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“Maybe that’s it. Do you prefer to be seen in something a bit less in the Old Italian style, something a bit more of the tech bro or the Silicon Valley look. Is our old ancestral home a bit too mob-like for you? Is that it? Are you trying to cultivate an image that’s above all of that graft and grit? Something shinier?”
His teeth clench.
He shouts, “Or is it just that you’ve got all that you wanted. Now you’re the top dog,” I flinch at the way he says, dog, “Now you don’t have to pretend you’re one of us any more.”
He spins the bike in a tight skid. Acrid smoke rises from the back tire and it spits shale at me as the motor roars. The front wheel lifts as the motor roars and he cannons away with a deafening blast, through billowing clouds of smoke.
I can’t see us ever being the sam again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In the back of the limo, I punch the number Alessio gave me into my phone. It rings eight times and then goes to voicemail, the automated voicemail greeting is a default, female voice. I don’t leave a message.
How many rings does it take, I wonder, on average, before the sound of a ringing phone flips from being a flat, repetitive chime into a maddening middle-finger cackle. I’m guessing it’s somewhere between four and six.
Slumped deep into the seat, I glower out of the window at nothing while I chew my lip, fuming. Mikey watches me in the mirror from the driver’s seat.
“Princess,” his voice is like a blanket. “I’m calling Gianni.”
“Mikey, no. Please. I have to set up a–”
“Princess,” Mikey’s eyes in the rearview stare back at me. “I know you better than you know yourself,”
I know it’s true. It’s Mikey. He’s known me since I was a baby. I can’t argue with him.
He says, “One thing I always know for sure is when you need cake.”
Gianni is a Seattle secret. From behind a tiny, plain wood storefront, short, round Gianni’s cheeks are always red from his wide, constant smile. He makes divine coffee, and the best Sicilian pastries in Washington State.
The warm squeeze of Gianni’s big, open hug always takes me back to my childhood, and today, it’s even more tight than usual. He looks in my face and strokes my hair and tells me how wonderful I’m looking, but that I’m not eating enough. I know he’s going to do all that he can to fix that.
He sets me up at a table in a corner of the store with a homey cotton pink gingham tablecloth. While he fetches me a jug and a glass for water, a schooner of grappa and a plate of little cakes, with his divine cannoli at the center, Gianni asks me how I want my coffee. He always asks, even though he knows I always take espresso, unless it’s the first thing in the morning.
Gianni’s espresso is to die for. The rich, dark aroma alone as he brings me the tiny cup transports me straight back to summer afternoons in my childhood.
At the little table in Gianni’s bakery, I feel as much at home as I ever felt it, anywhere. I think it’s because Mikey has been bringing me here since I was tiny. Any cause for a celebration, whenever I needed a consolation, any time he wanted to give me something to lift my spirits, a little cake or two at Gianni’s table was the treat for all occasions, the cure for all ills.
Mikey takes an espresso for himself. As always, he stands back courteously to ask, would I like him to join me at the table.
“Gianni and me,” he says, “we got lots to catch up on. Or I can always wait in the car for you.”
“Mikey, please. Sit with me. There are some things I want to talk to you about. And anyway, we never get enough time to visit.”
“Always too much to do,” Mikey says, putting his coffee on the table as he slides into the seat opposite me. “And especially you, Princess. You’re always doing way too much. You should give yourself a break now and then.”
I offer him the dish to take a pastry for himself, but he shakes his head gravely as he rubs his stomach. He’s hardly overweight, but I never saw him take anything sweet. I guess there could be a connection there.
“Mikey,” I pause and eye the tempting cakes, choosing and enjoying the aromas and the anticipation. I say, “You talk to the men. The generals as well as the soldiers.”
He looks up at me with apprehension.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to tell tales out of school or rat anybody out. Come on, Mikey.” I reach across to squeeze his hand. “It’s me. Remember?”
He looks warily at me over the rim of his little coffee cup.
I try to reassure him. He should know that I wouldn’t ambush him. Especially not when he’s brought me here.
“I’m not going to put you on the spot or ask you to say anything you don’t want to say. Not about anyone, Mikey. I just need to know the feelings on the ground. What’s going on. There could be changes in the wind and I need to know who I can count on.”
