Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

“That’s a nice painting,” she said. She pointed to the Madonna in the small pine frame over his bed. The painting that had come with the room was a huge thing with an Indian on a white horse, slumped in the saddle, watching the sun set. “Did you paint it?”

“What? No.”

“Do you know the artist?”

“It’s just a painting, okay?”

“I had a long time to look at it. That model, she has no vanity. It’s a good piece.”

“A good piece?”

“I studied art.” She looked down. Her toenail polish was chipped. “A long time ago.”

“It is a good piece,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, grabbing her purse.

“Okay,” he said, walking her to the door.

She pulled out a cigarette. He reached in his pocket. “Shit,” he said. “I lost my lighter.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, tucking the cigarette behind his ear.

“Not really,” he said. He gave her back the cigarette. “Not my brand, honey.”

She leaned toward him. It had all the makings of a peck on the cheek, but something else Fredo had learned about these girls on the make in the west, a lot of things at three in the morning that have the look of something that would make sense by the rules of three in the afternoon turn into things the men asleep in their beds on Long Island would never believe. Her lips parted. His tongue obeyed, driving into her little wet mouth, sliding his hands through her coarse platinum hair. A tiny gasp came out of her that seemed to startle them both.

They looked into each other’s eyes. Hers grew wide, as if she’d just found an earring she’d lost. She was right, she wasn’t a pro. They don’t look at you like that.

“My life,” she said, “it is so fucking complicated.”

“Everybody thinks that,” Fredo said. “Probably you’re right, though. About you.”

This Rita had a crooked grin.

“Oh?” she said. “And what about you, eh?”

“I can’t complain,” he said. “Though I still do. I guess I got it all under control, though.”

“You think so?” With her index finger she touched his bare rib cage and did a little screwdriver thing.

They kissed again. Her mouth was sour from all that champagne, but he stayed with it.

“Fray-die Cor-le-o-ne,” she said.

If this hadn’t been three in the morning, it would have occurred to him right away that it was stupid to run the risk that someday this girl would blab about how she was bare-ass naked in front of Fredo Corleone and he paid her two grand not to fuck her. Why was he in any hurry to get upstairs? Anything worth being there for was over. “At your service,” he said.

“You dirty rat,” she said. She said it weird.

“Say what?”

“Nothing,” she said. She sighed heavily and reached for the doorknob. “See you in the funny papers, okay?”

Oh, right. She’d been doing an impression of some movie gangster. He put his hand on her hand. “Stay,” he said.

She screwed up that funny lopsided mouth. “I don’t know,” she said. “Will you take your money back?”

“I never paid you for that,” he said. “I paid you to give Johnny Fontane nightmares.”

She seemed deep in thought about this. “So I could just give him his money back, yes?”

Fredo smiled. “Perfect,” he said. “Tell him, you know, the thing I paid you to tell him. You want me to write it down or you got it?”

“Hands down,” she said. “Best I ever had. Got it.”

“And then tell him to take his money back,” he said, “it was that good.”

“I’m not sure about this,” she said. “Maybe-tomorrow? We could start over. A date or something?”

“Today’s tomorrow, baby.”

She still looked deep in thought. She put her finger in her mouth and sucked on it and ran it slowly down Fredo’s bare chest from his neck to his belt buckle. She kept her hand there.

“I love sex.” She said it like an admission of defeat. Her voice was small, too, not the husky voices people always talk about with French girls. She was still slurring her words. “It’s bad, you know, but like a man I love it.”

For a moment, the line -like a man I love it- went through Fredo like an electric shock. Though of course she didn’t mean it the way, for a split second, he was afraid she did. Then he snapped out of it and grabbed onto those little tits with both hands.

She moaned, but now she did sound like a pro. Trying too hard. It couldn’t feel that good, her tits.

They moved to the bed, and she undid his belt and yanked at his pants and his underwear. Fredo fell back on the bed. She stood over him and reached back to unzip her dress.

“Don’t,” he said.

She turned around for him to do it.

“Keep it on,” he said. “It’s dynamite.”

She shrugged and sat down beside him on the bed. They kissed for a while and she put her hand on his cock. He could have blamed it on all the drinking he’d done today-this morning and who knows how much he had waiting at the Detroit airport, though nothing since then. And also how tired he was, the jet lag. He didn’t, didn’t, didn’t want to think about the other thing. That never happened. And anyway he’d knocked up better showgirls than this here, in his sleep. Now that he was thinking about it, of course, he was doomed. So, okay, don’t think about my cock, he thought. He thought about her, kissing her and grabbing her tits and how great it would be to fuck her with that shiny dress on, which could happen in like ten seconds if he could just stop thinking about all the things he was thinking about. If he could just stop thinking at all. He really needed to go easier on the booze.

She dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth so fast he couldn’t say no. A terrible shiver went through him. “No,” he said, tugging her up to him by her armpits.

She looked hurt.

“I don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t be sore, okay? Come on and kiss me.”

She obeyed. He did keep her hand on him and tugged her flowered Sears underpants down and did the same for her. They kissed some more.

“How about you get on your knees?”

She sighed. She looked like she was losing her patience. She looked like a girl at work.

“ No, ” he said. “Like I said.” Then he tried to sound more tender. It wasn’t anything she’d done wrong. She seemed like a good egg who’d been willing to fuck him for nothing, probably because she’d heard rumors he was a dangerous gangster, but also because he’d been nice to her when he maybe didn’t have to. He positioned her on her knees and hiked up her red dress and grabbed himself and with the other hand groped for her cunt. She reached back to help him. Something about the vulnerability of that gesture made him go rock hard in her hand, and he was in, and he was going for it from thrust number one. He had to act and not think. He grabbed onto her hips, curling his fingers in by the bones. He told her to beg him for it. She started chanting about how badly she wanted it and not to stop and then just, over and over, big man, big man, big man, and he closed his eyes and sped up, as fast as he had the strength to go.

His body tensed and he cried out.

“Pull out,” she said, panting. “Big man. Pull out.” In that squeaky voice. “Big man.”

He didn’t. He ground his hips in a twitchy circle against her muscular dancer’s ass, oozing what little he had left into her. After that, his prick was so sensitive it hurt and he had to pull it out. It would have been sexy, dribbling little wet pearls onto her ass and that red dress. What could be better than that? He couldn’t have said why he didn’t do it.

That’s not true. He knew. He liked knocking them up. He couldn’t have said why.