“Don’t be. Not for that. The other stuff, yeah. I’m still mad. When are you coming?”
“Soon,” I said, lying again. It was possible I could be with my family some time before my brother’s funeral, but my own funeral was the likeliest event.
“I’m going to corner you, and you’re going to talk to me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Good.” She seemed fully calmed. “I have to go.”
She hung up. I dropped the phone as if it had turned into lead.
I stayed in the dark, hunched over and paralyzed with conflicting emotions. The shower turned on. I waited for Antonio to finish. Then waited a few minutes more before I couldn’t wait another second. I opened the door and padded into the living room. The kitchen island separated the two rooms, and Antonio stood under the island lamps, hair still wet, cigarette dangling from his lips, with the guts of his gun all over the counter. He clicked pieces together, snap clap snap.
His hands stopped moving when he saw me. I’d seen him magnificently tired, exhaustion making him look more feral and beautiful, but in that cone of light, he looked as if he’d been unzipped and emptied.
“Hi,” I said.
“Buona sera.” He slapped the last piece into the pistol. “I’ve been trying to find the right words to tell you. I keep choosing then unchoosing.”
I’m a wreck, everything is fucked up, I love you, I can’t have you. You could get shot any minute, my brother is dying, and I can’t see him. I feel like a half-played game of Jenga. Pieces of me keep getting pulled away and added to the load.
“I don’t want to talk,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at me in that way that made me feel eaten alive. He just put his gun down carefully and held out his hand. I took it, and he led me to the couch. He lay flat, and I crawled on top of him, lying thigh to thigh, cheek to chest. When he put his arm around my back, the weight of it secured me in place, pressed the anxiety from my ribs, and I slept with his heartbeat in my ear.
nineteen.
theresa
dreamed I was chasing something through the halls of WDE, but I didn’t know what. I only knew I wanted it very badly. My father stood behind Arnie Sanderson’s wooden desk, knocking on it while saying it’s in here it’s in here. His voice wasn’t his voice but a hive of bees in his throat.
I woke with a stiff neck to Antonio’s cheap burner phone buzzing.
“Be still,” whispered Antonio when I tried to raise my head. He wiggled until he got his phone out of his pocket. “Pronto?”
I opened my eyes and rested on him, letting my vision clear. How long had we slept? Longer than I thought I could. The light outside was dull grey, and the birds made a racket. Zo was on the other end. I heard his choppy Italian. I wondered if Antonio’s voice would still sound like music if I could understand what he was saying. Maybe if we got out of this and made a life, I’d learn Italian and find out the answer, or maybe I’d just go on loving the way he sounded, listening to what he was feeling instead of what he was saying.
He tapped his thumb to two of his fingers, making a list for Zo. He swallowed and added a third thing. Zo laughed. Antonio did not.
“Bene. A dopo. He tapped off.
I got up, and he sat on the edge of the couch.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“What did Zo want?”
“Marching orders. I don’t know what they did without me for two days.”
“I want to see Jonathan,” I said.
His silence was too heavy. Too obvious.
“You can pick the time if we have other things to do first. Or…”
I realized he had a set of concerns he wasn’t sharing, and the look on his face told me he wasn’t just going to tell me what he was thinking. He was calculating his next move.
“Say it, Antonio. What are you going to do when Zo gets here?”
“I need you to wait for my call before you leave for the hospital,” he said. “I’ll send Otto or come myself.”
Ah. That was it.