Mafia King

by CD Reiss

  “They just put in brand new appliances.” Bosco opens the huge refrigerator, showing off the pristine interior like a woman turning letters on a game show. “Also ‘smart,’ they say.”

  “Che?” Santino replies as if he has no idea what I’d be asking about right now.

  He knows. He has to know. Why else am I here?

  “Six-burner stove!” Bosco delights. “Maybe only one kitchen? Be like a real American housewife. June Cleaver. No?”

  He looks between us. I have no idea who Bosco is talking about, and I stopped paying close attention after Santi acted as if I knew what’s going on.

  But Bosco continues like a soldier someone wound up all the way. “I think I’m showing my age. But here’s for the man of the house to cook… a brick barbecue in the backyard.” He unlocks the sliding door to the back, which is completely paved except for a patch of manicured grass.

  No. I don’t want to go there yet. I put my hand on the graceful curl of staircase banister.

  “Violetta?” Santino asks, tugging me, but I tug back. I want to see upstairs.

  “Oh!” Bosco cries, jumping in our direction. “Let me show you the master suite!”

  He hustles up the stairs ahead of us.

  “What are you doing?” I ask Santino softly.

  “I didn’t want to spring it on you on your birthday.”

  “I see.” What I see is a man who’s sprung one too many things on me and very much wants me to think of him as changed.

  “If you don’t like it,” he says, “we can look at another one.”

  “No, I…” I hadn’t even thought about liking it or not liking it. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Good.”

  Santino pulls me up the steps and I run past him, giggling, to a wide hall bathed in sunlight. Bosco waits in the wide doorway to what has to be the master suite, but I know it’ll be gorgeous. I head for the bedroom next door.

  The window seat is coated in fresh white paint, and the walls are a gender neutral butter color. It’s bare as a bone, but the crib goes on the shared wall with the master suite, and the changing table is opposite. I look at the ceiling and see a small hook. There was a mobile there to occupy the baby while they were changed.

  “Forzetta,” Santino murmurs, putting his hand on my shoulder with two fingers on the bare skin of my neck. “You want to sleep in the guest room?”

  “This isn’t the guest room.”

  I open the closet. A little window on the facing end lights the walk-in space. A few wire hangers dangle from the rods on either side, and the walls are marred by strips of white paper and shards of exposed plaster. Stickers were pulled off. A cartoon character or flowers. Vestiges of the last occupant.

  “It’s a nursery,” I say.

  He shrugs. “We could need a nursery some day, no?”

  I should tell him I’m late. He deserves to know. But I’d so much rather be sure.

  You can’t always have what you’d rather.

  “Yes.” I go to the window and look down. Just below, there’s a crystalline pool for Santino to slice into. He’ll push me against the edge of it and kiss me until I’m as liquid as the water. “We probably will.”

  I don’t say when. I’m not ready to even insinuate a maybe. There’s no coming back from those conversations.

  I hear Bosco enter the room, but Santino holds his hand out to stop the agent from interrupting us.

  “Bigger then?” my husband offers.

  Another square foot won’t change a thing, but I don’t know what will, because I’m not sure what changes I need.

  “What’s wrong with the house you have?” I ask.

  “I thought you’d like this one. The location.” He indicates the window.

  The tower seems close enough to touch. He isn’t offering me a view out a closet window. He’s offering school without a commute.

  “This type of house,” he continues. “It’s better for having people around.”

  “It’s so far from everyone though.”

  “There are these things called… come si dice…” He snaps his fingers by his ear like a guy trying to lure a memory out of the dark. “Ah!” He points. “Cars! They can come in their cars.”

  It’s hard not to smile when he reveals his sense of humor.

  “Maybe,” I say, looking at the school’s brick tower that signaled I had to change busses. Every morning, it meant I was coming closer to where I belonged. “Maybe.”

  But now I belong to him.

  Tell him tell him tell him.

  And I’m still a little mad about it.

  And there’s still so much I don’t know, but I haven’t planned an escape in a long time, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to want to leave him.

  Tell him tell him tell him.

  From his pocket, his phone rings. He hesitates.

  “Get it,” I say. “I’ll let Bosco show me around.”

  He kisses me and answers the phone. I leave Santino in the baby’s closet so the realtor can show me the brick barbecue.

  Santino’s leaning on the car, talking on the phone when we’re done with the house. He hangs up when he sees us. I should tell him to take me to the drugstore, but as we drive away from Bosco, who’s waving from the front porch, and out the front gate, there’s no choice to make. Santino’s tight as a drum. I’m not telling him shit right now. I don’t think he can handle it.

  I put my hand on his, and he strokes my pinkie but doesn’t loosen up. His tension radiates outward, filling every inch of the car.

  “Are you all right?” I ask, assuming he’ll say he’s fine, and even if something is wrong, it’s not my business.

  He defies my expectations and hands me his phone. There’s a text from Gia.

  —Dear Santino. I won’t be at work today. I’m sorry. Thank you for giving me the job. It meant a lot to me. I’m going back with Mamma today—

  There’s no more.

  “What does she mean by ‘going back’?”

  “I can take you home,” he says at the light before the bridge. “But it’s in the opposite direction, and you won’t have a chance to say good-bye.”

  I’m going back with Mamma today.

  “Gia’s going back to the other side?”

  The light turns green.

  “Decide.”

  “Decide what?” I ask.

  “Airport or home.”

  There is no decision.

  “Airport.”

  Santino swoops into a U-turn at the intersection, causing a symphony of horns, shouts, and screeching tires, gunning it to make the next light. I grip the dashboard and his hand to try to keep steady.

  “Is that what you were on the phone about? She’s getting sent home?”

  “They’re not sending her home,” he says, slapping the shifter into a different gear. “They’re bringing her home for two weeks. To get the right things…” He stops as if he doesn’t want to say it.

  But Rosetta went to Italy for the right things too.

  “For the wedding?” The engine’s roaring so loud I have to shout, but I would have raised my voice anyway. “You said you took care of it!”

  “Did I?”

  Did he? Or is that what I assumed he meant?

  “You said he had nothing to gain.”

  He takes a turn at a yellow light, and with a gear change and a lurch, we’re speeding down the highway. His full lips are thinned by the tight clench of his mouth.

  “That’s what this house is about,” I say, then continue when I get no response from him. “You’re trying to placate me. You think if you buy me, I’ll let her—or anyone—get sold into marriage. All I cost is a house.”

  “No,” is all he can get out.

  “Say you’re not a liar.”

  “I did not lie.” His finger juts at me, but with his eyes on the road, the pointing loses its power. “I thought I had more time.”

  “Is that why you’re driving to the airport at ninety miles an hour?”
>
  “You want to say good-bye or no?”

  This is him doing things for me. The house I didn’t ask for, in a neighborhood he’d hate. The death-defying trip for a simple good-bye. All of it, covering the fact that he didn’t do what he told me he’d do.

  “You were supposed to stop it!” Both fists shake at him. I want to punch his face, but he’s driving.

  “She wants it.” He jabs his finger at me. “I talked to her. Gia wants this marriage. She said so. What are you going to do? Tell her she can’t have it because I fucked it up for you? I ruined your life, so you ruin hers? So you don’t feel bad? Queen Violetta won’t bless the deal so fuck what Gia wants?”

  He’s spoken to me like a child and a servant. He’s been heartless and cold. But he’s never spoken to me with this particular mixture of anger and respect.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

  “Bullshit. You want her to have the choice, but you don’t want her to choose.”

  “Fuck you.” I cross my arms and sink into my seat. “She’s being sold.”

  “And she knows it. You confuse yourself. It’s her life, not yours.”

  “I’m not confused,” I snarl. “I’m very clear about the difference between consent and force.”

  “Yes, I forced you. I didn’t take you back to Naples to have a dress made or to get bomboniere from Abriana Dolce. You had no bobbin lace veil. You had no time to consent. This is what I did. I. Fucked. Up.”

  My body stays upright, but inside, I can no longer hold up my own weight and my heart sinks into my gut. My life. My wedding. My marriage. The things he ruined, forced, and took for granted, in that order.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why did you move so fast?”

  A wrist over the steering wheel and the opposite elbow on the door, he rubs his lower lip, clearly thinking.

  “I’ll tell you.” He puts his blinker on, checks his mirrors, and exits to the airport. “On your birthday. Right now, you put on a good face for your cousin.”

  The airport closest to us is too small to service international flights, but we pass it right by anyway and go to the smaller, private terminal.

  Small planes dot the tarmac and surround the main runway. Santino drives to a jet surrounded by a handful of cars. Men load bags into the cargo hold of the jet that took us to and from Italy.

  “That’s your plane,” I say.

  “I had to placate them too. The plane ride’s cheaper than the house.”

  “Is there anything you can’t just buy?”

  “I got the plane as collateral on a loan.” He makes a lap around the little jet and stops behind the last car. “Owner defaulted.”

  “Did he offer you his daughter first?”

  “I was already spoken for.” He puts the car into park.

  “Jesus Christ.” I shake my head. “He’d give up his daughter before his plane.”

  “It was the strategic choice. I can take care of her and the marriage would protect him from me.”

  The logic is so real and so cynical I can’t refute it.

  I get out so I’m not obligated to answer. Santino meets me on the passenger side, putting his hand at the base of my neck as we approach Paola. She’s wearing red lipstick, big sunglasses, and a headscarf, looking ten times more glamorous than the day I met her in an old apartment in Naples. Santino kisses her, then goes to Marco, leaving us alone.

  “How is she?” I ask.

  “Thrilled,” Paola says, without enough sarcasm to make the statement untrue. “She gets to be married to a man who can keep her comfortable and she gets to stay in the United States.”

  “But does she love him?”

  Paola takes off her sunglasses, revealing that she’s not wearing any eye makeup.

  “What does that matter?” she says, looking at my ring, then back at my face, as if asking who the fuck I think I am.

  “I guess it doesn’t.”

  She puts her sunglasses back on. “You can say hello. She’s in the car.” Paola points at a Lincoln. “She didn’t want tan lines. You know how brides are.”

  “Yeah. I do,” I say without irony before going to the Lincoln Continental and rapping on a back window.

  The door unlocks and I take a deep, calming breath. If Gia wants to be married, she’ll tell me. If she doesn’t and I’m tense, she won’t. So I put on my happy face and get in. Gia throws her arms around my shoulders. The door clicks closed behind me.

  “Hey,” I say. “I had no idea you were leaving!”

  “Totally last minute. Look!” Gia thrusts her left hand under my nose to show off a huge round diamond solitaire. “Damiano asked me this morning.”

  Fuck. She’s accepted his proposal. Maybe she’s not being forced like I was, but she’s still being sold. She’s still shackled to a man for reasons that have nothing to do with her at all.

  “It is… Gia, this is so fast.”

  “Isn’t. It. Beautiful?” She needs me to weigh in on the ring, and I need to stay focused.

  I take her hand to move it out of my face, and it’s shaking. Her eyes are puffy and her lips are pink and swollen. Wadded up tissues litter the seat and floor of the car. She’s been crying.

  “I’m going to miss your birthday,” she says quickly. “I’ll bring you back a present to make up for it.”

  “Are you all right? Gia, talk to me. Did you have a choice?”

  “Please don’t make a big deal about it, Violetta. The engagement’s fast, yeah… I don’t have time to do everything… and I’m a little—” She cuts herself off. Was she going to say leery? Angry? Sad? Scared?

  “Did you have a choice?” I ask again. She’s allowed to make stupid decisions for herself, but I can’t walk away without knowing if this stupid decision was hers.

  She shakes her head, but if it’s an answer, she tries to cover it up. “It’s not like what happened with you. Not the bad parts.”

  That’s enough to tell me she didn’t have a choice, but my arguments die on my lips. The bad parts are close enough to what happened with me, and the good parts she imagines are not guaranteed for her. The worst for me was the lightning-fast speed of the wedding though. Gia has time, which means I have time.

  “I might have married him anyway.” She shrugs. “It’s just confusing. I don’t know how to feel and…” She sucks in a hitched breath as if she’s about to cry. “The idea of being traded bothers me, but…” She clears her throat, swallowing her tears. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “I am too.” I am sure of no such thing.

  “Do you ever wonder…?” After a deep breath, she finishes her thought. “What if we could have all the things that come with being married, the house and the kids and you know… the respect.” Her voice hammers that last upside of marriage as though it’s the last nail in a coffin. “Even the big party with all your friends and family… and everyone congratulating you and being happy and proud… but without the guy?”

  It’s called liberation. I thought it was woven into the fabric of my life, but it was just a stain Secondo Vasto wiped away.

  “I’m sorry, Gia,” I offer sympathy, but her affect swings again, and she waves it away.

  “It’s fine! Hey, I can have it all plus a cute guy I have a lifetime to get to know. Right?”

  I can’t keep up with her shifting attitudes. I don’t envy her mother or anyone she meets on the other side in the next few days, but mostly, I don’t envy her. The constant changes must be painful.

  “Have you set a date?” I ask, trying to sound excited and casual.

  “Right when we get back!” She takes my hands. “Will you be my maid of honor, Violetta?”

  Fuck no. I want nothing at all to do with this. I’d rather set the church on fire.

  But my preference for arson doesn’t matter.

  “Of course, but…” I can’t let my complicity sit there unchallenged. “When you get back, if it’s still all too fast, you can stay with us. Santino will protect you. You c
an just wait a bit.”

  She looks at me, breathes through a hitch, blinks. “It is fast. I think that’s freaking me out a little, but Papa says he can’t go home until the money’s paid or the man he owes…” She lets out a little laugh. “He exaggerates. So much drama for a man.”

  “Stay with us,” I whisper.

  There’s a shadow over our hands and I follow it, thinking Santino’s trying to rush us, but it’s Paola, putting on lipstick in the window’s reflection.

  “I’ve got it all set in my head.” Gia touches the corner of her eye as if her mascara’s bothering her. “It’s going to be the most glamorous wedding you’ve ever seen.” She sniffs. “And Damiano? He’s renting the perfect place in the hills.”

  She’s pretty and innocent, naïve even, but not stupid.

  “Gia,” I say firmly, and the smile melts off her face. “Come home with us.”

  “Are you not happy for me?”

  “I want to be happy for you in ten years.” I squeeze her hand. “I don’t want someone to sell your tomorrows for a wedding today.”

  “Don’t say sold. I’m not being sold. I would have married him anyway. It’s just the timing that changed to help Daddy.”

  She’s ashamed, but I don’t know if she’s ashamed that she was sold into marriage or that the man she’s crowing over doesn’t love her.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say. “Santino will get you out of it. I’ll make him.”

  She turns her whole body away from me and faces front. “Did I tell you? Damiano’s paying for everything. I’m going shopping from the minute I get off the plane until the minute I get back on. He says to get real confetti almonds, not these horribly fake things you get here.”

  “Gia,” I say, intending to offer her a place to stay while we deal with Damiano, but she ignores me.

  “I’m going to bring back pounds and pounds of them. And custom figurines for the cake! There’s a shop on Corso Meridionale my mom wants to get them from. I’m even making a special trip to Burano Island to get lace for the gown!”

  When Gia finally looks at me, her brows are knitted—pleading me to go along with it all. The confetti almonds. The lace. The cake. She wants my permission, and if I don’t give it, I may lose her.