Carol's Corner: Middle of the Mob Chp 5&6

Presents !! for You — A Serialization !!

The story continues. Please enjoy this is the next chapter of my life in the Middle of the Mob ! —The Gang

As printed…

Note: This should be about 14 to 19 minute read as we did a double-episode (though your mileage may vary)…

As seen in the Print Edition…

My first job after graduating high school was as a teller at World Savings and Loan. Remember that prehistoric institution? Did you know that at the end of 2004 the direct cost of the S&L crisis to taxpayers was about $124 billion? Now I’m not giving the mob any kudos but, back in 1963, I’ll bet the amount of money the mafia stole from taxpayers was peanuts compared to that.

Anyway, I started as a teller and worked my way up to account department manager and was finally promoted to secretary to the president. My parents were proud of me and so was I.

While I was working my way up the ladder at World Savings, Nicky Salatto had been drafted, serving time in Japan with the Marines for a few years. While stationed there he spoiled himself with tailor-made suits and shirts. After his tour of duty, he was honorably discharged, that being one of the few honors he ever received.

We met again at Rocco’s Inn, a popular neighborhood bar. I was eighteen and Nicky was twenty-one. Now it’s one thing to be good looking but you put all those good looks, the dark hair, big blue eyes, and olive complexion, in a deep blue suit with a tailored, hug-your-waist light blue shirt, opened at the collar and it’s enough to make you faint. I couldn’t take my eyes off him and he noticed.

Dancing with his body plastered against a friend of mine, he winked at me over her shoulder. When Sabina returned to our table I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “He was flirting with me while you were dancing with him.” Sabina, tipsy, just shrugged and said, “That’s cool. Go for it, Sami. He’s with a different girl every night anyway,” as she took another sip from her drink.

When he asked me to dance, he immediately tried to press in close, but I pulled away and kept a respectful distance between us. His head nodded as a slight smile spread across his lips as if to say, “Okay you want to play hard to get?” He just stared into my eyes and I stared right back for the longest two minutes of my life. Then he said, “You look familiar; do I know you?”

“Well if you call a short double ski ride around Ciron Lake, when you didn’t even ask my name, knowing someone, then yes… I guess you know me.”

“Wait, I remember. You’re “jail bait,” right?”

“Well, maybe back then. Now, I’m just “trouble,” I said smiling. “I don’t remember your name,” I said, lying.

“It’s Nicky… Nicky Salatto. And yours?”

“Sami… Sami Carracci.”

And so, it began. At first, he just phoned me every day for about a week, and then asked me out on our first date. I remember it was summer and I had the greatest tan; to show it off I wore a white top and skirt.

Military service was Nicky’s excuse for not having a job or a car and that seemed logical to me so I didn’t mind that I borrowed Mom’s car to pick him up. He suggested a local drive-in for hamburgers and fries. Okay, so he wasn’t the romantic type but he did manage to pay the tab that night.

We talked all night, about my family, about his family. He was one of eleven, three sisters and seven brothers. He laughed as he told me about all the screaming and fighting that went on in his home, the worst between his mom and dad.

“I’ll never forget the time my mom hit my dad over the head with a frying pan. I must have been about six. She found out he was cheating on her with a neighbor across the street and chased him around the kitchen table with me holding on to the back of her dress to try to slow her down.

“She’s screaming, ‘You had to be with Rosa, with Rosa of all people?’

“‘You donna know whata ya speak,’ Dad yelled back at her.

“I was terrified as the blood ran down his cheeks. It was brutal. It’s comical now, you know?”

He hesitated then confessed, “I think you should know right off the bat, my older brother, Frankie, has already served time in prison for assault and drugs charges.” The confession shocked me, but he was not his brother, so I dismissed it.

Nicky’s father was a barber and had his own shop just up the street from where I grew up. As a young boy, he used to go to his father’s shop and help him sweep the floor and do odd jobs that his dad made clear were “never done right.” He went on and on as I nodded my head and tried unsuccessfully to suppress the memory that surfaced.

When I was about twelve, I used to walk past that barber shop to go swimming at a public park across the street. There was a boy working in that shop around fifteen years old that used to stare at me when I walked by. Way back then, I told my sister and cousin that his eyes were evil and he gave me the creeps. That boy… was Nicky.

When I drove him home that night, we sat in front of his house, not saying a word. His eyes were burning a hole through me when he reached across the seat and began stroking my hair. I felt my stomach suck in automatically like it does when you drop down the first hill of a roller-coaster.

Then he gently put his arm around my shoulder and slid next to me, lifted my face and placed his mouth on mine. I knew immediately: this was the one man I could have left my family for, the man I could have left my religion for, the man I would have given my soul to that night if he asked… but he didn’t.

To this day, I still can’t explain the hold he had on me. Maybe it was just raging hormones, but I knew this was the man that I had to have in my life.

We dated for three months before we got engaged. I never let him screw me, no matter how hard he tried. Poor guy, walked around with a bulge in his pants for months. Believe me I wanted him too, my panties were always wet.

He proposed to me over a large sausage and pepperoni pizza at Pauli’s Pizza Parlor on 38th Street and we married three months later.

This is a double-episode…

As seen in the Print Edition…

CHAPTER 6 – SEX

Now, you have to understand that Mama was very shy and modest, never told us anything about sex when we were growing up. I learned about menstruation from Eileen, who, at age 28, got pregnant with her boyfriend (the detective―my brother-in-law―Sean O’Shay) of ten years and had to get married. It destroyed Mama and she cried for days. So, she made up her mind to have “the talk” with me and my sister Gina, before we got ourselves in trouble. We were both in our teens at the time. She led us into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, saying she had “something very important” to tell us. “I never talked to your sister Eileen about this and I know now it was a mistake,” she said, coughing and clearing her throat. Her face turned candy-apple red as she passed on her sage advice.

“Don’t do it!”

Our eyes quickly slid sideways toward one another, then back to her. We nodded our heads to assure her we understood. Her head nodded too, looking first into Gina’s eyes then into mine to punctuate the importance of the moment. She unlocked the door and walked out. We buried our heads in the bathroom towels to stifle the laughter.

The only other time Mama talked to me about sex was after I married Nicky. But, let me back up. You see, we had no money for a honeymoon, our wedding night was at the Landon Hotel, part of my parents’ wedding gift to us. Nicky rushed into the room, leaving me standing at the door. I buried the words “meal ticket” into a coffin of denial created by my mind in an ever-growing graveyard full of them.

“Aren’t you going to carry me across the threshold?” I asked.

“You’re joking, right?” Nicky said.

“No, it’s a tradition. Come on.”

He swept me into his arms and staggered through the door, bumping my head against the frame. He threw me on the bed, lifted my gown, then crawled on top of me. The beautiful negligee (my sister’s wedding gift to me) remained in my suitcase. Petticoats thrown to the floor along with my panties, his whiskey tongue in my mouth, his rough hand squeezing my breast, his legs forcing my knees apart, his groans and roars assaulting my ears, his penis thrusting hard into my vagina, ripping me apart. He came, then rolled over and fell asleep.

I gathered my beautiful gown, wet with a pink stain of sperm and blood, and tiptoed to the bathroom to wipe up the mess between my legs; startled by my image in the mirror: lipstick smeared, fallen bouffant, and streams of black mascara running down my face, I accepted the first of many failed expectations.

Nicky knew nothing about satisfying a woman. His technique started and ended with his kiss. Sex was all about his orgasm. For the first year, I didn’t even know what an orgasm felt like. Then, quite by chance, through no effort on Nicky’s part, I accidentally felt that overwhelming pleasure, that heart-racing, heat-inducing, out-of-control, thrusting first orgasm. Felt like a few minutes in heaven and gave me a small understanding of why men were so crazed with sex. After that, my sexual appetite increased while Nicky’s decreased because he was screwing around with other women.

Soon after I married Nicky, Mama said she had “something very important” to tell me. I noticed the candy-apple red that had crawled up her neck during the first “sex” talk had begun to flush her face again. She struggled to find the words. “Nicky told me I needed to teach you how to keep yourself clean or douche or something because he said… you smell down there.”

I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach. The knockout blow came when Nicky betrayed me, when he asked Mama, “Do you know what your daughter wants me to do to her?” She wants me to go down there and kiss her and stuff. You know… disgusting!”

The words exploded inside me; blood drained to my feet; my knees gave in as my back fell against the wall. I crumbled to the floor. Tears of shame and humiliation streamed down my cheeks, I cried for a long time… so did Mama.

-30-

And now the segue…