Chapter 1
I met Connie about a year ago. She didn't call herself Connie though, at least not in her trade of entertaining men. I was traveling down from Staten Island, New York, itching to open another restaurant that served fine Italian cuisine.
Business was booming at Balducci's, but I couldn't pass up the prospect of earning more money in Virginia Beach—the Southern resort area was a virtual goldmine. Who knew that when I got down there, I would not only be putting money into a second restaurant, but a woman's thong as well?
As I cruised the interstate, I was remembering that morning I was scheduled to leave, because I had been fucking Sylvia—she was like a cold fish beneath me, and it was the first time I had ever slapped the shit out of my wife.
It wasn't that we weren't attracted to each other, because we both took special pains to look exactly the way we did eight years ago when I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-six—we did everything from exercising to receiving facials together. Sylvia's tummy was still as flat as any teenager's, and women would kill for her ample breasts and rounded ass. Not to mention the onyx hair that cascaded down her back for days.
My Mediterranean looks complemented her own—in the past, she could never keep her hands out of my shoulder-length, brownish hair or snatch herself away from my hazel eyes which had captivated her in the first place. I refused to look like the typical, spiky-haired, young punks on Staten Island.
I had become a successful restaurateur when I made the transition from chef to owner—I took away most of the loyal patrons at the popular venue up the block I had sliced and diced for when those customers realized my cooking was going elsewhere.
Eventually, the place went out of business and the owner, Larry Pantone, went so far as to harass me at my then new establishment and make threatening phone calls to my home. The chaos ended not to long after that when the police escorted him out of Balducci's. I had never liked the greedy asshole anyway.
But getting back to my dry, Saharan dick—I estimated two years of sexual tension, because the warmth in Sylvia's feline eyes disappeared shortly after the birth of Balducci's. She thought she wasn't number one anymore. The arguments had followed and then the short-lived, listless sex. I made the decision to name my second restaurant Venice, the city of my wedding proposal. I thought it would please her, but it didn't. She continued to stifle the intimacy I craved to punish me for my supposed lack of attention.
How many times did I have to convince her that we lived this way because of all my hard work? She didn't have to lift one damned, manicured finger. It was this thought that made me thrust into her with wild abandonment and anger to get some sort of reaction.
Her vaginal muscles contracted and the left corner of her mouth twitched—I knew my wife's body, and there was no question in my mind that she wanted to succumb to my dick but was fighting the urge. My hair fell into my face like a psycho. I wanted to see her face twist in ecstasy, to feel the lock of her legs around my waist while she moaned my name like she used to. Yet, she pursed her lips even tighter, and when she rolled her eyes, I came inside of her from sheer frustration.
"Fuck!" I shouted.
"Wish you could," she muttered, flipping that luscious mane of silk over one shoulder. Her red talons clutched a Marlboro on the nightstand, and she lit it despite the tremors that pulsed through her fingers. She knew that a comment like that one could get her the silent treatment for a week, because that was how I dealt with my short temperament those days. I couldn't revert back to my old ways.
When we first got together, Sylvia discovered the anger management classes I was forced to attend. After watching my drunken father beat the shit out of my mother on countless days and blacken a cashier's eye for saying "hello" to Mom the wrong way, it was no wonder my temper had been maniacal. I guess smashing a guy's Cadillac windshield, after he cut me off, with the bat in my trunk was enough for the judge to say, "You can pay a fine and go to jail, or you can take the classes." Road rage is a bitch.
Nonetheless, Sylvia, a paralegal at the time exiting the same courtroom I was sentenced in, was drawn to my chivalry and witty nature. Or at least that's the lie she told me for fear that if she admitted she simply wanted to fuck me, I would call her a slut.
I told her about my childhood. She didn't run away, like some of my ex-girlfriends, thinking I would turn out like my father. Anyway, I had never laid my hands on a woman. Okay, maybe I had shaken one or two, but I never hit them. Sylvia was a strong woman, a borderline bitch that could handle my temper, and I guess that's what made me fall in love with her.
Of course that morning I didn't really like her, so I ignored her comment and swung my legs over the side of the bed to slip on my cotton briefs. "I'm leaving for two months, and this is how you act?" I asked.
"You shouldn't be leaving at all. Not for two damned months anyway. How did you expect me to react?"
"I don't know how many times I have to explain to you that this isn't a vacation. It's a business trip that could benefit the both of us."
"Well, I'm tired of sitting in this house all day. I want to go back to work, Chris—I don't know why I let you talk me into leaving." I sighed impatiently.
"I thought we agreed that you didn't have to work anymore after my business took off."
"No, you agreed. And I'm really getting sick and tired of you trying to control me all of a sudden."
"Control you? Is it such a big deal that I don't think my wife should have to work? You should be grateful."
"Well, I can make my own decisions, thank you. I'm not your mother." My eyes turned into dangerous little slits, and I moved so close to her that I could hear her heart beating.
"What did you say?"
"I said I'm not—" Before the last words could escape from her mouth, I knocked the spit out of it. I drew back my burning hand, and Sylvia looked at me in disbelief with a red handprint on her cheek. Even though she had pissed me off, I couldn't believe I had slapped her. I was instantly ashamed, and I turned away from her so that I could go to the bathroom where I wouldn't have to face her.
All of a sudden, a sensational pain went up my spine. I spun around, and Sylvia was naked on her hands and knees, panting like a dog in heat on our bed.
The fury burned in her face, mirroring the cigarette that was still dangling from her pouty lips. I glanced towards the bathroom door and noticed the small, heart-shaped, fifteen-hundred dollar vase I had bought her on our third anniversary still rolling across the carpet. Sylvia gnashed her teeth, a sign that she was ready for war.
"The next time you decide to put your motherfucking hands on me, you had better learn how to sleep with both eyes open!" She stubbed out the flimsy cigarette in her crystal ashtray. Thank God, she didn't hurl that at me. "You think I don't get a little upset that the only time you decide to fuck me is right before you make your business trips?" She had every right to be angry with me after what I had done, but I, too, was angry with her for disrespecting my dead mother the way she had. I could see in her eyes that she might try to hit me again, but we were both seething and probably would have went at it the second time around. I walked away instead.
