Page 21 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
He smiles without teeth and thanks me for the olives.
I don't ask about the headlights again.
He does not offer.
We live in a hallway of unspoken things and it turns out I know the route by heart.
I grew up with an uncle who never said a name when a nod would do.
The old men taught me a kind of conversation that could keep a neighborhood whole without ever using the words that would crack it.
I tell myself this is the same, that I'm practicing the only kind of fluency that matters here.
Then he walks past and the smell of his cologne catches on the air and all my fluency goes to pieces for a minute because my body is twenty and dumb again.
The second night, he sleeps.
He does not snore.
He does not thrash.
He breathes like he is rationing it on purpose.
I wake twice to listen, not because I'm worried he will stop, but because the sound steadies me.
When it goes shallow, I get up without turning on a light and set a glass of water on the crate we are using as a table.
I don't touch him.
I tuck the blanket higher and tell myself my hands are overachievers.
By the third night, humor is the only thing I have that keeps me from turning into a tuning fork.
My hands still do their work, but my head is a chorus.
So I talk to him while I change the dressing, and I keep the talking light.
I tell him about the man who tried to name his pain a gentlemanly six because he did not want to look weak in front of his wife.
I tell him about the resident who thought she invented the idea of warming saline.
I tell him my uncle always said that if a man could eat anchovies, he could keep a secret, which I’m starting to suspect is not science.
He listens with his head turned, eyes on my mouth as if the words are more useful than the gauze.
He answers when he wants to, but he answers like every syllable costs him a coin.
It should irritate me.
Instead, it makes me feel like I'm doing a magic trick with my voice.
The night his fever spikes, I know before the thermometer tells me.
The back of the hand is a fine instrument when you use it daily.
His skin burns in a way that has nothing to do with unwashed rooms and everything to do with bodies that have to be convinced to behave.
He starts in Italian, which is probably not wise but is definitely charming when your head is full of it from childhood.
