The Loyalty Test

It's the night my wife of three months realizes what my work is -- the naked truth.

                                                 [Rough Draft]
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Patti, my twenty-two-year-old wife of three months, entered the room, and she stopped, turned her upper body halfway, and looked around. Then, with a graceful wave of her right hand, she swooshed her hair, an untamed copper-toned fire across the desert aside to reveal her eyes. Her luxurious, button eyes: a couverture of melted chocolate that promised both depth and complexity. When she looked at me, she had a soothing gaze that caught the light with a glossy sheen. Tonight, Patti was adorned in a sleeveless, white, chiffon maxi dress, a flowing pillar of fog that fluttered with every graceful movement. It was accented flawlessly with lava-red accessories.
                   Again, I fell in love with her for the first time, and everything about her is a mystery.
                   She mumbled something indistinguishable and sat down at my table.
                   She leaned forward, “Bob, isn’t that a lot (of wine)?” She repeated.
                   “Nope! This is only my second glass.” I sipped my glass, “See, it’s not even half full!”
                   She raised her eyebrows in disbelief and smirked, “Not quite! Huh!”
                   I barked, “Stop naggin’!
                   In a calmer tone, “Relax toots!,” I said, “we’re among friends.”
                   Clang! Smash!
                   Tony, one of the male servers dropped a serving tray and a tall-stemmed wineglass. Because it shattered and made a lot of noise, everybody turned to look; they anticipated a quarreling couple. Then one of them ended the argument by throwing the now-shattered wineglass before storming out.
                   “Hey Patti, see that server?”
                   “Yea, what about him?”
                   “He has an old half-inch scar under his left eye. Check him out the next time he walks past. Ask me how he got it. Go ahead, ask!”
                   “Ok already,” then she propped her head up on her left hand, “how did he get the scar?”
                   “Well, I heard that about twelve years ago this one mobster named Snitch flung a knife right at him. I mean, right here in the restaurant because he was supposed to bring four drinks to the table, but he only brought three. He told Snitch he didn’t see him there and thought there were only three. Then Snitch, flung the knife and caught him right below the left eye. Snitch said to him that now I can believe you didn’t see me you lying motherfucker!”
                   “That pretty damn mean.” Patti stated, “if it’s actually true.”
                   She sat back and looked very relaxed.
                   “Hey kid, what ya do for an encore!” Yelled a man who goes by the name Knuckles.
                   Patti leaned forward and whispered, “Wow! He’s scary lookin’! Do you know him?”
                   “Actually, I do! In fact, I know him for a very long time, and I would trust that man with my life.”
                   She raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes. “You people are all the same. I can’t tell you how many guys say that about old buddies from twenty years ago.
Please!” She said in a drawn-out way to emphasize her disbelief.
                   She was pissing me off, I mean it’s almost like she’s itching for an argument.
                   “Go ahead, be a bitch all night – you’re slowly spoiling the mood, so you know. Again, ask me how I know him.” I said.
                   “How do you know him?” She asked, in a sarcastically boring and drawn out tone.
                   I sipped my wine, then sat back and crossed my arms. It was that defiant body posture. “Well, now I’m going back a few years. I think it was the first time I got pinched. I was living in Jersey, the old neighborhood. Most of us, back then, only had a few ways to turn a buck and survive. I stole car parts that were resold; we made pennies on the dollar. But, I’ll bet you the cars we saw daily bought their parts from the very garages and junk-yards we sold to —guaranteed Sometimes, we hit the jackpot when we hoofed a whole car that was worth real money.”
                   “Actually, that is how it is for all of us. Not everyone who has it rough becomes a thief or a neighborhood hood, so you know.” Patti interrupted.
                   She didn’t get it! Some of us had such a bad home life and a piss-poor relationship with our parents that the only ones we had left were those hoods on the streets –they became my family. Hell, by the time I was twelve-years-old I was drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. It was only a natural next step for me to become a thief to pay for those things. That’s something she couldn’t understand coming from the kind of family she obviously did. Maybe, the very qualities in her that attracted me could also become a problem – I hope not!
                   “Anyhow as I was saying, it was the summer that I was fourteen, when one of those lucky, jackpot days hit. In broad daylight, a couple of us stole a black Mercedes that was in front of the Regency Hotel. Well, long story short, we were caught. Three of us ended-up in court on an auto theft charge; I was put on probation until I turned eighteen. My lawyer said if my parents had just shown up, he could have worked a deal to get me half the time. My parents refused to go. They told me to let my lawyer clean up the mess. Because I didn’t listen to them, when I stayed out all night and associated with known hoods, this is the kind of stuff that happens. They also said they weren’t getting involved period. I wasn’t going to kiss their ass! Our relationship has fallen so far from perfect that the dragonfly, the symbol of hope, has flown away. One day, I’ll get into all of that, but not today. It’s fair to say, I don’t like going there because there are way to many bad memories for me.”
                   “Oh, well I’m not looking to drag old skeletons out of the closet, Hun. But, I do appreciate you telling me all of this. But, what does this have to do with ‘him?’” She said.
                   “Trust me, it’s all connected. I want to tell you the story of me and him, but you just need to understand how I ended-up working with him. Let’s see, where was I? Oh, because of that ugly mess, Fats--as we called Fat Tony--pulled me off the streets and put me on collections. I was assigned an enforcer: Knuckles, a ten-year professional, though he went by a different name then. Actually, I liked the new arrangement, since I wasn’t hustling for pennies anymore. Collections paid much more, and that’s always a plus in my book. Together we collected on defaulted notes. That’s it – nothing more! Fats was the loan company for people who couldn’t qualify, and we were the collection agency for those who didn’t want to pay – end of story.
                   “A lot of people will say all kinds of negative crap about The Family’s collection tactics, but that’s bullshit. Don’t believe any of them. After all Patti, every last one of them have a gripe, and you’ll never get an unbiased opinion from someone who got caught and forced to make good on a loan they tried to skip-out on. Right?”
                   “I guess,” hesitantly, Patti replied.
                   “Then, look into my eyes. You once told me that you can read a person through their eyes. Do you actually believe these are the eyes of a liar? Do you believe I would sit here and deliberately lie to you?”
                   “No,” while softly touching my left cheek with her right hand, then she slid her hand down off of my chin. “I can’t believe you would ever lie to me. We love each other to much.”
                   I smiled at her and kissed her (in mid-air), then I continued. “Fresh outta the gate, we had to go to Trenton. Some schmuck, bar owner, reneged on his loan – the very loan that put his sorry ass in business. Imagine that,” I said, “one day Fats helped him out and set him up, and a few years later he’s trying to weasel-out on the note. Let’s not forget that nobody forced him to come to Fats, or to accept the note and terms. He made all of those choices – no gun at his head or knife in his back. There were no muscles dragging him in the backroom then working him over until he signed. Capiche? Surely, he had to realize that one day somebody is going to come looking for their money.
                    “By the time we got there, two days before Christmas, the place was all deck the halls and holly and ivy’d to the hull – the whole sha-bang! We walked in the joint just before closing, at 1:30 AM, and the place was empty. He had several jingle bells serving dishes, filled with walnuts (in the shell) and a nutcracker, across the bar. I guess, Knuckles was feeling festive and started cracking a few nuts; meanwhile I spoke to the bar owner endlessly, about his defaulted payment; I went the full five rounds and still no payment. By 2:00 AM Knuckles had enough of his fairy tales and sad songs. Out of nowhere, Knuckles grabbed that schmuck by his left wrist, pulled him half-way over the bar, and as fast as a bolt of lightening takes down a two-hundred-year-old pine tree, he had that nutcracker on the man’s middle knuckle of his forefinger. He held him there with a vein-popping death grip. Knuckles told him to save the stories for under the Christmas tree, if he didn’t pay-up that he, Knuckles, was gonna break a few bones tonight. He reminded that schmuck, that it won’t be a pretty sight! After all of that, he still stuck to his story. Then, all I heard were two sounds! ‘SNAP !’ followed by a ‘Crack!”
                   Patti partially covered her gaping mouth and her eyes widened to the size of planets.
                   “In one full-throttle moment, Knuckles broke the guy’s finger and a nickname was born – it stuck with him ever since – over thirteen years.”
                   “I can’t imagine the severity of pain that man felt,” Patti said, while rubbing her forefinger.
                   “That ain’t the end of it, toots! That schmuck, while he held his hand with an imploded knuckle, wrapped in an apron, cried like a baby. Trust me! I saw it with my own eyes that night. It was right there! That bone was ready to punch right through the skin. One more millimeter and it would have been the whole gory mess: squirting blood all over the bar, a bone hanging out of his hand, and a bar owner screaming bloody murder in the streets. Then, Knuckles told him: ‘In two days we’ll return for that payment. Remember, you have seven more fingers.’ Then, he wished him a Merry Christmas, told him to tell his wife he, Knuckles, said hello, and grabbed one for the road (walnut) before we left.”
                   She said she couldn’t even breathe properly at this point, and that makes her skin crawl.
                   “All the more reason to be afraid of him.” Patti said, then she glanced at Knuckles one more time. “It’s almost like staring at Death.” She whispered. “Is this the kind of work you do for these people? I mean, are these the kind of people you’re proud to work for?”
                   She was far away now. For the first time, she got a hard-core look at the ugly after the curtain goes down. I put a face on who my friends and associates are. A face that made her very uncomfortable. Adding insult to injury by telling her that story of Knuckles, only magnified her fears. It’s obvious that there’s no pulling her back from here. Like every other wife in this room, she’ll have to find her own way to accept it and live with it. What does our future look like now?
                   “Patti, that’s them – it’s not me! It’s just a job! I told you, all I do is collect defaulted loan payments. I’m not breaking any bones, working anyone over, or whackin’ someone over a loan payment. But, let’s also remember that all of these people know they’re behind, they know somebody will come looking for their money one day, and they can’t be to surprised when that somebody is a man like Knuckles.
                   “For my part, I really go out of my way to meet with them, work things out with them, even, in some cases, to get a partial payment. In fact, there have been cases I was able to get Fats to let them skip a payment so they can bring it up to date – this was not that type of case. When I was briefed, they tried repeatedly to work shit out with this schmuck – this was a last ditch effort to get him to pay up. What you need to understand is that this is nothing personal it’s just the family business!
                   “Said the criminal to his wife!” Sarcastically, Patti said. “I was always taught that birds of a feather will always flock together. Some people, might consider people like that to be criminals.” She whispered.
                   She said she really didn’t want any of them to hear her; especially, Death, as she is now calling Knuckles.
                   “People like them, you can say it – mafia! Just so you know the story does have a happy ending to it. Two days later he made that payment without any further problems. Then, he borrowed from some relatives and mortgaged his life for the next thirty-years, but paid that loan off within ninety days from our visit. The best part was the Knuckles and me each got 10% off the top, the rest, like always, got kicked upstairs. That only proves the point that sometimes all they need is a little push. Knuckles called it motivation.” I said. You’re free to think of me and what I do in any way that suits you – as long as you remember your loyalty to me above all else!”
                   Then Patti sipped her Zinfandel, which, like her complexion, looked a lot colder now, excused herself, and went to use the restroom. However, when she returned, she was different.