Page 4 of Mafia Queen
I can’t think in clear sentences, and pictures flip through my mind as if Zio Guglielmo is doing his best to make me crazy with the TV’s remote control at the end of a long day. It’s after dinner, and he’s in the recliner, too tired to make a decision. Too wired to go to sleep and let me watchSupernaturalin peace. It’s a ball game, the news, paper towels disappearing a red splatter, one of theLaw and Orders, Santino’s smile, reciting every step of our plan, Gia looking up at me from poolside, my husband thrown back from an impact to the chest, swallowed by cool, clean water one final time.
“Mrs. DiLustro?” The same urgent voice from the other side of a long, dark tunnel. “I need to know, is your husband dead? Santino DiLustro? Does he still walk the earth or no?”
Walking. Falling back. Splash. Swallow.
“He swims,” I say, but I’m not sure if the words make it past my lips.
A part of me wakes up and separates itself from the sleeper, the groggy, the mind moving as if it’s underwater, and that part has questions.
Who’s asking?
Why do they not know?
Why do they care so much?
Why do I smell incense?
The left side of my face is bursting. The nerves on the surface stretch from the fluid gathering underneath the skin, screaming for release. The pressure is too much.
I’m going to throw up, and that’s when I become more conscious than unconscious, because a person can choke on their own vomit, and I’m not ready to die.
Knowing that is new.
Was I even conscious of a will to live a moment ago?
When I open my eyes, the dim light only enters one. The other is swollen shut, but through the fog, I can make out a blurry, dark blob in the center of flickering yellow light. A head. A man. The voice.
I am sitting. My wrists lay on the arms of a chair. I can’t move them.
“Mrs. DiLustro.” He has the voice of an old man, and his breath stinks of fermented plaque. “I need to know—”
“Who are you?”
“Father Alfonso.” His reply is slow and drunken. “I officiated your wedding to Santino DiLustro.”
“Asshole.” I blink hard. Breathe in the incense. Scratch a sudden itch on my nose and cheek with an overly rough right hand, then lift my left off the arm of the chair.
Okay. So my arms are weak. Not tied down.
Itches attack my face. When I try to scratch my left eye, it tingles then explodes in pain like an afterthought.
“I cannot commit a sin,” Father Alfonso says. “Please. Tell me if your husband has died.”
My mind is clearing slowly, but I cannot fathom what Santino’s life or death has to do with a priest adding one more sin to a long, long list of them.
“He’s dead.” I scratch my jaw and rub a colony of itches from my right cheek. My hand feels rough as lace. “She killed him.”
I point to some place to the left where Gia exists in my mind, and I’m about to say her name when I realize my hand is lighter than usual.
Father Alfonso leaves, hunched, touching surfaces and walls until he finds the door before he clicks it closed. When I’m alone, I sit straight in the chair. Hold up my hand. My one good eye is full of gunk. I blink. Blink. Blink. When it clears, I know what the candlelight will reveal.
A room with plaster walls.
A tiny, darkened stained glass window.
I can’t see close. The world is crisscrossed by the net I’m caught inside.
But across the room…a thick wooden door. A cabinet with a small statue of the Virgin, surrounded by the unassertive yellow glow of candles.
