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There comes a point when a body gets cold and hungry enough to stop existing in any real physical sense, at least for the person who is inhabiting it. Tom has read about monks who do this on purpose. It's like getting high without drugs. The only drawback is that death is about ten steps down the road.
It happened to him with relative frequency during the winter he spent alone in the city, ducking into churches only long enough to avoid being claimed by the state. He wasn't sure what he was afraid of; part of him thought that if he weren't collected and labeled an orphan his mother might come back. Later, of course, he realized that he'd been waiting for Sonny to show up and save him.
He was in the Bronx, a few days away from hunger-induced hallucinations. He'd had corn bread at St. Peter's on Sunday afternoon, and had stolen a peppermint from a shop down the street the day before. He still had half the peppermint in the pocket of his coat, which had once belonged to his father, or that was what his mother told him, anyway. It was much too big but served as a passable tent that he could hide in at night.
There was a regular pickup game of stickball that took place in an empty lot across the street from one of the less reliable churches Tom visited. When the doors were locked, he would wander across the street and watch the boys play. He'd never been to a real ball game, but during his mother's short stint as a waitress in Queens he had listened to games on the radio in the back with the line cooks when they were in the mood to let him hang around. He sat on a crumbled brick wall and tried to follow the stickball game, which was progressing slowly because of disagreements about the rules. One boy, who was taller than the others and freckled across his nose, shoved everybody else until they fell in line. Toward the end of the game, the chubby kid playing catcher made some comment under his breath as a small boy with black hair stepped up to bat, and the tall boy went nuts. He knocked the catcher over, scrambled on top of him and punched him three times in the side of the head, then just stood up as if he was suddenly bored by the whole thing. The catcher ran off crying, and the other players dispersed nervously. Tom watched the tall boy sling an arm around the smaller one, suddenly soft and friendly, reassuring him. Tom was an only child, but he understood immediately that the two were brothers.
"Did you see that?" the tall boy shouted, and it took Tom a moment to realize he was talking to him.
"Yeah, sure." Tom shifted so that he could run away quickly if he had to. He didn't want to be the next victim.
"Nobody talks to my brother like that," the boy said. He walked over to Tom, dragging his little brother with him. The younger kid had a vacant, annoyed sort of look, as if he was ready to go home.
"Why didn't you play?" the tall boy asked Tom.
"I don't know. Maybe next time I will."
"Yeah. You should. You live around here?"
"No."
"You live in the city?"
"I guess. I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
Tom wasn't sure why he trusted Sonny with the truth, except that he wanted to be looked after like that, wanted punches thrown on his behalf. It had been a long time since somebody stood up for him or talked to him or even noticed he was alive.
"My mother died," Tom said. "They took the apartment back." He wanted to curse himself for saying something so childish, as if the people from the bank had physically removed the dump they'd been renting on the Lower East Side.
Sonny stared at him for a minute, his face serious and stern.
"What about your pop?"
"He died a long time ago." Tom wasn't sure that this was true. Anyway, he was gone.
"So how old are you?" Sonny asked.
"Ten." He'd actually turned eleven two months ago, but he'd lost track of the date.
"I'm eleven." Sonny yanked Tom down off the wall as if this settled things. "You look a little skinny, pal. Maybe you'd better come home with us."
They made their introductions on the way. Tom thought about running off; he was afraid Sonny's parents would just turn him over to one of the church orphanages and wash their hands of him. He asked Sonny and Michael not to tell about his dead parents. Sonny waved his hand through the air as if he was being ridiculous. He had two dirty fingerprints on his cheek from a brief moment when the catcher had tried to fight back.
"Don't worry," Sonny said. "My parents love children."
They came to a fancy brownstone in one of the Italian neighborhoods, and Sonny took Tom and Michael around back, through a wooden gate. He knocked three times on a door that was opened by a fat man wearing suspenders. Tom figured they must be rich if they locked their door in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, or maybe the neighborhood was bad. The inside of the house was nice enough, warm and clean with thick carpets over the wooden floors. Sonny pushed Tom into a chair at the kitchen table and Michael stood near the icebox, staring at him.
"Take off your coat," Sonny said, and then he pulled if off for him when Tom hesitated. Tom was embarrassed by the shabbiness of his clothes. He'd worn holes in the elbows of his shirt and his pants were hanging loose around his hips. Sonny whistled in amazement.
"Maybe you should wash up before you eat," he said. "Mike, go get Connie."
"What for?" Michael whined. He looked scared. Tom was beginning to get nervous himself. The fat man with the suspenders reappeared, carrying a meatball sandwich. The smell of it, tomatoes and melted cheese, made Tom's mouth water.
"Who's your friend?" the man asked Sonny.
"He's Tom," Sonny said, as if that explained everything. "You seen Connie around?"
"Sure I have, she's upstairs. You fellas better keep it down, your pop's having a meeting."
"Yeah, yeah."
Sonny pulled Tom upstairs by the hand, and Tom began to wonder if he was hallucinating after all. He kept waiting for a bite of cold to pierce through his dream, or a spray of snow from a passing car, but it never came. Connie and Sonny stripped him and dumped him into a bath like he was a doll. Michael lingered in the doorway and sucked his thumb. Tom had never met such people, kind but strange, a little frantic, and he began to wonder where their own mother was when she appeared in the bathroom doorway and gasped out some words in a language Tom didn't know.
"Geez, Ma, it's okay!" Sonny said, his soapy hands in Tom's hair. Connie dropped the bar of soap she'd been rubbing across his back and jumped away as if she'd been caught with cigarettes. Michael clung to his mother's leg.
"His parents died!" Connie said.
"He's starving, Ma, look at him." Sonny sat back on his knees like he was going to beg. Tom's cheeks were hot, and he kept his eyes on the foamy bathwater, humiliated. If they threw him out with wet hair and no coat he'd be as good as dead.
Sonny's mother said something else in what Tom guessed was Italian, and Connie led her out of the room. Michael trailed them, and Sonny shut the door when they were gone. He sighed and put his hand on top of Tom's head, dunked him underwater and let him up like he was baptizing him.
"There," he said. "The towel's on the sink. I'll go get you some clothes."
"What about your mother?" Tom asked, his voice shaking.
"Forget about it." Sonny grinned, his hand on the doorknob. "She'll love you."
*
That evening, dressed in Sonny's clothes, Tom was introduced properly to Sonny's parents and his brother Fredo, who had been held behind in school to write lines after failing to complete his class work. This seemed to be a larger issue among the family than the appearance of Tom, who tried to be as polite as possible in the presence of so much hot food. Sonny refilled Tom's plate while his parents chastised Fredo in Italian, and Tom kept eating even after he felt sated and sick, because Sonny grinned like he'd told a great joke every time he accepted more food.
"C'mon, Freddy, even Sonny ain't flunking out yet," said the fat man in suspenders, who was called Clemenza even by the children.
"He had to do lines last week for punching Vick Delluci," Connie said.
"Shut up!" Sonny barked, and that earned him a harsh rebuttal from both parents. Tom was glad that they weren't speaking English. It gave the dinner an appropriately surreal feeling. He was afraid to look at Mr. Corleone, who had the quietly exhausted presence of a king, though Sonny had told Tom he was only an olive oil distributor. Tom waited for the family to turn their attention to him, perhaps to give him the chance to win them over in order to secure his place at more dinners in the future, but no one put him on the spot. Mr. Corleone hardly even looked at him until after dinner, when Tom was headed upstairs with Sonny.
"Wait a moment, son," he said. Tom almost expected to be called into the dark study that Mr. Corleone and four other men had emerged from just before dinnertime, but when he came to the bottom of the stairs Sonny's father only knelt down and studied Tom's face, frowning slightly. Sonny stood behind them, two steps up, and Tom felt connected to him already, could feel the strain of his sympathy.
"My wife tells me that you are an orphan," Mr. Corleone said. "That you have nowhere to go. This is true?"
"Yes." Tom looked down at his battered shoes, ashamed. Mr. Corleone put a finger under his chin and tipped it up again.
"I am also an orphan," he said, and Tom was filled with hope. He knew that he shouldn't trust strangers so easily, but Sonny and his father both had honest eyes. It was not necessarily comforting; there was something frightening in their sincerity, as if Tom would be expected to live up to this generosity. He prayed that he could.
"My family has been blessed by a modest prosperity in recent years," Mr. Corleone said. He spoke to Tom like he was an adult, and Tom was grateful for this. "Since God has done me this grace, and has given me a son who has begged his father to take in an orphan who came to him hungry and cold, I feel that it would be right for me to allow you to stay here. Do you feel this way as well?"
Tom nodded emphatically, unable to come up with any words to express his gratitude. Mr. Corleone patted his shoulder and walked back toward the kitchen as if the matter was closed. Tom was left standing on the bottom step, happy and confused, trying not to cry. Sonny came up behind him and slung an arm around his shoulders.
"See?" he whispered in his ear. "I told you."
Fredo was moved to Michael's room and Tom into Sonny's. The room had one twin bed, a small stove for burning coal at night, and a child's desk in the corner. Tom dressed in Sonny's pajamas and watched him light the coals that would keep the room warm.
"How long have you been on your own?" Sonny asked. He climbed into bed and patted the mattress until Tom followed. Tom would have gladly slept on the floor. He had a fluttering feeling in his chest, was afraid he would burst apart if they offered him anything more.
"Since April," Tom said. He imitated Sonny, tucking his legs under the itchy wool blankets and rolling onto his side to face him, their heads pressing two valleys into the same pillow.
"So you must be pretty smart," Sonny said. Tom shrugged. It had been a long time since he'd attributed any traits to himself at all. He felt like a soggy leaf that had blown into the Corleone house, not a boy. He was waiting for someone to realize what he really was and sweep him out into the yard. Sonny reached over to scratch him behind his ear like he was a new pet. Tom thought of the pounding he'd given the catcher at the stickball game, and knew already that he would pour the same kind of rabid enthusiasm into anything he felt, even affection.
"Was your pop a good man?" Sonny asked. "Or a bad one?"
"Good one," Tom said, though he suspected that the opposite might have been true.
"Mine is, too," Sonny said. "Want to know a secret?"
"Sure."
"I saw him kill a bad man, once."
Tom didn't believe him, but he pretended to be impressed. He bundled in close when Sonny fretted over his shaking. Tom didn't feel cold at all, but he couldn't stop shivering, even when Sonny rubbed his shoulder like he was trying to start a fire there.
"You're all bones," Sonny said. "That's why you can't get warm. Here you go, I got plenty of muscle to go around. You see this?" He curled up his arm and let his bicep bump against Tom's nose. "From now on, anybody who messes with you has to answer to this."
Tom fought off his smile, not wanting Sonny to think that he was laughing at him. He smelled like spice and pomade, like someone who could make good on a promise like that.
"Why?" Tom asked. He regretted it immediately. If Sonny had to explain himself it might wake him up from this sleepy daydream that was fading into night.
"Because," Sonny said. "I know a good man when I see one. And I got tired of sharing with Fredo. He kicks me in his sleep."
Tom tried to be as still as possible. Sonny rolled over before he fell asleep, and Tom had to fight the urge to push his face against the warm flat of his back. For the rest of his life he would be cautious and quiet, avoiding sudden movements, even after he'd come to trust the Corleones' generosity. Sometimes he still felt like a leaf that had blown through their door, or like a set of eyes and ears without a body attached. He wanted to ride on Sonny's shoulder and be a part of him instead, and he was a long way off from realizing what this meant about him, and Sonny, and the way things would go.
*
In 1929, while things crumbled to hell for the rest of the country, the Corleone family went from modestly successful to enormously wealthy. They moved to an estate in the suburbs, a big, walled-in place that looked to Tom like a castle. This meant that all of the children got their own bedrooms, which was an uncommon luxury. Tom had just turned thirteen, and had been sleeping in the same bed with Sonny for over two years. He hated his room in the new house. It reminded him of being turned loose and wandering without direction, sleeping in a lonely bundle inside his coat.
It also meant that he wouldn't have to listen to Sonny stroke himself off in the middle of the night, something he'd started doing on the regular around his own thirteenth birthday. He'd seemed embarrassed about it at first, and Tom had just rolled over and pretended not to notice. It was the way things would always be: Sonny did what he wanted and Tom didn't ask questions or pass judgment. As Sonny got older he got less shy about it, and asked Tom why he didn't do it.
"I don't know," Tom mumbled into his pillow, humiliated.
"You mean you don't know how?" Sonny asked. Tom shrugged. Outside of school, Sonny had to show him everything. In class, it was Tom who seemed to know things instinctively.
"Here, it's easy," Sonny said, reaching around Tom's middle. Tom flinched and curled up tighter, didn't want Sonny to know that he always got hard listening to the heavy breathing he tried to hide, but it was too late. Sonny had the evidence in his hand, and Tom flushed all over, but Sonny just laughed as if he'd expected as much.
"So you get stiff but you don't beat off?" Sonny asked. "What're you, crazy?" His hand went still when Tom squirmed and huffed. "You want me to show you or not?" he asked.
"Yeah," Tom breathed out, because he never said no to Sonny, and anyway, what he was doing felt good. "Okay."
They did it on a regular basis from then on; it was usually Sonny's idea, but Tom was always happy to join in. It didn't feel strange or even very secret, though a couple of times Sonny mentioned that it was a sin. Tom only pretended to understand what that meant, and Sonny didn't seem too worried about it. He never really worried about anything.
Tom told himself that not being able to reach for Sonny in the dark was the one advantage of having his own room, because they were getting too old to fool around like that, and sometimes Sonny kissed Tom's neck like he was going to take a big bite out of it, and sometimes Tom slept with his face between Sonny's shoulder blades. In his own room, Tom lay awake at night and thought about Sonny. They could have their whispered conversations and play fights during the day, but there were certain things that would only ever go on between them at night, when they were both dozy and ready to retire to the world that comprised just the two of them and the huddle of blankets. He tried to be glad that all of that was over, but still found the new room cold and approached bedtime with dread.
He didn't complain, of course. He still shared every other possible intimacy with Sonny, and his life was charmed, nothing but blue skies for miles. They were driven to school every morning by Clemenza, and Tom was included in all of Sonny's dealings with the toughest kids at school. He kept watch while Sonny beat on anybody who looked too long at Connie or picked on Michael or got Fredo in trouble. Once he went after a guy just for besting Tom in a school-wide spelling contest, and Tom pretended not to notice, though he was quite touched. Sonny was careful never to implicate Tom in his schemes lest his parents begin to think Tom anything but a perfect angel. If it was up to Tom, they wouldn't cut class or drink gin or steal teachers' cars for fun on weekends, but if that was what Sonny wanted, he was along for the ride.
Tom never gave a lot of thought to what he felt for Sonny, even when he lay awake missing the smell of him and beat off thinking about his hands and his mouth and the sticky heat of his body. He'd never had a brother, so he didn't know what was normal and what wasn't, but he was pretty sure that Sonny didn't feel this way about Fredo or Michael, and Tom certainly didn't. He loved them, of course, but mostly because Sonny did.
He didn't think much of any of it, didn't even worry over the fact that sometimes he wanted to kiss Sonny. The Corleones were a very affectionate family, and while Tom was too shy to reach out physically to even Mrs. Corleone, Sonny was always kissing the side of his head with mocking enthusiasm, slinging an arm around his shoulders or giving him congratulatory smacks on the ass when he won awards in school. Tom loved any gesture Sonny threw his way, and looked forward to opportunities to touch him with greedy anticipation, but he told himself it was only because he'd been alone for so long. Sonny was still the one who'd saved him. For Tom he was a kind of personified warmth, and the fact that he wanted to wrap himself up in Sonny never seemed odd, not until they were fifteen and Sonny took Tom up to his room after dinner, telling him that he had some big news.
"You know Angela Arnette?" Sonny asked once he had the door shut. Tom sat down on his bed, shrugged.
"I guess." Angela was one of the many girls who followed Sonny around school with hopeful determination. Tom didn't care for her especially.
"I did her," Sonny said, beaming. Tom stared at him, confused.
"What?" he said. "As in, sex?"
Sonny thought this response was hilarious. He laughed so hard he fell back against the door, then came to the bed and fell around Tom's shoulders. For the first time in his life Tom had the inclination to pull away from him in disgust. He was furious at the thought of Sonny even touching Angela. She had bug eyes and greasy hair and suddenly Tom hated her more than anyone.
"How was it?" he forced himself to ask.
"It was strange," Sonny said. "But good. You know? She moaned."
Tom couldn't stop himself from making a face, but Sonny only laughed and punched his shoulder.
"How come you don't have a girl?" he asked Tom. "Wait, I know why. You're too scared to talk to them."
"I'm not scared." Tom got up and walked across the room, pretended to be interested in some papers on Sonny's desk. It was his mathematics homework, crumpled up and half-finished. Tom tried to tutor him, but he wasn't much of a listener when the subject didn't interest him.
"It's okay," Sonny said. "At least you're not like Fredo. You've seen him around girls, my God. Mr. Comedian, they can't stand him. Ah, but the real problem is those spots on his face, poor Freddy. You ain't like that, though. I've seen girls look twice at you."
"I thought we were talking about you and Angela," Tom said, his back to Sonny. His face was burning and his eyes were watering. The truth about things was crashing down on him hard. He hadn't had reason to be jealous of anyone since he was a ten-year-old kid watching businessmen eat their hot lunches in the park.
"Tony says she'll be all over me now, wanting to get married or something," Sonny said. "But I'm not looking for anything like that. She's alright. You can talk her into things, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah," Tom said, though he was barely listening at that point. He ran his short nails over the chipped wooden surface of Sonny's desk, and for the first time since they'd moved to the new house he longed for the privacy of his own room.
“What's wrong?” Sonny asked, and Tom's heart went over a cliff, started beating fast. If Sonny found out, it was all over. It was one thing to grope at each other in the dark, half asleep, and quite another to hold a candle like some kind of queer, to miss the way someone's smile felt when it was pressed to your skin.
“Nothing,” Tom said. “I just thought. Well. Don't take this wrong, but maybe you could do better than Angela.”
“You think I don't know that?” Sonny grinned and threw a pillow at Tom. It bounced off of him and landed in a disheveled heap on the floor. Tom felt sorry for it, absurdly.
“I know I can do better,” Sonny said. “Angela is just the beginning.”
*
Sonny stopped going to school that year. His sporadic attendance had been a family joke since before they moved to the suburbs, and he'd only shown periodically to appease his parents and look after his siblings. Tom missed him terribly, in the halls and the courtyard where the older students went to smoke. The friends who had tolerated him when Sonny was around ignored him when he was gone; many of them left school around the same time. Tom was a good student, probably owing to the fact that he had escaped school for a year while he was homeless and remembered too well what life was like without it. Fredo quit attending shortly after Sonny, and it was left to Tom to look after Connie and Michael until Sonny picked them all up at the end of the day. It was a job Tom took very seriously, and he reported any potential threats to their well-being to Sonny, who always took care of things promptly.
By then, Tom knew how Vito really made his money, and that Sonny wanted to follow him into the family business. They began to grow apart as their career paths veered off in different directions, and Tom hated it. He went out of his way to show an interest in the business, just quietly enough to fly under the radar of Sonny's enthusiasm.
"What do you want to get mixed up in this for?" Sonny asked Tom when he accompanied him on a drive out to Ithaca to buy a gun from someone who had promised him one at a nightclub that weekend. They were sixteen, and Sonny had recently convinced Vito to allow him a more active role in the business's operations. It was a dreary day in autumn, the trees still dripping from a rainfall the night before.
"I owe it to your father," Tom said. "To help him." It was a good enough excuse, he thought, to stay close to Sonny. He did love Vito and all of the Corleones and wanted to contribute to the family's success, though he couldn't yet imagine how he might actually do that.
"You're not like the people he does favors for," Sonny said. He tweaked Tom's ear, something he hadn't done in a long time. "You know that. He doesn't expect anything but love and respect. You're his son."
"I know. But I want to help him, Sonny, I do. And you."
"And me what?" Sonny smirked. "I don't need help. Not with what they brought me on for, anyway. But you're smart, Tommy. You should go to school, learn how to be an accountant or something. Couldn't hurt to have one in the family."
Tom dug his cigarettes from his coat pocket and stuck two in his mouth, lit them both. He passed one over to Sonny, who took it without looking. Tom didn't really want to go to college, but he would do whatever Sonny asked.
"This guy might try to cheat me," Sonny said. "Things might get a little heated."
"It's okay," Tom said. "I can handle it."
Sonny smiled, tried to hide it. He liked it when Tom tried to act tough.
They pulled up to a crumbling old mansion at the end of a quiet suburban street. There had once been an iron gate across its driveway, but it had been knocked over at some point, and most of it was lying on the front lawn. Tom sat up straighter but didn't move to get out when Sonny parked the car. Even Sonny took a brief moment to lean down over the steering wheel and case the joint.
"These guys," Tom said. "They're not made guys, are they? Not people who would -- want to -- you know, to show your father up --"
"Tom, c'mon." Sonny got out of the car. "They're just punks. They're squatting in this place this week, next week they'll be somewhere else. Prison, probably. C'mon, get out of the car. I don't need a bodyguard anymore, Tommy. And neither do you."
Tom followed him out and stuffed his shaking hands into his pockets. He felt around for the shape of his switchblade and found it resting against his cigarette case. Both were presents from Sonny for his sixteenth birthday. He fell into step with Sonny as he headed for the sagging old house, crows calling to each other in the trees. Tom knew that Vito would be furious about this trip if he found out, and he felt guilty, but his first loyalty was always to Sonny. Vito and Carmella had taken him in and had even promised to put him through college, but it was Sonny who had really adopted him.
"Let me do the talking in there," Sonny said as they went around the back of the house. "And try to look dangerous."
Tom blushed. He knew that was impossible, but Sonny didn't look especially dangerous himself, at least not to those who didn't know his reputation. They were both wiry and sweet-faced, and Sonny still had his freckles.
A man with wild, dirty hair stepped from the shadows of the back patio as they approached the house, and Tom stopped in his tracks, then hurried forward when Sonny walked toward the man as if he'd been expecting him. Tom's heart was beating so fast he had to cough up a few breaths. This sort of dealing with petty criminals was still a long way off from the seriousness of the family business, but the unpredictability of crooks who operated untethered by affiliation made him uneasy.
"You got business here?" the man barked. Sonny gave him a cocky grin, scoffed. He had his hands in his coat pockets, too. Tom squeezed his own knife tighter, wondering what it would be like to slit a man's throat, how much pressure it would require, how hardily the skin and muscle might resist.
"I have an appointment with Rico," Sonny said. "We're old school chums," he added, like they'd gone to Yale together. The wild-haired man narrowed his eyes, and Tom wished Sonny were a faster runner, but when he did run it tended to be toward trouble rather than away from it.
"Fine," the man said. "Wait here." He went into the house. Even from the patio, Tom could smell the interior's mildew and general decay, like so many of the old buildings Tom had lived with his mother. He took a deep breath and stood beside Sonny, shoulder to shoulder. Sonny smiled at him as if this was going well. Tom smiled back like he believed him. They seemed to both realize that they shouldn't be smiling at the same time, and stopped. Probably they were being watched from the dark second story windows that overlooked the patio.
"I'll teach you how to shoot," Sonny said just before Rico arrived with the gun. For some reason it took Tom a long time to realize Sonny had been speaking to him.
The transaction went relatively smoothly; there was no reason it shouldn't have. Tom was already filled with a sense of drama and doom just from the looks that passed between the adults in the Corleone household, the muttered conversations in hallways and the sound of the door to Vito's office shutting with a forbidding click at certain hours of the day. Sonny would sit at the bottom of the stairs and try to listen when he was a boy, Tom behind him with his knees tucked against the curve of Sonny's back, but now, sometimes, Sonny got invited into the room. Tom wasn't jealous, was even glad that he didn't accompany Sonny, because it meant that Sonny had to creep into Tom's room at night and whisper what he'd learned, his lips brushing Tom's ear when something was really important or especially confidential.
Tom drove them home while Sonny checked out the gun. He had a small drawstring bag full of bullets in his lap, but he hadn't loaded it yet. Tom hoped he was as good with a gun as he was with a knife and his fists. If anything ever happened to Sonny, the whole world would go gray like a news reel, and Tom would wander through it like he had the winter he lost his mother, waiting to die.
"Pop can't know about this," Sonny said. "He won't give me one yet. He's afraid I'll go around looking for trouble." Sonny laughed like he knew his father was right.
"He'll know," Tom said. "As soon as you walk through the door."
"Yeah, probably. But what am I supposed to do? He only gives me bullshit jobs. Well, I should be glad he lets me in on anything. But I'm as good in a fight as fatass Clemenza. If I have a gun, that is. Which, now I do."
"Jesus, Sonny, it's not about fighting. It's about keeping peace. That's how your father got where he is. People look to him to keep order."
"They respect him because they fear him," Sonny said.
"Right, sure, but it's not like you're walking into some free-for-all rumble. And anyway, he's not going to send you out to take care of people. Not for awhile, anyway. You're his son. You're not expendable."
Sonny leaned back and pointed the gun at the roof of the car, pulled the trigger just to feel the click of the empty chamber. Tom could hear the bullets knocking against each other inside the drawstring bag. He wanted to say it again, but Sonny wasn't really listening. You are not expendable, goddammit.
Tom clung to the gossip he got from Sonny that year, trying to stay involved enough to bind them together as Sonny slowly rose through the ranks. He took notes on the names Sonny mentioned, made charts depicting the business relationships between the five families and kept them hidden under his mattress. When Sonny was sent to meet with one of the Tattaglia sons about a harassment incident involving a grocer who was friendly with the Don, Tom suggested that Sonny get the kid drunk, remembering a comment he'd relayed about the Tattaglias needing their connections with the police just to keep their son out of prison for possession.
"Good thinking," Sonny said, cocking a smile as he remembered the same thing. He came back to Tom later with a full report of all the information the kid had divulged while sipping from the gin Sonny had kindly provided.
"Pop was real impressed," Sonny said. He slung an arm around Tom, gave him a friendly shake. Tom was in bed with his history book open across his lap; he'd been waiting up for Sonny to return. "Especially because I stayed sober." He smirked, hiccuped. "Mostly."
For Tom's seventeenth birthday, Sonny had big plans to take him out to a strip joint on the island. Tom refused, telling Sonny that getting caught in a place like that might jeopardize his admittance into Columbia. Sonny scoffed and told him that Vito could get him in there no problem, but he gave up the plot and took Tom to a Dodgers game instead. They had great seats, in the front row along the first base line. Sonny heckled everybody and Tom laughed until his cheeks hurt.
Afterward, they drove out to the pier by the bridge and sat drinking some nameless and foul home-brewed alcohol from a flask Sonny had brought along. Tom hated the stuff but forced himself to choke it down, and soon he began to feel warm and thoughtlessly happy, leaning against the car's windshield with Sonny stretched out beside him. The city was bright and noisy in the distance, its lights coming up as the sun went down.
"Tommy, Jesus," Sonny said, poking him in the arm with the flask, prompting him to take another pull. "What'll I do without you?"
Tom laughed and drank again. He knew exactly what Sonny would do. He'd begun seeing a girl named Sandra seriously just a few months earlier. She was blond, beautiful of course, and not as easy as most of Sonny's regular dates. When he wasn't chasing after her, he'd be busy shadowing his father and Clemenza, learning the business. He would have Fredo to boss around when Tom was gone.
"Why've you always been so good to me?" Tom asked, though he was afraid to know the answer. Sonny didn't give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt. If a guy looked at him cock-eyed he was ready to kill him, and he wasn't big on making new friends unless they could do something for him. Tom was always trying to figure out what exactly he was doing for Sonny.
"Cause you're my brother," Sonny said. He sat up on an elbow and looked down at Tom, who had the mostly empty flask tucked to his chest. His eyes were starting to droop, and his whole body felt loose and electric. He could feel Sonny's breath on the tip of his nose.
"Only because you asked me to be," Tom said. Sonny's eyes darkened, and he put his hand over Tom's on the flask, but Tom wouldn't let him take it.
"Okay, so why do you do everything I ask?" Sonny seemed irritated for a moment, then just curious. Tom slid his other hand over Sonny's. He never flinched at physical affection. Tom realized suddenly that he'd been a fool not to try and get away with more over the years.
"Because I love you," he said. He'd never said it out loud to anyone. Sonny stared down at him as if he was waiting for more. Tom didn't know how else he could possibly explain it.
"I love you, too, fratello," Sonny said. He patted Tom's cheek. Tom released the flask and Sonny drained the last of it, sighed in contentment and leaned back against the windshield. Tom was afraid that the glass would crack under their weight, but he stayed in place, folding his hands over his stomach. He wanted to continue badgering Sonny with questions: but WHY do you love me, what did you see in me that day, why do you trust me with everything? He was constantly struck by the feeling that Sonny really knew nothing about him, because the one thing he didn't know was more important than anything else.
Tom finished high school at the top of his class. The whole family came to his graduation, along with Clemenza and five other bodyguards. He was the first family member to graduate from high school, though Michael was close on his heels, and Tom knew that he, being the first Corleone to do so, would be celebrated with ten times the enthusiasm. Still, he was touched enough to let his eyes water when Vito embraced him and said that he knew Tom would make the family proud at Columbia and afterward. His eyes watered again when Sonny brought Sandra to the party at the house after the graduation ceremony and held her against him like she was an oxygen tank, an extension of his own body.
It was a hard summer for Tom, with no schoolwork to distract him and Sonny preoccupied with his own life. He spent time with Michael, who had grown up to be a thoughtful, intelligent teenager, but he was so quiet and collected that he only made Tom miss Sonny's constant exuberance. He tried hanging around with Fredo, who had nothing but free time, but found him to be even more obnoxiously obsessed with women than Sonny, only in his case they didn't reciprocate the fascination. His only other option was Connie, but she was always surrounded by girlfriends who went red in the face when he came near.
"Why don't you let me fix you up with somebody, Tommy?" Connie asked him one morning at breakfast. "Ginny's pretty, and Rebecca is smart, like you."
"I don't want to get anything started just before I leave for school," Tom mumbled down at his plate. "It would be irresponsible."
"Haven't you ever heard of a summer fling?" Connie asked. Fredo snickered down at the other end of the table. He never failed to find even the vaguest mention of sex hilarious.
"You'd better clam up before Mama hears you talking like that," Michael said, and Tom was grateful for the reprieve. He'd always suspected that Michael had at least an inkling about what he really felt for Sonny, maybe because he'd been there when they met and witnessed the almost wordless unification of Tom's will and Sonny's whims.
When the day came for him to leave for college, there was a big family dinner, toasts and presents. Tom was grateful but distracted, trying to enjoy his last moments with Sonny. Tom could visit home on weekends, but he knew that they would be living in different worlds as soon as Tom attended his first class and Sonny knocked off his first mark.
"To Tommy," Sonny said, when it was his turn to toast. "Mio fratello, mio caro, il mio piccolo orfano."
Tom sniffed out a laugh, felt his cheeks heating and hoped no one would notice. My dear, my little orphan. He was thrilled and embarrassed to hear Sonny speak of him so possessively, but the fact that he was doing it in front of the others meant that he wasn't using those terms of endearment the way Tom wished he would. When he and Sonny had rolled around in bed together as kids, they never said anything, as if it was a game that would be exposed as something else if they spoke. He would gladly take back that closeness with Sonny in silence, but if he could have anything it would be Sonny whispering things against his skin, undressing him and saying in astonishment, in English or Italian or whatever language he wanted, darling, sweetheart, Tommy, come here.
He knew it was the worst kind of sin to think such things in the presence of so much undeserved generosity. The fact that his body even had the capacity to want more hurt him, made him remember what it felt like to finally get a bite to eat and already be worried about where the next meal would come from.
*
At Columbia, Tom slipped into himself the way he had after his mother died, not in despair but out of necessity. The work was difficult and rest was hard to come by. He ate at the dining hall with books open on the table, not tasting anything. The only conversations he had were with classmates, brief inquiries about assignments and dull pleasantries before his professors arrived. He had a roommate named Arnold who was also a serious student, studying to become a doctor. They took turns making coffee during late night cram sessions and otherwise stayed out of each other's business.
He went home every Sunday for a family dinner, but began to dread the ritual when Sandra became a regular fixture. She was a nice enough girl, but her presence felt like a slap in the face to Tom, as if Sonny had brought home a new orphan to replace him. It was hard to watch Vito and Carmella begin to admire her as Sonny did, and Tom hated himself for this jealousy but also indulged himself in it, imagining that Sonny had abandoned him, never really cared, and could never be happy with just one woman. She couldn't give him the kind of devotion that Tom had; none of them could. They wouldn't understand the business and watch him become a killer in quiet awe, wouldn't allow him to put himself in great danger, wouldn't know that this recklessness was the only way Sonny would ever be happy.
"Does she know about you?" Tom asked Sonny one night when they were alone on the back patio, smoking cigarettes while the women cleaned up and Fredo organized the others into a card game.
"She's from the neighborhood," Sonny said. "She knows."
"Well, what does she think about it? Does she disapprove?"
"Are you kidding? How do you think I get so much tail? Girls in this neighborhood know what it means to be a Corleone."
"So why her and not some other girl?" Tom asked, getting frustrated. He shouldn't have had wine with dinner. He had a major examination the next morning and had been in a wretched mood all night, watching Sandra brush stray hairs from Sonny's shoulders.
Sonny laughed, puffs of smoke spilling from his nose.
"You've never been in love, eh, Tommy?"
Tom's eyes burned, and he pretended to cough up some cigarette smoke. Sonny squeezed his shoulder sympathetically, and Tom wished that he could disappear, turn invisible and blow away on the wind.
"You'll meet a girl someday," Sonny said. "Whenever you pull your nose out of your books long enough."
Tom scrubbed a hand across his face and threw his cigarette down, stamped it out. He thought about where he and Sonny would go when they left the house: Tom back to Columbia, dropped at a subway stop by one of the drivers. Sonny would take Sandra home, but not before parking somewhere and nailing her in the backseat. She would put her arms around his shoulders and gasp his name until her throat was raw, and when they were through Sonny would smooth her damp blond hair back in order and tell her, maybe, that he loved her.
Tom didn't go home for dinner the following Sunday. He made up an excuse about having too much work to do for class, and instead went to a men's room on campus that was rumored to be a meeting place for queers. He sat in a stall for twenty minutes, terrified and sweating, and when the bathroom door creaked open he bolted out without even looking at the young man who'd entered. He didn't want that sort of thing, he decided on the way back to the dormitory, the hot summer air thick around him like a witness. He only wanted Sonny, back the way he had him when they were kids, a warm body to roll against at the end of the day. He would never have that again, and sometimes he was almost sorry that he ever had, because the memories were driving him out of his mind. Sometimes he wondered if he'd imagined the whole thing, or dreamed it as a kid, Sonny languid and unconcerned while he snuck a hot hand into Tom's pajama bottoms, kissed his nose and said something like Jesus, you're already hard.
He had his daydreams and his schoolwork, and he told himself that this was enough. He was growing to truly love and appreciate the law, mostly for all the ways it could be manipulated if it was studied closely enough and interpreted persuasively. Tom believed this was true of everything; nothing was absolute, even death. Sometimes he saw snatches of his mother among the living, in the destitute women who ducked into bookstores near the campus for warmth in the winter, in a classmate who tucked her hair behind her ear in a certain way, and out of the corner of his eye when he woke from a nightmare, the shape of her ghost moving away from him until he remembered that she was gone.
During the summer, he stayed at school and took whatever classes were offered, eager to get ahead in the program so that he could begin his graduate studies in law. There had already been discussions in the Don's study about the potential usefulness of Tom's forthcoming law degree, and this designation as a person who could be not just valuable but useful to the family shone through him like a beacon, shedding light on the meaning of everything else in his life.
It was a hot, miserably hazy afternoon in his dorm the summer after his first full year at Columbia when Sonny came knocking on his door. Tom was in his undershirt and a pair of trousers that were sticking to his legs, bent over his desk and trying to concentrate on writing a history paper. It was harder with Arnold gone and the room to himself; too much privacy was not always conducive to work. He pulled open the door irritably, expecting to see his nosy floor warden, who was always trying to sell everyone cocaine, claiming that it was the only way to get through final examinations.
Sonny's grin was a little sheepish when Tom found him standing out in the hall in clothes much nicer than any nineteen-year-old student could afford, and Tom knew immediately that something was wrong. He stood there like an imbecile for a moment, just staring at Sonny as if he'd only imagined him there.
"Wow, this is where they've got you holed up?" Sonny said. He walked past Tom and invited himself inside. Tom was embarrassed by the dormitory room with its meager furnishings, Arnold's bed stripped of sheets and his side of the room completely empty. He shouldn't be, he knew; it wasn't as if Sonny didn't know his father had paid for this room and everything in it.
"What are you doing here?" Tom asked, shutting the door. "Is everything okay?"
"I can't just come visit you?" Sonny asked, pretending to be hurt. He grinned again, this time more forced than sheepish. "What, you're too busy for your twin brother?"
They joked sometimes that they were twins, since they were the same age and roughly the same height and build. They'd even come to look a bit alike over the years, Tom's light hair darkening to match Sonny's reddish brown. They both had high cheekbones and blue eyes, and they could have at least passed for blood brothers if there wasn't something undeniably Sicilian about Sonny and indefinably Irish about Tom.
"I am busy," Tom said. "But sit down, sit down. I'm glad you came. I, um, don't really have anything to drink, but --"
"Never mind that," Sonny said. "We're going someplace where there's plenty to drink."
"We?"
"Listen, I got some news." Sonny huffed out a laugh, put his hands on his hips. "Sandra's pregnant."
Tom let his mouth fall open and then clamped it shut again before he could say anything. The development didn't really bother him. He was guiltily happy that Sandra had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. She was no saint, however long she'd held out when Sonny was still chasing her.
"Congratulations," Tom managed.
"Yeah, sure." Sonny ran a hand over his face and walked to Tom's desk. There was a small window over it, with a partially obscured view of the city. "Fuckin' hot in here," Sonny muttered.
"You were saying something about drinks?" There was suddenly nothing Tom wanted more than to throw back a few with Sonny, to let himself get stupid and talkative. Sonny smiled over his shoulder.
"Sandra and I are getting married next month," he said. "Before she gets too indecente to wear a wedding dress, that's what Ma said. And I thought, hey. I should have a bachelor party, then, right?"
"Sure you should, Sonny." Tom was frozen in place in the middle of the room. He knew he should be hugging his brother, at least shaking his hand. He was going to be a father and a husband. Tom couldn't force himself to move, and suddenly there seemed to be an understanding between them, in the dense atmosphere of the sweltering room. Tom felt as if he didn't need to pretend anymore.
"Come with me to Vegas," Sonny said. "I got business out there anyway. You can get away for a few days, can't you?"
Tom glanced at the papers spread across his desk. The history assignment was due in two days, and he had an important civil practice exam at the end of the week. There was no getting away while studying at Columbia; even sleep felt extravagant and selfish.
"Of course I can," Tom said. "When do we leave?"
*
Tom packed a few shirts and a clean pair of pants and met Sonny downstairs, where he was waiting with his driver. Sonny beamed at him like he'd been afraid for a moment that he wouldn't come down. Tom had been afraid Sonny would invite other friends, at least Fredo, but it was just the two of them on the way to the airport. It struck Tom occasionally how difficult it was for anyone in the family to form true friendships with outsiders, to trust completely. It was as if Sonny had recruited Tom, a rootless orphan, when he was young enough to be made a lifetime companion, an amico fidato who had no place else to go, no one to betray him to. It was the best theory Tom had for the ease with which he had been welcomed into Sonny's life.
"This is gonna be legendary," Sonny said when they were on the plane, a flimsy little thing owned by a friend of the family who owed Sonny a favor. He clapped his hands together for emphasis. Tom grinned, hoping that Sonny's idea of a bachelor's weekend wouldn't be nonstop sex with cocktail waitresses while Tom shot craps at some casino.
"I've never been on a plane before," Tom said as it began to pick up speed along the runway.
"I flew to California last year," Sonny said. He looked a little nervous himself as the plane's front wheels left the earth.
"Do your parents know you're going to Vegas?" Tom shouted over the noise of the engine.
"They don't have to know everything."
The plane tipped them back against their seats as it rose into the air, tilted at an angle that made it seem as if the machine was fighting hard against gravity, possibly losing. Tom gripped the arm rest of on his narrow seat and wished that he hadn't eaten lunch before he boarded. He wasn't sure what was happening. Sonny was taking him to Vegas. Tom was abandoning his schoolwork, at least temporarily. Sandra was pregnant. Nobody knew that Sonny and Tom were together, headed out West, flying.
The heat in Nevada was quite different from the filthy, oppressive stink of New York in the summertime. Everything was spacious and dry, and the sun was tyrannical overhead, even at four o'clock in the afternoon as a cab took them to a hotel on the main drag that was apparently owned by another friend of the family.
"There's a lot going on in Vegas right now," Sonny said. "A lot of business." He gave Tom a meaningful look, as if he needed clarification. There did seem to be a flush of development, construction sites blocked off with chain-link fencing every few hundred yards. Gambling had been legalized in Vegas four years earlier, thanks mostly to the business interests of men like Sonny's father, and there were already six tall hotels lined up down the street, all of their signs advertising the casinos they housed.
"What's this errand you're here for?" Tom asked when they were alone together in the hotel's mirrored elevator, which was taking them up to their room on the seventeenth floor. The hotel was modest but large, with plush blue carpeting that reeked of cigarette smoke in the hallways. Sonny unlocked the door to their room to reveal that it was really something of a suite, with large windows that looked out over the town and the surrounding desert. The curtains were made from a tacky gold material and the bedspread was deep red. It looked like a bumpkin's idea of a king's bed chamber.
"It's nothing too special," Sonny said once they were inside. "I'm going to have dinner with a man who's building a new casino down here. He wants my father as a financier, and that probably ain't gonna happen, but I thought I'd check the guy out just for the hell of it. Pop thinks he's a clown, but I don't know. Everybody knows there's a lot of money to be made out here, and today's clown could be tomorrow's kingpin, you know?" He turned back to Tom, who was surveying the room, searching for the second bed. All he saw was a small loveseat near the window.
"Hey, you can get your own room if you want," Sonny said. "I just thought it could be like old times, huh?"
A charge went through Tom when Sonny turned to look at him as if he was afraid of what he might say. It hit him hard at first, dulled out through his nerves like it would fade, then came back in a wave. He was afraid to open his mouth, would need hours before he could speak again. Sonny wanted him back in his bed. It was impossible, and true, and harder to take than Tom would have thought. He wanted to cross the room and pull Sonny against him, kiss him on the mouth, but he had no idea how a man went about doing a thing like that.
"You okay with this?" Sonny asked when a long stretch of silence had passed between them. Tom hadn't heard Sonny go so long without talking in years, maybe ever. He nodded quickly when he realized that he hadn't yet responded, was still just standing there like a fool.
"They've got stuff to make martinis over here," Sonny said. He busied himself with the drinks, and Tom stood at the window, watched the sun begin to descend toward the bland desert horizon. He was sweating a little, his heart racing, but otherwise he was okay, just trying to decide what to do next. Of course, that was always really up to Sonny. Tom kept his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling, but had to expose them when Sonny brought his drink.
"Here's to the end of childhood," Sonny said, clicking his glass against Tom's. Tom was as shocked by this as what had proceeded it. Sonny had considered himself a man capable of anything at fourteen.
"Is that what we're really celebrating?" Tom heard himself ask. He swallowed a huge gulp of his drink and reminded himself not to speak.
"Sure, sure," Sonny muttered. He drained his own drink and looked out at the town. "It's different here," he said. "I feel different than I do in New York, sorta unchained, you know? It was the same in California. And with you."
Tom was afraid to look at him. He was afraid of everything, suddenly, but the pink-orange sky outside and the ridiculous decor of their room held him steady, promised that he could handle this. He never would have thought that getting what he wanted would be so terrifying, but then, he had never considered that he could actually get what he wanted, not really, not ever.
"We should go downstairs," Sonny said before Tom could do anything. "The bartender will make better drinks than I can."
Tom still felt strange drinking in public, the pastime having been made legal again only a couple of years earlier. He felt like everyone in the hotel bar knew who he was and what was going on, that he was wanting to get back up to the room and find his way to Sonny in the dark, cling to him like the world was ending. He drank everything Sonny recommended: highballs, Manhattans, a Singapore Sling. The bar was dressed up to look like it was a hut on a Polynesian island, and Tom had the drunken notion that he was on a kind of honeymoon. He laughed into his drinks while Sonny told their favorite stories about washed-up old Dons, Fredo, Clemenza's long line of hysterical mistresses, and all the other comic figures of their lives. They stumbled into the hotel restaurant around eight o'clock and were seated in a cushy red booth. A couple of drunk teenagers, rich kids who'd left their ties in the hotel room, they were treated like princes.
"Someone must know who we are," Tom said.
"Shit," Sonny said, and they both laughed harder.
"Don't you have to meet with that man?" Tom asked.
"Fuck him," Sonny said. "He's garbage, he's a joke. I'm out with my best amico. He can screw himself."
Sonny was farther gone than Tom, who ignored his wine at dinner and ate prime rib and potatoes to soak up the alcohol. Sonny was too busy talking to do much eating, and he was leaning perpetually toward Tom, as if people were eavesdropping. The restaurant was not crowded, but there were a few other groups crowded around small tables, most of them rowdier than Tom and Sonny. Tom had the feeling that anything was permissible in this blank desert town, and there was much money to be made indeed if Vegas could package that feeling and sell it to tourists.
They walked through the casino after eating, but the whirl of the roulette wheels and the dash and shuffle at the dealer's tables just made them dizzy. When Sonny made for the elevators, Tom followed gratefully. He shut his eyes on the way up and concentrated on the feeling of rising, floating away, up to the sky. Sonny was tapping his foot impatiently.
"I've really missed you," Tom finally allowed himself to say. The elevator reached their floor and Sonny put his hand on the grate but didn't open it.
"I know, Tommy," he said. "You at that damn school, and me -- you know I finally made my bones last week."
He said so like Tom should in fact have known this, though who but Sonny would have told him? Tom just stared at him. He was going to ask what it was like, but all he had to do was look at Sonny to know. He seemed proud and disappointed, older suddenly.
"Are we getting off the elevator or what?" Tom asked. He wanted to sink into that bed and forget everything.
"The day I do it I go over to Sandra's to calm down and she's got her head in the toilet, telling me she's pregnant, she knows she is." Sonny's knuckles were white on the grate, and Tom wished he'd open it before someone called the elevator back down to the lobby. "How do you like that?"
"I don't like it," Tom said. "But it doesn't matter what I think."
Sonny threw open the grate and let it slam back noisily. He stopped before walking toward the room, one foot on the elevator and the other on the hallway's blue carpet.
"Sure it does," he said.
When they walked into the room, the windows looked like a movie screen, lit up with the lights outside, none of the lamps on to spoil the effect. Sonny locked the door behind him and made himself another drink, mostly just gin. He made one for Tom, too, but Tom just held it and watched him sip at his.
"Drink," Sonny said, so Tom did, though he already felt like he was going to be sick. He never touched the stuff when Sonny wasn't around.
"Why do you do everything I say?" Sonny asked angrily, as if that was a test and Tom had failed.
"Because," Tom said, but he stopped there. He'd already answered this question. Sonny threw his glass down and Tom heard it bounce harmlessly across the carpet. In this strange place where Sonny had brought him, a fantasy land where everything was dry and clean, even glass couldn't break.
"You're mine, aren't you, Tommy?" Sonny asked. He grabbed Tom and backed him against the wall, held his face roughly, his thumb and forefinger pinching Tom's jaw. "Aren't you? Haven't you always been?"
"Yeah," Tom said, in two syllables, every hour he'd spent wanting this couched in his broken pronunciation of that single word.
“Yeah,” Sonny repeated, but it was different when he said it. Tom knew that Sonny wouldn't kiss him, so he kissed Sonny, soft and dry but straight on the mouth, unmistakable. It wasn't dark enough in the room with the curtains open and the young city shining in, but they were drunk enough to make up for the fact that they weren't doing this blind. Sonny grabbed Tom's hips and squeezed so hard Tom thought he would dent his bones. It was enough to send all of Tom's blood rushing to his cock, and he parted his legs and his lips at the same time, let Sonny pull him open like a crowbar.
They got to the bed somehow; Tom felt like he'd been thrown there, and he laughed when Sonny slid onto him. This was somebody else's life, certainly, but he'd felt that way since he was eleven years old. Sonny licked his neck and pinned his hands over his head, and Tom just spread himself as wide as he could underneath him, let his muscles liquefy in surrender.
“My Tommy,” Sonny said, his mouth on Tom's ear now. “Won't even let anyone else touch you. Not even broads. Tommy, Tommy, Jesus Christ.”
Tom was laughing, trying to keep his wet eyes from filling entirely. He twined his fingers through Sonny's and wrapped his legs around his back. He still had his shoes on, and this seemed incorrect somehow, so he tried to get them off by leveraging them against each other. As he was struggling to coordinate this maneuver, his cock rubbed against Sonny's, and he didn't even have time to gasp in happy surprise before Sonny moaned loud in his ear and ground his erection down against Tom's, throwing stars out across the back of his eyelids.
“God in heaven,” Tom sobbed, letting his eyes overflow. He was going to come, but he didn't want this to end. It was much too likely that it would never happen again.
“You're so good, Tommy,” Sonny was saying, his mouth moving against the hollow of Tom's throat while his hand snaked down Tom's chest, undoing the buttons on his shirt. “Always had to show you how to be bad.”
“I'm not,” Tom said, thinking of his consuming envy and the long history of lust that he cherished too dearly to make room for any sort of real relationship.
“I know you're not bad,” Sonny said, misunderstanding him. “But you deserve to feel good every once in awhile, yeah?” He pushed his hand down Tom's bare chest, still holding his wrists together with the other. Tom whined in blissful impatience when Sonny pulled his trousers open and slid his hand down to steady the throb of his cock in his palm.
“Never let anybody else touch you,” Sonny said, and for a moment Tom wasn't sure if that was a request or an observation. Sonny's thumb was moving just slightly at the base of his cock, and Tom was probably drooling, definitely making some involuntary sound, low in the back of his throat.
“I kinda like that about you, Tommy,” Sonny admitted. His hand moved up the length of Tom's cock and he circled the head with his thumb, spreading the slickness that had already leaked out around until Tom jerked beneath him, his muscles going tense.
“I'm gonna –” he warned, and he arched up into Sonny's hand when the first stab of his orgasm pulsed out of him, let his mouth open wide in soundless gratitude. He was crying as Sonny pumped him dry, tremors rocking through him in the aftermath.
“Shh, shh,” Sonny said, kissing his cheeks. “It's okay, Tommy. Jesus, you needed that bad, huh?”
Tom didn't trust his voice, and anyway there were no words emphatic enough to honestly answer that question. He grabbed Sonny's face and kissed him as well as his clumsy inexperience would allow, their teeth clicking together at moments, both of them panting and the scent of alcohol so strong on their breath it made Tom want to sneeze. When Sonny pulled back to look at him, his eyes were wide and unshaded, as if he'd sobered up, or suddenly understood that Tom was so far beyond saving that he wasn't really doing him a favor.
“I love you,” Tom said, because Sonny was thinking it anyway, wondering. “I always will. For the rest of my life.”
“It's my fault,” Sonny said. His body was still snug along Tom's, and he was stroking his face like he had when they were kids, when Tom woke from nightmares about freezing to death.
Tom snorted. “You're goddamn right it is.”
“I think I did it on purpose,” Sonny said. He looked sincerely distraught but not quite repentant.
“Why?”
“I don't know. The way you looked, sitting on that wall. Like you were gonna blow away.”
Tom let Sonny fuck him. His cock had gotten almost comically huge since Tom had seen it last, and it hurt like hell, but he didn't regret it, even when Sonny drove in deep as he finished, his fingers ten dull knives squeezed into Tom's thighs. He laid there beside him afterward and let the hollow burn roll through him, his heart thundering like the sky was going to fall. Sonny was still getting his breath, staring at the ceiling.
“Alright,” he said. “I'm gonna have a smoke.”
“Me too,” Tom said.
They filled their empty martini glasses with water from the bathroom sink and sat in bed smoking, Sonny eying the windows and Tom too sated and ripped apart to make eye contact with anything. The fuzzy veil of the drinks was entirely gone, and his head was pounding, but whatever pain his body was in was of little concern at the moment.
“Hell of a town,” Sonny muttered, as if this kind of thing happened in Vegas all the time. Maybe it did; Tom wouldn't know. He'd never been out of New York. Now, of course, he never wanted to go back.
*
They spent the next day at the hotel pool, which had a little bar that served novelty drinks mixed with rum. If anyone asked, they said they were brothers. It was the first time this story had felt like a lie. Tom fell asleep in the sun, enjoying the harshness of it on his skin, the way he felt himself sizzling, cooking underneath it. He didn't even care when Sonny flirted with their waitresses. They were going home the following morning, and he wouldn't let anything bother him until he stepped onto the plane like receiving a death sentence.
Around five o'clock they went up to the room in their swim trunks and complimentary robes, and Tom pushed Sonny against the wall as soon as the door was shut, sucked his cock and swallowed his come with gulping gratitude, greedy for the taste of him.
“You done that before?” Sonny asked between stuttered breaths, weak-kneed against the wall. Tom wiped his mouth and looked up at him, shook his head.
“Guys at school talked about it,” Tom said, meaning high school, meaning Sonny's hoodlum friends. “I always wanted to do it to you.”
Sonny pulled him up and laughed against his neck, put his arms around Tom's sunburned shoulders. They took a shower and pulled each other off under the hot water, stumbled into the bed still wet and slept until their empty stomachs woke them up with groaning complaints. Tom let Sonny roll him onto his back and kiss him lazily like he had when they were young, and it occurred to him that they were still young. He'd spent the whole day living like it was the last one he had.
“What will become of us?” Tom asked, stroking Sonny's back, his skin still hot from the sun.
“What will become of us?” Sonny laughed. “Let me worry about that.”
But it was always Tom who would worry. Even when the Tattaglias kidnapped Tom so Sollozzo could deliver their proposition after the assassination attempt on the Don, Sonny didn't panic like the others. He thought they were all invincible, himself especially. If someone had told him what would really become of him, that he would be gunned down at a toll booth while driving alone like a goddamn fool in the middle of a war, he would have laughed and called them matto, crazy. He lived with death every day and thought it would never come near him. Connie had wanted Tom to come and get her that day, not Sonny, though not out of any concern for her brother. She knew Sonny would kill her husband and Tom knew he planned to prove her right. Tom sent a car after him, but it was useless. He might have told Sonny, that last night in Vegas, this is what will become of you: I will have to tell your father you're dead, I will have to stand back and watch an undertaker despair at the thought of trying to put you back together, I will watch Carlo struggle like a fish as they kill him and it won't do a damn bit of good, because I've only got eleven more years with you and then you're gone.
Tom didn't know any of this, couldn't have guessed, though by the time it all happened he couldn't exactly say that he was surprised. The world went gray the way he had always known that it would. He was angry with Sonny for a long time, for tearing his heart out and living so carelessly while he carried it. They hadn't often fallen together the way they had in Vegas, but they were always close, shoulder to shoulder, and even when Sonny fought him, said things to hurt Tom like no one else could, he was always pulling him back within seconds, telling him he didn't mean it that way, don't be sore, Tommy, don't take things so hard.
He tried to get back to that room in Vegas in the early sixties, but they'd torn the old hotel down and built a new, neon-lined mammoth in its place. He got a room on the seventeenth floor and made himself a martini at the mini bar, stood at the windows and watched the sun go down. Two years later he would be murdered in Florida of all goddamn places, untouchable Tom Hagen the mob lawyer, the stoic, the imitation Sicilian, the Corleone who was too good to get his hands dirty. Tom never killed anyone, though he'd asked Michael if he could be the one who killed Carlo. Michael was quiet, and for a moment Tom had worried that he was actually considering it.
“You loved him,” Michael said.
“Of course I did.” Tom's face burned, and Michael looked at him, seemed to suddenly know everything.
“That day,” Michael said. “That day he found you. I've never seen my brother like that. It was like you were something he'd lost. Something he'd been looking for.”
That was Michael's way of telling Tom that no, he wouldn't be the one who killed Carlo. He made sure that Tom was there to see it, and as Tom stood watching, he'd never felt more like the world he'd been pulled into was surreal, a dream, and that he was invisible inside it.
Alone in Vegas, he sat on the end of the hotel room bed, martini in hand. The bedspread wasn't red, but an ugly checkered pattern of brown and blue. The curtains were yellow. He drained his drink, lit himself a cigarette and took off his shoes.
What will become of us. Sonny had laughed. Tom tried to smile as the room went dark. When he was done with his cigarette, he would shut his eyes and Sonny would walk through the door. He was eleven years old when he learned that anything could happen. The whole world could change in seconds. It could surprise you with an easy way out, comfort and safety and a table spread with food, or a boy who would never love you the way you needed him to turning to tell you that he had all along.