'You don't,' Sharon said, 'you're going to lose your mind.'
'What do you care?'
He was right, she didn't. She'd given up. He was drinking Scotch, Dewar's with ice. 'Dewar's-rocks,' he'd say when he ordered a drink in a bar. He looked drunk, face puffy, eyes bloodshot. She said, 'How many is that?'
'You counting my drinks now?'
'Somebody better.' She was trying to remember why she married him. Trying to remember why she'd stayed with him so long-determined to get a divorce every time he left the house. But then changed her mind. Not sure why. It was weird, like he had some strange hold over her.
She lit a cigarette, sipped her wine and looked down the bar. There was a good-looking guy smoking a cigar, talking on his cell phone. He saw her looking at him and smiled. He closed the phone, put it in his pocket, got up with his drink and his cigar and came over to her. He was a big man and she liked big men.
He said, 'Know what my horoscope said?'
Sharon said, 'You’d fall in love with a mysterious blonde.' She’d gone from blonde streaks to full blonde a month earlier and got more attention from men than she ever had in her life. Her mother thought she looked like a $20 hooker. Sharon wondered how her mother knew what hookers charged, but she liked her new look. Had her eyebrows done too, waxed and colored to match her hair. Sharon worked with a girl who dyed her muff with a product called Fun Betty that came in three colors. You could be red down there, brunette or blonde. Sharon thought that was going too far. She didn't care if the carpet and drapes didn't match. No guy she'd been with had ever mentioned it.
He said, 'You're close. It said, 'You're starting to design a life for yourself that is truly custom-fit to your proclivities.''
Proclivities, huh? She wondered if he had any idea what it meant. Sharon hadn't heard a guy use his horoscope as a pickup line in fifteen years. Maybe it was back in style. She said, 'You just get a divorce?'
'No, I just met you.' He puffed on the cigar and blew a cloud of smoke over the bar top. 'Where're my manners?' He held up the cigar, pinched between his thumb and index finger. 'This bother you?'
'I like it,' Sharon said. 'Reminds me of my father and uncles.'
He said, 'Good, we'll get along great. My name's Joey, by the way. Joey Palermo.'
He offered his hand and she shook it. It was warm and dry and wrapped around hers.
She wondered why a grown man would want to be called
Joey. 'I'm Sharon Vanelli,' she said.
'How do you like that? Two Italian kids meeting by chance, or is it fate?' Joey still working the horoscope angle, that being there at the same time was somehow pre-ordained.
Joey said, 'Where'd you grow up at?' He gestured with his right hand, kept it going while he talked, like he couldn't talk without it.
'Bloomfield Hills.'
'So you're rich and beautiful.'
'My dad was in PR at Chrysler.' She almost said Chrysler's, out of habit.
'You in PR?'
'I sell ad space in magazines.' She finished her wine.
'How about another one?'
'Chardonnay,' Sharon said. 'Sonoma-Cutrer.'
Joey raised his hand, got the bartender's attention, pointed to his glass and Sharon's. The bartender nodded and went to work.
'What magazines?'
'Heard of Rolling Stone?'
'No. What's that?' He grinned. ''Course I heard of it. Bought the issue had Jessica Alba on the cover.'
'You like beautiful, tall, thin movie stars, huh?'
'Who doesn't?'
He puffed on the cigar, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.
'Not everyone,' Sharon said and winked.
'She don't got nothing on you,' Joey said, and winked back.
He wasn't going to be mistaken for a p-t laureate, but she appreciated what he was trying to say.
Joey said, 'What do you listen to?'
'On the way here, the new Wilco CD.' She had 3,500 songs on her iPod.
'I've heard of them,' Joey said.
'What do you like?'
'Old stuff, Frank and Bobby.'
Frank and Bobby. Using their first names like they were friends. He wore a blue button-down-collar shirt with the top three buttons undone showing chest hair and a gold chain with the letters 'SJ' hanging from it. 'What's SJ stand for?'
He grinned and put the nub of his cigar in the ashtray. 'Swinging Joey.'
'That's your nickname, huh? What's it mean, you like to dance, like to have a good time?'
'Something like that.'
The bartender put fresh drinks in front of them. Joey picked his up, and clinked her glass and said, 'Salute'
Sharon sipped her wine and said, 'You from Sicily?'
'Huh?'
'Your name's Palermo,' Sharon said. 'Isn't that the capital?'
'I'm from St Clair Shores. Used to go to Tringali's with my mother, she'd buy her tomatoes, or Pete amp; Frank's.'
She said, 'Ever go to Club Leo?'
'Club Leo? We were there like every other weekend, weddings and parties. My dad and the owner were buds. We called him Uncle Phil. You went there too, huh? I wonder if we met before.'
'It's possible,' Sharon said. She pictured the place, an old Knights of Columbus hall, spiffed up, cinderblock on the outside, fake stucco inside. A dance floor and long tables and buffet food, three meats: baked chicken and pork chops and sliced beef that looked like shoe leather. The men drinking wine out of little juice glasses. 'Remember dancing to Louis Prima? I can hear him doing 'Felicia No Capicia' and 'Buona Sera'.' She remembered dancing with her uncles who smelled like cigars and BO.
Joey said, 'When'd you graduate high school?'
'You want to know how old I am? Ask me. I'm thirty-eight.'
'How old are you really?'
Sharon gave him a dirty look. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Hey, take it easy, I thought you were like twenty-nine, thirty tops.'
It was a line but Sharon liked hearing it.
'Ever been married?'
'Once. I'm separated.' In Sharon's mind it was true. That's how she felt.
'Now I live in Harrison Township,' Joey said. 'Place on the lake.'
Sharon could picture it, mammoth house on a postage-stamp lot, nouveau-retro. 'Let me guess,' Sharon said. 'You've got a thirty-foot Wellcraft docked behind it.'
'It's a Century,' Joey said, 'and it's a thirty-two-footer. How'd you know?'
How'd she know? He was a wop from the east side. 'What do you do?'
'Little of this, little of that.' He sipped his drink, looked like vodka on the rocks with a twist. 'Want to go somewhere?'
Sharon was thinking, who was this guy lived in a five-thousand- square-foot house — not that his taste was any good — on Lake St Clair, had nothing but leisure time or so it seemed?
He called her four, five times a day, said, 'How you doing?'
And Sharon would say, 'Same as I was when you called fifteen minutes ago.'
'Baby, I miss you. Tell them you're sick, we'll go to the casino.' Or he'd be at the track or a Tigers day game, he'd say, 'I gotta see you. Take the afternoon off, I'll send a car.'
