a few other guys, all of them in suits, most of them with guns tucked in their waistband.
“What’s this?” I asked, pointing at the picture.
He poured himself a glass of whiskey and walked over. He squinted at it then let out a breath.
“That’s the day Steven was made,” he said and pointed at a handsome, lanky guy at the far left. “We were just kids back then.”
“You look so young.”
“We thought we owned the fucking city,” he said and pointed at another guy right next to Steven. “That’s Dante, one of my father’s best Capos. That’s Sergio, the old guy at the end, and that’s Mikhail and that’s Gennaro. Mikhail and Gennaro are dead now, God rest their souls.”
I chewed on my lip and looked at their young eyes, their short haircuts, their baby fat cheeks.
“How old were they?” I asked.
“Gennaro died a year after this picture,” he said. “There was a war with the Chinese. Then Mikhail a couple years after that in a little skirmish with the Russians. I wasn’t in the city at the time, so I don’t really know how it went down.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Price of the game.” He sipped his whiskey and turned away from the picture. “Come on. Let’s go see your room.”
I lingered for another minute, trying to imagine what they were thinking back then. Those guns, those suits, they probably felt rich and immortal. And now two of them were gone, dead before they were really adults.
Just the price.
I turned away and followed him up the steps. The landing led down a short hall with a door at the far end, two doors on the right, and another staircase leading up.
“Your room’s here,” he said, taking me to the last door at the end of the hall. I caught a glimpse of a little office in the first room on the right, a full bathroom in the second room, and stopped on the threshold of the last room.
He pushed the door wide and flipped on the light. I expected a bare mattress on the floor, maybe some ammunition and some drugs lying in the corner. At least, that was the cliché idea I had in my head about what I’d find.
Instead, it looked like a nice suburban extra bedroom. There were generic flower prints in black frames on the walls and the bed was queen sized with a big frilly flower print bedspread with some nice decorative pillows thrown on top. The nightstands each had fake flowers on then, and the right one had a clock with red glowing letters. There was a bureau against one wall, a rocking chair in the corner on the right, and a closet door on the right.
“Here you go,” he said and walked in. A window let in nice, bright light and cast long shadows on the floor. He walked to the closet door and pulled it open, revealing nothing but empty hangers and a suitcase stuck in a corner.
“This is really…” I trailed off, not sure how to put it.
“It’s girly as all fuck,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s really, really girly. I mean, where did you get all those pillows from?”
“Marshal’s,” he said. “I think.”
“I can’t picture you pillow shopping,” I said “Seriously, Vince, you didn’t actually go pillow shopping, did you?”
He laughed, picked one up, and threw it at me. I managed to catch it before it smashed into my face.
“An ex did this,” he said. “Not my style, but I haven’t bothered to change it.”
“An ex, huh?” I tilted my head. That made a lot more sense.
“Don’t get started on that,” he said.
“If an ex changed up this room, I’m guessing you two lived together,” I said.
“Don’t get started.” He frowned at me, arms crossed. “You know what? Fuck it, I’ll tell you about her so you’re not bugging me later.”
“I’m all ears,” I say and toss him the pillow.
He put it back on the bed. “Her name was Lynn, we dated for three months, and she was fucking intense. She never lived here, but I’m pretty sure she planned on moving in eventually.”
