I knew that it was going to be a bad day when I read that Britney Spears was engaged. I stood in line at the grocery store behind a bickering elderly couple, a box of chocolate glazed doughnuts in one hand and a carton of milk in the other, and Britney's beautiful face smiled up at me from a number of tabloid magazines, the bold letters above her head proclaiming: "Britney to Tie the Knot!"
My heart sank. With the engagement, I could kiss about two thirds of my masturbation fantasies goodbye. The same thing had happened when Catherine Zeta-Jones got married. I have trouble fantasizing about women who are attached; as ridiculous as it sounds, I feel a little guilty thinking about bopping a woman who belongs to another man. The less attainable the woman, the less desirable, and the thing about Britney Spears was that she seemed white trash enough to be attainable if only the proper situation presented itself.
I sighed. At least I could still rely on Salma Hayek to lead my mental dream team. For now, anyway.
The cashier was a cute blonde, old enough to be legal but young enough to be a girl. I paid for my doughnuts and milk, and she slipped me a wink as I left, my purchased items weighing down the plastic bags in my hands.
I headed towards my apartment just down the block. It was comfortable but messy, more of a college bachelor pad than the dwelling of a mature and professional adult. Posters of old mafia films and hot pop stars decorated the walls. A framed and signed photograph of Mickey Mantle hung above the television. Dirty clothes and old magazines (People, National Enquirer, Maxim, Playboy... and gasp! even a copy of Cosmo with Tyra Banks on the cover, another starter on my mental dream team) littered the floor like land mines.
As I pushed open the apartment door with my elbows, arms full, dropping my keys, I heard the phone ringing. I'd turned my cell off earlier, not wanting to be bothered, but someone had the home number. "Someone" meant Pop or an old girlfriend; no one else knew how to reach me at home. Naturally, I'm not listed in the phone book.
"Hello," I said as I picked up the phone. I hoped that it was Dad. I was not in the mood to talk to my ex, to discuss feelings of our relationship, to talk about old times; she expected me to come back on my knees, begging to be received by her. She had already forgotten I'd caught her on all fours, barking like a basset hound while some muscle-bound meat-head she'd met on the subway plowed her from behind. This was a mistake that I was not easily going to forgive and forget. She's lucky I didn't kill them both, and if I had been a stupider man, I would have.
But when you're in my line of work, you can't just go around killing people you want to because sooner or later you'll get caught. Plus, if I were to kill someone and not get paid, it'd be like a surgeon giving a freebie open heart surgery. It's my job, not my hobby.
"Junior, we got problems," the voice was that of my father's former bodyguard, Jake "Sharktooth" Fontana. They called him Sharktooth because he'd chipped a tooth during a fight then bit the guy in the arm, Fontana's jagged tooth tearing out a good hunk of flesh.
"Ya bit a guy? What are ya, a woman?" someone had later asked him.
"He smelt blood and couldn't help himself," my father had replied. "Like a fuckin' shark."
Hence the name "Sharktooth" even though Sharky (only criminals and athletes have nicknames for nicknames) had a little cap that he put on every day, disguising his shark's tooth among his other teeth. Sharky was a formidable man, big, dark and dangerous, a bit of stubble seeming to always shadow his jaw no matter how many times a day he shaved. Dad demanded no less than the best for his personal protection, and Sharktooth was undoubtedly the best. Now, he was simply retired.
"What's up, Sharky?" I said. I didn't ask him how he'd gotten my number, but I knew that my dad hadn't given it him. This meant that Sharky had gone through Daddio's files, found my number, and called me without my father's knowledge. Sharky wouldn't have done such a thing if it wasn't important.
"When can you meet me?" he said.
"Whenever."
"Ok, this afternoon. My bar. Around three or so."
"Deal," I said, and I heard him hang up the phone. Sharky was not a man of many words, and I loved him for it. You never had to sort through any bullshit; he was short, blunt, and to the point. I wondered what the problem was. It had to be pretty serious for Sharktooth to call me out of the blue like that, and it probably concerned my dad.
I sorted through my bag, pulled out the box of doughnuts, and got to work. I'd worry about what Sharktooth had on his mind when it came time to worry about it. For now, I would only concern myself with chocolate glazed goodness, a cold glass of milk, and Sportscenter on the television.
After I polished off my fourth doughnut, sucking some glaze from my fingers, I realized that I had left my wallet back at the grocery store.
***
The cashier seemed to be waiting for me. Her hands were shoved down the kangaroo pouch in the front of her red apron, and she raised an eyebrow as I walked up to her.
"Took you long enough," she said with a crooked grin. There's a certain arrogance to girls that age that I don't quite understand. Barely eighteen, these girls think they know everything there is to know, but by the time they figure out they've got it all wrong, their poorly chosen boyfriends have jaded them for life. What a vicious cycle is this world we live in.
"Yeah, I think I left my wallet," I said. She nodded, looking bored.
"Yep, you sure did," she said and pulled it out of the pouch of her apron. She turned it over in her hands as if searching for something but didn't hand it over to me. No one else was in the store, so the girl must have figured she had time to fuck around before giving back the wallet. I heaved a mental sigh. Girls and their games.
