This is terrible. It couldn’t possibly get worse.
I get to the light in front of the red brick church.
DON’T CRY, COME BY!
I know where I am.
I put on the blinker and turn left.
Tommy’s Pizzeria comes up quicker than I expect. I whip into the parking lot. The door is shut and the sign inside is flipped to CLOSED, but the kitchen lights are on. I pull in and stop with a jerk, put the car in park, and turn to Massimo, who’s a little too still in the shadows.
“Told you.”
No answer. I can hear him breathing though. He’s alive.
“Massimo?” I stretch to touch his cheek. It’s cold.
A man exits the restaurant with a flat box, holding the door open for a woman. They walk side by side. The woman looks our way. I’ve got a man with a gunshot wound in the back seat of the car and anyone can see it.
I start the engine and back out, slinging my arm over the seat the way Dario did. There’s an alley behind the restaurant. No one will be there.
“Say something,” I say to my brother as I drive backward with a snap and jerk. Facing forward, I put the red line on the letter D. “Tell me about the time I snitched on you for wearing Daddy’s shoes. And he made you wear them to school, and you had basketball practice. That’s when you started calling me Goody.”
His tongue taps the roof of his mouth as air leaves it, making a tuh tuh tuh sound.
He’s not dead. I didn’t kill him. Not yet.
“That’s right.” I say it as if he laughed with recognition as I slowly go around the building to the back. “Timo watched you to make sure you didn’t take them off. Stood like a statue by the door every time you fell.”
He fell a lot that day. I stood on the other side of the gym door—behind Timo—peeking through the window, thinking I’d feel some sort of satisfaction at bringing him down a peg. My little brother was always more prized than me. He was rarely punished for things Grandma would beat me for. The first time he tripped because of shoes built for a man with a deformed foot, I wrung a drop of pleasure from the worn rag of revenge. On the second fall, when his team mocked him and Timo did nothing, only guilt dripped out. No matter how hard I twisted myself, I couldn’t feel good about hurting him.
A dumpster keeps me from going any farther. Just as I put the car into park, the phone trills again.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
Before I slide the dot, I ask myself a question.
How would Dario answer this call?
He wouldn’t say “hello?” and wait to be told who was there and what they wanted. He’d know already—and I do as well.
I slide the dot and start talking before I hear a sound from the other side.
“Massimo’s shot and here’s how it’s going to be—”
“Whoa, babydoll.” It’s Sergio. He’s not even Colonia, but he’s somehow weaseled his way into a position where he can call my brother’s phone. “Pull the reins back a little. Who shot him?”
Me. I shot him. He doesn’t need to know that.
“You give me Dario Lucari, unharmed.”
“Uhh… oopsie on the unharmed part.”
I expected this, but I’m still thrown by the thought of anyone getting close enough to my husband to hurt him.
No. Dario wouldn’t be thrown an inch off course.
“Deliver him to me and I’ll give you Massimo alive.”
I glance back to check my brother’s reaction to the threat, but his eyes are closed and his face is a deathly shade of gray. The flickering neon of the Tommy’s Pizzeria sign lights his cheeks red, then not, then red again. I suck in a breath then turn back to the front. Dario can’t be dead. Can he?
“Then I’ll deliver Massimo dead.”
“That would make my life real easy,” Sergio says. “He was supposed to watch the henhouse but went off to do I-don’t-even-know-what with the foxes. That’s you. In more ways than one.” He turns a compliment into a threat. “So let me check that, see if it’s a body for a body.”
The grounding of my plan’s been ripped out from under me. What I have to trade isn’t what they want. What they have is what I need.
“Hey, buddy boy!” Sergio calls to someone on his side. “You dead?”
I hold my breath.
“Fuck you.” It’s Dario. He’s alive. The relief is so overwhelming, it almost drowns out that I don’t have a replacement for my plan to trade Massimo for Dario.
“So nah… yeah?” Sergio asks. “Cool. So, tatertot, let’s say I take you up on this offer. You bring number one son home and I give you this hunk of meat. What are you going to do with it?”
The answer, obviously, is I’m going to run away with him to live happily ever after. We’re going to make babies and he’s going to teach me everything about the world. We will swim with sharks in sapphire blue waters.
“Not your business.”
“Sure, sure, but this guy here, he’s kinda pissed off and I get the impression he can hold a grudge. Can you guarantee he won’t come back with a bazooka? No, you can’t, because nobody, and not no woman especially, is gonna keep this guy away. So why don’t you—”
“I want to kill him myself,” I interrupt. “Give him to me so I can kill him on my terms.”
He laughs, then pauses. I really surprised him.
Good, because I surprised myself too.
“Get in line, princess,” Sergio says. “Everybody around here’s got terms they wanna kill him on… but tell you what, you bring your sweet ass home with Massimo and I’ll let Lucari live long enough for you to spit in his face. How about it?”
There’s no trade of equally valued things. Both men are worthless to the one who approves the swap. This is as good as it’s going to get.
Tommy’s neon sign flashes Calzones! Pasta! Sicilian Slices!
What now? Where am I going, if not home?
“Prove he’s alive,” I demand. “You could be talking to no one.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re a ballbreaker. All right. Here’s the legend himself…”
There’s a rustling on the other side of the line. Murmurs and grunts.
“Sarah?”
It’s him. I’ve never heard him sound so weak, but it’s Dario.
“Da—”
“Stay away.”
“But—”
“Don’t come! Stay away!”
The phone’s pulled away and Sergio’s voice comes back.
“I think he’s sweet on you. So, we keeping him alive for you or nah?”
“Yes.” My response is too quick, betraying a naïve eagerness.
“And you bring your brother home.”
This is too easy. It’s the trade I wanted, but I’m getting less and less sure it’s the trade I need.
I still have guns. I can shoot them all the way I did Massimo. I look back at him again and… I wish I hadn’t done it.
Maybe I won’t shoot them all. Or any of them. I just don’t know.
What would Dario do?
He’d set the terms. He’d say when, where, what, how. He’d plan ahead for every contingency. He’d have loyal men and guns and a lifetime of experience. I can’t even say where the meeting should be because I don’t really know where I am right now.