Page 45 of Shadow Ticket
iniquitous…that you
never-seem to care, how
ridiculous-ly I’m yearning, in-
-to what a sap I’m turning…
you’re-here-and,
then you’re there,
Though the guy’s not always me,
I try-to-act debonair,
Like I know I’m s’posed to be—how
I-wish-you’d, c’mere and, kiss-me-quick,
Till-we’re-both-of-us
brainless, as-a-brick,
Though it’s got kinda thick-with-dust,
once it sure did the trick with us,
’n’ you, you’ve gone all…u-biquitous…
“Listen to me,gabadost, and I’m not kidding.”
He guesses she isn’t.
“You noticed this?” Who hasn’t? the sparkler on her finger looks like you’d expect to find one or more Black Hawks skating around on it, announcing that April has become the all but kept tomato of Don Peppino Infernacci the bad and big. “He’s Calabrese, ‘Ndrangheta 200 proof, he’d rather kill you than work things out, and just when I start asking myself what’d I get into, here he comes again with that down-homenun sò che, or maybe I feel sorry for him ’cause his wife is such a tramp, runs around after anything…”
“My kinda woman, how come you haven’t tried to fix us up yet? We could all get together and play bridge, and maybe she’ll be packing too.”
April turns her face away like he just reached for it or something. “Thanks.”
“Now what’d I say?”
“Oh, don’t mind me, just go on ahead with the happy patter, you Einsteins, what is it with you? Heads in the fog, never know how much trouble you’re in.”
“How many Einsteins would that be again?”
“I’m such straight-up trouble, Hicks.” The eye-to-eye she’s waited till now to hit him with doesn’t go out over the air either.
Hicks with a tremble in his voice she has never yet mistaken for anything but strategic, “Maybe I always knew about”—almost naming Don Peppino—“that…and maybe I don’t care?”
Sure. But, “Thatcould change quick enough, ya ten-minute egg, you. I keep hoping…if we could just get past it this one time, who knows, I mean if there is a next time—”
“If” is seldom a good sign. Pretending he didn’t hear, “Careful with that ‘we,’ Angel.”
“Oh, I know how to be careful. I wish you did.”
No goodbye night together in Chicago. Hicks would be sorely disappointed, if there hadn’t been so many lesser occasions already.
“So—family business, huh. Thought your uncle was retired from all that.”
