Free Paradise Man by Jerome Charyn Page A

the title of assistant manager. Muriel’s was a haven for La Familia, for mob lawyers like Infante, for police chiefs with a little cash in their pockets, and Gottlieb was Holden’s highest-paid rat.
    “How can I get to Huevo?”
    “You can’t,” Gottlieb said.
    “He sent me a greeting card, a goddamn claw, and I still don’t understand. The Parrot wasn’t his people.”
    “I warned you, Holden. The Bandidos are after your life.”
    “Well, can’t we have a meet?”
    “No.”
    “Gottlieb, it’s not nice to say no. Get me to Big Balls. I don’t care who you bribe. Sell your ass.”
    “What if I sold yours?” Gottlieb said.
    “If that’s the road to Big Balls, I’ll take it. Come on, you can come up with one of his witches.”
    “Holden, you don’t fuck with a man’s religious beliefs.”
    “I’ll cross you off the payroll.”
    “You wouldn’t dare. Holden, you taught me too much. I could hire a bumper to crack your neck.”
    “And what if I cracked your neck, kid?”
    “You’d miss me, Holden. In your heart of hearts you’d really love to make my ass.”
    “I have no heart of hearts, kid.”
    And Holden marched upstairs to Melissa. But Melissa wasn’t in the north room. Holden wondered if he could march back down and offer his regrets, declare that he wasn’t quite in the mood to lie face to face with a debutante, but Edmundo might laugh at him and Holden could lose his standing in the house. Where would he go when he wanted to close his eyes and sleep with a long-stemmed beauty for half an hour? So he sat on the bed with its decorated quilt in a room that could have been designed by Grandma Moses, because Muriel wouldn’t tolerate whips and boots, ceiling mirrors and garter belts on a doorknob. I’ll marry Melissa, Holden decided, make love to her in a mask.
    A girl came into the room. She seemed much too throaty for a debutante. Her legs weren’t long enough. “Melissa?” But she was more like a girl out of a convent than a finishing school. She was dressed in black and Holden felt numb behind the ears because he was staring at Red Mike’s little sister, Carmen Pinzolo, with a hammer in her hand. “I’ll kill you,” she said, and he didn’t move. The hammer went higher and higher in the air. “This is for Eddie and Rat and Red Mike.” Holden, the ice man, loved that throaty girl, loved her anger, her marvelous black hair. She was nine or ten when he’d married Andrushka. She’d scribbled love letters to him when she was fifteen.
    “Carmen, I had to—”
    The hammer landed. Holden heard a roar inside his head. His brains were sticky. He floated in a stupor, saw his bloody skull in the room’s only mirror and socked the hammer out of her hand, said, “I love you, Carmen,” and slapped her in the face.
    Blood trickled from her nose.
    “I’ll kill you, Holden. Today, tomorrow, I don’t care.”
    “Baby, it wasn’t my fault.”
    “I’m not your baby now,” she said, leaping at the hammer on the floor. Holden kicked the hammer across the room, seized her by the neck, and brought her out of the room with blood in his eye.
    Carmen twisted and tried to bite his face, but Holden shoved her head into the stairs and walked her down one step at a time. He got her into the parlor with a bumper’s crazy will.
    “Hey, Muriel” he said, “does this look like Melissa?” before he crashed into the card table and scattered piles of blue and red chips.

8
    H E WAS IN AVIGNON with his dad. Holden Sr. wore military boots and a sergeant’s coat. They climbed up the steps of the Palais des Papes. The palace was white, and Holden didn’t see any popes. But he saw a bridge that stopped in the middle of the water, and he wondered what a bridge like that could bring. His dad was the handsomest guy in town. Holden Sr. had different-colored bars and stripes across his chest and the palace walls were reflected in the wax of his boots. Holden wouldn’t talk French with his dad. He was an