Antonio and I sat next to each other on the wood bench, barely moving, ready for everything to go wrong. We weren’t resigned to failure, only sitting in a state of preparedness.
“I don’t know how I can face my family after what I’ve done,” I said. “I hurt them. I try not to think about it… but I’ll have to deal with it.”
“Don’t explain to them. You’re back, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I’m not worried about explaining. It’s… of everything I’ve done… I wronged them. All of them. They love me, and I made them grieve for nothing.”
“You should sleep,” he said.
“I can’t. I can’t think about anything but losing you and facing them.”
“Do you still have the medal I gave you? The St. Christopher?”
“Yes.” It lay flat against my chest. I forgot it was there most of the time.
“Touch it.”
I did. I couldn’t discern anything but an overall bumpiness on the nickel-sized charm. He put his arm around me and pulled me toward him. I didn’t feel as though I was resisting, but apparently I was.
“Down. Put your head on my lap.”
I rested on him, letting his thumb stroke my cheek. “That medal came from my great-great-grandfather, one of the first camorrista. It protects you from harm. All harm. Even when you beat yourself, you’re protected.”
“What about you?”
I felt a shrug in the movements of his body. “I don’t need as much protecting.”
I sighed. Arguing was pointless. “You should sleep too.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“Stop that.”
He pulled my hair off my face, stroking it gently back. “It’s inevitable. One day, Theresa Drazen will close her eyes.” He drew his fingers gently across my eyelids and down my cheek. I felt the need for sleep cover me like a blanket, as if my limbs and senses were in the first stage of shutting down. “She’ll close them while thinking a happy thought. About when she was younger, and she and her husband drove across the border in a police truck, before he got old and ugly.”
“You will never be ugly.” It took an enormous amount of energy to get those five words out, but they needed to be said.
He continued as if I hadn’t said a thing. “This is the day she’ll remember. The day her brother’s heart was healed, and she and her husband made peace with the Sicilians. The day they went to live in the olive orchards. When you close your eyes for the last time, it will be this day you remember as the first day of the long happiness of your life. You will smile your whole journey to heaven.”
I didn’t know if he said anything else. My thoughts started to go pre-dream, and I was far away from the heat and smell of the truck, held down only by Antonio’s touch on my cheek and the thrumming of the wheels on the road.
I woke with a mouth full of white school glue when the truck jerked to a stop and went backward, beeping. The light through the tiny windows in the door was daylight bright, then grey, as if we’d glided indoors.
Antonio’s head rested on the side of the truck, but his eyes were open. “Buongiorno.”
“Hi. You look good for a guy who slept sitting up.” I rubbed my eyes. He couldn’t possibly look that good on no sleep, but he did. Unshaven. A little rough around the edges, but still perfect.
He cupped my chin. “I want you to be ready for anything.” He gently pulled me up so he could stand. “I don’t know what we’re going to see when those doors open.”
“As long as you stay with me, I’m ready.”
The windows in the rear bay doors were set so high, Antonio had to stretch himself to see through them.
I heard a conversation outside the truck. It sounded like English, but I couldn’t string two words together. Contentious, sharp, businesslike. Antonio rubbed his eyes and sighed and motioned me to him.
“What is it?” I tried to get tall enough to see through the wire-meshed windows, but I couldn’t.