Regrets of the Don: His Beloved Walked Away novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: Snow

"Standing is a start," I said. "That's what she said."

"So it's working," Connie said.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. You squinted."

I threw a cushion at her.

The next Friday the blizzard came in off the water at four in the afternoon.

By eight, 18th Avenue was white and empty.

The buses stopped. The bakery closed early. The barber pulled his pole in.

Connie was on an overnight clinical at the hospital, and the hospital had told everybody to stay put.

"I'm snowed in with forty sick people," she texted. "It's like a slumber party with catheters."

I made soup and sat at the counter with the radio on.

At twelve-fifteen my phone rang.

It was a woman's voice, very young, trying not to cry.

"Is this the midnight lady?"

"Yes."

"I'm on Bay 13th. He took my keys when he left tonight. He says he's coming back when the snow stops, and the lock's his, he put it in."

"Is his name on the lease?"

"It's my grandmother's house. She's in Florida."

"I'm coming," I said.

The van wouldn't make it past 80th Street.

The plow hadn't been down the side streets, and the snow was up to my knees.

I got out with my grandfather's toolbox and a cylinder in my coat pocket.

The wind was coming sideways off the bay, so hard it took my breath.

I'd gone half a block when I saw him.

A man in a dark coat under the streetlight on the corner, with snow on his hair and no hat.

He wasn't going anywhere.

He was waiting to see which way I'd turn.

"How long have you been standing there?" I shouted over the wind.

"Since your van got stuck."

"You followed me."

"I was walking to number thirty's stoop," Cesare said. "You were in the way."

I looked at him.

His shoes were soaked through. His ears were red.

"Hold this," I said, and put the toolbox in his hands.

He took it.

We walked to Bay 13th together through the snow, not touching.

The house was a narrow brick one with a plaster Madonna in the yard, buried to her waist.

The girl opened the door before we got to the top step.

She was maybe nineteen, in a sweatshirt with a college name on it.

She looked at Cesare and went white.

Everybody in Bensonhurst knew that face.

"He's with me," I said. "He holds the light."

Cesare held the light.

He knelt on the wet step in his good coat with a flashlight on the lock, and he didn't say a word.

The snow piled up on his shoulders.

I had the old cylinder out in three minutes.

The new one went in.

I was turning the key when headlights came down the block, slow, fishtailing.

A pickup stopped at the curb.

A boy in a Jets jacket got out and stood in the street, swaying a little.

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