by Gabi Moore
I stared in horror at the message from a number I didn’t recognize. I heard Sophia opening and closing cabinet doors in the kitchen. I swiftly closed the bedroom door behind me and stood with my back to it. Then I hit “dial” and held the phone to my ear, fingers shaking with rage.
“Hello?”
“Who the hell is this?” I hissed. I could almost hear a smile through the phone line.
“What? You don’t recognize me? It’s your old friend,” the voice said, so casual it seemed sinister.
“Uncle Vito?”
“What, you think it’s the Easter bunny?” he laughed drily.
I swallowed so hard it was nearly painful.
“I’m not interested in any deal or any arrangement or anything. I haven’t seen you in years.”
“So? Family’s family.”
“You’re not family. Jesus,” I mumbled.
I couldn’t shake the images I had seen of him in the media, the snapshots of bloody murder scenes, the laundering accusations, the corruption. And now he was here, in my shaking hands. In my bedroom.
“In any case, I’m down a few men. What can I say, loyalty is thin on the ground these days. I need some new blood. Good men. I need someone without any history. Someone I can trust.”
Had he always had that ridiculous TV gangster accent? For some reason, it sounded so much thicker now than I remembered it, all those years ago. Those years when I was so desperate I had clung to anything that looked like a solution. Even if that thing was none other than Vito Roselli.
“No,” I said, and did nothing to fill up the silence after it. He grumbled into the line.
“OK, kiddo, look. You’re a businessman, right? I know you understand money. So I’m going to put this in terms you’ll understand. How much do you want?”
I heard a cupboard door slam again as Sophia rummaged around in the kitchen, completely unawares. I had to end this call.
“I don’t care about money,” I said, looking at Sophia’s crumpled underwear lying on the floor. “I said no. The past is the past. I’ve moved on.” I couldn’t even imagine what a guy like him could want from someone like me.
“Ah …it’s the girl?”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“You leave her alone.”
Silence.
I knew what Vito had done. Everyone knew. And I knew what he was capable of doing. But I didn’t give a shit.
“And if you ever come around to my house again I’ll personally come after you myself and so help me y--”
I was cut short by his amused laughter.
“Kid! Kid, relax! Ha, you always were like that, weren’t you? So feisty. Man, I remember now,” he said, still laughing. My face burnt.
“Baby?” Sophia yelled from the kitchen. “Baby, do you know where that vase is? Not the round one but the long, tall one?”
“I don’t know! Just a second!” I yelled, covering up the phone for a moment, then leaning in to speak again.
“Don’t fucking go near her.”
“Listen, Leo. I’m not gonna do anything to your girl. Fuck. In any case, if she really knew who you were, she’d leave on her own, right?”
I could hear the smile in his voice again.
“I’m a different person now,” I whispered.
“She doesn’t know about you, does she?”
“Doesn’t know what? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You know what the trouble with the younger generation is, Leo? It’s that you guys only know how to take. Only ever on the lookout for what you can get out of people. But when it comes to making a contribution? Well…”
I was stunned. Vito Roselli was lecturing me about contribution. And more stunning than that, I wondered if he could possibly be right.
“I was just a kid.”
“And now you’re a man. You got a girl, I get that. But I’m not asking for favors here, Leo. I don’t like saying it, you know I don’t, but you would have been dead in the streets were it not for me, and don’t you forget it.”
I didn’t know what to say. Was I really going to be bullied and blackmailed for something I did more than twenty years ago, as a child? My head spun.
“But baby, did you move it or something?” Sophia yelled again, but this time I could hear her voice getting louder as she approached the bedroom.
“Baby…?”
“Fine, I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t ever fucking call me again, I’ll call you,” I spat and hung up, then tossed the phone onto the bed.
I stepped back from the door and she opened it.
“Who …who were you talking to?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
“Nobody,” I said and gave her a kiss. “The cats. I was talking to the cats. I saw that vase under the sink, it’s right at the back,” I said, and walked off to the kitchen before she could see how shaken I was.
Chapter 4 - Sophia
I lit some incense, blew at the band of fragrant smoke a little till it wobbled in the air, and then gently placed the burner off to the side. I shook my hands, and cracked my neck. I walked over to the stereo and adjusted the volume of the music - or “space whale music”, as Leo liked to call it - and took a deep, cleansing breath, feeling my ribcage open slowly and then knot back closed.
Good.
The body is a temple, you see. An arena where we play out the dramas of our existence, an altar where all the magic unfolds. For the first half of my life, my body had been nothing but a dumping ground. A trash can. And it never stops seeming like a miracle to me how it still works today, even after all the damage I’ve inflicted on it.
I slid open the Japanese paper doors and poked my head into the waiting room.
“Emily?”
A pert girl with a blonde ponytail looked up at me and smiled. It’s important to make sure the first client of the day is one you really enjoy. I waved her in and she came into the massage room. She had a strong, lean body, but she was riddled with pain and had been since the first day I met her.
She would come in some days and tell me that she finally understood that the crunchy knots she felt in her neck were the crystalized words of criticism from her mother when she was growing up. Or she’d tell me about a dream she had while I worked on the pressure points all up and down her outer leg. Or sometimes we’d work on opening up her breathing a bit more, making sure that she was sending oxygen to her legs, which were now healing and functional even after dozens of doctors told her she’d never walk again.
Emily settled onto the table and I began to work on the muscles around her flanks and spine.
“You’re feeling really fluid today,” I said, and marveled at how she seemed to be melting under my very fingertips, a far cry from the usual ten minutes we’d have to spend to get her to loosen up.
She giggled. “Well, let’s just say I’ve met another ‘bodyworker’ recently.”
My hands paused on her skin.
“You’ve…?”
“I know, it’s a bit sudden, and I’m feeling really giddy about the whole thing, but remember that guy I mentioned? Andrew?”
“The programmer guy?”
“Yeah, him! Well, it’s going really well, actually…” she giggled again. I could almost feel her blushing.
“Emily, that’s amazing.”
“I know …he’s just so …so…”
It was like her body actually shivered and pulsed underneath my fingertips as she struggled to find the right words.
“He just …touches me, you know? I can’t really describe it. It’s so much more than sexy. He just …he has this way of setting me completely on fire.”
I smiled and continued rolling and stroking my hands over her body, working more deeply into her tissues.
“Well, it sounds like it’s working for you, you have almost no tension back here!”
She laughed.
“Honestly, at the rate we’re going he’s going to paralyze me again or something, I swear… Maybe I should forget abo
ut appointments with you and just make sure he’s regularly working the tension out, if you know what I mean.”
I winced.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m just joking. I’ll always keep coming back to you. You’re the expert on these things, after all. But you said it once before, sensuality is important in life…”
I tried to pretend that she hadn’t hurt my feelings. I rolled and kneaded further, letting the conversation drop.
“Ouch!”
I pulled my hands back.
“You’re …you’re being a little rough,” she said and laughed nervously.
She was right.
I was relieved when our session was over and I waved her goodbye. I blew out the incense, turned off those godawful screeching whales and tried to gather myself for a second. I had never hurt a client before. Ever. Not in my training, not in the few years I had run this center. Never. I was the girl with the golden hands, the little lost waif who took a vicious past of addiction and poverty and turned it all around with nothing but patchouli massage oil and a clear mind.
So what the hell was going on with me?
I exhaled loudly and checked my watch. I was probably just tired. Leo had been acting weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly. And why was I jealous of some girl who was in the throes of new lust …didn’t I already have the jackpot with Leo? Still, it nagged at me as I stripped the bed and started to prepare for the next client. Sure, Leo made me feel good. But did he make me feel that good? Like, so good I wanted to giggle and gush to strangers about it?
That was the real problem right there.
The last time we had sex, it was just weird. Not boring exactly but …I tossed the sheets aside and took another deep breath. No, no I had to be honest. Sex with my six foot two, insanely muscled, intelligent, emotionally aware and devoted boyfriend was boring.
I absentmindedly changed the music – or ‘hippie forest jams’, according to Leo - and chewed my nails a bit.
I would never admit it to a soul, but years ago I actually had felt that crazy sexual energy, that touch from another human that seemed to almost literally set me on fire. Too bad it was from the long-forgotten string of abusive boyfriends that carouselled in and out of my life when I was at my absolute lowest.
I shook the thought out of my mind and went to look at my phone.
Huh. A message from him.
Something very important I want to discuss with you tonight. Come home early if you can. I’m making us dinner.
I must have been crazy to doubt him. How the hell could I have an issue with the best partner I’d ever had, with the first guy in my world who offered to treat me like more than just something to take advantage of? I felt a pang of guilt for reminiscing about a past I had sworn to never go back to.
I was lucky to have Leo. And I would do whatever it took to make sure that he never understood quite how broken I was before I met him. I replied to the message and started to unfold another sheet for the bed.
Growing up in foster homes, getting lost in the system, I was surrounded on all sides by people addicted to one drug or other. But as far as I can see, the most dangerous drugs are those that are a little harder to see, hard to even think about clearly. The truth? It wasn’t all that difficult to drop my raging heroin addiction. And sure, it was tricky to find work and get back on my feet, but not impossible. The greatest challenge of my life wasn’t cutting my addiction to helplessness or the junk food I funneled in every day or the booze or the painkillers. Relatively speaking, that was all easy to shirk off, when I wanted to.
The difficult addiction, the really evil drug, was invisible for the most part. My caseworker wrinkled her top lip and called it a ‘sex addiction’. And maybe it was. But it was something else. Things I could swallow, and smoke tweaked the molecules in my brain and body till I felt good. Alcohol numbed, cigarettes soothed. Four big macs in a row was my equivalent of a warm hug from someone who gave a shit about me. But sex? I never really understood why I was as drawn to it as I was.
Sex was the one addiction I had never truly triumphed over because, frankly, I was never really sure what it did to me. On a molecular level. On a spiritual level. I never understood its hold on me. Taking drugs is one thing. I know how to take them, and I know how to quit them – after all, I’ve done it often enough! But sex? The things I’ve done? They’re a different kettle of fish.
I’ve been out of control on this substance or that pill. I’ve blacked out. I’ve forgotten things, and I’ve been desperate and made every poor decision you could dream of. But with sex …well, sex was the one demon I still hadn’t completely exorcized. It still hovered around the edges of my nightmares. Still clung all sticky and seductive in my daydreams sometimes, and now it was threatening to take the first real relationship I had and tear it to pieces.
But I wouldn’t let it. Leo was far too important to me. I hadn’t come all this way to gripe about a slightly less than ecstatic sex life. This was the real world, and I wasn’t done pulling myself up my bootstraps just yet.
I carried on down the appointment list. Luckily, my last client for the day cancelled at the last minute, leaving me to head home early and see about this ‘very important’ something that Leo wanted to discuss. When you’re a couple, you have to have ‘chats’. You have to get in touch with your feelings, to express them. For someone like me, you can’t overdo this kind of thing, obviously. So, fine.
But on the drive back home a strange memory popped into my mind. I thought of Rhonda, a woman I had met the very first time I went to rehab. She had been clean for more than five years and fancied herself something of a cheerleader, playing mother hen to all the wayward kids in the center who couldn’t make it to next Friday, nevermind five years.
I remembered her kind yet grizzled face, and the way she pursed her lips tight and stared right at you, right through you. And I’ll never forget what she said to the group one afternoon. She sighed and said, “Nobody else will tell you this, but you need to hear it. Addictive substances are good. Real good. If they weren’t, would any of you be here now? The world after drug addiction is safer. It’s more sane. It’s stable. But it’ll never be as good as being high, not even close. That’s the truth. The sooner you can mourn that and let it go, the better. If you don’t, you’ll always keep coming back to it.”
Chapter 5 - Leo
I didn’t know it at the time – I couldn’t have known it at the time – but it was the turning point of my life. The day on which my whole being swiveled and changed direction, forever. That day, the day I ran so hard I felt my whole world would burst open, was the skinny, malnourished line between one era of my life and another…
The longest up until that time had been three days. Three and a half depending on how you count it. The sun rose like a little ball of syrup freeing itself from the horizon and I thought calmly: today will be the day that I die.
I felt that kind of cold you get after you’ve been really cold for a long time already. The kind of cold that happens when you think something awful’s definitely starting to happen to your body, and all you can think of is meat in a freezer, and how you’re finished, you’re really done for …well, I felt the kind of cold that happens to you three hours after that feeling.
I walked up and down the backstreets for a bit, found nothing there. So I decided, I had to do it. There was no other way. I kicked a can up and down the tarmac for a while to get my nerve up and then found a house that looked broke enough that I knew there wouldn’t be too much security going on inside. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and double checked that nobody was around.
I busted into a rundown apartment that opened back onto a dim alleyway. It was cold enough that I didn’t feel the broken glass scratch me as I slunk inside.
I could feel my heart in my ears, and thought how funny it was to have my heart there, and not in my chest, like normal. It was an old lady’s house, kind of nasty, but I was surprised to find a ton of jewelry and shit i
n her dresser drawers. I ripped it all out, stuffed it in my pockets, and hauled some food from the kitchen and got out of there.
I turned to run and that’s when I heard it: kind of like an animal. Someone breathing hard. My eye catched a weird shape in the shadows a few yards into the alley. Two shapes. Some guy and a …woman. I stopped and stared. She was twisted all strange, folded over and kind of huffing and puffing, and the guy was behind her, slapping his hips against hers. It made me feel strange, watching them like that.
The guy turned and saw me standing there, stolen old lady jewels dangling out my pockets, and two hands full of stolen bread. Shit. And then I saw who it was.
Vito Roselli.
I knew the face instantly. Everyone knew Vito. That face that you can’t be sure if it’s laughing or angry or crazy or just nothing. I knew some kids who knew some kids who worked for him. I heard people say things. ‘Uncle Vito’ was a well-known name around here. But well-known like a disease is well-known, or a famous war is well-known. His was the kind of name that grown-ups hated having to say, hated having to pretend they recognized.
“What you looking at? Huh?” he yelled at me, and I felt like my legs had turned to jelly and I couldn’t move. He stopped making those gross movements. Now the woman was looking at me, too.
“What you got there? Give it to me. You a thief? Huh? You stealing shit?”
He took a step back, zipped up and pushed the woman aside. I knew I should run but I couldn’t.
“Give me what you got or I’ll call the police, huh, how about that?” He gave me this sneer like he’s disgusted by his own words, but also kind of foiund it all funny.
The woman started laughing and pulled down her skirt. I felt a rush of hate in me. I can’t explain it, but suddenly, the cold inside me was getting very, very warm. The cold that had been in me for four days suddenly felt icy hot. The heartbeat in my ears became louder.
“You dumb or something? I said give it to me,” he said and took a step toward me, holding his hand out to my loot.
“No.” I said.