57

There was a heavy rapping on the bedroom door of the suite. It was five after eleven in the morning. Maerose yelled, “Who is it?” A muffled voice through the door said it was the assistant manager. She yelled, “Go to the other door.” She put her evening wrap over her slip, crossed the living room from the bedroom, and opened the door. It was the assistant manager, but he was standing beside Al Melvini and Phil Vittimizzare.

“What is this?” she asked them.

They pushed into the room and closed the door behind them. “Get the hell out of here,” she said. “Get these hoodlums out of my room,” she told the assistant manager.

The Plumber said, “Where’s the guy, Miss Prizzi?”

The young man came out of the bedroom, tying the belt of the terry-cloth robe the hotel had provided. He walked into the room. “What’s going on?” he said.

“You son of a bitch!” Phil Vittimizzare said, grabbing both his arms and holding them behind his back. The Plumber stepped in front of him and punched him heavily in the stomach, not once but three times. The young man’s breakfast came up all over the carpet.

“Al, for Christ’s sake!” Maerose yelled, trying to hold his arm. He shook her off and slugged the young man in the face. The body slumped. Phil held him up. The Plumber hit him heavily in the face three more times, marking him good, messing him up. Phil let the body fall to the floor, and the two men, still wearing their hats, kicked in his ribs in on both sides of his body. The assistant manager watched them, appalled.

The Plumber turned away from the work. “Get dressed, Miss Prizzi,” he said. “We got a plane to catch to New York.”

“Drop dead, Al,” she said.

“You get dressed or we dress you. It don’t matter to us.”

She went to the small desk in the room and wrote a check. She gave the check to the assistant manager. “Listen. This check is made out to him and he better get it, you understand? I want the hotel to guarantee all expenses for him with the doctor and the hospital, then you send the bill to me. The address is on the check. You follow me? You understand?”

The assistant manager looked at the Plumber. The Plumber nodded.

“If he doesn’t get the best attention from you and a doctor and the hospital, and if he doesn’t get this check, then I am going to make an affidavit about what happened here this morning and I am going to hire a press agent in New York to get the story into the papers all over the United States, you understand what I’m telling you?”

The assistant manager rolled his eyes to look at the Plumber. “Do what the lady tells you,” the Plumber said, “or I’m gonna flush you down the terlet.”

She rode back to New York in row A of first class. The Plumber and Phillie rode in row B. She refused to eat or drink. The two men ate for six. When the plane got to Idlewild a car was waiting. It was six o’clock in the evening. The car drove them to Vincent’s house in Bensonhurst. Vincent greeted them at the door. The two men left her there.

She sat in the living room of her father’s house. He didn’t speak to her. He stared at her like she was garbage, until she wanted to yell at him.

“You put shame on your family in front of everybody who is anybody in this country,” he said to her. “You showed the whole world what you care about the Prizzi family. You never had the faith in this family. You were allowed to marry the son of your grandfather’s oldest friend but you decided to be a passeggiatrice instead. Thank God, your mother can never know what you done. She is safe from you with the angels. Lissena me! I am never gonna to talk to you again. Angelo Partanna says he forgives you, but Charley can’t ever forgive you, you took his manhood from him in front of all the people in this country. You can make believe to yourself that you still belong to this family, you can make believe you are still my daughter, but you are not. You are not in the Prizzi family. You are not my daughter. I will never speak your name, and I am going to see to it that you stay an old maid for the rest of your life.”

Pop was waiting for her in the old Chevy when she came out of the house with one suitcase. He smiled at her and told her to get into the car.

They drove north, toward the Brooklyn Bridge. “The don wants me to tell you the new rules,” he said. “But first I want to tell you that I understand you, what you done. It took more guts than I got.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Angelo. What are the new rules?”

“You gotta stay outta Brooklyn. You can’t come over here to see anybody in the family. You can’t come to weddings, funerals, christenings. You can’t see nobody in Brooklyn.”

“What the hell. I need a change anyway.”

“Your Aunt Amalia wants you to call her anytime, anywhere. At the don’s house. She don’t care.”

Mae began to cry quietly.

“The same goes for me. You need anything. You wanna find out something. You need company, you call me. I’ll be there. I’ll go wherever you are and we’ll have a nice meal.”

“Charley?”

“Charley is like Brooklyn. It’s all over, Mae.”

“That’s the way I wanted it.”

“We’ll let some time go by. Amalia and me will work on the don and Vincent. Gradually, we can get some changes made. Gradually, you can come back for the weddings and the funerals.”

“You’re my friend, Angelo.”

“It’s just gonna take a little time. Give it time. There ain’t nothing that can’t be changed by time.”