AS BELLA RUNS THROUGH Coney Island, the old oceanside town stands shuttered against the icy cold of a frostbitten mid-December. A light snow starts falling, dusting everything in a blanket of frozen precipitation.
Falling and swirling and covering.
Enough to make the world look like some sort of circus Heaven.
Freezing seagulls and pigeons huddle together under overhangs, heads tucked beneath shivering wings, all guttural grunts and ruffled complaints.
They clap and stamp and ha-ha-ha whistle into the frigid gales like fussing old men and cranky old women.
Of course Nathan’s is open, Christmas lights twinkle. Coney Island Santa faces wink and blink. The sharp scent of meat being grilled into tasty submission is Bella’s only greeting.
She charges past the old hot dog stand and the tarp-covered cars of the freezing Tornado.
Stalwart oceanfront buildings stand huddled along the boardwalk like a long row of chattering teeth. Sinister puddles of frozen frost gather at their feet. Sam Tweety’s Hawaiian Island Girlie Revue and Peek-a-Booth Theater is snugly boarded for a long winter’s sleep.
No palm trees are sprouting out of the abandoned beach. No hips are flinging. No island maidens are singing. Only Santa Bella, devastated daughter of silent Santa Lucia Medina Cicolina and mean Manolo Antonio Donato, is standing at the edge of the boards in full bridal regalia, wailing and billowing.
High in the sky behind her, a noxious cloud of black smoke plumes across the white (white like a stiff sheet of blank paper) Coney Island sky.
Is that the Glasgow-grinning face of Steeplechase cackling way up high?
Not too far away, the house on Neptune Avenue is engulfed in flames. The fire that had started in the kitchen after Bella burst out the back door viciously licks its way up from the tomato-gravy-stained stove to the shingles screaming around the calescent chimney.
As distant fire truck bells clang and sirens sing, Bella jumps down onto the broad expanse of the cold sand, empty except for the faraway figure of a little man bundled against the elements and pulling a wagon loaded with tinkling antiques. A tiny green dot is circling above him, flapping and squawking, “Fuck you! Eat me! Fuck you! Eat me!”
Standing in front of the endless sea, Bella kicks off her silver wedding shoes. Her stockings rip and shred on broken clamshells, sea glass, and sharp pebbles as she mindlessly makes her way to the water’s edge. The big, gray Atlantic yawns in front of her, as vast as the sky above her head, alive and breathing.
Unlike Francis.
The ocean is eternal.
Its hibernating heart is beating.
Gelid waves crawl to Bella’s numbing feet, then slowly slide away.
On the hard wet surface of the soaked sand, she looks down at her toes poking through her ripped stockings, each nail painted plum passion.
Francis had once bathed and kissed each and every one of those toes. He had made them curl with undying pleasure.
I will love you forever, my darling Angel Queen!
Now Francis is dead.
And Bella is determined to follow him up to Heaven.
As the ocean opens its wintry mouth and waits, the frantic wind whips the crown and veil off of Bella’s head. They roll down the beach like a sparkling tumbleweed and whack the little man with the wagon.
“What the fuck is that crazy girl doing?”
In a blind fury, Bella rips herself out of the wedding gown. She tears off the ruffled garters. She peels off the shredded stockings and tugs her panties down.
This is her last striptease routine.
Her showstopping grand finale.
Peekaboo! I see you!
Bella crosses herself. She kisses the ring Francis had placed on her finger and steps into the starving sea.
The little man down the beach drops the handle of his wagon. “Hey!” he yells. “Hey!”
The biting salt water strangles Bella’s ankles; it latches on to them with its sharp teeth, sending shocks of searing pain up her legs. Like razorblades, scraping. As she steps in up to her knees, it knocks the breath and prayers right out of her shaking tits. A pushy wave tumbles in and laps at her pubic hair, then her scarred belly. Before Bella knows it, she is in up to her shivering shoulders. Almost unable to move. Eyes wide. Heart clenching.
The little man abandons his loaded wagon and races toward her. Vibrant bits of magenta kimono peek out from under his flapping overcoat as he stumbles across the sand. “Hey! Lady! What the fuck are you doing?!” he screams. “Hey!”
“Hey! What the fuck! What the fuck! Hey!” a parrot coptering above his head echo-screeches.
The glacial water surges and lobs around Bella’s neck, smacking her in the mouth, icing her lips and teeth. It blasts down her throat in frozen fits until she’s choking. When she goes completely under, her hair laces out behind her like a flat of frozen seaweed.
As the current drags her down, as the greedy undertow grabs her by her painted toes and tugs and tugs (the way it once tugged the doomed Titanic), Bella sinks.
The little man hops up and down at the water’s edge, yelling deliriously.
The parrot flaps back and forth above him, squawking hysterically.
Occasionally something scrapes at Bella’s legs and grabs at her feet. The starving waves force her under the water, then above it, then under again. Her body is burning cold and weightless. She wants to float away, to let go, so she pushes and kicks. Farther and farther out, away from the loss of her baby, away from the death of Francis, away from the world, away from everything.
In the briny darkness, the murky wetness, Bella opens her eyes and sees a fabulous house full of singing and dancing. Spaghetti and meatballs. Joy and the spirit of forgiveness. She sees a young man strikingly similar to Francis, eyes flecked gold and green, the color of Christmas in his Christlike cheeks. He floats in front of her, wearing a bow-tied suit and holding a bouquet of brilliant white roses and a suitcase.
You’re my mother, I believe.
Billy?
Yes, it’s me.
Then the boy vanishes. Only blackness. Then everything blanches electric-white like the night Francis came back to her.
Then nothing.
Then Lucia’s blade closes in.
Then a new Dreamland appears.
There is the Glasgow-grinning face of Steeplechase grimacing.
There is the scarred face of her angry papa yelling.
There is the silence of her depressed mamma roaring.
There is the stunning face of Francis Anthony Mozzarelli howling.
Hello my darling Angel Queen!
I’m here to take you all the way to Heaven with me!
Somewhere in the turgid depths, a baby is wailing. Francis is singing,
Belladonna Marie! Come home to me!
“No!” Bella roars into the depths. “I don’t want to die!” The briny water blasts down her throat and into her lungs. “I don’t want to die! I want to find our son!”
Suddenly the voice of Big Betty LoMonico sings,
Call upon the holy hands of your Cooking Spirit!
The Cooking Spirit can fix anything!
Without warning, Bella’s whole body is violently seized, as if by an enormous pair of hands.
I love you, Francis Anthony Mozzarelli!
I love you and I’m sorry!
The water around her starts to swirl.
I love you too, Belladonna Marie Donato.
I will never forget you, my darling Angel Queen!
A Cyclonic rumble, lustier than the one that quaked below Vesuvius, suddenly erupts and Bella explodes out of the sea like a Coney Island cannon clown. The little Angel Queen is flying. Venus is rising. No need for her papa or anyone else to catch her.
She is soaring all on her own.
She never felt so alive.
She never felt so free.
“Watch out!” the little man on the beach screams.
With the ferocious airborne force of a sparkling carnival comet, the Queen of Steeplechase Park arcs over the parrot flapping around the little man’s head and slap-lands on the beach like a dead seal. Pale white and bloated blue. Is it really the woman who walked into the squalling sea? Or is it a dead fairy-tale mermaid?
Is this some sort of crazy dream?
The little man runs up to the inert body and peers into the slack face. It’s the most beautiful face he has ever seen.
How could this possibly be?
“Oh my God! Belladonna Marie Donato!”
“Pretty Bella!” the parrot squawks. “Bella pretty!”
It had been a long time since Terelli Lombardi had seen his old friend, but there was no mistaking who it was.
There still was no one like her.
“Oh, holy Jesus Christ!” Terelli screams. “Bella, what the hell have you done?” He throttles her. Nothing. In a blind panic, he listens at her lips. “My God! She isn’t breathing!” He throttles her again. “Honeybee, she isn’t breathing!” he desperately calls up to the hovering parrot. “God in Heaven, help me!”
Terelli grabs Bella’s frozen ankles and tugs her away from the greedy ocean. He elevates her chin and tilts back her head. Then he pinches her nose closed and gives her all of his breath. He clasps his fingers together and, with the heel of one hand, presses between her breasts and pumps her chest. He pushes air into her frozen mouth and pumps again and again and again until a forceful stream of seawater blasts out from between her purple lips and hoses him in his left eye.
“Ouch! Goddamnit!”
“Goddamnit! Pretty Bella! Bella pretty! Goddamnit!”
Bella chokes and coughs. She gasps and heaves. The world in front of her spins all vague and wobbly. Terelli removes his overcoat. He wraps it tight around her and vigorously rubs her entire body. As she begins to warm up, she is able to see the blur of a familiar face juddering in front of her. A little older. A little wiser. Smiling and glowing. With chattering teeth, she tries to say his name …
“Ter … Terrrr …?”
There’s a catch in Terelli’s throat. He wants to cry but he won’t. Not yet. “Yes, Bella! It’s me! It’s your old friend Terelli Lombardi!”
“Am I dead? Am I in Heaven?”
“You’re alive! You’re in Coney Island!”
Bella tries to raise herself up from the icy sand, but she can’t. “Wha-what are you doing here?”
“Of course I’m in Sin City, darling! Where else would Terelli Lombardi be?”
Bella tries to sit up again, arms akimbo, head toggling. Her eyes are watering. Tears are streaming.
“Oh Terelli, I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry!”
“Stay still and try and breathe! Can you breathe for me?!”
The sky above them turns furious. Dark, cracked and veined with slivers of silver lightning. Blasts of snow thunder crawl across the roiling sea like war bombs dropping. The angry air is choking on smoke and ash from the house burning over on Neptune Avenue. Just then a single white rose petal, like a fat ash from Pompeii, spirals down from the sky and lands on the beach at Bella’s feet.
“Francis … d-dead …” Bella sputters and coughs and spits. As Terelli takes in what she has just said, her pallor slowly blends from purple to a splotchy shade of paradise pink. “Francis in H-Heaven. Our b-baby … g-gone … t-taken … away … f-from m-me …”
Sirens are roaring.
Terelli looks into Bella’s beautiful face. The two of them regard each other. For a moment, they rest in the wonder of their lucky reunion.
They rest in everything that came before.
They rest in everything yet to come.
Love. Hate. Birth. Pain. Death. Redemption. Forgiveness.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Terelli giggles the way he used to. “You know, you could really use another one of my makeovers.”
Despite the freezing pain, Bella laughs along with him. “F-fuck you!” she sputters. Then she smiles and he smiles too. “I love you, T-Terelli L-Lombardi,” she hiccups.
Terelli gathers her in his arms. “I love you too, Belladonna Marie Donato. I always have and I always will.”
The two old friends burst into tears of joy and happiness as the parrot circles above them …
“Bella! Terelli! Terelli! Bella!”
Two old friends.
Together again.
Two old friends.
Ready to win in the end.