Mafia Girl

by Deborah Blumenthal

  We open the wine and Michael pours some for my mom and then for me. We toast.

  And then Anthony walks in. He looks at Michael and does a double take. He walks toward the kitchen and motions for me to follow.

  “That’s the same cop who—”

  “Yes, Anthony.”

  “You bring him home with you? You know what Dad would say?”

  “Do you see Dad here, Anthony?

  We eat together in the dining room and Anthony mutters a “how you doin’” in a guarded way then fills his plate, ignoring Michael who sits and waits.

  Our eyes meet across the table, and then Michael casually asks Anthony about his car. Anthony looks up and they start talking car stuff and the air changes and Anthony goes on about his beloved Jag with this kindred spirit, and I’m sitting there like, okay, can you guys just shut up about cars and carburetors and the throttle body needing to be replaced, whatever the hell that is.

  But never mind that because then they move on to head gasket failure, which seriously sounds like car impotence, and then my phone rings and I answer it because it’s Clive so I go to the living room to talk, and when I get back it’s not like I was missed because Michael and Anthony are still talking car failure. And I’m wondering about this cop, the one who never talks.

  After I help my mom clean up and Anthony and Michael finally shut up, I grab Michael’s hand and pull him upstairs and show him Vogue and he looks at the pictures and shakes his head and says, “did your dad see these?”

  “No.”

  He laughs. “That’s good.”

  We make out and he tastes like merlot and I lock the door and finally Michael catches his breath and says, “Baby, I better go.”

  Then I wake up and that make-believe world vanishes. I’m alone.

  Again.

  FIFTY

  I convince my mom not to worry because I’m going to Clive’s and that Thomas will be waiting for us at school and yada, yada, yada, even though now with my dad away my mom and Anthony keep saying, “be careful, be careful,” and if they ever had a clue that the crash on the West Side Highway…

  “It’s game change time,” Anthony says, “and Dad has enemies.”

  Clive has to stay after school and retake the history test he missed when he overslept. “Wait for me in the library,” he says.

  Only it’s beautiful out and it’s daylight and other kids are around and so are parents and I could use some distraction, so I decide to walk uptown and look in the stores. I text him.

  Text me when you’re done. Going out for air.

  I walk west toward Madison, checking the street both ways because my radar is in high gear, but no one is around and nothing sets off my internal panic meter. I stop at the ice cream truck because the mac and cheese for lunch was gross and I threw most of it out so I’m fainting from starvation. I wait in line and finally get a chocolate éclair bar because they’re out of the strawberry shortcake, my number-one fave. I head down the street, peeling off the paper, then start thinking about Michael and the chocolate ice cream sandwiches and how he looked and what that was like and how it went nowhere and crash-landed, and I look everywhere but he has not magically appeared.

  Just thinking about him is depressing and a waste of time so I try to push those thoughts away and focus on what kind of cashmere cardigans I should look for and what colors I need and want and settle on dark green and camel to match what I have. But I’m distracted by an asshole in an SUV who guns the engine and goes flying down the street and—hello—didn’t he see the sign that says slow because there’s a school on this block, and, like, where is the cop on the corner when you need him, and then the asshole slams the brakes hard and stops with a screech.

  And I get chills.

  I turn around to figure out what’s going on, and, shit, my ice cream falls from my hand and splatters all over the street, and I open my mouth but then look up when a door slams on the SUV and somebody gets out of the front seat, and I stop because he looks vaguely familiar, only I can’t place him.

  Then he crosses the street to my side and walks toward me.

  And. My. Insides. Tighten.

  He comes up close and then closer so he’s walking next to me, keeping pace. Step by step. This freaks me out. A small smile on his pock-marked face.

  “Hi, Gia,” he says, like my name is a dirty word.

  Adrenaline shoots through me. I try to hide the fear that rears up. I pivot abruptly and speed walk back to school. To safety. It’s not far. I’m almost there, less than one block.

  Be calm, a voice inside me says. Don’t show him you’re scared. I’m trying. To look calm. And not afraid. Trying to hold back from breaking into a run.

  An eighth of a block more. I can make it.

  He reaches out suddenly and grabs me roughly on the upper arm, dragging me toward the street.

  “Let’s go for a ride, Gia. Sal couldn’t get you. But I can.”

  “No!” I yell, yanking my arm free. He grabs it again and I freak and scream, “Let go of me!”

  Where the hell is everybody? I look around frantically. The street is deserted now. My body jerks alive with panic. I fixate on being strong. I have to get away. It’s life or death.

  Boxing. Fighting. All of Dante’s lessons flash in my brain. All the practice. The drills. It’s like he’s next to me and has prepared me for this.

  Jab, Gia! I slam his jaw as hard as I can with my left.

  Surprise them, Gia. I jab again.

  It stuns him. He freezes. His grip loosens. But before I can reach out and punch him again and again and again the way I’m supposed to, he recovers.

  This isn’t Dante’s basement anymore, where it’s just me and the bag. He has the advantage now. He’s bigger and stronger. He comes back at me and yanks my arm so hard I lose balance. I’m thrown to the street and fall back. My shoulder hits the pavement hard, then I slam my head, and it stuns me and I forget, I forget to be tough. I forget to pretend, and the strength leaches out of me. I want to cry. I need help. I hurt everywhere.

  I lie there overcome. Then he’s crouching over me and grabbing my arms to pull me to my feet.

  My head. It throbs. Blood rushing in my ears makes me deaf. Everything starts to go around and around. I stare up at the bright blue sky. My dad. His sliver of sky. All he sees. All he has. He’s lost almost everything he has to lose.

  And that. Can’t. Happen. To me.

  “Let’s go,” he hisses. “Get up, you bitch.” He yanks my arm again, nearly pulling it from the socket. I come to life and reach under the leg of his pants and dig my nails into his skin and then pull hard at his ankle to make him fall, to break his grip.

  It works.

  He stumbles and falls to his knees, but he manages to get up and he’s over me again, breathing hard, angrier now, furious that I hurt him, furious that I made him fall. He tries to grab me again. He yanks my hair. Only now I can’t fight as hard. I hurt all over. My whole body has turned to deadweight.

  I see my dad yelling no. Telling me to fight. To be strong. To win. I’m going to faint. Everything’s getting fuzzier. Stay awake, stay awake, my brain is yelling. Get up. My brain? Or my dad?

  Somewhere outside myself, an arm reaches over me. I’m trapped on the ground. I push against it, but it doesn’t move.

  Then there are voices. People are around me. Kids from school or people from the street?

  “It’s Gia,” a voice says.

  “Jesus,” says another.

  Then a voice from above me yells. “Get back! Get back! Police! Stop!”

  I’m trying to focus only on a figure leaning over me. Who is it?

  “Are you okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  I don’t know what’s happening anymore.

  Then there’s a hard click. The safety. A gun.

  My eyes open wide.

  Then again. “Are you all right? Talk to me.”

  Then I know. I am.

  “Did you get hi
m?”

  “He got away.”

  He leans away, not hovering over me anymore. He pulls out a pen and scribbles down numbers. The plate. I lie there as he calls it in. “Can you get up?” he asks, turning back to me.

  Only when I focus, I see that it isn’t him. It’s another cop, somebody I’ve never seen before.

  “I called an ambulance,” he says. “They’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “It looks like you hit your head pretty hard.”

  Am I conscious or not? I can’t tell. And then I hear the siren and feel them lift me up and carry me onto the gurney.

  Then everything goes black.

  When I open my eyes I’m in a curtained-off room. “I’m okay, I’m fine,” I say.

  A doctor nods as a nurse is taking my blood pressure and then cleaning what must be a cut on my head because the gauze looks bloody.

  “You can go as soon as your mom comes,” she says. “The MRI was normal.”

  And then the curtain parts and I see…Michael.

  “Gia,” he says, walking toward me.

  “We’ll be finished in a minute,” the nurse says.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  Michael steps toward me and touches my shoulder.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I heard it come over the radio,” he says. “I got here as fast as I could. How are you?”

  “Not ready for my close-up.”

  He shakes his head. “You look good to me.”

  Michael sits with me while we wait for my mom. He reaches out and takes my hand, and out of nowhere, my tears start and don’t stop. Fear, relief, shock? He reaches into his pocket and hands me a tissue. I expect to hear why are you crying? Or don’t cry, you’re safe. But he doesn’t say either of those things. He leans toward me and takes me in his arms, pressing me against his chest.

  “I know, baby, I know,” he says over and over, and those words go beyond what just happened to me and they comfort both of us because of everything we’ve gone through and all the months of not being together and finally losing my dad.

  “I’m sorry, Gia…for everything.”

  I never thought I’d hear that. I never thought I’d feel what I am feeling now and all I know for sure is that no matter what, I don’t want Michael to let go of me because I am so scared and so mixed up about my dad and all the things he did and I want to forget the past, all of it. I bury my face in his neck.

  “I wish I could take you home,” he says.

  That’s not what I want to hear. I thought things were different finally, but they’re not. I’m just blind and stupid because he obviously still blames me, and I’m just so weary of all the back and forth and the bullshit and his fear of getting close to me because of who I am even though he knows I can’t change that and I don’t even want to.

  “Don’t keep saying that, Michael. I don’t want you to take me home.”

  He shakes his head. “My home, Gia.”

  And I’m like, what did he say? I look at him again and I know it wasn’t my imagination.

  He said it. My home.

  Does this mean he accepts me for who I am? Or at least he wants to try?

  Never before have I moved from despair to ecstasy in a split second. How can a two letter pronoun do all that?

  My.

  A single word that can change everything.

  “Let’s start over, Michael.”

  “Fresh start,” he says with his half smile.

  FIFTY-ONE

  My mom comes to the hospital with Anthony, and since they found out what happened, my brother is in a rage and they’re huddling around me, super protective.

  “Saturday night?” Michael whispers.

  We’ve crossed the line back to relationship from the planet Splitsville.

  “Saturday night,” I say before he slips away and my eyes close because I feel like Dante’s punching bag.

  The newspapers pick up the story of course, and instead of my dad’s face on the front of the Daily News, it’s mine, because what’s bigger news than a kidnapping attempt on the don’s daughter who happens to go to one of Manhattan’s snootiest private schools?

  I get into bed that night and turn on the eleven o’clock news and after it’s over the phone rings.

  “Did you see the news?” Michael asks.

  “Ha, I’m famous.”

  “Christ,” he says.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “If I wasn’t feeling so crappy now…”

  “Yeah, if only…Saturday?” he says.

  “Saturday.”

  Then the Percocet kicks in and I yawn.

  “Go to sleep, Gia,” he says softly.

  “I love you, Michael,” I blurt out. Did I really say that?

  “Gia…” he says, exhaling hard.

  Say something back, Michael. Please.

  “Good night, baby,” he says finally. Then the line goes dead.

  I’m in school the next day, now with a friend of Anthony’s, Angelo, as my new driver and bodyguard even though I don’t know how Anthony’s paying him. And when Clive gets all the details about why I didn’t return his fifty calls or texts or emails he looks shaken and upset and keeps saying, “oh my God, Gia, oh my God, if I had known…”

  “But I’m fine, Clive—”

  “I know, but—”

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  “But I was inside, right inside, taking the damn test, if I had known…”

  He finally calms down after I tell him a hundred more times that I’m fine and how another cop saved my life and that “everything’s different now.”

  “So now do you want to know what I found out?”

  “About?”

  “About him, about Michael Cross,” Clive says impatiently. “The report. I’ve got the whole thing now…assuming I’m not dragged off to prison for hacking into—”

  “Yes, yes, tell me.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  It’s been so long since I asked him to find out about Michael that I forgot he said there was more and that he managed to get past a security firewall and yada, yada, yada.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Well, it’s not really about him,” Clive says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it is and it isn’t.”

  “Clive…”

  “It’s about his dad.”

  “He was a cop too.”

  “Yes, but it gets complicated,” Clive says. “Come over after school and I’ll show you everything.”

  Patience is not one of my strengths. Waiting and wondering and worrying churn up my insides. Not only that but also I’m now getting that quickening in my heart, the kind of amped-up feeling that says my body knows something ahead of my brain.

  Only it’s twelve o’clock, and I have three more hours until I go to Clive’s.

  “Gia,” Mrs. Collins says.

  I look up at her, startled. I was spacing.

  She asks the question again. Something about the significance of Ophelia to Hamlet? I haven’t thought about that.

  I stare back at her like an idiot. “Sorry,” I answer apologetically.

  She studies me briefly and shakes her head. “Please pay attention,” she says in a gentle, pitying sort of way. “You’re in outer space.”

  At three o’clock, my new bodyguard, who has a body like a defensive lineman, drives me and Clive to Clive’s apartment.

  “I’ll be fine from here on,” I say. Then add, “Thanks, Ann,” because I call him that, which makes him nuts.

  He exhales. “How you gettin’ home?”

  “Clive’s driver.”

  He looks at me uncertainly.

  “It’s fine, Ann, I’ll text you if anything changes.”

  Clive and I get into the elevator, and as soon as we get to his floor and the door closes behind us, I turn to Clive. “Show me.”

&nbs
p; He holds up his hands and goes to his room. He comes back with a manila folder. He opens it and looks at me questioningly. “You sure you want to hear it?”

  “His dad is dead now, so it doesn’t matter much anyway. But whatever. What did you find?”

  “First of all, his dad isn’t dead,” Clive says.

  “What?”

  “He’s living in Tennessee…in a small town there.”

  “Maybe his parents are divorced and his dad left,” I say. “That’s not a big deal and Michael could be mad at him or think of him as dead…”

  I think back to the time I asked him about his father. He talks so little that I’ve just about memorized his every word. We’d been talking about Thanksgiving. He was on the Henry Hudson, waiting for speeders.

  “What about your dad?”

  Silence.

  “No dad,” he’d said finally.

  “Did he…die?”

  “Yeah…he’s dead.”

  “Well,” Clive says. “Here’s the interesting part, Gia. His father was a cop—”

  “I know that, you said—”

  “And he was promoted to detective, but two years later there was an internal affairs investigation. I can’t get the actual report, I tried, so it was hushed up I guess because these people can usually get almost anything…but I got a summary from them—”

  “Them?”

  “My dad’s people, his sources,” he says, leaving it at that.

  My heart is starting to pound in my chest. “What…what did he do?”

  “He took payoffs, Gia…”

  “From?”

  “People in…your dad’s organization.”

  “What? Clive are you sure?”

  “It’s a summary of a report by internal affairs, Gia. They’re the ones who investigate these things.”

  My dad and his associates sometimes got tipped off about things they weren’t supposed to know. I would hear bits of things, never whole conversations. They had connections everywhere, I knew, but I never imagined it would get close to me, not like this.

  And then I remember the fight with Michael.

  “The cops that they squeeze and then they own,” he said. “To me it’s personal.”

  No wonder he hates people like my dad. He blames him, he blames us, but not only for how it ruined his brother, but what it did to his dad too. He couldn’t even forgive his own father.