“It wasn’t me.”
“It would be very nice if you could get him to leave.”
Gina seemed to want to defend me from her mother. “Where’s he going to go?” She shot to her feet and sidled up to me, and wrapped her arms around me in a showy embrace. She tried to kiss me and all I could think about was Doc Beltrando’s thermometer. I put an arm around her waist and held her tightly to me, but I turned my face away.
The lights flickered for a moment and everyone froze and gasped. Not so much out of fear as from the fact that finally something was happening. Gina breathed heavily in my ear, and during the second or two of shadow she ground her crotch against my thigh.
Despite my burning nightmares I wanted desperately to fuck her. I wondered how I could get away with it without kissing her.
“I’ve got to finish my rounds,” I said.
“If you kill the priest,” Ma said without any emotion, “when you burn him, make sure you turn him so he’s face down. I want his eyes covered. You understand, Tommy?”
I broke away from Gina and left the room. I liked how Ma laid it all on the line. Now that she had no reason to hold anything back, she was really cutting loose. No wonder the Ganooch appeared so flustered and crushed. She must rally be blasting hell out of him.
I walked to the kitchen. Grandma Ganucci was rushing from the stove to the marble island counter top, laying out platters of antipasto, prosciuto, calamari, fried mozzarella, fried artichoke hearts, pepperoni bread, and cannoli. She saw me and said, “Mangia, Tommaso!”
I checked the pantry. In four days she’d cooked a month worth of stores. I thought of all the time it had taken her to buy the food, pack it away, freeze it, only to waste it so fast. Huge garbage bags were knotted and left at the back door. The rotting meat and festering cheese proved how much she’d tossed away untouched or barely eaten.
She smiled as she put out the platters. Occasionally one of the crew would stop in and fix himself a plate. We wouldn’t make a dent in it before it all went bad too. And she’d just keep on cooking, her mind mostly gone.
I said, “Grandma, give me your hand.”
She lifted her hand out to me. I took her by the wrist and checked her pulse. It was shallow and irregular. I looked in her eyes. Her pupils were pinpoints. She’d been throwing back pills like crazy. I held her to me and put my ear to her chest. She squawked like I was trying to rape her and went, “Oooh no, ooh…” Her heartbeat rattled like an Edsel’s carburetor.
“Grandma, you’ve got to calm down,” I told her.
“I’m calm. Here… eat. Eat.”
“Show me your pills. Show me the labels on your pill bottles.”
“You worry too much about me. I’m an old woman. I’m going to die soon. I’m not afraid. I’m ready. I’m just sad for everyone else. To have to suffer so much. To have to look up in the sky and see fire.” She covered her face with her hands and let out a heavy sob like she was about to break down into tears. But she didn’t. She picked up the platters once more and again offered them to me. I took a bite of pepperoni bread, my favorite. It was wonderful, as always, even now. I took another bite and then thought of my teeth, tearing into the food, and my appetite vanished.
“What is this, Tommaso?” she asked “What’s happened? What is Jesu Christo doing to us? Where are my neighbors, where are my friends? I want to go to church. I want to go to the cemetery. I have so many flowers to put down. Where’s Niko?”
“Nicky’s gone, Grandma. Remember?”
“No,” she said, almost lucid, “he’s here. He hasn’t left us yet. I dream about him every night. He has to talk to you. He says he has to talk to you.”
“Grandma, you’re shaky, I want you to sit down.”
She touched the side of my face gently, warmly, the way, I think I might have remembered, that my mother had touched my cheek as a child. “It’s not your fault, these terrible things you do.”
The tone of her voice tugged at something deep in my chest. I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to press her toward the doorway. “We have enough food. Everyone has eaten. Now I want you to relax for a while. Go upstairs and lie down.”
“I’m going to lie down,” she said, and a trickle of blood began to flow from her left ear. Her eyes rolled up, her knees buckled, and she collapsed on the kitchen floor.
It was only then I wished I hadn’t iced the doctor. A prick quack like him probably couldn’t have done much, but I still wanted him there. I felt for her pulse. There wasn’t any. I started doing CPR on her. I almost shouted for help, but there wasn’t any point. Her eyes had filled with blood and turned black. I figured she’d had a brain aneurysm. She went a hell of a lot easier than the rest of us would.
I sat on the floor beside her and hissed under my breath to Niko. “You still here like she said, Nicky? Then tell me what I’m doing wrong. Tell me what I should be doing instead. I’ll listen to you, just say the word.”
There was no word. I reached around and hefted Grandma up under the arms and tugged her into the pantry. I thought I should get her out of sight. I asked her forgiveness the entire time I dragged her away. I didn’t think the Ganooch or Gina could take any more deceased family members. Don Guiseppe was on the edge. I didn’t want him to fall over before I had a chance to clip him.
One of her shoes fell off and I went back for it. Her dress had ridden up her hips to show off the snaps and straps of her girdle. I could just imagine her laughing at that, hooting. Once in the massive pantry I covered her over with plastic garbage bags and knotted them tightly in place. I stuck her in the giant walk-in freezer. The power flickered again as I moved her in beside the hundreds of pounds of steak, veal, and pork. If I’d had the ability to cry anymore I might’ve cried then. For her or only myself because she’d given me absolution in the end.
I shut the pantry door. I cleaned up the few drops of blood that had hit the kitchen floor. I knew a thousand prayers in a dozen languages but nothing came to me then, not even the words to the Hail Mary or Our Father. The priest should say something. He should sing his hymns, he should hold vespers for us, he should kneel and pray as we buried Grandma in the garden. Even if he was the devil. Even if he was death. Even if I was going to kill him when I found him.
I washed my face in the kitchen sink, hearing Grandma calling me an animali like she always did when I scrubbed up in the kitchen. I drew the back of my hand across my mouth and it felt as if fire was spilling over my lips. The steam coming off my forehead fogged the window over the sink.
Some of the capos came in to eat. Most of them had been fat to begin with, but in just the last few days of feasting on all the extra food I could see their faces had gone even more bloated. They sat down at the table and talked about the good old days, filling their plates until they were heaping. They stuffed their mouths and laughed about old scores, old lays, old hits. The sweat kept pouring off me no matter how often I splashed my face with ice water.
“Where’s Grandma?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Where’s the priest?”
“Haven’t seen Macdonald. Probably blow drying his hair someplace.”
I left the house and went to my room. I had a feeling he might be waiting for me there. The room was empty but I whispered his name anyway. I controlled myself enough to keep from looking in my closet or under the bed. I checked all the other buildings, the grounds, behind the shed. I walked the perimeter. The ash was beginning to thin. I didn’t take it for a good sign. The crematoriums weren’t burning the infected anymore. The rioting was at an end. All that was left was a sea of shambling biters out there.
The pretty priest was nowhere to be found. I wondered if someone else had already capped him. If someone else had already hauled him up the wall and tossed him over.
Falco found me and said, “The doctor. He’s dead. Looks like a heart attack.”
“Who knows?”
“Everybody. Ma found him in Nicky’s room. The don wanted
to know if you’d seen him. If you’d been checked.”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what did he say? Don Guiseppe wanted me to ask you how it went.”
“It went fine,” I told him, thinking the don and the doc had probably murdered everyone. “I’m clean. We’re all clean, according to what Beltrando said.”
“That’s something to be grateful for, right?”
“Right. You seen the priest anywhere?”
His lips hardened into bloodless slugs. “No. And that one… him… I don’t need to be around him. He’s a swish if I ever seen one. The church has enough like that one. They don’t got enough troubles they need to keep him in Brooklyn? We don’t got enough going on that he’s behind the gates with us? All my buddies that are outside the wall, dead or worse. And him, with the hair, with his eyelashes, he’s in here with me? It’s not right. It’s a lousy trick.”
“I think I might agree with you on that, Falco.”
“Damn right.”
“If you see him, send him to me.”
“I’ll do that, Tommy.”
I started to turn away.
“Tommy, about the doctor?”
“Bury him behind the shed.”
The capos ate, the lieutenants ate, the crew members ate, the servants ate. A lot of wine flowed. It was like a funeral. Everyone in good spirits because it wasn’t them in the fucking coffin, but everybody too reserved to talk very loudly. Except for when Johnny Tormino and his boys came in. They laughed and talked shit and explained which strip clubs they’d hit the minute things got back to normal. They couldn’t entertain the notion that things would never be normal again. The lights flickered again. I said I’d double-check on the generators and make sure everything would go smoothly when we had to switch over.
They’d all forgotten about Grandma. None of them cared much about Doctor Beltrando. The Ganooch asked about the priest and I said he was gone. He took it to mean I’d killed him and gotten rid of the body. The don let out a breath he’d been holding in for ten thousand years. There was plenty to eat and the crew came in one by one and two by two.
Gina and I had dinner in the dining room with her parents. It was almost like old times. There was a little joking around, some thoughtful discussion. The stoned maids served us. The Ganooch tried not to brood, but he couldn’t help himself. He dipped in and out of his dark thoughts. Ma mostly held her venom for me in check. It only seeped out on occasion, in an almost casual way. With a sharpened glance, a squint, a pursing of her lips.
She said, “Will they be satisfied now? Those people?”
“Which people?” I asked.
“The ones who did this. Who attacked us. Who destroyed us. Who murdered my son. Who burned the city. Will this be enough for them?”
“I’m not certain it is an attack. It might’ve just been an accident of something made by our own government. Or a naturally occurring plague due to our over-use of antibiotics.”
“Or God’s will.”
“Yes.”
“But if it wasn’t. If it was an attack by those people. Will they be satisfied now? Will they ever be?”
There was no way to explain to her the irony of her question. No one could ever make her understand that by saying “those people” she was helping to drive the ignorance and conflict that had raged across the desert for millennia. That separated one people from another, one god from another.
“No,” I said.
She nodded at that, and continued eating and drinking. The Ganooch had fallen into a heavy silence. Ma continued.
“While you were there, you tortured some of them to death.”
“Yes.”
Gina said, “Ma.”
“Did it make you feel good, Tommaso?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
She took a last bite of pasta, laid her silverware down crosswise against her plate, and sipped her wine. I wondered if the virus was already loose inside of her, trying to tear her mouth open into a wider smile. She gave me a sloe-eyed look, one that said she knew everything and nothing about me. It made Gina visibly uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat and reached across the table for my hand. I pretended not to notice.
Ma’s gaze locked with mine. She said, “Do you think this is a retaliation for things that you and men like you have done in places of the world where you shouldn’t be?”
“Like Jersey City?”
The Ganooch laughed at that. His smiled hung stupidly. He was aware of it and forced it from his face quickly. He went back to brooding. I stood and excused myself. The maids brought in trays of Grandma’s desserts. Still no one asked about her.
I searched the entire complex again for the priest and again I failed to find him. The moon rose and glowed high in the night as clouds of smoke rose against as if drifting towards and covering its surface.
When the power finally went off at around midnight I was standing in the garage waiting for it. I switched on the generators and put a couple of the crew in charge of making sure the tanks were always filled with fuel. Maybe the Ganooch always expected war on US soil, or that his home would come under siege by the other syndicates. I went around the buildings turning off any unnecessary lights. The electric locks on the gates never had a chance to spring. I wondered if it would matter. The biters didn’t seem to really want to get in. They just wanted us to know they were there.
I walked the perimeter on my own one last time. I heard them giggling and whispering on the other side of the wall. On occasion I’d stop and someone would say my name. They were always aware of me. I was always aware of them.
In my sleep, again came the burning fever and the maddening love of desires that weren’t actually mine. The golden flame burst alive in the center of my room, blonde and sensual and blazing, voluptuous, spiteful, hateful, too beautiful for mortal eyes, and with it arrived the heat from all the bombs I’d deactivated in the desert.
You’re mine, it said.
I burned and rolled onto the throw rug and hid myself up against the floorboards, that flesh laid against me the same as licking flames. The current ran through my testicles again. Dust choked my lungs. I snarled. I gnashed my teeth as the flaming sword of St. Michael skewered me. I was impaled upon angelic grace. I was disemboweled by seraphim benediction as ancient as the stone dagger that Abraham raised above Isaac’s throat.
The secrets bared in hot dark rooms.
We all need extraction.
St. Peter devoured.
I am a child of Sodom. I am a child of Gomorrah.
Right after dawn, as my flesh began to cool, Gina visited my room, undid her robe and slid into bed with me. I hadn’t managed to sleep for even a minute and felt like I never would again. My flesh stung as if ten thousand wasps had set on me. The jostling of the mattress made me stifle a moan. I let out an angry growl.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
She brought her lips to my back and jerked away as if in pain. She laid her hand flat between my shoulders and said, “You’re burning up. Are you sick?”
“No.”
She didn’t know what to do next. She turned on the lamp and pulled it off the night stand. She took off the shade and shined the light into my eyes. She was smart. She held the lamp by the center so she could swing it like a weapon. She didn’t want to catch the virus but didn’t want to be left alone.
“Is it in you? Tell me the truth.”
“You know I have fever dreams.”
“And what are they telling you?” she asked. “Do you know anything more that can help us?”
“Not yet.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing that makes any sense.”
“Explain it to me anyway.”
“I can’t.”
She made as if she might swing the lamp at me. I had no illusions that she wouldn’t smash my skull in if she thought she needed to.
She was a Mafia princess. She’d been around men like me since she was born. She’d played on the knees of killers her whole life. She laughed with us. She fucked us. Maybe she even loved us.
“Try,” she said.
I lashed my hand out and knocked the light to the floor. The bulb flashed and went dead. The room went dark except for the scant gray light failing against the glass. I wrapped my arms around her and agony roared through my chest. My hands were so weak I couldn’t even give her a valid hug. My muscles were nearly useless. We spooned and I pressed my lips to the back of her neck and tried to feel the old lust and want that I used to have for her. She whined in fear and desire. She struggled. She tried to scream. I hushed her. I whispered in her ear.
“The priest. Father Macdonald. What do you know about him?”
“Nothing. Except my parents don’t like him. Why? What do you know about him?”
“That he’s the devil. Or maybe Christ.”
“That’s–”
“I was going to kill him but he vanished.”
“Were you doing it for me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
I explained what I saw in my dreams, if they were dreams. I told her what Satan looked like. She fought against me even harder. I asked her about Nolan. She said, “He’s nothing. Where did you get this idea that he meant anything?” After a minute she let out a single sob and then quelled it. I didn’t bother to tell her about the possibility that the doctor had passed the virus on to everyone in the complex. After a while I asked, “You been carrying a gun?”
She nodded and said, “And a knife. With a two-inch long blade.” That was more than long enough to kill a man. I’d never taught her how to use one and I wondered who had. She let out a bitter little laugh and we made a haphazard love full of fear and confusion and then she fell asleep against me.
I walked to the security booth. Winslow and DiMeo were on duty.
“Is Nolan out there?”
“No,” DiMeo said, “haven’t seen him. They’re thinning out, those things. There’s hardly any of them at our gate anymore.”
“Where are they going?” Winslow asked. “Are they dying? Are they hiding?”
Vespers Page 12
