Cocktales

by The Cocky Collective

I took the hand he offered and we walked around the veranda to the side. That door was boarded completely.

  “I have a crowbar in the car,” he said. “But we check the back first, no?”

  “See? You can be sensible too.”

  He put his arm around me and we walked to the back. As we turned the corner, the orchard opened before us. The trees were planted in orderly rows starting about fifty feet from the house, but the ground beneath them was overgrown with bushes and grass. The back garden was rutted, broken, with tables and chairs cracked and overturned. All except one.

  It was a white plastic picnic chair set up next to a tree stump. I broke away from Antonio and walked down wooden steps. The stump had darkened grease spots on the top surface.

  “Someone’s been eating here,” I said. I could feel Antonio’s senses tingling as he scanned the area for more signs of life.

  “You should go back to the car.” His voice had dropped to a whisper, and he pointed to a trodden path of grass that began near the house and extended to the orchard.

  “These stains could be years old,” I said softly. My skin tingled with anticipation. I didn’t want to go to the car. “And it’s someone eating. Not someone shooting.”

  Everything jumped out at me now. The plywood plank next to the back door, not nailed against the frame. The baskets piled by it didn’t have any growth. The water spigot dripped into a half-empty bucket. Three tomato plants hidden in the grass were caged.

  “I’ll take you back to the car.” He reached for my arm, but I dodged him.

  “Stay back!” I said as I hopped up the back steps.

  “Theresa!” he barked, getting behind a tree.

  I turned the knob, threw the door open and ducked behind the wall.

  Nothing. No gunshots. No voices. Just the birds and the rustling of leaves in the breeze. Antonio hopped over the fence around the back veranda and joined me.

  “You’re impossible,” he whispered.

  “I’m only hiding here to appease you.” When I looked back at him, I saw real worry for the first time since we touched the ground. “I ran your empire while you were in prison, Antonio. It’s fine. I can feel it.”

  He stared at me—into me—for a moment, as if reminding himself why he married me in the first place.

  “I go first,” he said.

  “Come vuoi tu.”

  As he came around me to get close to the door, he said, “Your accent, Contessa.”

  Then he was gone, around the corner and into the house. Something made a scuffing noise and water splashed. Antonio cursed.

  “Antonio?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  I went inside. With the windows boarded and the sun rising over the front of the house, the kitchen was poorly lit. Antonio stood by a table covered in stones, surrounded by tall buckets full of water.

  My eyes adjusted and I saw the table wasn’t covered in stones, but olives on a tray. The buckets were full of liquid.

  “Olives brining,” I said.

  “Si.” A female voice came from somewhere, paired with the loud clack of a rifle being cocked. Antonio held his hand toward me to signal that I should stay still, as if I hadn’t frozen in place already.

  “Who’s there?” Antonio asked in Italian. “We won’t hurt you.”

  “No, you won’t.” The English was halting and thick with an Italian accent. The voice was young, clear, confident.

  Another voice uttered a few sentences from the cabinet below the sink, which was ajar. Female and tiny, it belonged to a child. I didn’t understand a word.

  But Antonio laughed.

  “Basta, Simona.” A boy came through the doorway with his rifle pointed at us. He was about twelve years old, with shoulder-length dirty brown hair down and one blue eye open so he could aim.

  “Where did you get this?” Antonio asked, drawing his finger from the side of his mouth and along his cheek. I put together their conversation based on the little Italian I knew and their gestures.

  “Where did you get yours?” The kid jerked the gun to indicate Antonio’s forehead.

  “Bullet.”

  “I won’t miss.”

  Antonio shrugged.

  “Shoot them!” Simona cried from under the sink. I couldn’t tell how old she was or what she looked like, but I could tell she was scared.

  Slowly, I crouched to the ground.

  “What you doing?” the kid demanded in English. I kept crouching, putting my hand on the floor, then my hip.

  “Contessa. Stop,” Antonio hissed. I ignored him, lying on the dirty floor, my legs on either side of a brining bucket, and spread my arms out.

  “Senora! I will shoot you!”

  The minute he moved the rifle to aim it at me, Antonio would take it. If the kid kept it on Antonio, we were okay. If he moved it, we were also okay.

  “I’m dead.” I closed my arms and lolled my tongue out.

  Silence.

  I opened one eye. At that level, I could see Simona in the crack of light through the ajar cabinet door. She was about six. She wore a pink T-shirt with a crown on it. Her hair was black and her eyes were as blue as the boy’s.

  She giggled. “You’re not dead.”

  “Hush. I’m dead.”

  I closed my eye and stuck my tongue out again.

  The cabinet door squeaked. Rustling. The creak of floorboards.

  “Simona!” The boy scolded.

  A light pressure on my forehead, then the tug of fingers through my hair. The soft notes of a little girl humming a sweet song.

  Then, the clack and thump of a scuffle above us.

  I didn’t need to look to know Antonio had the gun.

  I didn’t move. Simona kept stroking my hair and humming as if she and I, and Antonio and the boy, were locked in two separate worlds.

  The boy’s name was Nevio. His eyes constantly darted around as if looking for a hidden army. He sat in the white plastic chair with his legs spread so he could spring forward if necessary. A greasy lock of hair fell in front of one eye, and he jerked his head to move it. He was a cocky little bastard with a heart full of well-earned rage.

  Antonio didn’t bother keeping the gun on him. He’d unloaded it and slung it over his shoulder.

  They barked at each other in Italian so quickly I couldn’t keep up. I sat on the broken back steps and watched Simona pluck the stems from a bucket of olives. I reached a hand in the bucket and she froze. I took an olive, pinched the stem off and put it on the porch rail, next to hers.

  She relaxed and pointed to it. “Quindici.” She started at the first. “Uno. Due. Tre. Quattro…” and on to fifteen. Quindici. I clapped.

  “Bene! Allora.” I put another olive at the end. “Sedici.”

  “Se-DI-ci.” She corrected my pronunciation, of course, and produced another olive. “Diciassette.” Seventeen. I wasn’t even going to try it.

  Behind me, the conversation between Antonio and Nevio had gotten gentler. Less barking. I turned to see if they were biting.

  Nevio was telling a story. Antonio leaned on a barrel with his arms crossed, nodding and adding the occasional, “Si, si.”

  I wondered why he wasn’t worried someone else was going to show up with more than a rifle.

  “Simona,” I said. “Where’s your mother?”

  The girl didn’t look at me. Didn’t answer with a word or a gesture. She just hummed, plucking stems off olives, making a new row on the edge of the railing without counting.

  She was humming the same tune she did when she’d stroked my hair.

  “Put me the fuck down!” I beat Antonio’s back, elbowed the back of his head and aimed at his face when I kicked, but he held me over his shoulder and walked me the length of the estate’s driveway like the caveman he was.

  “Basta, woman!”

  I looked up, leveraging my hands on his back, and looked at the house. One of the upstairs windows didn’t have plywood over it. The shower curtain that covered it moved. I waved. The
kids were watching.

  “This is a great example you’re setting.”

  He opened the passenger side of the car. “Obedience is also an example,” he said, dropping me to my feet.

  “We can’t leave.” I pushed his chest. “They’re all alone.” His felony black eyes were unreadable, but the tightness of his mouth told a story of inner conflict.

  “They’ve been alone for a year. Now get in the car.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to scare them. Now please. Get in the fucking car.”

  With a last glance to the upper floor, I sat in the car and he shut the door. In the seconds it would take him to walk around to his side, I could get out. I could run back to them and…

  And what?

  Cook them dinner?

  Hug that little girl and listen to her hum?

  He was in the car before I could come up with a productive plan, and we were off.

  “What the hell is going on?” I growled. He didn’t reply. He just drove slowly past the gate and got out, leaning in before he walked away.

  “Do not get out of this car, Contessa, or I swear to you…”

  “What?” I snapped.

  He walked away without telling me.

  In the passenger rearview, I watched him close the gate and wrap the chain again. He put the padlock on an uncut link, tossing the broken segment into the brush.

  He got back in the car and rested his hand on the gearshift. He’d spoken to Nevio for a long time while I’d sat by the girl I assumed was his sister. They were obviously squatting and obviously alone. She’d broken my heart in her little pink shirt with the crown. She’d started to trust me, and taken me around the house where I saw their fire pit with the charred bones of a small animal piled to the side. Cucumbers growing along the side of a fence. A naked Barbie doll she named Principessa.

  I didn’t need Antonio to tell me any of what I already knew, but there was more to these two squatters than met the eye.

  I also knew my husband. He’d earned my trust.

  “What’s going on?” I put my hand on top of his.

  “We drive,” he said, putting the car into gear. “Then we talk.”

  I could live with that. I had no choice.

  I thought he was going to take me back to the city, but we only went deeper into the guts of the countryside. He was driving for the sake of driving, thinking and processing in the presence of his wife. On a winding two lane road bordered by trees, he swung the car onto the shoulder and slammed to a stop. He put the car into park and held up a finger.

  “I have something to say.”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s my grandfather’s house and I’m responsible for what’s in it.”

  That was heartening.

  “I’m responsible for what happens inside it, past, present, and future.”

  Also heartening.

  “We call the welfare agency when we get back.”

  Why wasn’t that heartening?

  “Are you nervous?” my sister-in-law asked. She bounced her one-year-old daughter on her knee. Gabrielle had been born with the Drazen trademark ginger hair, but it was changing to her mother’s rich brown.

  “About?” I could have been nervous about a hundred things. The waiter helped me stall by taking our plates. My husband and my brother Jonathan had taken to the patio to smoke. We could see them through the French doors overlooking the harbor, and Monica watched Jonathan like a hawk. He had a transplanted heart, and neither she nor his doctors wanted him near cigarette smoke. Not such an easy proposition in southern Europe.

  “He’s upwind,” I said. “Here.” I held my arms out for Gabrielle. “In case you want to dive through the window.”

  She passed the baby over. “He’s so cocky about that heart.” She slid the board book Gabrielle was looking at over to me, but the baby twisted in my arms and rested her head on my shoulder. “He thinks he’s freaking invincible.”

  The baby breathed wetly against my neck, and I laid my hand on her back. Her scent and the way she felt in my arms was so sweet I couldn’t imagine ever standing up.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s nervous,” I said.

  “About Jonathan? I’m always nervous. But anyway…” She swirled her wine and took a sip. “I was asking about meeting his family.”

  Antonio’s estranged mother and sister lived in the city, and once his father died, he negotiated a way back into Italy and planned a meeting with them. We arranged for the honeymoon we never had, crossing my brother’s family for a couple of days while Monica was on tour.

  “I’m not nervous, no. I was yesterday but this afternoon…” I hesitated, rocking the sleeping baby. “We went to his father’s abandoned orchard.”

  “Oh? Olives?”

  “Yes.”

  And children.

  “Well, you guys are experts at that now.”

  Antonio and I owned an olive orchard in Temecula, and she thought I was nervous about that. I wasn’t. Maybe it was that misunderstanding. Maybe it was the baby sleeping on my shoulder, or the comforting sight of my sister-in-law in a strange place. Maybe it was all the violence I’d seen and done contrasting with the gentleness of the surroundings. Maybe I’d been holding back tears for hours and they were ripe. But my face scrunched and my sinuses tingled, forcing out a sob.

  “Jesus, Theresa.” She pulled my napkin from my lap and handed it to me. “What happened?”

  I could barely speak through the tears, but I finally got it out.

  “There were children.”

  JONATHAN

  “How do you like it?” Antonio asked, releasing a plume of smoke toward the sea. Antonio stood by the railing, upwind, mindful of my transplanted heart.

  “It’s like Los Angeles twenty years ago,” I said. “Same weather. Smells like shit.”

  “But the people are better.”

  “Truth.” I tipped my wine to him and sipped. One glass was all I was supposed to drink, and I savored every drop.

  I could get used to southern Italy, except the cigarettes. Every time we walked down the street, someone was smoking. And every time, like goddamn clockwork, Monica pulled me away like a mother hen.

  I counted the times. Twelve times yesterday got her twelve swats with my belt last night. My guess? She did it because she liked the punishment.

  I glanced through the restaurant’s patio doors. She was watching me. Five times I checked, five times she was watching me and not the baby. That would be five strokes with my hand plus seven with the belt for pulling me away from smoke during the day. She handed the baby to my sister, but she’d still get swatted if she didn’t keep her concern to herself.

  I loved my wife’s concern more than I loved punishing her for it.

  A waitress brought espresso and Sambuca with curls of lemon peel on the rim.

  With the last drag, Antonio stamped the cigarette out and sat across from me. He spoke in Italian, but a little more slowly than normal. I was capable of speaking a few languages, but my fluency wasn’t always as good as a native.

  “Your daughter is beautiful,” he said, rubbing the lemon on the edge of his cup and dropping it in the saucer. “She’s losing the red hair.”

  “If we’re lucky she’ll look like her mother.” He dropped a bit of Sambuca in his cup.

  “Salud to that.” He tilted the cup toward me.

  “Maybe you’ll have a bunch of redheads.”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t tell you?”

  “I don’t know what I don’t know, brother.”

  “No kids.” He tipped his espresso down, finishing in one gulp.

  I was surprised. Theresa had always wanted children. I couldn’t believe she’d marry a man who didn’t.

  “I’m not supposed to ask why.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s rude.”

  “Fucking Americans.”

  “Well, we’re in Italy, so I’m asking. Why won’t you let her
have kids?”

  I tried not to sound angry, but maybe I did.

  “Me?” He tented his fingers over his chest. “It’s not me.”

  “Then?” I prepared my espresso. “What did you do?”

  “Now I know why Americans don’t ask.” He crossed his legs and leaned deep in his chair. “You’re pushy.”

  “That’s why we rule the world.”

  A shot of a laugh escaped his lungs.

  “Mio Dio. Asshole. I should blow smoke at your face just to watch your wife take you out of here by your ear.” He fingered his Zippo as he looked over the railing to the sea, but didn’t light a cigarette. “It was the accident.”

  The accident.

  My sister had fallen off a second story veranda with an infamous mob boss. Antonio had taken the blame for the boss’s death, but when mafia soldiers started secretly paying tribute to her in the hospital, we all suspected Theresa had done the deed.

  Antonio put Sambuca in his espresso cup and drained it.

  “She can’t have children,” he said. “A shard of hip bone punctured her…” he paused, pointing to his own stomach. “You know.”

  “Uterus?”

  “Fucking Americans. Yes. They took it out.” He poured more Sambuca. Between the sugar and the alcohol content, he was going to pickle his brain. I hailed the waitress.

  “Can you get this guy an aperitif?”

  “Limoncello,” he cut in. “And Pellegrino for the American.”

  When the waitress was gone I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees.

  “You could—”

  “Basta. I don’t want to adopt. No surrogates. It’s children as God intended or nothing. I give my life to my Theresa. That’s the end of it. Let’s talk about calcio or something normal.”

  I leaned back and glanced through the window into the restaurant. Monica wasn’t watching me. She and Theresa were talking closely, with real seriousness to their posture. Theresa wiped her eyes. Turning back to Antonio, I was glad he didn’t see his wife’s tears, and changed the subject so he wouldn’t react.

  “You inherited a house,” I said.

  “Went today. Roof leaks. Foundation’s cracked.”