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Behind me, a door opens, and I turn around.
“What’s with all the noise out here?” An older woman wearing rollers and a purple robe stands at the door of the apartment across from Michela’s.
“Jarrette!” Michela shouts before she flings the door to her apartment open and marches inside. She returns right away, dangling a small plastic bag full of pills. She flings them at the lady in the robe. “Stay away from my mom!” The pills hit the lady right in the face, and the woman stumbles back, slips, and falls on her bottom.
Michela takes no pity on her. In fact, she walks right up and tries slamming the woman’s door closed. The door bounces against the woman’s slipper, which is caught in the way, but Michela doesn’t seem to notice while she and the lady, who’s up now and screaming back, argue.
I better help.
I kick the slipper, and the door slams closed. My wife looks up at me as if she just now realized I’m still there. Her cheeks are red, her hair’s a mess, and she’s breathing heavily, nostrils flaring.
An angel with ruffled feathers and no hellfire.
She clears her throat. “Sorry about that.”
“Not at all. Is there anyone we should shoot?”
She smiles and laughs for a bit. “Not yet.”
I nod and walk into her apartment through the open door, where I find a small living space extending into a kitchen with a table for four stationed next to an old white refrigerator. On the right, in between the kitchen and living space, is a hallway that I take to the end and find two doors. The one on the right is open, and inside lies a woman with graying dark hair. A wet gray cloth covers her face.
I identify the smell of alcohol that often whiffs off a person’s pores. I hope it’s not too late for this woman’s liver. Or pancreas.
I return to the living room and sit on the couch. “Give me a minute to think about how I’ll handle this,” I tell Michela, who’s sitting at the kitchen table.
“Handle what?” she asks.
“This.”
“My mother?”
I nod.
“She is not a this. She’s a person, Corrado.”
“She’s in the way of what I want.”
“Well, we won’t be shooting her.” Michela sounds serious.
“Hmmm.” I pretend to think about it, playing it off as if it doesn’t bother me that my wife thinks I’d shoot her mother.
“Corrado, no.”
“Fine, I won’t. Now shut up so I can think.”
Michela huffs and talks to herself in the kitchen while getting me a glass of water, which she slams on the table in front of me.
“Thank you,” I say, eyes narrowed. “Go pack a few things.”
“I can’t leave her.”
“But you’re okay leaving me, even though you agreed you wouldn’t.”
“I was only visiting with my mom.”
I chuckle. “That’s what my mother said before she left the house. Guess what?”
“What?”
