Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

There was no noise at all. That had to be it, he thought: a new maid. As he walked in and reached for the light, the thought struck him that this was exactly the moment when guys got a slug right between the eyes, when they let down their guard and thought, Ah, fuck it, it’s nothing.

The instant he flicked the switch, the toilet flushed. His heart nearly knocked the meat from his ribs, but before he had a chance to run or duck or even shout “Who’s there?,” out of the open door of the bathroom came a naked woman, platinum blond. She screamed.

“My God, ” she said. “You scared the crap out of me!”

Zee crap. Thick French accent. It sounded real. Fredo closed the hallway door behind him and felt his heart slow down a little. “Do I know you?”

She walked toward him and smiled. Her bush was jet black, though her eyebrows were also blond. “I’ve been waiting for you do you know how long?”

“Seriously, sweetheart. Who are you? What the hell is going on here? Who let you in?”

“Since five o’clock in the afternoon,” she said. She pointed to the champagne bucket next to his bed. “The ice, it finished melting hours ago.” She shrugged, which made her little tits bounce. She had dull red nipples so big around they practically covered the whole business. “I’m sorry, but the bottle, it is empty now, too.”

The accent was real. She was also slurring her words.

“Honey,” he said. “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with, okay?”

“I think I might.” I sink. She jutted one of her hips and stuck out a pouty lower lip. “You’re Fredo Corleone, yes?” Fraid.

“Why don’t you start by telling me who you are?”

She extended her hand and giggled. “My name is Rita. Marguerite. But”-she dipped a naked shoulder, shy now-“I use Rita now.”

Fredo didn’t shake her hand. “Hello, Rita. The reason I shouldn’t have you thrown in jail for breaking and entering is what?”

“It’s not enough that a naked woman is waiting in your room to make love to you, huh?”

“I’m losing my patience with you, doll.”

“Ah!” She threw back her head, exasperated. “You are no fun. Johnny Fontane sent me, all right? I am”-she laughed, as if at a rueful private joke-“I am a present for you, no? Johnny said, you know, that I was to be naked and in your bed, waiting.” She blushed. “But a girl, she drinks the champagne, she’s going to have to tee-tee.”

Tee-tee? “That was real nice of Mr. Fontane, but it’s awful late, you’re awful drunk, and I’m awful tired, on top of which I still got one more thing to do tonight. This morning. Whatever. You should go, hon. If you need a cab or something, I got it.”

She nodded, turned around, and went to get her clothes, which she’d folded so neatly on the nightstand it broke his heart. She had nice muscular legs. First he’d noticed it.

He went into his closet to grab his own change of clothes. When he came back the only thing she’d managed to put on was a flowery cotton bra. He’d never understand that. You’d think they’d always cover up their snatch first, since that’s usually what came off last, but leave a woman alone to get dressed, and most of them start with the bra. She had her head in her hands, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, crying.

Drunk broads, he thought, shaking his head.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Sorry, nothin’,” Fredo said. “Look, it’s not any sort of, I don’t know-” He put his hand on her cheek. She looked up at him. Real tears, and she was fighting them. She looked mad at herself. “You’re a beautiful girl, okay? It’s just that it’s late, and I got someplace to be. It’s business. I mean, I guess if you really want to wait here, I-”

She shook her head. “You do not understand.” She wiped her face with her underpants. They matched the bra. He caught a glimpse of the label: Sears. “I don’t do this. I mean-” She rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling. “I mean, I do this, just not-” She let out a deep breath. “I’m a dancer, okay? I’m in a show, now, a tasteful one, too. Not even topless. This was supposed to be-a lark. That’s the word, yes? A dare I made to myself. I’m not a-”

Fredo got her a handkerchief. He’d been with a lot of broads since he’d moved to Las Vegas, and the one thing he’d learned about their crying is that it was always better to shut up and give them a nice handkerchief than to tell them everything would be okay.

He sat down next to her. He needed to get going. He ran his hand over her back. The little bit of her round ass he could see had skin tighter and smoother than most women, even really young ones, managed to have on their faces. Got to hand it to dancers, their bottom halves were something else. Finally, he just couldn’t take any more time for this. Johnny was just trying to be a good guy, but it was probably true he’d done her first and turned her head all around and gotten her to agree to do something that she wouldn’t have done in a million years back in whatever village in France she came from. “I got an idea,” he said.

She looked up at him. It looked like she’d gotten the tears under control.

“How much did Johnny pay you to come up here?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Wait right here.”

Fredo went into the den, pulled back the hinged oil painting replica of the Mona Lisa, opened his safe, and got out two thousand-dollar bills. She’d probably never seen one of these before in her life, much less two. The government had hardly bothered to design it. The back just said ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. And Cleveland on the front? What the fuck had Cleveland ever done? He folded the bills in half, came back out, and pressed them into her hand.

“Keep the thousand you already got,” he said, “and keep these, too. You don’t gotta feel bad you’re a whore, right, because how can you be a whore if we don’t, you know?”

“Fuck?” she said.

There was a hopeful tone in her voice that confused Fredo, as if fucking would cheer her up or something. He’d been trying not to even say fuck, since she was all bent out of shape about maybe being a fucking hooker. “Sure,” he said. “If we don’t fuck. Just one catch.”

She nodded, taking the money and slipping it into a pocket in the red dress beside her.

“All you have to do is go back to Johnny and, when he asks you how it was”-and he would, Fredo knew, that was just how Johnny was-“you got to promise to tell him”-Fredo paused to wink and flash her a grin-“that I was hands down the best you ever had.”

“Hands down,” she repeated, slipping on her underpants now. She seemed sad about it. “All right.”

“Attagirl,” he said.

The phone rang. It was Figaro, which is what he’d been calling the new bodyguard, whose name it embarrassed him not to be able to keep straight. Yes, Fredo said. He was fine.

As he watched her get dressed, he took off his shoes and socks and shirt.

He’d be up in no time, he said. Figaro said there were still guys up there. Fredo said that was good. Was Michael still there? He wasn’t. “Too bad.” Relieved, Fredo hung up.

He had stopped wearing undershirts a long time ago, after that one movie. After that, a guy wears an undershirt and these modern girls think he’s just off the boat. Only after he was standing there bare-chested in just his pants did it occur to him that if he was half the gentleman he was pretending to be, he’d either have waited for her to go or else himself gone into another room. Her dress was red satin. Somehow, with it on, seeing her like that and knowing about the cheap underwear underneath, he felt differently about her. He felt something.