Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: As You Wished

Roz texts the new Don that she left as he wished, from her bathhouse in Brooklyn, until Dino arrives with roses and the news that his family bid on her building.

"How do you know that?" I said.

Santo looked past me, down the drive, at the dark road.

"Because I know him."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight."

A black car came up the gravel without its headlights on.

It stopped beside the fountain like he'd called it with his mind.

A big man got out of the driver's seat and opened the back door.

Santo got in.

He didn't look at me again.

The car rolled down the hill and its lights came on at the bottom, where the road turned.

I stood barefoot on the gravel with my shoes in my hand.

Behind me the band started up again, too loud.

I called a car from the curb.

The driver asked if I was okay.

I said I was great, and I cried the whole way across the bridge.

I didn't cry because of Dino.

I cried because Santo Cavallaro had said my name, and it had sounded like a warning.

At seven the next morning I unlocked the bathhouse.

Lane Four ran out of an old brick building two blocks from my apartment, a stone's throw from the Red Hook piers.

It had been built in 1936.

The tile was cracked and blue, the bleachers were splintery, and the pool was mine.

Joanie Flynn came in at seven-fifteen with two coffees and her whistle already in her mouth.

She spat it out to talk.

"I heard."

"Who told you?"

"Everybody. My mother. My mother's dentist. It's on three group chats."

She handed me a coffee.

"You threw the ring in the pool?"

"I dropped it."

"In front of two hundred mobsters."

"In front of two hundred guests."

"Roz." She tilted her head. "What did he do?"

I'd been awake all night deciding what I'd tell her.

"He told the pool story at the party," I said. "As a joke."

Joanie's face went flat.

"I'm going to kill him."

"You're going to blow your whistle at the five-year-olds."

"I can do both."

The five-year-olds came at eight.

Eleven of them, in a line of mismatched goggles, holding hands because Joanie made them.

One girl was crying because her goggles were pinching her.

One boy was crying because the girl was crying.

I got down on the deck in my navy suit and fixed the strap.

"Who's going to blow bubbles today?"

Eleven hands went up, including the crying ones.

For an hour I didn't think about the yacht.

I thought about chins in the water and kicking from the hips.

I thought about the little boy who had screamed at the shallow end for three weeks and now put his whole face in.

Joanie blew her whistle at him.

At the break I sat on the top bleacher with my coffee and looked out the high window.

A black car was parked across the street.

It hadn't moved since I opened the doors.

The big man from the fountain was behind the wheel, eating a breakfast sandwich.

I took out my phone.

I'd had Santo's number for fifteen years. His father had made us both save each other's numbers, for emergencies.

I'd never once used it.

I took a picture of myself on the bleachers, the blue water behind me, my wet hair twisted up.

I typed under it.

"Don, I left as you wished."

I sent it before I could think better.

The three dots came up almost at once.

"Brooklyn isn't leaving."

I laughed out loud. A kid in the pool looked up at me.

"It's leaving Staten Island," I wrote. "Which is all you ever wanted."

"Get on a plane."

"I have eleven five-year-olds at nine."

"Then get on a plane at ten."

"Tell your driver he dropped egg on his tie."

Nothing came back for a minute.

Across the street the big man looked down at his tie, then up at the bathhouse windows.

My phone buzzed.

"He says thank you."

I put it face down on the bench so I'd stop smiling.

At eleven the doors banged open.

Dino came down the deck in his cream linen suit with two dozen red roses.

The kids stopped kicking.

The parents on the bleachers sat up.

He looked like a man in a movie.

He'd always looked like a man in a movie.

"Roz," he said, loud enough for the back row. "Baby. Please."

Joanie put her whistle back in her mouth.

Dino went down on one knee on the wet tile, roses held out.

Two mothers said "aww" before they could stop themselves.

"I was an idiot," he said. "I was drunk and I was proud of you and it came out wrong. Tell me how to fix it."

I looked at his face.

Last night, through a vent, this face had laughed about making sure I was tired first.

"You told the worst day of my life for laughs," I said. "In front of the boy who did it."

"I know."

"And everybody laughed."

"I know. I'll apologize to every one of them."

"Get up, Dino. You're kneeling in a puddle."

He got up. He laughed at himself. The mothers laughed with him.

He was so good at it.

He leaned in close, roses between us, and kissed my cheek.

His voice dropped so only I could hear.

"Pop's company bid on this building."

I didn't move.

"The lease is up," he said. "The city decides Labor Day. Torrisi Construction wants lofts."

He stepped back and smiled at my kids in the water.

"Marry me," Dino said, "and it stays a pool."

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