The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
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himself up. His situation was the reverse of the lover’s usual one. He had to get himself 
drunk instead of the girl. The girl was usually too willing where he was not. The last two 
years had been hell on his ego, and he used this simple way to restore it, sleeping with 
a young fresh girl for one night, taking her to dinner a few times, giving her an expensive 
present and then brushing her off in the nicest way possible so that her feelings wouldn’t 
be hurt. And then they could always say they had had a thing with the great Johnny 
Fontane. It wasn’t true love, but you couldn’t knock it if the girl was beautiful and 
genuinely nice. He hated the hard, bitchy ones, the ones who screwed for him and then 
rushed off to tell their friends that they’d screwed the great Johnny Fontane, always 
adding that they’d had better. What amazed him more than anything else in his career 
were the complaisant husbands who almost told him to his face that they forgave their 
wives since it was allowed for even the most virtuous matron to be unfaithful with a great 
singing and movie star like Johnny Fontane. That really floored him. 
He loved Ella Fitzgerald on records. He loved that kind of clean singing, that kind of 
clean phrasing. It was the only thing in life he really understood and he knew he 
understood it better than anyone else on earth. Now lying back on the couch, the brandy 
warming his throat, he felt a desire to sing, not music, but to phrase with the records, yet 
it was something impossible to do in front of a stranger. He put his free hand in Sharon’s 
lap, sipping his drink from his other hand. Without any slyness but with the sensualness 
of a child seeking warmth, his hand in her lap pulled up the silk of her dress to show 
milky white thigh above the sheer netted gold of her stockings and as always, despite all 
the women, all the years, all the familiarity, Johnny felt the fluid sticky warmness 
flooding through his body at that sight. The miracle still happened, and what would he 
do when that failed him as his voice had? 
He was ready now. He put his drink down on the long inlaid cocktail table and turned his 
body toward her. He was very sure, very deliberate, and yet tender. There was nothing 
sly or lecherously lascivious in his caresses. He kissed her on the lips while his hands 
rose to her breasts. His hand fell to her warm thighs, the skin so silky to his touch. Her 
returning kiss was warm but not passionate and he preferred it that way right now. He 
hated girls who turned on all of a sudden as if their bodies were motors galvanized into 
erotic pumpings by the touching of a hairy switch. 
Then he did something he always did, something that had never yet failed to arouse 
him. Delicately and as lightly as it was possible to do so and still feel something, he 
brushed the tip of his middle finger deep down between her thighs. Some girls never 

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