Page 2 of Mafia King
We are in the kitchen now. She’s put on slippers. Our habits together are the same. I’m leaning against the counter and she’s filling the Moka with water, not looking at me, as if my presence functions as audience to her femininity, not a participant in the scene.
“You know where the sambuca is,” she says with a jerk of her chin toward a familiar cabinet. “If you want to correct it.”
“No.” Itsk, softening the refusal. It’s one of the ticks I never thought about until Violetta.
“You’re such a good boy now.” She scoops dark brown powder into the Moka pot, baiting me, then glances over with a shrug. “So what brings you, at this hour, to my house on the hill?”
“A favor.”
“Of course. What is it this time? More clothes to burn in the fireplace?”
“Easier.”
“How exciting.” She’s droll, turning the knob on the stove. It clicks, but no flame appears. She sighs, tries again.
“I have it,” I say, getting the stainless steel Zippo from my breast pocket. I turn on the gas and flick it. The burner flame appears with a whoosh and I step out of her way.
She doesn’t move though. She just stands there, looking at me.
“I heard what happened in Amalfi,” she says. “With Siena.”
“Women gossip too much.”
“I heard it from a man.” She adjusts the pot on the burner. “You should have told her, you know.”
La tua bella
“Why should wives know everything?”
Her scoff is so slight, I would have missed it if I didn’t know her so well.
“What good would it do?” I add when she takes down two cups instead of answering.
“What’s the favor?” She places the cups on a tray.
“I want you to talk to Violetta. Woman to woman.”
“About?” She grabs a lemon from the fruit bowl. “Limone?”
“Si.” Telling her seems redundant, and the request itself is humiliating. She can’t refuse me, but the danger is Loretta will tell one too many people he has no control over his wife. The Moka spits steam. “She needs to know why.”
“Why her sister was first? Why she was in Italy? Why she died there?” She peels a curl of skin from the lemon. “Because no one knows the real answers to these questions.”
“She needs to…” I clench my jaw so hard against the list of humiliating answers, I can’t finish.
Talk to me? Listen to me? Love me?
Did I come all the way up this mountain to ask this shameful favor? I’m not going to beg any woman or man to help with my own house.
“She wasn’t raised right,” I say, forcing my jaw loose. “She doesn’t know the way things are.”
“Does she not know? Or not accept?”
Loretta picks up the tray and takes it outside without another word. I grab the full bottle of sambuca and follow. Despite my earlier refusal, I’m going to need to correct the espresso.
When I get outside into the humid night air, I smell the roses around the patio and the rosemary from the herb garden. I hear crickets calling to get laid. All of it is to be expected, but knowing the smells and sounds of the place makes the difference more clear.
There’s cologne. A man. And it’s fresh in the air—not the stale remnants of yesterday’s guest.
