Page 39 of Mafia Queen
My wife stands. I stand with her.
“You can go ahead and sit down, sir,” she says with a smile so fake it looks painted on. If this woman had been born on the other side of the river, she’d be one of those wives knocking around her husband’s business, exacting revenge for petty slights against her children. I remember why I don’t like crossing the bridge at all.
In Secondo Vasto, I am king.
Around here, I’m a diseased fruit on a healthy tree.
“Where is she going?”
“We’ll have her back in a jiff.” She winks at me, acknowledging that she knows who I am and what I’ve done.
My skin gets hot. Blood flows to the bruise in my chest, making the pain pound with the hammer of my heart.
She doesn’t know the half of it.
They’re separating us to ask questions about me. About us. About the bruise on her face and the blood afterward. How dare she try to separate us so they can convince my Violetta that I’m her enemy. How dare they pretend to understand what my wife’s been through or put her in the position to have to relive it by explaining. This clinic is owed nothing but the number on the bottom of the bill. They are not owed her story.
“Santino,” Violetta says, putting her hand over mine. “On the way in, I saw a vending machine with fruit in it. I’m kind of hungry.”
She’s giving me a way out of the office that won’t injure my ego.
This is meant to soothe me, but leaving her alone in that room has nothing to do with my manhood. I don’t need to save face. MyForzettaneeds me, and if I leave, I can’t be here for her.
“I have it,” Violetta adds. “Trust me.”
I trust her. She does have it. This is her world. She doesn’t need protection here any more than I need to be treated like a plate tipping over the edge of a shelf.
“Bene.” I pick up her hand and kiss it. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.”
“Then we go get what’s ours.”
I nod quickly to the nurse and leave before I tell her what I think of her suspicions.
The vending machines stand sentry on either side of the elevators. Anette has a bowl of waxed fruit in the dining room that looks exactly like what’s in the machine. The apples and oranges are perfect, brightly-colored, huge. The one banana left is more green than yellow because Americans would rather eat an unripe fruit than see a single brown spot.
I never hit my wife, but the entire country would assume I did. I never drugged her. I never hurt her.
That’s a lie.
I should have stayed in Italy, where this happens all the time.
The machine rejects my five dollar bill. I punch the clear plastic front, but all that does is make the security guard and the guy waiting for the elevator with his son look at me.
Right now, I hate it here. I want to go home. I should have gone home years ago. Should have stayed in Naples after my obligations died with Rosetta.
I straighten out the corners of the bill and try again. The slot sucks it in. I clench my fists, waiting for it to get spit out because when it does, I’m going to throw this entire thing right out the fucking window.
But a green light goes on. I punch the numbers with my knuckle as if I want to hit this spiteful box the way I never, ever, even once hit my wife, no matter what they think.
A little box slides across the machine on tracks, picks up the orange as an arm pushes it in, moves it over the slot, and drops it in. A lighted message tells me to open the flap for my prize and pick up the coins that slap into the change slot.
I pick out the fruit and sniff it. Where I expect the clean bite of citrus, there’s no smell at all.
I hate it here. They can keep their fourteen quarters.
The orange is still pressed up against my nose when my phone rings. Blocked number. Knowing it would do no good anyway. Good chance the phone will be at the bottom of the river before the sun sets.
“Pronto,” I say when I answer.
