Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

She smiled just a little. Her eyes flicked toward the assistant manager, who wore a white shirt with tux tie and black trousers, mannish attire that made her no less a strikingly attractive woman. “Has she moved in on you yet?”

“...What?”

“Your little minx assistant. Has she made her move yet? She’s had her eye on you from the beginning.”

He waved that off. “Don’t be silly. I’m not interested in anybody but you.”

Her mouth twitched a bitter knowing smile. “I wasn’t talking about you, Michael. I was talking about that little predatory bitch.”

He sighed, gave her half a grin. “Let’s just say I haven’t let her make a move.”

“Don’t.” Now she reached her hand across and squeezed his. “I know I... haven’t been very romantic lately...”

They’d made love perhaps half a dozen times since moving in at Paradise Estates, strictly perfunctory.

“No problem,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll make it up to you. Michael, I will make it up to you...”

Several hours later, she did.

Like all the Paradise Estates backyards, theirs was fenced off. Just a little drunk, they swam nude in their pool under a swatch of blue velvet flung across the sky, scattered with jewels, held together by a big polished pearl button. He dogpaddled after her and chased her and cornered her and kissed her, sometimes on the mouth. They crawled out, and without drying off lay on a big beach towel on the Bermuda grass and necked and petted like teenagers.

He sat on the edge of the towel, heel of his hand wedged against the cloth and ground beneath, and he gazed down at his still-lovely wife, with her slender fine body pearled with water, the breasts full firm handfuls, the legs sleek and long and soon to be wrapped around him.

“I love you, Patsy Ann O’Hara,” he said.

As she lay on her back, her blonde hair splayed against the towel, her pale flesh washed ivory in the moonlight, she held her arms open, her legs, too, and her eyes were wide, her lips parted, in an expression perched at the brink of smiling, or perhaps crying.

“I love you, too, Michael Satariano,” she said.

He lowered himself into her embrace, and indeed those legs locked around him as he entered her, and he kissed her mouth and her neck and her breasts, and she laughed and sobbed and held on to him so tight, it was as if she were trying to meld herself with him, disappear into him.

He came harder than he had in many months, perhaps years, and her cries of pleasure may well have alarmed the neighbors. They lay together, laughing quietly, stroking each other’s faces, and kissed a while.

“Everything but the fireworks,” he said.

“Huh?”

He played with a lock of blonde hair. “In the moonlight, you remind me of that first night, after I got back from service?... We were in your father’s Buick, backseat, parked by that cornfield...”

“Fourth of July!”

“Yes, and we could see the fireworks.”

“Oh, Michael...” She smiled at him, and her look was so loving, she broke his heart even while warming it. “... I saw the fireworks. Didn’t you?”

The coolness of the night got to them after a while — Arizona could get damn cold after dark — and they padded into the kitchen. She got robes for both of them — after all, Anna was just across the street at Cindy’s — and they sat and had decaf.

He was trying to find the words for something when she said, “What, Michael? What is it?”

“Would you... please think about starting to go to mass again? And getting involved with a church?”

Her face fell. “Oh, Michael.”

He leaned forward, patted her hand. “Honey, it would be so good for you.”

She smirked. “You mean, keep me busy?”

“Is that bad? It’s not busywork, it’s... meaningful.”

She studied him; she was almost staring. “Don’t tell me... Oh, Michael, don’t tell me you still believe .”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes were huge. “You believe in God ? After all this, you really still believe in God , and the fucking Catholic Church, and all that pomp and circumstance?”

He shrugged; oddly, he felt embarrassed. “Tradition isn’t a bad thing. It gives things an order. Puts a framework on.”

She laughed humorlessly. “Then you don’t t believe. It’s just... social. Like a country club without the golf. A nice thing for a family to do. A way to expose your kids to a moral outlook on life, and give them some... some structure.”

He was shaking his head. “You’re wrong, darling. I do believe there’s something out there, something bigger than us, a father who loves us and understands us. And forgives us.”

She arched an eyebrow. “If so, He hasn’t exactly been breaking His hump doing anything for either the Satarianos or the Smiths.”

“Pat...”

She sighed, then leaned forward, and her smile was not unkind. “Michael, if it makes you feel better to believe this ridiculous superstitious nonsense, go right ahead. Just don’t ask me to go along with you.”

“Then you have lost your faith?”

She reared back. “Are you for real? Whatever ‘faith’ I had died when we got that telegram about Mike! Jesus, Michael — look at our life! Look at your life! Your mother and brother, shot down like animals. Your father dead on a kitchen floor. These gangsters you’ve worked for, for so many goddamn years, they’re ankle deep in blood... knee deep!”

He cradled his coffee cup in both hands, couldn’t look at her. “None of it’s God’s fault.”

“Whose fault is it, then? Ours? ”

“Yes.”

“Oh, because we’re born sinners? Give me a break...”

“My father chose his path. I chose mine.”

She grunted. “Revenge?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do it any differently?”

“What?”

She shrugged. “You wanted to kill the men who killed your father. Just like your father wanted to kill the men who killed your mother and Peter. Would you do it any differently today than thirty years ago?”

“...I don’t know.”

She sipped her decaf, thought for a moment, then said, “You told me once that you thought it was sad that your father felt he could commit murder, then walk into a confessional, fess up, get forgiven, and walk back out and commit murder again.”

“I remember.”

“Is that how you see it?”

“I... I don’t know how I see it. I... I haven’t had to see it, look at it, for a long, long time. We’ve had a good life, Patsy Ann, for a lot of years now. We had two great kids.”

“Have two great kids.”

“Have two great kids. All I’ve been doing over the years is trying to keep my head down and provide for us. And all I’ve been doing these past couple months is trying to keep my feet under me.”

“Me, too. Me, too.”

“But I don’t think I could do that, if I didn’t think that... that there was something out there, bigger than this, better than us. A heavenly father. Forgiveness.”

She shook her head, smiled distantly, but her eyes were locked on to him. “You really do still believe.”

“I guess so.” His eyebrows went up. “But I never thought you’d think less of me for it.”

Her expression dissolved into concern, and she reached both hands out and took one of his. “Oh, I don’t , darling. Really I don’t. I think it’s... sweet. Naive. Kind of cute.”

“Cute?”

She shrugged. “Or maybe I envy you. Because if I believed what you believe, I could handle the days better. And the nights.” She sipped the decaf again. “Maybe even... face the thought that I may never see Mike again.”