Page 35 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
I press my fingers to my mouth and make myself promise I'm not going to cry in a doorway like a bad movie.
He left.
He left the way men like him probably always leave.
Quiet. Early.
With the kindest possible version of the story ready for me if I catch him, which I don't.
He left to keep me safe.
He left because he brought something to my door and does not want it to rip the hinges out.
He left because this is his world and I'm only a rare hour inside it.
It's a reasonable explanation and it still hurts like a blister you forgot was there and then a shoe finds it.
A sigh leaves my lips.
Leaving is his version of loving carefully.
It's also, unfortunately, my version of cowardice.
6
NICO
Months later
Spring finds the city with its collar up.
The air off the river smells clean for once, sharp with thaw and engine grease.
Street vendors have traded roasted chestnuts for pretzels and paper cones of tulips.
The tourists are back to a tolerable hum.
On corners where twenty years ago men did business with nods instead of contracts, boys sell espresso from carts that hiss like gossip.
I walk down Bayard with my hands in my coat pockets and a runner two steps behind me, just long enough to give me time to turn if I need it.
I'm not here by accident. I don’t do accidents.
I sent a message that did not live on a wire.
A folded card with a time and a place and my initials, delivered by a delivery boy who grew up climbing the fire escape behind her building.
There are rules for asking a woman like Elisa to meet a man like me.
You do it in daylight or you wait until the restaurant lights are on and the block has witnesses who know the right kind of silence.
You don't show up at her door.
You don't leave her standing on a corner with a shadow that does not belong to her.
La Vigna sits at the end of a short row like it has been waiting for the rest of the street to catch up.
The sign is small and stubborn.
