Love is a losing proposition
Johnny: Lulu came by to let me know she had talked to Sonny and Carly on my behalf.
Claudia: To say what? Why do you make me pull this stuff out of you?
Johnny: She alibied me for the time of Michael’s shooting.
Claudia: Well, I bet that went over well.
Johnny: It’s legitimate, by the way. I was with her.
Claudia: I’m not sure Sonny and Carly are going to buy it, but little Lulu gets an “A” for effort.
Johnny: Do you have to make fun of everything?
Claudia: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was a really nice thing for her to do.
Johnny: And guess how I repaid her. I blew up at her, basically threw her out the door.
Claudia: So you were with Lulu when Michael was shot?
Johnny: I found her at the Haunted Star.
Claudia: So all’s well in paradise?
Johnny: Hardly. We had a huge fight.
Claudia: You want to share it?
Johnny: That depends. Do you really want to know or are you storing up future ammunition?
Claudia: I can’t even believe you just said that. Of course, I want to know, John. If it concerns you, it concerns me. I love you.
Johnny: I know that. Basically, Lulu said that I was I lying to her, not letting her make her own choices, that I was jerking her around. She says, one minute I’m pushing her out of my life and the next minute I’m jumping back into hers.
Claudia: Is she right?
Johnny: Somewhat. But she does the same damn thing to me.
Claudia: Sounds like a recipe for a headache. What’s the deal, Johnny? What’s really going on with this girl?
Johnny: I’m not going to lie and say I don’t care about her. I do. And I know she cares back, but she’s scared. Who can blame her? I mean, look at my life. My crazy family –
Claudia: Hey.
Johnny: Present company included. But, seriously, I mean, sometimes you look at the fire and you know how bad it’s going to hurt when you get burned, but you can’t help but stick your hand in anyway. If I was — I don’t know what, noble? I’d hurt her so bad that she’d have to write me out of her life for good. But, honestly, I like waking up and knowing that she’s in my life and maybe I’d turn a corner and she’s there.
Claudia: Do you want my opinion?
Johnny: Do I have a choice?
Claudia: You want Lulu in your life? Keep her. Just don’t fall in love, John, because if you do, you might as well eat your gun.
Claudia: Look, I realize that “love kills” is not a universal truth. There are happy, normal nuclear families that exist somewhere. People fall in love early, and they stay together until death do they part. They invest in the whole 2.5 kids and a golden retriever a white picket fence, the American dream, and they have it pay off. But then, on the other hand, there people who never catch that gravy train. They fall in love and they get stomped, and then they meet someone else and they start the whole sad, sick cycle over again, never getting anywhere, just running in place. And then — then there’s us in a category all of our own. We come to the table already warped. You add love to the equation and you’re standing in the doorway that leads to full blown insanity. You need hard core proof, John? Look at your father in the local loony bin. He loved your mother so much he shot and killed her?
Johnny: So you think I’m going to end up like him. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Claudia: I have more confidence in you than I do in myself, and that is saying a lot. I’m just your big sister trying to give you a little bit of advice from my own experience. Love makes you vulnerable. You leave yourself open to betrayal and disappointment. And genetically unstable psyche? That’s enough to push it right over the edge into full blown whackdom. Why — why take that chance?
Johnny: Isn’t that what life’s about? The chance? The risk? The edge?
Claudia: All I’m saying is choose your risks.
Claudia: I’m not telling you something that I read in a — in a book somewhere, John. I’ve had my own experiences with how love equals emotional disaster. You didn’t know my mother.
Johnny: Dad wouldn’t even allow questions about her.
Claudia: Well, let me tell you. Domenica Zacchara was a strong, powerful woman. She was a force of nature, not for the faint of heart. I was in awe of her — a little afraid of her. And I wanted to be just like her till the axe fell, and Dad decided that he was done or bored or outmatched and banished her, divorced her, erased her from his life as if she had never existed. I didn’t even see my mother again until I was a teenager and I didn’t — I didn’t recognize her. That flamboyant, beautiful woman that I remembered was gone. She was hard. She was brittle. She had no spirit. She was dull. She was ruined because she loved a man who threw her away. And I said right then and there, I will never let a man make a shell out of me.
Johnny: Yeah, but what if someone takes you by surprise?
Claudia: That’s not going to happen. It’s not because I could only love someone that I could trust unconditionally. Somebody who’d stand by me no matter what. Somebody who would keep my secrets no matter how much it went against there grain and who would never leave me. And that man doesn’t exist. So I can wipe love off the agenda and just concentrate on things that, you know, I could actually make a difference at, like in the business, you know? And, hey, if you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll do the same thing. I’m telling you this because I love you, John, because I care about you. Love is a losing proposition. There’s one person in this world that will always have your back, that you can always trust, that you can count on. That’s me. You’re looking at her.
Claudia: Hey, you the moron on the motorcycle going 90 down the alley?
Jason: I guess so.
Claudia: You almost made me run into a dumpster.
Jason: Well, you were doing 50 going the wrong way.
Claudia: Okay, so maybe we both like to go a little too fast. Neither one of us can call the cops on the other one, so it looks like a standoff. You think it’s a trend?
Claudia: How’s Michael?
Jason: No change.
Claudia: I was with Carly when she found out.
Jason: Why’s that?
Claudia: No reason, I just was there. I was at the hotel. We got into an argument — business as usual. I was with her when she got the call. And so, I just — I don’t think that people in our line of work should procreate. It’s not fair to the kids, making them grow up in that environment. When they grow up with bodyguards, and guns, and bulletproof glass. Even if they manage to adjust or they live long enough to make their own choices, they usually become nothing but gangsters themselves. I personally have always known kids were not in my future, and I am okay with that. I have nothing to lose and a whole lot less to regret, right? I think we’re alike in that way, too.
