by C. D. Reiss
I didn’t know where I was going. I just had to get out of that cramped restaurant. The December air hit me full in the face, and I wished for a jacket. But more than that, when I got outside, I immediately calculated the width of the street, the movement of the cars, the foot traffic, the rooftops. I was completely exposed. I’d never felt that while walking across the street before. But every window was a gun perch, and every car was a moving crime scene.
I wasn’t concerned for myself but the fact that I was drawing Antonio out into the open.
Antonio came out of the restaurant, dinging the bell, and our eyes met across the seven-foot expanse of the street. Miles between us, and close enough to kiss. He could take one leap and be on me in the most pleasing agony.
“Get out of the street,” he said, pointing into the restaurant. “Anyone can take a shot at you here.”
I tore my eyes from his and went to the covered driveway that led to the parking lot behind the restaurant. Jesus. I was backing myself into a corner. I wondered if I could hop a fence, then I felt him behind me, and before I even got to the back lot, his hand was on my neck.
Time stopped. I didn’t know how much longer I could do this.
twenty-four.
antonio
he back of her neck, bare except for the stray hair that got out of the rubber band, was warm under my fingers. When I touched her there, getting my finger under the gold chain that held the St. Christopher medal, she stopped, like an animal with an instinctive reaction not to obey but to listen.
“I want you,” I whispered in her ear. “Only you.”
“I know,” she said. “But am I what you need?”
The scent of the food in the restaurant and the idea that any man knows what he needs triggered the memory that had haunted me for years.
My mother never made risotto, but Valentina had been raised in the north, so she’d brought the dish with her. It had to be stirred constantly. If the spatula stopped moving, the grains could get hard in places. For a consistent texture, not one grain could be still for one second. Nor could the temperature fluctuate. Hot broth went in to increase the moisture without cooling the pan. If she put in cold broth, the rice grains would crack into mush. It was a balancing act she did without even thinking.
She had no family to speak of, so she made mine into hers. My mother and aunt loved her, and she loved them. We’d lived in a small house in the outskirts of Napoli. Two bedrooms, a barely finished kitchen, and a backyard big enough to farm in. The winters were mild, and in summer, we buried our trash twice a day in a hole by the back fence because of the humidity. An apple tree took root where we put the garbage, so we moved our digging spot.
She had been making dinner when I saw her last. I was leaving for the night in an hour, and I hoped for a fuck before I went. But she was making risotto for dinner, and I couldn’t stop the process, nor could I skip eating entirely for the sake of the pressure on my dick. She was cooking, and that was all there was to it.
I couldn’t tell her where I was going. That was a given. When I was a mechanic, then a law student, then a lawyer, she didn’t have to ask where I was going, because I wasn’t going anywhere. Work-school-work-study-work.
I’d told her I would take care of the men who had hurt my sister, then I was done. Stupidi. She and I both. I hadn’t cleared my desk of all of them while she lived, and there was no “done.” Ever.
“I have to go,” I said. “I’m sorry. I have to miss supper.”
“Antonio!” She indicated the risotto as if it were its own reason. And it was. It couldn’t be stored or refrigerated.
“I’m sorry, it’s business.”
She slapped the spoon on the edge of the pot and put it down. Watched it bubble for a second before starting to stir again. She’d never ruin a risotto just because she was angry at me.
“Business. You do mental Olympics to make excuses for yourself,” she said, twirling the arm that wasn’t stirring the rice. Her nails were trimmed but unpolished. Her hair was thrown up in a quick pile on her head that I wanted to take down and pull from behind.
But no. There was no hair pulling, and there was no “from behind.” That had been agreed, but I could still imagine her on her hands and knees. My mind was my own.
“Oh, you think?” I snapped up a spoon. “Maybe I’ll leave tomorrow and show you Olympian stamina tonight.”
“Stop with your filth.” I wedged a little risotto onto the edge of the spoon, and she swatted me away. “I’m serious. Do not dismiss me.”
She was always serious. Her mother said it was because she had a heart condition. Even a misunderstanding could start the pains. I’d never seen any such thing until the night of our wedding, when I’d pulled her hair and she had palpitations.
I popped the bite of risotto into my mouth. It was delicious. Perfect. I remembered that bite of risotto for years after that day. The layers of flavor coated my mouth no matter how much bile I walked around Los Angeles with.
I’d dropped the spoon into the ceramic sink and clasped her at the rib cage. My hands went nearly all the way around her. I could ask her to keep stirring while I fucked her. That would be fun. But not only was that position off-limits, the kitchen was as well.
“Tell me about my excuses then.”
“I won’t tell a man what to do,” she lied, and I smiled. She was so bossy. “But, Antonio, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot watch you go away overnight and not know if you’re coming home.”
“There’s no safer job in Napoli.” I brushed loose strands of hair from her neck. “Consigliere is a protected position. If anything happened to me, every capo would make sure I was avenged.”
She slapped the spoon on the edge of the pot. “And you’d be in hell.” She turned her back to the stove, letting the risotto sit. “I can’t live like this anymore. What you do is wrong. It’s against God. I won’t be a part of it anymore. I won’t raise children like this.”
I took the wooden spoon and reached around her waist to stir the rice. “You don’t like the nice things I buy you?”
“I don’t care about them.”
She must have forgotten how unhappy she had been when we had nothing. She nagged me to change jobs, work harder, go back to fixing cars.
“And the children? When they come, you’re going to want things for them? We can buy a bigger house with what we’ve saved. Public lawyers don’t make shit.”
“I mean it, Antonio. Stop now. Today. Stay home tonight.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What do I get if I stay home tonight?”
She stared at me with her almond eyes, lips pressed together, and all the filthiest things she might let me do went through my mind.
“You get to go to confession and have your sins removed.”
“And then?” I was such a hopeful bastard.
She put her hands on my chest. “You go to heaven.”
“In the bed? Or maybe against this counter?”
She nudged me away and turned back around. “The kitchen isn’t for that.” She snapped the spoon away, grumbling, “Dirty boy.”
I was suddenly very, very angry. She didn’t have to promise me anything. She didn’t have to give me any part of her body she didn’t want to. But she pushed and pushed, and I was expected to do as she asked for the love of the same shit.
I put my hand on the back of her head and curled my fingers, grabbing a handful of bunched up hair. I yanked her head back. I was playing with fire, but I didn’t know how to stop myself.
“Ow! Stop!”
I spoke right into her ear. I wanted my words to be so tight between us, the air didn’t even know what I said. “I’ll tell you when I’ll quit this job. When I come home and you’ve got your palms on the counter and your skirt around your waist. When I spread your sweet cheeks apart, and you say, ‘Yes, Antonio baby, fuck my ass.’ And I stick a finger in your cunt and you’re wet.”
“Stop it,” she said, cry
ing.
I pulled her head back harder. I was so fucking mad, I didn’t care if her arrhythmia went crazy and I spent the night apologizing in a hospital. I was on some kind of track and I couldn’t get off. “When I take your juice to wet your asshole, and when it’s wet, my cock goes one, two, three, right inside. And you sit the fuck still and take it.” I let her hair go with a jerk. “That’s when I’ll stop doing what puts food on the table.”
I left before I did something stupid. I had a panino from the street cart for dinner, and I never saw her in Italy again.
twenty-five.
theresa
is hand rested on the back of my neck with just enough pressure to let me know he was there. I didn’t need the reminder. I knew he was present. Knew he loved me. I’d just needed a moment to breathe.
“You have to stop touching me,” I said.
He swung in front of me. The sunlight hit the edge of his face. The rest was veiled in shadow. I could still read him clearly, as if the light was his lust and the shade was his rage. All he had to do was turn his head slightly to be either bathed in brilliance or drowned in shadow.
“I don’t know how many times I have to say this—”
He stopped talking when I pulled away from him, backing into the brick wall. “I know. You can touch me any time you want. I’ve heard it.”
“Don’t take this lightly.”
“Lightly? I’m the only one taking your life seriously.” I touched his lapel. It was bent a sixteenth of an inch and needed straightening.
His shoulders dropped an amount equal to the bend of his lapel. Enough for me to notice. It was a half measure of resignation, another half measure of vulnerability. My fingers trailed the edge of the jacket seam, as if they were caught in a groove. He looked down at their journey, his eyelashes the length of black widow legs, lips parted just enough to emphasize their fullness.
“I’m only a man,” he said. “I’m not a saint.”
“Not a devil either.”
He flicked a speck of something off my shoulder, smoothing the fabric. “I don’t know what to do. And that alone is uncomfortable. I always know what to do.”
I pressed my hands to his chest but didn’t push him away. “I can’t reassure you. I can’t say we’ll figure it out. I can’t see the way through it.”
“We don’t divorce. It’s not done.”
“I know.”
“I could kill my mother for doing this.”
“She was protecting a life she knew you’d want back,” I said. “And before you protest, you want it back. I know you do. It’s exactly the life you described to me in TJ. It’s a good life. I get it. I want it with you, but I don’t know how to get there.”
I expected him to resist and tell me I was his life. That was the script. He was supposed to reassure me in no uncertain terms. But he wouldn’t look at me.
“This is what it means to get older,” he said. “Your choices get less and less.”
“You can get there. You can do it. You can have it all. If you manage to get forgiveness from Donna Maria, you need to step back and think about it.”
“I should leave you behind?”
“Yes. I think if we can unravel this, then that’s how it has to go.” A hairline crack appeared in my heart. I knew I was right. This was solvable if I gave him up. If I didn’t, it was a mess.
“It’s decided then?” he said gently, and the hairline crack deepened.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be safer that way.” He put his lips to my cheek, and my body trembled.
“I will,” I lied. I could never go back to who I had been. Never. “I’ll live a long, safe life.”
“Without me.” He kissed my neck, and the shimmering arousal that ran though my body seemed not hindered by the flood of melancholy but abetted by it.
“Without you.” My hips found their way to him as if by magnetism. His every kiss to my neck, his every breath in my ear, was a contradiction to the words he spoke.
“And I’ll go back home with my wife and fuck her sweetly for the rest of my days?”
I couldn’t give him more than mmm from deep in my chest because his hand brushed over my hardened nipple, coming back for a second pass with the backs of his fingers. I thought I should push him away, but my body wasn’t taking instructions.
“I’ll be happy,” he whispered in my ear then kissed it. “We’ll buy a little stone house, and I’ll spend the rest of my life with a sweet, useless little pet.”
“Don’t bad-mouth her.”
He pulled back until we were nose to nose. “She fucks like a plucked chicken.”
I had to bite back a laugh, and Antonio smiled so wide, I fell in love with his face all over again.
“Don’t—” I said.
“Don’t what? Don’t change? Don’t look back at my past and see clearly?”
“Don’t smile like that. You melt me. I can barely stand straight.”
“Let me catch you.”
He put his lips on mine. I bent under him, yielding completely to his mouth, the rhythm of his lips, the force of his tongue. I allowed myself to hope that there was a way out, and at the same time, the hope lived with resignation.
I didn’t want that kiss to end. It shouted down my confusion. I wanted to drown in it. Take my last breath with him. Die connected in a painless flood of arousal and sorrow. But through the window came the pop of a wine cork, and he straightened.
“Let me take you back to the house,” he said, his voice covered with a thin sheet of urgency. “I swear I’ll meet you there.”
“Do you not want me to talk to your wife?”
“I don’t want her to talk, period.”
“This intrigues me.” I slipped away from him and strode quickly back to the street. I opened the restaurant door to Daniel filling the glasses. “Don’t you have a campaign to run?” I felt my face getting red in the warm dining room. “You’ve been socializing without talking politics.”
“Gerry wants me out of the way until the trick you played at the wedding dies down.”
He handed Valentina a glass. She swirled it, avoiding eye contact with me.
“Sorry about that.”
He handed me a glass. “No, you’re not.”
“No. I’m not.”
Behind me, Antonio spoke sharply to Valentina. “Non bere quell vino.”
“Salute.” She raised her glass and, in a single open-throated gulp, poured the entire contents down her throat.
Antonio groaned as Valentina clacked her glass on the bar and made a swirling motion above it with her finger. Daniel refilled it.
“Sit down for primi,” Zia said as she burst through the swinging doors with a tray of manicotti. She set it in the center of a round table, which had already been set for four.
“Grazie, Zia! Bene!” Valentina said with an enthusiasm I hadn’t noticed before. She grabbed her glass and the bottle and sat.
I sat across from her, and when Antonio placed himself next to me, I whispered, “Isn’t Zia eating?”
He made a tsk noise with a shake of the head and placed his napkin in his lap.
“What about Antonin? Where is he?” I realized the question was just on the other side of inappropriate when it was all the way out of my mouth.
Valentina took the half-empty glass from her lips and answered. “I sent him home. It’s hell here. I don’t know how you stand the smells. Car exhaust. It’s everywhere. When I was first married, I had to scrub it out of my husband’s clothes every day. I will not have my son smell like street grease.”
“He took a plane home alone? To Europe?” Daniel asked, sliding a cheesy tube onto her plate.
“Non-stop flight. We do it all the time. Only Americans circle their children like helicopters. Give me another one please.” She indicated the manicotti and brought the wine to her lips again.
“Tina, enough,” Antonio said, reaching for the glass.
She slapped him away. Had I thought she wa
s haughty and controlled? Because she didn’t seem that way anymore.
“Tell me, Tonio, what have you been doing here? Besides pretending you’re dead and letting your girlfriend drink all she wants?”
“Avoiding this guy.” He smirked, pointing his fork at Daniel.
I took a slice of manicotti and watched as Valentina shoveled down half of one neatly and efficiently.
“You fail at this,” she said after she washed it down. “He’s right here.”
Daniel smiled and pushed his cheese around the plate, obviously finding this whole thing very amusing. He filled her wine glass, and she graced him with a beatific smile. God, she was stunning. A thoroughbred.
I got Daniel’s attention and mouthed, “More wine.”
He grinned and got up for another bottle.
“What else?” She swirled her wine around as if she was baiting Antonio.
“Just running my business.”
“You mean your criminal empire?” She bobbed her head when she spoke, a graceless gesture and a sign that she’d had a glass too many.
Antonio dropped his fork. “Basta, Tina.”
She turned her palms down and shook her hands, telling us to be quiet because something important was coming. “I work in a fabric factory, at the desk, and there’s a little salumeria on the corner. And the little men sit outside it talking like they’re so important. Little mafiosi. They come into the factory and take their money. Their tribute.” She flung her hands around like butterflies. “They try to take me to bed. You know what I say to them? Your little pistola matches your stupid bald head. Both in your pants. Both can’t shoot.”
“More wine?” I asked.
She pushed her glass to me. “Grazie. And all of the mafiosi…” She held up her pinkie. “Like this. You can’t be in the organization unless you have an okra between your legs.” She put her thumb and pointer finger two inches apart, then held up her hands to Antonio as if he’d objected, which he hadn’t, except to rub his face in embarrassment. “Not Mister Spinelli, of course. With that cetriolo.”