The Kitchen #2

Honestly, after the ladies gave Franky a good messing-up last month, it was surprising for this issue to open with the question of “How long can you live on someone else’s name?” You’d think that issue would be laid to rest once you become a direct participant in a brutal assault and battery. But upon reflection, it makes perfect sense. A single act of violence does not a fully-fledged gangster make, especially if no one really saw it anyway—sound in the forest, and all that.

Well, not no one. Nicky Lubretzi saw and he definitely plans to take advantage of it. By doing so, he forces the women to deal with the consequences of their actions, which reminds them that beating down Franky was their actions, not those of their significant others or anyone else. Kath realizes this before the others, which isn’t surprising, since she was the one who initiated the beatdown, but Raven and Angie take a little more time to understand what they did wasn’t just an act of self-defense, but of self-empowerment.

This is a function of the women’s different personalities. Kath has a temper so all she needed was an opportunity to discover she can act on it. Raven’s more of a follower and Angie hasn’t got the guts of either. Nevertheless, the experience of felling a grown man in a back alley has had its effect. Angie’s courage may falter when directly confronting a shake-up, but now she’s bold enough to con her way into getting what she needs. It’s hard not to see the symbolism of her mugging a man with a lipstick pressed to his neck.

All this is still short of the level of guts needed to play at their men’s level. It’s easy enough to make your move if you feel like no one can trace it back to you, but true audacity is doing it and not caring who knows. Consider the opening to #1, in which Jimmy, Johnny, and Rob grin in the face of prosecution, drinking to their impending trial and imprisonment. Our ladies clearly aren’t there yet, not even after they take down Nicky with a glass ashtray to the neck.

But each such step takes them closer to where they need to be to maintain this business, which Kath clearly intends to do, and not just for Jimmy’s sake. In fact, even though she tells her son George, “No one’s gonna take this from us,” you’re not certain she’s doing it for her children’s sake, either. There’s something in her enthusiasm and forcefulness as she pitches adding prostitution to operations that suggests she wants this. It’s not, as Raven believes, a temporary gig to get them by.

So the real wrinkle in this story isn’t Nicky, but Tommy, a compatriot of Jimmy’s who apparently puts his partner to shame in the sadistic department. The women see him as a genuine maniac, which is saying something in this world, and their familiarity with him offers no protection at all. I mean, when a guy finally gets out of psych hold and comes home with knife in hand, he’s clearly not the tolerant type. This is a threat far above the jocular Nicky, but our protagonists are committed now. As Nicky fades out of and Tommy enters their lives, all know “[i]t was never going to be a temporary thing. They were never going back to their normal lives. They were all in this. One. Hundred. Percent.“*

Doyle’s soap opera style sometimes feels a bit stiff and old-fashioned, but it suits the constant tension these characters live under. Sometimes that style adds a humorous tang to the visuals that’s almost satiric, like the cut from Angie pressing her lipstick against her victim’s neck to her wide, happy smile in the car, hands cheerfully tapping the steering wheel. It’s a common visual, the woman enjoying herself as she drives along, but subverted by your knowledge of the cause for her joy.**

Some Musings:

* Masters might as well have written “F—, yeah” afterwards. That’s what everyone’s thinking.

** It reminds you of those fifties pin-ups that novelty makers reappropriate with modern declarations: “I take my men the same way I do my coffee: strong, tall, black.”