4:Compromised

July 5

“It’s startin’ to look good in here,” Dominick admired, his salt and pepper head swiveling to take in the new kitchen cabinetry, backsplash and drywall.  

Coming from a professional chef, that was high praise and Charlie sincerely hoped that the room lived up to its potential.  It should since she was sinking enough money into renovating it, and this entire brownstone, to send a third son to Stanford. 

Thank God she only had two sons, who had spent their entire Sunday working on this kitchen, supervised by the youngest of Charlie’s three older brothers.   Luke was both a contractor and a godsend and, if she’d had to pay for his level of expertise in addition to all the materials, this place would never be finished. 

Considering it had only been two months since she took possession of her Brooklyn Heights home, she was feeling pretty good about the place.  

Bathrooms had taken priority and two of the three were stunningly complete, with the last not far behind.  Her bedroom was also close to finished after receiving new drywall, refinished floors and woodwork, a neutral basecoat of paint and three-quarters of a mural that would eventually encompass two walls.  The boys’ rooms had floors, walls and woodwork done, but no paint as of yet.  They hadn’t deemed it important enough. 

Tired of eating takeout, Noah and Caleb had declared the kitchen the new priority, thus the bevy of activity that had taken place today.  It was a good thing their Uncle Dom had been teaching them how to cook for the last ten years, because their mother had no proficiency beyond the microwave.  She would be back on frozen dinners once they were in school across the country.

“It’s not bad.”  She lifted on her toes, her ponytail swinging over shoulders left bare by a sports tank as she dusted his cheek with a kiss.  Nodding toward the unprimed wall opposite the sink, she admitted, “I haven’t decided what I want to do with that yet.  Once I finish the bedroom wall, I’ll figure it out.”

That mural was going to be a never-ending project, she feared.  Every time she walked into the room, it begged for another cloud tuft or just one more star, and she had yet to find a way to refuse that plea.  There existed the very distinct possibility that she would keep adding and adding until it ended up as an ungodly mess. 

But it will be your mess.

“A Tuscan scene?” her brother suggested, leaning against the counter and absently massaging his thigh. 

“Maybe,” was her murmured dismissal as she frowned at his movements.  “Leg bothering you again?”

He immediately removed his hand and tucked it into the crook of his opposite elbow, crossing his arms over his chest.  “I’m fine.”

Fine was a subjective term, in Charlie’s opinion.  It had been almost sixteen years since Dominick lost his right leg at mid-thigh and, while he managed well enough that most people couldn’t guess there was a prosthesis under his pant leg, she caught him rubbing his thigh as though it still hurt after all this time. 

Personally, she thought it was more of a psychological pain than a physical one, but he refused to talk about it.  That argument was one they’d had dozens of times through the years, and she was too tired to take it up tonight. 

“So where the hell’s my pizza?” she demanded instead, fists propped on her hips.  “The boys worked their asses off for Luke today and are starving for your pizza.  You aren’t seriously going to stiff them are you?”

Both were in the shower now, but the minute she’d walked through the door after work, they’d started bellyaching about starvation and inhumane treatment of slaves.  She had half-heartedly thrown at apple at Noah’s head, but her baseball star son had caught it easily and laughed at the “lame attempt.  Not being quite as athletically inclined, Caleb had gotten an orange in the chest.

“Since when have I ever denied those boys anything?  Vivi’s has it.  She was right behind me,” he said with a frown, as though just now realizing his wife wasn’t in the room.  “Where the hell did she go?  Vivi, get in here!”

“She’s not a dog.  Stop calling her like one.”  Charlie might mentally refer to her sister-in-law as a pit bull, but would never treat her as such.  It was just rude, but then again, her brothers weren’t exactly graduates of the Miss Manners School of Etiquette.

“Speaking of which, where’s the dork?”

Cutting him a look, she crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea and a couple of beers to put on the freshly wiped countertop, bumping her hip against his as she did.  Dom hated her sweet Dachsund/Yorkie mix, simply because she wasn’t a German Shepherd or some other “real” dog and had started calling her a dork to piss Charlie off.

It worked. 

“Her name is Nana, and she’s in her condo.”

Every time – every time – she said Nana’s name out loud, Dom snorted, laughed and giggled like some little schoolgirl, and this time was no different.  “It’s not a ‘condo’, Charlie, it’s a friggin’ crate.”

“That’s not what I tell her, so zip it,” she informed him over her shoulder while bending to pull a sleeve of plastic cups out of a box.  “It’s her safe haven from all the big bad construction.”

“For a hard-ass lawyer, you’re awful girly sometimes.”

Growing up with four brothers and having a nickname like Charlie sometimes made people forget that she was a woman.  She might be a woman who didn’t take anybody’s crap and who was currently wearing construction boots, but she was still a woman, dammit.

She used that hard-ass lawyer persona and crossed her arms to arrogantly inquire, “How ‘bout you shut your pie-hole and find my pizza?  Hmm?”

“Vivi!  Pizza!”

Rolling her eyes, she threw the Solo cups at his chest, knowing that he would easily catch them – and he did. 

“What the hell?” his wife’s voice came from the direction of the front door.  Leaning to an angle that would allow her a view of the hallway, Charlie could see that Vivi was just closing the door behind her and had two huge pizza boxes in hand as she strode toward the kitchen, her vividly pattered and colored sundress swirling around her ankles.  “I was taking a call.  You can’t come get the frigging pizzas yourself?  Your good leg is broken or something?”

Not bothering to reply, he simply relieved her of the boxes and asked, “Who called?”

“Uh.”  Guilty brown eyes darted briefly in Charlie’s direction, making the hair on her neck go rigid.  “Nobody.  Plates are where?  What about napkins?  Where are the boys?  Noah!  Caleb!  Come and eat!”

There wasn’t a single word in any rattling soliloquy that came out of her sister-in-law’s mouth that would faze Charlie.  She talked all the time, about everything, even if it was something that wasn’t appropriate to discuss.  This is why Charlie possessed the unfortunate knowledge of her brother’s overheated testicles and the “boiled swimmers” that left him childless.

Non-stop talking was situation normal.  What made her twitchy was when Vivi got that guilty look and didn’t talk about something – like the phone call she was being hush-hush about.

“Vivian,” she commanded in the courtroom voice normally saved for infantile dickheads trying to screw over their wives in a divorce.  “Who called?”

Bent over and foraging around in the same box from which Charlie had taken the cups, only her brightly adorned rump was visible when Vivi announced cheerily, “I found paper towels and paper plates.  Now where are those boys?  Boys!”

On cue, the teenagers came lumbering down from the third floor, smelling of soap and overwhelming the kitchen with their tall frames and broad shoulders. 

“Oh my God, that smells amazing!” seventeen-year-old Caleb enthused as he skidded to a stop and opened the nearest pizza box.  Looking up at his uncle through shaggy hair that was several shades lighter than his mother’s, he quizzed, “Did you use extra garlic, Uncle Dom?  It makes it so much better.”

One year older and twice as bulky, Noah slid up right behind him with an elbow to the ribs.  Tossing his head to see past bangs that were the exact mahogany of Charlie’s, he mocked his brother, “Yeah, like he didn’t know that.  He’s the one who taught us, asshat.”

“Don’t curse at your brother,” Charlie chided absently, eyes persistently trained on Vivi, who still wouldn’t look in her direction.

Clapping his nephew on the shoulder Dom assured, “Of course I used extra garlic.  Who eats pizza without it?”

Idle chatter about the perfect sauce-to-crust ratio filled the kitchen as slices were piled onto paper plates and drinks were poured, leaving Charlie to impatiently suggest, “Boys, isn’t the card table still in the family room on your floor?  Take your pizza up there and eat, please.”

“Oh, no, no,” Vivi interjected as they moved to follow instructions.  “It seems like we haven’t seen them in forever.  I was looking forward to a nice visit and hearing what they plan to do with the rest of the summer.  Stay.  We’ll eat in the dining room.  You’ve got a table in there, right?”

Charlie slowly nodded and reached for the beer that Dom hadn’t taken.  “Yes, but if you don’t want to talk about that call in front of them, they should go upstairs because you are going to talk about it.  I’ll leave that up to you.”

“I told you it was nobody.”

“Yet you can’t look me in the eye when you say it.  Who the hell was it and what does it have to do with me?”

After sharing a knowing look, her sons both mumbled their excuses and flew up the stairs with their food. 

“I don’t know why you’re making a federal case out of this,” Vivi insisted, fixing herself some tea to go with her pizza.  “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

Plunking her beer bottle down on the counter, a frustrated Charlie exclaimed, “Then tell me already!”

“Oh there’s this thing in a couple weeks.”  Her sister-in-law’s hand flipped inconsequentially through the air.  “Some private performance that’s sold out.  Well, you know those things are never really sold out, so I made a few calls and dropped a few names.  That was someone calling me back about it.”

Okay, so there were more words now.  That made her feel a little better, but the vagueness of those words still left shadows lurking around the periphery of Charlie’s good sense.  “What performance?”

In perfect execution of opportune timing, Vivian crammed half a slice of pepperoni pizza into her mouth and mumbled her answer around cheese, sauce and crust. 

“Swallow and say it again.”

She made a big show of gulping down the bite of food, taking a huge swallow of tea and sweeping her hair out of her eyes.  “Jon Bon Jovi is holding an exclusive performance at B.B. King’s in Times Square – with a question and answer session.”

Sweet Mary, Mother of God.  They were back to Jeannette Rizzo again.  The pit bull was alive and well.

“And did you get in?”

Sniffing with indignation, Vivi’s chin went up in the air.  “Regretfully, they were not able to accommodate you, even though you do know Jon.  His brother’s an asshole, by the way.  That’s who called just now and told me ‘absolutely not’.  Matt Bongiovi.”

The puzzle pieces were coming together in Charlie’s mind and she wasn’t happy with the way they were interlocking.  She looked toward Dom, who had been his normal, silent self while the sisters-in-law had words.  His wide eyes dropped from Charlie’s face to intently study the chemical composition of his pepperoni, telling her that he’d snapped those pieces together in much the same way she had.

“Vivian Del Vecchio,” she enunciated with deadly precision.  “Did you call Jon. Bon. Jovi’s. Brother?  Pretending to be me, and ask him to let me into that event because I know Jon?” 

“For what good it did me, yes.”

“OH MY GOD!” Charlie threw her hands helplessly up in the air.  “Do you know how damn humiliated I am right now?  Do you?!  Because I was beyond a hard-ass bitch on that man’s case.  For you to make it look like I consider us buddies now…”  Her head snapped around to her brother.  “I’m going to kill her.  Dead.”

They all knew she wouldn’t, but there had been few other instances where Charlie had been as tempted.  It wasn’t like this was an inconsequential blotch on her personal life.  God knew she had enough of those, and new one wouldn’t even faze her. 

This, though.  This was different.  She took her professional integrity very seriously and it had had been grossly compromised.

Because of an urban legend about crotchy rose petals.

Kill me now.