The Real Thing Read online

  Dante laughs, and despite his anger, it is an unrestrained laugh, a genuine laugh. “You thought you could show up, ask your questions, and go.”

  I relax a little when I see his eyes twinkle. “Yes.”

  He stands taller. “You think you can capture me in thirty minutes?”

  I nod.

  “Impossibile!”

  So vain! At least his eyes aren’t angry with me anymore.

  “Look,” I say, “I’ll ask you maybe five questions, you answer, I go away. End.” What’s Italian for end? Fine?

  He arrests me with those eyes. “Five questions.”

  “Right.”

  “Non importa then. Ciao.” He turns to leave the dock.

  So temperamental! “Dante!”

  He turns.

  “How do I capture you then?”

  Dante stares me down, freezing me in my seat. I stare back as long as I can but have to turn away. I hear more Italian, whispered this time, the phrase “corpo provocante” said twice, and reach blindly to untie the back rope. When I look up, Dante is gone and DJ is once again pulling my boat toward the dock.

  “Am I staying or leaving?” I ask. “That rope is getting tired.”

  “It’s up to you,” DJ says. “If you want an interview, a real interview, not a few questions and a picture, you must do five things.”

  That’s…weird. “Why five?”

  He, too, freezes me with a stare. “He says you ask five questions, you must do five things.”

  Mission impossibile! But I can’t leave without this story. “Okay. It’s fair. What do I have to do?”

  He reaches a hand down to me, and I take it. I step out of the boat while he gathers my laptop case and camera bag. At least DJ has manners. I wonder who taught him. It couldn’t have been his papino.

  “You must go fishing with him in the morning,” he says.

  I narrow my eyes. “You’re kidding. I haven’t been fishing in years.”

  “And Dad takes it seriously, too. He’ll want to leave at four-thirty, an hour before the sun rises.” He nods toward the stairs.

  “Why so early?” I ask.

  “Tradition,” he says, trying to sound like his daddy.

  “Oh.” I walk to the bottom step. “Um, where am I staying?”

  “Dad says you can use the guesthouse.”

  How generous. “Does it have…?”

  DJ rolls his eyes. “It has a full, modern bathroom if you’re worried, with running water and everything.”

  I wasn’t worried. I’m used to roughing it. Some of the hotels I’ve stayed in, you wouldn’t believe.

  Okay, okay, I was worried. I like the great outdoors, I really do. I just do not want to do my business in an outhouse surrounded by those great outdoors and creatures that do not understand American.

  I start up the steps. “What else do I have to do?”

  He trails behind. “After fishing you have to climb Mount Baldy with us and help us prepare breakfast.”

  “That’s two things,” I say.

  “Not to him. The catching, climbing, cleaning, cooking, and eating are all one thing to him.”

  Italians can’t count.

  I reach the top of the stairs and see two paths, one to the main cottage all lit up and glowing like Christmas by the sunset, another, narrower path to what looks like an overgrown shack with a small window facing me. “Back there?” I ask.

  DJ nods. “After that, you must complete a full workout with him.”

  I get a vision of my body jumping off that outcropping and sinking straight to the bottom. “I know he’s kidding now.”

  “My papino does not kid.”

  I get another vision of what the sky must look like from the bottom of a lake, fish swimming around my head—and talking bad about my hair. “I’ll have to swim across and everything like that?”

  “You look like you’re in pretty good shape,” DJ says.

  “Did your dad say that?”

  DJ looks down. “He said a lot of things about you, um, some of which I’m too embarrassed to repeat.”

  I stop on the path and smile at him. “Such as?”

  He looks at my boots. “Most of it was nice. Molto graziosa. He thinks you’re very pretty.”

  My heart thumps. “He said a lot of things down there. What else?”

  He frowned. “He says you’re pericolosa.”

  I repeat the word slowly. “I’m…perilous?”

  “Dangerous.” He steps past me under a pine tree.

  “What’s, um, ‘corpo provocante’ mean?”

  DJ turns slightly. “Um, it sort of means sexy body.”

  My heart thumps again. Dante’s right, of course. I am dangerous, and I do have a sexy body.

  I can’t believe he called me that in front of his son!

  People have told me I have a cute face, that I don’t look my age (thirty-five), that my eyes are penetrating. Below that, though, I have a smoking hot body and booty. I smile. Pericolosa, molto graziosa, and corpo provocante. I am a very dangerous beauty with a sexy body, which may make me a femme fatale to Dante Lattanza.

  “So after this full workout that will probably drown me,” I ask, “what’s next?”

  DJ stops in front of the guesthouse and opens the door, flipping on an interior light. “Then you…” He frowns. “I’ve forgotten the fourth thing. The last thing you’ll do is go waterskiing. After that—”

  “I have never been waterskiing in my life,” I say, rooted in the doorway.

  “Dad will teach you,” DJ says. “He’s a good teacher.”

  I get another vision, and this time Dante’s strong hands hold me in the water…before the boat rips me through the water at a hundred miles an hour, my head the only appendage still attached after—

  “After all that, you’ll get your interview,” DJ says.

  Personality doesn’t pay me enough to do this. “What if I, um, what if I fail?”

  DJ turns away. “Then you’ll know how he felt.” He looks up at me in the shy way that teenaged boys sometimes look at molto graziosa women. It touches me. “I’m sorry. Just…try, okay? Tenere provare, he might say. It means to try it, to keep trying. He says it all the time to me. That’s all he really expects you to do. He doesn’t expect you to succeed.”

  Now that was a challenge. “You’re really protective of your daddy, aren’t you?”

  DJ nods. “He’s my papino, my dad, you know?”

  He flips on a light, and I see a nice guestroom with whitewashed furniture contrasting against dark pine walls. A queen-sized bed sits in a corner, a single lamp on the headboard, next to a huge wardrobe, the bathroom just beyond in the shadows. A massive eight-drawer dresser rests under the only window, a Sony TV on top. A phone on its own stand and a cozy-looking chocolate recliner command the corner closest to the window.

  “Dad built it for my mama,” DJ says. “She never likes coming up here, so he made it as modern as he could.”

  “Why didn’t she like coming up here?” I ask, emphasizing the past tense.

  He counts out on his fingers. “She doesn’t like the bugs, the cold water, the lack of entertainment, the silence, the cold air, Barry’s Bay, did I mention the bugs? Um, the weather, the fish…”

  He’s still talking in the present tense. She still visits? Maybe it’s simply to be with her son. “Your daddy built all this?”

  “Yeah. Red and I helped some.”

  “Who’s Red?”

  DJ smiles. “Red Gregory, Dad’s best friend. You’ll meet him at dinner.” He opens the wardrobe revealing stacks of blue jeans, sweaters, sweatshirts, and several jackets and windbreakers. “Um, Mama always leaves a bunch of what she calls ‘Canada clothes’ up here.”

  Clothes she doesn’t mind getting dirty, I suppose.

  “They might fit you, I don’t know,” DJ says. “Dad said you could wear them.” He points at stacks and stacks of sweatpants and sweatshirts. “You’ll need to dress warmly when we go fishing.”
>
  I check a label on one of the pairs of jeans. Size six? Is she anorexic? If I hold my breath and butter my thighs, I might be able to wear them—for about a minute.

  “Dinner’s at six sharp,” DJ says. “Don’t be late.” He nods once and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

  I haven’t worn a size six since I was in the eighth grade. They look worn enough, though, and if she didn’t dry them in a dryer…

  I pull the blinds and drop out of my size tens. I have a decent figure, but I prefer my clothes to be a little baggy. If I can get into…geez!…these tiny little…hold breath, zip, button…c’mon button!…exhale.

  Whew.

  I walk into the bathroom, standing on the toilet seat to see my butt in the mirror above the pedestal sink. Whoa. You could read a newspaper through these size sixes. I can’t feel my toes.

  I look over at the shower curtain, parting it to see…Damn. Is that a whirlpool tub? It’s a two-seater with candles and potpourri already on the ledges. Maybe Dante’s ex doesn’t visit just to visit, and the two of them come out here to have some ex-sex.

  I hope there’s some Lysol somewhere. It looks clean enough, but I’m not taking any chances.

  The top button of the jeans is cutting off circulation to my legs, so I remove the pants and put mine back on. My toes throb back to life. I take off my flannel shirt and put on an oversized black sweatshirt with a howling wolf on the front.

  I check the time. Five-fifteen.

  Time to prowl.

  Chapter 4

  I’m almost out the door when I remember Shelley. I should check in to tell her that I won’t be back in New York tonight or tomorrow. I get my cell phone from my laptop bag, flipping it open.

  No signal.

  I wave it around the room, even returning to the bathroom to stand on the toilet seat again.

  Nothing.

  I glance again at the tub. Maybe if I stand in there I could…No.

  I settle into the cozy recliner and look at the old-fashioned yellow phone. Hmm. Dante’s number is listed right there below the buttons. I put his number in my cell phone. You know, just in case I need to check some facts with him later.

  I pick up the phone, dialing a zero. I used to have a calling card, but who uses those anymore? After a pleasant chat with an operator who is so excited to place a call “all the way to Manhattan,” I get a hold of Shelley, who had to be minutes from leaving her office.

  “I’m here,” I tell her.

  “Where’s ‘here’?” she asks.

  “Aylen Lake, Canada. I’m in Dante Lattanza’s guesthouse.”

  “Wonderful!” Shelley gushes. “Did you already interview him and he’s letting you stay?”

  I explain to her about my five tasks.

  “Sounds like the seven labors of Hercules to me,” she says. “That’s so…strange. What are Italians doing in Ontario anyway?”

  “I’m black and I’m not in Africa.”

  “True,” Shelley says. “What’s he like?”

  How much do I tell her? Do I tell her anything she doesn’t already know? “He’s almost exactly like you told me. He’s vain. He’s temperamental. He’s proud.” He’s hot, handsome, sexy, and probably still having mad whirlpool sex with his ex.

  “All the things you are, too,” Shelley says.

  “I’m not that vain.” Temperamental, yes. Proud, yes.

  “Look, I need to see this ASAP, Tiana,” Shelley says. “How soon can you send it?”

  Deadlines, schmedlines. The “sexy man” issue won’t hit the stands until late November or early December, and it’s only the beginning of September. With computers these days, you can almost insert a story ten minutes before the printing presses run. “I ought to finish capturing him by midnight tomorrow. I’ll send you some pictures as soon as I can.” Do they have Internet service this far north? Hmm. “I may have to bring them in to the office. You’ll love them. They’re of him working out.”

  “Lots of testosterone, huh?”

  “Yes.” And sweat. And winks. And that cute little squint. “If all goes well, I may have a longer piece for you in December.”

  “Hmm, just before the fight,” she says. “I like it. It might be the last ink Lattanza gets for a while.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’ll give you the skinny for the sexy man issue by Thursday and expand it later for the issue before the fight.”

  “I love to watch him fight, but I wince a lot,” Shelley says.

  That was so…random. A wave of garlic blows through the screen in the window. “Whoa. I gotta go. I think dinner’s almost ready.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me, Tiana?”

  She always thinks there’s “more to the story.” There is, but I don’t have to tell her. I decide to be temperamental. “You know how I feel about these puff pieces, right?”

  “Yes, but we all—”

  “Have to start somewhere,” I say, finishing her favorite line. “I know, Shelley.”

  “I could still have you writing obituaries,” she says.

  I growl. Six months I wrote advance obituaries for the richly famous and the famously rich. It’s about as morbid a writing job as there is. I’m not as superstitious as my predecessor, who once wrote an obit for a rapper who died the next day. “I just like being busy, Shelley. I’m like any boxer who’s been out of the ring for too long. My writing gets rusty if I’m not writing every day.”

  “Do you feel busy now?”

  “Yes. I feel…professional, you know? Like I did at the Times.” I add the last bit to threaten her, though I know she can replace me with a phone call. “They still want me back, you know.”

  I hear Shelley sigh. “Do you really want to go through that grind again, Tiana? All that racing around?”

  “I miss the adventure, the grit.” And the full use of my brain. How hard is it to ask a starlet how big her house is and does she have a vacation home that doesn’t have seven and a half bathrooms gilded in platinum?

  “You’re in Canada, Tiana,” she says, “the adventure capital of North America.”

  Hardly. The only adventure I’ve had so far is watching my boat swivel back and forth at a dock. But tomorrow…tomorrow should be interesting.

  “Hey, before I forget, what do we have on Dante’s ex-wife?” I ask.

  “Dante, huh? You’re on a first-name basis already?”

  I sigh. “Do we have anything on her or not?”

  I hear a series of clicks. “Nope. Nothing in the archives. You, um, trying to replace her, Tiana?”

  “What?”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “What’s not to like? He’s one of the sexiest men alive, right?” This year, anyway. I had a few fantasies about number seven last year, another Italian (go figure!) who had a minor role in a pirate movie and who has since married the princess of Slobobia or something.

  “Just don’t send me a ‘he’s the greatest thing since the toaster’ article, okay?”

  I bite off a curse before it hits my lips. “I never write those kinds of articles, and you know it.”

  “Well, it sounds as if you’re getting involved,” Shelley says. “You’re at his guesthouse, aren’t you?”

  I describe it to her. She particularly likes the sound of the tub.

  “Why would it have two seats if it was only built for her?” she asks. “Can you explain that?”

  I can’t, and I don’t want to. “So she likes to prop up her feet or something, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll bet he still loves her,” Shelley says. “That’s how those Italian men are. They possess their women, even after they break up. You remember Married to the Mob. That woman, wasn’t it Michelle Pfeiffer? That was before her lip implants, of course. Dreadful things, aren’t they? Like two worms wrestling with each other. Anyway—”

  “Dante is not in the Mafia, Shelley,” I interrupt, “and they’ve been divorced going on ten years.”

  “A little possessive your
self, aren’t you?” I know Shelley is smiling. She believes I should already be married and have a teenager by now.

  “Shelley, I’m here to do an interview and that’s it,” I say. “He’s only a job. He’s only a paycheck. He’s a handsome man, but he’s obviously not over his ex. I’m not here to—”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Tiana,” Shelley interrupts. “You’ve always struck me as someone who wants something more. Dante Lattanza is definitely all that and then some. I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you…”

  “If I what?”

  Shelley doesn’t answer.

  “I’ll have the puffer to you in two days,” I say angrily. “Good-bye, Shelley.”

  She thinks she knows me. She thinks she knows what I’m after. She thinks I’m on the prowl.

  I look at the wolf on my shirt, a moon rising just above my left breast.

  Maybe I am.

  And if playing a she-wolf helps me to get a decent story, I will be the best she-wolf I can be.

  Chapter 5

  I slink or skulk or however wolves move from the guesthouse through a canopy of pines to a side door. Opening it, I step into an amazing kitchen, pots hanging on hooks suspended from the ceiling over a massive butcher’s block, top-of-the-line Sub-Zero appliances, a double sink big enough to swallow four turkeys, and…Is that a brick oven? It looks as if it belongs in a pizzeria or a bakery.

  “Nice, isn’t it?”

  I turn and see a tall black cook in maybe his early fifties, with a shiny forehead dominating a head of tight gray and graying curls. He wears the requisite jeans, boots, and a stained chef’s apron over a green sweatshirt. He’s skinny as a rail, sports a few freckles under his huge brown eyes, and has shovels for hands.

  “Hi, I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” he interrupts. “No introductions are necessary, Miss Artis. I’m Red.”

  This is Dante’s best friend, and he’s Dante’s personal cook? “Where’s Dante?”

  “Answering his fan mail,” Red says, rinsing several green and red peppers. “He still gets hundreds of letters, and he answers them all himself.” He cracks open a green pepper with his fingers, removing the seeds. “You like linguini?”