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But I was going to come again, and I couldn’t come with anything inside me. I knew that. It was an indelible fact.

“I’m coming inside you,” he gasped. “I’m going to come so f**king hard in you.”

“Me too.” I didn’t even believe it. “You’re making me come.”

The swirl of feeling dropped away then coalesced, increasing until my limbs stiffened and I put my face in his neck to stifle my cries. The impossible happened. I came just from a man inside me. I pulsed around him, drowning in the power of it.

He thrust hard with a grunt then a moan. I felt the pulse at the base of his dick on my stretched pu**y. He was coming. Making that beautiful man lose himself in me felt like a gift. I pushed into him until he slowed, stopped, and kissed my neck.

“Grazie,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

Slowly, he slipped his dick out of me. It was still rigid, and I felt every inch of it against my raw skin. He tied off the condom and wrapped it in toilet paper as I sat up.

“Stay there,” he said, pressing my legs open.

Was he going to have me again? I didn’t think I could take it. Though I was already feeling twinges of shame and guilt, I wouldn’t have turned him down. He balled up a wad of tissue and pressed it between my legs, cleaning me. The gesture was so much more intimate than the actual sex that I blushed.

“I can’t send you back outside with sex dripping down your leg, now can I?”

Despite the sounds from the party, I’d forgotten that there would be a “back outside.” I’d forgotten about Daniel, his meek request that I come back to him, and the air of forgiveness my attendance was supposed to provide. I closed my legs and sat up.

“I have to get back out there.” I put my left shoe on all the way and popped off the vanity. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

The shreds of my underwear tickled my inner thighs, bunching as only ripped lace could. I straightened my skirt and smoothed my stockings, knowing he was watching me. I didn’t look at him as I went for the door.

He slipped between me and the knob. “Contessa.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t leave like this.”

“How should I leave?”

He kissed my forehead, and I let myself enjoy the tenderness. I didn’t want to rush out, but I couldn’t delude myself into thinking I was fully present, either.

“It doesn’t have to be meaningless,” he said.

“You won’t answer questions about your life, and I’m still in love with my ex. I don’t know how it can be meaningful.”

“I’ll answer one question right now if you kiss me back like you mean it.”

“Why are you doing this? You’re the one who wanted two bodies meeting and no more.”

“Because I can’t walk out of this room like this. You’re like a stranger all of a sudden. One question.”

“The girl. Who was she? To you, I mean? Why did you come here for her?”

“That’s three questions.”

“Pick one.”

“My sister. She’s my sister. Her name is Nella.”

“And?”

He bit his lip and looked down at my face. After a second, I realized he wasn’t going to answer me.

“Excuse me.” I pushed him away, but he shoved me against the door.

“I want my kiss,” he said.

“That was no kind of answer.”

“I answered two of the three. If you only cared about the last one, you should have said so.”

“Lawyer.” I said it like an indictment, and he smirked. I elbowed him, but he caught my forearms and pinned me to the door.

“Your underwear’s already ripped, and if I checked, I bet you’re wet again.”

“Get off me,” I said.

“I should f**k you right now.”

“Go to hell.”

I twisted, but his hands were bruising, and the growing hardness of his dick was enough to weaken my knees and my resolve. “Take your kiss then.”

He did, without hesitation or gentleness, prying my mouth open with his tongue, thick with the taste of my pu**y. He pulled away when we had to breathe, and we stared at each other, panting.

“I hope you enjoyed that,” I said. “Now excuse me.”

He backed away from the door, and I went through it before he and his beautiful dick could stop me. The air outside the bathroom felt fresher and thinner. I smoothed my dress again and pulled the pins out of my hair, letting it fall down in a red cascade. It was easier to keep that way.

I felt a weight between my legs. I could easily get my appearance together for the rest of the party. But I couldn’t hide the fact that my cheeks were pink with arousal and my ni**les stood on end. My arms still had goose bumps, and I was so wet I felt the moisture inside my thighs. But I walked outside as if it were my house, my party, my world, because that’s what I did. It was easier than math.

Dinner had started. Daniel was at his table with an empty seat next to him. He hadn’t mentioned the seating arrangements, but they shouldn’t have surprised me. Forgiveness didn’t sit across the room. He stood as I took my seat.

“Thank you,” I said. When our eyes met, I was sure he knew what I’d just done.

twelve.

he next morning, two things happened simultaneously. One. A dozen red roses on Pam’s desk.

“Wow, these from Bobby?” I asked.

 

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“They’re for you.” She tapped a pen to the desk blotter, as if writing a song in her head.

Before I could open the paper flap of the card, the second thing happened. I caught the image on my assistant’s screen of Antonio and me in the hallway. It had been shot through the window the moment before we kissed. Next to that image was one of Daniel and me sitting together at dinner.

I’d feared looking weak. I’d feared the op ed pieces about my neediness and desperation, about Daniel’s ambition and mindless drive for power. The inevitable comparisons to greater women’s choices about cheating political mates. Maybe I should have worried about looking like a whore.

“Who’s that?” Pam asked.

Who was he? I ran the question over and over in my mind, and I didn’t have an acceptable answer. He was a man I’d met the other day. He was a magnet for my sexual hunger.

“He’s being investigated for fraud,” Pam said, as if he was just a guy on the screen and not someone I had been standing so close to I could feel his heat. “Is he the same guy with the cars?”

“Same,” I choked. “What’s the article say?” I opened the envelope so I wouldn’t have to look at the screen. I figured the flowers were from Daniel, asking for another reprieve.

“Says you and Antonio Spinelli are friends through WDE. And you’re reconciling with Daniel Brower.”

“They used that word? Reconciling?” I looked at the card.

One more question.

No name. An arrogant avoidance of redundancy. I folded it back into the envelope.

“Yeppers,” Pam said. “Right next to that picture with the hot Italian guy. Sneaky.”

“Journalist. In Latin it means ‘to say everything while saying nothing.’”

“Really?”

“No. But if the ancients had known anything at all, it would.”

***

I’d gotten up and dressed like any other morning, expecting nothing more than the usual inconveniences. Traffic. Runny stockings. Coffee too hot/cold. Daniel and I had parted amicably the previous night, with him whispering “think about it,” in my ear. I promised to, and I would, but it was hard to think of Daniel when I woke up with a soaked, sore pu**y courtesy of Antonio.

I relieved myself, fingers stroking the soreness. I loved the pain of remembrance. He’d been so good, so hard, and talking during sex was something new. I whispered to myself f**k me f**k me f**k me hard until I came, ass tightening, hips twisting, balancing my whole body on the top of my head and the balls of my feet.

Only when I took my first panting breaths, cupping myself in my palm, did I consider how poorly we’d parted. I couldn’t be with someone so closed off. Later at work, when Pam told me he was under investigation, I knew why he didn’t like being interrogated. I had her hold my calls for an hour.

One more question.

What would it be? More about Nella? Another reason to land in Los Angeles besides easy Bar exams? No. All that was too facile and obviously loaded for him.

I locked my office door. I had a million things to do, but none would happen while those pictures sat in my mind. I needed to solve all of it immediately with an internet search.

If I could have bottled the next hour in a fragrance, it would have been called frustration. If the size of the bottle contained the amount of information I found on Antonio Spinelli, it would be one ounce, not a drop more, and the contents would be worth less than the vessel.

In other words, one sidebar article in Fortune had not one undigested word. I found one professional photograph in which he looked gorgeous, an unsubstantiated complaint in the comment section of a real estate blog bitching about how many cars he had and how much property he owned, a short fluff piece about Zia Giovana in the San Pedro Sun, and an investigative piece in the same paper from two years later.

The investigative piece was recent enough to matter. Antonio Spinelli, owner and proprietor of Zia’s restaurant, was under investigation for laundering millions through the establishment. The claim was absolutely impossible to prove, and apparently the money trail died before the reporter’s deadline.

Pam texted me.

—Mister Brower is on the line—

—I have another twenty minutes—

—He’s pretty insistent—

Pam knew me, and she knew my ex-fiancé. She wouldn’t interrupt for nonsense. I picked up the phone.

“Hi,” I said.

He started before I had the chance to take another breath. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“With a known criminal. What are you doing with him?”

I was shocked into speechlessness.

“Tink? Answer me. It was in the LA Times.”

“I’m not with anyone. Not that it’s your business.”

“Your safety is my business. I’m sorry. That’s not negotiable now or ever.”

His voice seemed physically present, coming through not just the phone but the walls, and I realized he was right outside my locked door.

“Let me in,” he said.

I hung up and opened the door. “You have to relax.” It was barely out of my mouth before he slammed the door and shut out his bodyguards, who seemed to be holding back Pam.

“Daniel, really—”

“Really? Really, Theresa? Where did you pick him up?”

I put my hands on my hips. I had to bite my lips to keep in all the pointless recrimination. We didn’t need more of it. Daniel knew things.

 

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“Do you want to take it easy and talk to me?” I said.

“No,” he said, taking my shoulders. “I don’t.” He kissed me, pushing me back against my desk.

I kept my mouth closed not out of anger, but confusion. By the time he pulled back, we’d both calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sit down.” I indicated the chair across from my desk, and I sat next to it.

He pulled his chair close to mine as if he was still entitled to breathe my air, as if I’d agreed to the newspaper’s reconciliation in real life. “I need you to tell me everything,” he said, gathering my hands.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“How did he approach you?”

I pulled my hands away. “This is not fair. You’re not exactly entitled to any information about me or my love life anymore. If I tell you it’s nothing, you’re going to think I’m lying. If I tell you it’s something, it’s like I’m trying to hurt you. I’m just trying to live my life, okay? I’m just trying to get through my days and nights.”

“You’re stumbling into a place where you can get hurt.”

“All roads lead to hurt, trust me.”

“I deserved that.”

“It wasn’t directed at you.” I threw his hands off me. “Can I just talk to you without all the baggage?”

“No, because you’ve forgotten who you are.”

“I’m not yours anymore.”

“You’re an heiress. A socialite. You run one of the biggest accounting departments in Hollywood. You funnel millions of dollars a day. You have access to the district attorney.”

“This is about you?”

“No! Fuck!” The curse was pure exclamation. Not a lead in or a modifier.

He paused for half of a microsecond, but I caught it. When he and I were together, I hadn’t liked cursing. I thought he didn’t do it until I found his texts to Clarice, and I found out just how well he used the word f**k.

He put his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands. “He’s the capo of the Giraldi crime family, Tinkerbell.”

If I’d had a muscle in my body that wasn’t tensed to pain, they caught up. Even my toes curled. “You’re making that up.”

His face was red and sweaty. He looked more like a man and less like a mayor than he had since the morning I discovered his infidelity. “I wish I was. I wish I was only jealous.”

My ex-fiancé didn’t get jealous often, but when he did, he burned white hot. I’d never betrayed him or any of my boyfriends. My relationships had ended because of educational choices (Randolph went to Berkeley, and I went to MIT) or because the other party strayed or because there was nothing worth bothering with, as was the case with Sam Traulich. He was a nice guy, just completely incompatible with me.

Sam and I stayed friends, and when he’d called to ask if I had any contacts at Northwestern Films, I agreed to a lunch. It had gone long. At three thirty p.m., Sam and I were laughing over some crumb of nostalgia when Daniel stormed into the little diner. At first, he was thrilled to see me alive. He’d apparently been calling the office for hours about our dinner plans, and no one knew where I was. My cell battery had died, so he tracked me down by having his friends on First Street look into my credit card transactions for the previous two hours.

For some reason, that didn’t bother me.

Once he’d gotten over his initial delight, he got a good look at Sam, who was burnished brown from the sun, joyful as always, laid-back, and in good humor. Daniel put on his politician game, apologized, and appeared to forget about it. We made it to dinner on time. Life moved on.

But not for Daniel. I was shocked to find out years later, through a mutual friend, what had followed. As an extraordinarily popular young prosecutor, Daniel had arranged for Sam to be picked up by the police, brought in, roughed up, and detained. Daniel visited the detainee and mentioned that if he ever kept his girlfriend too long again, Sam would be joined in his cell by at least three gang members who owed him favors.

I had been livid. I slept on the couch for three weeks and barely spoke to him. That was the last intolerably stupid thing Daniel ever did on my behalf.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m listening. Antonio is what... in the mafia?”

“Yes.”

“You mean there’s still a mafia?”

“Yes, Virginia, there is a mafia.”

I paused for a long time. On the one hand, he might as well have told me Antonio was a leprechaun. On the other, I couldn’t say I was surprised.

thirteen.

texted Antonio.

—I have my one question—

—I want you to ask it in person—

—Agreed—

The address was in Hollywood Heights, overlooking the Bowl, on a hairpin turn that looked like a sheer drop on the right and a fortress wall on the left. A thirty-foot long, fifteen-foot high dumpster was visible over the hedge, and crashing and banging drowned out the scrape of cricket wings. I edged past a pickup truck that looked as though it had survived a demolition derby and parked next to a low sports car covered by a grey tarp.

The house was Spanish with a red tile roof, leaded stained glass accents, and thick adobe walls. Tarps swung from rafters, and every wall’s plaster had been cracked down to the lathe. I followed the banging and crashing, nodding at the rough men pushing a wheelbarrow of broken house detritus.

 

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“Is Antonio here?” I asked.

I couldn’t imagine him hanging around a scraped-to-the-beams structure, but one of the guys thumbed toward the back of the house. I thanked him and headed in that direction. The pounding, thumping sounds were followed by the tickle of pebbles hitting the floor. The air got dusty, and the smell of pine hit me as I saw him.

I’d always been attracted to clean cut, educated men, men who had people to change their flat tires, drive them around, break down their walls. They exerted themselves mightily in gyms and squash courts. But none of them had ever looked like Antonio. He hoisted a sledgehammer and brought it down. The wall crumbled under the weight, and he wedged the head behind the wall and yanked it out, sending a shot of plaster and shredded lathe toward him. He didn’t stop, though. Didn’t even pause. His wiry muscles shifted and pulsed. The satin sheen of sweat on his olive skin brought out every muscle and tendon.

I knew women who liked that sort of thing: a sweaty man doing physical labor. I had never understood the appeal until that moment. He brought the sledgehammer down with a coil of force, like a righteous god smiting an errant creation off the face of his earth. The movement was so dramatic the gold pendant around his neck swung around to his shoulder.

“I know you’re there, Contessa.” He brought the hammer down again.

“Don’t you have people to do this for you?”

He tossed the hammer down as if he was done with the day’s violence. “It’s my house, and demo’s too much fun to delegate.” His face was covered in dust, sweat, and a smile.

“You should hire yourself,” I said.

“Like it?”

“It’ll be nice once you mop. Dust. You know, maybe a few pictures on the wall.” I swept my hand to the view of the city, the busted everything, the sheer potential.

“Let me show you.” He headed out an archway, indicating I should follow.

He led me onto a balcony on the west side of the house. The terra-cotta floor looked to be in good shape, and the cast-iron railing curled in on itself, making a floral design I’d never seen.

“I love this view,” I said, understating the grandeur of the ocean of lights. “I could look out on this all night.”

He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and poked one out. I refused his offer, and he took out a big metal lighter.

“Sit here at night, have a glass of wine. Or in the morning, a cup of coffee, just look over the city.” He lit his cigarette with a click clack, his profile something out of an art history class. He put his fingertips to the back of my neck, his stroke so delicate I didn’t lean into it, just stayed as still as I could.

“You had a question?” he asked, tracing the line where my shirt met my skin.

“Are you a leprechaun?” I asked.

“Only when St. Patrick’s Day lands on a full moon.” He was smiling, but I could see the question had confused him.

“I’m sorry. I had a real question, but I forgot which one I picked.”

Because they were all ridiculous, of course. If he was some cartoon capo, he’d have a dozen guys around him all the time. He’d wear pinstripes and a fedora. He’d carry a gun. He’d say capisce a lot.

“Do I get any questions?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“I’m an open book.”

He laughed softly, smoke trailing behind him. “Right. Open, but in a different language.”

He gave me an idea.

“I’m not going to ask you a question,” I said. “I’m going to tell you what happened to me today.”

“Let me make you coffee.”

***

The kitchen was in bad but useable shape. The beige marbled tiles with little mirrored squares every few feet, dark wood cabinets, and avocado appliances told me the place hadn’t been redone since the seventies.

Antonio sat me in a folding chair at a beat up pine table. “Best I have for now.”

“You living here during all this mess?”

“No. I have another place.” He gave no more information. “Do you like espresso? I have some hot still.”

“Sure.”

He poured from a chrome double brewer into two small blue cups. “Does it keep you up?”

“Nope.”

“Good. A real woman.” He brought the cups and a lemon to the table and set a cup before me. I reached for the handle, but he made a little tch tch noise. “Not yet.” He cradled the lemon in one palm and a little knife in the other. “What happened to you today?”

“Today, my assistant found a picture of us in the paper.”

“Saw that,” he said, cutting a strip of lemon peel. “You looked sexy as hell. I wanted to f**k you all over again.”

If he was trying to get my body to turn into a puddle of desire, it was working. “Everyone saw it.”

“Everyone want to f**k you as bad as I did?”

“My ex-fiancé showed up.”

“The Candidate…” He dropped a yellow curlicue into my saucer. “Bet he regrets what he did, no?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

I reached for the espresso, but he stopped me again, plucking the rind from my saucer and rubbing it on the edge of my cup.

“Do you want Sambuca?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He reached back, plucked a bottle from a line of them, and unscrewed the top. “In Napoli, the men point their pinkies up when they drink espresso to show their refinement. Once they’ve been here long enough, they drink like Americans.” He poured a little Sambuca into our cups.

 

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“How do the women drink?”

“Quickly, before the children pull on their skirts.”

I sipped the drink. It was good, thick, rich. I took a bigger mouthful but didn’t gulp.

“So there’s a picture in the paper of us, and let’s not play tricks with each other,” he said. “It looked like we’re intimate.”

“It did.”

“Next to a picture of you and him.” He picked up his cup.

I followed suit. “Yes.”

“And he runs to your office, how many hours later? One? A half? Or are we measuring in minutes?”

We looked at each other over our cups.

“I don’t see that it matters.” I blew on the black liquid, the ripples releasing the licorice scent of the Sambuca.

He smirked. “Maybe it doesn’t. What did it take him one to sixty minutes to tell you?”

“That you run an organized crime empire.”

He said nothing at first, just put his espresso to his lips and drank. He kept his pinky down, holding the demitasse with his curled fist. “I’m very impressed with me.” He clicked the cup to saucer. “Less so with him. I might have to vote Drummond.”

“I looked into it after he left, once I knew what I was looking for. You’re being investigated for all kinds of fraud. Insurance. Real estate. And you don’t want me to ask questions, so what am I supposed to think?”

“Is that your question?” he asked. “What are you supposed to think? I have an answer for that one.”

“I don’t have an actual question. I know you haven’t been convicted of anything, and I know what we had was just a casual screw.”

“It wasn’t casual.”

“We can’t make any commitments to each other. And that’s fine. But I don’t sleep with strangers. If you’re going to continue to be a stranger, then I can’t do this.”

He closed his eyes and cocked his head left, then right, as if stretching before a boxing match. “I have a history, and it followed me here.”

I sat back. “Go on.”

“My father didn’t exist to me. My mother shooed off the idea of him. Like she made me herself, out of nothing. I didn’t know who my father was until I was eleven. I had some business, and he was the man one went to with business.”

“At eleven? What business did you have at that age?”

“It’s a different world over there. Things need to be taken care of. If the trash wasn’t getting picked up, you went to Benito Racossi. If the delivery boy was stealing from your mother, you went to Racossi. My mother rarely left the apartment, and my sister… Well, I’d never send her to a man like that. But once I met him, I saw it.” He made a quick oval around his face. “Like looking in a mirror, but older.”

“He was your father?”

“He didn’t deny it. Took me under his wing. Gave me work. Legal work. Anything he had to keep me out of trouble. My mother? It nearly killed her. She didn’t want me in the life. She never believed I didn’t do anything illegal. Neither did the polizia. Neither did Interpol. Neither does Daniel Brower, who’s going to make my life hell if he’s mayor. But as God is my witness, every business I have runs because I watched how my father did it, but I’ve never imitated what he did. So I’ll tell you this once and swear to it, I’ve beaten every charge against me and I’ll beat everything they put on my back because I’m clean.”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t put me in a position where I have to defend myself against this again.”

He was so definite, so stern, so parental that I didn’t think I could spend another second in his presence. I stood. “If asking you questions turns you into an ass, I’ll be sure to only make declarative statements on the infinitely small chance I ever see you again. Thanks for the coffee.”

I spun on my heel and walked out of the kitchen, winding up in a room I hadn’t come through. Then I found another with a broken stone staircase. I didn’t feel him following me until a second before he grabbed me and pushed me toward a leaded glass window.

“Let go of me.”

“No.”

I clawed at his hands as they fondled me, going under my shirt and bra without prelude or hesitation. The flood of arousal was painful.

“Stop,” I said, trying to get his arms off me.

“Next time you say stop will be the last.” He placed my hands on either side of the window. The stone was cold, and the pressure of him on my back was harder than the wall. “What do you want to say?” He shifted behind me, unmistakably getting his dick out. I heard the tick of a condom wrapper hitting the tiles. Was he wrapping it up again? God, I hoped so.

I wanted to say stop. No. Don’t. But I needed him to relieve my ache, and I knew he meant that my next objection would send him away. “Do it.”

He yanked down my pants. I saw his reflection in the window, broken by curved strips of lead, looking at my ass. He put one hand on my throat, his thumb resting behind my ear, while his other hand yanked down my underwear and drove into where I was wettest.

“I’m going to f**k you so f**king hard.” He tightened the grip of both hands.

I’d made him angry. That was clear in every vowel. I shouldn’t like that. It shouldn’t turn me on. But as I stood with my ass jutting out, my bra and shirt pulled up until my br**sts swung, and a man’s dick at my opening, I could only wonder how to make him angrier.

 

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“You’d better make it worthwhile,” I said. “I have no time for sweet talk.”

“You’re such a rich little princess.” He pressed my neck down and pulled my hips toward him with the fingers he had inserted in me.

“Fuck you,” I whispered. “You’re a worthless street punk.”

I thought he would put his dick back in his pants and walk away. Instead, he jammed it in me with animal brutality. I cried out not because it hurt, but because the way he did it, plus the raw physical pleasure it created, pushed the wind out of me.

“You like this?” he said, thrusting with every word. “You like this. Worthless. Street. Punk. Fucking. You?”

His arms constricted around me. His right squeezed a breast, his left had four fingers on my clit, shifting like tectonic plates with every thrust. I grunted. I didn’t think I’d ever grunted during sex, but that wasn’t sex. That was two animals mating under a bush.

He pulled out and yanked me up. I saw us in the reflection in the window.

“Look at you. That face. I want to see you when you come.” He growled it. “Since the minute I saw you, I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted to open your legs and take you.” As if his words were fingers, they drifted down my body, fondling me, arousing me. “I’ve seen women come. They forget to look beautiful. They forget who they are. I want to see you when you lose yourself and all you know is my name.”

He sat on the windowsill, holding his hand out for me. I straddled him, lowering myself onto him. He guided me by the hips.

“This is good?” he asked as if he already knew the answer.

“So good. Fucking you is so good.”

“Look at me.”

He pressed me down, pressing my clit against his root. I gasped, trying to keep my eyes on him.

“Let me see,” he whispered over and over. “Let me see you come.”

He f**ked harder and faster, and I lost myself.

“Oh God,” I gasped. “Coming. Coming.”

“Give it to me, Contessa. Show me.”

He put his hand under my chin, pushing it up until my vision was filled with him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My lungs constricted around my heart, and my joints stiffened. I felt held up by his dick, but his arms and hands bound me to him as I came, watching him.

I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and put my hands on his biceps, and without an ounce of tenderness, he pulled my hair back and down until I was on my knees with the slick head of his c**k against my cheek, and he stood over me.

“Take it. Now.”

He pulled the condom off. I opened my mouth, and he guided himself in. I choked, and he pulled out. I prepared myself, holding down my reflex and pressing the back of my tongue down. I put my hands at the base of his shaft and put his c**k in my mouth, sliding the bottom of it against my flattened tongue. As he slid it out, I sucked, tasting my fluids on him.

“Yes, Contessa, that’s it. Suck my cock. All the way.”

I took him into my throat as far as I could, making up the rest with my hands, and sucked as he pulled out.

“Look at me,” he said.

We made eye contact, and he pushed forward. I opened my throat, but he was a lot of man for one mouth. I paused and, again, took him far down. His lips parted, and I knew I’d done it right. He thrust into me. He felt good, tasted good. I wanted him to come hard, and my desire to please him rattled the back of my throat.

“I’m coming in your mouth.” He grunted. “Take it. Take it all in your throat.”

His eyes closed tight, and I watched him as he thrust and came, flooding my tongue and throat with bitter, sticky lava. He muttered something in Italian, spitting curses through his teeth. I’d never seen anything so hot, and I swallowed every drop of him.

When he opened his eyes and saw me beneath him, he took a sharp breath. “So sweet.” He brushed my hair away from my face then pulled my head to him.

I didn’t even understand my reactions. “Not casual. I know what you mean.”

“But no questions. It means I have to defend myself. I don’t like it.”

“Okay. No more questions.” I didn’t know if I could keep that promise, but I could definitely put it on hold to have sex like that again.

I turned, wrapping my arms around his legs, and I turned to watch the image of us, me on my knees before him, with his hands at my back, in the window.

I screamed. Like a glowing mask floating in the night, a woman’s face sat framed in the window.

fourteen.

ntonio had me behind him so quickly and smoothly I didn’t even realize he was protecting me until I tried to stand. My pants restricted my thighs, and I nearly fell.

He held me up. “Marina!” he shouted.

I straightened my shirt and pants. Antonio zipped himself up and ran for the door.

He turned and held up a finger to me. “Don’t go anywhere.”

And he was gone. I still had the sting of his spunk in the back of my throat.

I straightened, breathed, and went outside. His admonition to stay put had fallen on Teflon ears. I didn’t know who Marina was or what she was doing outside his window. She could be a sister or cousin or the local convent rep, but she was young and attractive, and my blood went a familiar shade of green. I didn’t like feeling that way, especially about a man I had no claim to.

I intended to get in my car and drive away. Around the bend, I found the balcony. I knew how to get back to my car from there, but I heard voices. A Mercedes was parked in the rear drive, lights on and engine running. The woman stood by the open driver’s door. She was upset, hands flailing, voice squeaking. Antonio shouted recriminations in the spaces between hers.

 

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That wasn’t a fight between cousins. I stepped back, and my foot shifted a loose tile. The scrape was louder than I would have imagined. They looked up at me. I backed away then turned and ran to my car. I managed to get in my car and get it started before he got to the window. He knocked on the glass. I waved good-bye.

He got in front of the car. “Open up.”

I cranked down the window. “That only works during, not after.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Is she a blood relation?”

He came around to my side of the car.

“Yes? No? What is it, Antonio? Oh, I’m sorry. Did I phrase that as a question?”

I put the car in gear, and he threw himself through my open window. I screamed from the shock of having him between me and the windshield. He yanked the emergency brake.

“Don’t make me drag you out of this car,” he said.

“If you have something to tell me, just tell me. I’m not asking anything.”

“Come inside.”

“No.”

Still leaning through the door, he held the bottom of my face. “I want you. First, I want you.”

“Thanks. I’m glad I’m not a second. You know what? I’m tired of playing in an orchestra. I want to go solo. Now.” I pulled the brake down. “Get out of my car, or half of you is getting torn off when I drive away.”

“It’s not what you think.”

I put the car in drive. “You have no idea what I think.”

I let go of the brake, and even though I couldn’t see through Antonio’s gorgeous body, I drove. He cursed and pulled out of the window. I turned onto the street and left him behind.

fifteen.

hat’s your problem?” Katrina asked three days later.

We were on set in Elysian Park from seven a.m. to three p.m. on a weekend, and the light had been consistently softened by clouds. I shrugged. I had no idea what she was talking about. I still had to go through the other script supervisor’s notes.

She put her knee on the park bench where I had set up my files. “You got a frown.” She formed her hand into a claw and pivoted her wrist as if turning a knob on my face. “It needs an inversion.”

Pam had called it a sourpuss, and I’d given her the same answer. “I’m fine. Just a cold.”

“Bullshit.” She was fatigued. The days were very long, and she had confided that she was losing faith that it would ever be a movie. It was a common malady at the seventy-five percent mark. “I don’t have time to needle it out of you because in two minutes, someone is going to come here asking me which shirt Michael should wear, and I’ll have to convince them I care. So tell me.”

I slapped the clipboard on the table. “The Italian guy. He gave every indication he didn’t want me close. I slept with him twice, neither time in an actual bed, and I’m an idiot for being shocked that I wasn’t the only one he was with. So no, I expected nothing from him. But maybe once, for kicks, I’d like someone to be exclusive for fifteen minutes.”

“Ah.”

“Fuck it. I don’t care.”

She stood still for a second then said, “Did you just say what I think you said?”

I flipped through my pages without looking at her. “Go direct a movie. You make me crazy.”

She stepped away from the table, walking backward to the camera. When she was far enough away, I checked my phone. That text was the first I’d heard from Antonio since I almost tore him in half with my car.

—I’d like to speak with you—

—I’m all out of questions—

—I’ll do the talking—

What was he promising? More non-answers? That game was old. Either he would be forthcoming or he wouldn’t, and the more he promised to reveal who he really was, the less appealing he became. I needed overall sincerity. I needed intimacy. I didn’t need a sex doll, no matter how good the sex was.

—No. I’m sorry. I’m done with this—

—But I’m not—

I shuddered and pocketed the phone. I wasn’t going to encourage him.

Michael threw himself into the chair next to me, his lithe, tight body encased in a henley and grey jeans. “Heard that conversation back there.”

“And you have the answer?”

“I have an answer. Wanna hear it?” He raised his eyebrows as if he was offering candy. He was a handsome guy, and twice as fine on camera.

“Sure.”

“It’s not you, it’s him.”

I laughed.

Michael leaned forward. “I mean it. Look, I’m… let’s say active. It’s not the girls. Some are real nice. Good people. Make someone a great wife. But I’m on set until the wee hours. I can’t do the maintenance a guy’s gotta do. So we’re clear on that in the beginning.”

“You’re a charmer, you know that?”

“Any time. And if you want to be clear about something, some time, we can be maintenance-free. You and I.”

“I’m this close to taking my pants off and jumping on you. I mean, you can really sell a girl.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “All right. But friend to friend, it’s not you. You’re very cool, very beautiful, very smart. Just unlucky so far.” He bounced up and gave me a salute. “Remember all that. And if you’re ever looking, let me know.”

“Thanks. I mean it.”

 

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He strode off to makeup. I checked my phone. Antonio didn’t send a follow-up, and I didn’t answer. Michael had cheered me up somewhat. He was all right, and maybe if I wanted something forgettable sometime, I’d call him.

The park shoot bled into Sunday, and I collapsed on my couch with a duffel bag full of binders and notebooks at my feet. Katrina dropped her head on the kitchen table with the TV on.

sixteen.

ur Monday meeting had been a drone of problems and the same processes to manage them. Then we talked about implementing new processes to manage the same issues. Then we had new discussion points that were just shades of the old ones. The agency collected money on behalf of clients, deducted ten percent, and sent the rest. Anytime money moved, there were the twin matters of how much and how fast it moved. Nothing else really counted.

When I came back, Pam tapped her fingers like a drum machine, hitting the stapler on fourths. “Danny Dickinsonian.”

“Is he here?” I asked.

“Nope. Wanted you to meet him at his office downtown. Said it was important and apologies for the imposition et cetera. New polls show he’s getting beaten on the east side. Badly. Might be about that.” Tap tap tappa.

Running for mayor was an eighty-hour-a-week job. I’d known that from the beginning. “What do I have this afternoon?”

“Staff meeting at one. Procedure and protocols touchbase with Wanda’s team at two.”

Taking an afternoon jaunt downtown was undoubtedly ten times more appealing than either of those events. “Tell him I’ll be there.”

***

The DA’s office was in a 1920s stone-carved edifice a few blocks from my loft, so I parked at home and walked. The heat weighed on me. The streets, though not crowded, were populated.

The DA’s building was set back from the street with an expanse of lawn utilized by birds, squirrels, and urban picnickers. The tweedy grey brickwork matched the flat city sky, and as I got closer, I saw the stonework from a lost era. Like Roman reliefs, granite men carried logs, fished in a pebble sea, built houses from petrified wood, all immortalized with the toil of a sculptor’s sweat.

The lady at the front desk knew me, but I still needed to sign in and get a sticker. I was spared the thumbprint. I saw Gerry, Daniel’s top strategist, in the hall.

He stopped short and put out his hand. “Theresa, thank you for going to Catholic Charities.” When he shook my hand, he also kissed my cheek and patted my back.

“I was afraid I did more harm than good,” I said.

“No. Even a failed tactic can serve an overall strategy. Don’t forget that.”

“So I’m a failed tactic now?” I said with a smile and a lilt. “I thought I meant more to you than that.”

He pressed his lips together. “You’re perfect. You have politics in your blood. If I could, in good conscience, ask you to take that stupid bastard back, I would. He can’t lose with you by him.”

I had a few answers, none of them politic or kind. I chose the most bland. “He can win just fine without me.”

“Maybe, but it’ll be close.”

“Any idea why I’m here?”

“Come,” he said.

I let him lead me down the hall to Daniel’s office. A married couple he used for promotion was just leaving. They greeted me, then suddenly I was alone with my ex-fiancé.

He had a biggish office by 1920s standards. The windows slid up and down with rackety tickticks, and the walls were molded in every place molding could be placed. Over the last ninety years, it had been painted bi-annually, rounding out the edges until the room looked like the inside of a wedding cake.

“Found her wandering the halls,” Gerry said before ducking out.

Daniel had on a thin blue tie and white shirt with the cuffs rolled to the elbows. His wooden chair was dressed in his jacket, and he was every bit the good-looking, hardworking crusader for justice. “Theresa, thank you for coming.”

“After the election, this beck-and-all thing is over,” I said.

He approached a chestnut table that must have come with the building and pulled out a chair for me. I sat. He leaned on his desk and crossed his arms instead of sitting with me. I crossed my legs and faced him.

“It’s been a tough few days here,” he said.

“I have a protocol review I can still make if you don’t have something to say to me.”

“I know how much you love those.” He smiled his big, natural white smile.

“There were threats something would actually get done at this one.”

“Then it’s not really a protocol review.”

I sighed. “This is about Antonio again? Just say it.”

“I need to know what he is to you.”

“Oh, God. Really?” I stood. “Dan, honey, you’re so far out of line.”

“It matters. It matters to my campaign, and it matters to me. I need your help, and in order for me to even ask, I need to know the nature of your relationship with him.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Have you had sex with him?”

“Daniel!”

“I need to know.”

“Is this a deposition? Are you taking notes? Where’s the court reporter?”

He sighed and dropped his arms. “We’ve reached a wonderful pause in a war that’s been going on for a few decades. We have the Carlonis for all manner of shit, and I’ll file charges when everything’s in order. But the other side? The Giraldi family? I have nothing. I have accounting files we got from the NSA, but everything looks clean. I need them looked at by someone with your eye.”

 

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“And you don’t have a team of people?”

“They have skill. You have talent.”

“I think this is about more than my talent.” I couldn’t hold to that line for long because he’d asked me to look at the Carloni files months ago. He’d switched to their rivals, but his ideals about my talents were well known.

“We got Donna Maria Carloni on embezzlement thanks to a mole. Good mole. I got nothing with Spinelli,” he said.

“Who you can’t even prove is the head of any kind of crime organization, much less the Giraldis.”

“He’s committed a few murders to get to where he is, Tink. Just because I can’t prove it doesn’t make it any less true. And yes, I’m terrified of you being anywhere near him, and yes, this is two birds with one stone. I get your eyes on his books, and I get you to tell me where his malfeasance is. But if you’re sleeping with him, I can’t use you. I’ll have to fly a guy in from Quantico, and that’ll alert everyone that I have the NSA docs. They’ll be questioned and possibly yanked.”

“This is a hot mess.”

“I know.”

“The only way for me to avoid drama is to walk out right now,” I said. “But you have me curious. And you know I think you’re the best man for the mayor’s mansion.”

“So will you?”

“I had sex with him twice. But it’s over.”

He looked down to hide his expression, but I saw his fingers tighten. My first reaction was to tell him tough crap. He threw me away. It was my right to sleep with anyone I wanted. My second reaction was subtler.

“Do you have time for a personal question?” I asked.

He looked at me. I’d hurt him. I loved him, and I’d hurt him. I knew how he felt when he did it to me.

“I need it answered completely and honestly,” I said. “I have no energy for beating around the bush or confidence boosts right now.”

“Okay.”

“Is something about me just not enough? I mean, is there something inherently unsatisfying?”

He took a long time answering. “I always wondered if you really enjoyed it.”

I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I did. A lot.”

He rushed to open the door for me. “I’m avoiding asking for another chance.”

“Well done, Mister Mayor.”

***

I got back to WDE in time for the protocol review, which was marginally productive. When I got back to my office, another vase of red roses stood on Pam’s desk.

I don’t give up so easy

Yeah. He’d chase me, catch me, and continue with Marina or whoever else made him feel good. An inaccessible little heiress would quickly become boring.

After seven years, Daniel didn’t know if I’d enjoyed sex. What was wrong with me? Was I empty inside? I’d thought I’d imagined every horrifying answer he could have given me, but I hadn’t even scratched the surface.

At least I knew what the problem was. Maybe if I went back to Daniel with the assurance that I did like sex, he wouldn’t look elsewhere. Maybe. But the thought of going back to him just depressed me.

seventeen.

woke to the smell of bacon. I’d somehow crawled into bed during the middle of the night. Katrina had been known to put breakfast together when she felt chipper, and I was very grateful for her mood and her hospitality, especially on a work day. I showered and put up my hair, masking the circles under my eyes with some very expensive stage makeup. I was mid-stairwell when I heard a man’s voice coming from the open kitchen. Katrina said something I couldn’t hear above the crackle of pork belly. Then the man laughed.

“Antonio?” I bent around the iron bannister.

“He said I have to call him Spin,” Katrina called.

“Buongiorno! I brought you breakfast.”

I stepped into the kitchen. “I smelled the bacon.”

“It’s pancetta,” Katrina said, picking a few squares out of the pan and putting them on toast. “He’s corrected me, like, seven times already. He’s cute but annoying.”

“Mostly annoying,” he said, shifting scrambled eggs across the pan.

“Annoy me any time.” She folded up her sandwich and slipped it into a bag.

“This is a little presumptuous considering the way we left it last time,” I said.

“Gotta go!” Katrina gave Antonio the one-kiss-per-cheek exit and bounced out with a wink to me.

I crossed my arms, but I was hungry. The pancetta smelled delicious.

Antonio pointed the fork at me. “This suit? It’s nice for a funeral.”

I sucked in my cheeks. I’d chosen a black below-the-knee wool skirt and matching jacket, and he was trying to throw me off in my own house. He looked perfect in a light blue sweater and collar shirt.

“Insulting me?” I stood next to him and bumped him with my hip. “This is how you seduce me?” I snapped a wooden spoon from the canister and poked at the eggs.

“If I wanted to seduce you, the suit would be on the floor already.”

“You don’t want to seduce me?”

He took a piece of egg on a fork and blew on it. “I do, but as you know, we left on poor terms last time.” He held the fork to my lips, holding his palm under it to catch if it dripped.

“And tell me, Mister Spinelli, how do you intend to improve the terms?” I let him feed me.

“By explaining.” He divided the eggs onto two plates.

 

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“What? I can’t hear you over this explosion of delicious.”

He looked genuinely pleased that I liked his cooking, and he counted the ingredients on his fingers. “Salt, milk, parmesano, rosemary, and pancetta, of course. You have all my secrets now.” He put the plates on the center island and pulled a stool out for me. He’d already set out coffee, juice, and toast.

“You’ve buttered me up quite thoroughly.”

He sat and poured me coffee. “A compliment for a job well done?”

“Yes.”

“I appreciate that. But I want to give you the explanation part now, if the taste of the eggs won’t interfere with your hearing?”

“Okay, go ahead.”

He cleared his throat and sipped his juice. “Marina and I were a regular thing until a few weeks ago. She claimed I was distracted, and she was right. So we ended it. Or I thought we did. The other night, I found out that I’d ended it and she’d paused it.” He took a couple of bites of his breakfast then continued. “She comes from the same place I do. A little town outside Napoli. This was a connection between us. She’s a nice girl. I won’t speak evil of her. She took our thing more seriously than I did, and it didn’t break as easily as I’d expected. I’ve spent the past few days making sure she understands. I don’t want any crossover, or however you call it.”

I sighed and put down my fork. “I’m going to be honest. I like you. And I love this breakfast. But if I end up believing you’re telling me the whole truth, it’ll be a conscious decision I’m making. And with my history, that decision takes some effort. I don’t expect or want a commitment, but I don’t like crossover, as you say.”

“I don’t either.”

“And the questions thing? It bothers me.”

“I can’t negotiate that.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“We are enjoying ourselves. Do you object to that?”

“I guess I can live with it for now. It’ll come to bite us, though.”

“Maybe.” He leaned in to kiss me, much of his hardness and cocky arrogance gone. His lips looked soft and sweet as opposed to inaccessibly beautiful. His tongue was warm, slick, moving in harmony with his tender mouth. The smell of a pine forest in the morning, all dew and smoldering campfires, swelling my senses.

I wanted him. His neck, his jaw, his legs between mine. I wanted to suck on his fingers and thumbs. I reached between his legs, and he stopped me.

“This was only breakfast.”

I groaned. “Please?”

“Tempting, Contessa. But it’s been twice, and too hurried both times. The next time we f**k, it’s going to be for a few hours, and you’re going to need to be wheeled out. I’m not cheating you again.” He reached for the dishes. “I’ll clean up. Go get ready for work.”

By the time I’d brushed my teeth and put my hair and makeup in order, he’d finished clearing the island. We walked out the door kissing. I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Then I remembered what I’d promised Daniel, and by the time Antonio closed my car door and stepped away, my happiness had been worn away by the friction of reality.

I’d told Daniel it was over, and that had just changed, and I didn’t even know how. I was curious about Antonio’s alleged corruption. I couldn’t be with a criminal, much less a murderer. Not since my first experience at thirteen, which left me scarred and the boy dead, had I encountered a dangerous man. I’d kept clear of all manner of worthless street punk—until Antonio, who could still back off any question he didn’t feel like answering.

We were together. We weren’t. It didn’t matter. I was looking at those books.

eighteen.

y expertise was in accounting, but really, it was in the movement and flow of money. I looked at ledgers with a broad eye, finding patterns and flow. Like rivers on a map that fell into lakes, disappeared into mountains, and got spit into the ocean, the shifts of money were seen best from far away, with the finer details removed.

Bill and Phyllis, the core of the DA’s financial analysts, were a married couple who had met in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office forty-three years previous. They were detail people, in all their Midwestern glory—she was from Cadillac, Michigan and he was from Collett, Indiana. They reveled in getting it right, in not one shred of a detail falling through their fingers.

Thus, they missed everything.

If they’d understood the first law of fiscal dynamics—that money cannot be gained or lost, only moved—they’d understand that it all went somewhere. It was most important to follow a flow of cash downriver, and let the creeks taper into mysterious blue points. The answer was in the streams’ and the rivers’ undercurrents.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, dear,” Phyllis said, gracing me with a brilliant smile. “How are you?”

“Fine.” I put my bag on the table.

Bill sat at the old banker’s desk, tapping on a loud keyboard, his face a few inches too close to the screen. “Got mail from the boss.” His chin pointed at his screen, eyes squinted. “Miss Drazen’s looking at the Giraldi files. That right, Miss Drazen?”

“Theresa. Yes. If you don’t mind?”

“We looked at them already. There’s nothing there. We had the guys from downstairs working with us.”

“Probably,” I said. I didn’t want to step on his toes, or the toes of the hundreds who had pored over the documents. “Just a new set of eyes.”

 

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“Have at it.” He felt abused, if his expression was any indication. He dragged four document boxes from a shelf, one at a time, with the scratch of heavy cardboard sliding on wood.

“Anything digital?” I asked.

“Some,” said Phyllis, opening the boxes. “I’ll get it for you.”

Bill wiped his nose with a cotton handkerchief, fidgeted, and sat. Poor guy. I’d flattened his toes, and it wasn’t even lunchtime. I slid folders out, and with them came a scent. Not the musty odor of dust bunnies and paper residue. It was cologne, spicy and sweet with an undercurrent of pine trees after a rain. I caught a hint of something that I couldn’t identify until I’d unloaded the whole box.

I inhaled again, trying to catch it, but it was gone. Only the dewy forest morning remained.

I hadn’t spent more than an hour with the ledgers before I caught something. Just a few million in property tax payments. Legal payments from legal accounts containing legally obtained money.

One house in particular, in the center of the lots, had been purchased three years earlier with money from an international trust. The rest had been snapped up in the previous six months. It was a lot of property, tight together in the hills of Mount Washington, and it rankled.

nineteen.

argie’s red hair was tied back in a low ponytail, but strands had found their way free to drape over her cheeks. She was on her second chardonnay, and lunch hadn’t even arrived. She could have had seven more and still litigated a murder trial.

“Mob lawyers are consigliore,” she said. “They learn the law to get around it. But they don’t get to be boss.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not made. Before you ask, made means protected. And other things. It’s a whole freemason ceremonial shindig. They have to kill someone. Contract killing, not a vendetta. Now do I get to know why you’re asking?”

“Because you’d know.”

“Oh, shifty sister. Very shifty. You know what I meant.” She waved as if swatting away murder. Then she nodded and sat up a little.

I followed her gaze to Jonathan, who sauntered toward us after shaking hands with the owner. He kissed Margie first, then me. A waiter put a scotch in front of him.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

“How was San Francisco?” Margie asked.

“Wet, cold, and amusingly liberal. I saw your picture in the paper,” he said to me. “You’re taking him back?”

“No.”

“She has other things on her mind,” Margie said.

“Such as?” He looked at me over the rim of his glass.

“Nothing.”

“She’s either writing a book or dating a mafia don,” Margie said.

I went cold and hot at the same time. I set my face so it betrayed nothing. If Margie or Jonathan had suspected anything, they would have noticed the two percent change in my demeanor, but they only knew what I’d told them.

“Top secret,” I said. “This doesn’t leave the table. Drazen pledge.”

“Pledge open,” Margie said.

“Pledged,” Jonathan agreed, holding up his hand lazily.

I dropped my voice. “Dan got some files on a certain crime organization from the NSA, and he’s having me look at them.”

Their reaction was immediate and definitive. Margie dropped her fork as if it was white hot. Jonathan picked up his whiskey glass, shaking his head.

“Is he trying to get you killed?” Jonathan asked.

“He needs to grow a set of f**king balls,” Margie added.

She tilted her head a little, as if checking to see if I was going to make a fuss about her language. She’d once verbally cornered me at Thanksgiving dinner, bullying me into describing why, which I couldn’t. Mom had begged her to stop, and Daddy had broken out laughing at my tears.

“Marge, really.” Jonathan tapped his phone. “It’s not that big a deal. He’s the DA. If he can’t protect her—”

But Margie continued undaunted. “Please, let me be the one to explain the obvious. If the mafia doesn’t come after you for looking into their books, whoever’s running against him will use you to undermine him. Think Hillary Clinton doing healthcare. Giving your disgraced ex-fiancé—”

“Thanks. I appreciate you defining me.”

“The press will do a fine job without me,” she said.

“Leave it to them then.”

I glanced at my brother. He was fully engaged with his phone, smiling as if the Dodgers had won the Series. I knew he’d heard everything but had no intention of stepping into rescue me.

“Is he trying to get you back?” Margie asked. “This is his plan?”

“This was fun.” Jonathan glanced up from his phone while still texting. “No, wait, we’re in pledge. This wasn’t fun at all.”

Part of being “in pledge” was secrecy partnered with honesty, no matter how hurtful.

Jonathan put down his phone and leaned into me. “Most things, Dad can save you from, and he will.”

“For a price,” Margie muttered into her glass.

“Right,” Jonathan continued. “But this? The mob? I don’t know. That’s big fish.”

Our food arrived: sour lemon salads and more wine than anyone should drink at noon on a workday. We leaned back and let the waiter serve us, laying down oversized white plates and offering ground black pepper. Margie and Jonathan started eating, and I smoothed a crease in the tablecloth. Everything looked washed out by the sun and fill lights, every corner and curve of my body visible.

 

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“We don’t know if it’s organized crime,” I said. “Everything looks clean. Dan’s looking for something illegal.”

“I don’t like it,” Margie said.

“That’s because you hate Daniel,” I said.

“I was there. I saw what he did to you.” Margie speared salad and glanced at me, head not moving, expression bland and open. Her lawyer look.

“I think I found something,” I said. “But I’m not sure.”

“Proceed quietly.”

“I noticed some transactions. Real estate taxes. I followed the addresses to Mount Washington. The lots are grouped together in a really bad area. Fire sale prices.”

Jonathan plopped his phone down and leaned back in his chair.

“You look like you just ate a canary,” Margie said to him.

“I’m about to,” he said. “Now, Margaret, stop bullying her. You’re being bitter.”

“Fuck you.”

He turned to me. “Theresa, tell me about those buildings. Open permits? Zoning changes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Calls to the police about squatters? Still water?”

“I don’t know.”

“Complaints to Building and Safety?”

“Should I be making a list?”

He pushed his plate aside and put his elbows on the table. “If they’re warehousing property, they’d raze the structures to get rid of the reporting problems. Then they’d just build an ugly apartment building when they had the land they needed. But they’re keeping fire and liability traps standing. And that neighborhood... there’s no way some kids won’t use those buildings for business and burn the places down cooking meth.”

“Who the f**k cares?” Margie moaned.

“Real estate fraud isn’t covered under RICO, so they won’t be federally prosecuted if they get caught doing whatever they’re doing. You’d have mentioned that if you weren’t busy giving her a hard f**king time.”

“I’m trying to discourage her.”

“Something’s going on with those buildings, Theresa,” he said. “Get your man to figure out what it is.”

“Great idea.” Margie put her napkin on the table and stood. “Encourage her. I’m going to the ladies’. By the time I get back, I expect bullets through the window.”

We watched her stride across the room.

I sighed. “She thinks I’m made of sugar.” I pushed my salad around my plate. Jonathan didn’t say anything, and I didn’t realize he was staring at me until I looked up.

“What’s going on?” he asked as if he expected an answer. As if “nothing” wouldn’t cut it.

We knew each other too well. As kids, the eight of us had had the option of banding together or falling apart. As a result, the youngest and the oldest had wound into two cliques, held together on the spool of Margie.

“Is this your way of getting him back?” Jonathan said. “Keeping an eye on him?”

The silence between us became long and tense, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I thought Margie had gone to the bathroom in Peru.

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“Go on.”

“There’s someone else. I won’t talk about it more.”

“Ah.” He leaned back. “Use someone else as a threat, and then he tries to get you back with these books as an excuse? You’re a tactician. I forgot to thank you for your suggestion to bring a woman I wasn’t related to. Worked.”

“Really? Jessica came back? That’s amazing.”

“Yes, but I don’t want her. I’m keeping the new one. Unexpected upside.”

I was stunned into silence. He’d let go of something he’d been holding onto for a long time. “What happened to change your mind?”

“It was just gone. Whatever was there. Poof, gone. And for a while, too. Which is great, but neither of them is going to get me killed. You? You’re getting deep in shit.”

I didn’t want to say another word about it because I didn’t want to spin out of control. I just wanted to find out about Antonio without asking him questions.

“You speak Italian, right?” I said.

“Yes.”

He spoke everything. It was his gift.

“Come volevi tu. What does that mean?”

“Kind of ‘as you wish,’ more or less. Why?”

“Pledge closed,” I said.

“Fine. Pledge closed.”

Margie came up behind us. “Closing pledge. Who wants coffee?”

twenty.

ike every other part of central and eastern Los Angeles, Mount Washington was facing a real estate renaissance. Yet that particular hill seemed to have been passed over. The commercial district was a row of empty storefronts with gates pulled shut, broken glass, some burned out, and most graffitied over. Five blocks of third-world devastation stretched in either direction. I turned left up the hill, cracked asphalt bouncing my little car. The sidewalks ended under deep, thorny underbrush. Even at nine in the morning, I heard the beats of someone’s music on the other side of the hill.

A right, then another left, and I found an eight-foot high chain-link fence stretched around a hairpin turn and up the hill. Across the street, another fence. The buildings were overgrown, unkempt, with peeling stucco and beams warped under the passion flower vines. When I opened my car door, an avocado with the squirrel-sized bite rolled down the hill with a skit skit skoot, popping up on a crack in the pavement and landing on the asphalt. I looked up. A cloud-high avocado tree shaded the block, spitting its bounty onto the sidewalk.

 

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I shut the door. My car made a familiar chirp that alerted the neighborhood that something expensive was nearby. I glanced back at it then forward.

The late Frankie Giraldi had bought everything behind those fences, from what I could tell, but one house he’d bought first. He’d purchased it as an individual. Years later, his estate had moved it into trust and bought up everything around it.

The executor of the trust was the law firm of Mansiatti, Rowenstein, and Karo. Antonio Spinelli, Esq., LLP had bought them when they went belly up. They had one client: the Frank Giraldi estate. A snake eating itself. The estate’s trust owned the property, and Antonio managed the trust. Did he actually own it outright? I couldn’t tell from the papers I’d had in front of me.

The overgrowth detonated my allergies. I felt my sinuses swell and press against the bones of my face. A drip tickled the back of my nose. I checked my bag. Advil, tampons, wet wipes, and an empty tissue packet. Great. The tickle worked its way to the back of my throat. I put my hand in front of my mouth, checked to see if anyone was around, and made a very unladylike noise to scratch my throat as I walked down the block.

I found the house. I was allergic to just about everything growing around it.

I didn’t know what I’d expected, but there was nothing but a run down, bright yellow house with a fifty-foot front yard. An old Fiat was parked on top of rosebush stumps. Stacks of faded children’s toys pressed against the fence. Bars on the windows. A porch stacked with bags of leaves. The driveway had been kept clear though, which meant someone came in and out often enough to need a path. A few steps to the right, I saw muddy tire tracks from something bigger than a car.

The entrance to the drive had been chained shut. Though a hole had been cut in the fence at the next dilapidated house, it had been repaired with sharp twists of wire. I walked on a few feet and found a new opening.

I crawled through it. A thorny strand of brush found my stocking and gave it a good yank. I had an extra pair in the car, but I was still anxious about the drooping egg shape at my calf. Pushing past bamboo, bushes with sticky burrs, and tall weeds with yellow flowers that I knew tasted like broccoli, I came out into the end of the driveway, at the front end of the backyard.

The house had been built into a hill, so the backyard was at a slant, the square footage taken up by a slope that got more vertical as it bent away from the house. The structure itself was no surprise, with its beaten yellow paint and bent eaves. But the fence surprised me. Though the barriers from the street were old, hand-repaired chain link, the fences between the properties were new.

A loud crack echoed off the mountain. It could have been anything. A car backfiring. A piece of lumber snapping. Even a shotgun.

A smack of fear in my lower back sent me rushing through the bamboo and mustard weeds and through the hole in the fence, leaving behind strands of nylon for the thorns. I ran down the block and hurled myself at my car, almost twisting my ankle. The car blooped and I got in, turning the key before buckling. A drip of snot freed itself from my left sinus.

The car didn’t start.

Daniel’s voice bounced around my head, complaining that the car was unreliable, maintenance-heavy. He was right, and I was stuck on Mount Washington, turning my key repeatedly while nothing happened and a line of clear snot dropped down my lip.

My box of tissues was wedged under the passenger seat. Since I was stuck, and uncomfortable, and frustrated, I let go of the key and reached under the seat, rooting around for the feel of flat cardboard. I touched it and pushed, but a heavy iron pole got in the way. It was a security device called the Club that had been a big thing in the eighties, when the last owner had bought the car. Though I’d never used it, I kept it, even when it got in my damn way. I got the iron bar out and unbuckled my seatbelt. Leaning over, I curled my arm under the seat. The snot that had been sitting uncomfortably on my upper lip followed gravity. I shifted to get a look at what the box was caught on and yanked it free.

Clackclackclack

The sound of a ring rapping on the window. Too late to notice my skirt was hiked up, and I was showing full-on black garter belt to the world. I twisted to get a look at the guy standing over my car. He wore a neat striped shirt under a light windbreaker.

“You all right?” His voice was muffled through the glass.

I pulled my skirt down and sat up. “I’m fine.” I snapped the last tissue out of the box and wiped my nose quickly. I cranked down the window.

“This is a nice car.”

“Yeah, it won’t move.” I got a good look at him and recognized him by the bow lips. I held up a pointer finger and squinted, the universal sign for unreliable recognition.

“I thought I knew you,” he said. “How’s your sister?”

“Never better. Can you give me a push?”

“Sure. I know a garage down the street. They’re honest.”

There seemed to be red zones everywhere, so the garage was probably a good idea. “All right. I never got your name,” I said.

“Paulie. Paulie Patalano.”

“Nice to meet you again, Paulie.”

Another man got out of a car behind me. He had a low forehead and moustache.

“This is Lorenzo. He’s harmless,” Paulie said.

“Hey, Paulie.”

“Zo, this is Theresa. We’re giving her a push to East Side. Yeah?”

Zo agreed. They pushed, joking the entire time about horsepower, the division of thrust between them, and who got to direct traffic when we crossed Marmion Way onto Figueroa. I steered and wondered at the odds of meeting the bow-lipped man again. When one considered the actual mathematical odds, chance meetings were nearly impossible, yet they happened all the time.

 

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And then, I wondered, what were the odds that Antonio was somewhere near his friend? Was he somehow behind any of this?

East Side Motors appeared a block away. A typical car repair dump, with a dirty yellow and black sign advertising that every car brand in the universe was a specialty, it looked no better than any other shop around. As we got closer, it became apparent that business was brisk. The lot was packed, and men in grey jumpsuits hustled around bumpers and grilles, moving cars, shouting, and laughing.

I turned in and was greeted by a balding guy with a chambray shirt and moustache. He opened the door as soon as I stopped.

“Ma’am,” he said, “we don’t do German cars.”

I looked up at the sign. What had looked like every brand in the universe was actually every brand in Italy. A quick glance around the lot revealed Maseratis, Ferraris, Alpha Romeos, but no German, Japanese, or American cars.

“It won’t turn over,” I said. “Could you hold it until I get a tow? I’ll pay for the storage.”

“You got it.” He turned to Paulie. “Sir? Are we charging?”

“No f**king way. She keeps it here as long as she needs to.” He held his hand to me. “Come on to the back.”

His manner was so friendly and professional, I thought nothing of following him. I thought I’d find coffee, a seat, a stale donut perhaps. But as I walked through the hustle of the lot into the dim garage, where everything looked dusted with grime, a man in a clean, dark yellow sweater and grey jacket looked up into the underbelly of an old Ducati, exposing the tautness of his throat. Such a vulnerable position, yet he held it with supreme confidence. Antonio. Another chance meeting that I was beginning to think had little to do with the natural laws of probability.

“Spin,” called Paulie from behind me.

When Antonio pulled his arms down from the Ducati, he saw me and seemed as surprised at my presence. I kept doing probabilities in my head, switching the numbers between him knowing and not knowing.

“Contessa?” he said, glancing at me then his friend.

“Up by the casa di tuorlo,” Paulie said.

A concerned look crossed Antonio’s face, but then it was gone with a nod and a smile. He snapped a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped the engine grease off his fingers. Having erased reactions from my face my whole life, I knew exactly what he was doing. He was collecting himself from surprise.

“I got this, Pauls.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We’ll be in the office,” Antonio said.

They stared at each other for a moment, then Paulie held out his hand. They shook on it.

“Benny!” Antonio called to a stocky man tapping at a smudged keyboard. “Friction plates, rubber, and rings, okay?”

“You got it, boss.”

Boss? Okay. Lawyer. Restaurateur. Mechanic.

“Come on.” He held out his hand for me.

I didn’t take it. I trusted him less and less as the minutes wore on. Antonio just turned and walked through a door, holding it open as he passed into a clean, sundrenched room with industrial grey carpet and car posters.

I followed him. Coffee had been set up for the people waiting and reading magazines. Behind a counter with phone banks and more magazines sat a woman in her fifties.

“Spin,” she said in a thick Italian accent, handing him a clipboard. “Sign please. I want to order the paint.”

He signed without looking and walked to another door marked “Private.”

I stopped. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“I have the same feeling.”

The middle-aged woman went about her business as if nothing was happening.

“You could have called if you wanted to see me,” he continued.

“I didn’t come to see you.” With those words, I realized the trouble I was in. I’d been asking questions behind his back. Investigating. I couldn’t imagine how angry he would be. I had no reason to be in that neighborhood except to stare at a bunch of innocently acquired property that was just a cluster of buildings with zero illegal activity surrounding them. Maybe that was my secret weapon.

“Really?” he said with a raised brow.

I smiled coyly. “I’m here now.”

He opened the door and smiled back, but I couldn’t tell if he’d fallen for my act or not. The office was walled in glass and striped with shadows from natural wood blinds. The décor was warmer than the rest of the business, with a dark wood desk with clawfoot legs, shelves with car manuals, and a buffed matte wood floor. Antonio closed the blinds, and my eyes adjusted. The diffused light was still more than enough to see by.

“So,” he said, “up by the yellow house?”

“There was a yellow house. Needs a paint job.”

He nodded. “It’s not for sale.”

“I hoped the owner would be in. Maybe I could talk him into selling.”

“You couldn’t afford it.” He took two steps forward and was right in front of me.

“I have lots of money,” I whispered.

“He isn’t interested in your money.”

His lips were on mine before he’d even completed the last vowel. His tongue found my tongue, and his hands were under my shirt, caressing my ribs, slipping under my bra. He believed it. He believed I’d come to the neighborhood hoping to see him. Maybe there was a sliver of truth to that. My legs wrapped around him, and he put his hand up my skirt unceremoniously.

 

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He pressed his hips into the thin lace of my underwear. Would he rip another pair? I hoped so. From the bottom of my pelvis, I hoped he would.

“I don’t have hours to f**k you like you deserve.” He slipped a finger under my panties, finding where I was wettest. “I have a few minutes to make you hold back a scream.”

He found my engorged clit, and I stiffened. He pushed me onto the arm of a chair. My arms braced me as his hand stroked.

“How did you come here, Theresa?” he said as his fingertips blinded me with sensations, making me vulnerable.

I couldn’t think. “The one ten freeway.”

He pulled away, moving his hand so his thumb rotated on my clit as he stood over me. I felt intimidated and powerless, and I was as afraid as I was aroused.

“Look at me,” he whispered tenderly. “Spread your legs.”

I did it, looking and spreading until both hurt.

He was perfectly put together, with one hand in me the way it had just been inside a transmission. “What were you doing by the yellow house?”

“I wanted to see where you lived.”

“That’s not my legal address.”

“I hope not. It was a mess.”

He answered my sarcasm by sliding two fingers into my soaking hole. “I didn’t get a call about anyone trespassing at my house.”

“Oh God, Antonio, I’m so close.”

I noticed, as I got closer, that he wasn’t telling me what he was going to do to me. Where was the dirty talk? Something was wrong, but I was too close to the incoming tide of my sexual pleasure to think clearly about what that meant.

He put his hand on the back of the chair and leaned down, his strokes getting lighter and softer, keeping me on the edge. “I want to like you, Contessa. I want to. But I can’t trust you.”

His words didn’t sink in soon enough. My wet, engorged sex was still in his hand. On the third stroke, I exploded in an orgasm that was supposed to be a release, but instead was humiliating. The emotional disconnect cut the pleasure short, and I twisted away from him, breathing heavily with my bra half pulled over my br**sts and my skirt bunched at my waist.

“What was that?” I said.

“I wondered how you just show up in my neighborhood.” He took the grease-smeared hankie from his pocket and wiped the fingers that had been inside me. “You weren’t looking for my house. You were looking for something. The district attorney sent you. You’ve been working for him the whole time, haven’t you? It’s on the side of a barn, like you say.”

“You think my ex sent me to f**k you?” I straightened my clothes, seething so hard I didn’t even care what I said or how I said it. But the more I wanted to say what was on my mind, the more crowded my mind became. “You think he’s whoring me out? What kind of world do you live in? And let me assure you, the lack of trust is mutual. Talk about what’s on the side of a barn. You react to questions like I’m spraying acid on you. You have no real law practice. A hundred different businesses. You can bust a guy’s face on the hood of a car. Maybe the police questioned you so many times because you’re a criminal lowlife.” I brushed past him, but he caught my upper arm. “Let go of me,” I growled from deep in my throat.

“I run legitimate businesses.”

“What better way to do the laundry?”

His tongue pressed between his lips, and his eyes drifted to my mouth in a nanosecond of weakness. “Be careful.”

“Good advice. I’m staying away from the dirtbags from now on.”

He tightened his grip on my arm, and we stood like that, breathing each other’s air, until a light rap came from the other side of the door.

“Spin?”

He waited a second and kept his eyes on mine as he answered. “Yeah, Zo?”

“Tow’s here, and they don’t know where to take the Beemer.”

Silence hung between us. His jaw moved as if he was grinding his teeth. I held his gaze. He could go straight to hell, and I still wanted him. The knock came again.

Antonio whipped his head around and shouted, “What!”

Zo’s voice was timid. “The tow guy has another call.”

Antonio pulled me to him so hard I knew I would walk out of there with a nice bruise. He pressed his lips together as if he had something to say but didn’t know how to say it.

I answered as if he’d spoken. “I know what’s between us. I know it’s real, as real as anything I’ve ever felt for a man. And I know you don’t really believe Daniel whored me out to get information. Even if you think he’d do something like that, you know in your heart I wouldn’t. But none of that matters. Even though you don’t believe I have ulterior motives, you’re scared of it.” He loosened his grip just a little, and I took that as my cue to continue. “That’s not the way to be together. It’s too long a bridge to cross. Let’s both be grown-ups and walk away before this gets uglier.”

It took a few seconds, or forever, for him to remove his hand, his fingers slipping over my sleeve as if magnetized. I took a long breath, memorizing his scent, the thickness of his hair, the cleft in his jaw, the angle I held my head to look into his deep brown eyes.

“I’ll have someone drive you home,” he said.

“I can get a cab.”

“I know. But someone from here will drive you.” He opened the door.

Zo was right behind it, hunched and tense.

 

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“Make sure she gets home,” Antonio said.

“Sure, boss.”

I followed Lorenzo and looked back for the briefest second, enough to catch Antonio closing the office door.

On the way out, I saw a man with a comb-over I would have sworn I recognized. He wasn’t wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit, but a zipper jacket. His left eye was badly bruised, almost swelled shut, and a bandage held a cut together at his brow. It was Vito, and when he saw me, he turned and walked in the other direction.

After some discussion, some signed papers, a few minutes spent waiting for something I couldn’t remember because I was distracted by Antonio’s presence in his office and the distance between us, I let Paulie Patalano drive me home. Apparently, my house was on his way.

twenty-one.

ou ever been in a Ferrari?” Paulie asked.

“You’re joking,” I said as I got into the flashy yellow car.

“Gotta ask.” He slid into the driver’s side and shifted his shoulder a little, touching something behind him before he got his seatbelt on.

I’d dated a detective in college, and he made the same exact move when he got into a car. When he’d caught me watching, I got a lecture about how he had to wear his gun even when off-duty and how he didn’t want to take it off for a short drive. We had a long drive ahead of us, and poor Paulie was going to be very uncomfortable. He put the top down, and we got onto the freeway.

“Thanks for driving,” I said once we hit traffic and the wind didn’t whip as much.

“I was heading out this way.” He drove with the seat pushed all the way back and his wrist on the top of the wheel.

I had my bag in my lap and my knees pressed together. “I’m glad you found me at the bottom of that hill.”

“Yeah.”

“You work at the car shop?”

He smiled. Changed lanes. Adjusted the hunk of metal at his back. “I own it with Spin.”

“Oh, partners?”

“In everything. He’s like my brother. Pisses off my real brothers, but they’re douchebags. A cop and a lawyer.”

“And you?”

“Businessman.”

I put on my most political comportment because it was obvious what kind of business he did from the back of a body shop, with loose hours, carrying a firearm. I’d never seen one on Antonio though, which seemed strange.

I didn’t care. No, I shouldn’t care. It should all be meaningless small talk in a yellow Ferrari going twenty miles per hour on the 10 freeway.

“You weren’t really heading west, were you?” I said more as a statement than a question.

“Zo is the only other guy I’d trust to not speed, and he’d bore the paint off the car.” He glanced at me. “We just fixed it. He’d return it with primer, shrugging like, ‘dunno what happened, boss, I was just talking.’”

I laughed. “Sure.”

“And, you know, I want to get to know you. See what your deal is.”

Did he think I was working for the DA as well? I couldn’t easily ask. “My deal?”

“Spin likes you. Ain’t no secret.”

The road opened up for absolutely no reason, and the wind whipped my hair like cotton candy.

“I’m sure he likes plenty of girls.” I pulled out my bun and let my hair fly.

“Not like this,” Paulie said.

“Like what?”

He shook his head and put his eyes on the road.

“No, really,” I said. “I’m not asking you to tell stories about your friend.”

“Oh no? You women, you’re all alike.”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t want a guy to like you. You have to know how much. How high. How deep. Never simple. So before you ask again, he’s never looked at a woman who’s not from home.”

“Pretty small dating pool.”

“He don’t date. You ain’t getting another word outta me.” He raised his index finger and put it to his lips. “Just know I’ll protect him with my life.”

“He’s a lucky guy.”

“Right about that.”

Nothing he said should have hurt me, because my thing with Antonio was done, but as I watched the city blow by me, it did.

***

Katrina was on set when I got home. The loft had never seemed so big, so modern, so clean. Everything had a place, and everything was in it. The surfaces were wiped sterile, and dust bunnies were eradicated.

I threw my bag on the couch. It didn’t belong there, but I left it.

I missed something. I felt a longing and a regret for something I’d lost. I couldn’t pin it down. In a way, it was Daniel. I missed his constant talking on the phone, the hum of his ambition, the steady foursquare geometry of his dependence. I missed his presence spreading over me even when he traveled, covering me in a way Katrina’s couldn’t.

“Fuck you, Daniel,” I whispered. I threw my jacket over a chair and left it.

Dad had always said all we’d ever need was our family, and I’d never doubted him. But he was wrong. Dead wrong. I couldn’t mold my life into any of my sisters’. I couldn’t take joy in breathing their air, or feel the electricity of physical connection. I couldn’t look at my house and see them coexisting with me as anything but an imposition.

The refrigerator. Vegetables in the crisper. Proteins on the bottom shelf. Leftovers above that, and on the top, condiments. I pulled out a tub of hummus. Crackers on the bottom shelf two over from the sink. I stood at the island, dipping, eating, dipping, eating. Double-dipping, even.

 

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A blob of hummus plopped onto the counter. I swiped it up and ate it. The residual paste was the only disruption of the pristine surface.

What the hell had happened with Antonio? What was I thinking? Had I been trying to get away from Daniel in the most violent way possible? Was I trying to reject not just my comfort zone, but my lawfulness? Wasn’t there an easier way to do that than by getting involved with someone I had nothing in common with? No matter how my body reacted to him. No matter how excited or how free he made me feel. No matter how alive I felt around him.

But I couldn’t shake the sense of profound regret. I’d dodged a bullet but fallen onto a knife.

I let the paper towel roll drop from my hand. It rolled from the kitchen island to the front door. I needed something in my life besides a job and a man. I needed a purpose. I had nothing to care about besides myself. No wonder Daniel’s infidelity had thrown me so far off the deep end.

I whipped the stepstool around to the refrigerator and reached into the cabinet above it. As a kid, I’d collected porcelain swans. I didn’t know why, but I loved swans. Their grace, their delicacy. But when we moved to the loft, the mismatched animals didn’t make sense, so I hid them in the highest cabinet, where they wouldn’t get broken.

I took the first one out. It had a blue ribbon that flew in the wind as it raised its wings to take flight. It had cost a shameful amount. I put it on the counter. The next one was Lladro. Cheap, with a little cupid. There was a black one. An ugly duckling. One with an apron. Laughing. Swimming. Necks twisted together. I put them all on the counter until I came to the little white one in the back.

It was made of Legos. It had a red collar in flattish bricks and a bright yellow beak. My nephew David had made it for me some random Christmas. Hyper and brilliant David. How old had he been? Four? Aunt Theresa loved swans, and he’d made her a bird with such care. And she’d put it in the back of a cabinet she couldn’t even reach because it didn’t go with the décor.

“Fuck you, Aunt Theresa.” I got down from the stepstool and put the Lego swan in the center of the island.

I opened my dish cabinet. I loved my dishes. They had blue stars with gold flourishes. Why were they in a cabinet? I took them out and laid them on the counter in piles that specifically made no sense. My flatware had been chosen with utmost care. With no room on the counter, I threw the silver on the floor like pick-up sticks.

All of it came out. Everything in the cabinets I’d ever chosen. Everything I liked. Everything beautiful and worthy. The glass jelly jars and inherited Depression glass. The gold-leaf embellished glass rack from my great-grandmother. I didn’t break anything, but the frosted glass tray we got as an engagement gift almost slipped off the sink. I caught it and continued. Out of style napkin holders. Stained plastic containers. A red sippy cup Sheila had left behind on some visit. Out out out.

When I got to the last cabinet and found the dust and dirt in the back of it, I stepped into the living room where I could see the open kitchen. It was a wreck. I’d left all the cabinet doors open, and nothing was neatly or safely placed.

I reached over the island and moved some stacks until I found the little Lego swan. I had a date with my empty bed. I could figure out what to do with my life in the morning.

The bed still seemed too big. The mess downstairs offered a momentary peace then irked me into wakefulness. But I refused to go down and clean it. I had put my Lego swan on the nightstand, and when I wondered if I should just go put my life back in the cabinets, the swan clearly said no. Go to sleep. Think about the mess tomorrow.

Katrina came in. Lights went on. The TV went on. The toilet flushed. The water ran. The TV went off. The lights went off. I slept.

twenty-two.

hat happened?” Katrina asked as she pulled a swan-shaped coffee cup from the pile. Its neck was a handle, and its wings wrapped around the bowl. “I can’t find the spoons.”

I picked one up from the floor. “Here. I’ll wash it.”

She snatched it and blew on it. “Sanitizing pixie dust. Knife too, please.”

I picked one of my best silver butter knives off the floor and handed it to her without offering to wash it. The sink was full of china cruets anyway.

“I’ll put it all away later.”

“Whatever.” She cleared a space in front of the coffee pot and poured herself some.

“But we have to be on set today, then I have work on Monday. I’ll get Manuela on it when she comes Tuesday,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“Are you mad?”

“Mad? No. I almost broke all these damned dishes last night in a rage, but not because of them. Only because they were in front of me.”

I handed her a dish. “Go ahead. Break it.”

She took it and waved it up and down, balancing it on her fingertips like half a seesaw. Then she put it on top of its stack. “It’s pointless.” She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and growled in a tantrum.

“What?”

“Apogee fell through,” she shouted, as if yelling at the entire Hollywood system.

“What? They won’t distribute it?”

“No, they backed out of post-production.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She shook her hands as if she was at a loss for words. “Lenny Garsh moved to Ultimate, and the new guy’s only backing projects he believes in. Completed projects.” She stamped her feet. Full-on tantrum. “Fuck f**k f**k f**k. I have the editing bay and ADR place booked, and I can’t pay.”

 

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“Okay, we can work this out.”

“There’s nothing to work out. I’m screwed. I tapped everyone I know to do production. Now there’s no point in even finishing.” Her face collapsed. It took seconds for the muscles to go slack and the tears to gather. She sniffed, hard and wet. “Fuck, what am I going to tell Michael? He was depending on this. He’s a star, you know? In his gut. And I told him... I told him we’d get this done.”

“You will get this done,” I said, taking her shoulders.

“Ernie shot it free because he believed in me.”

“Katrina—”

“It’s my job to get the money, and I let everyone down.” She was full-on blubbering and trying to talk through hitching gasps.

I put my arms around her. “Directrix?”

I was answered with sobs.

“You have another week of production. Do you have the money to finish it?”

She nodded into my shoulder. “But—”

“No buts. Get it together.”

“I don’t have enough. I missed a wide on the dinner scene.”

“You won’t be the first. Now we have twenty minutes to get out of here and get to set. People are waiting.”

She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I have to tell them.”

“No.” I put up my hands. “What is wrong with you? That’ll kill the momentum.”

She put her head in her hands. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Go take a shower, and let’s go. Come on. I took a week off work to finish this with you. We have to get this thing in the can by Friday. Reschedule your ADR. It’s a phone call, right?”

“If they have space. They book months in advance.”

“Fast, cheap, or good,” I said, quoting the old filmmaking motto that no one can get more than two of the three. “Fast isn’t happening.”

“I have to eat. I can’t mooch off you forever.”

“Whatever. Let’s deal with today. Okay? We’re shooting at the café again?”

“Yes.”

“If you start freaking out, you come to me, right?”

“I love you, Tee Dray. You’re so together.”

twenty-three.

checked my phone after the thirty-fifth take. It was a long shot of Michael watching the woman in question over the food counter, and with so many moving parts, it was difficult to get. But the shot was meant to show infinite hours of longing for a woman who didn’t want him, and on the thirty-sixth try, it was stunning.

I didn’t expect Antonio to try to reach me, but I was surprised by my burning hope. Did I want him? Or did I want him to want me? He was toxic, and I shouldn’t touch him even if I was operating on all emotional cylinders, which I wasn’t. I had to keep in the front of my mind the fact that I couldn’t trust any man with my body or heart. No matter how intense. No matter how strong. No matter how much the sex was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Even thinking about Antonio, I felt a familiar throb between my legs. Even as I noted the placement of every extra’s arms and legs, I ached for that treacherous man, his pine scent, his rock of a dick.

“Cut!”

Katrina was barely finished her encouragements to the actors before I had my phone out. Nothing from Antonio. Three from Gerry, Daniel’s strategist. I got back to business making my notes. I needed to arrange my finances so I could get Katrina half a million dollars in such a way that she would accept it.

I didn’t know how I’d get it done in time. I had a week before she lost her mind. I was incorporated, but not as an investor. I couldn’t decide if I wanted her to know it was me who was fronting the money. It was two in the morning, and I was tired. Hardly ready for Gerry to show up in a three-piece suit looking as though he’d just woken up, showered, shaved, and taken his vitamins.

“Almost the first lady of the city,” he said with a jovial tone, “packing binders in a parking lot.”

“What are you doing here?” I stuffed the last of the day’s work into a duffel.

“Los Angeles never sleeps.”

“Daniel Brower does. A good five hours between midnight and dawn.”

“That’s when I get to work. Can we talk?”

I slung the bag over my shoulder. Katrina would get home on her own. “Sure. You’re driving though. My car’s busted.”

***

The front seat of Gerry’s Caddy SUV was bigger than the couch in my first apartment. The bag was in the back like a dead body.

“He’s not performing,” Gerry said, turning onto the 110. “Every time he flubs or goes back to some old habit, it’s like a snowball. It hasn’t affected his polling yet, but soon, it’s gonna get obvious.”

“After the election, he’ll get it together again.”

“He started biting his nails.”

“The ring finger?”

“Yeah. In a meeting with Harold Genter. I think I bruised his calf.”

I sighed. Years, I’d spent years in media skills sessions. We’d discussed that every movement, every breath, was ten times bigger on camera, and those moves flowed into real life. People wanted their leaders polished. Policy was secondary, and politics took third rung. If he was seen biting his nails, flipping his hair, or slouching, he’d be a laughingstock.

“He needs you,” Gerry said.

“He should have thought of that.”

 

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“Okay, lady, yes. You can be bitter and aggrieved. You earned it. You happy? Are you going to hold your bag of self-righteousness into your dotage? It gets heavy when you get old. Believe me.”

“I can’t trust him ever again. How am I supposed to carry that around? And for how long? Into the presidency?”

“As long as you want.” He drove on the surface streets—stop start stop start—obeying the lights even though no one was around.

I knew I’d let it go eventually. I’d learn to trust another man. He wouldn’t be Daniel, of course. I would have to invest in someone else all over again. Get hurt, move on. Hurt someone, move on. Antonio had proven how easy that was. One day, I’d fall in love. Maybe. I was thirty-four. I’d never felt too late until Gerry asked about my dotage.

“I hurt all over,” I said. “All the time. I don’t know what I feel any more. I don’t know what I want. I feel separate from my own thoughts. The fact that I’m telling this to a political strategist is enough of a red flag that I need to be medicated or institutionalized.”

I didn’t say that I think about hurting but not killing myself. I couldn’t cry. I felt unanchored. I loved Daniel still. The last time I’d felt marginally alive was with Antonio. I’d always depended on men for my happiness.

“Big Girls is opening Friday,” Gerry said as he pulled up in front of my building.

“Yeah.”

“It’s about domestic violence. We pitched that as your hot button during the campaign. I’ve seen the picture. It’s good.”

“You’re making a movie recommendation?” I asked.

“Daniel is making it a point to see it and release a statement after.”

“You’re trying to set me up on a date? Are you serious?”

“This is a high stakes date, Theresa. Please.”

I opened the car door and stepped out, slamming it shut and opening the back for my bag. “You’re a crappy Cupid.”

I should have taken a cab.

***

Fucking Gerry. I walked in the door cursing him, flinging my bag into a corner.

Fucking f**king Gerry. The man was made of the finest, most indestructible plastic in the universe. He didn’t have a feeling in him.

Or maybe he did. Maybe he just didn’t have a feeling for me.

Or maybe he did. Maybe I didn’t have a feeling for me.

Or maybe it wasn’t about me. Maybe it was about Daniel and the city of Los Angeles. Maybe it was about a campaign I’d invested my heart and soul in, and when Daniel fell through, what I’d wanted for myself fell through.

Or maybe it didn’t matter what Gerry thought was important. Maybe something was bothering me. Something that had excited me, given me something to look forward to, made me forget how much I despised my f**king life.

Antonio had made me feel alive, as if I’d been asleep for months. He shook me, slapped me. I was finally ready, and I’d thrown it away. It had been a casual nothing, a little dirty talk, something to fill the hours while I waited to get over Daniel. I wasn’t allowed to get upset over such a little nothing, but I was desperately upset, and I couldn’t admit it to myself until I was asked to be Daniel’s beard yet again.

I picked up a porcelain swan by the neck. I knew what I was going to do before I did, and once decided, the tension released.

I smacked it against the edge of the table. It bounced. I smacked it harder. The body broke off, clacking to the ground, and I was left holding the tiny head. In seconds, the tension came back. It was only relieved when I looked at all of my swans and stopped caring whether they ever went back into the cabinet.

I didn’t feel rage when I smashed the swans. I must have looked angry and emotional, but I wasn’t. I was dead, empty, frozen, doing a job I’d contracted myself to do. I bashed them against the marble countertop, leaving millions of plaster, porcelain, and glass shards everywhere.

It took about seven minutes to destroy years’ worth of swans and a few dishes. I stood over the puddle of sharp dust and said what I’d been too upset to consider.

“I want you.”

I pushed a china blue swan wing to the right. It had separated from the rest of the swan but hadn’t broken completely. Not nearly enough.

“I want you, you criminal punk.”

I picked up my foot and smashed the wing under my heel.

“And I’m going to have you.”

twenty-four.

paid my cleaning lady extra to make sense of the mess, sweep up the porcelain swan guts, and put everything back. I dressed for work before I called Antonio. No answer.

I texted.

—Call me, please. I want to discuss something with you—

I read it over. It seemed very businesslike. I was a well-mannered person, but that didn’t mean I had to evade everything¸ did it?

—Specifically, your cock—

I smiled. That should do it.

***

I practically jumped out of bed the next morning. I layered slacks and a tight button-down shirt over a satin demi and lace panties. Rippable lace, because I was going to find that f**ker and tell him what I thought, what I wanted, and how I wanted it. He would learn to trust me if I had to give him a signed affidavit and a blood sample.

I heard Katrina downstairs just as I was deciding to leave my hair down. No, I didn’t hear Katrina—I heard a dish clatter along the concrete floor as if it had been kicked.

“Sorry!” I called as I ran down.

 

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She blew on a dish and returned it to the pile. “What the f**k?” She pointed to my broken swans.

“You don’t like the mess? I spent eight minutes making it.”

She waved and pulled the coffee down then dropped it. “I don’t care about the mess. It’s you breaking things. You’re Tee Dray. You don’t break things.”

As she scooped the coffee, I saw her hand shaking.

“Directrix,” I said, “have some chamomile, please. You’re jacked up.”

“We’re almost done. I’m excited. You coming to the wrap party?”

“I’m springing for an open bar.”

Katrina flicked on the TV. The talking heads talked, and the news ticker ticked.

“You should bring the hot Italian,” she said, reminding me of my text.

I checked my pocket. No response. “I might. The last time I saw him, it was weird.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You’re busy.”

“So what happened?”

My lips stayed closed. I focused on the way they touched, because I had to shut up. It was just that kind of casual sharing and speculation that worried Antonio, and with good reason. I wanted to earn his trust behind his back.

“I think it’s over,” I said to deflect further questioning.

“Probably for the best. You know southern Europeans. They have a Madonna- whore complex. They either debase you and kick you to the curb, or revere you and never f**k you.”

Again, I pressed my lips together to keep from speaking. He’d f**ked me, and f**ked me dirty. I felt a familiar tingle between my legs just remembering it. But he didn’t want me to know about his life. It seemed as though he had disappeared long enough to get horny and then relentlessly pursue me when he wanted a whore. I hadn’t noticed the pattern because I’d been so close to it.

I shook it off. I didn’t have time to worry about how I was seen or wonder what he thought. I had to do what I wanted, and I wanted to feel alive again. He was like my drug, and I would either get a hit or go into withdrawal, but I wouldn’t abdicate my right to chase him.

I checked my phone again. Nothing. Just a traffic alert. The 10 was jammed up because of a car-to-car shootout that had resulted in a five-car pileup and police actions across a mile-long stretch. Venice Boulevard was in the red from the overflow.

“Fuck,” Katrina said.

“Yeah, the 10,” I replied, but Katrina was looking at the TV.

“This has been going on for days already.”

I looked over her shoulder. I recognized LaBrea Ave. The shot was daytime, and the tag said yesterday.

Two days of gang violence across the west side. Two shootings, one death in a seemingly unmotivated spree.

Daniel’s face filled the screen. The signage in the background told me the news crew had caught him at a campaign rally. “We’re working closely with the police to make sure justice is served.”

They cut him off there. God help him if that was the meat of the interview.

Could this be Antonio? Somehow? If he was what Daniel said he was, then he certainly could be involved, but there were hundreds of gangs in the city. The victims didn’t seem related, and the violence wasn’t all deadly. There was speculation about Compton gangs, the SGV Angels, and an Armenian outfit in East Hollywood.

“Good thing we’re downtown,” Katrina said, turning away from the TV. “But everyone on the west side’s going to miss call time.”

Daniel appeared again, mouthing the same promises. His hand appeared on the screen. The right ring fingernail was bitten down.

twenty-five.

’d learned when a script supervisor was needed and when she’d spend hours waiting around, so I knew when I could split for an hour or two. My first stop was the garage in Mount Washington.

I got in my car, which had been quickly repaired once the ignition coil had been reconnected. My mechanic had shrugged. Old car. Things bend and tighten. It happens, apparently. I asked if someone could have done it on purpose, and he said something noncommittal, like “Anyone can do anything on purpose.”

Especially when they wonder if you’re snooping around.

I got to Antonio’s repair shop in record time. A chest-constricting worry nearly kept me from driving in. The hum of activity I’d noticed last time was gone. The lot held half as many cars, and I didn’t see as many guys in jumpsuits. When I got past the gate, no one greeted me. I parked and went into the office.

“Hi,” I said to the woman behind the desk. “I’m looking for Antonio.”

“He’s out. You can just pull into the garage.” She was new, her black hair down and gum cracking against her molars. She had an accent. Italian, again. She was older, but I couldn’t help wonder if he’d f**ked her.

“I was hoping to see him.”

“Not in.” She shuffled some papers.

“Any idea where he is?”

She regarded me seriously for the first time. “No. You can leave a message.”

I thought about it for a second then declined. I texted him again.

—I still want to talk to you—

I didn’t expect to hear back, and I didn’t. I shot back downtown to finish the day’s work.

***

Every time my phone dinged and buzzed, I hoped it was Antonio. But it was always Pam with some new meeting or appointment. I started seeing the world through the hopeful window of my device.

“Hey.”