Mafia's Good Girl novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Page Four

Her first morning in his house the doors are unlocked and the contract is the lock: page four says she shares his bed whenever he asks, and Luciano names the night.

At seven in the morning I tried the front door.

I had been awake since four, listening to the house, and I wanted to know what I had signed.

The door opened.

The gate at the end of the drive was open too, and a man in a black coat leaned against the post, eating a cannoli.

"Morning, miss," he said, and the gap in his front teeth showed. "It's Benny. From last night. I'm real sorry about your arm."

"You can't be this nice."

"There's eggs," Benny said. "Rosa made too many."

I stood on the gravel in my waitress shoes with the whole street in front of me.

Nobody stopped me.

Nobody even looked.

I went back inside.

The kitchen was yellow and enormous, and a small woman in a red apron was beating eggs.

"You're Janelle," she said. "I'm Rosa. I'm his sister. Sit, babe, you look like death."

"Where's your brother?"

"Where's he always. At the table pretending to read the paper." She pointed her whisk. "He didn't sleep either. Don't tell him I said."

Two men passed the kitchen doorway on their way out, and one of them looked me up and down.

"So that's the good girl," he said to the other one, low and flat.

They both laughed.

Rosa's whisk stopped.

"Out," she said, and they went.

I felt my face go hot.

"It's what they call a girl a Don brings home and doesn't marry," she said. "Don't take it."

I took a plate of eggs into the dining room, because I was hungry and I was stubborn.

Luciano sat at the head of a table built for twenty, with a newspaper and a black coffee.

He didn't look up.

I put the contract's fourth page on the table in front of him.

I had memorized it. I said it out loud.

"Share his bed whenever he asks."

He folded the paper.

"If she leaves, everything paid is owed back in full," I said.

"That's right."

"You left the front door open this morning."

"I did."

"Because you know I can't use it."

"Because I'd rather you stayed with the door open than with it shut."

His voice was even.

"I haven't asked you for anything yet, Janelle. I will."

"When?"

"When I decide."

My pulse jumped, and I hated it.

"Good," I said.

"Good."

He went back to the paper, and I ate my eggs across from him, and neither of us said another word.

At ten Benny drove me to the hospital.

Luciano sat in the back with me.

I hadn't asked him to, and he hadn't asked if he could.

At the billing desk the woman who had spoken so kindly the day before stood up when she saw me.

"Miss Hostetter," she said, and her voice shook. "Everything has been taken care of. There's nothing at all outstanding."

I looked at her, and then at the man behind me with his hands in his pockets, and he looked at the ceiling.

Upstairs my mother was propped up on three pillows with a magazine in her lap.

She had the same green eyes I did, and she looked smaller every week.

"A charity fund?" she said, when I told her. "For me?"

"The hospital has a program, Mom. They called me yesterday."

I had never lied to her about anything bigger than a parking ticket.

She took my hand in both of hers.

"Walter always said you'd land on your feet," she said.

I put my forehead against her knuckles so she couldn't see my face.

When I came out into the hall, Luciano was standing at the far end of it with his back to me, looking at a window.

He had not come to the door.

He had not tried to see her.

We rode home without talking, and halfway there I realized I was staring at his hand on the seat between us.

It was a large hand, square, with a split knuckle healing across the back.

It had signed a paper that paid for my mother's life.

Maybe it had done other things too, six years ago.

I thought about Thursday and the gun in my coat.

I didn't feel the hate I had carried into that restaurant.

I felt something worse.

"Stop the car," I told Benny.

Benny stopped on a quiet street under bare trees.

Luciano turned his head.

"Tonight," he said. "Eleven. My room."

It was page four, and he had said it.

I slid across the seat, took his face in both hands, and kissed him hard.

I was angry the whole time, because I wanted to, and because the paper had no line for that.

He didn't move, not for a second.

Then he kissed me back.

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