by Gina LaManna
And despite the fact that she was richer than God, Nora continuously insisted a meal wasn’t worth eating if it wasn’t homemade. Carlos brought up the idea of hiring a chef over and over again (probably so we could enjoy a fully edible meal), but she’d laugh and pat his head. No, no, dear. I can handle it. I wouldn’t trust anyone to feed you except myself. Then she’d kiss him on the forehead, and Carlos would choke down another cookie.
“Sit, sit, honey.” Nora ushered me to sit next to the chair reserved for Carlos, who owned the head of the table. “Look who showed up for lunch.”
Nora smiled at me as if I should know who the homeless man across from me was, or the bleached blond fifty-year-old woman next to him.
“Hi,” I said. I did my best not to raise my eyebrows.
“Hey-a, I’m-a Butch. Dis is my lady friend here, Layla.” Butch gave a grin large enough to display his healthy set of missing teeth. If his teeth were bowling pins, I’d be scoring a pretty solid game.
I nodded and looked helplessly at Nora.
Butch spoke again, as if the reason I’d remained silent was because he hadn’t clarified enough.
“She’s a flighh’ attendant,” he emphasized, whistling his “T’s”.
“Wow. Great,” I said.
“Butch is my brother,” Nora said, her smile suddenly falser than normal. “The one that’s lived in Hawaii for the past twenty years. He just moved back.”
“OH! Butch,” I exclaimed, though I’d never seen him before in my life. “My bad. I was mixing you up with the other Butches I know.”
“You know other Butches?” The rumbling voice belonged to my grandfather.
Carlos appeared in the doorway, as intimidating a presence as always.
“Plenty,” I mumbled, quickly wracking my mind. I knew a few butchers, did that count?
Carlos took a swig of the neon limoncello that was sitting in a vase on the table without breaking eye contact with me.
Nora heaved plates of pasta onto the table and ladled sauce on top like a mini Leaning Tower of Pisa, and about just as edible.
“I made this alcohol with my own bare hands,” said Carlos. “I’d make some for your wedding, if that were to ever happen.”
Right, the wedding talk. In Sicily I’d be a barren old maid at twenty-eight. Fine, twenty-nine. Twenty-eight on my skinny days, which were rare.
“I’m working on it.”
He swigged the last of his limoncello.
There was silence as he stared pointedly at his empty cup. Nora rushed over and refilled the glass for him without a word.
“Please,” I gave a half-hearted laugh as Nora retreated quietly. But the truth of the matter was that Nora loved Carlos dearly, and he her. The pair had the option of having servants wait on them hand and foot, but Nora wanted to live a “normal” enough lifestyle, despite her husband’s less-than-normal profession. For her, cooking and bustling about for Carlos was the only way she knew to show her affection. She’d be damned if any of the help filled her husband’s glass at the dinner table.
“What’s that?” he snarled.
“Nothing, sorry. Nothing. Marriage – work in progress.”
“Oh, give her a break, Carlos. She’ll have the special one in no time.” Nora winked at me, and visions of unibrows floated through my brain. My stomach roiled at the thought.
“You wait long enough for the right one, and you’ll find a beauty, just like I did,” whistled Butch. Was he descended from a tea kettle? Honestly.
I vomited a bit in my mouth as his lady friend slid her tongue between Butch’s toothless gums.
“I’d be lucky,” I said, wrinkling my nose reflexively. It was like a terrible freeway wreck – I couldn’t quite look away.
“Business,” said Carlos.
“Eat first,” said Nora.
Chapter 7
CARLOS GRUMBLED, BUT bowed his head as Nora struggled to remember the words to grace. I’d put money that she’d exceeded her three glass limit – having Butch in town would put a stressor on anyone.
“So, your first assignment.” Carlos blinked at me. “It will be difficult and challenging. It’ll take significantly more effort than winning a spelling bee. You’ll need to be fully focused on the task at hand. Understand? Once you work for a bit and get on your feet, we’ll find you a nice man. Yes?”
I nodded politely.
“I like spelling, Lacey, dear. I’ve been playing Words with Friends on my iPad,” Nora chimed in. “Bill and Jean play as a team, the cheating cazzos. Will you play me?”
“Love to,” I mumbled through a mouthful of soggy linguine, snorting at her mangled Italian word for “dicks” in reference to her sweet, old poker friends.
She whipped her iPad out right there from under the table. “My user name is HotItalianMama1946. Add me?”
“Not at the table, Nora. We’re eating,” said Carlos. He turned to me, his face fighting a tough battle between patience and frustration. “I finally let her get this electronic thing, and what does she do? She uses it to play a stupid board game. She doesn’t even use The Google.”
“I have used The Google. Once – see, Bill told me to look up a recipe, but then the window disappeared and never came back. And you won’t help me.” Nora swigged wine and glared at her husband.
“I’ll help you later, I promise.” I patted Auntie Nora on the hand, clicking the ‘Sleep’ button in the meantime. Both grandparents looked slightly appeased. Plus, I was getting anxious to hear what was on Carlos’s agenda.
“I need you to get back something that’s lost,” Carlos said bluntly.
“Lost? As in, misplaced?” I asked.
“Lost. As in someone took it without asking.”
“So – stolen,” I clarified.
“No – it’s lost. People call the police for stolen goods. We deal with lost items ourselves. Understood?”
I nodded. “Totally.”
“Don’t be smart with me,” he said. “I’m giving you a step up in the company. You’re moving from the front of the laundromat to the back room.”
“Deal,” I said. “So you want me to get back some materials. Why?”
“That part is coming. I’m outlining everything.” Carlos worked at his own pace. He couldn’t be hurried or slowed for many people. “Now, you deserve a nice place and a nice man, and we’ll find both of those for you. We’ll get you a little spending money, get you on your feet, and get you an Italian husband.”
I was nodding along, though not completely agreeing. I was just fine without a man, thanks. I mean, the occasional man here and there was nice, sure, but I wasn’t on the hunt by any means.
“Honey, what he’s trying to say...” Nora reached out and put her hand over mine. “Carlos, will you please grab us more wine, dear? It’s just in the next room...”
“Call the butler,” Carlos said.
“Dear.” Nora’s voice was firm. “Please.”
There was one person on earth who could influence Carlos. And that was his wife.
Carlos stood up and hobbled out of the room, grumbling the entire time.
Nora turned back to me. “What I’m trying to say, Lacey, is that Carlos is looking out for you. He knows you’ve had a tough time, what with...”
She paused, and cleared her throat. “What with your mother, and... and all. He’s just trying to give you some guidance in life, and this is the only way he knows how. It might feel a little overbearing, but just promise me you’ll try. He wants to help, but you know Carlos. He doesn’t believe in giving things away for free – he believes in earning things. In working hard. He comes off as crass, but I promise you he’s only trying to help.”
That was an understatement. I mean, I believed in fairness and all, but honestly, I could’ve used an upgrade on my vehicle in the meantime.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”
“Thanks, honey,” she said. Then she gave me a girlish wink. “I told him to go easy on you.”
> I happened to disagree with her characterization of easy, if her husband’s definition was that of one bomb tossed my way, three bullet holes to my tires, and four guns pointed at my face.
Carlos re-entered, carrying a bottle of wine like it was a dirty rag.
“Right, dear?” Nora asked cheerfully. “You’ll go easy on Lacey, and in the meantime we’ll fix her up with Mr. Perfect.”
Carlos grunted.
I let out a long sigh. “Alright – so what’s this job?”
Carlos cleared his throat. “There are some people...”
Carlos gazed suspiciously at Butch and lowered his voice. “Some people of a different race that have the item now.”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” I said. “By a different race, I’m guessing you mean they’re not Italian?”
Political correctness was a term high, high on the list that I needed to show Nora how to look up on The Google; Carlos thought people from England were a different race.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s fine,” Nora said, as Carlos studied Butch suspiciously. “Butch won’t tell anybody, will you, Butchy?”
Butch looked up, sauce smeared around his mouth, a noodle somehow dangling from his nappy hair. “What?”
Butch didn’t know what was going on in this world, let alone at this kitchen table.
Carlos seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He leaned forward, whispering, “The Bratva.”
“Ah,” I said. I felt my stomach clutch a bit. The Bratva was similar to the Italian Mafia, except Russian.
The Organizatsiya (“The Organization”) was the main rival of the Luzzi Family in the Twin Cities. The Luzzi Family controlled drugs, weapons, and a few casinos in the surrounding area, pretty simple stuff. However, a few years ago, the Russians showed up and took a chunk of the market that Carlos hadn’t wanted to give up. The competition was strong; the organized Italian Families were dying out, so it was all the more important than ever that the Luzzis hold on to their share of the market. Plus, the Russians were mean and ruthless and deadly.
“They stole a shipment, about fifteen million dollars’ worth of ‘the good stuff’,” Carlos said, watching Layla as if she were an international secret agent.
Yeah, right. Nobody would go to so far as to kiss Butch to obtain information. I could be sleeping on a doorstep and eating dog food and wouldn’t consider kissing him for any amount of money.
“What’s ‘the good stuff’?” I asked.
Carlos rolled his eyes. “It’s your job to get it back.”
“Al...alright.” I gulped. “Tough first job.”
I wasn’t exactly clear on what “the good stuff” was, but it was easy to deduce that it was drugs of some kind – probably crack or cocaine, if I had to guess.
Carlos raised an eyebrow.
Nora leaned over and patted my hand. “Oh, honey, they’re all tough. Eat up. You’ll need your strength. Someone will be watching out for you, though, don’t worry.”
My appetite decreased in direct proportion to Nora’s scooping more twirly noodles onto my plate. The gravy splashed over the top, and I could barely contain my roiling stomach.
“Well, I should get to work,” I said, standing up and stretching.
“Don’t be silly. Not before you’ve had dessert.” Nora bustled towards the fridge, and I was positive she was reaching for her molasses cookies that were made of the stuff that chipped teeth.
“Oh, I can’t, I’m really stuffed,” I said, looking imploringly at Carlos.
He stared blankly at me, took a cookie from Nora’s obnoxious yellow and pink platter and bit into it, the sound like a car running over an upturned pothole at a hundred miles an hour. He chewed, and I wondered if he’d had his jaw replaced by steel plates since the last time I’d seen him. But since that had been last weekend for dinner, it would’ve been impossible. Probably, he’d still have bruises if someone had rearranged his face.
I reached forward and stared Carlos in the eye, wincing as I crunched my jaw into the cookie. It felt like I’d bitten a metal plate covered in reinforced cement. My eyes watered, but I didn’t break eye contact.
I heard a gasp to my left and a clatter like a box of silverware exploding all over the floor.
Nora stood, hands clasped, eyes teary. “Oh, how I love this. Grandfather and granddaughter bonding over Auntie Nora’s cooking.”
I smiled, unable to swallow the shrapnel in my mouth. I quickly scooted under her embrace to help pick up the cookies, tossing my uneaten one into the trash. I looked closer and saw another half-eaten cookie underneath mine. I raised my eyebrow at Carlos.
He looked blandly back at me. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“I’m on it,” I said, tossing the soiled cookies on the table and rushing for the sweet, sweet relief of my Kia. However, when I got to my car, there was a face staring up at me from the front seat. I unlocked the door carefully and pulled out a crisp manila folder filled with a bunch of papers on which were printed pale faces of blue-eyed Russians.
“How does he do it?” I asked the face of Andrey Shemyakin. “Carlos is a devil magician.”
I cranked the engine into gear and slopped the folder on the seat next to me.
“I hope it’s you,” I told Andrey. “You’re kinda cute.”
WHERE ARE YOU? I TEXTED Clay.
His response was immediate: Laundromat.
I zoomed the Kia towards the more debatable side of town (my side), and squealed into the parking lot that the crumbly laundromat shared with a 7-11. The windows were grimy, the parking lot littered with cigarettes, condoms, and all sorts of nasty wadded gunk.
I stepped into the cavernous room, much bigger on the inside than the outside, and approached the cozy little front desk where I’d spent many hours as cashier for the Family business. Cashier, I’d learned quickly, was code for lookout. I nodded to the unsuspecting patrons changing load after load of jeans, underwear, hoodies, and bed sheets.
“What’s up?” I slid next to Clay, who was currently the lookout.
Unlike me, Clay didn’t need to take a “step up” in the business. He made enough money working inside computers – hacking away at whatever challenge piqued his fancy. Carlos didn’t fully understand exactly what Clay did, but a while ago, after Carlos had fired Clay for refusing to “get his hands dirty like a man,” all of the money mysteriously disappeared from Carlos’s Family Fund bank account. And that was a lot of money.
The next day, Carlos had rehired Clay and paid him a higher rate to do less work. Miraculously, the Family Fund money made its appearance once more, as if it’d never been moved. Ever since, Carlos simply ignored Clay and signed his payroll checks. Of course Clay would never leave the laundromat; he used the easy income to fund his online poker habits and technology cravings.
“What’s up?” he parroted. I saw cards on the background of his laptop screen.
“This your only shift this week?” I asked. We each had to work two shifts at the laundromat desk, except for Clay who’d told Carlos he’d only do one.
Clay nodded, still engrossed in the game.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I have to do for my first assignment?” I stared pointedly at him.
“What? Damn. The deck was hot. Sorry, what?” He finally looked up.
I lowered my voice and explained about the Russians stealing fifteen million dollars’ worth of the good stuff from Carlos. “What is the good stuff, do you know?”
Clay looked at me like I was crazy. “Let me see that folder.”
“I think it’s drugs. Help me with the case.”
“Not a chance.”
“Then you’re not getting this folder.” I tucked it under my arm.
There was nothing Clay hated more than not knowing secret information, which was probably a large reason he’d concentrated his efforts on perfecting the art of hacking, instead of learning about Christopher Columbus and multiplication tables like most fourth gra
ders.
“Fine. I’ll help with the research.” Clay leaned forward, his black hair flopping over the side of his head.
I smiled and handed over the goods. “Thanks.”
I ran next door to my favorite 7-11 and filled up a large pumpkin spice latte: ¼ cup coffee, ½ cup mini marshmallows, and ¼ cup steamed powdery milk. I took a sip of my pure, delicious heaven. I got to the register, eyeing the donuts greedily.
“Morning, Maria,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Will this be all?” she nodded to my coffee.
“Hmmm, uh, mmm – yep.” I heed and hawed with my eyes drawn to the donut case, but a line was forming behind me.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t do this to me,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Just checking.” The small Hispanic woman shrugged behind the counter and punched in my coffee price. “You positive?”
“Dammit Maria, fine. Two donut holes.” I fished out an extra dollar. Maria already had the correct change ready for my expanded purchase. To say this was our typical song and dance would be accurate. I grabbed two donut holes, inserted one into my mouth immediately, and shook my head at the 7-11 manager who was eyeing me as if I’d stolen his precious sugar balls.
“Best sales person ever,” I told him, pointing at Maria. “Bye, girl!”
Maria was already busy with the next customer.
I swallowed both donuts before re-entering the laundromat, since I hadn’t gotten Clay any.
“Get me a donut?” he asked as I approached the counter.
“I didn’t get any. I’m on a diet.” I patted my stomach.
“Sugar diet.”
“I didn’t specify.”
“You’ve got frosting on your teeth.”
“Shit. The good stuff.” I wiped a wayward sprinkle from the corner of my mouth. It was hard to get anything past this guy.
Clay reached over and grabbed my coffee cup and took a swig. His face screwed up in a grimace and he spit the hot liquid into the garbage can next to the desk. “What is this? A cup of diabetes?”
