Now he stood just inside the doorway to the room, taking it all in, probably already had everything of value fenced in his head. Then he caught sight of his daughter, who I’d promised to find for him. “Vicky? That you? What’re you doing down there? What is this place? Is this where you ran off to that night? I guess I can see why.”
“Who are you?”
Jimmy walked over, hands outstretched to greet Fontane. “This, Felix, is your wife’s husband.” Both men looked at me like I’d yelled fire or told them Kievan Rus was on the rise again.
“I don’t understand.” Fontane, I believe, has been brain dead for the past decade.
“Like I just told you, Becky was never divorced, her husband went to prison, and she reinvented herself to snag a rich clown with more money than sense.”
“Rebecca lived here? Vicky…” Victoria’s tears had automatically dried up as soon as she heard his voice. Now she just sat there staring with the look of someone in front of a firing squad. Her eyes widened, and her breathing changed, and by my count, she moved her lips three times without any sound, as if finding it hard to speak or even form words. “Say hello to your dad again, Victoria. Aren’t you happy to see him? You’re so thirsty for a father to the point of trying to steal someone else’s I’d think you’d be glad to see yours.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know this man.” She actually recoiled away from him, putting some space between them.
“I would’ve said you may have forgotten him since you were so young when he went up. But didn’t you two catch up in that diner just the other day? How faulty is that memory of yours?” She gave me another one of those looks, and just like the complete psychopath that she is, I could see the wheels turning in her head.
Now your typical psycho, they don’t give a shit about anyone or anything. But more than that, they’re master manipulators who can turn shit to gold unless you catch them slipping. Or you can match their psychosis tick for tick; I think I qualify for the latter. I’ll pit my brain against hers any day. I just looked back at her with a smirk I knew would get under her skin.
At this point, I had no real interest in Fontane, seeing her true colors. I wasn’t doing this for him but for Gianna. She was getting a front-row seat, her head going back and forth between the players as if this were a tennis match. “Vicky, aren’t you happy to see daddy, baby? You know, it wasn’t nice what you did. You didn’t have to run out of the place that way. I thought something bad happened to you that night. You hear stories, ya know.”
“If the waitress didn’t tell me she saw you getting in a cab, I would’ve sat there all night.”
“Get out, get out, get out, get out.” Victoria pounded her fists against the floor, where she still lay sobbing.
“That’s no way to talk to your dad Victoria, didn’t you learn anything from hanging around people who are better than you?” I rubbed salt into her freshly cut wound.
“Who says they’re better than me? Who says?” She wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding the crazy.
“I do. But not to worry, not by much. At least everyone you know is just as big a piece of shit as you are, except for Gianna.” I think she took my smile worst than my smirk.
“He’s lying. I don’t know him.” Cue the rocking back and forth, classic signs that she was under duress.
In perfect timing, Gianna, who seemed to be finally catching on, turned to me and said, “she really is crazy, isn’t she? Poor thing.”
That proved to be the final straw for Victoria. Having the person she hates most looking down on her was apparently too much.
“Don’t you talk about me. Dad, this is all lies, believe me. I don’t know this man. That’s why I ran away from him that night.”
“Oh really! Fontane, there’s one more thing I wanted you to hear. This was recorded the night after Becky got arrested, the day Gianna and I came to visit.” Victoria looked panicked as she tried to figure out what I could probably have on her now. I found the required footage from the night after Gianna, and I left here after I’d been teasing mother and daughter with talk of Jimmy while Gianna spoke to her dad.
The psychotic duo was having a conversation about whether or not I really knew Jimmy, giving the clear indication that she did, in fact, know who he was. Things pretty much went downhill from there before they got worst once Jimmy and Fontane got to talking. “I don’t understand; how did someone like Becky end up married to someone like you? Where did you two even meet?” He scoffed!
“What do you mean someone like me? Becky and I grew up in the same neighborhood in the Bronx all our lives. We even lived there for a bit after we got married straight outta high school.”
“Out of… That doesn’t make sense; Becky went to Vassar.”
“Vassar? What’s that? Is that the place where they do all that space stuff?” Jimmy should be a comic in his spare time.
“No, it’s one of the leading female universities in the country.” Jimmy snorted at Fontane’s recitation and got more comfortable.
“I don’t know what story she’s been telling, but Becky barely got out the tenth grade. She cleaned up good, though if that’s her.” He peered at the portrait of Gianna’s mother.
“No, no, that can’t be her, unless she got cut, no way she got that pretty. Rebecca’s always been a looker but nothing compared to that. That’s pure class right there. I guess she’s your mom, huh, on account of you look so much like her.” He turned his attention to Gianna, who was looking a bit shell-shocked.
“Don’t you talk about my mother. My mother’s more beautiful than that bitch any day.” Well, now, that got Fontane’s attention. Of course, she could crap all over his kid but say anything against his beloved wife, and he’d go apeshit, it seems. But he wasn’t talking. I started looking at old Felix squinty-eyed when I realized that pattern.
I’d almost picked up on it before, but for some reason, it was glaringly obvious today. He was literally swallowing everything, taking it all in, and not responding except to ask very pointed questions. Why is he harvesting information? Why isn’t he reacting as any rational person would? With recriminations and accusations. Instead, he seemed to be inwardly seething while outwardly keeping his cool.
Jimmy went on and on about life with his wife and kid, the hard times they’d faced, and the need for more that had led him to a life of crime. I listened while keeping my eye on Victoria, who was scheming some shit in her head. “So, the woman I thought was my wife was already married, and everything she told me was a lie.”
Oh, woe is me, you fuck. Before he could start his pity party and head down the road to butthurt-ville, I decided to step in. Well, it wasn’t so much that I decided to step in and more that I’d had enough of the people in the room. The fact that he was sitting there looking like all this was done to him, that he was the one betrayed just rubbed me the wrong way, and weeks of having to hold it in came spewing out in controlled rage.
“None of that excuses the fact that you failed your own kid in the worst possible way. You chose filth and that abomination over there over someone as good as your wife’s daughter. Remember her? The daughter she left in your care when she departed this world? Yeah, you don’t get to pawn this whole thing off on that vile bitch and the rotted fruit of her corrupted womb. They didn’t owe Gianna shit, but you did.”