by Gina LaManna
Clay pressed a few buttons and twirled a few dials, grunting like a troll the entire time in computer lingo I didn’t understand.
“Sorry.” He winced as the lights mercifully stopped flashing and the alarm’s incessant buzzing turned into a garbled croak that sounded like a badly wounded toad the size of my kitchen table.
“I told you not to do that anymore,” I said, the anger obvious in my voice. “For safety reasons. I could’ve punched you. Or kicked you. Or strangled you. And I still might. Stop friggin’ setting your stupid traps on me.”
“One day it could save your ass,” he said, fiddling with one of the light bulbs attached to what I’d thought was an innocent tea kettle.
“Right. And when that day comes, I’ll owe you one,” I said. “I’ll buy you as many beef bowls as you want. But until then – let me enter my home in peace. I had a bad day, I duct-taped a guy’s face, and I’m not in the mood to talk about it.”
“Sure, girl. Mi casa es tu casa.” He pressed a lever and the bulb flashed once, then exploded, covering the ground in miniscule shards of glass.
“Yeah, it is.” I edged my way along the outskirts of the room, trying to avoid a trip to the emergency room for glass shards in my foot. “It is mi casa since we split rent.”
“It’s not splitting if I pay eighty percent and you pay twenty when you feel like it,” he retorted, staring angrily at the broken light bulb. He continued to mutter, “It should have worked. Compatible electrical frequency. GAH!”
I looked up at his high-pitched shriek to the sight of him swatting out a small fire on the sleeve of his tee-shirt, which sported some calculus equation that was supposed to be a joke in nerd language.
“Better put that fire out – I’m parked in front of the hydrant, and I really don’t want a ticket.”
I huffed into my closet-sized room and plunked my bags on the floor. I climbed into bed ready to sleep for days.
I must’ve fallen into a deep slumber to rival that of Sleeping Beauty, because I barely turned over when the phone yodeled, sometime the next morning. A real, live, actual yodel, another one of Clay’s ingenious inventions.
“Shut that thing up!” I hollered at the kitchen. “It’s the booty crack of dawn.”
Tupac started to screech, adding to the cacophony of weird noises inside apartment 7.
Maybe Clay was still feeling bad for scaring me crapless last night with his exploding bulbs and misconstrued alarms, but he actually answered the phone for the first time in ages. I sighed and closed my eyes firmly. When I heard footsteps at my door, I added a loud snore to the mix.
“Uh, Lacey?”
“Sleeping,” I sang, not bothering to hide my annoyance.
“It’s Carlos.”
My eyes flew open to Clay’s ashen face, holding out the phone as if it might possibly explode in the next second. Carlos and Nora were technologically defunct, to say the least, hence the reason they called the home phone. Or it could be that I’d shut my cell off while in hibernation.
I really, really wanted to tell Clay where to shove that phone, but of course I didn’t. I wearily extended a hand and put the phone to my ear.
Because nobody says no to Carlos.
Chapter 6
I HAULED MYSELF FROM bed after hanging up the phone and clamored into the living room, careful to avoid the smattering of glass shards that hadn’t settled in the kitchen, instead taking up residence on the living room carpet. I plunked my fuggs (fake Uggs) covered feet onto the edge of the couch and lay backwards, hoping that if I let all of the blood from my feet rush to my head I’d have more thinking power when I faced Carlos.
“I know I asked for this job, but I’m having second thoughts.”
Clay cracked open a beer – one of the dark, nasty kinds that made me feel like I’d eaten a loaf of bread after drinking it– and let out a nice, rounded belch.
“You’re not helpful,” I said. “Working for him will be dangerous and illegal and I might end up in jail. Or dead. Or something much worse.”
“Worse than dead?” Clay asked. “Interesting.”
When he saw I wasn’t amused, he swallowed a bite of his sandwich and tried again. “Isn’t it a little late to be wondering these things? I mean, you did already accept the job. Right?”
“Yes,” I moaned.
“Well?”
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Think aloud,” Clay said. “Otherwise I can’t help you. I know my way around tech stuff, but I haven’t figured out how to read your mind yet. And I don’t particularly want to, for that matter. It seems kind of schizo in there.”
I gave him a look.
“Whatever,” I said. “I guess I’ll make the best of it. But I’m telling you, I’m not going to marry an Italian with a unibrow in order to keep this job. I’ll go back to being a stripper. But I’ll give it my best shot for now. I mean, I have to eat. I have to pay rent, sometimes. I own a cat. Tupac needs food, too.”
“True,” Clay shrugged.
“Plus, it probably won’t be dangerous,” I tried to convince myself.
“Are you kidding?” Clay set his beer down. “Carlos lives in a fortress. His windows are bulletproof and he has an invisible fence that could send a giant to the moon if he breathed on it wrong. He has an army of huge scary guys carrying guns around the lawn, and people regularly try to kill him.”
“Yeah, but I mean, is that really so unusual?” I asked. I blew a wisp of hair away from my face. “Okay, okay, I get it. But Carlos knows I’m not a killer, so he’ll just have me doing innocent stuff. I’m a manager, and when you look at it like that, it looks better than my last four jobs on the resume. Plus, I’ve worked at the Luzzi Laundromat forever. That’s not an exactly legal venture, either.”
“You don’t have to justify it to me,” Clay said. “You have to justify it to yourself.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking pretty hard about it. “I guess you’re right.”
And I thought about it, and I thought about it. And I couldn’t think of a reason to say no to Carlos.
I kicked my feet up on the coffee table. “I’m only going to do a job or two for Carlos, help him out. Then when I figure out my life’s passion and get a job doing that, I’ll just hang out with Carlos and Nora for dinner. Innocent stuff.”
Clay burped again. Very loudly.
I grimaced at my cousin, sprawled onto the puke-yellow armchair. He was too tall, overfed, under-bathed, and overall kind of blobby. But still, we’d been best friends ever since I’d discovered the Fam. Maybe it was because we were the only two kids in the Family who’d been given non-Italian names, except for my Uncle Nicky’s two creepy kids, Marissa and Clarissa, who were not twins. They didn’t even have the same mother, for that matter.
He pounded his chest, probably working to expel another disgusting air bubble.
“I swear, gas travels through you faster than any normal human being.”
Belch. “Don’t be jealous.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Will you come with me?”
Clay narrowed his murky gray eyes at me.
“Right. Still sore. Never mind.”
Clay was still rightfully upset after Carlos had called him a very politically incorrect term when he wore an unflattering pair of skinny jeans to a Fourth of July gathering. It was nearly Labor Day, and the two hadn’t spoken once.
The thing was, people were worried about his love life. His parents had deemed his lack of interest in women as “romantically challenged,” while our grandfather Carlos used descriptions I don’t care to ever repeat. Me, I was nearly eighty percent sure he was gay. I didn’t see why it was such a big deal to Carlos; I just wanted to see Clay happy whether it was with a dude, a chick, a dog, or his computer, and as long as he stopped exploding light bulbs in my half of the kitchen.
“Fine, be a turd.” It was harder moving my legs than an industrial-sized sack of dirty laundry. But I did it; I got to my feet and even performed a Tom Cruise-wo
rthy slide through the kitchen. I waved to Tupac, who was hiding on top of the fridge, and opened the front door of my apartment.
I was halfway down the stairs before I saw the blood dripping from my knuckles. Deciding it might give me a bit of street cred in front of Carlos, I wrenched the small shard of glass from my skin and let the blood flow a bit. Okay, maybe I squeezed it out a bit more than necessary and smeared it around my wrist to make it look worse than it was, but I deserved the additional support after the day I’d had.
Jogging over the classy F-bomb artwork, I turned around and stared at the steps.
“You’re right,” I said to the stairs. “Graffiti – 1, Lacey – 0.”
And then I turned and heaved myself into the Kia before anyone heard me talking to spray paint. As I roared away, I flipped off the freaky white van monopolizing my parking venue.
I PULLED IN FRONT OF the sprawling manor that belonged to Carlos and his wife, Nora, noting that the blood had dried nicely on the back of my hand, crusty and disgusting looking. I pressed the buzzer on the gate and waited while a large man babbled something in Italian into a secure walkie talkie.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s me.”
The man at the gate was familiar – I’d seen him before, but I didn’t know his name. Eventually the man buzzed me in and the thick metal gate lifted, the ends of the posts so sharp they’d pierce your finger if pressed lightly.
I pulled forward into the driveway, proudly noting that my left mirror had remained on from previously sustained injuries – held in place by a hair binder and a bit of scotch tape – and the back door had remained wired shut. (Okay, hanger-ed shut. Why should I spend money on fancy wiring when those bendy metal hangers work just the same?)
I stomped my knockoff Ugg boots up the walkway towards the beautiful front door of the manor, rubbing my sweaty palms on my black leggings, careful to make sure none of the blood wiped off in the process. I looked around nervously at the expansive property. Manor was an understatement. The place was, as Clay said, a fortress.
A stone wall stretched around at least ten acres of land, the wall as high as many of the trees. Above the stone wall was an invisible fence which proceeded to protect the airspace around Carlos’s house. Not only could a person not climb over the walls, but a low flying helicopter would be zapped to shreds like a mosquito in a bug lamp.
The door was opened by a butler. Harold had been imported straight from England, though his roots were Italian. He’d been with the Family for longer than I’d been alive, and he was always good for an honest opinion or a word of advice. He pretended to know nothing of the Family’s involvement in the underworld, and I loved him for it. I gave him a quick hug.
“Welcome home,” Harold smiled. “Congrats on the new job. I see good things in your future.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic; he had the best deadpan around. I sized him up, trying to decide. “Thanks, Harold. It’s good to see you.”
“Yes,” he said. “It has been a week or so.”
I smiled at his dry, now confirmed sarcasm and rolled my eyes. “It’s a temporary patch, this job. Stripping didn’t work out.”
“If you say so, ma’am,” said Harold.
“Don’t call me ma’am,” I said. “It makes me feel old.”
“If the shoe fits.” Harold winked.
I handed him my jacket and moved into the grand entranceway. “Takes an old fart to know one.”
I heard a small chuckle behind me as Harold hung my jacket in an inconspicuous place. “Do yourself a favor and buy a new car with your signing bonus.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I agreed. “It’s a little shabby.”
Harold coughed.
“Fine, it’s a piece of crap, is that what you wanted to hear?” I turned around and shook my head good-naturedly. “Do you know where Carlos – ooooofta!” I grunted, my Minnesotan accent escaping as my arms were grasped, my legs groped, and foreign hands approached my lady bits while my pockets and thighs were patted down with enthusiastic vigor. “What the hell?”
Two guards whom I’d never seen before nearly tackled me before I’d taken two steps into the great hall. I felt hands on my scalp and I swatted away a small, wiry man wearing a guard’s uniform who was squeezing my back pocket with too much appreciation.
“There’s nothing in there except ass,” I said. “And my head is fairly normal, too.”
“Harold, what the heck?” I called helplessly to the butler.
“Ragazzi!” Harold stepped from the cloak room. “Stop it. Lacey is Family.”
The two Italian guards took a step back and saluted me, apologizing profusely.
Scusi!
Mi dispiace!
Bellissima, sorry!
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Watch yourselves. I’m retired from stripping. No more groping allowed. Where’s Carlos?”
“Please excuse the guards,” Harold said. “They’re new. They’ve been in immersion and orientation for the past year, and this is their first week on the job.”
“It’s no problem,” I said. “Just threw me for a loop. By the way, is there a Marco around here?”
I wasn’t exactly excited to come face to face with my captured prey.
Harold gave a sound that was a mix of a snort and a laugh, and I had a feeling word had traveled fast.
“He’s, eh, in the medical ward today,” one of the guards explained.
I shook off the intrusive pat down, gave the two guards a quick glare, and straightened my shoulders.
“May I proceed?” I waved my hand, the sarcasm in my voice prevalent.
“Yes, ma’am. We will escort you to Carlos,” the taller of the two short men answered.
“Grazie,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Federico. This is Andrea,” the same one said.
“Federico, cool. I’m over here a lot. Capisci? I don’t need a guide. Do you know where Carlos is?”
“This way,” the guard said, and began leading the way.
I looked at Harold and exhaled a loud sigh. He gave me a shrug in return, as if to say, Pick your battles.
We walked through the grand entryway which felt large enough to hold the Presidential inauguration. Fresh roses were piled in vases at the bottom of the staircase. Despite the floors and banisters being marble, the room had a rather warm feel – which was due completely to my grandmother, Nora. There was a deep maroon carpet up the staircase and an oriental rug the size of a small dance floor. One of my favorite parts of the room was the stained glass window behind the grand staircase. To match the gorgeous window, Carlos (with Nora’s guidance) had hired a painter and crew fresh from Italy to give the room an old, Romanesque vibe. And it had worked, beautifully.
The ceilings were magnificent and vaulted, with old white stone matching that of the D’uomo di Milano. Statues upon statues were layered to form intricate banisters, making the place feel like its own castle, despite its being misplaced in the American midwest.
Federico led me to the right of the staircase, Andrea following closely behind.
As I walked through this grand fortress, the idea was pounded into my head over and over again. I wasn’t Mafia material – I was the daughter of a stripper. But there was something about Carlos, something that, despite all of those intimidating, scary qualities, made me want to impress him. Maybe because it seemed an impossible target to hit, and I was a glutton for punishment. Or maybe I still longed for the praise that came far and few between when I did something Carlos would be proud of.
“Yours?” Federico asked.
“What?” I’d been lost in my daydream. “Oh, yeah.”
We’d entered the Family hallway – a hallway where guests were not allowed, only members of our immediate family and the occasional extra Carlos held close to his heart. Here was where our personal belongings were stored – the rest of the house was clean and beautiful and exquisite, but not exactly personal. The pictures were professional and unsmi
ling, meant to intimidate. This hallway though, this was where Nora was allowed to go wild. And wild she’d gone: pictures and certificates and plaques dangled at all sorts of angles from the hallway, nailed in by none other than Nora herself.
Federico was pointing to an old spelling bee certificate, the one I’d won in eighth grade.
“Carlos likes,” Federico said. “He brags.”
“No, he doesn’t.” My cheeks blushed. “Not about that.”
Federico gave one nod and continued down the hallway adorned with little league trophies, soccer team patches, jerseys from football and track, and even the occasional letter of acceptance or award. The sports stuff belonged to my cousins, except the nerd stuff belonged to Clay. There were a few mug shots of my Uncle Nicky. And right next to my mother’s nipple tassels, was the only thing I could claim: a measly little spelling bee certificate. I hadn’t even succeeded at being bad.
Which in turn, made me a natural choice for Mafia material. Not.
The doorway at the end of the hallway was the Family kitchen. We had a large, perfectly set dining room available for company, and an even fancier kitchen for more elegant meals, but this kitchen was my favorite. The walls were yellow, filled with pictures upon pictures of family and friends and grandkids, and the table was a beat-up picnic table, imported from Carlos and Nora’s house in Italy. It was solid and large, perfect for seating a large family. I loved it.
Federico knocked once on the heavy swinging door. A voice trilled from inside to “Come on in!”
Federico pushed the door open, his muscles bulging with the effort, and there stood Auntie Nora (actually my grandma, but she preferred the “younger” term of auntie). Her hair was short and frizzy and fire-truck red, her glasses impressively oversized, and the blush on her cheeks as brilliant as her hair.
“Come in, come in,” she said, kissing me on all sides of my face. “I’ve already started cooking.”
“Of course you have,” I said. I could smell the wine on her breath. Nora wasn’t an alcoholic – at least not more than anyone else in my family – but the start to every one of her recipes was “three glasses of red,” even if it was just barely lunch. She insisted it helped her cook better. I expected it helped her ignore everyone’s grimaces at the dinner table after a few bites of gravy.
