REVISED / RE-EDITED 11/1/2022

Denise and Loretta are original characters, and everything else is based on Richelle Mead's VA series.

The title of the story is swiped from a 1978 album by Parliament

Thank you so much to megamorr for her beta-ing skills!

Depiction is not endorsement. Some characters in this story use language appropriate for the time in which the story is set that some may find offensive.

These characters' opinions do not reflect my own.


CHAPTER 1

New Jersey, 1978.

Denise Caputo leaned against a metal workbench in the middle of Angelo's Auto Body Shop pretending to file her nails. It was a Saturday, and she had plenty of other things she'd rather be doing on a Saturday afternoon than standing around in a sweaty, smelly car garage in downtown Newark staring at Mickey Tanner's legs sticking out from underneath the car he was working on. In his greasy coveralls and scuffed boots, it was almost impossible to tell that they were actually his legs. He hadn't spoken a word to her in the twenty-five minutes since he rolled straight under the blue '72 Oldsmobile Cutlass - which he did the moment he saw her walk through the side door reserved for customers. He was hiding from her. What made it worse was she knew it was his mother's car he was under, and she fuckin' hated that bitch.

He was hiding from a woman under his mother's car. She was maybe starting to hate him, too.

"How much longer are you gonna be under that fuckin' thing? I've been standing over here like an asshole waitin' for you to talk to me for ages. It's almost 4:30 and I'm tellin' you my dad loses his fuckin' shit if everyone isn't ready for dinner at exactly 6:15. I can't see your fuckin' face right now, but I know you need to go home and shower before you can sit at my mother's table and eat her carbonara."

Mikhail Tanner, or Mickey as he was called by everyone but his Ma, wheeled himself out from under the car and lifted his head to gaze up at the biggest pain in the ass he'd ever met in his life: Denise Caputo.

Why did it have to be her? Anybody but her.

He made the huge mistake of drinking too much at the party following Karolina Belikova's newest baby daughter Zinaida's christening, and he ended up having sex with Denise in the treehouse he and his best friend Dimitri built when they were kids. Or maybe he had sex with her? He'd been blackout drunk for half the night. His walk of shame the next morning was more of a fall of shame; he woke up in a heap, bare-assed and flat on his face in Dimitri's backyard at the bottom of the tree with the family's ancient babushka, Yeva, poking him with her cane and muttering about Hungarian boys not being able to hold their liquor. Since that night he couldn't shake her loose, no matter how hard he tried.

And, oh, how he fucking tried.

"Denise, I never said I was going to your parent's house for dinner tonight," Mickey said flatly, hoisting himself off his back and onto his feet. Trying not to give a shit if Denise was there or not, he crossed the floor of the garage over to the wash basin and began scrubbing the grime off his hands with soapy water and the wooden manicure brush he had stashed in the pocket of his coveralls. His younger sister Joanna worked in a beauty parlor on Long Island, and it was her personal mission in life to keep her big brother from being, 'one of those guys at the club with perfect hair, decent manners, and nasty grease monkey hands.'

Denise was hot on his heels as he made his way to the sink. She stood right next to him and leaned up into the mirror that hung on the wall. She was half Italian and half Rottweiler.

"So, I'm fuckin' lying then?!" She screeched. "I just made it up in my own head that you were comin' over for dinner tonight to finally meet my father!?"

She was lying. She'd been in love with Mickey Tanner since she was fifteen years old and her family moved to East Orange from Queens right before her sophomore year of high school. He was a senior, and when she saw him walk through the halls of East Orange High for the first time, it was like he was moving in slow motion with a gentle wind blowing through his dark brown hair and music playing somewhere off in the distance. Mickey Tanner and Dimitri Belikov were young gods in that place. Back then, she would have drowned her own mother to be with him. Not much had changed - except now she might try to drown his mother too.

Mickey didn't look up from his hands as she spoke, he just kept scrubbing vigorously. He needed to get rid of her for good, and that meant acting like more of a bastard than he was used to. As long as he focused on individual tasks and chose his words carefully, he could make his way out of this nightmare while still holding on to at least a little bit of his pride. He turned off the water, dried his hands on a paper towel, and shoved the brush back in his pocket without rinsing it. He had others at home, if that one got gross he could throw it away.

He turned to look the current bane of his existence in the eye once more.

"First of all, Denise, I've met your father before. He's been in the IBEW Local. 162 with Dimitri for three years now. He's also an asshole who gropes women at the Christmas party and thinks pull-my-finger jokes are funny and not just fucking disgusting. Second of all, what do you mean by finally? I've told you a hundred times in the last few weeks that we are not in a relationship, okay? I know we spent some time together at a party, and I really hope I wasn't a jerk to you that night because I honestly don't remember. But I'm not your boyfriend. You are not my girlfriend. I'm not coming over to your house for dinner. Not tonight, and not ever. I am truly sorry for leading you on. You're a pretty girl, and I'm sure you'll find somebody new without much trouble."

She was pretty. She had long light brown hair, green eyes, a trim figure up top with a big ass, and slim ankles. But none of that mattered because she had the personality of a wet sandwich that was also a bitch. He was glad the other two guys who came in today to finish up extra work had already closed down and left for the weekend. This situation was stupid and embarrassing.

"If you're not coming over to my house tonight, what are you doin' then, huh?" She demanded.

He smiled challengingly. "Don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried. I'm just asking."

"I'm going out with Dimitri. We've got plans."

"I bet you do. You two are always doin' stuff together, aren't you?"

Mickey didn't like the shift in her tone. "Yeah. He's been my best friend since we were eight years old - our mothers are best friends, and our sisters are all best friends. We are all always doin' stuff together. What the fuck are you going on about?"

"Nothin'." She replied, eyebrows raised and neck wobbling.

"That wasn't a nothing 'nuthin', that was a something 'nuthin'. Spit it out, or get going."

"I just think it's weird the way you two are always together. Just the two of you alone all the time. It's a little, I dunno, fuckin' peculiar." Denise crossed her arms over her chest and leaned forward. "A little…queer, maybe?"

Subtle.

"Are you trying to say that you think Dimitri and I are fucking?" He deadpanned into the mirror.

"No. Not Me. People from around where we live talk, okay? I never said a goddamn thing, but other people…? Some of them maybe think you and your best friend Dimka might be a couple'uh fags. Where one of you is, the other always is too. It might not mean anything funny is goin' on, but it's not fuckin' normal, I will say that." Denise was beginning to see she was on the losing end of this battle, so she'd brought out the big guns. In the past, she's had a lot of success with calling the guy she was seeing a homo to get him all riled up.

Not so today.

Mickey didn't seem to give a shit at all. He was completely calm when he finally spoke.

"Well, Dimitri's girlfriend Rose is coming out with us tonight. You remember Rose I'm sure." He paused for a second to let Denise's deep-seated fear of Rose Hathaway work its way to the surface before continuing. Rose had a lot of girls from the neighborhood scared. "When they are busy dry-humping each other in the backseat of my car on the way to the club, I'll be sure to pull them apart at a stoplight to tell them that Denise Caputo thinks Dimitri and I are homosexuals together. I'm sure both of them will be just as upset about it as I am right now." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Are we finished? Ma needs me to stop by the laundry on my way home."

Mickey moved away from the sink and was about to begin the process of locking up when another dramatic swing in Denise's tone stopped him in his tracks. "No, we're not done here, Mikhail." He shuddered. Nobody but Loretta Tanner called him Mikhail. When other people did it, he barely recognized it as his name. It felt wrong. She continued, "I came here today to talk to you about something important, and you keep fuckin' distracting me. You see…" She trailed off as she shifted her eyes down toward her hands which had just begun to coyly fiddle around with the hem of her peasant top. Her right foot kept flicking about. Everything about her drastically altered demeanor was weird. She was doing an impression of a real girl. "I came here today because I think I'm pregnant."

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. You think you're what?" He asked after a long pause.

Her eyes snapped back up but avoided looking into his. She spoke her next words to his left ear and the wall behind him. "I said I think I'm fuckin' pregnant!"

That's what he thought she said.

She'd gone and fucking done it.

There it was - now he was mad!

The music coming from the radio at his workstation was suddenly far too loud. His blood was simmering and everything was becoming too loud and too close. He crossed the same path back over to his mother's car and turned the radio off. Denise was right next to him with no delay. She was practically on top of him.

"I know ya heard me! So fuckin' say something about it!"

He turned on her, all business and no-nonsense, "I've got five sisters, Denise. I've got five sisters and nine nieces and nephews. Dimitri has three sisters, and six nieces and nephews. I've been around pregnant women almost my entire life. You, you are not fucking pregnant, okay? You're just not."

"You may have too many sisters, but you don't have a fuckin' vagina, Mickey. A woman knows these things." She shouted back at him.

"We fucked one time, Denise. Zinaida's Christening was three weeks ago. Even if you are pregnant, which you're not, you'd have no way of knowing by now. You probably can't even take one of those at-home tests yet."

He stumbled a little on his last point, and she glommed onto it immediately. "Ahhhh, look at that. Mr. Big Catholic Boy over here is scared he might have to settle down with a girl instead of using her like a whore, huh?"

"I'm not that Catholic, Denise," he snapped. "Even the Virgin Mary would forgive me for leaving you in the lurch. But that's not what's happening here because you are fucking lying right now. You can't even look me in the eyes." He never wanted to touch this woman again, but these were extenuating circumstances. He reached out and locked his hands around her biceps, "Look me in the eyes and say, 'Mickey, I'm pregnant.' Go on. Say it."

"Fuck you!" She spat.

"Denise, are you pregnant?"

"Yes."

"Are you pregnant?"

"Yes!"

"Denise Caputo, are you fucking pregnant, don't lie to me?"

"No! Alright? No, no, no, fuckin' no. And let go of me!" She shook her shoulders to loosen his hold and then slapped at his arms repeatedly until he let go completely. She tried to calm her breathing before attempting an explanation. "I just thought of it as something to say to try and get you to come over tonight. YOU-HAVE-GOT-TO-COME-OVER-TO-MY-HOUSE -TONIGHT, OKAY?" She yelled, smacking the back of her hand into the palm of her other hand after every word. "My aunt Judy is gonna be there because my mother told her about my new boyfriend. If you're not there, she's gonna act like a giant cunt about it, and my parents will never let me hear the end of it. My father already hates that woman enough as it is."

He rubbed his hand over his eyes and forehead to try and relieve some of the pressure in his head. Nothing helped. This girl was a never-ending fount of aggravation. "Denise, I gotta close down and lock up the shop. Ma's expecting me at home. I don't wanna see you like this again. No more showing up at places uninvited, no more calling my house and harassing Ma, and no more fake babies. Just... leave me the fuck alone." She hadn't won the battle, but he certainly felt defeated at that moment - kicked in the ass by life.

"Excuse me, we are not done here! Stop tryin' to get rid of me!"

He trudged over to the metal roll-up door that separated his part of the garage from the outside world and pounded on it with his fist hoping the loud noise might help get through to her. "Oh yes, we are. We couldn't possibly be more done here." He yanked in the chain that rolled the door back open, gesturing for Denise to leave through it. "Now get the fuck out of here so I can lock up. I'm done talking to you."

Denise wasn't budging.

"Go!"

"Can you at least give me a ride home?" She asked, sounding hopeful.

"How did you get here?"

"The bus."

"Well in case it escaped your attention, the car I was working on is my mother's. I drove it here so I could work on it, and I didn't finish the job because you wouldn't let me. I'll be taking the bus home, too, after I close down and clean up. And before you ask, no you cannot wait for me so we can go together. It's not dark out yet, and you don't live that far."

And still, she wouldn't move.

Mickey stood at the garage opening with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the building next door to the shop and silently willing himself never to be a man who would hit a woman. A loud crashing noise caught him off guard, and he turned just in time to see Denise pick his radio back up off the floor, hold it over her head, and slam it back to the cement floor with all of her might. She repeated this move three more times before she thought the thing was busted up enough.

He broke her fuckin' heart, so she broke his fuckin' radio. She kicked the pieces in all different directions to make picking them up more of a task, and then stalked out of the garage, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder and refusing to look at him. "You are such a fuckin' asshole. Fuckin' momma's boy queer."

"That's really nice, Denise. Nice mouth you got, there!" He called after her.

She stopped in the middle of the driveway and turned back to face him. Throwing both arms out in front of her, Denise flipped him two birds as she screamed, "Fuck you, Mickey Tanner! We never even fucked because your dick wouldn't work! I left your ass in that treehouse to go sleep in my own bed! You're a fuckin' COCKSUCKER, and I hope you FUCKIN' DIE!"

Then she left.

Mickey watched her walk off into the late afternoon sun, hopefully never to be seen by him again.

Yeah right.

Letting out a huge sigh - maybe of relief, but who the fuck could even tell at this point - he rolled the door back down without padlocking it. He swept up the parts of his radio and tossed them in the large dumpster. Listening to music would have made the process more enjoyable. Denise's revenge. After putting away any tools that were left out at the various workstations, he tidied the break room. He'd begun to whistle. Once all the lights were off, he could finally get the hell out of there. He rolled the door back up and started his mother's car. He'd lied to her. It was only in the shop for an oil change and a new fan belt; it ran just fine. There was no way in hell he was driving the crazy bitch home. That would have been a death sentence. Or worse - a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

After slamming the garage door shut for a final time and putting the lock in place, he got back in the car and loaded a tape in the 8-track.

The night could only go up from here.


Mickey took off his work boots and left them on the porch by the front door to his house before going inside. Loretta Tanner kept a clean home because it was expected of her as the matriarch of a family in a neighborhood full of judgmental gossiping housewives, not because she enjoyed all the tasks of a homemaker. She hated cleaning, and if he made her job harder by tracking in grease from the shop she'd make him regret it for a lot longer than it took to just leave his shoes outside.

Once the door was shut behind him, he stopped for a second at the bottom of the stairs to figure out what sort of evening he was in for. He heard his mother's voice from back in the kitchen, and he guessed the second voice he could hear was Olena Belikova's. The house smelled like dinner cooking - meat of some kind along with the tang of vinegar, garlic, and dill. Russian food, not Italian for a change. It was definitely Olena.

"Ma, I'm home! I gotta shower!" He hollered in the direction of all the smells and sounds.

"I'm in the kitchen! Olena is here for dinner. Did you stop by the laundry like I asked yuh to?"

Half of the conversations he had with his mother took place with the two of them in entirely different rooms. The woman smoked a pack a day for the last twenty years, and she still had the lungs of an opera singer.

"Yeah! It was just a loose bolt on one of the dryers! It only took a minute to fix!"

"You're a treasure, my darling boy. *MUAH* I just kissed yuh! Was Cynthia there?"

"Yeah!" Mickey rolled his eyes. Always with the questions.

"Did yuh tell her to go fuck herself like I told yuh to!?"

"Ma, Cynthia Rodriguez is eighty-two years old. I can't say shit like that to her. It would be like telling Dimitri's babushka to go fuck herself!" There was a brief pause on his end of things; he could hear the two women saying something to each other.

"Olena says she has twenty dollars in her purse, and it's all yours if yuh go to her house right now and tell her mother to fuck herself!"

Both women howled with laughter. The two of them together never seemed to stop laughing. It was nice... it was also loud.

"Tell Auntie Olena I'll think on it in the shower!"

"Yuh gonna be thinkin' about yuh Auntie Olena in the shower?! Mikhail Christopher Tanner, shame on yuh. I know she looks good for her age, but she is old enough to be yuh mother!" Another round of laughter echoed down the hallway. The ladies obviously decided to crack into the hard stuff early tonight. They weren't usually this saused before dinnertime.

"Very funny, Ma! I'm going upstairs, so if you keep talking, it'll be to yourself!"


Mickey enjoyed getting ready to go out for the night. The slow ritual of it was cathartic, particularly after the grind of working six days straight at the garage. It gave him an excuse to take a longer shower than his customary five minutes first thing in the morning and right after work. He took his time washing his hair and used the conditioning rinse his sister insisted would help keep him from going bald as his father had. He paid extra attention to his skin, scrubbing it with a loofah sponge to remove dead flakes like his mother first instructed him to do back in high school when his sweaty football equipment made his neck and upper back break out in zits. Women taught him everything he knew about proper grooming.

The shower was a pretty solid place to just stand around and think, the bathroom in general, really - toilet, shower, and sink. The car was his favorite place to work things out in his mind, but a hot shower or slow shave were a close second and third.

Right now his brain kept replaying the scene from earlier in the garage. Why had he landed himself in that situation in the first place? Denise was never a person he was interested in before that night. She was friends with, well, acquaintances with Victoria Belikova so he'd seen her around enough to know her. From what he observed she was unpleasant at the best of times and completely intolerable at her worst. He wasn't desperate for sexual attention from women. He had plenty of opportunities in that general area. If he wanted to go out and get laid, he could manage it with minimal effort at a club or bar. He was young, people told him he was good-looking - a stone-cold fox even. He made decent money and he didn't have a criminal record which in this town…was really saying something.

SO WHY THE ABSOLUTE FUCK DID HIS STUPID BRAIN HAVE TO LET HIM TRY AND FUCK DENISE CAPUTO AT A FAMILY GATHERING!?

It was the same question on repeat for weeks now.

This was one of those times he really wished his father was still alive. He could ask him if he'd been through something like this before. Had his dick ever been smarter than his brain and chosen not to work in an attempt to save him from himself?

Maybe a wise cock was an inherited family trait. He'd never met any of his father's side of the family. He knew his grandparents were from Budapest, and that Tanner was a name they made up to replace a much more complicated one. That was it. Everything else was shrouded in mystery.

A paternal history penis mystery. He was a poet and he didn't know it.

He groaned.

After showering, Mickey stood in front of the bathroom mirror to evaluate himself at basecamp level. Did he need to shave, or was the stubble on his face at the right length to give him a more masculine edge? Were his sideburns even? He checked for long nose hairs and errant hairs in the space between his eyebrows and on his shoulders. Was his pubic hair too...much? Could he trim it evenly with the scissors this time without accidentally nicking his scrotum and bleeding like a stuck pig all over one of his mother's 'for company towels'? The clippers might be a safer option. Earlier, Denise shouted at him that they hadn't fucked because his dick wasn't hard. She didn't say it was because it was too hard to find in all that hair.

Maybe just leave well enough alone for now?

Once hair removal had been addressed he was ready to put on his undershirt and briefs. It was very important that his undershirt went on before he started the painstaking task of styling his hair. If he waited until after his hair was done, he ran the risk of fucking it up, and then he'd have to start all over again with the shower. He pulled an unworn white cotton sleeveless tank over his head, careful not to stretch the arm holes too much so they'd sag and look sloppy.

Hair time.

His hair was dark brown with a bit of natural wave just like his mother's. It was fine in texture, but there was a lot of it. He wasn't keen on pomade, particularly the scented ones, and he also didn't want to look like a guy who spent a ton of time on his hair. Carefully controlled chaos was his hair philosophy; achieving nonchalant perfection like the follicles of Robert Redford was his goal. Joanna once told him it was all in the cut and the drying, even more so at the slightly longer length he preferred. When he finally had it the way he wanted it, he'd hit it with a small amount of holding spray. A second application would be required after dinner just in case.

His bedroom was halfway down the hall from the bathroom. Loretta and Olena were still in the kitchen, so he could leave his towel on the rack to dry and walk back to his room in his underwear without running into either of them. He wasn't bashful around the women who raised him, but his Ma thought it the height of comedy to hoot or catcall in situations like this. He knew from experience.

'Look at yuh, Mr. Burt Reynolds over here! Did yuh decide to skip wearing clothes tonight to give the girls a better look upfront at the merchandise? Might seem a little desperate…'

His balls had already been busted enough for one day.


His bedroom hadn't changed much since he moved into it at the age of eleven after his oldest sister Cecilia ran away to live with the father of her first child. She was married to a different man now, Barry, and had three more children. They never talked about the other guy, which was just as well because the cheating sack of shit was dead.

The olive green carpet was the same. The caramel damask print wallpaper was the same. The ochre plaid curtains were still there if a bit faded from years of sun exposure. The quilt on his double bed was newer - a purchase made by his mother when she finally realized he'd long since outgrown his cowboy phase. Dimitri was the only cowboy around here, now.

The single update Mickey made to the room's décor in recent years was the addition of a large brass freestanding clothing rack which now stood between his closet and full-length mirror. Hanging from it were two heavy garment bags containing the most expensive items in his possession, not including his car - his custom-made silk and lightweight wool blend three-piece suits.

He'd saved up for a full year to afford them and went to a shop in Manhattan to have them tailored. One was the absolute perfect shade of camel by way of oatmeal, and the other was heathered gray with a barely detectable silver sheen. They were fucking gorgeous. So far those puppies had seen zero action because he had nowhere appropriate to wear them, but tonight was the night. He planned on wearing the gray suit with a brand new pale yellow cotton and silk blend shirt and his black leather platform brogues. It was the perfect late spring color combination, and he was going to look like a goddamn movie star.

Mickey couldn't remember much about his father. There was a time he felt guilty about it, about not holding on harder to the man he'd once idolized. As he grew older he began to realize the real reason he couldn't recall a perfectly clear image of him was that he never had one in the first place. He was eight when his father died, they hadn't really shared many long conversations about the meaning of life. Only one, but he tried not to think about that day if he could help it.

His father smoked Pall Malls. He always ordered chicken fried steak at a diner, for breakfast or dinner, it didn't matter. He never wore cologne. He was a fan of the San Francisco 49ers even though he'd never been to San Francisco and the 49ers weren't any good. He wasn't a handsome man, Mickey's looks came from his Mother's side of the family thank God, but he could wear the shit out of a suit. That was what he remembered most - his father always believed in the power of a sharp-looking suit. A man didn't need to be good-looking to be beautiful, he just needed to be confident and wear the right fucking clothes.

Tonight he would get dressed up for both of them.

Tonight...he was gonna strut.


SOUNDTRACK

Alone Too Long - Daryl Hall & John Oates (The Garage Radio)

Poor Poor Pitiful Me - Warren Zevon (Denise Smashes Mickey's Radio)

Badlands - Bruce Springsteen (Mickey's 8-Track Jam)

Deacon Blues - Steely Dan (Mickey Starts Getting Ready)

NOTES

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