The Girl She Used to Be (23 page)

I wait for him to continue the story he started outside but he stares at me, like he’s trying to hypnotize me. It doesn’t
work.

“Gregory Morrison,” I say.

Jonathan rolls his eyes and takes another drink. “Greg Morrison was one of a bunch of guys who used to hang around my neighborhood,
thought he was real tough. We never paid them any mind; they were just neighborhood kids. Then one night, my brother and I
catch him and his buddies trying to break into one of our establishments. My brother confronts them. Well, it’s like six of
them and only me and Peter, so they start talking it up all cool, like they’re going to rough us up. My brother, he likes
to throw our name around, and when he does this time, all the kids turn and look at Greg, as if Greg is the one who’s going
to decide how this goes down.

“Now, the proper thing for Greg and his buddies to do would have been to apologize, to show respect. I know that sounds corny
and all, but it’s true. We would’ve let them all walk away. All
anybody
wants is some respect, you know? Not just the Mafia. Some respect and a decent white clam sauce, which is getting harder
and harder to find in New York.”

“Greg Morrison.”

“So Greg stares at Peter and tells him to his face how he’s gonna hurt him. Well, Peter turns to me and laughs, like he’s
sort of been looking for some action anyway, and starts rolling up his sleeves.”

He stops again, like nothing else happened. This is getting old. I kick him under the table and he picks up where he left
off like a malfunctioning tape recorder.

“So things get very ugly. Peter gives him a pretty good pounding. Nothing major, just an old-fashioned beating.”

“You can’t beat an old-fashioned.”

“Yeah, it was pretty easy. His friends did nothing. Just watched—and learned.”

Like the friends of the frat kid in West Virginia.

Like the friend of Marcus at the hotel bar.

I’m feeling a connection here, but the story seems to have come to a nebulous end. I’m hopeful that all Jonathan did was watch,
and fail to prevent Greg Morrison from getting beaten. “So you never actually harmed Greg yourself?”

“Well, not
that
time.”

I sigh.

“See,” he continues, “the whole time Peter is going to town, Greg just keeps saying Peter is going to pay, that our family
is going to pay for this.” Jonathan starts playing with the cork from the wine bottle, and I can see the tension increase
as he starts breaking off chunks of the cork with his thumbnail. He stares at his wine-stained fingers, so entranced in the
memory he converts it all to present tense. “I go to my folks’ home one evening, about a week later, and I find my mother
rocking in my dad’s arms on the couch and she is weeping and my dad is… he’s, like, staring into the distance with tears
running down his cheeks. He has this look I’ve only ever seen him have a few times, and I know someone is going to have to
die.”

“What’d happened?”

He clears his throat and drops the cork and wipes his face. He looks me in the eye and says, “Greg Morrison raped my mother
while she was putting groceries in the trunk of her car. Just shoved her body in the trunk, lifted up her dress and…”

One thing is certain: To have raped the matriarch of a crime family, Greg Morrison had to be either a sociopath or the stupidest
man on earth.

I can tell Jonathan is fighting the retrospection, that he does not want to show this side of himself.

“The whole time,” he says, “Greg just kept repeating, ‘Tell your boys payback is hell.’ ”

I gulp and bite my lower lip. I touch his hand gently; it’s shaking. “I don’t know what to say, I…”

Herman starts heading our way. I wave him off.

“My father put my mother down for a rest in their bedroom and told me he needed to stay with her—and that I needed to go make
things right.”

I hold my breath. “And did you?”

He sits up. “You better believe I did. I went to Morrison’s scuzzy little apartment and kicked in his door. He was just sitting
there in a stained La-Z-Boy with a pistol in his hand, waiting for me or Peter or whoever. He held it up, pointed it at me,
and said, ‘Payback’ and pulled the trigger—but nothing happened. God knows why, but nothing left the barrel of that gun. I
jumped on him and the gun went sliding across the floor. I picked up a chair from his kitchen table and smashed it over his
head.” He snaps his fingers. “Out immediately.”

I wait a few seconds. “And that’s it?”

“No. I sat in his apartment for over two hours, waiting for that piece of crap to return to consciousness.”

“Why?”

“Because he needed to live through what I was gonna do to him, the way my mother had to live through what he did to her. I
wanted to make sure he would never forget, for the rest of his life, the mistake he made.”

“For screwing with a Bovaro?”

He leans forward and his face goes completely flush. “For messing with my mother, Melody. This has nothing to do with my family’s
name or my family’s history. I would’ve done the same thing if my name was Schwartz.”

I sigh again, but this one is a sigh of relief. It turns out Jonathan’s one bad act—or at least his worst act—was not because
he was a Bovaro at all; it was because he was a human being.

We sit in silence for a minute before a thought occurs to me. “So, your dad was proud of you, I guess?”

He laughs a little, cracks his knuckles. “He was livid.”

“Livid? Why?”

“He wanted Morrison dead, gone forever. He wanted to send a message to the entire community that if you ever mess with our
family you will die.”

“I’m surprised your brother didn’t go back and finish the job for you.”

“Oh, he wanted to. And my dad wanted him to, as well. It was the source of many arguments we had as a family.” He goes back
to playing with the cork. “But I told my father and my brothers and the other ‘made’ men that if we killed Morrison, he’d
be forgotten in a month and someone would fill his place. But this way, with him being a living, breathing example that people
would see day after day, the event would never be forgotten.”

It was a good argument. Jonathan is either very smart or very lucky. I’m glad he’s on my side. “But what if he heals?”

“He won’t.”

“Well, it’s possible that—”

“He won’t.”

I watch Jonathan and the tension slowly leaves his hands, then his face, then his body. He is transforming back to the guy
I have fallen for, from the Hulk back to David Banner, and I can see that in his own violent, perverted way, he has made peace
with what happened. And, having convinced his family not to kill Morrison, I feel he might actually be able to pull off the
greatest swindle in Bovaro history: presenting me to his family and asking that they let me live in peace—with amnesty.

Herman returns for our order and he approaches the table like it’s wired with explosives. “Can I, um, take your order?”

We play with our menus, opening them for the first time. I can feel Jonathan watching me.

Jonathan smiles at Herman and says, “She’ll have the best of everything.”

I chuckle. “Make that two.”

Herman must’ve been scared to death that he’d fail the crazy couple seated by the kitchen, so he takes Jonathan’s “everything”
comment rather seriously. He has two additional servers come over to our table and cover it with an array of dishes from every
section of the menu: mussels; scallops; lobster tails; three different blue-crab dishes; fresh littleneck clams, still steaming,
with a bowl of melted butter at their side; two different bowls of pasta, including their version of a Chesapeake Alfredo—which
is essentially regular Alfredo with Old Bay dashed on top; and a massive bowl of Caesar salad, which Herman nervously prepares
table-side.

I lean over the dishes a little, trying to catch the aroma of the garlic rising from the mussels, and my left strap falls
from my shoulder. Herman pauses his salad-making as he attempts to catch a glimpse down the front of my dress.

Jonathan snatches one of the utensils from Herman’s hand and whispers, “Guess what I’m gonna do with this?”

Herman nods and says, in a quick falsetto, “Let me know if you need anything else,” and scampers off.

“What,” Jonathan says to me. “I was just gonna finish tossing the salad, is all.”

I sit back and fix my strap. “I’m not that hungry.”

Jonathan puts the salad utensils down. “Me either.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Me too.”

We both swallow.

“Why are we nervous?” I ask.

He bites his lip, then answers, “Because that’s how you feel when you’re about to experience one of the best moments of your
life.”

Or: one of the
last
moments of your life.

But the truth is hard to deny. I’ve entered one of the manic cycles of my bipolar interplay with Jonathan. He’s got me convinced
again that his plan will work and that some great ending is hours from unfolding. Or maybe I’ve convinced myself. Either way
he’s right: The nervousness—for the moment—is anxious pleasure.

I stare at the shellfish and the creamy pasta and the bottle of wine. “We’ve got a table full of aphrodisiacs here.”

“I don’t need them.”

I cock my head and sigh. “Neither do I.”

Jonathan stares at the wine but does not pick it up. “More wine?”

“No.” He looks at me. “I… I don’t want anything to interfere with the way I’m feeling.” I reach across the table and
run the tips of my fingers across his hand and wrist. I keep my eyes on his. “I don’t want anything to impair this night.
I want to experience you, Jonathan.”

He turns his hand over and I gently drag my fingers to his palm and he closes his fingers around mine.

Jonathan holds my hand very tightly, seemingly intent on preventing my escape. He takes his fork, sneaks it between the shells
of a clam, deftly pops the meat out and submerses it in the butter, dabs the excess, and carefully brings it to my lips.

I laugh a little and look around the room, then look back at Jonathan and say, “Okay.” I put the clam between my teeth and
take it from the fork. It is salty and tender and a little grainy—sort of like Jonathan. I try to keep from laughing with
my mouth open.

I take my fork and plunge it into the Chesapeake Alfredo and begin twisting a huge spiral of fettuccine—humorously big, actually.
I hold it up to Jonathan and cream drips on the table.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he says.

“Take it like a man.”

He squints and says, “Bring it on.”

I deliver it to his mouth, timing the drips to avoid any mess, and he opens as wide as possible and I manage to push it all
in and he winces as he noshes.

Jonathan grabs his fork and extracts the meat from between the shells of a mussel and holds it up.

“Oh, but the garlic,” I whine.

“You’ve lived on the run most of your life and you can’t handle a little garlic?”

I roll my eyes. “Bring it.”

I chomp down on his fork in feigned anger and the mussel is wet with olive oil and studded with flakes of sautéed garlic and
crushed capers and for a second I roll my eyes again, though this time from a prandial rush.

We continue this journey around the bowls and platters of food on our table until we both hit the dish with the blue crab
au gratin. We get stuck there and alternate feeding forkfuls of it to each other until it’s gone, which takes several minutes,
and we each take a deep breath and sigh and loosen our grip on each other slowly until our hands drift apart and we rest back
in our chairs.

I guess we were hungry after all.

We cleanse our palates with a single swish of the Chianti. We rest our glasses back down, leaving two-thirds of the bottle
unconsumed.

“I’ve got one thing on my mind right now,” I say.

“Passion?”

“Garlic.”

“Afraid I won’t want to kiss you?”

“Afraid of what you’ll think
after
you kiss me.”

He smiles. “Want me to fix it? I’ve got a lot of experience with fixing things.”

I’m not sure what he means but I nod like I know.

Jonathan carefully reaches into his glass of water and removes the slice of lemon, cuts two narrow slices across each end,
and lets it drip on his bread plate for a moment.

“Come here,” he says. I lean forward. “Tilt your head back just a little.” I do. “Now open your mouth.” I part my lips. “A
little more.” I open wider. “A little more.” Then, just as I begin to feel self-conscious, he squeezes the lemon and a narrow
spray of citrus splashes onto my tongue. He squeezes more firmly and it takes five seconds before all of the fluid is in my
mouth.

“Swirl it around,” he says, “and swallow.”

The lemon is fresh and sweet and the tartness makes my nose burn. I swallow and my tongue and my throat feel alive—and clean.
I laugh as I bring my fingers to my lips. “Oh,
wow
—that’s amazing.”

Jonathan nods and puts the lemon slice on his plate. “As a member of a Sicilian family, you grow up with almost every dish
starting the same way: sautéed garlic in olive oil. By the time you enter adolescence, you find ways to cope. It’s one of
those things that seems odd and trivial but is incredibly necessary, it turns out.”

“Hmm, like a Fibonacci number.”

He flips his hands out. “Am I supposed to understand what that means?”

“Oh, um, a Fibonacci number is formed from a sequence defined recursively where, after you select two starting values, the
number is the sum of the two preceding numbers—like, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29—and it’s just the kind of thing you try to comprehend
and think, How would I ever apply this in real life, and, judging by the look on your face, I’m guessing you weren’t really
that interested.”

He smiles. “I’m interested in everything about you, in all the pieces I was never able to grasp by watching you from a distance.
You’re like this beautiful painting where the colors become richer and deeper and more captivating with every step closer
to the canvas.”

I can feel myself blushing. “That is
so
not something I would imagine coming from the mouth of a Bovaro.” I nod a little. “But it’s something I will remember for
the rest of my life.”