Chapter 8: Not My Semicolons

The young capo got to his feet so fast his chair hit the racehorse.

"She's posting it right now? While she's standing here?"

"I'm not posting anything."

"It says honeybee!"

He grabbed his own phone and read the first page with his lips moving.

The baker leaned over his shoulder.

I watched the flour-dusted face go from red to gray.

"That's the judge," the baker said. "That's our judge. She put the bow tie in."

"I didn't write it."

"Sweetheart." Raimondo didn't even raise his voice. "It's your name on it."

The old man with the cane hit the floor with it, once.

The room went still.

He looked at Luciano.

"Take your wife home," he said. "Before somebody here forgets what she is."

Luciano finally stood up.

He took my hand off the back of his chair and held it, in front of all of them.

"Nobody here forgets," he said. "Ever."

Then he walked me out through the espresso bar, past the card players, into the sun.

Bernie was leaning on her hood with the tire iron.

"Is that a tire iron?" Luciano asked.

"Is that a mob boss?" Bernie asked back.

"Get in the car, both of you," I said.

Sunday dinner in Chestnut Hill was at four.

Nobody canceled it.

Nobody cancels Sunday dinner, Rosalba told me, not for funerals, not for the FBI.

So at four o'clock I sat at the long kitchen table across from Raimondo and his wife.

Nonna put a plate of gravy and rigatoni in front of me that I couldn't touch.

The old man with the cane had come too.

He ate in silence, watching me.

Raimondo's wife talked about her tomatoes.

Raimondo passed me the bread.

"Eat, sweetheart. You look pale. Writing's hard work."

Luciano's jaw was so tight I thought his teeth would crack.

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