stand again, in the way men have of believing the athletes on television can actually hear them through some miracle of technology. But Jackson just lay there, as I knew he would. The fight was called, the champ held up the belt he retained with the victory, and I stuck out my palm.
“A cool one hundred, please.”
Stunned, Dave pulled his eel-skin wallet out of the back pocket of his beautifully cut pants (Italian, no doubt). Lady Di tried to look appropriately sad that he lost, but she couldn’t look at me for fear we would both dissolve into gales of laughter.
“Here,” Dave said through his teeth, seething. He handed me five twenties.
“Fastest hundred I ever earned. Thanks…and Dave?”
“What,” he said evenly.
“Don’t forget the kitchen,” I replied in a singsong voice. “You’ll find everything you need under the sink…sponges, dish towels and detergent.” I twirled around and veritably pranced into my bedroom and shut the door. I looked at my clock radio—10:37 p.m. I gave Dave ten minutes before he left and slammed the door.
He only took five.
Lady Di knocked on my bedroom door a moment later and poked her head in. “What an insufferable ass,” she said, then squealed with laughter and flopped down on my bed.
“He deserved it.”
She squeezed my hand. “You are something else, Teddi ol’ girl. This calls for champagne cocktails.”
She climbed off my bed, went into the still-dirty kitchen and returned with two champagne flutes with sugar cubes nestled in the bottom, a splash of bitters on each and a bottle of Moët. She popped the cork and poured us each a glass right to the rim.
“To Teddi, for knowing much more about boxing than Dave will ever know—and to her hundred dollars.”
“And to my grandfather Marcello, for owning Tony ‘the Dancer’ Jackson—and to Garcia.”
We clinked glasses and sipped the bubbly champagne. Lady Di sat down on the antique rocking chair in the corner of my room, next to a small pie table I inherited from my great-grandmother and covered in pictures of family and friends encased in silver frames.
“You’re always complaining about your family, Teddi, but it seems to me they come in terribly handy at times. My parents are pathetically boring—so utterly devoid of any life. Their faces are so stiff, they look like Botox patients whose treatment went horribly awry. I’d much rather be in your family. The food on Sundays is better, too.”
“Well…you’re an honorary member, anyway. They adore you. But trust me, you really wouldn’t want to be in my family if you had a choice. My childhood wasn’t about snooty British boarding schools, Miss Fancy Pants. I didn’t learn to ride English on Thoroughbred horses, and I didn’t ski in St. Moritz on vacation.”
In fact, Di knew very well that I learned three-card monte before I started kindergarten. I learned how to score a boxing match on the ten-point must system before I learned my ABCs—and it wasn’t too long after that when I found out most of the matches were fixed. I know about the over-under in football, and I can shoot pool better than Minnesota Fats—well, maybe not him, but I can outshoot almost anyone. This does not make for a) an idyllic childhood orb) the kind of skills you like to show off to men. I mean, on what date do you tell the man you potentially want to sleep with that before you discuss birth control it might be a good idea to see how he feels about the Witness Protection Program?
“Hmm.” Lady Di frowned, squinting her blue, almost-violet eyes. “I’d hate to give up my ski vacations. Nonetheless, your family is much more fun than my own pathetic ’rents.”
“Maybe, but then there’s the little problem of surveillance. Go to the window.”
“Oh, not again.” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me…”
“Go on. Peek out the blinds.”
She did as I asked.
“Let me guess, Di. A long, black Lincoln Town Car? A guy leaning on the hood? He’s sort of just hanging around—maybe even reading a newspaper?”
“You know very well that, yes, he’s there. Appears to be your cousin Anthony—who I will reiterate for the thousandth time is very hunky, by the way—and your uncle Lou again.”
“Of course, because we two nice single girls shouldn’t be living alone in the big city.”
“Puts a crimp in things, doesn’t it?”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’d think they would have grown tired of this by now.”
“Please…my uncle Tony once waited fifteen years to extract revenge from a guy who screwed him in a casino deal in Atlantic City. My family is nothing if not patient.”
Lady Di and I had moved in together two years ago when my father “persuaded” someone to rent us this place for a song. I realize how extremely hypocritical it is to complain about my family at the same time that I enjoy a two-bed-room apartment with a view of the East River in a doorman building. Of course, the spacious apartment and the view came with the vigilant watchdog eyes of various members of my family. My cousin Tony—whom Di has a crush on, and vice versa—seemed to have drawn the short straw or something as he is the one who watches over us the most.
Lady Di came over to the bed and sat down. “So we ignore them. There’s nothing exciting going on here, anyway. Eventually, they’ll go home. What do you say we hit some clubs tomorrow, Teddi? It’s your night off.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please,” she pleaded, “I have a smashing new outfit that I’m dying to wear. And now that Dave appears to be out of the picture, you can’t expect me to spend the brisk and bitter days of autumn in New York alone, can you? It’ll be winter before you know it.”
“No, I suppose I can’t. Though Lord knows I’ll be by my lonesome.”
“Don’t say that, Teddi.” She smiled and refilled my glass. Standing up, she kissed me on the top of my head. “I have a feeling you’ll meet the right one before long. See you in the morning, love.”
“Good night, Lady Di.”
She shut my bedroom door. I turned on my stereo and listened to a vintage Bruce Springsteen CD. I stripped and pulled on a sleep shirt, then I padded over to the window. Tony was pacing the sidewalk. I knew he and my uncle would stay another hour, then head over to Mario’s for some pizza and a card game.
I went into my bathroom—my bathroom…in New York City where most people live in apartments the size of bathrooms. Our apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows, crown molding, Ralph Lauren paint and hardwood floors glossed to a sheen. I washed up and brushed my teeth.
Back in my room, I sat on my bed and pulled out a photo album I kept on the shelf near my bed. In my life, I hit the crime-family genetic lottery. My mother’s family, the Marcellos, own one of the largest pizza chains in New York. They also are bookies and gamblers, loan sharks and pool hustlers. Suspected of money laundering, they are what New York newspapers call “an
