CHAPTER ELEVEN
TWO WEEKS LATER
Roz’s birthday party and all the heads of the family were there with their wives and children.
It was early afternoon on a nice, breezy Saturday.
The family leadership sat at the big patio table while the younger set played games in the pool or soccer on the soccer field or tennis and basketball on the courts. Everybody was there.
Everybody except Mick.
Many people wanted to ask where he was, but after what they heard happened with Bella Caine and Rome, they decided against it. They didn’t know why they were in Rome together, just that they had been there together, and the rumor mill was in overdrive.
But they also knew Mick was due back in the country earlier that day after two weeks away, but there was no sign of him at the party.
They assumed he and Roz were on the outs again.
They assumed she kicked him out again. It was all assumptions and conjecture and rumor, but no hard facts.
Only the birthday girl could give them that and she was too busy sitting easy at the head of the table, sipping her cabernet sauvignon wine, and very much on the verge of inebriation.
So much so that she had the ladies laughing.
“This is a nice party,” she said in her Tipsy Roz voice. “Not very nice. Not perfect. But nice, you know?”
Even the men at the table, from Teddy to Mick’s big brother Charles “Big Daddy” Sinatra, to casino mogul Reno Gabrini, to mob boss Sal Gabrini, to business titan Tommy Gabrini, found her humorous. Especially since she didn’t realize she was funny at all.
Then Reno, who was the ring leader when it came to provocation and who was a little tipsy himself, elbowed Sal and then asked his question: “So Roz?”
She jerked her head to the side of the table where Reno and Sal were seated. They even laughed at her jerk. “Yes?”
“How old are you, Roz?”
Tommy and Sal almost got up from that table and ran they wanted to laugh so hard. Reno was taking full advantage of her state of near-inebriation and they knew it.
But Roz knew it too. “How old am I?”
“Yes. Since it’s your birthday and all. Curious minds wanna know.”
“Ain’t nobody curious but your ass, Reno.”
“Okay then I’m the curious mind.”
“Mind?” asked Sal. “What mind?”
“I’m talking to Roz over here. Do you look like a Roz?”
“Just ask your damn question,” said Sal.
“I already asked my damn question.”
“What’s your question?” Roz asked.
“How old your ass is?” asked Reno.
“For your information,” said Roz, taking another sip and then sitting her glass down so hard that her liquor shook in the glass. Then she belched. They laughed. “For your information,” she said again, “I am thirty-five years old today.”
“Thirty-five?” asked a surprised Reno. “Thirty-five minus what?”
“It ain’t no minus you moron,” said Sal. “It’s plus.”
“Actually it’s times,” said Roz. “I’m thirty-five times one.”
Reno looked at Tommy, the brains of the Gabrini men. “What that equal, Tommy?”
The ladies laughed. Sal frowned. “Is there anybody alive that’s dumber than you, Reno?”
“Yet I own the biggest casino in Vegas,” Reno shot back.
“Yet I’m voted King of Vegas every single year.
I’m the largest employer in Vegas, and I count more money in an hour than you’ve counted in your lifetime.
I got a kid that’s a certified genius. Yet I’m dumb?
You hear that, Tommy? Your kid brother over here says I’m dumb. ”
“You are,” said Sal.
“I’m talking to Tommy.”
“And I’m talking to you,” Sal shot back. “You’re the king of dumb, Reno. You’re like the Liberace of dumb. You’re like the Michael Jordan of dumb. You’re like--”
“Okay, Sal, we get it,” said Roz. “He’s dumb.”
“Sal can kiss my dumb ass,” said Reno. “I wasn’t talking to you anyway,” he said to Sal. “Do you look like Tommy?”
“He’s my brother, so yeah.”
“I’m talking to Tommy.”
“He’s talking to Tommy,” said Roz as she belched again.
And the ladies at the table, from Big Daddy’s old lady Jenay, to Reno’s old lady Trina, to Sal’s old lady Gemma, to Tommy’s old lady Grace, to Teddy’s Nikki, all laughed.
Even Amelia Sinatra, Mick and Big Daddy’s half-sister, was at that table laughing too.
“Thirty-five times one equals thirty-five, Reno,” Tommy finally answered Reno’s original question. “Any number times one equals that number.”
Reno frowned. “Then what they timing it for?”
Sal frowned. “What they timing it . . . What are you talking, you idiot?”
“Forget you, Sal!” Then Reno looked at Roz. “I love you, Roz. You know I do. And you’re a very beautiful woman. I mean stunningly so. But your ass ain’t no thirty-five. I know that too. I’ll bet my fortune on that knowledge. Now answer my question: How old is your old ass?”
Instead of laughing, everybody looked at Roz. If you cross that line with her, she could be as vicious as Mick.
But this time she just nodded. “My ass old enough to beat your old ass,” she said, and then they laughed. “That’s how old I am.”
But then Reno went where they all wanted to go. “And another thing,” he said. “Where Mick at?”
Everybody was shocked that Reno asked it, was glad he did, and they all looked at Roz.
Roz tilted her head slightly back and looked at Reno seemingly with her eyes half closed. “Why you always got questions?”
“Because I’m a curious man.”
“You ask too many damn questions.”
“But curious minds want to know where Mick at.”
Roz was agitated. “Can a bitch just chill?” she asked, and they all laughed at that too. “Damn Reno! It’s my birthday.”
And that was the end of any talk about Mick.
Until his daughter Gloria came out onto the back patio. She’d just gotten into town. She greeted everybody but went over to hug her stepmother’s neck. “Hey Ma,” she said. “Happy birthday.”
“Where’s Oz?” Roz asked.
Gloria stood erect. “He couldn’t make it.”
“He can never make it,” said Reno.
“What is that your business?” Trina asked her husband.
But Roz was even more blunt. “What y’all doing?” she asked her stepdaughter.
Gloria looked at Roz. “Excuse me?”
“What y’all doing? He’s never where you are, and you’re never where he is. What kind of a walla-ha-ha y’all got going? Because it ain’t no marriage. It’s a walla-ha-ha.”
They all laughed, some falling from their chairs laughing at Roz’s phrase.
Even Gloria smiled and began looking around.
She never wanted the spotlight on her marriage.
She looked over at the golf course further back on the property where he usually could be found whenever he was home. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked.
Everybody expected Roz to go off on Glo just for bring him up, but she didn’t. She just sipped more of her wine.
“He was supposed to be in town earlier today,” said Big Daddy, answering for Roz. “But he’s not back yet.”
“Then who’s driving his truck? I thought he didn’t let anybody drive his tricked out Escalades. Not even you or Mom.”
Even Roz found Gloria confusing. “What you talking about, Gloria?”
“Daddy’s SUV’s out front. When I drove up and saw it, I assumed he was home.”
“He is home.”
Everybody looked over at the patio door as Duke was walking out of it with four canned sodas for him and his cousins.
But Roz was frowning. “What do you mean he’s home?”
“Daddy’s home. He got here a couple hours ago.”
Roz, and everybody else, were floored. “His ass home and he didn’t even come back here to wish me a happy birthday?”
Duke hunched his shoulders. “You know how he is.”
“Where is he?” Big Daddy asked.
“He went upstairs all I know. I thought you knew he was home, Ma.”
“I didn’t know shit about it,” Roz said with anger. Then she started nodding her head. “But let him keep on. Let him keep on. I’m gonna get up out of here and get me some dick, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Duke, Gloria and Teddy were shocked. “Ma!” said Gloria.
“Don’t you Ma me! He can get his piece, I can get mine! And it ain’t gonna be no old-ass dick either. It’s gonna be fresh and new. That’s what I’m gonna do. See how he feels about that!”
Although Reno and Sal were laughing so hard that they jumped up from their seats and started running around the patio.
The ladies were falling against each other laughing too.
But Duke and Gloria found it disgusting and hurried to go hang out with their cousins.
Teddy and Nikki weren’t laughing either.
They remembered that scene at that restaurant a couple weeks ago.
Big Daddy couldn’t find the humor either. He was staring at his sister-in-law. He was very concerned. “You’re talking crazy, Roz,” he said to her.
But Roz wasn’t backing down. “Oh yeah? You think that’s crazy for me to pull that same shit he’s pulling?” That head was nodding overtime. “Watch me. Just watch me.”
“You mean watch him kill your ass,” Big Daddy said, and when he said it all of the gaiety stopped. As if they suddenly realized who Mick was. As if they failed to realize that Roz was a hothead when she wanted to be, but Mick was the one human being you didn’t want to be hot around.
But Roz wasn’t thinking about Mick and his ticking time bomb temper. Her ass had a temper too. That was why she got up and went inside the house.
“Uh-oh,” said Sal. “There’s about to be some situations and consequences up in that bitch.”
But Grace was astonished. “She sobers up quick, doesn’t she?” And they all laughed.
But Big Daddy looked at Amelia, and Amelia looked at him. They knew their brother and they knew Roz. And both of them could be combustible. But if anybody could stand toe-to-toe with Mick, it was Roz.
They didn’t intervene. She’d handled him this long without them coming to blows. They had to let her take it on home.