“Tommy, what brings you here?”
“I’ve got something to tell you. Can I come in?”
“Just for a minute. It’s almost the baby’s feeding time.”
He stepped into the apartment. “How is the baby?”
“He’s fine. Even Mama thinks he’s fat enough,” Sofia said with a smile. “Can I make you some coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’m only staying a minute. I just came up to tell you that Nilo got a reprieve.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means his death sentence has been lifted. The governor changed it to life in prison.”
He had not known what kind of reaction she would have to his news, but he had not expected her to fall back onto a stuffed chair and laugh, a bitter, angry laugh.
“So he gets life,” she said. “Why couldn’t they just be done with it?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy.”
“As long as Nilo lives, I am Mrs. Sesta. I cannot divorce. I cannot remarry. I live my life alone. My son grows up without a father. And you expected me to be happy?”
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say. “I just thought—”
“Never mind. How is Tina?”
“She’s okay. She’s back home. Still can’t talk above a whisper, but she’s alive.”
“Will she sing again?”
“No.”
“She used to come and see me,” Sofia said. “We would talk about old times. I read every one of her reviews from her concert. I was so happy for her. And then I heard … Did they ever catch who did it?”
Tommy shook his head. “She vanished. One of the other students at Tina’s singing class who just got jealous, I guess. Nobody’s been able to find a trace of her.”
“She probably doesn’t want to see me,” Sofia said. “But tell her, please, how sorry I was.” She began to cry softly. “I wasn’t even able to go to the hospital to see her because I was sick myself after the baby.”
“I know she understood,” Tommy said. He rose from the sofa. “Well, I just wanted to let you know. About Nilo.”
“I appreciate the thought.” Sofia rose, too. “Would you like to see your … your cousin, I guess he is?”
“Is it any bother?” Tommy asked.
“No. He’s just a greedy little thing. All he wants to do is eat and sleep. Guests don’t bother him at all.”
She led the way into her bedroom where the baby was asleep in a wooden slatted cradle. Tommy looked at him and saw Nilo’s face on the boy. He had long eyelashes and wide-set eyes and a supple full-lipped mouth that now, in his sleep, was beginning to twist, as if the child were puzzled about something.
“He’s beautiful,” Tommy said. “He looks like—”
“Like me,” Sofia interrupted. “Everyone says so.” She bent over and lifted the baby from the crib, carefully wrapping the thin cotton blanket around his feet. With no trace of self-consciousness, she opened the buttons on her housedress, pulled one side of it back, exposing a breast, and put her son’s mouth to it. Without even opening his eyes, he began suckling.
Tommy found it hard to take his eyes off Sofia’s breast. It was larger, fuller, than it had been that … that one night.
“I’m sorry, I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I?” Sofia said.
“No,” Tommy answered. “It’s just that I haven’t been around mothers and babies much. I’ll leave now.”
Sofia was looking down at her son. “Suck, you greedy thing,” she said. She glanced up at Tommy, and her eyes were bright, almost electric, with a curious passion, but it passed quickly and she said, “Thank you again for coming by, Tommy. Tell Tina I think of her.”
“I will. And when you see Nilo, tell him…” His voice trailed off because he could think of no message he wanted to send to his cousin.
Sofia just shook her head.
* * *
SHE HAD NOT CHANGED all that much, Tina thought. At least not that anyone could see. She still looked the same. The face was the same and so was the body.
But the soul had changed and so had the voice. What had once been a silken rippling sound that coursed easily through three octaves was now a hoarse rasp.
Even so, the doctors said she had been lucky. Most people who suffered such a ferocious assault would never again be able to speak, but she had been the recipient of a minor miracle.
Mario’s miracle, she thought bitterly. Some miracle, God. You’ve taken my voice and left me with the croak of a frog.
She tried to sing every now and then, probably more out of curiosity than anything else, but she always gave it up quickly. She could not stand the raspy, sandpapery sound that came from her mouth. The only time she sang anymore was in the shower after making love to Charlie. She couldn’t help herself then; the man just made her feel so good. She laughed again: from holier-than-thou prima donna to gangster’s moll in one short year.
Luciano had come to her in the hospital. She had been there almost a week when he appeared. Her hospitalization had reached that awkward point where it was obvious the patient was not going to die and so the shirttail relatives no longer had any morbid reason to visit and a patient was left with the same close relatives at bedside day after day, talking the same platitudes, recalling the same past events with each other, often ignoring Tina, until it all grew so ferociously boring that Tina just wanted them all to leave.
Frau Schatte had never visited; neither had anyone from her Greenwich Village crowd. That had hurt.
Sofia had not visited, either. Tommy and Mario told Tina that she had been ill since the birth of her son and so she had a reason, but Tina missed her nevertheless. Sofia was possibly the only person in the world with whom she could really speak. She was left instead with this unending parade of relatives, like one of those clown cars at the circus, where the same people kept coming through the door over and over and over again.
Then that evening, after everyone had blessedly left, Luciano had appeared at her door.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said.
Tina still was not allowed to speak. She had written her response on the slate: Hello.
“I won’t stay long,” he said. He looked slightly embarrassed.
Tina had gestured for him to sit down, but he remained standing, running the brim of his hat around and around through his long thick fingers.
“Look, I don’t know how to say this real good. I talked to your doctors and they said you’re going to need a lot of help. I know your old man isn’t exactly made of money so … well, I’ve arranged for the bill to be taken care of.”
Tina rose up from her pillows, starting to protest, more out of form than any real desire. Luciano took a couple of steps backward, almost as if trying to retreat from his good deed, then stopped and approached her again.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Your father will never know. None of them in your family. It’ll be our little secret. And besides, I expect you to pay me back when you’re a rich and famous singer.”
Tina had started to cry then. She hadn’t wanted to, but she did just the same. Luciano had tightened his jaw.
“One other thing,” he said. “The little chippie that did this to you … she swallowed a bottle of lye herself. And nobody was around to try to save her. But nobody knows about it. So mum’s the word.”
Tina lifted the chalk but could write nothing. She was too horrified.
“Well,” Luciano had said. “I guess I’ve got to get going. I’ll come back and see you in a couple of days, if you don’t mind. You’re looking terrific, kid.”
He had started to leave, but Tina had grabbed hold of his jacket sleeve. He stopped and looked at her again.
She scrawled furiously on her chalkboard in big capital letters: WHY?
Luciano read the note, then shrugged.
“Damned if I know,” he had said. “Maybe because I never forgot the first time we met and you looked down your nose at me like I was a pile of garbage. Maybe I just want
to take that look off your face. God only knows. I don’t.”
He had moved gently away, stopping in the doorway to smile at her once more, and to tip his hat.
* * *
OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL, Luciano got into his car. Ben Siegel, at the wheel, looked over the seat and asked, “Did you screw her?”
“You are crude, Benny. Even for a thug, you’re crude.”
“I guess that means she wouldn’t put out for you. You shoulda just stuck it to her anyway.”
“In the hospital, right? Benny, you’re not only crude, but you’re a little nuts. No wonder they’ve started to call you Bugsy.”
Angrily, Benny turned away and lurched the car forward out of the hospital parking lot.
“Not to my face, they don’t,” he snarled.
Luciano leaned forward, over the back of the seat, and tousled Benny’s hair affectionately. “No, that’s true. But do yourself a favor, Benny. Try to get a little class, will you? We’re gonna go a lot of places, and you gotta be able to go there, too.”
Benny grunted. Luciano sank back against the car’s rear seat and then said, “By the way, I can screw her anytime I want, even in the hospital. I’m just saving it.”
“For what?”
Luciano smiled. “For when I can do the most harm.”
“I still want seconds,” Benny said.
* * *
TINA HAD SPENT another three weeks in the hospital—with Charlie visiting her every few days—and then had moved back to the Falcones’ apartment, but after a week she knew it would not work out.
Her father was in a snit because somebody had paid the hospital bill and he could not find out who it was.
“Somebody who said she was a patron of the arts,” he said. “And she paid in cash. Who could that have been?”
“I don’t know, Papa,” Tina had lied.
He asked her every day. Every day, she lied. Meanwhile, her parents were trying to baby her all the time, and by the end of the summer Tina had moved out, found an apartment in the Village, and a job as a waitress. After a few days on the job, one evening, walking home, she varied her path so she could walk by the townhouse of Frau Schatte.
There were no lights on in the house, and attached to the brick front was a FOR SALE sign.
Tina stood there, looking at the sign for a moment, trying to figure whether anybody was still living inside, when a voice behind her said, “She decided to move out of town.”
She turned to see Charlie standing at the curb behind her. His big black car was parked across the street; she recognized Benny behind the wheel. “Pretty quick decision,” Tina said. “I’m surprised she didn’t even let me know.”
“I think it was health reasons,” Luciano answered, and the look on his face told Tina everything she needed to know about Frau Schatte’s decision to move. She had probably run out of town to escape Luciano.
But why? she thought. What am I to him?
“I never got a chance to thank you,” she said. “About the hospital bill. About everything.”
He waved his hand airily, dismissing it as nothing.
“You’ve made my father crazy,” she said, smiling. “He spent weeks trying to figure out who the mystery woman, the ‘patron of the arts,’ was.”
“Yeah, I was busy that day. I had a friend do it for me. He’ll never know who.” They stood awkwardly for a moment and Luciano said, “Come on, I’ll ride you home.”
When they stopped in front of her apartment house over on the West Side, Luciano asked her, “How’s the new digs?”
“They’ll do,” she said. “Would you like to come up for coffee?”
Luciano mulled the idea for a moment. “Yeah, sure,” he finally said.
“You too,” she said to the driver.
“He’s got some stuff to do,” Luciano said. He helped Tina out of the car and leaned over to Benny. “I’ll call you when I need you,” he said. “Make sure everything goes all right tonight.”
“Okay, Charlie.”
She had thought her apartment, furnished with leftovers and castoffs, looked pretty presentable, but now, with company here for the first time, she surveyed it with a more critical eye and decided the whole apartment was shabby. She tried to apologize for it, after pouring coffee for her and Luciano, but he just put his hand over hers, as she stood at the table alongside him, and said, “Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Someday, kid, for you it’s going to be money and mansions.”
She put the coffeepot down on the table, then leaned over and kissed Luciano full on the lips, a long searching kiss, probing his mouth with her tongue. He slipped his hand under her sweater to cup her breast and then reached inside her brassiere to squeeze her nipple, and Tina had gasped at the touch. It had been so long, she thought, since she had had a man. Since before her … accident.
She pulled away from Luciano, grabbed his hand, and pulled him to his feet. She licked a forefinger and touched it to his cheek.
“I don’t want that coffee now,” she said.
“Oh? What do you want?”
“You know very well what I want,” she said, and led him to the bedroom. Once inside, she turned to face him, and he said, “You sure you want to do this, kid? Once you do, there’s no going back.”
Tina smiled, dropped to her knees, and reached out her long delicate fingers for him.
Charlie had spent the night. In the morning, when Tina awoke, he was already on the phone. She lay in bed for a while, listening to his husky voice, barking out orders she did not understand. She was surprised to hear him identify himself as “Three-Twelve” on the phone.
After a while, she got up and made a pot of coffee, and when Luciano came into the kitchen she asked, “Would Three-Twelve like a cup of coffee?”
Luciano grinned and nodded. As she poured the coffee, he said, “You never know who’s listening in on telephones. So it’s best sometimes not to mention names.”
“But why Three-Twelve?”
“You think about it,” he said.
“I’ll think while I’m cooking breakfast.”
“Forget cooking. Get some clothes on.”
When Tina did, Luciano took her to the Plaza Hotel, where he seemed well known, and they ate breakfast there. And in the cab, it came to her and she said softly to him, “‘Three’ is for C, the third letter. ‘Twelve’ is for L. It’s your initials.”
“I always like a smart girl,” Luciano said.
He came to her apartment often after that, usually three or four times a week. She never knew when he might come, and without realizing it, she managed always to stay around her apartment, not even venturing out to the movies. When he did show up, seeing him was like opening a Christmas present. Sometimes they would make love as if he had to run to catch a train, and Charlie would leave right after. Other times, he spent the night, and Tina liked those times best because they would lie in bed afterward and talk, and Tina had few people to talk to anymore.
Luciano never quite admitted to her that he was a gangster. Instead, he described himself, as “a businessman who gives people what they want.”
“You sure do that for me,” Tina said with a giggle.
“Aaaah, you Sicilian girls just love getting laid. If it wasn’t me, it’d be somebody else.”
“No, Charlie, not anybody like you,” she said, and meant it.
One night, she remembered the story her father had told about how Luciano and Benny Siegel got together, and she just mentioned conversationally, “You and Benny seem very close. Did you grow up together?”
“Nahh, we met once having a fight over some woman. And we got to be friends. But Benny’s important.”
“Why’s that?” she asked. “Important” was the last word she would ever have applied to Benny Siegel.
“’Cause he’s Jewish. So’s my other friend, Meyer.”
“Why does that make them important?”
“Because it’s not gonna be too long before the cops and the law and everybody
is after people in our business. What happens then is that everybody starts fighting to keep their own little piece. The Jews fight the Italians, and the Irish fight everybody, and we all hate each other and we all get hurt. But Benny, Meyer, I’m bringing them in with me. The Irish too. Your brother taught me that.”
“My brother? Tommy?”
“No. The one who’s the priest. I heard him one day in a sermon and that’s what he was talking about. Everybody getting together and being one big family. And I thought it works for the church. They got Irish and Italians and every kind of priest and they all seem to get along, and I figured if it works for the church, it’d work for our business too. Italians, Jews, Irish—someday, we’re gonna be all one big organization.”
“I thought the Mafia already was a big organization.”
“Yeah, but that’s what wrong with it. These guys at the top, they think it has to be just Italians or just Sicilians or just Sicilians from some little jerk-off village someplace, and they don’t get it. Capone’s like that in Chicago, fighting with everybody so just wops run everything. And it’s stupid. If we all get along, we all go a lot farther.”
“You’ve got good ideas, Charlie. Does anybody listen?”
“Nobody has to listen,” he said. “Not now. When the time comes, then they’ll all listen. Now shut up and fuck.”
Charlie took to giving her money to pay her rent, and with her meager savings almost depleted, Tina was grateful for it. Just before Thanksgiving, she had her second abortion. Charlie paid for it again.
She knew, of course, that Charlie had other women right along. There was one in particular whose name he would drop unwittingly in conversations—with the Russian-sounding name of Gay Orlova—and Tina knew this must be the showgirl whom Sofia had seen come into Mangini’s Restaurant.
In her innermost heart, Tina was jealous of the other woman, but she knew she had no right to be. Charlie showed her more kindness than he had any earthly reason to do, and, besides, when he was with Tina he was always enough man for her. Whatever he did, that was fine with her.
Because of her abortion, she missed Thanksgiving Dinner with her family, giving them an excuse that she would be out of town.
She went over a couple of days later, at dinnertime, and found her mother and father alone in the apartment.
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