Mafia Girl (8 page)

“The Tewl has changed her hair color,” I whisper to Ro.

She sticks her finger down her throat. “Yesterday it was light brown and now it’s bright red?”

That is off the charts weird in the middle of an election because you look like you don’t trust who you are and that you need help because you’re going through a serious identity crisis.

Jordan the jock is actually striding through the cafeteria working the room as if he’s relying on political advice about networking dating back to President Clinton’s campaign.

If all that’s not weird enough, even Domingo, the guy who cleans the cafeteria, passes my table and says, “you going to be the president?” And, whoa, I didn’t know even the kitchen staff is following this.

“I’m trying,” I say with an embarrassed laugh.

He smiles and picks up the trash on the table that people leave behind because some kids at Morgan feel they are
so
above carrying a single empty Arizona bottle to the recycle bin ten feet away in order to save the planet.

“President,” Domingo says again, like I’m in line for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I’d never admit it, but I’m feeling pretty good about my chances until someone comes up with the brilliant idea of holding a debate with the candidates to give the election more cosmic importance or something. I can’t exactly get to the bottom of who came up with that idea—because the school never did that before—but whatever, I can take the heat. Anyway, as everyone knows, I am a motormouth and good at thinking on my feet. They schedule the debate for an assembly that is only forty-five minutes long and everyone is invited to submit questions, which a committee of teachers will then sort through to pick the best.

Our next move is to prepare me, and Clive salivates at the thought. That afternoon instead of going home I get permission from my dad to go home with Clive who transforms himself into one of the more obnoxious kids in school and fires questions at me, pretending he’s holding a microphone:

“Gia, tell us in a sentence or two why you think you’d make a better president than anyone else in this school?

“What is the first thing you’d do if you became president?

“What do you see as the biggest shortcomings in our school and how would you address them?

“Our biggest strength?

“What qualifications do you bring to the job?

“Have you held office in other schools?

“What would you do to stop bullying in our school?

“How would you help make the school more diverse?”

If all that isn’t exhaustive enough, he goes on YouTube and gets a video of the Kennedy-Nixon debates like I could definitely apply lessons from those to what I would say at Morgan.

“Clive, you’re taking this pretty seriously.”

He takes that as a compliment. “I’m just trying to think of everything I can to prepare you, Gia, because you know how those people can get.”

“I don’t know, not really.”

Aside from Christy and her garbage mouth group, I don’t know what to expect, and anyway, I really can’t concentrate because my attention keeps flipping back and forth between reality and my fantasies of Michael Cross, who, of course, has not reached out and touched me and probably never will because Mr. Hot Cop is probably totally chickenshit.

But Clive isn’t thinking about Michael. He’s thinking about making me class president. So we drill and drill and drill until he thinks I’m ready.

“I’m surprised you haven’t rented out a TV studio to stage a mock debate on camera,” I mutter when it’s nearly ten.

“I should have thought of that,” he says.

I finally pack up and leave his building at ten thirty and while I’m going down in the elevator I’m not thinking about the election anymore or the stupid people or the questions they will throw at me, because on my phone I see something I’ve never seen before.

A text. From Michael.

I get a cab
on Fifth and as it goes south I look again to make sure that I really saw it.

Off at 11. Meet?

Cardiac arrest.
Yes. Where?

Simone Martini Bar. Know it?

Yes.
Actually no, I don’t. What was I thinking? I google it and find it in the East Village on First Avenue and St. Marks Place. Then the name Simone Martini sets off memory bells so I google that and realize why.

Simone Martini was an Italian painter from Siena (1280–1344) who they talked about in art history. We saw a painting of his from this online tour of the Uffizi in Florence, which was cool. And then I remember that he painted a portrait of a woman named Laura something who the poet Petrarch was crazed over and sort of stalked.

Instead of going home, I get out in the village and call my mom, mumbling something about meeting a friend to work on the campaign some more so I’ll be home later, but not really late. Who knows if she believes me, but my mom doesn’t have the strength to check out all the stories I dream up and my dad is out and I know she’s in the middle of a rerun of
Golden Girls
, her favorite TV show, because can you possibly mistake the voice of Bea Arthur?

I get there way early, so I circle the block twelve times like a streetwalker and then stroll in finally at 11:15 like this is so no big deal. The place has soft lighting, zebra fabric on the seats, and a tin ceiling, and I love the vibe so I am in the zone.

I spot him and go into overdrive. He’s sitting with a drink looking lost in thought, only he has this telepathic awareness of me because he looks up and the electrical currents begin pulsing. I head toward him, and he stands, and he has to be six-four because even in my heels he’s high above me.

I kiss his cheek and breathe in his lemony scent. He must have cleaned up and doesn’t that say something? I slide out of my jacket and sit in the banquette next to him and live in the moment.

“How you feeling?” he asks, pretending not to see the low-cut silk tank top.

I shrug.

“Your back, I mean.”

“It’s mostly better.” I hold off on joking about Percocet because that would be playing into his law enforcement antidrug thing and I know that script. The waiter comes by and I order a Coke to avoid flashing my bogus ID.

I can’t say it feels easy or natural or comfortable or any other emotion that I’ve ever felt to be near him in a bar, his thigh inches from mine. What it feels is otherworldly, as though the rest of humanity is closed off behind glass like the dioramas in the Museum of Natural History, and there’s just the two of us.

“I didn’t know if you’d call,” I say.

“Neither did I.”

I look in his eyes and stare at his lips and force myself to look away.

I start toying with the black leather and gold bracelets on my arm, tightening them, loosening them, tightening them again and feeling twelve years old again and not me. And where did that come from? Because right now I need my Gia alter ego on steroids, the one who says what’s on her mind and isn’t gnawing at the inside of her cheek.

I’m convinced that in cop school they teach you never to say anything that advances the conversation so that the other person will feel forced to fill the silence. I snap to and start wondering if he’s like this just with me or with other girls too which tightens my insides because for the first time I think of other girls.

Does he have a girlfriend? What a complete jerk I am. I mean, look at him, how could he not?

“Why didn’t you know…if you’d call?”

“Gia…” he says, lifting his head and looking at me. I’m looking back at him and fixated on those lips again and how they’re parted now. I expect flames to shoot up and burn us.

“This is totally off the wall.”

“What is?”

“My seeing you, my sitting here.”

“Because you’re a cop?”

“Because of a lot of things.”

“Does that scare you?” I say.

“What? Being with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what scares me, Michael?

“What?”

“Not being with you.” Then I swallow extra hard and close my fingers around his upper arm and just leave my hand there and try to pretend that I’m not breathing ragged because I’m touching his skin.

Did I really have the nerve to say that? Why didn’t I just shut up? And how can my mouth come out and say what I’m thinking? But it does and I can’t seem to control that, and here we go again with my head telling my mouth what it wants to say, not what it should.

Michael tries to pretend my hand isn’t where it is, but he stirs and something inside him changes. We sit there without talking, surrounded by ghosts of things in his head, and he mostly looks down at the fake black marble table. And then he stares inside his glass at his drink before he lifts it and drains it, and I watch his throat as the liquid goes down.

I don’t know where things are going to end up so I pull my hand away and lean against him and he feels warm and solid. I run the tip of my shoe up and down his calf and then wait, but he still doesn’t do anything except open his clenched fist and press his opened hand against the tabletop. And I watch and wonder what that hand would feel like…if it were touching me.

He licks his lips. “You don’t even know me,” he says finally.

“What do I need to know?”

He squints and looks at me to see if I’m serious, and then his face softens and he smiles his smirky cop smile. “I never met anyone like you.”

I give him back a smirky smile.

Out of nowhere, because I can’t think of something to say, and even though this place looks more Chinese than Italian, I tell him about Simone Martini. And he looks at me and listens and smiles and says, “yeah, I read about him.”

“Have you been to Italy?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Do you want to go?”

“Yeah, maybe, who knows?”

Then I go on about Petrarch who he says he remembers from school, even though I don’t believe him. “He was infatuated with a girl named Laura from the first moment he saw her in church,” I say. “But she was married and never got involved with him, but still he wrote poems to her and was obsessed with her.”

He nods, smiling.

Then I’m thinking that he is probably thinking that I’m trying to send him a subliminal message about crushes and lust and unfulfilled hookups and maybe like he should make a move or else. So I just stop. Mid-sentence. And look him in the eyes, and I start to ache inside.

It feels like we are on top of Mt. Vesuvius with smoke and molten lava erupting around us. I slide my fingers around his forearm again, squeezing it slightly. The touch has this visceral effect on both of us. He swallows and, God, it’s just his arm. All I can think of is that I want him to kiss me.

“Can we go?” I say softly.

“Yeah, I’ll take you home.”

“That’s not what I meant, Michael.”

“I know.” His eyes don’t leave mine.

I want you to kiss me.
But he doesn’t. He looks away abruptly then reaches for his wallet and pays the check.

We go outside and walk past small boutiques with handmade peasant dresses and clowny platform heels, a cigar store with a wooden Indian outside, and then a sexy underwear boutique with panties without crotches and I start to laugh and can’t stop and he starts to laugh too, but not as much, and I bump against him and hook my arm through his, which feels like the most natural thing to do.

And then the only thing I’m feeling aside from bone-crushing lust is a growing sadness because the end of the night is getting closer and I look up at the sky and ask for help because I want to just stop time and make this night go on forever.

We’re nowhere near
where he lives, even though he doesn’t know that I know where he lives, and no, he is not coming back to my house in Little Italy for a Limoncello. And no, he is not even setting foot on the street because the rows of brownstones have eyes and ears.

There is a limit to how many blocks you can walk, especially in my shoes. And anyway, Michael is probably horny and feeling guilty and conflicted in his cop role, but more than that, scared shitless because I’m seventeen, not to mention the don’s daughter. So, as usual, is the deck stacked here? He wants to put me in a cab then head to a bar to get wasted I guess, not that he says any of that.

“It’s late. You have to go home, Gia,” he says. “You have school tomorrow, right?”

“Shut up, Michael,” I whisper, staring at his beautiful face.

We pass the dark entrance to a low, seedy apartment building and no one is around, so I go over and try the door. It’s stuck at first but then it opens, and he stands there watching me, not sure what I’m doing. I grab his arm and pull him in after me and then lean into him and press my lips against his and start kissing him. He tries to turn away at first, but not really. Then he can’t not respond because he’s so into me too. And for the first time, he kisses me back hard and then harder and rakes his hands through my hair and pulls me against him and everything around us dissolves and our tongues are deep in each other’s mouths. And I don’t even have words to say how that feels because suddenly every cell in my body is exploding with longing and I’m so overcome that I can barely stand. We’re in each other’s clothes and his skin is so hot, his shoulders and back so hard and strong and he smells like lemony soap. And he’s inside my bra and touching me lightly and I can’t bear it. We’re maybe twenty seconds from the point of tearing each other apart and getting down on the floor, until, that is, an old guy with white whiskers and a cane comes tap, tap, tapping his way down the stairs to go out and sees us in heat and waves the cane around wildly in the air and yells in a loud, crazy voice like a psycho.

“If you don’t get the fuck out of here right now, I’m going to call the cops!”

We catch our ragged breaths and start to laugh so hard I double over, a victim of pain and sexual wreckage. All Michael does is stop and close his eyes and mutter “shit” and wait and breathe heavy, and finally he looks at me and whispers, “let’s go.” He takes my hand and we push through the door and he slips an arm around my waist and we walk fast down the street like we’re in a hurry to go someplace. Only we’re not going anywhere. When we get a few blocks away he stops and holds me against him for a few seconds and then he shakes his head and kisses me again before he turns away and finds me a cab, and without a word everything that started is over.