The Toil and Trouble Trilogy, Book One

by Val St. Crowe

  * * *

  The hospital hallway is packed with my cousins and aunts and uncles. There are so many of us that I haven’t even been in to see Guido yet. Not that it really matters. Guido is in a coma, or so I hear. He was shot pretty bad. They were shooting to kill. That they didn’t is a miracle. That’s what I keep hearing my family say anyway.

  “Oh, it’s a miracle he’s alive,” someone says every two seconds.

  “Thank God,” says someone else.

  I am wondering if it will be bad form if I perform in Macbeth tonight. If I can’t go on, I have to tell someone right away. I don’t have the hugest part in the play. I’m Hecate. I’m only in one scene. But if I’m not there, it will screw everything up for everyone. I don’t want to mention the play to anyone, because I’m kind of embarrassed that I’m doing it in the first place.

  I dropped out of school so everyone would see I was serious about taking over for my father. I’ve always done plays at the Shakespeare Theater for fun. They open auditions to the community, even though the big parts usually get cast by professional actors. I really like being on stage. I like Shakespeare too. It’s hard to get those old English lines to sound like normal talking, but I’m good at it. Anyway, I know it’s kid stuff, but this play is going to be my last one. After that, I’ll only focus on the family. I don’t want to let anyone down.

  I sit in a waiting room, thumbing through a magazine while my family rushes around me, reassuring themselves about miracles. Vincent sits down next to me.

  Even though we’re rivals, and Vincent’s rude to me, I feel bad for the guy. His dad is really hurt. “We can, um, thank God he’s alive,” I say to Vincent. So it’s unoriginal. I mean it to be nice.

  Vincent laughs, and it sounds ugly. “Don’t pretend, Olivia. I know you want him dead. That way you can get your daddy to set you up as the boss.”

  I’m shocked. I lower the magazine in disbelief. “Vincent, I would never wish Guido dead. He’s my uncle. Family first.”

  Vincent sits back in his chair. “You’re not fooling me.”

  “You know, my mother died. I would never wish that on someone. Losing a parent. It’s horrible.”

  Vincent puts his hands behind his head. “Oh, yeah, your sainted mother. I don’t know what’s funnier, Olivia. That you still believe the police accidentally killed her in the crossfire when your dad was being arrested or that everyone else knows it ain’t true.”

  I don’t speak for several seconds. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “It’s not true?” I finally get out.

  Vincent smirks. “Your mother was a rat, Olivia. She sold your dad out. He had that bitch capped.”

  I feel the blood rush to my face. Anger floods through my entire body. How dare he say something like that about my mother? And to imply my father would have my mother killed? He’s crossed a line. I grit my teeth.

  I’m about to slug him, but Tommy yells out, “Olivia, get over here. We got your father on the phone.”

  I’m shaking as I stand up. I want to say something to Vincent, so that he knows he’s not off the hook, but he strides past me before I get the chance.

  My family is crowded around Tommy, who’s holding up a phone. He’s got my dad on speaker phone. I try to take calming breaths as I listen to the disembodied voice of my father.

  “We can thank God he’s still alive,” he says. “It’s a miracle.”

  My father is not particularly original either.

  “The Calabrese family will weather this storm the way we always do,” he continues. “Together. As a family. We will draw strength from our love for each other. We are a strong people. We will lean on each other in this time of crisis.”

  Maria, Guido’s wife, wipes tears from her eyes. “That was beautiful, Lucio.”

  I glare at Vincent. This is the man he thinks ordered a hit on his own wife? How could he possibly think such a thing?

  My father says some other comforting words, and then he asks to talk to Tommy alone. Suddenly, it hits me. Guido is out of commission for the foreseeable future. The Calabrese family is without a leader on the outside. If my father is talking to Tommy, it may be because he is asking Tommy to step in. Tommy is older than both Vincent and me. He might be the logical choice. But Vincent and I have the pedigree. We are the next in the bloodline. No wonder Vincent was being so nasty to me. He must have realized what this could mean for one of us.

  When Tommy gets off the phone, he jerks his head in the direction of the hallway. All of the adult men follow him. I do too. My father has given Tommy news about the business. We can’t have that conversation in front of everyone. Tommy leads us all into the elevator. He punches buttons. When the elevator starts moving, he hits a button that stops it. We are trapped between floors and away from anyone who might hear us.

  “Lucio is confident that Guido’s going to recover,” says Tommy. “But he doesn’t want to leave the family without a leader on the outside. He asked me to do it, but I don’t want it. So naturally, Lucio thought of his daughter. And he thought of Guido’s son.”

  No one says anything for a second, but then someone speaks up. “They’re both just kids, Tommy.”

  Tommy spreads his hands. “This is straight from Lucio’s mouth. You know he was about their age when he took over. You want to argue with him about it, you talk to him.”

  No one says anything else.

  “So which of us is it?” asks Vincent.

  “It’s both of you,” says Tommy.

  Both of us? I shoot Vincent a look. He looks just as confused as me.

  “For a few weeks, Lucio wants to see which of you brings in the most income and observe how well you do with leading. You’ll each have half of the family to work with. Whoever does a better job will take the position, assuming Guido doesn’t recover during that time.”

  So I’m going to have to compete against Vincent. And I’m going to have to bring in more money than him. I cross my arms over my chest. I can beat Vincent at anything.

   

  Chapter Three

  I manage to make it to the performance that night. Eventually, people just started leaving the hospital, so I did too. I’m not sure if I can stay in the play, though. Not now. Not if I’m competing against Vincent. I can’t be distracted. I decide I’ll wait until after the show to talk to someone about it, though. Beforehand, everyone’s focused on the upcoming show. It will just piss them off. Later, they’ll still be pissed off, but it won’t be hanging over them all during the performance.

  My character doesn’t show up until the middle of the play, so I don’t bother getting into costume yet. Instead, I play cards with the kid playing Fleance backstage.

  Towards the end of Act I, Brice finds me. He is still wearing his old man wig, and he has stage blood on his face. Brice is playing King Duncan. He is dead. He has nothing to do until curtain call now. It’s actually kind of weird that they cast Brice as King Duncan. He’s at least five years younger than the guy playing Malcolm, Duncan’s son. They just shoved a gray wig on Brice, though. And I have to admit, Brice is good. Plus, he likes having a death scene. “Can I talk to you?” he asks.

  “Sorry Fleance, I gotta go for a minute,” I tell the kid.

  “My name’s Toby,” he says. “Stop calling me Fleance, Hecate.”

  I stick out my tongue at him.

  He sticks his tongue back out at me. As Brice and I are walking away, Toby makes kissing noises. I turn around and glare at him. He stops.

  Brice takes me into the depths of backstage, back to the hall behind the dressing rooms, to a dimly lit corner. I’m not going to be able to hear my cues from back here, so I have to make sure that I don’t stay too long. But I’m not on stage until Act 3, Scene 5, so I’ve got time.

  “I swear I didn’t know,” Brice says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, “I guess I learned my lesson about being slutty.”

  “Oh come on, Olivia. It wasn’t like that.”

>   What dugout was he in? I was pretty sure I threw myself at him, and all because I was freaked out about that jerk Joey Ercalono. “It was like that, Ventresca.”

  Brice shakes his head. “So now I’m Ventresca again, huh?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was drunk last night. I’m embarrassed. I don’t usually act like that.”

  “You’re embarrassed?” says Brice. “Think how I feel.”

  I consider. Yeah, Brice probably had the worse deal.

  “I guess it’s good that we didn’t actually do anything,” Brice says. “I mean, for you, it’s good.”

  I chew on my bottom lip, unsure of how to ask what I want to ask him. “If you got the virus from screwing, Brice, how come you couldn’t, you know...” I can’t finish. It’s too embarrassing.

  Brice buries his face in his hands. “Oh God, Olivia.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “should I not have brought it up? It’s just that you said you’d done it before and—”

  He lifts his face. “I told you I don’t remember what happened with that actress woman. She was older, and I was really drunk, and I blacked out.”

   I feel very sorry for him suddenly. Since Brice is a berserker, that may be the only time he ever has sex for the rest of his life. And he doesn’t remember it. “That sucks.”

  He leans back against a wall. “I wish it had never happened. I wish last night... I wish that you and I... Well, I mean, there’s no way you’d even want to be around me anymore, is there?”

  “We’re still friends, Brice.”

  “Right.” He sounds bitter.

  “Look, even if something had happened last night, it’s not like you’d have wanted to date me or something. Last night was just a thing. Right now, you’re feeling lonely, that’s all. It’s understandable. But we’re still friends.”

  “Yeah,” Brice says. He doesn’t sound any happier. I guess there’s not much you can say to console a guy when he’s just figured out he’s going to turn into a monster for one hour a night, every night for the rest of his life, and if he has sex with anyone, he’ll turn that person into a monster too. It’s a devastating thing to find out. Poor Brice.

  “Um,” I say, “I think I’m going to have to quit the play. But, you know, you can call me or something if you want to talk.”

  Brice stands up straight. “Wait. Why are you quitting the play?”

  “Family stuff.”

  “No way, Olivia. You have to tell me more than that.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Because it’s illegal?” He sounds eager.

  “Brice.”

  “I’m a berserker now. If they find out, they’ll put me in one of those sanitariums. Come on. We’re on the same side.”

  It would be nice to talk to someone about it, I guess. I tell him. I don’t tell him everything. I don’t tell him about killing Joey Ercalono or why Guido’s in a coma. I just tell him about how I’ve got to compete against Vincent to become the boss.

  Brice is riveted. “Whoa. That’s insane. You’re really like going to be the jettatori boss of the Calabrese family?”

  “Well, I have to beat Vincent first. And I won’t have time if I’m doing this play. It’s not like I have a big part, anyway.”

  “Oh, come on. You have that whole monologue. You say more than me. You gotta stay in the play.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You gotta. You need money, right? Well, we’ll use the play to make money.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Brice shrugs. “I don’t know yet. But we’ve got a whole audience out there that pays money to see the show. We can get money from them, maybe.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t understand. We’re talking half of the money that the family business needs to survive that I’ve got to bring in.”

  Brice is thinking. Then he grins at me. “Yeah, okay. How much would you pay for a charm that made you feel like you were Macbeth while you were watching?”

  “Like I was part of the play, you mean?”

  “Exactly. Doesn’t that sound cool?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know how to make something like that. No one in the family does either.”

  Brice looks around the hallway to make sure no one is listening. “I, uh, have a little bit of talent. I’m not supposed to use it, you know, because I’m a guy. But I’ve always been able to just do things.”

  I’m confused. “Do things? What kind of things?”

  “I kind of...think about it, and it happens. It’s hard to explain. But I’ve always been able to do it. My family has always told me never to show anyone. But I want to help you. Bring me a charm, and I’ll show you.”

  I consider. I know that there are some benedette that are so powerful, they can cast spells without chanting. I’ve never heard of a guy who could do it, though. Of course, the benedette wouldn’t want that to get out, I guess, considering they don’t want men to use magic. “You can really do that?”

  He nods. “I’ll help you make the charms if you stay in the play.”

  This whole thing sounds crazy, but I really do like being in the play. “We’ll give it a week,” I say. “We’ll see what happens.”

  “Excellent,” Brice says. He grins at me. His eyes seem to dance in delight.

  I’m happy I’ll be seeing him almost every day too.