Page 60 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
“Boy bye,” Vera said dismissively to Sal as he and Reno laughed. “I’m not thinking about your trifling butt.” Then she looked at Tommy again. “May I smoke, Tommy? It’s a bad habit, I know it is, but I can’t help that now.”
“I told you to stick around because I might need you again,” said Tommy. “Why did you all of a sudden feel the urge to hop a plane and head to Mexico?”
“It wasn’t an urge.”
“What was it then?”
“It was an order,” Vera said. “I was ordered to get out of town and stay out until it’s finished.”
Like every Sinatra and Gabrini, Tommy was taught to ask the less-relevant question first because their person of interest might clam-up on everything else if they asked the main question first. “Until what was finished?” he asked her.
“How should I know what that meant?”
“Bullshit,” said Sal.
“Tommy, I’d tell you if I knew. You know I would.” Then she looked her big eyes at him. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Nobody standing there believed herlittle Miss Innocentact, but Tommy knew her best. Grace could tell that he believed her.
And when Tommy acknowledged that he did believe her, Grace wasn’t surprised. But Reno and Sal were shocked. “Ah Tommy get real!” said Reno. “How you gonna believe any word that comes out of this chick’s mouth? You ain’t thinking right. That’s that bottom head doing the thinking right now.”
Reno didn’t mean to blurt out such vulgarity in front of Grace, whom he loved and respected. “Sorry, Grace,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You meant it,” Grace replied. “But if Tommy believes her,” she added, “then so do I.”
Tommy looked at Grace and then squeezed her hand. He could always count on her to be in his corner no matter how rocky their relationship might be faring, and he appreciated her confidence in him. But Reno and Sal looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe she would fall for that.
Grace knew Reno and Sal thought of her as this weak woman from way back who believed anything Tommy told her, and that she let him get away with murder. But that wasn’t true. She believed in not just the reality of who Tommy was, which wasn’t a perfect person by any means, but in the promise of who he could become. She had faith in his judgment. That was the difference.
But Reno and Sal looked to Mick for help when they saw Mick staring at Grace as if he was sizing her up. “Can you please tell this woman that Tommy’s full of shit right about now, Uncle Mick?” asked Reno.
“There’s no way rational, Backdoor Tommy would believe this dame was ordered to do anything,” said Sal. “But Dapper Tom would believe that shit. Because like Reno said: It’s the wrong head doing the thinking.”
Hammer Reese quietly entered the guest house as Mick decided to give his two cents. Because Mick got Grace. And because he knew she was gravely misunderstood in the family.
But what he said wasn’t what Reno and Sal were expecting. “Grace is unlike any woman I’ve ever known, that’s for damn sure,” said Mick. “She has a quiet strength about her, a kind of gracefulness you just don’t see around much. She’s that rare kind of woman that don’t feel the need to battle her husband about everything. And I think that’s a much harder way to go than to fight it out every time. Because that way, the way of Grace, will always make her seem smaller and herhusband larger. It will always be misinterpreted for weakness.” Mick exhaled. “But she’s not weak. And she’s nobody’s fool. She’s an admirable woman.”
Sal felt sufficiently put in his place. But Reno knew Mick a little better. “So she’s the kind of woman you would want, Uncle Mick?”
“Shit no,” said Mick. “She can’t handle me.”
Sal and Reno laughed. “Roz can handle you though,” said Reno.
“She’s no Roz,” Mick quickly pointed out. “She’s Grace.” Then he looked at Reno and Sal. “And you two fuckers need to stop trying to turn her into who she isn’t and accept who she is. You two don’t believe Tommy’s bullshit that he has faith in this black Barbie sitting up here,” he said, motioning toward Vera Lang, “and neither do I. But did you ever think that maybe Grace has a deeper point of reference than we do?”
Reno and Sal didn’t know what to say to that, and Grace and Tommy were pleased that at least Mick got it. But Mick’s acceptance of Grace inwardly enraged Vera. She looked at the woman, whom she still viewed as her rival, with bile in her eyes. “You believe Tommy,” she said, “because you don’t know our history. He might have told you that he dumped me after he met you. But did he tell you he rekindled our relationship after that dumping?”
Everybody looked at Grace as Grace’s heart dropped. Tommy had said he attempted to reach out to Vera after the fact, but that it didn’t go anywhere.
Tommy spoke up. “That’s not true,” he said in his defense. “There was no rekindling of anything and she knows it.”
But Vera did not back down. “Did you or did you not try to call me more than once after you so-called dumped me?”
“Yes, I did. Three times to be precise. And nothing became of it.”
“Not because of your ass,” said Vera. “It’s because I didn’t answer you. So don’t try to play Mister Righteous with me. Because righteous you are not, and will never be.”
Grace had already shed her tears over that fumble by Tommy. And she wasn’t going to pretend Vera was wrong about it either. “He told me you ghosted him,” Grace said, which surprised Reno and Sal. But it didn’t surprise Mick. Tommy was doing everything in his power to hold onto his woman. And he knew lying to her wasn’t going to cut it.
