Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

cried. “You were born a piece of shit and you’ll die a piece of shit just like every other piece of shit on this planet!”

When he told the movers to take the bedside lamp, she hit him across his back and scratched his shoulder.

“Veronica, stop it,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Please.”

She grabbed the lamp out of the mover’s hand and threw it against the wall. Mick’s pulse started to race, as he watched her unravel. He grew nauseated and pale. She lunged at him and he ducked from her last grasp as she fell to the floor crying. He threw a few hundred bucks at the head mover and ran out of the apartment.

As he lit a cigarette there on the street corner, about to hail a cab to his hotel, Mick thought fondly of June.

• • •

June learned about the divorce from the pages of Sub Rosa magazine. As she read the headline, she felt some semblance of pride. She’d lasted longer on the bull than Veronica had.

Maybe, June thought, he’ll get his head straight now. Maybe he’ll at least call his kids. But the phone never rang. Not on Christmas. Not on anyone’s birthday. Never.

• • •

Still, in the rare quiet moments backstage …

In the deafeningly sober seconds before the first drink at his after-parties …

In the blindingly bright mornings before his first glass of bourbon …

Mick thought of his children. Nina, Jay, and Hud.

They would be fine, he figured. He had chosen a good mother for them. He had done that right. And he was paying the bills for all of them. He was keeping that roof over their heads, sending child support payments that were sky high. They would be fine. After all, he’d been fine with far less than they had. He gave no thought to the idea that he might break his children just as someone had broken him.

• • •

Carlo and Anna Riva had been tall, stocky, formidable people. They had one child, Michael Dominic Riva, and had tried for more but came up empty. In other families that might have meant Mick was the star, but for the Rivas it meant Mick was the beginning of a failed project, one they were sometimes tempted to abandon.

Carlo was an unremarkable barber. Anna was a mediocre cook. They often were not able to pay their rent or put anything that tasted good on the table. But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren’t sure they’d survive them. They smacked each other on the face. They made love with a sense of urgency and mania. They locked each other out of the house. They threatened to call the cops on each other. Carlo was never faithful. Anna was never kind. And neither of them spent much time remembering there was a child.

Once, when Mick was only four years old, Anna was making dinner when Carlo came home late smelling like perfume.

“I know exactly where you’ve been!” Anna shouted, furious. “With the whore from the corner.” Tiny Mick ducked at the sound of her raised voice. He already knew when to find cover.

“Anna, mind your business,” Carlo snapped.

Anna grabbed the pot of boiling water in front of her with both hands and flung it at her husband.

The scorching water hit the kitchen floor and a spot across Carlo’s neck. Mick watched from the living room floor as his father’s skin began to puff at the collarbone.

“You crazy bitch!” Carlo screamed.

But by the time the burn had blistered, Carlo and Anna were snuggled up together on the tattered sofa, laughing and flirting as if they were alone.

Mick watched them, eyes wide and staring, unworried they would see him gawking. They never looked at him when they got like this.

The next month, Carlo was gone again. He’d met a blond seamstress on the subway. He stopped coming home for nine weeks.

During times like those, when his father was gone, his mother could often be found alone in bed, crying. There were some mornings, far more often than to be called occasional, when Anna did not get out of bed until the sun had passed its zenith and started its way back around.

On those mornings, Mick would wake up and wait for his mother to come to him. He would wait until ten or eleven, sometimes even one. And then, understanding that it was one of those days, he would eventually begin to fend for himself.

Anna would later open her bedroom door and join the world of the living, often to find her baby boy cross-legged on the floor, eating dried spaghetti. She would run to him and sweep him up in her arms and she would say, “My boy, I am so sorry. Let’s get you something to eat.”

She would take him to the bakery, buy him every roll and donut he wanted. She would fill him with sugar, ply him with laughter. She would pick him up into her arms with glee, cradling him to her, calling out “My Michael, my Michael, fast as a motorcycle” as she ran with him through the streets. People would stare and that made it all the more fun.

“They don’t know how to have a good time,” Anna would tell her son. “They aren’t special like us. We were born with magic in our hearts.”

When they got home, Mick would have an ache in his stomach, and he would crash from the sugar and fall asleep in his mother’s loving arms. Until the chill settled into her again.

Soon enough, Mick’s father would come home. And the fighting would resume. And then they would lock themselves in their bedroom.

But eventually, whether it was weeks or months or even a year, his father would leave again. And his mother would stay in bed.

And Mick would have to fend for himself.

• • •

Mick married again, shortly after he divorced Veronica.