“Bye, Sal.” She waved over her shoulder. Try as she did to fuel the indignation, she couldn’t. Cecibel felt lighter and, if she let herself, maybe even happy.
Heading back to her room, she halted at the corridor leading to Alfonse Carducci’s suite. He’d gone and hadn’t told her. Strange. And yet, the opportunity presenting itself like the Yellow Brick Road straight to his door turned strange into fortuitous.
Her scalp prickled. Could she do it? Had she ever intended to? Well, yes, of course she had, but not this way. Not sneaking into Alfonse Carducci’s private suite and swiping the notebook from his desk. But how much more exciting than waiting for Olivia to accidentally-on-purpose leave it for her to find?
Another day, Cecibel might have ignored fortune’s call. Another day, she’d barely consider it. But today was today, no other. Without even a glance over her shoulder, she answered.
Chapter 10
Paterson, New Jersey
Spring 1954
Aldo
“Don’t go, Aldo. Please.”
Hot tears scorched his chest where she’d whispered her passion and then her plea. Gathering his arms tighter around her, he kissed her hair, still damp from their bath. A risk, a splurge, taken on this last night together. Motel on the Mountain. Hillburn, New York. Her parents thought she was at Denise Pagano’s pajama party, and she had been. Until ten. Aldo had waited in a borrowed car for all the lights to go out.
“I have to,” he said. “If I don’t show up, I’ll be arrested.”
“They can’t do that.”
“Yes, they can. I signed up. I passed all the tests, had my physical. I have to go, Cecilia. I’m going. But I’ll write you letters every day and send them to Agnes. She’ll give them to you.”
“I can’t do it,” she told him. “I’ll kill myself. I swear.”
He kissed her hair again, her eyes, her mouth. “Say that again and we’re through.”
“You’re a liar, Aldo Wronksi. You’ll never be through with me.”
“Just don’t say it again. Please.”
“Then st—”
Aldo devoured her words and swallowed them. He returned her words to her in soft moans that she breathed back into his mouth. They kissed and caressed, plunged and sucked. Her body, slick and scented, writhed beneath him, on top of him, on hands and knees before him. Drained and desperate, he took her, gave to her, satisfied her as many times as she would have him. As many times as he could. At twenty, his stamina was mighty, and even Cecilia lay spent in the end. An arm across her eyes. Hair, sex-curled, splayed on the white and tangled sheets. Breasts rising and falling, slower, lower with each breath caught. Aldo sat cross-legged on the rented bed, unable to look away. Unwilling.
“It’s getting too close to morning.” She moved her arm. “You better get me back to Denise’s.”
Aldo crawled to her. Pinned her hands above her head and covered her body with his. He kissed her once. Twice. So tenderly. And rested his brow to hers. “I swear to you, I’ll be true. No matter how long I’m away, there’s never going to be anyone for me but you.”
“And I’ll never love anyone but you.”
His heart ached. Aldo kissed her until it eased. “I swore I’d come back someone your dad can’t object to. Someone he will respect, but—”
“No. Don’t say it. No vows, Aldo. No conditions or demands. I’m yours and you’re mine. Forever. When you come home, no matter what happens to either one of us in between, that’s still going to be true.” She wriggled beneath him. “We have to go. If I’m not in my sleeping bag by the time Mrs. Pagano calls us for pancakes, Denise’ll tattle.”
Cecilia rolled out from underneath him. Aldo flopped onto his back. Empty. Cold. And only moments out of her arms. Four years was so long.
She’d dressed in the lace-and-flannel pajamas her mother bought her for Denise’s party and put her hair in pigtails before Aldo got his pants on. Out of the motel room he’d paid for with his last week’s paycheck, into the car he’d borrowed from Agnes, along dark and rural roads to the new Garden State Parkway he’d only driven on twice.
He parked on the street parallel to Denise’s. Dawn pinked the edges of day. Through the backyard, he saw a light in the Pagano kitchen go on.
“Shit.” Cecilia hunkered low in the seat, as if someone were watching. As if someone would see. “Who the hell gets up this early?”
“Is there another way in?”
“The front door.” Cecilia yanked open the glove box. “I know she’s got some stashed in here.”
“What?”
“Cigarettes. Agnes smokes. There has to be— Aha!” She fished out a cigarette from the metal case, flicked the lighter. Her face illuminated. She inhaled, sputtered.
“What are you doing?”
“Picking up an unladylike habit.” Cecilia shouldered open the car door. “I’ll pretend I sneaked out for a smoke and got caught before I could sneak back in. Better that than the truth.” She came around to his side of the car. “I love you, Aldo. Never forget that. Write me soon.”
“I love you, too,” he told the air outside his window. Cecilia was already climbing over the low wall separating the Paganos’ yard from the one behind it. He didn’t watch her go in. Better to not be seen, even momentarily through the yards. Mrs. Pagano would buy her story. She’d tell Cecilia’s mother, who might or might not tell her father. Aldo guessed no, she wouldn’t. Dealing with her daughter’s dip into hooliganism was better done privately.
He drove back to Falls View in silence. No radio. Only the engine’s hum and the cold wind coming through the window. After parking the car in the lot behind the establishment, he left the keys under the dustbin, just as Agnes asked him to. Though she’d teared up when he told her he was leaving, she had to be glad she’d no longer be forced to lie to her old and dangerous friend Cami. Delivering letters between the two of them was simple and safe enough. She couldn’t be blamed for what the U.S. mail delivered, from whom.
Morning was near, and Aldo hadn’t slept. He had to catch his bus to Illinois at seven o’clock. Illinois. So far away. He’d rarely been out of New Jersey, barely ever left Paterson. A few trips down the shore when he was a kid and still had a family. Mother. Father. Brother. Two sisters. Only one sister now, and she lived in Florida with a distant cousin who had wanted a little girl to raise but not a teenage boy. Did she remember him at all? She’d been six, he thought, but wasn’t sure. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tessa. Or maybe it was Theresa. Or was that the one who died in the car with his parents and brother?
Aldo would get no sleep. It had to be after six already. Time enough to head to the rented room over the garage where he’d been living since the orphanage set him loose at eighteen, get his belongings, bus ticket and go. Walking past the falls, he paused. One last look. One more time with his feet on the iron railing, looking down into the roaring swirl. By the time he came home from service, he’d be twenty-four. Maybe older. The falls would look the same.
A shaft of sunlight hit the mist, sparking dozens of rainbows into being. Aldo smiled. “Goodbye,” he said, and turned away.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” Dominic Giancami stood so close behind Aldo he could have reached out and grabbed him. But he didn’t. Hands clasped in front of him, the man rolled his shoulders, tilted his head side to side.
Aldo’s insides itched and squirmed. “Excuse me.”
“Excuse you what?”
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Nah.” Mr. Giancami waved a cinderblock hand. Aldo flinched and Cami smiled. “I meant what’re you asking me to excuse? That you’re blocking my view? Or that you fucking my putan’ daughter?”
Cold shivered through Aldo. He couldn’t move. “Sir?”
“You think I’m an idiot? You think I didn’t know you been sniffin’ around her since last summer? I got eyes, stugots. I got a dick, too, and I know what it wants. You get what you wanted? Feels good in there, ah? I hope it was worth it ’cause I’m gonna kill you
now.”
Massive, slow, Giancami lunged. Aldo danced to the side, tried to get around him, but the man’s reach was long. He swung again, this time nearly clipped him.
“Where’s Cecilia?” Aldo shouted. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. Yet.” They danced the ancient dance of combatants poorly matched. Cami’s face was beet red. Anger. Exertion. Both. “She’ll get hers after I finish with you. I’m gonna beat you out of her. Every drop of you.”
“Don’t you touch her!” Aldo dove into the wall that was Dominic Giancami. The man grabbed him around the waist, flipped him over his shoulder. Kicking, punching, Aldo was already dizzy trying to catch his breath while Cami squeezed and squeezed. A lucky strike found Cami’s balls. Hitting the gravel hard knocked out what little wind was left in Aldo. He rolled to his feet.
Doubled over, his face purple, spittle flecking his lips and chin, Giancami croaked, “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
“I love her!”
“Fuck you!” A roar, gravel scattering underfoot, and Dominic Giancami came at him like a wrecking ball.
Aldo scrambled backward, slipped, fell. He covered his face with both arms—“Hail Mary, full of grace”—and missed the sight he would forever imagine of Dominic Giancami flying precisely through the iron railings surrounding the falls. The man’s screams opened Aldo’s eyes, lowered his arms. He crawled to the railing and stuck his head through. Only the mist, the rainbows sparkling, and the crushing rush of water on rock where Cecilia’s father was, this very moment, drowning.
Aldo put his back to the railing, his head between his knees, and sobbed. What had just happened? What would he do now? And Cecilia? He’d just killed her father. It didn’t matter that he’d otherwise be a bloody heap of bones and flesh, that he saved her from the same, or that he hadn’t meant for it to happen. Dominic Giancami was dead. He killed him.
And nobody knew it but Aldo.
Cool morning stole over him, washed through his veins, washed them clean. He pushed to his feet. Aside from the disturbance in the gravel, there was no sign of the altercation. No car he could see in the lot. He brushed off his pants. Straightened his hair. Cecilia was safe. Or, at least, safe from her father, but he could never face her again. How could he? She’d never know why he didn’t write, only that he didn’t. She’d go to college, get married, have children. Without her father’s influence, she might even marry for love.
Love. He’d promised her forever; he would give her that. A vow made in passion and now, written in blood. Aldo Wronski left the falls. Paterson, New Jersey. His home. Every mile on the bus took him farther from home, from Cecilia, but not even an ocean would ever take him far enough from what he’d done to forget.
Chapter 11
Bar Harbor, Maine
June 10, 1999
Some say there are only two certainties in life—death and taxes;
but there are three—death, taxes, and heartbreak.
—Cornelius Traegar
“He’s Polish?”
Alfonse chuckled carefully, took the leather notebook from her hands. “I just killed a man and that’s what you ask?”
“Don’t evade the question.”
“It just happened. Surprised the hell out of me, too.”
“But his name is Aldo.”
“His mother was Italian.”
Olivia tsked. “You can’t invent a character’s background after the fact, Alfie.”
“Of course you can. I did it all the time. Writing is rewriting, remember? And what happened to no planning? Writing as organically as we did when we had no idea what we were doing?”
“Don’t you throw my words back at me, Alfonse Carducci.” Olivia thumbed her lip. “Polish. Hmm. I do like it, actually. And the addition of his family, the sister still alive. You’re going to have to add that in, further back. You made it a point, in your earlier chapter, that he had no family. Remember? This sister will have to come into play, of course.”
“There is no point to keeping her alive, otherwise.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing whatsoever.” Alfonse tapped the notebook. “But it will come to me when the time is right. Or to you. We must trust.”
“My mind is already percolating.”
“Good. Because it’s your turn.” He handed her back the book. “I think it needs more period detail. What do you think?”
“A few small ones wouldn’t hurt. The setting could use some fleshing out.”
“Maybe a little more detail on the naval training center. I guessed at Illinois. I know it’s on Lake Michigan, and I vaguely recall it being near Chicago.”
Olivia took a pencil from his desk, scratched a note in the margin. “We can add it later, if we find it necessary. How about Agnes’s car?”
“What about it?”
“Give it a make, a model.” Olivia sparkled. “A 1946 Pontiac Streamliner.”
Alfonse wrinkled his nose. “Why?”
“Don’t you remember?” She waited. “Your first car. You were still driving it when we met, that old heap.”
“Ah, yes. A glorious old heap it was.” Alfonse’s heart quivered. “Cornelius bought it for me, brand-new, to celebrate the sale of my first novel. I was twenty-six.”
“So young. I wish I’d known you then”—she grinned—“before fame made you insufferable.”
“I was born insufferable.” He held out his hand for hers. Olivia gave it, and Alfonse brought it to his lips. Cornelius. How many ways he’d betrayed him. How many times he’d hurt him. With women. With other men. But then there’d been Olivia Peppernell, whom they both loved in their separate ways. “He forgave you, didn’t he?”
“I did nothing that needed forgiving.”
“I suppose not.” Alfonse kept her fingers against his lips. “He never forgave me.”
“Of course he did.”
“He might have, at one point,” he said. “But in the end, I didn’t come. I abandoned him completely.”
“Cornelius understood. He loved you.”
“He shouldn’t have. I didn’t earn what he gave me. I couldn’t give back what he gave.”
“Alfonse.” Olivia tugged her hand from his lips, but not from his grasp. She clasped his in both of hers. “Cornelius couldn’t help loving you any more than you could help not loving him in kind. We don’t control such things, no matter what anyone says.”
“He was a good man.”
“A very good man. And if you need proof of his love and forgiveness, look around you. He wouldn’t have willed this suite to someone he despised.”
Alfonse did look around at all the sunshine on all the polished wood. Perhaps Olivia was right. Or perhaps it was he who couldn’t forgive.
“So?” Olivia let him go. “Did she read it?”
Alfonse shifted in his chair. “She took great pains to hide the evidence, but yes, she did. Or someone did. The match I slipped into the binding was on the floor when I got back from the hospital.”
“She’ll tell me. I can hardly wait to hear what she thinks.”
“Something I’d dearly love as well.” Alfonse chuffed. “You wily witch. You did it on purpose, keeping Cecibel’s adoration all for yourself.”
“I thought only of her,” Olivia countered. “Besides the lark, think about it logically, Alfie. Imagine how she would feel, reading the first work you’ve done in over a decade, knowing you were awaiting her response? Especially considering she fancies herself in love with you. She’d never read a single word.”
“You’re just thinking that up now, on the spot.”
“Is it any less true?”
He grunted.
“Don’t be so cross.” Olivia got to her feet. “I’m going back to my room. My brain is buzzing, and not from the excellent weed I smoked a little while ago. Cecibel will be around for her daily visit later on.”
“You’re leaving already? You only just got here.”
“For goodness’ sake,
Alfonse. Surely you can entertain yourself. Watch television.”
“I loathe daytime programming. It’s for old people and the unemployed.”
“You are an old person. And you’re also unemployed.”
“I still get royalty checks every quarter.”
“That doesn’t make you employed. Go down to the gathering room,” Olivia suggested. “There’s always someone lingering in there.”
“Will you take me? The nurses talk to me as if I were deaf, or a simpleton.”
“Oh, fine, you big baby.” Olivia moved his wheelchair closer. “You know you’re perfectly capable of doing this on your own.”
“I like to be waited on.” He caught her hand and kissed it. “Especially by a beautiful woman who captured my heart decades ago and kept it all to herself.”
“Liar.” Olivia bent to kiss his cheek. “But charm will get you everywhere. When I’m stoned. I’d leave you where you sit, otherwise. Consider yourself warned.”
Alfonse kept his hand on hers as she wheeled him down the corridor. Their passion had been legendary, but now? Love and passion, as he’d told Cecibel, were such disparate things. What he felt for Olivia now intricately entwined with what they had been, with all they’d shared. Love, still. Passion, faded. Remembered. Cherished. And gone.
“Look, there’s Judith,” Olivia said close to his ear. “Sit with her a bit. She can feed your ego for a while.”
“Are you jealous, my dear?”
“Oh, I was, Alfonse. I was indeed, all those years ago when I had become too old to be enticing, and she was still young and fresh. But that’s all in the past now.”
“Livy?” He put the brake on his chair.
She nearly tumbled over his shoulder. “For goodness’ sake!”
“You can’t believe that,” he said. “Please tell me you were joking.”
Olivia came around to face him, arms crossed over her bony chest. “Isn’t it true?”
The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses Page 8
