30. Brenda Gets It on For Joe Pro
Since seeing Joe Pro at her door, Brenda is humming the song Can't Take My Eyes Off a You. (To hear it now click
DIANA ROSS and THE SUPREMES can't take ... - YouTube)
But she is Stan's loyal girl; so she pushes it subliminal.She is young and her nature is passionate and Stan is such a gentleman he makes no demands. But she needs demands. And it is Spring! Worst of all, 2 weeks after her menstruation; it is ovulation day, when she normally gets the lay lady lay feeling
And Stan is at a conference in Chicago for a week.
It is 10 AM. She picks up the phone.
"Joe? Brenda. Today's educate session will be in 2A instead of your home. Can you be here ten thirty?"
He rings from downstairs, and she rings back to open the lobby door and runs to stand in her doorway to see him take the stairs 2 at a time.
"Hello, Miss Brenda." He is in tank-top white shirt, brown workman's pants with his trim, solid footballer waist, and thin brown socks in black loafer kick-off shoes. Hair combed blackly back with pomade and he has just shaved. A solid guy, she thinks.
He follows her into the living room; she points to mid sofa and sits to his right. She puts on a record, low-volume, I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good.. (To hear it now, click
Sarah Vaughan - I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) Pablo Records 1979 )
Digression: This is 6 months after the swordfish catch. Brenda has been meeting with Joe an hour a week at his home, getting Joe to speak educated English, starting him on a reading program, suggesting night courses. An unexpected offshoot is discovery of Joe's art talent. At night school he wandered into a painting class and something in his soul or heritage (Italian renaissance?) caused him to stay the course. The teacher quickly recognized a talent for landscape and portrait based on Joe's eagle-eye vision and color sensibility. Meanwhile he attends a literature class in Italian. Now he is reading Dante and the poems of D'Annunzio. So it is an advanced Joe Pro now.
She has put perfume on, and red dress knee-length and a green sweater above, tight against her bra-less breasts whose nipples show. Joe senses the danger. Dr. Stan is his respected friend and he feels an educated man's honor not to violate a trust by taking what Stan's woman is offering.
"Miss Brenda, it's a beautiful Saturday. How about we take a drive in my Betsy and stop off at Luigi's for take-out spaghetti and pizza, and then do an eat-out in Van Cortlandt forest?"
She leans forward touching his right shoulder with a bit of breast through sweater. "Alright, Joe." she breaths at his mouth. "But let's stop the Miss when we're alone like this. Just Brenda."
"OK."
They stand and she leans against him, catching herself from a stumble in a way that leads to an embrace. "Aw, Joe. I need something now. Anything you want, it's yours."
"He holds her. Then separates and says, "Come on, girl; you need fresh air."
A few minutes later they are in his Betsy and 5 minutes after that he parks it outside Luigi's. As usual, Luigi is out on a delivery and Nicola is behind the counter in spaghetti-sauce-stained white jacket and chef's hat: "Hey, Joe! Howza goin', gumbah?" He recognizes Brenda from Seminar and nods to her. The pizza-pasta take-out store is the size of a large kitchen and has 3 walls and a front plate window on Jerome Avenue. And Nicola is behind the counter facing as they enter and to his right in the corner is a pizza oven. Three 4-person booths are against the left, or north, wall and, for the rest, small tables with 2 chairs each. Brenda notices the walls, behind and to Nicola's right, are covered by a sheet.
Joe shakes Nicola's hand across the counter: "OK, Nicola! Make fifty-cent spaghetti and red sauce, four slices ten-cent pizza, a Pilsener beer for me and a Coca Cola for the Miss here. Take out."
"Hohkay! Joe. But no money! Luigi say Joe Pro get ever'thin' free because a da wall paintin'."
Brenda perks up: "Wall painting?"
"Yeah, Joe do da walls. See I show." He pulls a string and the sheet drops, showing a mural centered by a most delicious looking full-circle pizza and a spaghetti plate al fresco in mouth-watering color. And on the wall to Nicola's right, the fresco shows - on its left side a painting of a thin mustached Gabriele D'Annunzio in Italian army military visor cap and his characteristic Army uniform with tie and white shirt. The words Italy's Fighting Poet of Democracy are under his head & shoulders and smaller scenes of his famous exploits depicted to the right. The fresco is unfinished.
"You painted that, Joe?" Brenda exclaims
"Shua he doing, Miss. Joe a genius, a Michelangelo!"
"OK, OK, Nicola," Joe says, embarrassed by the to do over his fresco. "Get to work on our take out." He and Brenda sit in a booth and after 10 minutes they are back in Betsy with the food and Joe is driving north past the Woodlawn end of the elevated train's downtown subway line, on the uncovered widely scenic Jerome Avenue, with Woodlawn Cemetery to his right and the Van Cortlandt forest to left. Shortly he turns the car left into the small side road and a minute later parks in the lot at the bottom of the road.
They get out and walk in the warm sun to a nearby eat-out bench under newly leafing elms and surrounded by budding bushes. A couple of squirrels look on in anticipation and a small hare hops away in fear while spring robins chirp furiously.
They sit facing each other across a Parks Dept eat-out table - 6 feet long, 2 1/2 feet wide, of 5 old-painted olive-green boards on a concrete stand and with attached facing side benches. Brenda takes out the spaghetti containers, pulls off the tops, unwraps the pizza slices, takes out the long pieces of complimentary garlic bread and the cold Pilsener beer bottle for Joe and Coca Cola for herself. Both sit eating the spaghetti, like professionals, using the twirling fork technique. They alternate swallows of the tomato-sauce juicy spaghetti or still warm, soft Mozzarella cheese pizza with the drinks. They do it silently, Joe naturally and Brenda having learned the habit from her now gone friend, Ali, for maximally enjoying the sensual pleasure of food.
After Joe's takeout plate is empty and even the sauce all swept up on garlic bread bites and Brenda's left partly on plate, ladylike, one half eaten, she asks:
"How much is Luigi paying you for the paintings?"
"I didn't ask. He and Nicola can't afford anything and I'm learning to paint and happy to get a chance to show my work. I got a lifetime ticket for free food from Luigi."
They talk some more, clean up the area and dump the remainders into a Parks Dept trashcan and then Joe drives Brenda back to the flat, telling her as they park, he's got to go help his mother for the afternoon, which happens to be a lie. Actually, he does not want to be alone with Brenda, not trusting himself with this beautiful young woman who seems to be in a state of heat.
Before getting out of the car, Brenda turns to him, "Joe, thanks a lot for keeping me honest." She leans forward and gives him a kiss midway between sister and next door Polly. Then she says, "But, if you and Stan can agree on a Menage a trois - It's alright with me. Do you understand my French?"
"I get it, Brenda. My Italian says it's something like Three of a kind."
He hesitates then adds, "And you know what? If Stan will agree, it's OK with me."
She quickly quits the car thinking, Stop when we're ahead.
For next, click 13.(31-32) Ali in Winnipeg
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