by C. D. Reiss
Donna Maria shuffled in from the dining room. “You two quit it.”
She slid open a big wooden pocket door, revealing a small study with heavy chairs and dark fabrics. A deeply masculine room, it looked inherited directly from her late husband.
Paulie went in first. Two men were at either side of the window. They had risen to their feet when the door had opened. One was Skinny Carlo; the other was a clean-cut gentleman in a full suit, about forty years old. I didn’t recognize him.
“Carlo,” I said as Paulie sat.
“Spin,” said Carlo.
I turned to the man I didn’t know. “Antonio.”
He didn’t say anything. The cuckoo clock over his head ticked loudly. I could hear the gears grinding.
Donna Maria shuffled in. “Don’t mind him.”
“I’ll forget to mind him when I know who he is.”
“He’s from the old country.”
“Mine or yours?”
She laughed to herself. A clear, crystal Virgin lighter, about the size of an eggplant, wobbled when she sat behind her desk. It had a brass metal head that flipped up to reveal the flint. These things made better paperweights than lighters, but that didn’t stop old Italian ladies from buying them. I’d seen about a hundred of the monstrosities in my life.
“There’s only one, but if you have to know…” She waved her hand at the stranger.
“Aldo,” said the man. “From Portici. I’m sent to make sure this runs smooth. So we don’t have any trouble with our friends from the south.” He spoke in an Italian I knew well, the spiraling tones of my hometown clicking together like gears.
“I don’t need to be watched.”
“He ain’t watching you.” Donna Maria sat back in her chair, her body filling in the worn spots in the leather. “He’s watching me. Ain’t you, Aldo?”
Aldo didn’t answer.
“All right. Let’s get down to it,” she said. “This thing with you two, it’s bad for business. Not just your business, but mine, because if I gotta get into it with you to keep the peace—”
“It wouldn’t be a peace,” Paulie interjected.
“You can put it back in your pants. As an interested third party, I’m just here to make sure all’s fair and send you two on your way. I don’t need to tell you that what’s done in here is done. What’s agreed is law. What is said is true under God and the Holy Virgin. Yes?”
I made the sign of the cross. Paulie and the two men sitting behind Donna Maria did the same, even though it wasn’t their job to agree, it was their job to listen.
“Bene,” Donna Maria said, fingering a piece of paper. “We got a nice chunk of territory east of the river and north of Arroyo Seco. Biggest hunk of camorra territory in the country. You guys got tobacco, real estate, protection, and something happening with a garment factory on Marmion. Good job, that. No tributes to pay, either. Nice to be Neapolitan.”
Paulie snickered. I lit a cigarette with my own lighter. She didn’t know all of what we had, but she didn’t have to. She only had to know that within our territory, she could push all the drugs she needed without interference, and though she didn’t officially run prostitution, she managed to squeeze cash out of a few pimps working in the soot of the 110. We split the local councils and brokered the bigger politicians individually. When shit broke out with the gangs, we negotiated the area as a solid block. It was a good system, and I was invested in keeping it intact. We loved peace. Peace was profitable.
“I have a proposal,” I said. “Geographic. Split at the railroad tracks. I take east.”
“You take west,” said Paulie.
“The shop is mine. What’s left of it.”
“Split along the foothills through Avenue 37,” offered Donna Maria.
“That cuts the commercial district by half a mile,” Paulie said. “Do this. He gets three blocks at the edge of the foothills, and I get the outer ring up to the river and the arroyo”
“Fine,” I said. That gave me the garment factory and the shop. That was all I needed in the end. He could have the commercial sector if he thought he could make any money off it.
“When he bails on us, I get his stake,” Paulie said.
“What?” I said.
“Eh?” Donna Maria said.
Oh, that son of a whore was going to try and corner me. I should have shot him when I had the chance.
“See how easy this was?” Paulie continues, holding his hands out to indicate the room, the people, the agreement. “I would say, normally, he’s just going to grease me first chance he gets, but he woulda done that yesterday if he coulda.” He turned to me. “I ain’t afraid of you. I’m a made man. If you take me out, you’re gonna lose your dick. So I been trying to figure what you’re doing. Sat up all night, thinking. Tick tock, all night, listening to that clock, and it wasn’t till the sun came up that I realized. You’re getting your shit in order. You want out of the life.”
There was a dead silence that was filled with the ticking of the cuckoo clock and the laughter of the children outside.
Donna Maria laid her gaze on me. I didn’t have to answer the charge, serious as it was. I didn’t have to entertain the challenge or defend myself. I could leave it hanging with a laugh and a wave of my hand. But with Donna Maria looking at me, and the ticking over Aldo’s head, I knew I had to counter the charge.
“Let me tell you something. My great-great-grandfather carried a carabina for Liborio Romano when the Atto Sovrano was nailed to a tree. And not a generation has passed without an olive tree being planted for us. Not one grows that my grandfather didn’t oversee the pricing, and my father, even now, fixes the price of every kilo. My family is in the orchards, from the roots to the leaves, and you think I can run away from that? The blood beating in me is Napoli. It’s this life. I’m camorrista, blood and bone. And do not ever, ever bring anything like that up again. It’s an offense to my father and my father’s father.”
A heavy silence followed. Even the children were quiet. Only the clock went on and on.
Paulie leaned on the arm of his chair and stroked his chin with his finger. I know I betrayed nothing, but he was a little too confident. “I know who you are. And there’s another piece of this deal. You drop the inamorata.”
Donna Maria broke in. “We don’t discuss the women, Paulo.”
“That’s the deal, or I’m out. Theresa Drazen goes.”
“You can’t lead like this,” Donna Maria said. “You’ll end up dead.”
“Well.” Paulie fingered his phone. “So you know, it’s not just ’cause I don’t like her face. It’s because she met the district attorney at the Downtown Gate Club today for a private chat.”
I burned from the inside, as if my spine were a fuse, and my heart was a bomb; the spark coursed from my lower back upward.
“You’re lying,” I said.
“I ain’t. Got this text right here from a good source. Gerry Friedman from the mayor’s campaign.” He held up the phone for Donna Maria. She put reading glasses on and read while Paulie continued. “He wants her to fuck off, too. She’s poison. But that’s besides the point.”
I didn’t want to see his fucking phone. I didn’t think I could read a word of it through the haze of rage I was holding back. I didn’t know what she was doing with Daniel, but I wouldn’t have her tried and found guilty by that stronzo.
“My split’s east of Cypress Avenue,” I said. “And south of Merced.”
“What?” Paulie twisted in his seat to face me. “You can’t redraw this now.”
I looked at Donna Maria when I said, “Yes, I can.” She did not flinch. This was going her way, I realized.
“No, fuck you.” He shot up, pointing at me, looking at Donna Maria. “What’s this asshole playing at?”
Normally, the person who stands first has seized the power in a negotiation. My father taught me that, but I taught myself how to change that without getting up.
“Ask him,” Donna Maria said.
He didn’t have a chance to drop the curse before I swept his legs from under him. He lost his balance and caught himself on the edge of the desk. I swiped the crystal Virgin from the desk and hit him on the temple. Blood sprayed on Carlos’s shirt, but he didn’t move, even when Paulie went flying into the sideboard. Dishes fell, Paulie grunted, yet I didn’t hear a peep from behind me. Just our breathing and the ticking of the cuckoo clock.
“It’s all mine, you stronzetto. All of it.”
I pulled him up by the collar. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, but he reached and slapped me. I barely felt it. Theresa had slapped me harder.
“Come on, Paulie. This is too easy.”
I dropped him, and he caught himself on the sideboard, wobbly. I almost felt bad. He’d been a brother to me until he broke with jealousy over a woman.
“You’re a dead man,” he grunted, his hand reaching for the bloodied lighter that I’d put down. I moved it an inch farther away. He reached again.
I looked back at Donna Maria. She had her arms crossed and was leaning back in her chair as if the TV was playing a rerun. Carlos was smiling, and Aldo frowned but hadn’t moved an inch. The clock ticked as always. I turned back to Paulie, who seemed to be getting his bearings.
Paulie’s fingers touched the blood-streaked crystal Virgin. Her head had fallen off, and she was just a lower half with a butane lighter sticking out of her.
I moved it another inch farther. “How many times will I have to make you pray before you understand?”
He didn’t answer but hitched himself up. I put my weight on him, pinning him under me. Stuff rattled on the shelves. I picked up the statue and put it in his hand.
“You mention Theresa again, I’m not going to kill you,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing his artery shut. “You’re going to beg to die.”
He became dead weight in my arms, and the crystal Virgin fell out of his hand. I picked it up.
“I’ve cleaned blood off that thing twice already,” Donna Maria said.
“Third time’s the charm.” I poked a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with the Virgin Mary’s brass butane head. “He’ll come around in a few minutes.”
“I’ll deal with him,” Aldo said.
“You got other problems,” Carlo said to me. “This woman. The one he’s talking about?”
“Yes?” I suddenly didn’t want him or anyone to utter her name.
“You going to do something about it?”
“Yes, but I’m going to have to miss the cacciatore. My apologies to your daughter.”
nineteen.
theresa
wasn’t in the habit of going to church anymore. It was a requirement before I turned eighteen, but once I got to college, I could beg off with studies and activities a little too easily. Once I was in my twenties, no one pretended the requirement would stick.
I still knew what to do. Stand up. Sit down. Kneel. Stand. Kneel. The standing and kneeling seemed strategically placed at the end of the mass, when legs got wobbly and the evening’s fast made attention hard to keep.
Margie stood next to me in a contrapposto pose, as if she were simply too impatient to be in that big stone box with its waxy smell and bleeding Jesus.
“You called me here to tell me you’re worried?” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just call me?”
“I needed to see you. And now I’m worried more.”
Margie always had a sense of when things were wrong with us. Back before I knew how to get in trouble, it amused me. She could take one look at Fiona and know when she was using, or talk to Jonathan for ten minutes to know he was having trouble with his wife. The only one she couldn’t read was Daddy. But no one could read him.
“I’m fine.”
“I heard you went to see Daniel today.”
“Jesus—”
“Shh.” Her hush wasn’t drawn or loud, and sounded more like chh than a soothing naptime sound. “Will is watching you.”
“Watching me?” The church broke into song, and we stood, the organ drowning out our words, and the voices of the crowd keeping me from hearing the pounding of my heart.
“He’s good,” she said.
“I don’t want to be watched. I’m a grown woman.”
“Too bad. We need to talk, you and I. Right after communion.”
“No.”
The woman in front of me turned around to glare, and I glared right back.
“You are in deep, playing the DA against the mob, you’re—”
“Shut up, Margie. Just shut it. I’m not talking about it with you, ever.”
“I will not sit back and watch you destroy yourself,” Margie said.
Every muscle coiled, every breath came short. I wanted to yell, to push, to fight her on everything. I wanted to say words that would cut her, about her spinsterhood, about her lost opportunities, about her authority to mother any of us.
Luckily for Margie, the woman in front made it her business to shoot us a librarian stare, and I got to funnel my anger into her.
“Turn around and mind your business,” I said.
Margie looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had.
I didn’t smell burned pine when he stepped next to me, probably because of the weight of the incense. Nor did I feel his closeness, probably because the nave was packed, but when he put his hand on my arm, and I felt the lightning of his touch, I knew it was him.
“Contessa,” he whispered.
I looked up at him. Gorgeous thing in his jacket and shirt, hands gripping the pew in front, all squared-off knuckles and throbbing veins. Those hands needed to be on my thighs, clawing my back. Even in church, I had ungodly thoughts.
The hymn ended, and everyone sat in a rustle and clatter.
“She’s worshiping, for Chrissakes,” Margie said.
“Good,” Antonio said, snapping up a bulletin. “So am I.”
He knew the words, as did I, and we recited the responsives until Margie seemed distracted.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
“OK.” I pushed against him, feeling him next to me, his solidness against my tipping form, rocking with the music as if the rising phrases of the hymn made him denser and made me more viscous.
“Were you at the DA’s office today?”
I went cold. My skin curled in on itself, and the backs of my thighs tingled with an adrenaline rush. The music sounded as if it were being sung through a funnel.
“Not the office. I saw him at a club.”
We faced each other, standing in church with our hymnals open. “Was this an accident?”
“It wasn’t what you think.”
“What do I think?” he asked.
“You think I want him, I—”
He took my hand and pulled me out of the pew. Margie looked more irritated than frightened, and I shot her a smile to keep up the ruse but then yanked back for half a second long enough to say to my sister, “Never. And stop asking.”
But I admitted to myself, as he pulled me out to the vestibule and down the marble stairs, I was afraid. I didn’t think he’d hurt my body, at least not in a way I wasn’t begging for. He could, however, hurt me with his anger, his disappointment. And though I hadn’t given the trip to see Daniel a second of thought, I probably should have.
“Listen!” I yanked back at his hand at the bottom of the stairs, but he yanked me and swung me through a doorway.
The choir dressing room was ancient with wooden lockers built in the Depression. So, when he slammed me against them, there wasn’t a clatter of sheet metal, but a thunk as my body rattled.
Antonio grabbed me by the wrists, locking them together in two fingers and holding them over my head.
“You think I’m worried about him?” He put his finger to my face. “I spend not one minute of my life thinking about that man with you. He’s not even a man. He’s not worthy of you. He’s one of a thousand rats on the bot
tom of a sinking ship.”
“Then what’s the problem?” My question came out in a gasp because my body gravitated toward him, arching to press against him, just as he arched in the opposite curve to keep his face close to mine.
“Why did you see him?” I could have kissed him, but I moved my head against the locker door, turning my face toward the arched lead-glass window. I wanted him, not in spite of his anger but because of it.
“He went to Katrina. His team grilled her, and I don’t like it.”
“What did they grill her about?”
He knew damn well, but he wasn’t going to assume. I noticed that about him. He never assumed anything or jumped to a conclusion.
“You,” I whispered.
“Me.”
“You.”
“And you told him what?” he said.
“To stop. To leave you alone. That if he didn’t, I had enough on him to make his life a living hell.”
“Do you think you maybe should talk to me first, before you do crazy shit?”
“No.” I twisted and pulled my hands down. He let them go but increased his weight on me, pushing me against the lockers. “You barely let me out of an apartment that’s not even mine. I highly doubt you’d let me see Daniel.”
“Because it’s stupid and dangerous.”
“It’s what I have to give. And it’s useful to you. And go to hell if you don’t like it. I will never, ever sit still while he’s after you.”
“I’m already going to hell. Grazie.”
I pushed him away, and he grabbed my jaw, holding me still while he put his nose next to mine and spoke into my mouth. “You’re a loaded gun. Do you see that? You’re from a different world, but you smell like home to me. I haven’t been to Napoli in ten years, but whenever you’re near me, I smell olive flowers. My heart gets sick with thirst, but the water is poison.”
“Antonio—”
“I’m drowning, Contessa.”
“What are you talking about?”
His face got tight, holding back a flood of emotion. His fingers pressed harder on my face until I took hold of his wrist, pulling it down. He let go.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Just tell me.”
He looked confused for a second. Overwhelmed. Then, as if the dam had burst, he wrapped his arms around me and put his mouth to mine. It happened so quickly that I didn’t kiss him back at first. I couldn’t breathe; he held me so tight, but I got my arms around him and my mouth open, pulling him close, pushing as much of myself as I could into whatever part of him was within my reach. Thighs, hips, hands, shoulders, lips bashing lips, tongues forceful on tongues. It wasn’t even a kiss, or at least, not like one I’d ever had before. It was a slap, a punch, the use of force, a coercion of two worlds into uncomfortable cohesion.
