The Escort

chapter 4

Twenty five dollars in coin, including a glittering gold half eagle that sent Angelina's heart pattering every time she looked at it, towered in a pile next to Tonio, who sprawled casually on the floor in the half circle of men, legs outstretched toward the side. Angelina knelt behind him, her full skirt billowed around her, leaning against his back, at times pressing forward against him, her hand resting intimately on his shoulder, in an effort to see around him and watch the play of the dice as they bounced off the wall under the window. All her previous anger at the men for not letting her play on her own was forgotten in the passion of their winning streak.

Tonio placed the bets she dictated, seemingly amused by the enthusiasm she'd gained for the game since being allowed some part in it, although she was never allowed to toss the dice. The other men seemed less amused by her presence. She used a system, betting with the odds every time. During the morning of play she'd lost only one bet, and that one on the come at even payoff. As soon as the traitorous dice had settled in their lie, her nose had wrinkled in disgust. Tonio laughed at her as he paid off and remarked that he'd never let her play poker.

The man immediately to their right was having an unusually long and lucky streak as shooter. Angelina studied him during play and concluded quickly that pure luck was responsible for his success. He recklessly placed bets with the odds well against him. Sooner or later his streak would end and it would be their turn to shoot. Angelina was betting it would be sooner. She eyed his pile of money, which was larger than theirs. With that much cash they could surely buy first class tickets from Chicago.

Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours Tonio's goal had become hers. As Tonio wooed her with his tales of first class travel, her excitement at the novelty of train travel paled. Something in her longed to experience the opulence of first class, to see how the rich lived. She felt his impatience when they pulled over to allow an express to pass, or when they were sidelined for hours loading freight. She longed to feel the rush of traveling at top speed, the way passenger-only trains were allowed. The urge to compete and win, to see a tall store of money in front of her overcame her. She could not fell it. But it did not erode her caution. With studious even betting, they would win. Tonio had noticed her addiction and mentioned that her eyes shone with a pretty gleam of avarice. She thought it was a compliment.

"Greed comes before a fall, isn't that what they say?" he'd added.

She realized then that he was insulting her. "I believe that's pride."

He laughed, well aware of the proper saying. "You let gambling fever get hold of you, you're lost. Be careful Angelina. I've seen eyes like those aplenty surrounding gambling tables, happily watching as their owners lose everything."

"Place our bet. One dollar on a natural." She let her irritation show. The game continued.

The man to their right tossed the dice. They bounced off the wall and fell back into a pair of fours. Angelina leaned close and whispered in Tonio's ear. "Place two on a gag that he won't make his point with a double four."

"No, bet right that he comes on the next roll. Same two."

She shook her head. "He's foolhardy. He'll take our bet. We're guaranteed a win. He just rolled two fours, what are the odds he'll do it again?"

"Ten to one."

He didn't need to tell her, she could figure or recall odds faster than the rest of them. She knew that he was baiting her.

"If we lose, we pay off at the same," he continued.

"He just rolled his one. The odds are with us."

"He's on a hot streak."

Angelina didn't listen. She leaned past him and scooped the half eagle out of the pile. "See, I'm preserving our original investment." Then she set two silver dollars out in front of them. Tonio called the bet, which the man accepted as Angelina had predicted. The man shooting held the dice out to her to blow on.

"Care to blow out my luck?"

She shook her head. "Tell him, I'd as soon spit on them. He hasn't a prayer of winning."

The shooter laughed and tossed with great care, aiming at the wall with exaggerated movements. The dice bounced, the first die landing a solid, stationary four immediately. The second rolled to the edge of the semicircle, nearly out of play, before settling into the second four. Angelina's mouth fell open.

"Hot damn!" the victor cried out.

She covered her mouth to stifle a scream. She couldn't look at Tonio. He must be furious. She fled to her seat. Twenty dollars, over a week's worth of wages, gone!

"With that little stroke of luck, I pass," the shooter said. He moved to hand the dice to Tonio.

"I'm out. Go on without me."

She heard his steps coming down the aisle, then felt his eyes bearing down on her from where he stood in the aisle, but she couldn't look up to meet the fury she expected to find. He reached over her and let the window down a few inches. Cool spring air swept down on her.

"You look green." His voice was calm.

"You can look at me." He settled into the seat next to her. When she still refused to look up, he gently pulled her chin round and tipped her face to meet his. "I won't hit you. Is that what you expect?"

"I'm sorry. I lost all your money."

He showed her the half eagle. It glinted gamely in the sunlight. "What did I lose? I still have my original investment."

"I'd be furious."

"That's you."

She pulled away, confused by his gentleness. "Spoken as someone who grew up with money."

"Is it harder to have had and lost, or never to have had at all?"

"It was a safe bet. The odds were against him."

"That's why they're called odds, there's always the chance—"

"He shouldn't have won."

"Angelina, you can't always bet with the odds. Sometimes you've got to go with what's in your gut."

"You knew he'd win?"

"I would have bet differently. He was hot. Where were your country superstitions to guide you when you needed them most?" His tone was light, joking. He was trying to cheer her.

"Aristicratico!" The word was a barely audible whisper under her breath.

"I may have come from nobility, but I'm as poor as you are. And no one gives a damn about bloodline here." He pushed up and strode off down the aisle and into the next railcar. She was vindicated that at last he was mad. But she couldn't help wondering why.



They sat in an uncomfortable silence, staring at each other over the meal that he insisted on buying with money he'd won playing craps after their big loss. He forced angry forkfuls down, followed by swigs of beer. She pushed bites around in random patterns on her plate, uneasy with his anger.

"Are you going to eat the damned food or just fork it to death?"

"I'm sorry." She took a bite of chicken to appease him.

"Look, I thought getting off the train for a meal would be a treat. We've been trapped there for days."

She took another bite. He still sounded angry.

"You thought I was gloating, buying this meal. That's it, isn't it?"

"No. Why do you insist on believing that I'm still angry? My anger passes quickly. At first, I couldn't understand why you weren't angry with me, now I can't understand why you are."

"You don't have the power to provoke me to anger."

"Don't I?"

"I don't want to hear any aristocrat crap again. I'm an American, pure and simple. The fact that I was born to a titled family is an unfortunate quirk of nature. I renounced my Italian citizenship at the first opportunity years ago. And my family sure as hell renounced me. I have no desire to ever return to the forsaken place of my birth. If you had half an ounce of brain in your head, you'd feel the same. How long is it going to take you to realize that we're on common ground here? That I'm not the enemy?"

"How long is it going to take you to realize that I love my homeland and don't share your opinion of it?"

"All right, truce." He flagged the waiter and ordered a piece of pie. When the waiter asked if the lady would like dessert also she answered for herself, ordering a slice of cake. "Where'd you learn to speak English?"

"I learned a little from my work in the signor's household and taught myself the rest in New York. Mario's boys practiced with me. Both speak a little; they must for their jobs."

"That explains your pronunciation. You weren't taught by someone who speaks it as a first language. We'll work on it. By the time we reach Idaho I'll have you speaking like a native. How much do you understand?"

"Most, if people don't speak too quickly."

"Read?"

"Enough to get by." He smiled at her, but she had the feeling he was patronizing her. "Does it surprise you that I read?"

"You think it should?"

"Peasants usually don't, and more especially, women don't. I haven't had the advantages the wealthy, or even men, have. At least they aren't looked down on for trying to learn. Papa taught me to read against my own mother's wishes. She thought it frivolous, but then, she can't see how it benefits Papa, and he is a man after all. My parents are not well matched in that way. Mama cares nothing about learning." She sized him up.

Education was a touchy topic with her. She had a quick mind that yearned to learn, but by accident of her own birth, had been denied. If not for Papa she would have starved intellectually. "Where were you educated? The best schools? The finest Italy has to offer?" Though she didn't mean to sound adversarial, the tone was clearly present in her voice.

"The seminary," he said.

She knew he watched her reaction with immense satisfaction. His eyes danced as he stared at her. But she couldn't disguise her reaction. Her eyes went wide. A steam whistle sounded before she could press him further.

He threw a pile of money on the table and stood, coming round to pull out her chair while she sat, stunned. He helped her up by her elbow and pulled her away. "Come on. The train won't wait. I think the engineer enjoys seeing us scramble to get back." He sighed. "I was looking forward to that pie."

The depot restaurant cleared quickly, most of the clientele returned to board the soon-to-be departing train. There was a crush at the door. Tonio grabbed her hand to pull her through. She was still too stunned to pull it away.



Angelina lay on the chumming board staring up at the rounded ceiling above her. Sleep was a faint hope. Tonio sat beside her, buffing the dust off his boots as he prepared for the night. Neither one had spoken since they'd boarded. He swung his legs around and up onto the makeshift bed, then turned facing away from her in preparation for sleep.

"Tonio," she asked, "What were you doing in the seminary?"

He rolled over to face her, studying her for a moment before propping up on one elbow. "Living in exile."

She looked relieved. "You weren't studying to be a priest?"

"Angelina, you're such an innocent. What else would I be doing at the seminary?"

"Oh." Then silence as he stared at her. "Are you?"

"What? A priest? No!" He laughed and leaned into her. His face was inches from hers. "Why do you want to know? Perhaps there's something you want to confess?"

She didn't understand the look he wore. This was a serious matter. "Did you break your vows?"

"Holy Orders? I never took them. A little incident with a girl came up."

Her relief was accompanied by a surge of jealousy over the mention of the girl. She didn't like to think of him as having been so distracted by another woman that he gave up his calling to be a man of God. Yet her reaction made no sense. She surely couldn't be falling in love with such a wild and reckless man.

"Were you worried or prepared to be disgusted by traveling with one defiled?"

"Oh, Tonio! How can you joke about this? You know that if you broke your vows you'll be damned for eternity. You can't walk away from a promise with God."

"Are you so worried about the condition of my soul?"

"Yes."

He leaned even closer over her, and though she didn't understand it, his eyes lit up with some intense emotion that she couldn't name or describe. If she pursed her lips he'd come down in a kiss. Her heart pounded, but she was at a loss. She desired his kiss, and it frightened her. The way her body reacted to his nearness was unfamiliar, and exciting, but forbidden. And she had to know. The jealous beast inside her had to be sated. "Did she mean so much to you that you would give up your calling?"

He fell back from her and the mood was broken. "My calling! You misunderstand. I told you, she was an act of rebellion. My father was the one that sent me to the seminary. He paid the priests a donation to take me off his hands. He paraded around with his pious arrogance, happily bragging about giving a son to the Church, all the while setting up mistresses throughout the city. If the good fathers had known of his carnal life they most certainly would have refused his money, and taken me on just to save my soul.

"He drank too much and spent too much money. He taught my older brother his same whoring ways, of which my poor brother has never repented. Poor Pia. My brother's wife. He's led her a merry chase. And yet, she continues to love him, my despot of a brother. Sometimes the evil don't get their just reward, it seems.

"No, you needn't worry about me giving up a calling. It was my father's form of punishment, that's all. There he was making bastards throughout the city and yet he blamed me for my—" He cut himself short.

"Your mother didn't stop him?"

He looked at her oddly, as if she'd missed something important he'd already told her. "She was dead. She died when I was ten, of cholera. Just like the king, the same year. Don't feel sorry for her. It was an escape.

"He would never have taken a mistress while she was alive. He enjoyed imprisoning her far too much. He kept her locked in the palazzo, all to himself, as if he were afraid that someone would get to her."

He mumbled something beneath his breath in English, as if he were taking an extra precaution against her understanding. She thought he said, "But then, can you ever really trust a woman?"

He continued aloud in Italian. "She was an obsession with him."

Angelina sighed. It sounded very romantic. "How very lucky for your mother to have someone adore her like that."

"She hated him," he said flatly. He'd been staring at the ceiling. He turned to look at her. "I've dispelled your girlish views. You'd like to believe that I grew up in some kind of fairytale." He looked back to the ceiling. "I suppose by your standards I did. Home was a palazzo with a porte-cochere and a large courtyard. The house had a plain facade, but inside it was magnificent."

He didn't elaborate and it seemed to Angelina that he didn't like remembering. "Because I was so much younger than my brother and sister, I had the nursery all to myself. My mother spent hours there with me. It only infuriated him further. It all belongs to my brother now. Oldest takes all."

Angelina was trying hard to put the puzzled pieces of his life together. But the pieces were oddly shaped and hard to fit. "Where did you go when you left the seminary? Your father sent you away?"

"To Ethiopia, to war. Because I'd been raised since the age of ten by pacifist priests my father thought that would be the perfect place for me. And he was right. I learned many useful skills there, none of which he counted on. I learned how to use a knife and a gun. How to blow things up. And most of all how to survive.

"That was the greatest surprise of all; that I, a pampered candidate for the priesthood, would have such a strong will to live. It was the bane of his later years. I came back a well-decorated hero. He would have preferred a dead son sent home on a medic's stretcher. Then he could have bragged about my heroism to his friends, buried me, and been done with me. Too bad for him that I valued life too much."

He sat up and turned the back of his head toward her, lifting his hair to reveal the jagged scar she'd noticed before. Beneath his hairline it was wider and raised. "I got this when the enemy sneaked up behind me and tried to decapitate me. Maybe scalping was all he had on his mind. The army doctor did a bang up job of sewing it back on. Since that time, I don't sleep heavily, and I always carry my own knife." He let his hair down.

She felt nauseated.

"We'll be in Chicago tomorrow. We've got a day's layover there. We'll be staying with old friends of mine. We'd better get some sleep." He lay down and rolled over.

"Tonio?"

He didn't respond, but she knew he was listening.

"I'm sorry." She curled up behind him and listened until his breathing stilled and she was certain he was asleep. Then she gently lifted his hair and ran her finger along the scar, finally kissing it softly. That he was awake and well aware of her gesture, she never knew. Nor that he kept his hands tightly clenched in front of him, fighting desire that he hadn't felt in years.

She lay her head back down and drifted lazily to sleep. Tomorrow they'd be in Chicago. The West.