“I’m not a wiseguy,” Tino reminded him. “I’m trying out for dance team. If Carina gets to try out to be a cheerleader, I get to try out for dance team.”
“Dollars for doughnuts the old man doesn’t know Mary is making Carina try out for cheerleading,” Nova said with a growl. “I think that cunt does merda like that to piss the Morettis off. She could give two shits about Carina, but all of a sudden she wants her to go cheer for all those teste di cazzo playing football like Dominic from the Brambino family. I call bullshit. She’s fucking with us.”
Tino really wished Nova hadn’t brought up Mary.
Especially since she had shown up last night after Nova left, and ruined Tino’s high over Brianna’s dance. He’d run into the bathroom and taken one of those pills when he heard her on the stairs, half hoping he’d end up puking on her, but he had a cereal bar earlier so all it really did was haze things for him. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
After she left, he counted them out and hoped to God fifty-seven was enough for Mary to get sick of him.
Tino turned and looked out the window. “Us?” he asked distantly. “So we’re Team Moretti now? That’s our us? They’re our people?”
“Yes, they’re our people.” Nova sighed. “Like it or not, they’re our people. They’re our Borgata. That’s our team, and we make sure our team wins. I’m telling the old man about the cheerleading.”
“You do that,” Tino whispered as he kept staring out the window.
Tino stayed silent after that.
He let Nova listen to what he wanted on the radio, but he could only hear so much 2Pac, Jay Z, and N.W.A. before he got irritated. He was already angry.
“I hate this shit.” Tino groaned after a half an hour. “Can I listen to something else?”
Nova gave him a look, as if the dance-team conversation made him question if Tino deserved control of the radio. “If you’d listen to the lyrics.”
“I don’t wanna listen to the lyrics.”
“Some of it is really poetic. Their statement is powerful.”
“I don’t care.” Tino raised his eyebrows at his brother. “I get it. Fuck the police. Fuck everyone. Can I listen to something else?”
“Fine, whatever,” Nova said dismissively. “We’re almost there anyway.”
So Tino got to mess with the radio. He stopped on a Mary J. Blige song, because he knew Nova liked her and they probably needed to find a middle ground.
Then, just as they were pulling into the gas station to meet the lawyer, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” came on, and Tino sat up and looked at the radio. “I like this song. A lot. You like it?”
“Yeah, it’s all right,” Nova agreed.
Nova sat there next to him after they parked, letting him listen to the song. Tino rested his head back against the seat, closed his eyes, and remembered Brianna so he could forget Mary.
“Are you gonna tell Romeo about the basement?” Nova asked again.
Tino kept his eyes closed, still imagining Brianna’s dance as he sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You can if you want.” Nova choked on the words, but he said them. “I’m not gonna tell you not to.”
Tino nodded, knowing how hard it was for Nova to give him that. He wasn’t sure which of them had it worse, Nova who carried so much guilt, or Tino who was fighting down so much anger.
“Ti voglio bene,” he whispered, more to remind himself than Nova.
Nova reached over and squeezed his shoulder, like he wanted to make sure Tino was still there. “I love you too.”
Then the song was over, and the lawyer showed up. So they got in his Mercedes and drove to the jail.
“Leave your hat,” Nova said from the front seat where he sat discussing things with the guy in the suit who obviously worked for the don and was part of the bonus Nova got for being a Cosa Nostra trained dog. “You can’t bring it in.”
Tino didn’t want to leave his hat. It sort of felt like his good-luck charm. He took it off and sniffed at the brim, because it still had the scent of Brianna’s shampoo. Or maybe he was just imagining it, but either way it made him feel better.
“Did you just sniff your hat?” Nova asked in Italian.
Tino looked at the hat in his hand, and then he smelled it again. “Why can’t I bring it?”
“’Cause you can’t. They pat you down and use a metal detector. You can’t bring anything you could hide something in,” he went on in Italian and then added in English, “It’s a friggin’ jail.”
Tino put his hat over his face and dropped his head back against the seat. He took another deep breath, trying to pretend he was back at the studio in Bed-Stuy.
“You don’t have to come in,” Nova whispered in Italian once more. “You can wait in the car, piccolo.”
“I’m not a baby,” Tino decided for the first time in his life. His mother used to call him the baby, and it was a habit Romeo and Nova picked up. They got better about it as he got older, but sometimes they reverted back to when Tino was five and his name in the house had just been piccolo. “Don’t call me that anymore.”
It reminded him of his ma.