I let her hands go. She was still concerned. It was in her voice, as if she wanted to add something but didn’t because I was on top of her naked and only half dried-off.
I rolled onto my back. The ceiling was a popcorn pattern with chips missing in the shapes of islands lost in the sea. “When I was a boy, I knew my side of the piazza. I was the little mayor. Sophia sold cigarettes, Vincenzo sold fruit, and they’d give me some for running errands, though I tell you, Sophia was a hardass. Made me work for it.”
Theresa got up on her elbow. “Her product was more expensive. Vincenzo could give you a bruised reject. She couldn’t.”
“True, true.”
“Did Vincenzo have strawberries in summer?”
“When I was a kid? Never. I had him get them for me special later, though. I was a mechanic. I couldn’t afford them but…”
But Valentina loved them.
“I like them better than cigarettes,” Theresa said.
“Sophia’s smokes stank to high heaven anyway.” She touched my face, stroking my cheek as if appreciating something seen for the first time. She looked breakable, but I knew otherwise. “I want one now that I mentioned it.”
“Is that how you made money? Running errands?” she asked.
“I was fast. You shoulda seen me run. Via Duchessa to Via Concezio in seventeen seconds. I took care of business. Made sure my uncle got to the docks, made a little money where I could. Went to school sometimes. Everything had a place. When I went to work for my father, the places were different, but there was less chaos. Men did what men did, and women did what women did, and it all fit. Who I was as a child still fit in that world. It wasn’t what my mother wanted, but it was something I understood. I didn’t have to think about it.”
I looked at the islands on the ceiling. The longer I looked, the more there were. It was a regular archipelago up there.
“And now it’s all different.” Her voice came over the popcorn waters as undulating music. “The rug’s getting ripped from under you, but not all at once. Piece by piece.”
I turned to her and put my hand on her face. “I told you once that you were making me soft.”
“At the wrap party.”
“That day, Daniel Brower had a press conference. I went to see him because he’d been to that movie with you the night before. I didn’t know what I wanted from him, except to keep away from you. He said he wouldn’t. I felt powerless. I thought I was going to go insane.” Remembering that moment, I felt helpless all over again. The feeling had been new at the time. I would never get used to it. “You’ve been making me soft since we met. And now I’m lying here telling you this bullshit. I should be fucking you.”
“No.” She straddled me. I put my hands up, and she held them. “I should be fucking you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, Capo.”
“Well. Let’s see how you do then.”
She hitched up a little and guided herself onto me. She felt perfect. Built for my body. I was consumed by her. I took her hands again, and she leveraged herself against them. She leaned down, and I held her, let her be the boat on my sea as the islands above formed and reformed. I closed my eyes and felt her softness in my hands, all warmth and curves. When I felt her stiffen and shake, I released inside her.
We slept in each other’s arms, and the last thing I saw was the chipped ceiling, no more than part of a room in need of a paint job.
thirty-six.
theresa
os Angeles nights were cold, and if the heat wasn’t on in the safe house you happened to be staying at and the stash under the bed wasn’t equipped with a blanket, you huddled for warmth. At some point in the night, Antonio and I had unwrapped and rewrapped ourselves around each other, and his heat kept me warm under the flimsy sheet. When I woke, I thought he was asleep, but when I turned and looked at him, hoping to see him in restful peace, his eyes were open.