by C. D. Reiss
When I’d gotten got back upstairs, she hadn’t moved. It might be the first time she’d actually obeyed me.[→4]
The bed creaked and bent when I sat on the edge. “Let me see your hands.”
She held them out, and I bit the end off the burn ointment.
“I’m sorry about this. This is not how we start.” I gently coated her palms with the clear gel.
“We’re not exactly normal. Ow.” Her wrist twitched, but she didn’t pull away.
“Are you sure you want to marry me? You’re committing yourself to a man who gives you burned hands.”
“Oh,” was all she said.
I looked from her hand to her face. Her eyes were cast down, only slivers of blue visible from my angle, but her answer was in the shape and twitch of her mouth. Her lips were held tightly together, narrowed, straight across, and her cheeks dimpled. She was trying not to smile.
“I mean it,” I said, capping the tube. There wasn’t much I could do about the bump on her head besides clean it off. I pulled her hair away so I could see it. “You’ll have to learn to speak Italian so you can curse me like a good Neapolitan wife.”
The smile broke into a full crescent of teeth. “I’ll invent new words to curse you with. Promise.” She put her fingers on my shirt buttons and slipped them through the holes. “Now get this off. Your arm and your head need attention.”
I got out of my shirt. I thought she wanted to get us naked so I could take her, but the sleeve stuck to my bicep and hurt when I ripped it away. I looked at the raw wound, bordered in gunpowder[→5] and angry pink between the split skin.
“This is going to scar,” she said.
“More proof I lived.”
She spun on her bottom, hopped off the other side of the bed, and padded to the sink. She snapped a worn white towel from the rack and wet it, twisted it into a rope to get the last of the excess water out, then sat next to me.
“No crying now,” she said. “Be a big boy.”
She pressed the towel to the wound. It hurt enough to make me bite back a grunt, but I didn’t make a sound as she cleaned it off. She patted my head with the same cloth. The blood there had been wiped away on the drive down. We’d covered it with my hair so we could pass through customs.
“This already looks better,” she said about my head. “You have amazing healing powers. The arm though…” She dabbed my arm again.
“I guess you’ll clean the children’s knees with a wet cloth too? I can see it.”
“If the children have gunshot wounds, you’re the one who’s going to need first aid, Mister Spinelli.” She squirted my arm with antibiotic gel and ripped open the packet of gauze with her teeth. She didn’t remove the gauze from the envelope. Didn’t move.
“What?”
“I was so busy thinking about myself. I didn’t even think about children.”
I took her chin and pointed her face at me. Close up, I could see tiny pieces of grit inside her scrape. “We’re out.”
“I don’t feel out.”
With the other end of the white towel, I patted the bump on her head, cleaning it. “You’re out. I’m out. We go back to being civilians. We just have to get into LA without being seen and back out again. Should be easy.”
She plucked the gauze from the paper package and looked around for the tape. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.” She taped the square of gauze to my wound, swallowing her nerves. “I’m scared, Capo.”
I took the tape and put it to the side. “You’re not to be scared.”
I’d said it as if it were an instruction. I should have soothed her, but I didn’t know how. So I kissed her. I kissed her long and hard. To suck her fear out of her. To eat it alive and spit out the bones. I pushed her back onto the mattress and kissed her harder. Her hands stayed burn-side up, but the rest of her body arched up to meet mine.
I moved my hips against her, the clothing between us getting hot with friction. “Give yourself to me, and I’ll fuck the fear from you.”
Her eyes fluttered closed as I pushed myself against her, increasing the pressure until I thought I’d burst.
“Your answer, Contessa,” I whispered in her ear. “Your answer. Answer. Answer.” I was ready to get off her if she said no, but I knew she wouldn’t.
“Take me,” she breathed. “You crazy, beautiful bastard. Take me.”
I got up and peeled off her pants, yanking her legs open so I could see her pussy. She tried to close them, and I pulled her legs open again, bending the knees.
“Don’t move.” Standing over her, I got my pants off. I was going to fuck her so hard that we were one person, to touch that sameness between us so I could understand it.
Two fingers in her, and she was soaked. She bucked against the thin mattress, and when I ran my wet fingers over her clit, she cried out. I wanted to taste her, to tease her, to spend hours swimming in our heat. I wanted to fuck her hard and fast. Plant myself inside her and drive to the finish. I wanted to fuck her mouth, her ass, her cunt, her very being. I didn’t know how to do all the things I wanted to do to her.
I got on my knees quickly, pulled her seam apart until everything was exposed, and I ran my tongue over her. She dug her fingers into my hair as I fucked her with my tongue and hands. Two fingers in her ass. A thumb in her pussy. My mouth sucking her clit. Other hand squeezing her nipple tight to hold her still. When she came, all of Mexico heard.
I didn’t wait until she breathed. I had to have her. My spit had to be on her cunt when I fucked it, the last of my fingers in her ass still. She was so wet, so soft when I fucked her, and her mouth was open, unfucked. Unacceptable. I rolled her over so she was on top. I pressed her tongue down with three fingers and took her face too. I was everywhere inside her. Ass and mouth and pussy. All mine. All of it.
And still, a few hours later, in the dark of night, with her breathing next to me, touching every part of her as if committing to a sacrament, I didn’t know what we were. But I knew I’d have to leave her alone on the earth. One way or the other, they would get me. Going in or going out. I was a dead man and something else. I was the man who would prepare her for his death.
two.
THE NEXT MORNING
theresa
onathan had tried to kill himself when he was sixteen. It had been over a girl, my friend Rachel. At the time, I’d thought it was because they split up, but it had been much, much more complicated. He’d suffered, and I hadn’t been there for him, not in the way I should have been. I was beating myself to a pulp over it in the hostel, brushing my thumb over Antonio’s arm. I would be there this time, and as stressful as it was to go back to Los Angeles, reestablishing that balance released a different source of tension.
“This has a texture,” I said, running my fingers over the volcano tattoo inside his left wrist.
He’d just brought me to orgasm twice, and I was on my stomach, getting my brain reorganized. Once I’d stopped screaming in ecstasy, he’d opened the windows. Children played in the street two stories down, and we spoke softly as if they could hear us.
“It’s not a tattoo. Not really.” He got up on his elbows and held out his wrists. “The shape is cut with a knife, and they rub ink from a pen on it.”
I looked closely. Every line was a bump. “Blue pen?”
“I asked for the blue. I liked it.”
“Did it hurt?” I stroked the lines of Vesuvius.
“Yes.”
“It’s dangerous to cut the inside of the wrist. Did it bleed a lot?”
“Are you going to ask me if I cried?”
“I know you did.”
He took me in his arms and kissed my face. “Like a baby.”
I looked at the ceiling for a second as his hand trailed up and down my body like a boat on still water, leaving widening wakes of sensation.
I rolled over. The window faced north, so the morning sun was cool and soft. “We have a few hours before the passports come.”
“I have plans
for you.”
“More of the same?”
“No, I’m sorry to say,” he said, sitting straight up. “I’ve left you vulnerable. We are going back as civilians, but that doesn’t mean we go back stupid.”
He took the gun off the table and checked the ammunition. He pivoted on his ass then stood above me with it, naked, shoulders at an angle that balanced the pedestal of his neck. His waist, his hips, his tight stomach with a line of hair leading to the perfection of his half-erect cock, all were meant for me.
He snapped the gun closed, reminding me of everything hard and hot and dangerous. All the reasons we were going to hell. I felt two jolts. One between my legs. The other in my heart.
“I did it,” I said. “With Paulie. I shot him. I held the gun, and I pulled the trigger. That’s on me.”
“Because he was coming at me.”
I sat up. Paulie had been coming at Antonio, and if I was ever unsure whether or not I’d kill for him, I wasn’t anymore. But in the haze of thinking Antonio was dead, to needing to stay completely and utterly calm for the trip to TJ, to finding out about my brother and planning for our return, I hadn’t had a moment’s peace to think about what killing for him meant.
I looked away from Antonio at the foot of the bed. Past the wrought-iron footboard, the mirror stared back at me. I was naked, hair hanging over my shoulders in a post-coital nest. I looked as I always had, and him above me, dark hair contrasting with the whiteish walls, body lithe and tight and perfect, dark eyes with lashes longer than should be legal. The mirror couldn’t see Antonio’s taste in my mouth, his cum dripping from me, my aching pussy. It couldn’t see the change in my brain caused by the sex and the safety, the dam of avoidance dropping and the torrent of truth.
I held up my right hand to block my face in the mirror, and I saw something I shouldn’t. The little black stain was probably caused by the dirty mirror, because when I turned my palm around to look at it directly, it was red from a burn, not black with sin. Downstairs, a child’s scream turned to laughter. I pressed my lips between my teeth.
Antonio looked down at me. “Theresa?”
“I didn’t…” I pressed my finger to his lips. “I can’t accept that you forgive me.”
He sat down, twisting to face me. “You didn’t mean it.”
Mean it? What did that even mean? No one means to shoot anyone, except psychopaths and nihilists.
“I did mean it.”
He pulled my fingers away from his lips, but I shook my head violently and put both hands over my face. I couldn’t look at him, or anyone. Especially not myself. That mirror, it bothered me. It flattened everything into truth.
Antonio straightened like a shot, straddling me. He took my hands from my face and filled my vision. The eye of the storm: a place of peace and calm, and the most dangerous space to be in. The eye made you complacent and comfortable, and the next minute, while you were enjoying the cloudless sky, you’d be swept into a violent wind.
“Theresa,” he said, his accent like music, the concern on his face as real as his taste on my tongue. “Contessa. Amore mio. Ascolta. We are animals. You. Me. The kids playing outside. We wash ourselves. We cook our food. We speak in big words and have ideas. But we are animals. We fuck and we shit, and when we have to survive, we kill.”
We kill. Did that mean everyone, or just me? Just us? Just the family I’d forced my way into for reasons that even I couldn’t articulate?
“No. I don’t believe that,” I said, knowing he was right no matter how I let the light hit it.
He cupped my chin and held my head fast, as if keeping me still would ensure I heard him. “Your life will be easier if you accept it.”
What about me deserved an easy time of it? I’d never earned the ease I’d been given, and now that I’d done what I’d done, my worthiness was even more questionable. His eyes met mine, and I saw nothing but the depth of his troubles. Decades’ worth of weight. Would I add mine to his? Would I harp on my sin until he took responsibility for my corruption? I could break him. I knew that. If he thought I was destroyed beyond recognition, he’d take it all on himself.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just adjusting.”
“Don’t adjust too much. If something has to be done again, it’s for me to do.”
“I know.” I turned away, and he let my chin go. “Trust me.”
“First thing, we don’t separate. I am with you always. If you need defending, I’m going to do it.”
I admired the way he assessed and took control of a situation. I admired his passion and heat, his old world attitudes and how he was willing to bend them to accommodate his respect for me, and how unwilling he was to let go of his responsibility to protect me from all the evil I’d brought on myself. I couldn’t have asked for better, and that made me want to shield him from the worst of me.
“I love you, Capo.”
“Say you understand.”
“I understand. We stay together. All the way back to Los Angeles.”
“And you do not pick up a weapon to defend me. As long as I’m alive, I am your weapon,” he said.
“You’re not dying.”
“Say it. Say I am your weapon.”
“You are my weapon.”
“I see you, beautiful Contessa. Don’t think I’m blind.”
“What do you mean?” My voice was sharper than I wanted it to be. I was afraid he saw my emotional discomfort and mistook it for guilt. But it wasn’t guilt he saw. I’d turned my back on heaven when I pulled that trigger, and I felt no regret. I didn’t want him to see the empty hole where guilt and sorrow should have been.
“You don’t have as much practice at this, and today, before the passports come, I’m going to teach you to defend yourself for the day I may be gone.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“Call it a sleep then. I need you to know what to do if I sleep.”
I nodded, because I knew what I’d do if anything happened to him. I’d find the bastards who did it, and I’d put them to sleep with Paulie. I was a talented psychopath. I had a real God-given gift.
I kissed Antonio so he wouldn’t be able to look in my eyes and see what was broken and what was whole. He owned me with his lips, protected me and told me I was worth saving when I felt less than worthy. I loved him for trying, for telling me how precious I was without saying a word. I wanted another hour with him, so he could fuck me so hard I became the human he thought I was.
three.
theresa
t felt hard and warm, the surface supple to the touch, with curves designed to comfort the force of a closed fist.
“You know how to use it?” Antonio asked, even though he knew the answer.
The long brushy desert behind the hostel was perfect for target practice, and the owner didn’t seem to mind bullets flying as long as we didn’t disturb or shoot the guests. It was as good a pastime as any while we waited for passports to be fashioned out of lies.
I took aim at the empty Coke bottle, putting the pin of the front sight into the notch of the rear sight. Squeezed. Missed.
He smiled on one side of his mouth, lips full in the blasting Mexican sun, face cast in hard shadows that accentuated the flawless angles of his face. “I can see that it bothers you.”
“What? That I missed? Everyone misses. It’s a small object, and you put it far away.” Was I whining? Maybe.
“But it bothers you.”
He put his fingertip on the back of my neck and started to say something, as if he would teach me how to shoot. That was why he’d brought me out here. Before he could start, I leveled the gun on the bottle and squeezed, expecting to waste a bullet.
The bottle shattered.
He pressed his hand to the back of my neck.
“I’m getting anxious.” I pulled the trigger again. A ping echoed over the rocks when I hit the bottle just at the edge. It spun then fell. “Every hour that passes… I might miss him.”
“I think we can make i
t,” he said.
“Then what?”
He ran his hand down my neck. “The Carlonis can’t find out we’re alive. I shamed Donna Maria by running from her granddaughter. She’ll want me dead and pay good money for someone to do the job. But these are the American mafia. They watch too many movies. The Italians I think I can make peace with. Once that’s done, I’m going to marry you.”
“Can’t be a big church wedding.” I bent my elbow until the gun pointed at nothing but the sky. “Not without family.”
“No. Maybe.” He ran his hand up my arm and over my body until he found my chin. I felt safe and loved when he looked at me like that, eyes shadowed by the sun but still intense enough to compete with its blaze. “I want something so badly, and I’m afraid to even say it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to tempt God.”
“Say it.” I felt more than heard the breath he took. “God can’t hear you out here.”
His glance toward the heavens was almost imperceptible. “I want to go home. I want to take you into my family. To make you a part of… we’ve always looked for a new life. Maybe that was the mistake. Maybe we need to make the best of the old life.”
“How? I don’t even know how.”
He leaned forward, and I leaned into him until I felt his stubble on my lips. “Me neither,” he said. “But come home with me and try. Come home with me.”
I wondered, not for the first time, when it had happened. When I’d fallen in love. When I’d committed myself so irrevocably. When the thought of a world without him hadn’t seemed grey and flat.
It wasn’t the sex. It wasn’t the way he fucked me as if he wanted to peel my skin off and enter my soul. It wasn’t the way his unreasonable demands made me wet rather than angry. It wasn’t the violence, or the knowledge that he would do anything he had to in order to get what he wanted. He’d murder, steal, hurt himself. Hurt me.
Nor was it the way he took on responsibility for my brother as if Jonathan was his own. Daniel would have asked me what I wanted to do then explained why he was too busy to be with me for it. Or we’d talk about what to tell the media. But my problems would be inconveniences, puzzles to be solved. He wouldn’t own them. Antonio owned me, meaning my body, my soul, and my family. I didn’t know how to own him with the same surety. I didn’t know how to want things for us.