Chapter 6: Up the Stairs

We did not speak in the car.

Sandro drove with his eyes on the road and his shoulders very square.

Rocco sat beside me with his hand on his own knee, not touching me.

I could feel exactly where the heat of him stopped.

On Harlem Avenue the shop was dark.

Rocco got out first and held my door.

"Sandro," he said. "The stairs. All night. Nobody comes up."

"Yes, Don."

I unlocked the street door.

I climbed the narrow stairs in front of him with my heels in my hand.

I could hear him behind me, one step for each of mine, close enough that I felt it in my spine.

In the flat I turned on one lamp.

He shut the door and put his back to it.

"You said you'd ruin my night," I said.

"I did."

"In front of forty people."

"Do you want me to take it back?"

I looked at him in the lamplight, at the white shirt open at the throat.

I looked at the scar through his eyebrow and the shadows under his eyes.

Five years.

I knew every inch of him, and I had no idea who had signed that paper in March.

"No," I said. "I want you to prove it."

He crossed the room in three steps.

His hands went into my hair and pulled out every pin, and they fell on the floor, and he kissed me.

It was not a polite kiss.

It was a hard, deep, angry kiss, and I met it with my teeth.

He made a low noise in his chest that I felt in my knees.

I pushed his shirt off his shoulders and he let me.

He backed me against the sewing table and the bolts of cloth fell off it onto the floor.

"You think I wanted her?" he said against my mouth.

"I think you let a room full of men vote on me."

"Livia."

"Say it again." I bit his lower lip. "Say my name like you're sorry."

"I'm not sorry," he said.

His hand slid up the back of my dress and found the zip.

"I'm furious. I've been furious for seven months."

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