Life is short, barely a blink for some of us.
Why waste half of it with your eyes closed?
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Maybe I'm already there…
Sighing, I turn my head, looking away from the ceiling, and glance at the bed beside me. Karissa is fast asleep on her stomach, facing me, her leg hitched against mine as I lay on my back. Her face is so close that even in the darkness I can make out the splattering of freckles along her nose, more prominent these days because of the sun. She looks so peaceful. I wonder if she's dreaming.
I wonder how often she thinks about dying.
Gritting my teeth from the pain, I shift onto my uninjured side, careful not to disturb her. I reach over and push some stray hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear before running the back of my hand along her flushed cheek.
I think about her dying all the time.
Leaning over, I press a kiss to her forehead, giving myself just a second to linger, before climbing out of bed. I dress in silence, pulling my clothes on in the dark, and walk out of the bedroom without giving her another look. I head downstairs, grabbing a bottle of water in the kitchen, and stare at the pill bottles on the kitchen counter.
I still don't take them.
I leave the house, making sure to lock up, and glance at my watch under the glow of the outdoor lights.
Five in the morning.
I don't know where I'm going, or what I'm doing, but I can't stare at that ceiling, can't lay in that bed beside Karissa and dwell on dying anymore. I drive around for a while, letting the darkness consume me, letting the silence swarm me, before somehow ending up in Hell's Kitchen around dawn.
A hint of light touches the morning sky, the temperate already warm… it's going to be a sweltering day.
I park the car near the familiar deli for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, locking the doors before strolling toward it. It's empty inside, the chairs upside down on top of all the tables, but I can see a hint of light in the back, beyond the swinging door.
I know he's here.
He always is at this time.
The door is locked, not budging when I pull on it. Sometimes I wonder if he put the bars on the place because of me. I remember when he first opened it, when I was just a kid, when Vitale's hung prominently and the glass was exposed, open and friendly.
Everyone was welcome back then.
I was only eighteen the day my father told me to get out and never come back, the day he told me my kind wasn't welcome here anymore.
The bars went up a week later.
I've kept my distance ever since.
I round the corner, slipping down the small alley that runs behind the stretch of buildings. Dumpsters line the graffiti-riddled walls, the smell of trash and piss burning my nostrils as I pass. The back door of the deli is lit up from the inside, the door propped open a crack thanks to a cinder block.
My father stands just inside, in front of a long metal table, chopping vegetables with his back to the door. He stalls when he hears me step inside, his shoulders squaring, but he doesn't turn around.
Five. Ten. Fifteen seconds pass, as I stand just inside the kitchen, before he goes right back to what he was doing.
"Twice in one day, Ignazio," he says without even looking, the sound of the knife against the cutting board magnified as he expertly chops. I learned how to do that from him, how to use a knife gracefully like it's an extension of my limb.
I just use it differently.
"It's almost sunrise," I say, shoving my hands in my pockets as I lean back against the wall beside the door. "It's a brand new day."
He finishes that head of lettuce before moving on to another. "If you want to get technical, it's only been twelve hours since your last visit. That's half a day."
"Yeah, well, what can I say? You're always so hospitable. I can't seem to stay away."
He works in silence, easily shredding the second head of lettuce as I stand there, before he finally sets the knife down and turns around. He wipes his hands on his old, stained white apron before running his palms down his face, sighing exasperatedly.
Tired eyes greet me, surveying me, judging, as he leans back against the metal worktable.
Giuseppe Vitale is the most fearless man I know. I've never seen him cower from anyone—not from the police, not from the wise guys who used to try to extort money from him, and certainly not from me. He has high standards and a low tolerance, and I never quite fit in with his expectations. I disappointed the man from the moment I started talking, and he drove me further away every day with his criticism.
We'll never see eye-to-eye. He wrote me off the day I started working for Ray, and Ray become the kind of father to me that Giuseppe would never be. But the fact remains—the man in front of me gave me life.
I'm grateful for it.
And I respect him.
Even if it isn't mutual.
"Who was she?" he asks, crossing his thick arms over his broad chest.
"Who?"
"That girl you brought here."
I regard him curiously. "She didn't look familiar to you?"
"She did," he says, "that's why I'm asking. She's got one of those faces, you know, and you don't forget a face like that, ever. Used to walk in the front door of the deli after school every day, looking for one of your mother's cookies. Such a sweet face… haven't seen it in a long time because of you."
He blames me, naturally.
I started it all, set up the dominos to eventually fall.
Had I not stolen from Ray's shop that day, he wouldn't have offered me that job, and Johnny and Carmela probably would've never even crossed his path. I met Maria the first time I walked into her father's house at sixteen years old, and it was through me that she met the rest of them.
I was the center of it all, and my father knows it.
I was a damaged nucleus.
He always believed I was too weak to hold anyone else together.
The day of my wife's funeral, my father walked up to me, grasped my hands tightly, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, "rats will always desert a sinking ship, Ignazio."
I thought, at first, it was compassion. I thought he was sympathizing that my friend turned on me. It wasn't until later that I realized it was a swipe at the person I'd become instead.
I was a sinking ship.
He didn't blame Johnny for running for his life.
He didn't blame them for jumping overboard.
He blamed me for going under.
"She's their daughter," I say. "Johnny and Carmela's."
"Does she know who you are?"
"Yes."
"Then why's she with you?"
It's a damn good question. I don't know how to answer. I could list a dozen reasons she might be with me but it would amount to nothing in the way of explanation. At the end of the day, she's with me because she has to be. Compared to that, the rest means nothing.