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I move to sit up, bite through the pain.
“Gabriela?”
I look at his shoulders, at the blood there. Small crescent shapes. My fingernails. I meet his eyes again. “I’m cold.”
He gathers the blanket and puts it around my shoulders, then gets up, walks into the bathroom. A few minutes later, he’s back and he sits down beside me. The blood is gone from him and in his hand is a damp towel.
I go to take it from him, but he shakes his head and he’s cleaning me and he’s gentle and tender and I just watch his dark head as he softly wipes the blood and cum from between my legs.
“I should have been more careful with you. Your first time…” he trails off, setting the towel aside.
I study him, see the weighted look in his eyes. And what I say, I don’t say it to make him feel better. I say it because it’s true.
“I don’t know that it could have gone any other way. This is us, Stefan. This is you and this is me. It’s always going to be this way with us.”
19
Stefan
I can’t stop thinking about last night. About what she said. She’s right. This is us. I will always take. And she will always be made to give.
“Exit’s coming up,” Rafa says beside me.
I nod, slowing the Bugatti down as I exit the highway and turn onto the smaller streets into Syracuse. I used to come here a lot growing up and know the streets pretty well. Avoiding the busiest part of the city, I make my way to the Greco house. It’s in one of the poorer neighborhoods, which doesn’t surprise me.
“Remind me again why do you want to do this?” Rafa asks me casually as we park outside the small, shabby house.
“Just want to hear for myself,” I answer.
I found the man Gabriela recognized. I found his family. I expected them to be from Taormina, but it bodes well for my uncle that they’re not.
“I already talked to them. There’s nothing to hear, Stefan. His grandmother’s an old woman who’s now stuck raising two kids both under six. They don’t know anything about Danny Greco. All they know is he’s been gone for a while, which apparently isn’t unusual for him.”
Danny Greco is the name of the man who sideswiped Rafa’s car. Who was one of the men at the house in Pentedattilo.
“Sounds like a class act.” I get out of the car and look at the house. The plot is mostly sand, no grass, and the two trees are half-dead with thirst. Laundry blows in the hot wind on a line in the backyard which butts up to a crumbling concrete wall that divides it from the train running behind it.
All of the windows are open—I would be surprised if they had air-conditioning—and patterned curtains keep the sun and insects out.
This is poor Sicily. Where I live, how I grew up, I’m in the minority.
“Stef come on. We don’t even have soldiers.”
I look back at him. “Are you afraid of an old woman and two kids under six?”
He purses his lips and I get the feeling he wants to say something but decides to keep his mouth shut, which is a good thing.
I make my way up the street to the front door of the house and ring the doorbell. Here, too, a worn curtain with the same floral pattern billows. It’s tucked into the locked metal gate that serves as a door.
It’s two more rings before I hear little feet running toward us, kids speaking in rapid Italian, the one telling the other they’re not supposed to open the door.
A moment later, two heads peer out from around the curtain. A boy and a girl.
“Is that your car?” the little boy asks. He appears to be the younger of the two.
Rafa chuckles.
I crouch down. “Yes, that’s my car,” I answer.
The boy whistles appreciatively. “A Bugatti. I prefer red. A real sports car.”
“Do you?” Mine’s black. I smile, straighten. “Is your grandmother home?”
The girl looks to her brother, then at me. She tries to shove him behind her and shakes her head in response to my question.
“She’s at the market,” the boy says, peering around her.
“Maybe we can wait for her out back.”
“One minute,” the girl says, then drops the curtain.
I stifle a laugh as they argue behind the curtain if it’s wise or not to let us in. A few minutes later, the boy’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “I’ll open the garden gate.”
“Good idea,” I tell him, nodding.
“I think it was the Bugatti that got you points,” Rafa says as he lights up a cigarette.
“When did you start smoking again?” I ask. He’s quit several times, but the habit always manages to creep back up. I hate it, hate the smell of it.
