Work Text:
It’s the last straw: the redheaded bimbo leaning heavily on Richard’s arm as if she can’t stand on her own two legs, the slinky pink nightgown of a dress slung so low and see-through that Jennifer Melfi can count the freckles on the younger woman’s perky breasts; the woman introduces herself as ‘Colleen with two l’s and two e’s.’
Christ-sake! Jennifer hisses the expletive under her breath.
She needs air, away from the festivities; solitude and nicotine. She sneaks the pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her son’s blazer; Jason notices and gives an eye-roll in the general direction of his father, silently agreeing that yes, the man is an extraordinary asshole tonight – bringing his bimbo of a ‘girlfriend’ to his son’s high school graduation party, what the fuck is wrong with him?
Jennifer easily gets lost in the crowd of mingling graduates and assorted family; catching Richard’s eye before she leaves and she gives him the most passive-aggressive smile she can conjure, better than a middle finger in the air although it is tempting to flip him off.
The third door she tries gives way to success and she follows a long deserted hallway till it reveals a circular terrace in the middle of the building, trees in neat squares, a couple of metal benches and the view out into the night sky, starless from the city light even here.
Ducking outside through the glass door, she lights a cigarette and takes a heavenly, needy pull. She closes her eyes, savoring that first sharp inhale, and finally she can push away the insulting image of Richard’s dick in that bimbo’s mouth. Or at least, the cigarette calms her nerves and she can look at it from a distance. Laugh at the stupidity of it.
“Hey there, you got one for me?” A man asks her, subdued music drifting through the open terrace door before it closes; the playful vibration of the words entirely too intimate for someone she doesn’t know.
She opens her eyes, the cigarette loosely between two fingers as she contemplates the well-dressed stranger.
“They are not really mine,” she excuses herself on reflex. Into her forties and she still feels like a wayward teenager caught red-handed when she smokes.
“You stole the pack from some poor schmuck?” His smile is crooked and warm, the tone intrigued.
A bubble of a laugh bursts from her. She covers it quickly with a hand.
With a smile, she says, “No, no. They are my son’s. But I’m willing to share.”
Jason won’t mind – or at least, he will not dare lecture her on how many cigarettes she goes through because that will only open up the conversation for why he even smokes in the first place; it is much easier for the both of them to pretend their shared habit doesn’t exist.
Jennifer offers the man the open packet. He takes one out, lights it with his own zippo lighter, the silver case looking antique and flashy, and then he puffs on it, hurriedly blowing out a plume of smoke. He takes another languid tug, blows out another cloud. Another father here to celebrate his child graduating?
“What is this, some farmer’s market tobacco?” He sounds curious but his expression is wrinkled with distaste.
Farmer’s market tobacco? She almost bursts out laughing again.
“American Spirits.”
The man grimaces but hides it well behind another drag from the cigarette, the glow of a golden ring on his little finger catching her attention. On his wrist there’s a golden bracelet too. Attractive and well-dressed, she catalogs it almost absently.
“What a shit show, huh?” the man then says out loud, conspiratorially with a broad smile, the obvious interest in his eyes not to mistake. “I think I’ve had my fill of adolescents and non alcoholic punch.”
Maybe just a relative, she thinks with another smile. There’s a shiny silk pocket in his suit jacket, his leather shoes shined and sleek, the cuff links glinting golden in his sleeves; altogether an expensive outfit that looks tailored on his frame. Dark hair and dark eyes, broad shouldered and his stance one of self-assurance; just enough arrogance to not be off-putting.
“You wanted to get away too?” she asks him, opting for small talk.
He nods in agreement, his smile cheerful as he takes another puff on the cigarette.
“You’re not cold?” He’s eyeing her cleavage.
“Oh no, I’m fine,” she says, goosebumps prickling on her arms, and now that he does mention it, maybe her nipples are peaking through the fabric of the cocktail dress. She hopes so.
“Hey, I can’t have you standing there freezing,” he says and before she knows it, he’s settling his own suit jacket comfortably around her shoulders, large hands patting the fabric down along her arms before he backs off.
“Better?”
Very handsy, she reflects with fluttering butterflies in her stomach at the proximity. He’s a real charmer; natural without it seeming particularly practiced.
“Yes, thank you,” she says, and then she can’t resist, her eyebrow lifting when she comments, “Un vero signore?”
“Ah, no one would call me that.” He grins wide.
“No?” she smiles back.
His answering smile is fairly cheeky.
“You from around here?” His eyes go down the length of her body; obvious and arrogant.
“Essex Fells,” she tells him.
Oh, she’s newly moved to Essex Fells but he doesn’t need to know that – she would just end up vomiting everything out in a desperate stream: in the middle of a messy divorce, the loneliness of her son leaving her too, drinking too much fine wine on her own, and now, clearly, also driven into tobacco as a substitute. Soul-drenching melancholia she calls it in her head, and that label doesn’t make it any better.
“Yeah, I’m out in North Caldwell.”
More than middle income then.
There’s the perfume of his cologne on the jacket, snug and warm around her, and it lulls her into a masculine warmth, her body readying up for some kind of dalliance with the way heat settles in her lower abdomen.
“What part of the boot you from, hon?”
She melts at ‘hon’ even though she shouldn’t; it’s laced with clear intentions.
“My father's people were from Caserta.” She licks her bottom lip.
“Avellino.” He points at himself with an even bigger smile, his gaze once again on her cleavage. “My mother would have loved it if you and I got together.”
“Oh, my father would have hated it.”
Joseph Melfi had never wanted her to date Italian boys – or any boys for that matter. No, her father had been happy when his daughter had been stuck inside with her nose in a book.
“Ahh, yeah, I never was popular with fathers,” he says it with smug grin. “I was a, what you say, corrupting influence on their daughters.”
She takes a soft puff from the cigarette in answer.
Her gaze lingers on his form too; she imagines riding him on the metal bench, right out here in plain view, uncaring about consequences. Maybe Richard is right about her? Is she self-destructive on her own?
“You know,-” he points toward the sky with the hand holding the cigarette, the glow of the end against the night sky and his smile suggestive. “- a couple weeks ago, these two ducks landed in my pool. It was amazing. They're from Canada, and it’s mating season.”
She smiles. “Yeah?”
He nods eagerly.
It’s Spring; brisk in the linings but turning warmer and warmer – mating season, indeed.
He cocks his head.
She bites her lower lip.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She grounds the butt of the cigarette against the trashcan before she flicks it in. Responsibility weighs heavy.
“I’ve gotta get back to the festivities.” She returns the jacket, noticing the label on the inside; Bottega Veneta.
Disappointment is easy to catch in his expression when he takes the jacket and slings it haphazardly across his arm.
“Hey, my name’s Tony,” he calls out when she’s in the door opening, disappointment gone and instead it’s a toothy, mischievous smile. “What’s yours?”
“Ciao Tony,” she waves at him, throwing him a secretive smile over her shoulder just short of actually blowing him a kiss. Maybe that welcoming drink had been alcoholic after all?
“Okay, beautiful, I’ll see you around,” he calls out again, a flirtatious glint in his eyes, blowing out smoke as he takes a long drag, his eyes focused on her.
Oh god; she hurries back inside before she changes her mind, arousal feeling like a coiled spring in her body just waiting to be released. It’s Jason’s night, she reminds herself. She’s not here to flirt – or fuck. Although the stranger – Tony – would certainly tick all her boxes.
Ah, shit!
Tony wants nothing else but to venture out into the crowd and find the brunette; she looked so ready and inviting out in the dark that his dick is already preemptively hard just thinking about it. But nah, responsibility calls, or rather, his pissed off wife calls out to him with two nagging fingers in the air.
Back in the crowd of the party Carmela is pissed off about everything evidently. From his gift to her graduating cousin thrice removed (what’s wrong with a book anyway? Tony’s read it himself and he finds it extraordinarily exciting – The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds, what the fuck’s wrong with that?) to his ‘disappearing act’.
“Jeez – I’m not allowed to go piss now!” he says to her under his breath, surface smiling at that idiot priest – Intintola whatshisname – who always seems to appear wherever there’s free food, like now, the priest’s disgusting claw of a servile hand around a plastic plate that holds not two, but five petit fours. The father is already stuffed with food, his face red as if he’s been in the communal wine.
Scifoso, Tony hisses between his teeth.
Carmela’s top lip curls with distaste at the retort; what, she’s got fucking super sonic hearing now!
“Toe-o-knee,” she whines reproachful in the same tone Tony imagines she goes to confession with and complains about him.
“Fuck this,” Tony says, gesturing at the lot of them, and then he goes off to find something alcoholic to devour.
You would think he was something she’d stepped in, her own husband. He grits his teeth. When he looks back over his shoulder, Carmela is not missing him, no, she’s all easy ingratiating smiles at the priest, batting her eyelashes stupidly and her laughs artificially forced – throwing herself at that fairy, no shame.
Everything is alcohol free. The punch is just grenadine and orange juice. An overly cheerful grasso strunz, cheeks jeweled out with cakes, tries to offer him a water bottle. Tony stares him down, enjoying wiping the smile off his face.
The whole celebration sours Tony’s mood considerably, wandering aimlessly around trying to find something to drown himself in, and even the snacks are miserabile.
On his second lap around the gymnasium Tony stumbles into his friend Artie Bucco, the poor guy decked out in a suit one number too large on his lanky frame. Misery likes company; Tony brings his friend along with an arm around the other man’s shoulder, turning his friend away from the tables with cakes. The two of them go off like the good old days, in cahoots, trying to find the most amount of trouble possible. In a secluded corner, shadowed behind dancing graduates, the two of them share taking slurps from the neck of a Mancino Vermouth. Someone probably meant it for a gift, Tony thinks, and for a brief time he feels bad, but really, it was left unattended; and one look from Artie, the idiot smiling goofily like a high school boy with acne, and it’s an easy solution to boredom.
The drink would have been better on the rocks.
“Fuck Ton, I’m already in the doghouse, buddy,” Artie complains, eyes out on the crowd, a nervous look in the depths of his eyes that he tries to hide. If Charmaine catches Artie like this, he is certainly a dead guy.
Tony shakes his head. “You fucking live in that doghouse twenty-four-seven.”
“Ahhh,” Artie grins stupidly. “Fuck you.”
“Nah, fuck you,” Tony grins back.
Tony then elbows Artie. “C’mon, Artie, Charmaine’s busy. Relax, will ya.”
Artie nods and drinks from the bottle. Tony doesn’t understand at all, but again, it’s Artie. He can’t imagine it any other way for his friend; the guy likes being stepped on, or something.
Tony takes the bottle from Artie and bringing the Vermouth to his mouth, his eyes out into the crowd, Tony sees her; alone, bee lining for the backroom with the restrooms.
Ah, fortuna!
“Sorry Artie, you’re on your own,” Tony says smugly to Artie. “I’ve gotta go get me some sweet new pussy.”
Feeling lucky, Tony brings the bottle with him and hurries after the brunette. Artie gives him a pathetic look of abandonment – his friend needs a lap-dance or a blowjob, possibly two, Tony thinks, to boost the guy’s spirits or something. But the idiot never says yes to anything at the Bing – too afraid of Charmaine who would probably grill Artie’s testicles and eat them for lunch if she ever caught him ‘cheating’.
Tony finds the hallway empty; except for the brunette, the view to her backside doing wonders for his imagination, and hard-on.
“Hey? How you doing?” he calls out to her, and she stops short, turns around and regards him with surprise.
He holds up the bottle. “You wanna share?”
“Vermouth?” She narrows her eyes at the brand, looks up and then questions him, “Solo?”
“It’s a good brand – it’s what they do in the home country, ain’t it?”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” she replies with a soft smile, and then takes the bottle, her slender fingers around it.
“Salute.”
“Salute,” he echoes watching her with rapt attention; her lips around the opening, her eyes closed, her lashes dark and long. She’s wearing very little make-up, a subtle look if not for the bright red lipstick. She’s beautiful, he thinks; all soft lines and curves – soft tits draped in a black cocktail dress and he wants to bury his face between the two mounds.
It doesn’t take more than that; alcohol shared, standing close together and one look from her, coy but inviting, and he kisses her. From the way she responds, her mouth soft against his, it goes straight to his dick. Stumbling, he backs her up against the wall on the other side of the restrooms, the Mancino loosely in her hand. Her other hand is in his hair around the back of his head, bringing him closer, the kiss deepening.
The light goes off leaving them in darkness and he grabs her ass with both hands, bringing her up against his hard dick. Fortuna indeed; it’s like the fucking gods of fate or whatever wants Tony to fuck her brains out here in the dark.
“Oh, fuck me,” she exhales with a breath when he lifts her dress from her knees and slips a hand under the fabric, his hand around the bare skin of her soft thigh.
“That’s the plan, hon,” he growls in her ear, the soft moan she lets out arousing.
Like he’d guessed; ready and willing, one of those women he can easily ply apart and when they come undone, it’s wild and loud.
He pushes her dress further up with both hands, touching the bare skin of her inner thighs, and wasting no time, he slides his fingers against the lining of her underwear, her center warm through the thin fabric. He rubs two fingers back and forth.
“Oh, you’re an eager one,” she says to him with a breathy moan.
“Fuck yeah, I’m eager,” he replies, kissing her neck, pushing his fingers against her core. Her breath is humid against his cheek. He can’t wait to bury his dick in her warmth. “You’re beautiful and I’m whatever you want me to be.”
That’s the right thing to say; she melts in his arms, her lips supple and desperate against his in another heated kiss, her legs opening, inviting, and he rubs his fingers with little finesse but enough force to get a whimper out of her.
“I’m gonna fuck you right here,” he says, enjoying the second whimper even more, her eyes closing in transparent pleasure. He lets her pussy go for now, instead he grabs her hips under the dress, goes under the band line of her underwear and lays his palms against her ass, squeezing, and brings her closer to his groin. Grinds himself against her.
Ah, fuck.
His mind is made up; he’s going to fucking do her here, uncaring about anything, consequences be damned; but the sound of music is suddenly loud, doors opening and closing, and then the light turns on again. His hand stills on his belt. Motion-detection, or some technical shit. It ruins the mood; illuminating as every shadow flees and she looks like she’s drenched in sin before him. Half open mouth, eyes full of ecstasy, until that is, they widen in surprise at something behind him.
And then she is shoving his one hand off her ass, smoothing down her dress trying without success to look presentable. She slips the arm that doesn’t hold the Vermouth through his, forcing him to confront the onlookers as well.
His disappointment is massive; left with a hard-on.
“Hi,” she says in an off-key high note to the group of people watching them, her cheeks painted red with embarrassment – or maybe the flush is from kissing?
“I found an old friend from high-school,” she lies to the group. Varying degrees of bewilderment are thrown at them from the group of a young guy, an older guy and a redheaded bimbo.
The young guy coughs into his hand to cover mortification.
“Old friend?” the older man croaks, blatantly annoyed, and fuck, this gets Tony even more excited.
“Tony Soprano,” Tony introduces himself and the old guy’s face crumbles into horrified recognition and that recognition jet streams through Tony’s blood with sweet pleasure. Ohhh, fuck yes. Tony brings the brunette closer to him with a possessive arm around her waist. The other man’s eyes almost bulge out.
Her ex, he decides with an unholy grin. If he can’t dip his dick into the pond, he can at the very least have fun toying with the ex.
“Tony here, -” she lies again, nestled warmly against his side, “ - was just telling me about what he’s been up to since leaving school. Very interesting. He’s a...” She wavers, and obviously she has no idea who he is. It’s sweet, he thinks, and a blessing in disguise.
“Ornithologist,” Tony supplies.
She smiles wider, nodding eagerly, and Jesus Christ, she’s something; she probably thinks he is an Ornithologist for real.
The old guy tries to ignore Tony’s presence, a little too desperately, instead turning his obvious disapproval unto her appearance.
“You’re coming undone, Jen,” the ex simply says, the tone belittling.
Perplexed, she looks down at herself; the visible edge of a lacy white bra at the swell of one breast, the bosom of her dress just under. She fumbles with her cleavage then, trying to right her dress; she looks ready to pop out, and fuck it, Tony is still so hard, straining, aching, and he can’t do anything about it but tug her harder against his side. That and watch the old guy have a conniption at this display.
“I need a cigarette,” the younger guy exclaims, and then throws a whiny, “Mom?”
Her son then, the boy’s hand out with his palm open, waiting impatiently and it’s a wonder the boy doesn’t tap his foot against the floor in a huff.
She finds the packet of cigarettes in her purse, still balancing the bottle of Vermouth awkwardly in one hand, embarrassed when she passes the packet to her son, clearly avoiding the angry look of her ex.
It’s a whole family shit show and being in the middle of it, it’s gloriously entertaining.
The boy leaves with a “You all better behave, or I’m gonna have a meltdown in therapy with Dr. Reis.”
The ex looks even more sour now.
“I thought you’d quit,” the man says. “And instead you’ve passed on this disgusting habit to our son, Jennifer! Supplying him! What’s next, you’re going to get drunk with him? Buy him vodka? Teach him how to do Tequila?”
“Hi,” the redheaded bimbo meanwhile says to Tony, her hand out. “I’m Colleen with two l’s and two e’s.”
Tony just looks at the hand the other woman offers him, and then ignores it. Instead he slips his hand down over the brunette’s clothed ass, enjoying the audible intake of breath, low enough for only him to hear, before he squeezes her ass cheek in one hand.
“Tequila, really,” she says breathless, and Tony imagines her breathless with his dick in her pussy; imagines fucking her, her breaths heavy in his ear, imagines her pussy fluttering tightly around his dick, imagines making her scream out.
“Jesus Christ, Richard, I’m not supplying him,” she bites out.
“No, no,” Richard, the annoying ex, bites back full of sarcasm. “You just happen to have a pack of American Spirits in your purse, by accident. Along with the Vermouth.”
The neck of the bottle is still in her hand and she does look particularly messy like this, her dress still not in its proper place – she looks messy in that fuckable desperate fashion that Tony especially loves but her ex seems to find it very disagreeable, the jealous angle to the older man’s words not beyond Tony.
“You’re so fucking bitter, and you have absolutely no reason to,” she tells him, her head held high.
“Bitter? Jennifer, you’re acting juvenile, smoking, drinking, cavorting with strangers, if I didn’t know you better,-”
“Fuck you Richard,” she exclaims in high tones, and then she storms off too leaving Tony alone with the guy and the bimbo.
The older guy looks like he’s about to go after her.
“Hey Dick,” Tony says with a cheerful tone. “Let’s leave your ex alone, yeah. She clearly doesn’t want you.”
Fuck, Tony gets harder just saying this.
The guy sneers.
Tony crudely lifts two fingers to his nose, smiling at the older guy when he mimics sniffing them.
The guy blanches white.
And then the bimbo interrupts, oblivious.
“Ornithologist?” the redhead says more than slow on the uptake. “That’s like pyramids and tombs, right? Indiana Jones?”
Tony stares at her.
Jesus Christ.
“Barely two brain cells, this one,” he comments to Dick the Ex and then Tony goes back to humdrum of the celebrations, all his hopes of getting to fuck the brunette now hopelessly diminished.
Jennifer tracks down Jason easily; her son has in lieu of his mother fled to the same circular terrace with the metal benches and the trimmed trees in their neat squares. Solitary he sits on a bench, furiously puffing out billows of smoke, head tilted back as he gazes up at the dark sky. In the corner, huddled together, a group of graduates are smoking too, their conversation full of muffled cheer. The group briefly look at her and she feels self-conscious; on reflex she smoothens her dress with a hand down the side of her hip.
Jason’s face softens considerably when he notices her and then he makes room for her on the bench scooting to the side. She feels intense relief at this; she’s never kissed anyone in front of him that isn’t his father, and now if her son had caught her a moment later it would have been the scene of his shameless middle-aged mother in flagrante delicto.
Jesus fucking Christ, Jennifer!
Jason is mute on the subject of divorce; why he hardly says anything in the family therapy sessions Richard insists on. I don’t care, he says on any subject that comes up.
“Hi,” she says, bumping her shoulder gently against his. She puts down the bottle of Vermouth by her heels, annoyed that she brought it with her, but she didn’t think clearly; she just needed to get away from Richard.
Jason offers the cigarette and she takes one inhalation before giving it back.
The other group disappears back into the building.
“I’m so sorry, Jason.” She tries to not let her worry or embarrassment show.
“Don’t worry.” He waves her apology away, looking older than he is. Without his spectacles he looks like Richard, except his eyes; they are hers.
“I’m being very unmotherly.”
He laughs and it sounds carefree; she feels further relief, finally relaxing back against the bench with him.
“Mom, you’re the least of my concerns.”
“You have concerns?”
He sighs, but doesn’t expand. Instead he puffs on the cigarette and blows smoke out, away from her.
“I’ll be fine, you know,” she tells him, brushing her hand down her dress, trying to flatten down a crease that isn’t there. She can’t imagine he doesn’t have concerns about her or the divorce.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
The last time she mentioned anything about him leaving the nest, he’d huffed and puffed annoyingly for a whole day; so she holds back on that – he hates when she fusses about him.
“So, you’re not sad about the divorce?” He pokes at her, this narrow look that reminds her of Richard too, only it doesn’t come from any place but love. He’s growing up so fast, she thinks.
She crosses her arms, and tries to keep her gaze on his.
He explains, “Dad seems, I don’t know, oddly confrontational. And you seem, anxious, mom.”
“Maybe he is,” she reflects about Richard, opting to not say anything about herself.
Jason sighs. “Textbook, you’d say if you were honest with me, mom. You’d say he’s having a textbook midlife crisis.”
Honesty? There’s so much she can’t tell her son.
“Do you think he’ll buy a convertible next?” Jason then comments, all wry, clued in on her silence no doubt. His eyes are alight with glee.
She laughs. Oh, she can just imagine it; Richard in a stupid corvette with that bimbo.
Jason’s smile quickly fades, worry suddenly in his countenance. “You’re still going through with it?” He makes it sound like a possibility; her not going through with it.
“Yes. I’ve signed the papers. I’m just waiting for your father’s signature.”
There’s a long beat of silence.
“I’m proud of you, Mom.” He looks at her, his face young and innocent.
This is new, she thinks, the deviation from a blasé attitude. She tilts her head and gives him an inquisitive look.
“Going through with it, you know, no one’s divorced in the old neighborhood. Pretty gutsy of you.”
Funny, she doesn’t feel particularly brave, but looking at him, she feels strangely comforted; it’s the right thing to do.
“Oh, I love you, baby,” she tells him, her heart full of sentimentality, and now he’s embarrassed but also pleased. She tussles his hair and he smiles back with that same smile from when he was ten. Her little baby about to fly out into the world all on his own. What did she even teach him about relationships and love? It’s not too late, she tells herself; isn’t that why she’s about to fly off herself?
“Jason, your friend Ryan is looking for you,” Richard interrupts them standing in the door opening to the terrace, thankfully without the bimbo.
“Love you too mom,” Jason whispers when they leave the bench, and she feels blessed until she meets Richard’s eye; his disapproval not censured, if anything it darkens when Jason grounds the heel of his shoe on the cigarette stump before he neatly, and very conscientiously, throws it into the trash can.
In the door opening, Richard grabs her arm.
“Go on, Jason, I’ll just have a short talk with your mother,” Richard tells Jason. It’s that same voice that makes her feel chastised; she hates it.
Jason looks ready to argue; on her behalf, her son’s eyes calculatingly on his father’s hand around her arm. She shakes her head at him, mouths ‘go.’
When their son is out of sight, Richard leans closer but he doesn’t let go of her arm. Atypical of him, she thinks, because he doesn’t touch her like this; a firm, fast grip and it stalls her breath for a short, agonizing moment. He’s unpredictable now?
“You’re a mess,” he says, concern across his features, and he probably didn’t mean for it to sound condescending.
“Let’s talk,” he begins. Richard LaPenna always knows best. “Separation is good and all, Jennifer, space and time for us to think for ourselves, that is good and healthy in any relationship. But there’s no need for us to finalize it, we can find someone to talk to, just the two of us. Couple’s therapy, it would be beneficial. And -,”
Here he goes, she thinks, tuning out his words. Rationalizing it, reeling her in.
Instead of listening to his monologue, she watches his mouth. Nothing is going to fix this. Maybe it’s the Vermouth, the spice of it still a strong flavor in her mouth, a buzz of herbaceous courage, and so, in an effort to get him to shut up, she leans in and captures his mouth in a kiss.
He tastes like familiarity; safe and comfortable, but there is no place for her in a relationship with him, and maybe there never was. He’s the bigger mess, she decides, when he kisses her back, his lips adamant. Her mess is proportionately messy.
She ends the kiss, gives him a look. “You’ve got Colleen.” She traces a thumb across his cheek. “And I don’t want you anymore, Richard.”
He finally lets her arm go, a momentary look of devastation.
“Just sign the papers, please,” she says, not caring that it sounds desperate. She is desperate to be free.
He’s been putting it off, she knows. Dragging his feet about it, prolonging it. Something about the image he has of himself; it cracks when he has to say he’s divorced.
His mood shifts, and it’s also familiar that look.
“Jennifer.”
“Richard,” she echoes back with the same patronizing tone.
“You do know who that was? That stranger you were about to publicly fuck? Out in plain view, Christ-sake, what were you thinking?”
So, he is jealous.
She smiles. “He was nice. That’s all I know.”
“He’s the least nice guy around,” Richard sneers, and for a split second it looks like he wants to shake her; grab both her arms and shake sense into her.
“Then tell me? Who is he?”
It finally looks like his anger will win out; he’s usually always so levelheaded in their fights that this blatant display is puzzling – and exciting. Finally, something, but before she can reflect on it, his face shifts again, back into aloof and he just says, “Let’s get back to our son.”
Distant.
Couple’s therapy with him would be just like this; disappointing.
Tony is preoccupied and lost in what could have been; his eyes tracking surreptitiously around the large gymnasium, and when he catches a brief glimpse of the brunette, he’s uncomfortably hard again, watching her disappear into the crowd of people leaving. The trouble with the whole affair; he can’t go disappearing again. Carmela’s already given him hell and now she’s keeping a suspicious eye on him, he can tell. Walking arm-in-arm with Charmaine two steps back, a sharp eye on his heel.
The celebrations are changing gear and all the grown ups are leaving.
Artie gives him a sly, secretive smile, his finger briefly on his nose with a suggestive arch of his eyebrow.
Idiot.
Tony shakes his head, mouthing ‘not now.’
Carmela and Charmaine talk; politely like they always do, like they’ve got only one leg in on the conversation. Carmela insists they are close, but Tony doesn’t see it.
“Eh?” Artie comes in closer, two wagging eyebrows.
Tony shrugs it off.
“Ah, don’t leave me hanging,” Artie complains, his eyes moving towards their wives. Tony looks; both women are momentarily occupied by an enthusiastic conversation about a shopping mall or something equally inane.
Tony moves closer to his friend and slings an arm around Artie’s shoulder, and covered by this, he leans in, almost touching Artie’s cheek with his own. “Oh, Madonn’, she was like a fine vintage Barolo.” Tony lowers his voice even more, “Intense and ripe.”
Artie looks mesmerized. The guy lives vicariously through everyone else – that and his food, which he pours his entire soul into.
Tony continues in a hushed tone, “I tell you, she was hot for me, you know what I mean. Let’s just say she wasn’t quiet. Molto entusiasmo.”
Artie nods and he looks even more enthralled. “You gonna see her again?”
And maybe that’s what’s bothering Tony; he will probably never see her again.
“Yeah, she slipped her telephone number into my pocket,” he lies to his friend, patting the pocket in his suit jacket.
Artie seems impressed, and a little jealous if Tony has to put a name to that peculiar look in his friend’s eyes.
“You’ve gotta come by Vesuvio soon,” Artie says out loud when Charmaine and Carmela come closer and within hearing range. “I’m just finishing off a new dish. Pappardele all’anatra. It’s heaven. I’ll even throw in a nice Barolo free of charge.”
Artie grins stupidly.
Jesus, the idiot.
Tony can’t help smiling back with the same stupid grin. If his friend would only say yes, Tony would buy the idiot a whole evening of entertainment at the Bing; Tony Soprano takes care of his friends.
“You gonna come by this weekend? Saturday?” Artie nods enthusiastically.
Then the Pappardele all’anatra hits and Tony’s smile disappears.
“I can’t,” Tony says, sorrowful out of the blue.
Tony could explain to Artie that he can’t eat duck for the foreseeable future, as simple as that, and his friend would be understanding. Tony can’t figure out how to explain it without looking like a blubbering asshole, however, and he would never live it down; crying about eating duck.
Tony shrugs with an easy smile. “It’s my busy season, you know.”
He is busy, so it’s not an outright lie.
“Artie,” Charmaine butts in, her smile not reaching her eyes. She always gives Tony a look of disapproval; subtle but he catches it like the whiff of a bad smell. Carmela looks disapproving too, and he wagers she will start complaining about a headache the moment they are in the car. Not that he feels in the mood to fuck his wife tonight; it will feel like a chore.
“You have fun?” Carmela asks him, patting his tie against his chest, her long lacquered nails clicking.
Artie and Charmaine are talking about ingredients; shop talk like no ones business, boring, and Tony imagines they talk like that in bed too, missionary and bland, lost in credit scores and bills.
“Fun?” Tony exclaims, and then he huffs out, “Carm, this is your family. I don’t know them. It was a party for teenagers, c’mon! And you know, they were cheap on the food, weren’t they? And that punch! Garbage.”
She nods.
“The petit fours were a little dry.”
“Yeah dry,” Tony agrees.
The brunette had been fucking wet for him! Oh fucking hell! Stupido imbecille! Tony could easily have thrown her into the restroom, locked the door and fucked her until her voice turned hoarse; if only he’d used his fucking brain.
Tony hums distractedly at Carmela, his eyes on Artie who looks chastised about something Charmaine says.
He imagines the restroom; divesting her of her underwear, rip it off or slide it down her legs?
“Father Phil says,-” Carmela continues, her arm through his.
Tony only listens halfheartedly, his mind elsewhere.
Jennifer should have turned him down on the telephone when he booked the appointment; but he didn’t recognize her voice. She knew the moment he said his name on the phone, instantly taken back to his groping hands in the dark.
Tony Soprano and now here he sits in her waiting room, faux Ornithologist, mobster in hiding, looking very uncomfortable and masquerading behind many masks.
“Mr. Soprano,” she says to him, and instead of inviting him inside the office like she usually does, she sits down next to him on the waiting room couch.
He looks at her with surprise, his eyes briefly going to the nude statue. She’s never been more happy about the sculpture; something about the naked form that fits well into this exact conversation. It throws him off, and she hopes it makes him think about her breasts.
His eyes flit down her body, quick, before he again looks at her face.
Bingo.
“You’re the shrink?” His tone is incredulous.
She nods gently.
He rubs his hand across his forehead. “Fuck me.”
“Obviously, I can’t have you as a client,” she tells him. He casually dressed today; a black short-sleeved polo shirt paired with tan slacks.
She continues, “I’m happy to go over a list of colleagues with you and I can refer you. I can make certain you find the right therapist.”
“Nah, nah, you see, I don’t really need a head shrink.”
Head shrink; his scorn shows.
“My understanding from Dr. Cusamano, your family physician, is that you collapsed. Possibly a panic attack? You were unable to breathe?”
Jennifer can imagine numerous gruesome things a mafia captain can panic about, and that may be it, but Richard’s in the back of her head derisively saying something about Italian boys and their mothers.
“They said it was a panic attack,” he bites out between clenched jaws like even the notion of a panic attack is too much for him. “The blood and neurological work came back negative. And they sent me here.”
She hums.
Then he says, “And you know what, it doesn’t matter. It’s impossible for me to talk to a psychiatrist.”
“Impossible?”
Omertá?
“Look, I’m fine, back at work and everything.” He elaborates. “Back to, you know, watching birds and shit.”
She barely keeps her smile in check. “And being an ornithologist makes it impossible for you to see a psychiatrist?”
“Yeah, I mean, sometimes I work late. Lotta nocturnal birds, yeah.”
He’s a nocturnal bird himself, isn’t he?
“Okay, that makes sense,” she agrees, very intrigued with his obvious lie and how he’s going to maintain it with her. “And during the day? I imagine you teach at a college or something?”
Does he secretly want to be an ornithologist? Does he want to quit the Mafia? Is he overcome with guilt, and so, he makes up this persona? Is that why he has panic attacks? Or does he simply want to fuck her – and this persona fits that? Oh, god, she would have loved to have had him in her chair, going through his brain and motives, figuring out what makes him tick. Help him too – naturally.
“Yeah,” he nods. “In the daytime, I teach.”
“Where?”
Instead of answering, he looks at her with this intense look, and then he easily deflects.
“You wanna have dinner with me?”
“Oh.”
“We hit it off last time,” he smiles wide, his eyes glinting with mischief.
“Aren’t you married?” she comments although she already knows; Richard has spent an inordinate amount of time detailing all the grotesque facts about the Dimeo Crime Family – especially one Tony Soprano that you would think the man in question had been an unrelenting childhood bully.
There’s a little annoyed line around Tony Soprano’s eye at her questioning his marital status. Very subtle but she catches it easily.
“No,” he lies. “Divorced.” He bares his teeth and the smile looks attractive and charming. A gangster with backward old Italian family traditions and he’s divorced? She almost laughs. Oh, he’s really gung ho on this divorced ornithologist mask; why she finds this pleasing, she can’t tell.
“Like me?” She quirks her eyebrow, gives her own smile.
He nods, eagerly, catching onto it with desperation, “Yeah. Just like you.”
He lies very easily.
“Do you want the list of colleagues?” She dips back into some form of professionalism although she doesn’t have to.
“Sure,” he says, offhand. “I don’t need it, but yeah. I mean, it sounds important to you, so if you really want to give me the list, give me the list.”
Very offhand.
Psychiatry and the Mafia; doesn’t fit very well, does it?
He follows her into the office, on her heel, looking at her writing down names from her Rolodex onto a piece of paper, his eyes on her behind with no cover at all. He’s very forward, and she more than likes it; this brash attitude.
He walks restlessly around her office, surveying, and she likens him to a predator on the savanna.
He briefly looks at her diploma. “Tufts University, huh. You must be smart, yeah?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Your parents must be proud?” he smiles, coming closer now, slowly, circling her.
She shrugs, and then she finds herself honestly declaring, “To a degree.” She forgets the list, instead she leans back against the edge of the desk, watching his advances.
“Only the one son?” he asks again very forward, another step closer.
She nods.
He smiles, his eyes now going to the edge of her skirt. Usually she’d wear a pantsuit but the skirt is easier to push up and get out of the way; she just wants the feeling of it bunched around her waist when he fucks her.
“You on the pill?”
She feels all tingly with excitement when she gives him a nod.
He’s standing so close his thighs touch hers, his eyes darker up close; a split second where they look at each other, and then he pounces, his lips on hers with a strange passion.
Maybe it’s Richard stupid face in the back of her head that urges her on, or maybe it’s the fact that she’s attracted to this man, or something third she hasn’t accounted for, but she lets him back her up onto her desk, lets him step between her legs and she kisses him back, uncaring when her things clatter to the floor.
She begins to undo his belt, he pushes her skirt up and before she knows it, he’s gotten rid of her underwear, and two broads fingers are working her; she’s so wet already, she can barely stand it when he circles his fingers around her clitoris before he slides two fingers into her, slick, going deep.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” he grunts, sloppily kissing the side of her neck.
She finishes with his belt and pushes his underwear down, her hand around the length of his cock; she lines him up, scooting further back on the desk, and then he is heavy on top, hands around the back of her thighs, and he sinks in with a deep thrust, stretching her out.
She eggs him on, her own breaths loud. “Fuck me hard,” and he does, each quick roll of his hips bringing her closer and closer; she’s gasping, moaning, and fuck, it’s an inferno of building pleasure.
She comes with his hand across her mouth, his grin entirely too self-satisfied as he continues to plunge into her, chasing his own orgasm. The length of him sliding into her is almost enough to topple her already sensitized flesh.
She almost comes a second time.
Afterwards, she can’t find her underwear, his semen starting to run out of her. Richard is once again in her head, this time whispering something scornful about venereal diseases.
“How about that dinner, hon?”
He’s one big smile, offering her the tissue box from her own coffee table, his slacks already up and the belt buckled; presentable and unruffled.
She snatches a couple of tissues, and trying not to feel self-conscious, she cleans his semen off; he’s staring at her, hungrily, a dark look that prickles on her skin.
“Well?” he pushes, a cocky attitude, “You game?”
“Why not,” she agrees, sliding her skirt back into place; and then she notices her underwear in his hands.
“A little souvenir for me,” he grins, twirling the cloth around a finger.
Oh god, it’s just the right thing for her at this juncture in her life. A big bad wolf to blow her house down; that’s all she wants: sex.
“I’ll pick you up Saturday at 7 pm,” he says boldly, slipping her underwear into the pocket of his slacks, coming close again, a distinct gleam in his eyes. “I’ll do you proper then. Wine and dine you, high-end, yeah, and you know, I’ll make you cum again.”
“You don’t know where I live,” she replies, her own smile ridiculously wide.
“I’m tenacious,” he simply says, and with two quick steps he kisses the breath out of her lungs with a hand to the back of her head. She kisses him back, his mouth hot and demanding, his hand firm on her hip holding her in place.
His thumb goes over her bottom lip when he ends the kiss.
“I’ll see you then, Mr. Soprano,” she says, her own voice sounding husky.
“Sure thing, Doc,” he grins, and then he’s bouncing out of her office. And she has to sit, the rest of the day, commando, afraid all her patients can tell she’s naked beneath the skirt, afraid they can tell she got pounded into the desk a moment before.
Next time, though, she reflects, if Richard starts anything, she’s going to tell him that Tony Soprano’s got a bigger dick than him. If only to shut him up.
The thought pleases her.