Saraceno by Djelloul Marbrook

Author:Djelloul Marbrook [Marbrook, Djelloul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: eBook, Fixed, Mafia, pBook
ISBN: 9780973946505
Publisher: Open Book Press
Published: 2005-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

12

“The sea air makes people spell bad,’ Billy said.

Not once since Matt had walked into Mina’s did Billy’s eyes break with his. He rose to greet Matt like Burt Lancaster playing Luchino Visconti’s tired Leopard, and now the lovely improbability of his answer to Matt’s “Spell it out for me” filled Matt with the anxiety of being lost.

Connie saluted him drunk-sailor fashion from the bar. “Cinzano,”’ he replied with a British salute, only to turn back and find Billy still looking at him.

Billy was forty-three now.

Nah, that’s not what Matt wanted to contemplate, nor the wryness of Billy’s riposte, nor… maybe Billy had misunderstood, maybe he thought Matt was asking about the Florida thing, maybe he hadn’t given Matt credit for sensing something more important. He turned his palms up and jerked them toward his rib cage, the impatient Sicilian command to come out with it.

Billy aged sitting there studying this privileged boy – that is how he still thought of him – whom he loved.

He took out a little yellow paper, wrote, and handed it to Matt.

Business as usual, Matt thought. Then he saw the three letters, O-U-T. He stared at the table, he listened to his blood whorl at the sink of his throat, his vision blurred, and then he did the first thing he’d ever done that announced his blood tie to Gus, he banged the table with his fist so that Connie jumped and Billy’s hand instinctively slid behind his jacket.

“How the fuck d’you spell out, Billy? There’s no such word. You know that? Laugh, cry, those are words. Out is a figment of your imagination. You don’t get out.” He paused. “Maybe you need a vacation.”

That’s when Billy said it, sending Matt skidding out to the edge of his being, something about the sea air and spelling bad, something that would’ve made Matt chuckle in any other situation.

Connie was trembling at the bar, as if the cobra had finally emerged from the council tree. She’d seen but not heard. Matt sent his gaze crashing around the room. A few savvy New Yorkers near the two men put money down and left without tallying up. But when Connie finally steadied her eyes on Billy her bemused heart steadied too, comforted as always by this frightening man. And when Matt turned back to Billy he was greeted by that same crooked, somehow innocent smile that had beguiled him years before over Herbie’s soda counter. A dolphin’s smile.

He got up, walked halfway to the bar and spun around and came back.

“Hey, it’s too bad you never learned the language, you know that? It’s fuori di, fuori da. Think about it, stupido! What’re you, an astronaut, you think somebody’s got a ticket for you to go to Mars? You better learn how to speak Italian.”

He was hating himself for this Preto snit but he couldn’t get off it. It fascinated him. It was an archaeological dig.

“Take a walk.”

Matt looked stunned: was he being dismissed, was it an invitation? cocked his head toward the door and smiled.

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