HOW TO EARN YOUR KEEP
Deahn Berrini
Le Lit, Toulouse Lautrec
How To Earn Your Keep is my new novel about a sister and a brother who mistake the finer material things for the material matters of heart and soul. A jealous polo player, a mother who dresses out of season, a bulldog personal injury lawyer, a bereft family, and a horse trainer round out the story, set in the north of Boston in the late 1990’s. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Two.
The bathrobe appeared one Saturday morning as Kat looked up from her tepid morning coffee. He had just slipped it on, and then slipped into the kitchen where their mother was throwing together pancakes. Bright red silk covered in elaborate green dragons breathing great bursts of yellow fire, it intimated exoticism, luxury, and danger over naked white calves covered in wisps of red-blond hair. Larry Lavoie carried it off, too, thick chested with broad shoulders, the robe didn't hang on him sadly, and the large dragon on the back licked dramatic flames over his shoulder.
"Chinatown," said Kat. Precise, narrow waves shimmered down the delicate silk as he moved. "It must have cost a fortune," she lowered her voice, "didn't Linda like it?"
"Linda won't buy anything," Larry answered, "from a store where they don't speak English."
Ruby turned from the stove. "It's beautiful," she cooed. "I want one too."
Larry shrugged. "It's one of a kind."
"He went to Boston yesterday," said Kat to her mother. "Feel the silk, it's gorgeous."
"Don't get too close to this stove,” warned Ruby, spatula high in the air. “Grease is hell on silk."
Larry stepped away from the cooking, held the front of the robe up, and regarded the swirl of color. "It's enough to make you want to learn Chinese."
Larry waited at the hotel bar for Linda. She was late, and Larry knew she wouldn't show. They had first gotten together last spring, after a party where he had found himself in a back bedroom with Linda riding on top of him, her large breasts spilling out of her sleeveless, low-scooped muscle shirt like urgent trapped animals. That sort of enthusiasm had been hard to resist, and it also shed light on her reputation as "easy." Larry had to smile, even as he knew she was probably at this moment landing on her next target. Easy didn't even begin to describe Linda. The woman was possessed, and had thought nothing of pulling him behind a bush by the side of the road while they were waiting for a ride from a friend. She was also sad, her sister and the sister's fiancé killed by an elderly driver weeks before their wedding. Her pathos had kept his interest, but at the same time Larry acknowledged these feelings sent her running hard in the opposite direction. Linda had picked up on his softness and was repelled. He had tried to take her to Boston, to the old brick buildings, to the shops, to his Chinatown haunts, but she had been impatient, bored when she wasn't putting her hands down his pants on an empty side street. This afternoon on the phone, she had been more distracted than usual when he'd told her he'd lost his job, and he could tell that whatever had propelled her into their relationship was finally overcome by inertia. It wasn't my fault, he had tried to explain, they just gave my position to two relatives just off the boat from Piraeus.
He drank the last of his beer, and thought about asking the bartender to throw a burger on the grill in the back. At whatever job he had Larry was always the last guy hired, the most expendable, the one with the least invested. He’d slid around community college for a few semesters, but remained distracted and unable to find the point. Most months he managed his share of the bills, but Kat was so efficient, so dependable that he knew he could skip some paychecks too, and come to no harm. His mother got the alimony, but without Kat the whole unit would disintegrate, death by insolvency, the pieces unable to fend for themselves.
He gave the order for the burger, rare, to the bartender, and sat at the narrow bar, his back to the half dozen or so booths, and watched the Bruins game on the TV hung from the ceiling. Larry couldn’t name the defense of the current team, but he’d grown up in the afterglow of Bobby Orr and those Stanley Cup wins, and he found the familiar sounds of the nasal announcers and the horn blasts that signal the end of each period, as well as the rhythmic skating, with its push and retreat and bursts of speed, soothing.
The bar catered to a good mix of regulars and hotel guests, so when the front door opened, Larry turned to glance at the entrance. He watched as a group of half dozen people, most wearing tight jeans and riding boots, headed in. A musty, animal smell preceded them. A small built man about his age, light hair falling onto his shoulders, looked straight at Larry as he stepped onto the carpet, his face raised up as if pulled in by Larry’s attention. This gaze fell on Larry like a charge, there was no mistaking it. “Geesus,” he muttered in confusion, “what did I do?” and he returned to his beer and the hockey game.
The group quickly ordered drinks and made a congenial semi-circle between the bar and a nearby booth. When someone hailed the bartender in the snaky ‘rs and long vowels of foreign English, Larry couldn’t resist listening in. Their talk turned to unusual women's names that he soon discovered were the names of horses. Part of a group of traveling groomsmen and horse trainers from the last of the season's polo matches, some were staying at the motel. During a lull in the conversation, the guy with the light hair that swooped along the sides of his face sat down on the stool next to Larry. He held out a hand and gave up a guarded smile, William, Billy, Potter he introduced himself in a perfectly ordinary way. Had Larry imagined the glance? Pulled in by his new acquaintance’s reserved charm, it wasn't long before Larry sat amidst the general bonhomie of the larger group. After several more beers, he stopped returning to the memory of that spark and enjoyed the company of his new friend and his amusing companions.