by C. D. Reiss
I found Jonathan sitting on the edge of his bed with tubes all over him. He looked drained of everything but frustration. Sheila sat in the chair by the window, tapping on her phone like she wanted to poke through it. Under stress, the rage came out.
“Hi,” I said, kissing his cheek. “You look good.”
“He wants to get out of here,” Sheila said.
“They’re holding me until I’m stable,” he growled. “And I’m feeling more unstable every hour.”
“What happened?” I asked. “You’re hardly old enough for this.”
“Can I not review this again?” he said.
“Honestly,” Sheila said, all the singsong gone, “It’s just his youthful indiscretions catching up with him. But if you make him tell the story again, he’s going to chew your face off and it’s not worth it. He needs a bypass. He’s going to get it. End.”
“They do them during their lunch hour. It’s just which lunch hour that’s the question.” He laid back. I sat in the chair next to the bed. A tray sat next to him with a plastic container that was empty but for a piece of cut pineapple.
“They’re letting you eat pineapple?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were crazy, then followed my gaze to the container. “That’s Monica’s.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “Is this the new girl?”
“She comes at night,” Jonathan said.
“Mom thinks she’s a gold digger taking advantage of Jonathan’s infirmity,” Sheila piped in. “So she comes at night and we avoid the drama.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, pointing at Jonathan. “How can you do that to her? Do you love her or not?”
“She doesn’t need the aggravation. Believe me.”
I shouldn’t have cared about some girl I’d never met. I shouldn’t have cared about one of my brother’s dalliances. But he was so young and so sick, and I was disappearing in a short time: I felt as if the smallest problems were dire, and that if I had one tiny bit of wisdom to offer him, I owed it to him because it would be the last.
“Commit, Jonathan. Just commit.”
I walked out a couple of hours later, after laughing and crying with them, knowing I’d take my own advice to heart.
forty.
theresa
felt as if I were studying for a test. We drilled day in and out. We drilled in the shower and in the bed. He fucked me and wouldn’t let me come until I got all the answers right. He still had my phone, so I called Jonathan from his phone. My brother invariably growled at me because he wanted to be out making money or bedding the new girl. Then Antonio would begin again as soon as I hung up. He was a rough taskmaster, demanding perfection.
How is it going to go, Contessa? Say it again.
First thing, I deliver the earpieces to the bathroom attendant. I come back. During the cocktail hour, before they introduce the bride and groom, I go outside.
Why?
I’m meeting you for a fuck. There’s a florist’s truck in the parking space over the grate. The florists are setting up the ballroom. I go in. The florist is owned by a business associate. You made the truck and sold it to them. I go in the false bottom. You have left a brick of C4 and a handheld crowbar under the chassis.
What else?
Guns.
What am I doing then?
Asking Donna Maria permission to marry her granddaughter.
Then what?
I wait for you.
Wait for me, Contessa, no matter what you think you hear. No matter how long you think it’s taking. I’ll be there. We’ll run across the street and blow up the truck.
And there will be two explosions, because C4 explodes twice.
In the chaos, we come from the grate in the street and get in the car.
What kind of car is it?
A Porsche.
Perfect. No one would believe it was you.
Do you have it?
I have it.
forty-one.
theresa
t wasn’t my wedding. I wasn’t wearing white. I didn’t have bridesmaids or an excited family. I hadn’t chosen the venue or the catering, but in a way, I was coming out of the event a woman entangled with a man to the death. We were committed, tied in ropes of lies and deceit, each able to destroy the other if we escaped the net.
I wore a short grey dress with matte silver-bugle beads. The looseness of the skirt made it easy to move in, with heels that were more comfortable than they looked. In my bag I had lipstick, credit cards, jewelry, and an obscene wad of cash. I’d memorized my account numbers and passwords for my overseas banks.
I heard Antonio come into the loft, downstairs.
We’d never discussed getting married. It was too soon, but with the intensity of our commitment, I wondered if we’d both been too busy with practicalities to bring it up or if we were simply scared of making it official.
He came behind me in a black tux that fit him without an errant crease or curve, brushing his fingertips on my arms. His touch was still perfect, still arousing, designed to bring my skin to life. He dropped my phone on the vanity.
“It’s done,” he said.
“I press the home key?”
“Yes. Three seconds. But wait for me. We can both detonate. If we’re not together, one has a good chance of blowing the other up.”
He kissed my bare shoulder and looked at me in the mirror. “You look like a queen.”
“How do I taste?”
“Like a woman.”
I shuddered, arching my neck until the back of my head was on his shoulder. “You didn’t have this power over me three months ago.”
“And you? You were just a figurine on television,” he said.
I turned, put my arms around his neck, and pulled him to me. “A miserable one.”
He cast his eyes down. “So many things could go wrong today.”
“Nothing will go wrong.”
“Wait for me. You have to wait for me.”
“I’ll wait in the tunnel under the car, I promise,” I said.
“You don’t come out until I’m there. Then we exit the tunnel together. I checked. It’s open on the other side.”
“Yes, boss,” I whispered.
“Ti amo, Theresa. Please don’t ever doubt that.”
I kissed him because the doubt he forbade me was all over his voice. I knew he loved me, at that moment. I knew I had his heart and owned his soul. Today.
But maybe he was wondering about tomorrow. Something was off.
I didn’t want to doubt our plans. I wanted to be on a plane to Greece as Persephone, goddess of the underworld, with my Adonis next to me.
“You have to know,” he said, “I’ll always take care of you. I’ll always think of you first. You’re precious to me.”
“Can you get that suit off and show me?” I hiked my dress up to show him the terribly impractical garters I wore.
He looked at them with a ruefulness I didn’t understand, drawing his finger around one of the legs and yanking it.
“Do you want to be late?”
“I don’t see that it matters. Come on, Capo. I’m wet. You’re hard. Give me that cock one last time before we die.”
With a quick stroke, he ripped them, reducing them to tatters in seconds. He threw me onto the bed. “Open your legs,” he said, undoing his belt. “Show me your pussy.”
I bent my knees and spread them apart. My pussy cooled when the air hit it. I kept my eyes on Antonio and then on his cock as he pulled it out. “I love you, Capo.”
He kneeled on the bed then licked his hand and pressed it between my legs, entering me with three fingers. “Wet to the death, my love.”
He didn’t make me beg but fucked me without preamble. I thought, as he drove into me, growling my name, wrinkling our good clothes, that this was the man I was fucking forever. I dug my fingers in his hair and said his name over and over until I could no longer form words.
forty-two.
antonio<
br />
was a bad man. I knew that when I met her and when I stood at her door the night she called me Capo the first time. And I knew that when I came inside her on the day she planned to disappear with me.
She didn’t know she wasn’t going anywhere with me.
She was going to live. She was going to get over me and find herself a lawful man to take care of her and fuck her gently. She was going to have children who lived as citizens of decency, and I’d twist in hell, knowing that she’d mourn for a little while and then find happiness.
forty-three.
theresa
he club was not its usual self. A line of long black cars backed down the block as each driver and passenger was identified, cross-checked and let through. Or not.
Why was I nervous about going through? I felt as though I was about to star in a musical production where there would be no encore, no repeat performance, no ovation. And under those nerves was a lightness I could only describe as elation. I was leaving everything behind and starting fresh. The possibilities were endless and had been barely scraped by my imagination.
Antonio, driving a three-year-old Alfa Romeo, reached over and took my hand, knotting the fingers together in my lap. “You all right?”
“Yep.”
“Wait for me.” He inched forward in the line. “Remember.”
“How do you say it in Italian?”
“Aspettami.”
“Will you take me to Italy some time? My sister lives there.”
He took his gaze off me, and turned in to the gate, stopping at the guard station.
“Well?” I asked.
“Yes. Sure.” He squeezed my hand and let go.
“Hello, Sir,” the guard said. He wore a boutonniere in his uniform, a little white carnation wrapped in green and fastened with a pearl-head straight pin. “Can I have your name?”
Another security guy took down Antonio’s license plate number.
“Antonio Spinelli,” he said.
“And you, ma’am?”
“Theresa Drazen.”
“Can I see some ID?”
We showed him. He checked our photos and took the license numbers down.
“Romance in America,” Antonio said, quietly joking.
“Movie stars and mobsters get the same treatment.”
“In Italy, they’d just shoot anyone who made trouble. To avoid the war, you play nice.”
“We’re about to ruin the whole party,” I said.
“We are mad, aren’t we?”
“We are.” I squeezed his hand. “Let’s do this. Before I go to the truck, let’s enjoy this. Let’s forget everything and dance for one hour. Let’s be who we could have been. Just Antonio and Theresa, with a real future and boring pasts. I’ll act like my biggest problem is whether or not you like my dress. And you’ll act like yours is how to get under it. We’ll be the most thrilling things in each other’s lives.”
He touched my lip, turning it down, then stroked my chin. “You already are the best thing I have.”
“Pretend I’m also the worst thing.”
“I haven’t earned the life you just invented for me.”
“Mr. Spinelli?” The guard leaned down, our licenses on a clipboard.
Antonio turned from me. “Yes?”
“Sorry about the wait.” He handed the licenses back to Antonio. “Can you get out of the car?”
“No problem.”
We were frisked. My bag was rooted through. They fingered the space behind my ears and looked inside them with the same little handheld lights doctors used, apologizing the whole time. Across the way, on the line of cars coming the other direction, another couple was getting the same treatment. Then the guards smiled and nodded, letting us through as if patting down guests was normal.
forty-four.
antonio
as it wrong to give her good memories of me when I knew I was leaving her? Yes, it was. I should have been making her hate me. But if I was going to keep two conflicting ideas in my mind at the same time, one was going to sweeten the bitterness of the other.
I was being selfish, but her suggestion that we enjoy the wedding appealed to me, and I couldn’t let it go. So after we gave the valet our keys and walked into the Heritage House, I guided her with my hand at the small of her back, which she relaxed into as if she belonged there. When the champagne went around, I took two glasses and gave her one, looking deeply into her eyes when we toasted.
“Am I getting dirty looks?” she whispered to me.
“Not today.”
If any part of our plan failed, by the next week, she’d be the camorrista whore. But I’d be long gone, and no shame would be brought to anyone. That day, to everyone but a few, she was just a woman I’d brought to a wedding.
“And Paulie’s not coming? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Donna Maria sat at a small cocktail table with Irene and Carlo, shaking hands with subjects who passed. Irene wore a blue shift dress that went to the floor. There was no sign of the hypersexed little flirt I’d seen in the yard. She avoided looking at me.
By the dais, Bernardo Lei and Giacomo Bortolusi, the fathers of the Neapolitan bride and Sicilian groom, respectively, held court as if this coronation were the end of years of competition, when in fact it was only the beginning.
“We have to go pay our respects,” I whispered to Theresa.
“Can I get drunk first?”
I removed the empty champagne glass from her hand and led her to the line.
“I once met the Queen of England.” Theresa said quietly.
“Really?”
“Elizabeth. My whole class went. It was a trip to London, and you know, private school. Los Angeles. Rich people, blah blah. I wasn’t even nervous. And when it was my turn in line, and I said ‘How do you do?’ exactly like I was taught, I could tell she was just bored out of her mind.” She tilted her head to the right slightly to see the front of the line, the curve of her neck begging to be touched and bitten and licked to a bruising. But I couldn’t touch her. She turned back to me. “These guys don’t look bored.”
“This is the height of their lives. A business arrangement disguised as a marriage.”
She squeezed my hand. “Have you ever thought of just doing it? Maybe it won’t be so bad?”
“How could I go back to earth, having kissed heaven?”
I didn’t know if I was leading her on. I wondered if speaking the truth to her in those last hours would just make the separation worse. Would it make the sting of her hurt be lenghtier or go deeper? Would the venom course through her veins longer, or would she just have some honest piece of me to hold onto after I left?
“Master Racossi!” Bortolusi bellowed. He knew my father and was his main competition in the cigarette trade. He was ambitious, cruel, and ruthless.
“I go by my mother’s name,” I said as I shook his hand, looking him in the eye. I was famously unashamed of my bastard lineage, and I wouldn’t take any shit about it.
And he knew it. That disconcerted me.
“This is Theresa Drazen,” I said.
He took her hand and kissed it. She was perfectly gracious, neither too proud, nor coy, nor embarrassed.
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“I recognize that name.”
“I have a big family. You might have met one of my sisters. I have six.”
He laughed and nodded then turned back to me. There was a line of people behind me, waiting to meet the father of the bride, but he took the time to put his hand on my shoulder. “A little bird told me I’ll be seeing you back home in a few weeks.”
“You shouldn’t listen to birds,” I said. “They chirp what they hear, not what they know.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. We shook hands with the gentle Bernardo Lei, who made no insinuations. Then we met the groom, who was boisterous, half drunk, half bald, and a bride who beamed with pride. Despite the reasons for the
union, it looked like a good match.
“Shall we dance?” I asked. “I think we have time for one.”
“He said you were going back to Italy? I thought you couldn’t?”
“If this goes through, everything’s forgiven. Come on, let’s go dance. I’m not looking for absolution from anyone but you.”
forty-five.
theresa
was glad I didn’t speak Italian. It meant I could smile through the half conversations and small talk Antonio endured on the way to the cocktail room. I didn’t have to attach meaning to any of the looks I got. I only had to pay attention when he was addressed in English.
“Consigliere,” an old woman said from a seat we passed. She wore a black dress and shoes, no makeup besides years of sun, and brown eyes sharp and clear.
“Donna, it’s been years since I was your consul,” he replied in English with a rote, joking tone, as if they’d been through this a hundred times.
“It still has a nice ring to it. I haven’t met the lady.”
I put my hand out. “Theresa Drazen. Lovely to meet you.”
“Maria Carloni. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
I swallowed. Smiled. Ran through my mental rolodex, cross referenced her with Daniel, in the subcategory ‘nice things felons do.’
“Yes. Of course. The Catholic Woman’s League.”
She laughed in the way an old woman does when she can, because she’s old and she doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks anymore.
A young woman in a modest blue dress handed Maria Carloni a drink. She was lovely, with olive skin and brown eyes the size of teacups.
“You’ve met my granddaughter, Irene, Mr. Spinelli?”
“I have.” He took her hand and bowed a little. “Nice to see you again.”
She didn’t meet his gaze but curtseyed. Something in the gesture was formal, yet intimate, and I felt a surge of jealous rage I worked to cover with a noncommittal smile.
I wasn’t introduced.
Antonio took my hand and pulled me away. But as fast as he got me away, I heard Irene mumble, ‘puttana,’ under her breath. I was no scholar, but I knew what that meant.
