We leave the waterfront and drive inland. The feeling of being stopped in time wears off with the needs of my body. I’m thirsty and I have to pee. He won’t stop for food or a bathroom break or anything until we’re “out of NYSD jurisdiction.”
I don’t know what that means, but it seems important. I can hold it.
Without being reminded of my increasingly urgent situation, Dario gets off the highway, makes a few turns into a neighborhood that’s quieter and grassier than the one we left, and pulls into a strip mall.
“Stay close.” He puts the car into park. “We’re not safe yet.”
He walks around to my side, eyes everywhere in a heightened state of alertness, waving to an old guy sitting at one of the little tables outside Tommy’s Pizzeria, then he opens my door to help me out.
“You hungry?” Dario checks over his shoulder when a car creeps up behind us.
“I could eat.”
“Good,” he says before greeting the man at the table, who’s stood up. “Tommy!”
They shake hands and fold each other into a back-slapping hug.
“Dario, it’s been too long.”
Tommy is in his fifties with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a ruddy, clean-shaven face, and thick, gray eyebrows.
“Been busy.” Dario takes my hand, pauses with his eyes on our hands. Maybe it’s the scars, or the snowflake ring, but he takes a moment before turning back to Tommy. “This is my wife, Sarah.”
He and I can argue about the technical truth of that statement, but not about my immediate reaction. My heart doesn’t resist it, nor does my mind shout out against it. Willa or no, for now, I am his wife or something close enough to it. I am comforted. I am accepted.
“Signora Lucari.” Tommy takes my hands and kisses my cheeks. “Piacere mio! Come in, come in.” We follow him into the little restaurant. “Junior’s making up his specialty. Sarah, you like pizza bianco?”
I don’t know what he’s saying, so I look at Dario. He speaks to Tommy in Italian, and Tommy says something back. They laugh, and we sit in a booth.
“What was that about?” I ask Dario when Tommy’s gone.
“It’s nothing.” His eyes are on the windows and door. “You should have the bianco.”
“Don’t tell me it’s nothing.”
He turns back to me, head cocked. “I’ll tell you what I like.”
Direct confrontation is not even a consideration, but I offer the same tilted head and add a raised eyebrow. The same expression Grandma made when she was daring me to keep up whatever behavior would lead to a Correction.
Dario’s concession is quick enough to surprise me. “He asked if you were the Sarah from second blood.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Most people won’t say the Colonia name in public. It’s like speaking of the devil will summon him. So, they use second blood, for the church.”
“Precious Blood?” I like the way questions feel in my mouth. The way they flick over the tongue. Even more, I love the way my mind opens in the expectation of an answer.
“It was built second. After the one Downtown. Secondo sangue.”
“And we’re too scary to mention out loud.”
“You are.”
“Then why were you both laughing?”
“You ask a lot of fucking questions.”
I shrug, and he fills in the blanks.
“You never had a bianco because you—your people—pretend you’re American. You don’t learn the language, the culture. Nothing. I can’t speak great. But my dad spoke it in the house, and I learned enough to do business. You people? Nothing but red, white, and blue.”
“We’ve been in New York since it was New Amsterdam.”
Tommy comes over with water that I immediately gulp. “Junior’s coming with the pie in a minute.” He sits himself at the end of the table. “Where you headed? Anything you need?”
“A bathroom?” I answer even though I wasn’t the one he asked.
“Of course. It’s right down—”
“I’ll take her.”
With his hand between my shoulder blades, Dario walks me to a narrow back passage and opens a door marked Donne in a carved plastic rectangle. He flicks on the light, checks behind the door, the corners, and inside the cabinet. He makes sure the window is locked and peers up at the vent.
Satisfied, he steps into the hall. “I’ll wait here for you.”
I check what every woman does when she enters a bathroom.
“Toilet paper.” I open the cabinet under the sink and take out a fresh roll, holding it up for him.
He’s already distracted by something in the parking lot. I close the door and do my business.
When I get out, our booth is empty, and a white circle of pizza sits in the center of the table.
I am actually very hungry.
Before I can slide off a slice, a man approaches.
“Let me get that.” He’s handsome, about my age, with forearms stretching the rolled cuffs of his chef’s coat. “I’m Tommy Junior.” He pulls the triangle-shaped spatula from under the crust. “Everybody calls me Junior.”
“Nice to meet you. Do you know where Dario went?”
“Outside for a minute. The trick to this pie,” he says without pause as he slips the spatula under a slice, “is you put a little pesto under the mozzarella.”
Right around the word “pesto,” I spot Dario on the far side of the parking lot, next to a black and white police car, talking to two cops. One smokes a cigarette. The other has his hand on his holster.
“Go ahead,” Junior says, getting into the seat across from me and folding his hands on the table.
I take a bite, burning my mouth.
“It’s hot,” he says, handing me my water.
“Clearly.” I polish off the water.
“Try again.” He refills my glass and leans forward, observing me carefully.
I blow on the pizza’s surface, then gingerly bite into it. No burn. Either the pie’s cooler or I’ve killed the nerve endings in my mouth.
My taste buds work fine though.
“Oh, it’s good.”
“It bursts like a pop of brightness on your tongue and lets the ricotta blossom.”
Still talking to the cops, Dario looks in my direction. I’m not sure if he can see through the window’s reflection, but I wave to him and take another bite.
“Something is crunching,” I say on my third bite.
“Ah, pignoli. I don’t grind all of it into the paste. I take out maybe ten percent while there are still pieces, then put it back. Keeps it from being mush. Here, have another piece.”
I start on the second slice like a starving animal.
“Did you know,” he says, “Afghanistan is the third biggest exporter of pignoli?”
“Mm-mm.” I tell him I don’t while chewing.
“I was stationed there. Army. Made E-6.”
I don’t know what that means.
“Were you an army cook?” I say around my third bite.
He shows me a tattoo inside his forearm. Two snakes curling around a rifle, set over a red cross in the background. The word COMBAT above, and MEDIC below.
“Where did you learn to cook?”
“My mother. She always said, ‘Junior, a woman might cook for you one day, but if you know how to cook for yourself, she’ll be one less woman who’s gonna have to.’”
I laugh around a bite. “Do you clean the bathroom too?”
“Nah, nah,” he says, leaning over the table to get closer to me. “And my wife’s not gonna either. When I marry a woman, she’s gonna be a queen, because I’ll be a king. Big house. Servants. A full staff. All she’s gonna have to do is sit on the couch and watch TV.”
“What if she wants to do something more?”
“Like what?”
“Be productive? I don’t know actually.”
“There’s gonna be kids!”
Dario shakes hands with one of the cops and heads toward us in big strides, his gaze melting the window glass between us.
“Well, I’m going to make this for—” For a split second, I have to consider if I should call him my husband. I decide not to get used to it. “Dario, because he can’t cook for himself.”
“I got printouts of the recipe.” Junior gets out of the booth with all the energy of a man who’s found his purpose in life. “One second!”
The bell rings when Dario comes in.
“Hey, this is really good,” I tell Dario. “You’re lucky I saved you half.”
“Finish it.” He heads for Junior, who’s coming around the counter with a piece of paper.
Dario snaps it away. Junior stands there with his mouth open and his hands out. He starts a reply, then claps his jaw shut. Dario stands too close to him, legs apart, knees bent, fists clenched. He’s too tight. Too menacing.
Whatever this is, it’s dangerous.
Dario isn’t hurting another person today. None. Zero.
I swallow whatever I’d bitten off and run between them, taking the paper away from Dario.
“It’s a recipe.” I hold it up, but he can’t see or hear me through his focus on Junior.
“You.” Over my shoulder, Dario jabs a finger at the quaking younger man. “Don’t talk to her.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Hey, hey!” Tommy comes out from the back. “Cosa c'è?”
Dario seems to wake up with a subtle relaxing of his posture and an exhale.
“Nothing.” He focuses on me, taking the paper. He reads it and looks past me at Junior. “Thank you. We’ll pack it up to go.”
I count this as a victory, but I don’t know what I’ve won.