by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
A right, then another left, and I found an eight-foot high chain-link fence stretched around a hairpin turn and up the hill. Across the street, another fence. The buildings were overgrown, unkempt, with peeling stucco and beams warped under the passion flower vines. When I opened my car door, an avocado with the squirrel-sized bite rolled down the hill with a skit skit skoot, popping up on a crack in the pavement and landing on the asphalt. I looked up. A cloud-high avocado tree shaded the block, spitting its bounty onto the sidewalk.
I shut the door. My car made a familiar chirp that alerted the neighborhood that something expensive was nearby. I glanced back at it then forward.
The late Frankie Giraldi had bought everything behind those fences, from what I could tell, but one house he’d bought first. He’d purchased it as an individual. Years later, his estate had moved it into trust and bought up everything around it.
The executor of the trust was the law firm of Mansiatti, Rowenstein, and Karo. Antonio Spinelli, Esq., LLP had bought them when they went belly up. They had one client: the Frank Giraldi estate. A snake eating itself. The estate’s trust owned the property, and Antonio managed the trust. Did he actually own it outright? I couldn’t tell from the papers I’d had in front of me.
The overgrowth detonated my allergies. I felt my sinuses swell and press against the bones of my face. A drip tickled the back of my nose. I checked my bag. Advil, tampons, wet wipes, and an empty tissue packet. Great. The tickle worked its way to the back of my throat. I put my hand in front of my mouth, checked to see if anyone was around, and made a very unladylike noise to scratch my throat as I walked down the block.
I found the house. I was allergic to just about everything growing around it.
I didn’t know what I’d expected, but there was nothing but a run down, bright yellow house with a fifty-foot front yard. An old Fiat was parked on top of rosebush stumps. Stacks of faded children’s toys pressed against the fence. Bars on the windows. A porch stacked with bags of leaves. The driveway had been kept clear though, which meant someone came in and out often enough to need a path. A few steps to the right, I saw muddy tire tracks from something bigger than a car.
The entrance to the drive had been chained shut. Though a hole had been cut in the fence at the next dilapidated house, it had been repaired with sharp twists of wire. I walked on a few feet and found a new opening.
I crawled through it. A thorny strand of brush found my stocking and gave it a good yank. I had an extra pair in the car, but I was still anxious about the drooping egg shape at my calf. Pushing past bamboo, bushes with sticky burrs, and tall weeds with yellow flowers that I knew tasted like broccoli, I came out into the end of the driveway, at the front end of the backyard.
The house had been built into a hill, so the backyard was at a slant, the square footage taken up by a slope that got more vertical as it bent away from the house. The structure itself was no surprise, with its beaten yellow paint and bent eaves. But the fence surprised me. Though the barriers from the street were old, hand-repaired chain link, the fences between the properties were new.
A loud crack echoed off the mountain. It could have been anything. A car backfiring. A piece of lumber snapping. Even a shotgun.
A smack of fear in my lower back sent me rushing through the bamboo and mustard weeds and through the hole in the fence, leaving behind strands of nylon for the thorns. I ran down the block and hurled myself at my car, almost twisting my ankle. The car blooped and I got in, turning the key before buckling. A drip of snot freed itself from my left sinus.
The car didn’t start.
Daniel’s voice bounced around my head, complaining that the car was unreliable, maintenance-heavy. He was right, and I was stuck on Mount Washington, turning my key repeatedly while nothing happened and a line of clear snot dropped down my lip.
My box of tissues was wedged under the passenger seat. Since I was stuck, and uncomfortable, and frustrated, I let go of the key and reached under the seat, rooting around for the feel of flat cardboard. I touched it and pushed, but a heavy iron pole got in the way. It was a security device called the Club that had been a big thing in the eighties, when the last owner had bought the car. Though I’d never used it, I kept it, even when it got in my damn way. I got the iron bar out and unbuckled my seatbelt. Leaning over, I curled my arm under the seat. The snot that had been sitting uncomfortably on my upper lip followed gravity. I shifted to get a look at what the box was caught on and yanked it free.
Clackclackclack
The sound of a ring rapping on the window. Too late to notice my skirt was hiked up, and I was showing full-on black garter belt to the world. I twisted to get a look at the guy standing over my car. He wore a neat striped shirt under a light windbreaker.
“You all right?” His voice was muffled through the glass.
I pulled my skirt down and sat up. “I’m fine.” I snapped the last tissue out of the box and wiped my nose quickly. I cranked down the window.
“This is a nice car.”
“Yeah, it won’t move.” I got a good look at him and recognized him by the bow lips. I held up a pointer finger and squinted, the universal sign for unreliable recognition.
“I thought I knew you,” he said. “How’s your sister?”
“Never better. Can you give me a push?”
“Sure. I know a garage down the street. They’re honest.”
There seemed to be red zones everywhere, so the garage was probably a good idea. “All right. I never got your name,” I said.
“Paulie. Paulie Patalano.”
“Nice to meet you again, Paulie.”
Another man got out of a car behind me. He had a low forehead and moustache.
“This is Lorenzo. He’s harmless,” Paulie said.
“Hey, Paulie.”
“Zo, this is Theresa. We’re giving her a push to East Side. Yeah?”
Zo agreed. They pushed, joking the entire time about horsepower, the division of thrust between them, and who got to direct traffic when we crossed Marmion Way onto Figueroa. I steered and wondered at the odds of meeting the bow-lipped man again. When one considered the actual mathematical odds, chance meetings were nearly impossible, yet they happened all the time.
And then, I wondered, what were the odds that Antonio was somewhere near his friend? Was he somehow behind any of this?
East Side Motors appeared a block away. A typical car repair dump, with a dirty yellow and black sign advertising that every car brand in the universe was a specialty, it looked no better than any other shop around. As we got closer, it became apparent that business was brisk. The lot was packed, and men in grey jumpsuits hustled around bumpers and grilles, moving cars, shouting, and laughing.
I turned in and was greeted by a balding guy with a chambray shirt and moustache. He opened the door as soon as I stopped.
“Ma’am,” he said, “we don’t do German cars.”
I looked up at the sign. What had looked like every brand in the universe was actually every brand in Italy. A quick glance around the lot revealed Maseratis, Ferraris, Alpha Romeos, but no German, Japanese, or American cars.
“It won’t turn over,” I said. “Could you hold it until I get a tow? I’ll pay for the storage.”
“You got it.” He turned to Paulie. “Sir? Are we charging?”
“No fucking way. She keeps it here as long as she needs to.” He held his hand to me. “Come on to the back.”
His manner was so friendly and professional, I thought nothing of following him. I thought I’d find coffee, a seat, a stale donut perhaps. But as I walked through the hustle of the lot into the dim garage, where everything looked dusted with grime, a man in a clean, dark yellow sweater and grey jacket looked up into the underbelly of an old Ducati, exposing the tautness of his throat. Such a vulnerable position, yet he held it with supreme confidence. Antonio. Another chance meeting that I was beginning to think had little to do with the natural laws of probability.
“Sp
in,” called Paulie from behind me.
When Antonio pulled his arms down from the Ducati, he saw me and seemed as surprised at my presence. I kept doing probabilities in my head, switching the numbers between him knowing and not knowing.
“Contessa?” he said, glancing at me then his friend.
“Up by l’uovo,” Paulie said.
A concerned look crossed Antonio’s face, but then it was gone with a nod and a smile. He snapped a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped the engine grease off his fingers. Having erased reactions from my face my whole life, I knew exactly what he was doing. He was collecting himself from surprise.
“I got this, Pauls.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ll be in the office,” Antonio said.
They stared at each other for a moment, then Paulie held out his hand. They shook on it.
“Benny!” Antonio called to a stocky man tapping at a smudged keyboard. “Friction plates, rubber, and rings, okay?”
“You got it, boss.”
Boss? Okay. Lawyer. Restaurateur. Mechanic.
“Come on.” He held out his hand for me.
I didn’t take it. I trusted him less and less as the minutes wore on. Antonio just turned and walked through a door, holding it open as he passed into a clean, sundrenched room with industrial grey carpet and car posters.
I followed him. Coffee had been set up for the people waiting and reading magazines. Behind a counter with phone banks and more magazines sat a woman in her fifties.
“Spin,” she said in a thick Italian accent, handing him a clipboard. “Sign please. I want to order the paint.”
He signed without looking and walked to another door marked “Private.”
I stopped. “I’m surprised to see you.”
“I have the same feeling.”
The middle-aged woman went about her business as if nothing was happening.
“You could have called if you wanted to see me,” he continued.
“I didn’t come to see you.” With those words, I realized the trouble I was in. I’d been asking questions behind his back. Investigating. I couldn’t imagine how angry he would be. I had no reason to be in that neighborhood except to stare at a bunch of innocently acquired property that was just a cluster of buildings with zero illegal activity surrounding them. Maybe that was my secret weapon.
“Really?” he said with a raised brow.
I smiled coyly. “I’m here now.”
He opened the door and smiled back, but I couldn’t tell if he’d fallen for my act or not. The office was walled in glass and striped with shadows from natural wood blinds. The décor was warmer than the rest of the business, with a dark wood desk with clawfoot legs, shelves with car manuals, and a buffed matte wood floor. Antonio closed the blinds, and my eyes adjusted. The diffused light was still more than enough to see by.
“So,” he said, “up by the yellow house?”
“There was a yellow house. Needs a paint job.”
He nodded. “It’s not for sale.”
“I hoped the owner would be in. Maybe I could talk him into selling.”
“You couldn’t afford it.” He took two steps forward and was right in front of me.
“I have lots of money,” I whispered.
“He isn’t interested in your money.”
His lips were on mine before he’d even completed the last vowel. His tongue found my tongue, and his hands were under my shirt, caressing my ribs, slipping under my bra. He believed it. He believed I’d come to the neighborhood hoping to see him. Maybe there was a sliver of truth to that. My legs wrapped around him, and he put his hand up my skirt unceremoniously.
He pressed his hips into the thin lace of my underwear. Would he rip another pair? I hoped so. From the bottom of my pelvis, I hoped he would.
“I don’t have hours to fuck you like you deserve.” He slipped a finger under my panties, finding where I was wettest. “I have a few minutes to make you hold back a scream.”
He found my engorged clit, and I stiffened. He pushed me onto the arm of a chair. My arms braced me as his hand stroked.
“How did you come here, Theresa?” he said as his fingertips blinded me with sensations, making me vulnerable.
I couldn’t think. “The one ten freeway.”
He pulled away, moving his hand so his thumb rotated on my clit as he stood over me. I felt intimidated and powerless, and I was as afraid as I was aroused.
“Look at me,” he whispered tenderly. “Spread your legs.”
I did it, looking and spreading until both hurt.
He was perfectly put together, with one hand in me the way it had just been inside a transmission. “What were you doing by the yellow house?”
“I wanted to see where you lived.”
“That’s not my legal address.”
“I hope not. It was a mess.”
He answered my sarcasm by sliding two fingers into my soaking hole. “I didn’t get a call about anyone trespassing at my house.”
“Oh God, Antonio, I’m so close.”
I noticed, as I got closer, that he wasn’t telling me what he was going to do to me. Where was the dirty talk? Something was wrong, but I was too close to the incoming tide of my sexual pleasure to think clearly about what that meant.
He put his hand on the back of the chair and leaned down, his strokes getting lighter and softer, keeping me on the edge. “I want to like you, Contessa. I want to. But I can’t trust you.”
His words didn’t sink in soon enough. My wet, engorged sex was still in his hand. On the third stroke, I exploded in an orgasm that was supposed to be a release, but instead was humiliating. The emotional disconnect cut the pleasure short, and I twisted away from him, breathing heavily with my bra half pulled over my breasts and my skirt bunched at my waist.
“What was that?” I said.
“I wondered how you just show up in my neighborhood.” He took the grease-smeared hankie from his pocket and wiped the fingers that had been inside me. “You weren’t looking for my house. You were looking for something. The district attorney sent you. You’ve been working for him the whole time, haven’t you? It’s on the side of a barn, like you say.”
“You think my ex sent me to fuck you?” I straightened my clothes, seething so hard I didn’t even care what I said or how I said it. But the more I wanted to say what was on my mind, the more crowded my mind became. “You think he’s whoring me out? What kind of world do you live in? And let me assure you, the lack of trust is mutual. Talk about what’s on the side of a barn. You react to questions like I’m spraying acid on you. You have no real law practice. A hundred different businesses. You can bust a guy’s face on the hood of a car. Maybe the police questioned you so many times because you’re a criminal lowlife.” I brushed past him, but he caught my upper arm. “Let go of me,” I growled from deep in my throat.
“I run legitimate businesses.”
“What better way to do the laundry?”
His tongue pressed between his lips, and his eyes drifted to my mouth in a nanosecond of weakness. “Be careful.”
“Good advice. I’m staying away from the dirtbags from now on.”
He tightened his grip on my arm, and we stood like that, breathing each other’s air, until a light rap came from the other side of the door.
“Spin?”
He waited a second and kept his eyes on mine as he answered. “Yeah, Zo?”
“Tow’s here, and they don’t know where to take the Beemer.”
Silence hung between us. His jaw moved as if he was grinding his teeth. I held his gaze. He could go straight to hell, and I still wanted him. The knock came again.
Antonio whipped his head around and shouted, “What!”
Zo’s voice was timid. “The tow guy has another call.”
Antonio pulled me to him so hard I knew I would walk out of there with a nice bruise. He pressed his lips together as if he had something to say but didn’t know how t
o say it.
I answered as if he’d spoken. “I know what’s between us. I know it’s real, as real as anything I’ve ever felt for a man. And I know you don’t really believe Daniel whored me out to get information. Even if you think he’d do something like that, you know in your heart I wouldn’t. But none of that matters. Even though you don’t believe I have ulterior motives, you’re scared of it.” He loosened his grip just a little, and I took that as my cue to continue. “That’s not the way to be together. It’s too long a bridge to cross. Let’s both be grown-ups and walk away before this gets uglier.”
It took a few seconds, or forever, for him to remove his hand, his fingers slipping over my sleeve as if magnetized. I took a long breath, memorizing his scent, the thickness of his hair, the cleft in his jaw, the angle I held my head to look into his deep brown eyes.
“I’ll have someone drive you home,” he said.
“I can get a cab.”
“I know. But someone from here will drive you.” He opened the door.
Zo was right behind it, hunched and tense.
“Make sure she gets home,” Antonio said.
“Sure, boss.”
I followed Lorenzo and looked back for the briefest second, enough to catch Antonio closing the office door.
On the way out, I saw a man with a comb-over I would have sworn I recognized. He wasn’t wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit, but a zipper jacket. His left eye was badly bruised, almost swelled shut, and a bandage held a cut together at his brow. It was Vito, and when he saw me, he turned and walked in the other direction.
After some discussion, some signed papers, a few minutes spent waiting for something I couldn’t remember because I was distracted by Antonio’s presence in his office and the distance between us, I let Paulie Patalano drive me home. Apparently, my house was on his way.
