by CD Reiss
“No, they weren’t.” I smile and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. The man has irritated me for most of my adult life, but he knows where his bread is buttered, the customers love him, and he’s terrified of me, so I haven’t bought the club from under him.
“Loretta,” Tommy says, “Mikey needs rolls of quarters. I’ll take care of the capo di capo here.”
She nods to him, then once to me, and I read her like the newspaper. She’s telling me to be careful.
I will be.
Past the doors, the space stinks of sweat and alcohol. The air’s cut with the promised lasers, and the music isn’t more than a beat and a warble. At a back table, Damiano jabs a cigar between his teeth. A woman in a green dress leans over his shoulder and lights it. When she stands, I recognize her as his niece, Theresa Rubino, from Green Springs. The girl whose cunt stink was on Roman’s tongue before I replaced it with the taste of blood.
She waves to me timidly and goes back to the bar with her friends.
“Sit, sit.” Tommy indicates my chair. “You having the usual?”
“Sure.”
Two men stand in the corners with their hands folded above their dicks. Gennaro is one, but the other… I don’t know. Damiano’s guy apparently.
He shouldn’t need protection here. Not from me.
Damiano and I shake hands, and I sit.
“You going to introduce me to your friend.”
“Oh, sure.” He waves the man over, speaking Italian. “Lucio, this is Santino, the capo of this shithole town.”
I shake the man’s hand and hold him long enough to look him in the face.
“You’re from the other side,” I say in English.
He just smiles.
“I saw you peeking out of the closet when I was fucking your mother in the ass,” I add.
Lucio keeps smiling, then glances at Damiano.
“You’re a fucking dick,” Damiano says to me. I let the man’s hand go. “He’s one of my dad’s guys. On loan.”
I have to reassess this entire situation. Cosimo sent a guy for his son, who he’s barely on speaking terms with. For what? To protect him? To spy on him? Both?
Or to start planning the coming war?
“Sit down, would you?” Damiano says to me, then switches to Italian for Lucio. “Back it up.”
The man moves back to his dark corner. As a young woman offers me a cigar, and I refuse, Damiano leans back and makes a show of checking out her ass, and with a shake of his hand, declares it gorgeous.
“How old are you?” I ask him.
“Old enough to tap that.” He watches her leave as if he’s some kind of ravenous animal. I don’t know this cigar girl and I don’t care, but who is this guy trying to marry my cousin?
“You’ll have more respect for Gia.”
“That your way of getting to the point?”
“I’m not interested in hanging around”—I indicate the club, the noise, the flashing lights—“this.”
“You’re such an old man.” He rolls his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. “All right. So fine. Get to the point. The flowers.”
Damiano leans back and crosses his arms, cigar between two fingers, with the face of a guy who’s been wronged and insulted over and over. He reminds me of a shark. If you don’t provoke a shark, they don’t bite. But if you do, and the shark thinks they can get away with it, you’ll bleed into the sea.
“You think I want to talk about flowers?” I ask as if I don’t know what he means.
“You got something to say to me, Santino? You think I’m not good enough to marry into your family? Just say it.”
“So Lucio over here can go back to Cosimo and tell him?”
“No, so I can send a fucking carrier pigeon. If I wanted my father to know, I’d pick up this thing here. It’s called a phone. What the fuck is going on with your wife? I thought she was mouthy, but knocking shit over?”
I know when I’m being provoked, even slightly, and talking about my wife like this is incitement. He wants me to lose my temper so he has the upper hand… not tonight, but tomorrow and the next day, when he tells everyone I’m too weak to think before I act.
“As far as you’re concerned, it was the wind,” I say. “And if you back out, you’ve insulted me, my uncle, and my cousin.”
“My money’s where it belongs.” He jabs his finger against the table so hard the knuckle bends. “I already bought a ring. A new one.”
He knows how my wedding went and that Violetta’s ring was Rosetta’s first. Another thing I regret.
“So there’s a deal. Unless you want out. Do you want out, Dami? I could get in your way if you do, but I won’t.”
For my wife’s sake, I hope he wants out. I’ll protect that decision from his own father and Gia’s. He taps his cigar, curls his mouth, looks around as if the answer’s written in lasers.
“What’s your problem?” I ask.
“Violetta was supposed to be mine.”
The possibility of this doesn’t scare me. She was never his. She was born to be mine.
“You were too slow, and Emilio meant for me to marry a daughter first. You were there.”
“You shoulda come to me,” he says.
“And if you had a problem, you should have brought it to Il Blocco.”
“No one knows where the fuck Corragio is!” He slams his hand on the table, breaking his cigar. “I was going through the channels the right way, and you…” He flings the cigar pieces into the ashtray. “You just dropped in like a fucking ghost and took her.”
“She’s mine. This is the end of it. She knocks down a vase of roses, kicks it, flings it into the sky, it’s my business.”
“I could tell them,” he says in a low growl. “All of them. One word that she’s inheriting the crown and every gray-haired old capo and every soldier with four whiskers on his chin is coming for you.”
“But you won’t.” I stand. This is over. “Not in front of your father.” I nod toward Lucio. “He’ll kill you for letting someone else in line before him.”
Damiano’s up like a shot. “And he’ll kill you for what you did to me.”
With his wide eyes and set shoulders, I can tell Damiano wants to hit me, and I wish I could let him try, but our business isn’t done.
“He may end my life,” I say. “But we both know he won’t lift his little finger for your sake.”
Before he can utter another threat, I leave. It’s the greatest favor I’ve ever done for him.
My wife waits for me in the bedroom like a child on Christmas morning, kneeling in the middle of our bed, nipples hardened to dark points in the white silk nightgown.
“Where’s Gia?” I ask, taking off my jacket.
“Her mother called. She went home.”
“Bene.”
“They said you met with Damiano.”
“Did they?”
“What did he say?”
“He will let go of your insult.”
Her mouth drops and her eyes open wide, but she collects herself a second later. “So what’s our next move?”
Our. Violetta wants us to be a team now. Wants to play the game now. Wants to enter into my world.
“There is no next move. That isn’t our business.” I take off my shirt and fold it neatly over the desk chair. “Our business is on that bed.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Zitta,” I hush her. “There’s nothing in it for him anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Can she sense the half-truth? Is she nosing around what I’m leaving out? Or does she just want enough assurance that she can relax now?
“It means pull up your nightgown and show me where to leave my come next.”
Her throat ripples when she swallows, and she grabs a handful of nightgown and stops. “Are you sure about Damiano?”
If I tell her that—from what I can see—there’s nothing in the marriage for him, she’ll ask if that means the wedding is o
ff or not. When I say I don’t know yet, she’ll push harder and something will break.
“I am sure.” I unbuckle my belt and snap it from the loops. “I told you to show me your body.”
Satisfied, she pulls her nightgown up to her neck and displays her gorgeous tits, her belly, her cunt. All I can do is stare and pull the gown over her head.
I slap the pillow. “Put your head here.”
She obeys as the last of my clothes drop to the floor, and I jerk her legs up and apart, exposing her soft pink invitation and the tighter promise below.
She puts her hands between her legs. “What should be your reward for ending Gia’s wedding?”
She’s being coy and cute, but I don’t like it.
“No,” I say sternly and get off the bed. “This game… you do not play.”
“What game?”
“You don’t open your legs as a reward.” I get my belt from the floor and use it to tie her wrists to the headboard. “You open them because you want to.” Pushing her legs back open again, I position myself between them and slide myself along her cunt. “You still want me to fuck you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Voglio che mi scopi…” She deliberates every word of the request to fuck her, then stops, thinks, and adds a word. “Difficile?”
“Do you mean ‘hard,’ Forzetta?” I can’t wait for confirmation, but push inside so hard she cries out. “You say it like this. Scopami.” I lick my thumb and press it to her clit. Her eyes flutter closed as I make circles.
“Scopa—” she elongates an aah of pleasure.
“Scopami. Di. Brutto. Say it.”
I thrust for each word and toy with her endlessly. As soon as I see her getting close, I demand she speak again.
“Yes,” she replies breathlessly.
I can go all night, watching her will drain away into desperate submission. I press harder against her nub. “What do you want?”
“To come.”
“Italiano,” I demand. “Say it perfectly.”
I want her to fuck it up as much as I want her to get it right.
“Scopami di brutto, mio Re.”
“Good girl,” I say, and I mean it. She is good. Better than good. “You will now have the longest orgasm ever had by anyone.”
Deep as I can go inside her, I circle her clit harder and faster, until the dark world locked within her bursts open. She is silent and explosive all at once. Full and glorious. When her body slowly folds in on itself and expands again, I know she’s at the height of her pleasure, and I release into her, erasing every doubt I’ve ever had about this woman.
As I roll off her, I let myself believe the problem is solved. She’ll be how she’s supposed to be. She’ll do what’s expected of her and no more, and at the same time, I’m aware this is a lie. I have not taken her completely. I will never quiet her doubts. And I fear she will never fully turn into a wife.
18
VIOLETTA
The night he gave me the longest orgasm ever in the history of the universe, I fell asleep so hard I broke my ability to open my eyes before ten in the morning. I just lie there in a state of half-dream, with the sun bursting behind my eyelids, letting the all-rightness warm me from the inside out.
He fucked me again the next morning. During the day, I speak to Gia. Her father told her things had changed, but not what.
“Do you think the ‘mbasciata is off?” Gia asks. I can’t read how she feels about it one way or the other.
“What if it is?”
She pauses.
“I want to be married,” she says, then breathes through another long pause. “But… no offense… not like this.”
“No offense taken.”
The call ends with a relieved sigh on my side.
For three more days, the sheets remain crisp and white, and I can’t avoid it anymore. Lord knows I’m going to give birth before Santino notices I haven’t had my period. First, I want confirmation. I have to pee on a stick today.
As I get out of bed, the house rumbles with the echoes of Santino’s voice from downstairs. There are pauses but not replies. He must be on the phone. We’re going to have to put some rugs down, because sound bounces around this house like a ping-pong ball and the floors can be rough on tender young knees.
Before I say anything about the floors or putting a fence around the pool, I have to make sure there will be a baby in the house.
“Hey,” I say with a kiss, joining Santino in the kitchen, freshly showered.
“Buon pomeriggio.” He snaps an empty cup from the row on the counter.
“It’s not afternoon yet.”
He pours me coffee, serving me. I try not to make a big deal of it, even when he puts in sugar so I don’t have to.
Does he know my period is late?
“Grazie,” I say. Why is he even home? It’s not Sunday, the only day he spends the morning in the house.
“Do you have plans today?”
Something’s up. He can’t be counting the days in my menstrual cycle, but who knows?
“Do I ever?” I ask.
“Bene, allora. Finish your coffee and we go.”
He drives the Alfa with the windows open and I let the warm summer breeze break against my cheeks. My right hand taps on the top of the door and my left rests on the gearshift, over his. The crown ring he wears on that hand is hard against the underside of my fingers. He hasn’t told me where we’re going. I’m okay with that until he turns onto the bridge over the river and my curiosity gets the best of me.
“Where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise.”
The tower of St. John’s creeps over the tree line, and I wonder about school. I wonder why I haven’t thought about it, wished for it, or asked him about it. Maybe because I don’t have to. It’s summer anyway, and I’m already registered for fall. Or maybe I’ve been too distracted by the insanity my life has become.
And now I think about what happens to all that if I’m pregnant, and I don’t have to wonder if another decision can easily be taken away from me.
“Santi,” I say, squeezing his hand, “is it school? Are we going to school?”
He takes his attention from the road long enough to look at me, and something in my expression must tell him that I won’t take less than a definite answer. “No.”
“Good.” I relax and turn back to the view of the river with fishing boats, the V of jet-skis, the diagonal hatch of piers on the shore.
The tires buzz over the textured metal plate that ends the bridge connecting Secondo Vasto to the rest of the world.
“Do you want to go to school in the fall?” he asks at a red light.
What I want could be irrelevant soon, but he asked what I wanted, not what’s possible. That doesn’t make the answer any easier.
“I’d be the only married person in the class.”
“So? You’re there to study.”
“What if I get a bad grade? You going to beat up the professor?” I ask.
“What’s a bad grade?”
“A B plus.”
“Oh, for that?” He shrugs and turns into a residential area. “Just a black eye.”
“What about a D?”
“That’s failing?”
“That’s passing. Barely.”
“Then I will let him live. Barely.”
He’s joking, of course, but I pat his hand in thanks for letting this fake professor live through my unlikely near-fail. I don’t need to ask about an F.
“This is a nice neighborhood,” I say.
The streets curve around clean sidewalks shaded with old trees. The lawns are lush and short. The houses are painted soft colors and trimmed in white. Flowers, birds, and butterflies thrive inside a bubble of perfection.
“It’s called River Heights. They say it’s very safe.” He strokes my pinkie with his thumb, then slows by a property with ten-foot hedges and an open driveway gate. When he pulls into it, a pale yel
low two-story house is visible. He stops behind a silver Lexus SUV. The house’s front door is wide open.
“So,” I say, “who lives here? What’s going on?”
He gets out of the car. A man with a thick moustache walks onto the porch, and Santino waves to him. I open my own door before my husband has a chance to, and get out into the beautiful, blazing sun.
“Come.” Santino grabs my hand and takes me up the front steps. He’s like a kid who’s too old to be excited by his birthday, but young enough to be delighted with the presents. The mustachioed man on the porch wears a light gray suit that’s too small around the belly and a red tie that’s just a little wider than fashionable. The breeze has zero impact on his dark brown combover, and there’s something vaguely familiar about him. “Bosco, this is my wife, Violetta.”
The man takes one of my hands in both of his. “Such a pleasure.”
“Bosco is a real estate agent.”
“Ah!” The sound escapes my lips when I realize why I recognize him. “From the ads on the bus benches.”
There’s no FOR SALE sign on the lawn. That’s my excuse for standing there thinking we’re having lunch with the guy or something.
“Guilty!” Bosco opens his arms and quotes the ads. “Number One paesano in our paese!”
I can’t help but laugh at his pride in the silly slogan.
“I admit,” he says with some humility, “River Heights isn’t my area, but I have it on good authority that this is a primo neighborhood. Safest you can find. The tiptop! Come!”
He steps backward, waving us through the door. Whatever fog of clueless ignorance I was floating around inside dissipates, and I look at my husband, who’s beaming like a guy who just swallowed the sun.
The space is bare, leaving the hardwood floors and white walls completely exposed.
“The security system? Just updated to ‘smart security,’ they call it. Open plan in the living room to the kitchen and this dining room, right here, so you can talk to guests while you prepare dinner. I warn you, there’s no kitchen in the basement, but if your husband wants to put one in for you, there’s room next to the wine cellar.”
“Santi?” I say, peering up a staircase that sweeps at a graceful curve.
