Jonathan would be okay, and my family would be all right. Antonio had to be fine. I was so mad at him for leaving me in that break room, but I would forgive him and let him fuck me like a rag doll.
I hurled myself down the steps and into the waiting room next to the vending machine Antonio had fed a twenty-dollar bill an eternity ago. My face was bathed in sweat and tears. I couldn’t breathe from running toward then away from the make-believe fire, and my ears rang from the alarm. I passed the colorful box of shiny plastic food, all screaming for attention. Something about it made me stop in my tracks. All the crinkly packages held upright by black coils were the same. Or not. I didn’t remember the food, because Antonio had been so beautiful with two-day scruff on his cheeks and his sparkling eyes. And his hands, breaking open the granola package… the way the fingers had articulated, the sheer power and dignity of them. Later, I’d learned to love the grace with which those hands managed small things because I knew how rough they could be.
The vending machine wasn’t interesting. The memory of my resistance to Antonio was, as was the sobbing of the woman next to it as she crumpled a bunch of papers in her hand. That was why I was attracted to the machine. It wasn’t the memory of Antonio or the brightly packaged non-food. It was the woman. It was Valentina.
My ribs took on a life of their own, squeezing the air from my lungs as if I couldn’t breathe without the help.
She wasn’t supposed to be sitting on a blue plastic chair by herself, crying. Antonio wouldn’t leave her like that. Not for a minute. Not for as long as it took me to stare at a bunch of snacks.
That only meant one thing.
Donna Maria had been telling the truth. She had him.
“Valentina?” I sat and said her name at the same time, putting my arm around her. “Where’s Antonio?”
She looked up and saw me, her eyes at the bottom of deep, salty puddles. She rattled something off in Italian, hands waving, mouth wet with tears and spit. I looked around the room. Sick grandmothers. Wailing babies. One woman so pale I thought she was wearing a mask. No one cared that a beautiful woman was crying her eyes out.
“Valentina, English, please. Antonio? He was coming to get you. Have you seen him?”
She shook her head. Spit out more Italian. All I understood was the name “Tonio” and the emotion, which read something between regret and resignation.
She wasn’t functioning, and more than anything, I needed her to function, at least well enough to tell me that Antonio had left us both for a life on the run, or a third woman, or some other attempt at vengeance. I didn’t even care what it was. Didn’t even worry about “us” but about the worst-case scenario, which I refused to even tell her.
I set her papers aside and took her hands. I tried to remember his voice, his tone, how he broke through her walls of panic and despair.
“Shh, Tina, tesoro. Shhh. Cinque secondi. Non dire nulla. Respira.”
She heard me. She must have. She took a breath through her mouth. It hitched, choked, but I saw the concentration in her face. She looked right at me, as if trying to seek out strength in me she didn’t have for herself. I tried to project Antonio-like confidence as I made a show of taking another deep breath. She followed, her second breath hitching that much less.
“Bene,” I said. “Another.”
We breathed together three more times. She swallowed. Breathed. Sniffed. Dug an overused tissue out of her sweater sleeve and wiped her nose. When she looked at me again and sucked her lips between her teeth as if there was something she wanted to say but was now calm enough to be ashamed of, I panicked.
“Okay. Tell me. Do you know where Antonio is?” In my heart, I still hoped she was crying because he’d broken her heart, not because I liked seeing her hurt but because the other option was terrifying.
“I don’t know.” Her face started melting again.
I squeezed her hands so hard it must have hurt. At least, that was the intention. “Have you seen him?”
“No.”