The Family(86)

“Against the wall,” says Tommy Fianzo Jr., and it is not just inadequate, but unnecessary, because he is pointing a gun at Sofia. “Let’s all take a walk.” And Sofia understands that whatever tenuous moment of understanding she might have been building toward with Tommy Fianzo Jr. has been lost, and with it, any hope she and Saul have of getting out of this unscathed. Of getting out of it at all.



* * *



    —

The cab pulls up short a few blocks away from the docks. Next to Antonia in the backseat, Paolo takes her hand. “Please stay here,” he begs her.

“I love you,” she responds.

(Paolo and Antonia, seventeen years old, ran out of things to say halfway through their first date. Words seemed entirely insufficient.)

Antonia opens the car door and slips out. She begins to run, alone.

It is noon, but it looks like evening. The air smells like metal and engine oil, like every evening of Antonia’s childhood, the kitchen window in Sofia’s apartment open to the slow breeze coming off the East River. The way the air can smell like the ocean and the city all at once.

Antonia is alight with energy. The deepest parts of her have been pulled up to the surface of her skin.

And of course, Antonia is not alone. She has Sofia with her. She has Carlo. And because she stopped upstairs in Sofia’s apartment before getting in a cab, she has a gleaming, heavy, fully loaded pearl-handled pistol.



* * *



—

Paolo is running to catch up with Antonia. She is stealthy, quick, better at this than Paolo would have guessed, moving from dumpster to shipping container, sheltering herself.

In front of the Fianzo building there stands a guard. Antonia cannot see him from her vantage point behind a tall metal pylon. Paolo can see that when Antonia moves again, she will cross right into the guard’s line of sight. He runs.

As a child, Paolo was scrappy. Three older brothers and the bloody path home from school had beaten into him the importance of self-defense, and defense of those you loved. Paolo was well-known in his neighborhood, and not just for his handwriting.

Paolo’s fist connects with the Fianzo guard’s face before the guard even has time to register that anyone is approaching. Paolo draws back his right fist again but then jabs viciously with his left, hitting just under the guard’s rib cage. The soft flesh there collapses; the guard lets out a whoosh of breath. Paolo elbows him in the face. Something cracks. I love you, Paolo thinks, picturing Saul and Antonia. The Fianzo guard slips into a blissful unconsciousness. Paolo leaves the guard bruised and bloodied, draped over the concrete steps. He takes off after Antonia. I love you, he prays.



* * *



—

Antonia sticks to the shadows. She hopes Saul and Sofia will be there. She hopes they will not be there. She moves as slowly as she can bear, as quietly, as carefully as anyone ever has.

In the distance, toward the river, there is a small cloud of seagulls flapping and keening. Recently disturbed.

Sofia.

Antonia stands. She is at the edge of the ocean.

Come on, Carlo says.

Antonia is all storm, all clash and fury. The summer air is still but in her ears wind roars.



* * *



—

Sofia and Antonia, playing make-believe, once started a war in Sofia’s bedroom. They vanquished the entire army. They were the only survivors.



* * *



—

Antonia can smell Sofia. She is close. There is no time. There is less and less time every moment. Antonia must move impossibly fast. She must move backward in time.

Three figures are standing at the edge of the docks, the edge of the world. One is on his knees. One is holding a gun. One is Sofia.

Antonia can feel everything.



* * *



—

The wind comes now, little tendrils of it stirring trash and dust on the docks, making ripples on the water. The clouds cannot get darker but they do, somehow, sealing themselves to the edges of the sky so that rain is the only way out.



* * *



—

Antonia is running, with her jellied legs, with blood leaking down her thighs, with her deep soft new-mother skin, the darkness of her eyes.

“Hey!” Antonia shouts. The wind carries her voice.

Tommy turns.



* * *



    —

When she is twenty feet away from them Antonia stops and plants her feet and raises the gun. Tommy Fianzo Jr. has let his own gun swing down to his side in surprise. When he realizes Antonia has a weapon of her own he puts his hands up by his shoulders and says something like, alright there, sweetheart, no need to do anything rash.

Antonia tightens her finger toward the trigger.

“This won’t end the way you want it,” says Tommy Jr. Saul and Sofia are still, staring. Antonia is moving backward in time.



* * *



—

Eighteen years ago, Antonia knows, Carlo was walked up to the edge of these docks. He begged, didn’t he, because he loved his life, because he didn’t want to leave it. He imagined Antonia’s face, Lina’s arms, the ecstatic staccato of one day passing after another. He was absolutely animated, wasn’t he, those last seconds his lungs drew breath. He was halfway through an inhale when the shot was fired. Antonia can picture it perfectly. Carlo’s fervent wish to stay alive.