by CD Reiss
Yes, it is, because it’s just like every other test. One line for the status quo. One line for time to change the world I live in.
Two lines for an immediate decision. Raise a child in it, or leave it.
“Violetta!”
I spin around to find Santino’s zia Anette, then I turn back to the cashier who’s still holding up a pregnancy test.
“That’s the one,” I say quickly, then I hold my arms out to Anette for a kiss on each of her blush-heavy cheeks, while the beeping of the register goes on.
“You shouldn’t come here for that,” Anette says, flicking a finger toward the items being shoved into a plastic bag, and I tighten. She saw the test. Is she telling me to go to the doctor? “Lorenzo owns a party store on Fifth.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” I don’t care either, but shame for my ignorance is a good excuse for my hot cheeks.
She takes out an old flip phone. “I have to drop by there to get something for Gia’s reception.”
Gia’s reception? Santino said he would end it. Maybe Anette didn’t get the memo?
“I’ll call Lucia right now and have her tell him you’re coming.”
“Did someone say party?” another voice asks. It’s Scarlett getting rung up at the adjacent register. I feel attacked from all sides. “That’s impossible since I’m not invited!”
I hug Scarlett so tightly I’m just short of breaking a rib, and when I let go, her eyebrows are knotted with concern. We move away from the counter.
“Violetta?” She’s looking me up and down as if she’s never seen me before.
Scarlett’s going to ask me if I’m all right and I’m not going to lie. I’ll tell her straight out, right in the drugstore, and Anette will hear it.
“I thought you were in Monaco,” I say.
“Ugh! Don’t get me started on my father’s business.”
Anette comes up to us, clapping her phone closed. “Are you coming? I have to go today or the ribbon won’t be here in time. Is that Armando?” She waves him over.
I never wanted or needed party supplies. The birthday dinner will be like any other except for a cake, which isn’t a big deal, but why is Anette in such a rush for a wedding that may not happen?
“How long will the ribbon take?” I ask to make conversation.
“Paola’s giving me agita. Now-now-now. Everything now. She called me at two this morning—from her lunch.”
I’m getting the feeling the wedding isn’t being called off at all. My heart pounds like a drum. I want to run to my husband and choke him first and ask questions later, but I can’t. I have to breathe. I don’t have the whole story.
“Do you have time for coffee?” I ask Scarlett.
“Well, duh. Yeah.”
“Lorenzo closes at four,” Anette says.
“Oh, I’m so rude. Aunt Anette, this is my friend Scarlett from school. Scarlett, you met Santino. This is his aunt.”
They exchange greetings, and I realize the pregnancy test is at the bottom of the bag, totally visible pressing against the thin white plastic.
I have to get out of here.
“So tell Lorenzo I’d love to come by another time, okay?” I kiss Anette before she has a moment to object.
I pull Scarlett into the street, toward the Leaky Bean, sure Armando’s hot on our heels, trying to look inconspicuous.
“Who’s the hot guy following us?” Scarlett whispers.
“He’s really nice. But no.”
“Is he your bodyguard or something?”
“Kind of.”
“I knew it!”
We enter the coffee shop, where a duet of acoustic guitarists strum a song with unremarkable lyrics, and I go right for the counter and order for Scarlett first.
“Green tea, and double espresso shot with lemon.”
The cashier blinks once, tilts her head just enough for one red braid to slip behind her shoulder, and smiles. “We don’t have lemon.”
Of course they don’t. I’m on the wrong side of the river to drink lemon with my espresso.
“That’s fine.” I catch sight of Armando at the door. “Make it two.”
She gives me a number on a stick, and Scarlett and I sit at a table with the number between us.
“Don’t think I didn’t see it,” she says. “You’re knocked up?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t need the test.” I put the bag on my lap and shift the box to the middle.
“Are you excited? Or… too soon?”
Normal question in the normal world. No one else will ask me that.
“Yes.” I drop the bag between my feet. “And yes.”
“How does that husband of yours feel about it?”
When I walked in here, my only intention was to get away from Anette before my day was sucked into a party-supply vortex where I’d have to avoid questions and meaningful looks about the pregnancy test. I never intended to tell Scarlett anything about my situation, but I’ve caught her at some weird moment. She’s not talking about herself but leaning forward in silence, waiting for me to fill her in.
“I haven’t told him,” I say.
“Are you keeping it?” Another question that would only be asked on this side of the river.
“Yes.”
“So why do you look like you want to throw yourself over a cliff?” Her eyes scan mine. “Is he all right with you?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t be mad I’m telling you this, but if you need somewhere to go and you forgot the helpline numbers, I have them. Or you can stay with me. Whatever you want.”
“You’re a good friend.”
“So do you need help?”
Our order comes. I send the extra espresso to Armando. He waves to me when he gets it. Then I face Scarlett.
“He is good to me.” I sip my coffee from the tiny paper cup. “And I love him.”
“Good.” She relaxes so much I realize how tense she was. “Really, that’s good, because as soon as I saw that guy, I was worried.”
“You didn’t seem worried. You sent me a text that he was hot.”
“Yeah, well, he is. But he had a gun on him, same as that bodyguard you have.” She shrugs. “And all of us from school? We all know you, but honestly…” She blows on her tea. “We also know what goes on over the river.”
“What goes on?”
She sips her tea with an abundance of caution. “Like, the mob and shit? And police jurisdiction stops at the bridge. Supposedly, it’s like this other whole world on the other side.”
“How come I didn’t know you felt that way?”
“Why bring that up? So you can get hurt?” She tries to sip again and does a little better. “Not interested. You seemed okay. You never said anything. But then you obviously didn’t go on your trip, and Signore Hotstuff showed up, and I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a thing that happens over there.’ So I just filed it. Figured I’d see you in September.”
My future education is a big fat question mark, but I don’t tell her that. She’s seen the pregnancy test. She knows it already.
“It’s everything you say,” I tell her, realizing—as the words come out—how silent I’ve been on the subject. “Everyone’s in everyone’s business, unless it’s real business… and you’re a woman. Then it’s definitely not your business. But there’s peace. Zero crime. I mean… except the stuff that’s against the law.”
Scarlett chuckles.
“Everyone agrees on how things should be, more or less,” I add.
“Even you?”
Stalling, I finish my coffee.
“Espresso’s thicker from a Moka pot.” I put down the ridiculous, toy-sized mug. “And the rim should be rubbed with lemon, which you can’t do with a fucking Dixie cup… but when there’s a world war on and you don’t have enough water? The citrus sanitizes it so you don’t drink… basically sewage. And if you have to drink chicory because the fascists raised the coffee tariffs? A drop of sambuca corrects the bitterness.”
/> “I take it you don’t like the espresso.” She looks at me over the rim of her green tea.
“Sambuca ruins good coffee. It’s not necessary anymore. The war is over. And that’s how I feel about a lot of what goes on where I grew up. We’re correcting things that don’t need it anymore. We have solutions for problems that were already solved in other ways, and now we’re calling them traditions we have to live by. And all I’m saying, all I think with my whole heart, is that if you like sambuca in your coffee, drink it. But don’t tell me I have to correct something that’s fine already, then call it tradition and act like it’s normal.”
She sits back, cradling her cup at her chest, and shakes her head. “You lost me at the war being over.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just want to know you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. But I’m not okay with the way we are. Things have to change, and if I have to be the one to change them, so be it.”
“Fine.” She shrugs. “But are you inviting me to your party or not?”
I laugh, but no. She can’t come to this party. Nothing on this side of the river is powerful enough to change where I’m from.
She tells me about a guy she met in a fender bender with her new BMW, who she asked on a date in the ensuing road rage—right after threatening to put a tire iron through his windshield. By the end of it, I’m laughing so hard my side hurts.
And unlike the last time I saw Scarlett, I can see the future. There’s no reason not to see her again. I can go to school and have the life I want.
This time, when I hug my friend and say good-bye, I feel as if I have the power to make anything possible.
I do have the power. It makes me smile uncontrollably in the back seat of the car.
Armando looks at me in the rearview. “Happy today?”
“You could say that.”
My phone dings. There’s a message from Gia.
I open it, reading a series of short, textual bursts, and each one is a punch in the face.
22
SANTINO
Engraved inside our wedding rings, where a date or a line about love would usually go, is a number—a lawyer’s bar license, given to me in the days following our meeting with Emilio in the hospital.
After Rosetta died, I looked up the number so I could tell Nazario Coraggio it was all over. The deal was off. But there was no such license issued.
When I heard Damiano had designs on Violetta, I married her, then tried the license number again. Nazario protected himself—the license didn’t lead me to him, but a partner in a generations-old international firm, with an office a hundred miles away, in a part of the state with high rises and a Starbucks on every corner.
The receptionist denied there was a Nazario Coraggio in the firm, then gave me a phone number to call on a certain date.
Today is the day.
I made it. Violetta won’t have to read about the numbers in my will and find the lawyer herself. It’s here. The secret is safe. The crown is safe. She’s safe.
Behind a locked door to the back room of Mille Luci, I take out a new phone and dial the number the receptionist gave me. When the lawyer picks up, I recognize the voice immediately.
“Nazario?”
Emilio Moretti’s consigliere—Il Blocco—coughs dry and hard.
“Santino DiLustro.” He says in Italian, “You made it.”
“So did you. I thought they buried you in the sea.”
He tsks. “No. I know how to stay low. But you? You’re a big piece over there now.”
“Big piece over a small territory.”
“With a target on your back so big a child could hit it.” Nazario Coraggio is a born consigliere. He never holds back advice, whether you want it or not. “Emilio said you were the patient one. The one who sees the whole…” He stops for a coughing fit. “You lost the picture when you married her so fast. No courtship, no nothing.”
“I had no choice. Damiano was going to claim her.”
“You could have started sooner.”
Explaining that I stalled because of Rosetta is pointless. My guilt and regret mean nothing to him. “I did what I had to do.”
“You did what you wanted.”
Arguing with a man who’s right will get me nowhere.
“How much longer is this lecture going to go?” I look at my watch even though he can’t see the cue over the phone. “I have things to do.”
“You do.” He wheezes. “You have to secure your position before you get what you were promised, or it’ll be taken away from you.”
“By who? I ran the Tabonas out already.”
“They’re trash. It’s the Orolios you have to worry about.”
“I have Damiano under control,” I say.
He sighs as if his point is a target a child could hit, and I’m missing it over and over.
“You have to play defense for a few more days. Don’t make any moves.” He coughs twice and swallows the rest behind a guttural groan. “Fortify your position.”
“Bene. I will.”
“You do not appreciate how precarious your situation is.”
“I do.”
“Cosimo’s looking for a reason to hit you.”
“Cristo, can you make your point more clear? Or would you like to come here and knock me over with a lead pipe?”
“I’m an old man. All I want is to see this thing put in safe hands. Then I can die.”
“It will be safe.”
“I know.”
He gives me a time to be at the lawyer’s office. I don’t write it down.
“Violetta?” I call up the stairs.
She’s supposed to be home, but she’s not in the kitchen or by the pool. I keep looking. She’s not in her room and she’s not answering when I call her name. I turn the corner around a blind hallway in my own fucking house, and I’m stopped by cold metal against my cheek.
It’s a gun.
Someone shorter than me is holding it. I look without moving, but I already know who it is.
“Violetta,” I say softly, with my hands up. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
“You’re a liar.”
She has my grandfather’s gun with the World War Two bullets still in it, and she knows I’m telling the truth. She’s not going to shoot me, but her eyes are red-rimmed and her mouth is twisted into a snarl. She thinks she might pull the trigger, and what she believes she’s capable of is more important than what I think she’s going to do.
“Put that down.”
“You said you’d call it off!”
There’s no point in pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“I said I will stop the ‘mbasciata. I can’t now. Not without the crown.” I speak calmly, but it’s not stopping the trembling that’s taken her over from her face to the two hands holding the revolver. “Do you know how to use that?”
She clicks the hammer back, proving she watches television, but not that she understands how sensitive the trigger is.
“Gia says the wedding’s still on. They’re doing it. What the fuck, Santino?” She takes a hard sniff, and her breath hiccups. “Why are you letting this happen?”
In the shake of her hands and the break of her voice, she’s losing control of herself, and that trigger’s like a virgin dick in a wet cunt. The slightest friction and it’s all over.
“I can…” I don’t finish the sentence on purpose, because I don’t want her to react.
Instead, I grab her wrist and push it away, wrestling her down. The gun fires, leaving a long path of smoking splinters in the hardwood floor.
That could have been my brain.
If she’d killed me, what would happen to her?
How many men would come for my wife? And what would they do to her?
The thought of her being torn apart because I’m not here to protect her steals every ounce of my control. I become what I am and always was—an animal.
23
VIOLE
TTA
The opposite of love is apathy, and there’s nothing indifferent about my feelings toward my husband. I hate him for letting me love him almost as much as I hate him for loving me.
And I don’t want to shoot him. I don’t even want to hurt him. But I don’t know how to get through to him that what he’s allowing is worse than a sin, and I don’t know how to get out of the situation in the hallway without shooting him. I’ve gone too far.
When he wrestles me to the floor, the gun goes off. The power of it against my palm is so great that it loosens my fingers, freeing itself—and I’m grateful to Santino for making sure the bullet landed anywhere but his skull.
He gets off me and picks up the gun. For a moment, I’m sure he’s going to give me a taste of my own medicine in the form of a bitter threat of death.
Instead, he points the gun anywhere except at me. I’m in a crouch when he opens the cylinder and lets the bullets clatter to the floor. He swallows fire and breathes rage.
“Do you know what you almost did?” he growls, tossing the gun onto the hall table. It makes a clattering racket that echoes off the walls. I can still get to it, but it’s empty.
I’m terrified and aroused at the same time, but I’m also angry enough to get my feet under me. “Killed a liar.”
In one step, he has me by the throat, pressing me to the wall. I’m submissive, powerless, and immediately wet. He doesn’t hold me hard enough to choke me, but he’s forceful enough to pin me still with the pulse at the base of his hand throbbing against my neck. Intoxicating danger and solid protection mingle in my brain, and the blood in my veins thrums with electricity. I let him handle me, knowing he would never, ever harm me.
“You want to know what they’d do to you?” he says through his teeth. His grip tightens on my neck, but my nipples harden and an insatiable need grows between my legs.
Maybe I don’t want to know, but I nod against his hand.
“Tell me,” I croak. “But don’t lie again.”
Santino snarls and pushes me into my bedroom, snarling and grumbling to himself in indecipherable Italian. I land on the bed on my back with my legs akimbo, struggling to get them under me quickly. Instead of fear, the knot of desire grows bigger and tighter, pulling the threads of my humming nerves together into an ever-spinning ball of need at my core.