“Why couldn’t you turn out normal?” Don Lou snaps, his face turning red. “The Gabellas, the Gaglianos, the Cultreras, they all got normal grandsons! Minchia, a situation like this, you think it’s funny?!”
“If you want me to, Grandpa, I’ll do what Jack Gagliano did!” Lou says resentfully.
Don Lou emits an incomprehensible whine.
“What did Jack Gagliano do?” Leonard asks.
“To get at Anthony Fumeri,” Lou says, “he grabbed Anthony’s brother, cut his hand off, put the rest of the body in formaldehyde, and sent the hand all wrapped up and packed in ice so it didn’t stink, with a card that read, We’ve given you one hand, now we request a meeting. If you refuse to grace us with your presence, we’ll take no offense, but as the good Christians we are, we’ll turn the other cheek, and send you the other hand. I could do that to Sal Scali. Maybe I could kidnap Tony.”
“Who’s Tony? The guy throwing the party?” Leonard asks.
“Right, the guy throwing the barbecue, Sal Scali’s nephew,” Lou says.
“Don’t do a fucking thing!” Don Lou says very seriously. “I want you to be a good kid. Show Leonard around Catania. Go to barbecues with these bozos, go to their fucking parties, see Via Etnea, see the whole of Catania, the whole of Sicily, damn it! And I want everybody to see you while you’re doing it. Do we understand each other?”
Lou and Leonard look at each other, puzzled.
“In fact, why don’t you start right now?” Don Lou says, looking even more severe.
Lou nods to his grandpa and signals to Leonard that it’s time for a change of scene. Reluctantly, Leonard puts the glass of Nero d’Avola down on the coffee table, stands up, and shakes his leg to straighten the crease in his pants.
“’Bye, Don Lou,” he says.
Don Lou raises his left hand slightly.
* * *
Alone with Don Lou, Pippino does what he’s careful to avoid doing in public: he takes a blanket and arranges it tenderly over Don Lou’s legs. Don Lou, as usual, pretends not to like it, and shifts the blanket to one side, mumbling, “Minchia, barbecues in Catania! Maybe the assholes play baseball, too!” Then he adds plaintively, “I can’t get up! Get the good cell phone, Pippino, and call John La Bruna for me.”
Pippino smiles, tucks in the blanket on the side that’s uncovered, goes to the wardrobe, takes a cell phone out of a bag, dials John La Bruna’s number, says, “Wait a minute,” and passes the device to Don Lou.
“Ciao, John,” Don Lou says. “This is Lou Sciortino.”
“Where are you calling from, Lou?” At the other end of the line, John La Bruna’s voice doesn’t sound too happy.
“Don’t worry, John, the line’s safe.”
“Where are you?”
“In Sicily, John. I wanted to tell you, that thing you sent me at Starship less than a month ago, it got damaged.”
Pippino sits down on the edge of the couch, ready to spring up again.
“Don’t worry, Lou, we can send you a replacement. You know, we La Brunas always give a guarantee with our merchandise.”
“Listen, John, the truth is, I’m tired, I’m old, I got arteriosclerosis, and my grandson is a reliable person. You know what I’m saying? The movie business isn’t for me anymore.”
John La Bruna is silent for five or six seconds. Then he says, “I understand, Lou! We’re getting old for such things…”
“Exactly. Listen, John, here’s the deal, I go back to New York, bring my grandson back with me, we draw up a nice contract, in black and white, saying I sell you Starship…”
“But are you sure I want to buy it, Lou? Cazzarola, I got so much tax to pay right now!”
“John … how about you name a price, okay? And if you haven’t got the cash, don’t worry, I won’t sue.”
John laughs uproariously. “Sure, Lou, sure … So what are you going to do, retire?”
“More or less, John, more or less.”
“I understand. You want to devote yourself to opera. What are you doing, taking singing lessons? You want to be like Salvatore Mineo, who performed under the dome of Montreal Cathedral? But what’s with us Italians and opera? I say we should get it out of our systems, Lou! There’s only one Pavarotti, damn it, the others all sing off-key.”
“No, John, when I want to sing, I sing!” Don Lou says. “I can’t help it, opera’s my passion. If they don’t want me to sing, they’ll have to kill me … Not that I’m recommending it to anybody else…”
“Of course, Lou, of course. But don’t you have any other passions?”
“I could devote myself to agriculture.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because lately, I started planting beans, and they came out small, sad, and bitter … Then I tried almonds … But you know what happened? They dried up! The almonds dried up! I need to eliminate the few broken beans I still got left, the almonds, too … What do you think, John?”
“Great idea, Lou. Eliminate, eliminate, it’s the only way to renew the soil!”
“Are you sure, John?”
“Cazzarola, Lou. I’ve never liked beans or almonds. It’s an obsession you Sicilians have. I assure you, Lou, as far as I’m concerned, they could get rid of all the beans and almonds in the world! Who gives a shit, right?”
“How’s Carmine Iacono, John? And Salvatore Fumeri? Tell them they’re assholes, because they don’t work with Don Lou Sciortino anymore!”
“They’re fine, Lou. They always remember you with affection.”
“Okay, John, it was a pleasure talking to you.”
“Likewise, Lou. So, I’ll expect you in New York … In the meantime, I’ll get Charlie Cacace to draw up a contract, he’s a good kid and—”
“You do whatever you think is right, John.”
“Okay, Lou, ’bye.”
“’Bye, John.”
Don Lou throws the cell phone on the coffee table, picks up the glass of Nero d’Avola, but doesn’t drink it. He stays like that, with the blanket over his knees, bent forward slightly, looking into the glass. Then he looks up slightly and meets Pippino’s eyes. Pippino is tense. Don Lou lowers his head again, then nods. Pippino jumps to his feet and straightens his pants.
THE ROOM IS DIMLY LIT
The room is dimly lit by a kerosene lamp, the kind used in camping. A leather jacket is hanging on the back of a bottomless chair, and a cell phone is ringing inside the pocket. Underneath the sound of the phone, the squeak of bedsprings can briefly be heard.
“What the fuck!” Nuccio says. He gets up, naked, and goes to get the cell phone. “What the f— Don Scali!”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“We had a flat. Parrinello’s changing the tire on the van.”
“So to kill time, you go to whores…”
“No, Don Scali, don’t say these things…”
“Minchia, what is it with you? Every time you whack somebody, you got to get laid afterwards?”
“No, Don Scali, who told you that?… I’m in a … in a bar.”
“Sure you are. You whack somebody, you eat a hot dog, you take a tab of ecstasy, and you get laid, and then you show up smelling of some black whore. You think I don’t know you? If you’re not here, if you’re not here right now, I’ll cut off your balls and wear them for earrings … capish? … I’ll wear them for fucking earrings!”
“I’ll be there, Don Scali, minchia, even if the wheel is broken, I don’t care, I’ll tell Bruno to leave it, I’ll finish my Fernet and I’ll be there … No, no, I won’t even finish it … I’ll be right there…”
* * *
It’s dusk in the Simeto estuary, and the sun is setting over the reeds and the birds, over bags of garbage, a few squatters’ shacks, old shoes, sewage from the drains, and also over the corpses of Tuccio and Nunzio Aliotro. Tuccio is lying facedown, Nunzio is in a contorted position with his right arm tensed. From a hundred yards, they look like a contemporary art installation. Tuccio’s cell phone rings: the
ringtone is “La Vida Loca.”
* * *
With a wrapped-up package under his arm, Nuccio looks right and left along Corso Italia and rings at the door of Scali’s Amaretti. Maria, he really loves plotting something after a good fuck with a black girl in San Berillo!
Uncle Sal opens the brass and glass door, looks at Nuccio, and gives him a slap that echoes along Corso Italia.
“Did you think this was the right moment to get laid?”
“Don Scali, I swear to you, I went and had a Fernet…”
“Did you bring the rifle?”
“Sure, here it is…” Nuccio says, lifting the package. “I wrapped it so nobody would see it…”
“Where’s Tuccio?”
“Are you asking me, Don Scali? He went to take care of Sonnino, didn’t he?”
“Didn’t you talk on your cell?”
“No.”
“You phone each other when you’re sitting in the same car, and today you didn’t talk on the phone?”
“Okay, we sometimes do that as a joke, but we don’t joke when we’re working.”
“You stupid bastard, you motherfucking, cocksucking son of a bitch!”
Maybe it’s because he’s high, or maybe it’s because he’s used to it, but here in Sciortino Junior’s office, Nuccio just smiles when Uncle Sal calls him names. And that makes Uncle Sal even angrier.
“You son of a fucking bitch. Don’t you know your mother gave us all head when we went to the mattresses? I had to call Turi to get rid of that fucking americana whore! Capish, you big faggot?”
“That’s not possible, Don Scali, I saw the americano in the white suit go down, and she went down at the same time!”
“The bitch went down, did she, you cocksucking faggot? You’re laughing? You faggots are all the same, you love to laugh!”
“I’m not laughing, Don Scali, I’m not laughing,” Nuccio says, laughing.
“Hide the rifle down there!” Uncle Sal says, pointing to Lou’s wardrobe.
Nuccio pulls his pants up, takes the rifle, gets down on his knees, puts his head right inside the wardrobe, and starts rummaging around.
“Did you put your gloves on, dickhead?”
“Of course!” Nuccio says, thinking of the black girl slipping the condom on his dick.
“Be careful, if the thing goes off, it’ll blow your faggot face off.”
“What?” Nuccio asks from the back of the wardrobe.
“I said be careful, if it goes off, it’ll blow your faggot face off.”
“What did you say, Don Scali?”
“Go fuck yourself, I said go fuck yourself.”
Nuccio comes out of the wardrobe with his eyes half closed, gets to his feet, and wipes the dust off his knees. “What do we do now?” he asks.
Uncle Sal is staring into space. Nuccio makes a dumb face. He looks around and sees a bottle of gin. He looks at Uncle Sal. But Uncle Sal is absorbed by something that’s going on in his head. Nuccio moves the bottle closer, glances at Uncle Sal out of the corner of his eye, unscrews the top, takes a glass, pours the gin, glances at Uncle Sal again, knocks back the gin, puts down the glass, puts his hands in his pockets, and whistles.
“Call Tuccio,” Uncle Sal says, still staring into space. Then he gets up on tiptoe and falls back on his heels.
Nuccio takes the phone and dials Tuccio’s number.
* * *
In the Simeto estuary are couples fucking in their cars, plastic bags, sand dunes with plastic bottles half buried in them, the corpses of Tuccio and Nunzio, and “La Vida Loca” playing on a cell phone.
“Answer it, it must be your wife,” somebody says from one of the cars.
They all laugh. Then they go back to fucking.
* * *
“No answer,” Nuccio says, not knowing what the fuck to do, rummaging through the documents and newspapers and overturned beer bottles on the desk. Then suddenly he sees the crossbow.
“Give me the phone!” Uncle Sal says.
Nuccio gives Uncle Sal the cell and starts walking around the room. He takes the bottle of gin from the bar, unscrews the top, and pours himself another glass. When the glass is full, he starts walking around the room again, then sits back down on a chair at the desk, absently. He looks into space and feels like laughing.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Eh?”
“What the fuck are you laughing about?”
“Who, me? I’m not laughing, Don Scali,” Nuccio says, taking a swig of the gin.
Uncle Sal lets it pass. He dials a number.
Nuccio puts his elbow on the desk, but so close to the edge that it slips off. Then he opens the top right-hand drawer of the desk and sees the box of arrows for the crossbow.
Nuccio looks at it out of the corner of his eye. It looks like one of those old cookie boxes, but it has the word ARROWS on it. Nuccio takes it out, puts it on the desk, and opens it.
“Nunzio Aliotro’s got music playing,” Uncle Sal says.
Nuccio takes out an arrow and starts stroking the goose quills. “Huh?” he says.
“Music, on the phone,” Uncle Sal says.
Nuccio brings the tip of the arrow up close to his right eye, then blinks, moves the arrow farther away, puts it down next to the crossbow, and at last his thoughts come into focus. He smiles as he pulls on the string and turns the steel knob that holds back the string and the arrow.
“Where the fuck are you? This is Sal Scali!” Uncle Sal says into the phone, then gets up on tiptoe and, just as he’s about to fall back on his heels, finds himself incomprehensibly, mysteriously, on the ground. Just before he stops seeing any fucking thing at all, Uncle Sal has time to see a bloodstain descending rapidly, from right to left, over his white shirt, obliterating the beautifully embroidered gothic SS on the left side of the shirt.
TONY PHONED THE CHINESE RESTAURANT ON VIA PACINI
Tony phoned the Chinese restaurant on Via Pacini. The bozo who answered didn’t understand a fucking thing, then someone with more upstairs came on the phone and now, at the barbecue, along with the shooting stars, the colored balloons, the lanterns, some lighted and some of them not, there’s a dragon about thirty feet long winding its way across the garden.
Tony’s last big barbecue of the season is in honor of Senator Zappulla, who helped Tony get his hairdresser’s license. Tony has invited people with money, from every milieu (that’s the word he used to Cettina), so Senator Zappulla can come and give everybody a smile and a promise, because he knows it takes a lot of bricks to build a wall.
But because there are americani here, too, this time, Tony thought of something special, an evening of chinoiserie et orientalisme—those are the very words he used to Cettina—with a triad of aperitifs, Bellini, Rossini, and Tonini—prosecco, licorice, and coconut milk, white and black just like the cardinal, who for some reason Tony is convinced is Sicilian-American—Sicilian sushi, anchovies and raw octopus, and at the octopus buffet, of course, Nunzio and Agatino dressed as Yakuza: tight-fitting black leather jeans, patent leather moccasins with square tips and big silver buckles, tight vests, leather jackets, opaque sunglasses.
Looking contentedly at the dragon, Tony stops Nunzio as he passes and asks in a low voice, “Are there enough amaretti?”
Nunzio, who’s short, looks him up and down. “If there aren’t, you can always get more from Corso Italia,” he says irritably.
“Then hurry up and find some, asshole!” Tony says, reflected in Nunzio’s sunglasses. Then he realizes that from that angle, his reflection looks twice the size, and he gives himself a manual face-lift, smoothing his neck several times very quickly with his hand to dismiss even the memory of skin that’s starting to age.
* * *
Felice Romano, the mechanic, and Angelo Colombo, the dressmaker, are talking in a corner of the garden. Felice is wearing a caftan with Indian pants, Angelo a white linen suit like the one Truman Capote wore when he visited Taormina. They’re talking but not re
ally, because Felice doesn’t give a shit what Angelo’s saying, and vice versa. What they’re really doing is vamping, and watching everyone else do the same.
Angelo’s wife, who used to model for him before they were married, leans over to Felice’s wife, who’s wearing a blue medium-length skirt, white tights, and a blouse with an embroidered collar, and whispers in her ear, “Since he stopped fucking me, all he does is talk. Same with you?”
“Tell me about it, signora. Sometimes I really worry.”
* * *
“I’m telling you,” Uncle Mimmo is saying a few yards away, buttoning his woolen jacket over his checkered shirt, “you got to explain this democracy to me.”
Cosimo, Pietro, Turi, and Tano nod. They’ve been invited to a political barbecue, so it’s normal to talk politics, like when you go to the theater it’s normal to talk about Pirandello.
“Minchia, at least when there was a king, you knew who you had to shoot. The way things are now, who understands a fucking thing? You’re telling me,” he continues, turning to Cosimo, even though Cosimo hasn’t said a fucking thing, “in a democracy, the guy behaves badly, you stop voting for him.” Uncle Mimmo gives a bitter laugh. “But the guy doesn’t give a shit, all he does is change sides, and you can’t even shoot him because that’s democracy.”
Cosimo nods.
“Minchia, in a democracy politicians run faster than rabbits.”
* * *
Signorina Niscemi has brought Raffaella, her best friend, who’s a cleaning woman at the provincial assembly.
“Are you sure it was okay for me to come?” Raffaella asks, a tad embarrassed. “I wasn’t invited.”
“Sure! You can bring anybody you like to a political barbecue. In fact, the more people you bring, the better.”
Signorina Niscemi isn’t wearing a bra, and the daisies on her blouse look like they’re being shaken by a tornado in California or Florida—someplace in America with palms.
Raffaella, on the other hand, is wearing a tight bra, which lifts her tits and makes them sway, so she’s looking good, too.
Who is Lou Sciortino? Page 16
