Chapter 19: The Match

They put his chair next to my bed.

The nurse said it would take most of the day to collect what they needed from him.

Salvatore sat with a needle in each arm and a machine humming beside him, and he held very still.

I lay with my head bare on the pillow, and the line in my chest waited for what he was giving me.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

"Does it hurt?" I asked at last.

"No." He looked at the tube. "It's strange. That's all."

"What is?"

"It's red and warm, and it's going to you."

He said it with his gaze on the bag, and not on me, which made it easier to hear.

I took the tin box out of my coat, which Matteo had hung by the bed.

I turned it over in my left hand and wound it.

The little bird on the lid caught the light, and the lullaby began, thin and slow.

Salvatore's eyes closed.

"Her name was Rosa," he said.

"I know."

"She waited tables at a bakery on Taylor Street. She sang it under her breath behind the counter."

"And you went in for coffee."

"Every morning, so I could hear it."

"Did you love her?"

"I did." He opened his eyes. "I was twenty-nine, and I was promised to a woman my father picked. Rosa knew it. She never asked me for one thing."

He said the next part to the ceiling.

"She had a cough that wouldn't go away. I didn't take it seriously. I was busy being important."

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