by Meg Watson
I catch Nico's eye as Donnie pushes himself up from the table. This is definitely not going as planned. I hadn't even thought about whether Donnie might be happy where he is. Maybe he doesn't want to go anywhere.
Donnie leads us through the house to the front room. Roni and Charli are there, with a small blonde lady who’s leaning back from the wall, her hands across her middle, her weight on one hip.
When Nico and I walk in the room with Donnie, she gives us a smiling, sidelong look. She's incredibly pretty, all earthy and funky like I guess artists are supposed to be. Actually, she kinda reminds me of Lisa from the Marina. She's real cute.
“Nico Lauro,” Nico says formally, holding out his hand to shake hers. “This is my brother, Tek.”
I shake her hand, just catching a glimpse of those bright blue eyes under the fringe of her bangs. Quickly I look away, but I don’t really know why. It just doesn’t seem right to stare at her too long.
“So, um, these are yours?” I ask, taking a step toward the wall. There are three paintings hanging there of tables with feasts laid out on them. Lobsters, wine, bread, a basket of those little purple flowers — hydrangeas or something. Or at least I think they’re paintings. They look so real, I could reach out and pick a petal off the flower. This is crazy.
“These look like pictures… Like photographs…” I mumble.
I don’t even feel it coming, but Donnie comes up behind me and slaps the back of my head, just like the old days. What the fuck!
“You don’t tell an artist their painting looks like a photograph, what’s the matter with you?” he yells at me. Well, I guess he still has a lot of the old neighborhood still left in him after all. “This is a painting! It’s better!”
My hand automatically goes up to rub the back of my head, though it didn’t really hurt. Just surprised me, is all.
“Sorry bout that,” I say.
“Aw, don’t worry about it,” Cindy says. She has this sweet, chirpy voice. I bet she laughs a lot. “I know what you meant. Thank you!”
I turn toward Roni and Charli, and they’re giving me some kind of stink eye too. I don’t even want to see what kind of smug face Nico is pulling. I need to get out of here.
“You guys wanna take a walk or something?” I ask Nico and Charli. “We need to figure out what’s our next step.”
“Ooh! Can Gus stay with me for a minute?” Roni asks, with perfect timing. “I would just love to get reacquainted with your little man!”
Charli nods, and we head back to the front door.
“Nice going in there, slick,” Nico gloats as soon as we’re out of earshot.
“Oh right, like you knew any better!” I huff. I knew he was going to make a big deal out of this.
“I liked it,” Charli says as we head down the winding concrete steps to the driveway. “It really did, uh, look like a picture to me too.”
“See?” I ask, my hands out. “How the hell was I supposed to know that?”
“Maybe a little attention to the world outside of your computers and shit, huh? You could try that.”
“Oh yeah, because you're so goddamn worldly, Nico.”
Charli holds up her hands. She doesn't even seem to really have the energy to put up much of a fight. This is all wearing on her, I can tell. And with Aldo and everything, God. She's really been through a lot over the last few years. A whole lot. I suddenly feel kinda bad for her.
“You guys, can you just stop for a minute? We have got to figure out how we’re getting back to —”
“About that, Charli,” Nico interrupts, “Donnie's not coming.”
She blinks several times. “What?”
Nico runs his hand over his face, kneading his eyebrows for a few seconds. “We tried, Charli. Donnie isn’t coming.”
“Yes he is.”
Oh great, I guess she’s got a little sass left in her after all. “No, Charli, this isn’t the time to argue,” I tell her. “You can't just interfere with —”
“Yes he is,” she interrupts me. “Roni says he is. So he is. They're coming.”
Nico rocks back a little bit. “What are you talking about?”
“Roni just thinks… Well they’re coming. That's all we really need to know, right?”
“What did you guys talk about?” I wonder out loud.
“But Donnie said —” Nico insists.
“They’re coming!” she huffs. “Don't believe me? Let's go inside.”
Nico just shrugs at me as Charli turns on her heel and stalks back to the front steps, climbing them two at a time. Man, when that woman is on a mission, she is really on a mission. I don’t even know what to say at this point. Donnie already told us what was up, what does she think Roni is going to have to do with it?
“So, Aunt Roni,” Charli calls out as we follow her back to what looks like a big, mother-of-pearl and crystal dining room in Louis XIV style, “do you guys just want to follow us? It can't be that far, right?”
Roni looks up from the table. She's got a deck of cards out and is playing some kind of game with Gus.
“Look, mommy! I've got three of a kind.”
“You’re not teaching him to play poker are you?” Charli chuckles.
“Actually it's Gin,” Roni says with her eyebrows raised. “And the kid is a natural. Is this his first time?”
“Course it is,” I mutter, “he’s only four.”
“Only four?” Roni repeats, pursing her lips.
“Thank you for that child development lesson, Dr. Spock!” Charli shoots back. I have no idea who she’s talking about. Is that a Star Trek thing? “So do you think you could follow us?”
Roni cuts her off with a wave of her hand. She flicks at the cards with her long, pink fingernails, looking them over. “Oh, we don't have a car. Just a golf cart. We can't drive.”
Nico and I exchange looks like, I told you so. Luckily Charli doesn't see us.
She shifts from foot to foot. “You can ride with us then? The minivan is big enough for all of us, I think. Doesn't that sound like fun?”
Roni raises one eyebrow. A little smirk curls the corners of her lips. “Carlotta, just how long has this little boy been in this minivan? Two days? three?”
“Gee, well I —”
“— That settles it,” Roni says, smacking her lips together. “You guys can go in the minivan. Donnie and I will fly out in the afternoon with the little card champion here. That's okay with you?”
“Oh, Aunt Roni, you don't have to do that! Gus has never been on an airplane before or anything… I mean, I just couldn't ask you to do that.”
Roni shrugs. “You did ask me to do anything,” she reminds her. “It's my pleasure. I'm always looking for somebody smart to play cards with. Since you guys have the evening free now, want to go out? The three of you. Go. I mean it.”
Her eyes sweep over Nico and me, landing on Charli with a bemused glint. These ladies are up to something, definitely. I have a hard time believing that this plan just occurred to her, out of the blue.
“Really, you're sure?” Charli asks. “I mean it would be nice to just take a breath, just relax for a minute maybe.”
Roni waves her fingers in the air, ready for us to leave the room now. “Yeah, I think this is a good idea. It'll give me a minute to explain to Donnie what the plan is too. Get everything situated.”
“Mommy, is this right?” Gus pipes up. Charli leans over, nodding, brushing the back of his head with the palm of her hand.
“You can stay with Aunt Roni? Play a little cards? Be a good boy?”
Charli pivots around to face us, her hand fisted on her hip, her eyebrows raised in triumph. “Well, I guess that settles it, doesn't it?” she says with just a hint of superiority in her voice.
Nico and I nod, what else can we do?
Behind her, I see Gus go up on his knees and lean forward. He places his cards face up on the table and fans them out.
“Gin!”
***
Donnie's house is
enormous, and Roni showed us to a couple of guest bedrooms where we could get cleaned up for the dinner she commanded us to go out on. I flopped across the floral bedspread while Nico went to take a shower.
I must've dozed off, because it seemed like he was back out in a blink, buttoning up one of those shiny shirts. He is all shaved and primped and kind of girly-looking if you ask me.
“What are you doing?”
I stare at the ceiling. “What does it look like I'm doing?”
“Are you going to get ready? There’s a couple of nice restaurants in downtown Chattanooga. I thought we could take Charli for a nice dinner, you know? Like the old days?”
“These aren’t the old days, Nico.” I remind him.
I flop to my stomach on the bed and hear him walk over to me, so I close my eyes.
“Either way, this will all be over in a day or two. You realize that? We never got to say goodbye to her before. Don’t you think it will be nice to at least part as friends or whatever?”
“Are you serious? Is that what you think we are? Friends?”
He shrugs and sucks the inside of his cheek. “There's no reason we can’t be,” he says reasonably.
Instantly I'm seeing red. I find myself standing, my hands out from my sides like I’m ready to tangle with him or something.
“No reason we can't be? Have you lost your mind? She got us burned, Nico, did you forget all that? She ruined our lives.”
“She thought she was saving our lives.”
“Yeah well, maybe she thinks too much!”
“Is that what you're wearing?”
“Don't you change the subject on me!” I say, and I can hear my voice getting a little too loud for the space. “If she would have just stayed out of it, everything would've been okay. We would've been fine!”
“We would've been sitting ducks!” Nico says, suddenly furious. “Did that ever occur to you? First of all, you never thought about any of this from her perspective, did you? Because she thought she was doing the right thing. She thought she was saving us. She loved us, Tek, in case you forgot?”
I hold my breath. I can hardly hear him over the sound my heartbeat hammering in my ears. If he gets one millimeter closer to me, I'm going to knock him out.
But he can’t shut up, can he.
“Think about it, Tek! If this is all Aldo, and we had made it out of that trial innocent, what do you think would have happened next? If Aldo was willing to hit Salvatore, what do you think he would've done to us if his plan had been unsuccessful?”
“Oh…” I hear myself say. I hadn’t thought about that way.
“Oh!” Nico mocks me. “All coming together for you now, right? Yeah, Charli burned us, but looking back, it kinda looks like she saved our asses, right? Because if we had stuck around, knowing now that Aldo snuffed Knuckles, maybe Bruno, a whole diner full of people, two of Charli's boyfriends, and probably our brother too —”
His voice chokes off. His hand goes up and he bites the back of his knuckle. It still hurts, thinking about Salvatore gone. And I know how he feels. Our defenses, so carefully built up over the years, have been scraped away mercilessly over the past few days. Everything is raw, beating like a new heart, flayed like skin.
“And what do you see happening when we get back there, Nico? How do you think this can go down? Don’t you think that maybe Donnie's got a point? We should stay here…”
“We can't stay here, Tek. You know that. We can’t stay anywhere now. Aldo's gotta know that we know. We won’t be safe. Charli and Gus… Won't ever be safe.”
He meets my eyes, and I know he's right. That's the final straw right there, just like always. Charli.
As long as she is safe, I can talk myself into anything, live through anything. Live alone in Oriental. Sell my car. Give my dog to the landlady. Drive across the country… Twice.
But if this is really happening, she's not safe anywhere. Nico’s right. We have to see it through. We don’t have another choice.
Fuck me, fuck this. I still love her.
I don't know what to do. I know I don't want to be looking into Nico's eyes and have him knowing what I'm thinking. So I get out of bed and go to the bathroom to try to wash up some. He's left me a shirt on a hanger next to the shower. It's just a dark gray cotton shirt. I suppose it will be all right. At least it doesn't have paisley or whatever on it. How does he even have so many shirts with him? This guy never ceases to amaze me.
The heat and noise of the shower are a relief. I can turn off the landslide of my thoughts for a second. Try to understand what's going on. Understand how we’re all tangled up in this mess again, but one thing is clear: it needs to be settled, for once and for all.
When I step out of the shower, I realize he left me some kind of hair treatment on the counter too. What a thoughtful guy. So I guess we’re supposed to be making a good impression tonight? That's the plan?
I hope he doesn't think there's still hope for all of us. I hope that's not what he's trying to accomplish here.
But as I step out of the bathroom, she's already in the room. She’s standing awkwardly in an empty space, her hands up from her sides, looking around uncertainly. She's wearing a black, soft-looking dress with pearl buttons up to the neck. Her hair is swept up in a bun or something. She's wearing heels.
“Jesus,” is all I can say. My mouth is dry.
“Yeah, she looks beautiful, right? That's what I was just saying,” Nico fills in for me.
“I just… this is all I had to wear,” she explains quietly.
I can’t even look directly at her. It’s like trying to stare into the sun.
“Yeah all right, let's go,” I mumble, snatching the keys off the side table. It's already dark, but the air is still warm outside. The cicadas in the trees are making that sawing noise that they do. I drive down the mountain and toward downtown, looking for lights. Nico has some ideas for dinner, but I want something outside. On a patio, like, overlooking the river. Something with music, maybe. Something with a whole lot of alcohol.
I see a sign that says Valet $20. I figure that's usually a good sign and pull right up. The valet guy opens up the sliding door, keeping his eyes down. Yeah, man, well my minivan is pretty fucking cool if I'm driving it, now isn't it?
Looks to be some kind of hotel bar. Something old, something that has probably got a lot of history attached to it. There's a gated patio area and I hear some kind of live music. Nothing too loud. Jazz or some bullshit like that. Perfect.
“What is this place?” she breathes.
“No idea,” Nico responds. “Tek picked it out.”
“It's nice,” she says as we walk through the door. Nico tries to look at me and I just shrug. Lucky guess.
Nico is more of a talker than I am, and that's fine with me. The hostess seats us at a round table facing the band, and I do not have to say anything. Nico just talks and talks and talks and talks. I can watch them.
I can also watch the crowd. It's kind of weird being in a place where nobody knows us, at all. There is practically zero chance that anything bad will happen here. There are no wiseguys in town, no threat. I practically don't know what to do with myself.
The whiskey is good and strong. God, it feels like a million years since I had a drink. The first taste of the bourbon goes right over my tongue and sets my throat on fire. I feel the warmth spread through me almost instantly. In a few seconds, I feel much better. Enormously better. And looking back, I have really felt pretty crappy lately.
“You like your food?” Nico asks her when the waitress sets down a plate of linguini and clams in front of her.
“Oh, I really do,” she sighs, breathing in the steam. There is a little fog that seems to envelop her, and I can smell the garlic and olive oil from here. Smells amazing. The wine is in her blood too, and I can see that pink flush in her cheeks.
“So how did you and Roni work this all out, exactly?” I ask.
Nico glares at me. “Tek? You think you can just ha
ve a good time for once?”
Charli ignores him. “I don't know what you are talking about, Tek. Roni just agreed with what we had talked about. No big deal.”
Charli twirls the linguini on her fork. She spears a clam and places the morsel in her mouth, chewing slowly. She blinks at me with those wide, innocent eyes. Like I'm gonna fall for that again.
“Oh, she just happened to agree with you? Just like that?”
Charli shrugs, taking another bite before she answers me. She is chewing really slowly. I twirl my knife in my hand, waiting patiently.
“Roni has opinions about what went down too, I guess. I know you guys think that the ladies just go out and get their nails done while you guys all conduct your official business or whatever, but it seems to me that she knows a lot of things.”
She raises her eyes up to meet mine. They are so, so green. I forget just how green they are, every time.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Tek, it doesn’t mean anything. Eat your steak. It’s getting cold,” Nico complains. “My steak is excellent. How's yours?”
“Do you want to dance with me?” she asks me suddenly. My mouth kind of falls open. “I mean you don't have to. It's just that there's music. And you picked the place, right? Is that why?”
Nico grins widely with his mouth hanging open a little bit. He's enjoying this. “Yeah, Tek, is that why you picked this place? You want to dance?”
Finally I cut a big piece of steak off and pop it in my mouth, then just shrug. The hell they laughing at?
“I think he does want to dance,” Nico nods at Charli, like they're conspiring without me noticing. “And he's just too shy to say it. And if he doesn't, I will.”
I drop my napkin next to my plate and stand up. They're both still laughing at me when I hold up my hand.
She looks up at me, startled, blinking. “We… Are you serious?”
“Are you chicken?”