Warpath

Then the job started getting more serious. I had my first muscle job and came to her afterward to get my knuckles bandaged. And my nose. And my ribs. My muscle job days were a slow start. I went in with my f

ists, but often met up with guys who fought back with shit like baseball bats and steel pipes.

She started to say things. Not like my mom kind of things, ultimatums and stuff, but she was worried. She told me she loved me too, and she didn’t think this was a good path I was on.

I told her it was the only path I knew, then I quoted Robert Frost about two paths in the woods and I figured she’d think I was smart. She said all that meant was that I chose wrong.

Then came the first hit.

I told Tia everything about my jobs. I couldn’t not tell her. So I did. She told me if I did the hit that she’d leave me. Made me choose.

Now, I’m not the kind of guy—but I know a lot of them—who would tell his girl to shut up. Remind her that he’s the man. She was my world, but the family—the job—that was my life. How do you choose?

So I called her bluff and guess what? I’m two for two. She moved out. Changed her number.

A bunch of the guys said I should go get her back. That it’s my call when things are over, not hers. But if she didn’t want me, I wasn’t gonna force her.

I told the guys if you love something, set it free.

They beat the shit out of me. I stopped reading poetry after that.

THREE

Bricks

I slid my key into the lock, gave it a nudge. First up, then over, then a slight drop. Honestly, this old lock’s idiosyncrasies are worth more than three extra deadbolts. You gotta have a precise hand to get it to open up. A lover’s hand.

I’ve been using it for three years now, and know its nuances well enough that I can open it with just one hand while holding bags of groceries, or while drunk and fumbling.

It’s my door.

I get it.

It gets me.

I wish the rest of my life was that easy.

Once inside, I put the deli sandwich I picked up at the Korean place in the fridge next to the two bottles of Peroni beer already there. They weren’t just for show. I liked beer even better than I liked vino, which was cause for suspicion about your heritage among many Italians. So while birra Italiana isn’t the best brew in the world, I made a habit of drinking it anyway. When you’re only half Italian already, and the half is on your mother’s side, you need every advantage you can get to fit in with the family.

The family. La famiglia. When you think of that word, you’d like to think of large dinners, loud discussions, loving arms. Ever since my pops died, though, it’s been none of that.

Truth be told, it really wasn’t like that before, either. About once a month, my Aunt Marie will invite me over for Sunday dinner but I don’t go two times out of three. It either turns into a grief session over Pops, with Marie leading the charge until my cousins get whipped into enough of a frenzy to join in, railing against the cops and the government and especially “them goddamn rats” that were all responsible for him ending up in prison. Or him getting cancer. I’m not sure which.

If it ain’t a Popsfest, then it’s Ma’s turn and we get the subdued, unspoken, talk-around-it bit. That’s where they pretend my ma didn’t bail on Pops and the famiglia during the first year he was in the joint. She ran off with some guy who was a doctor down at the free clinic.

Some black guy, to be more accurate.

I always thought it was funny how the biggest shame most people in the family felt about the situation wasn’t that Ma had no loyalty when the chips were down. Or that she cut and run, and with another man, too.

Nope. All my cousins, Aunt Marie, the whole family? They were most upset that Ma went with a black guy.

“Fucking mulignan,” my cousin Peter said at one dinner shortly after Ma bolted. “They oughta stay with their own kind.”

“Watch that talk,” Aunt Marie told him, but without the customary sharpness usually reserved for profanity at the Sunday dinner table. That was her way of expressing agreement, I guess.

“I’m serious,” Peter said. “We oughta file a missing person’s report or something. Not like any self-respectin’ Italian girl would go wit a moolie. Not on her own. It’s fuckin’ kidnappin’.”

“Here’s an idea,” I told him. “How about you file a missing persons report on your fucking brain?”