Mafia Girl (5 page)

I remember coming home from school that snowy afternoon and turning on the TV. They were doing a report about a crime and the next thing I saw was the screen filled with my dad’s face. I shut the TV off because I knew he would get mad if he saw me watching.

He was working at home in his office that day so I decided to go ask him because I had to know. I opened the door and walked in without knocking first. The office walls are paneled in dark wood, and both windows are covered with heavy wine colored velvet drapes, always drawn. I loved the way it looked from the moment he had it decorated. It reminded me of a cave. I felt safe there. Even now, my dad’s office is my favorite part of our house, although I don’t go there much since it’s mostly off-limits. I remember staring at the vase of fresh roses on the table near the window.

He has a mahogany desk with a gold letter holder where he keeps bills. Next to it is a tall lamp with a wine colored base and gold handles that look like ears that stick out too far. On top of it is a shade with tiny pleats. I remember how the room smelled, like lemony furniture polish. I sat in the red velvet armchair with the lace doily over the footstool and stared at him, waiting. He was reading the newspaper and finally looked up.

“Gia, what’s the matter?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t sure what the matter was.

“Those things,” I said, “that they say about you…on the TV…Are they right?”

“What things?” he asked, lifting his chin slightly.

“That you’re the one behind it when people get killed,” I said, so low I didn’t think he could hear me. Our eyes met across the room. I don’t think either of us blinked.

His eyes darkened. “Don’t listen to the TV. They’re trying to make headlines to be popular. Just remember the only important thing is that I love you. That’s all that matters here.”

“But is it true?” I said, refusing to look away.

“Sometimes things happen, Gia,” he said, looking down at the gold rings on his fingers and at his nails, always perfectly covered with clear polish. “People don’t always act the way they’re supposed to. They cross you.” He looked back up at me. “If you’re running a business you have to trust the people around you, like we trust each other, right?”

I nodded.

“So we have to do the right thing when other people don’t do the right thing. If you’re the boss, you have to act like the boss.”

I must have looked confused because he shook his head and smiled. “It’s complicated,” he said, “and I don’t want you to worry about it. You’re safe here, that’s all you have to know.”

I swallowed hard and got up to leave.

“Come, come here,” he said, motioning to me. I walked over to him and he hugged me, kissing me on the top of the head again and again, as if he was trying to fill my head with his love instead of the thoughts I came in with.

“Who loves you more than anyone else in the whole world?”

That was our game, the game we had played since I was a two-year-old. He asked me that question again and again, each time as if he had never asked it before. Every time he did I was back to being two again, looking up at my dad as if he were this giant, the most perfect man in the whole world.

“You do,” I said, and he broke into a smile the way he always did.

“That’s right. Now go and see if you can help your mother with dinner. She’s making chicken cacciatore,” he said. “You love that, no?”

I nodded. He patted me on the back and I walked toward the door. I turned to look at him one last time, expecting to see him already looking down, reading his paper again, but he wasn’t. His face was darker, his eyes hooded, and he was still watching me.

I never asked him again.

I get a reprieve
from being grounded because we have to do campaign posters, so Ro and Clive and Candy and I hang out at Clive’s, and at dinnertime we’re starving so we speed-dial for hot and sour soup, egg rolls, moo shu pork, shrimp and Chinese vegetables, ten-ingredient fried rice, sweet-and-sour chicken, and shrimp lo mein.

After everyone pigs out and we read the fortunes in the cookies—
All your hard work will soon pay off
(mine),
Don’t let the past and useless details choke your existence
(Candy),
The one you love is closer than you think
(Clive), and
Be direct, usually one can accomplish more that way
(Ro). I force them into the bathroom to wash their hands ten times to get rid of the grease before touching the oak tag for my posters.

When everyone’s clean, we sit on the floor in Clive’s room.

“Okay,” I say, clapping my hands. “Here it is, the long awaited campaign slogan:
Gia. Fresh thinking. Fresh answers. Vote outside the box
.”

Silence.

“Earth to Clive?”

“I like it,” he says finally, “but you know the people you’re running against, Gia. Can you handle how they’re going to twist it and throw it back at you?”

“I can deal.”

“Just one thing, Gia,” Ro says. “When they start snickering and sticking it to you about the word fresh and calling you a slut, how do you plan to answer that?”

“That this is the year of the slut.”

“What?” Clive says, his eyes widening.

“I’m kidding. I don’t know. Any ideas?”

“Say that they have filthy minds for thinking that,” Candy says, “and for perverting the truth. Act totally indignant.”

We all look at Candy with new respect.

“You go, girl. That’s exactly what I’ll say.”

Then we get to work coloring, never mind the blisters on our fingers from all the work, three hours later we do actually finish all of them and they come out fabulous. Then Clive’s driver takes Candy home to Park Avenue and drops Ro off at home in Little Italy. I stay behind to hang with Clive.

“You never told me about that night with Michael Cross,” he says. “Excuse me, Officer Hottie.”

“He’s in total denial about his feelings for me. Plus he probably thinks I’m jailbait—even though I’m not—and the daughter of a don and he’s my arresting officer and blah blah blah.

“Did he actually say all that?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“What did he actually say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He’s not a talker.”

“So how do you know he’s into you and can’t handle it?”

“By the way he looks at me.”

“That’s all?”

“Clive,” I say. “Chemistry. Does. Not. Lie.”

He’s quiet after that and we sit there looking at each other.

“Maybe I should just marry you,” I say. “And we could live happily ever after.”

“I would love that,” Clive says.

“And you’d give me a giant diamond ring and everything?”

“Absolutely everything.”

I smile back at Clive, not sure exactly what he means. He said he’s not gay, but he’s not like anyone straight that I know either. Not that it matters.

I climb into his bed and pat the place next to me and then Clive and I snuggle together while the rain comes down hard so that the view of Central Park outside looks all drippy and speckled like it was painted by Seurat, the French artist we learned about in art history who freaked everyone out at first with his weird way of painting called pointillism. He put like three million paint dots or something on his canvas, and if you stand away from it, you see that, whoa, it totally all works, because what happens is those separate color dots you see next to each other close-up magically morph into different patches of colors from a distance.

And that made me start to think about whether in real life you need to step back from things to see the real picture and the true colors, aka perspective, and that if you’re too close and fixated on the individual dots, you can get it all wrong and maybe what you think you’re seeing isn’t reality or the true picture at all. It’s something else entirely.

“What are you thinking, Gia?

“Of George Seurat.”

“Because of our painting?”

“What painting?”

“You know, the one in the living room.”

“You have a Seurat? A real Seurat?”

“Mmm, over the couch.”

“Clive, do
not
tell anyone.”

“Why?”

“Because they’d steal it and kidnap you for ransom.”

“Like they could ever track down my parents to pay.”

I look at Clive and he looks back at me and we start to snicker and then laugh and a minute later we’re keeled over laughing so hard we’re practically choking and holding our stomachs because they hurt so much.

I mean what’s sadder, the fact that my dad’s people would probably get behind stealing the art, or the fact that his dad is MIA and wouldn’t be around to pay?

Without warning all this emotion that must have been barricaded behind the laughter rears up like a tsunami and I don’t know why, but everything gets less funny and backslides and grows darker and tragic and suddenly we’re sobbing and, God, how did that happen? And we’re feeling sorry for everything that’s wrong in our lives and not the way we want it to be, although we know we don’t have the power to change any of that. So we sob harder and I can’t breathe and Clive is gasping for air too with tears running down his cheeks. And how pathetic are we, lost and alone even though we’re not now because we have each other. And I don’t even remember how all this started now, but I wish I could figure out what it means because my insides are collapsing.

It’s been one week, sixteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes or so since I’ve seen Michael. I check my phone every time I inhale to see if he might have broken down and called. Or left a message. Or a text. But no. He is playing hard to get or not playing at all and just being a dick because he’s so into the good cop thing, trying to do right and be ethical and all, despite the fact that I’m sure he’s up nights thinking about me and suffering too because even his tough impassive cop face is not good enough to hide what’s behind his eyes.

If there’s one thing I am sure of, it’s that I have an unfailingly sharp radar when it comes to picking up vibes on how men feel about me. And even though, yes, I might be completely deranged, I am convinced that I just have to work on Michael Cross. And that is what I’m going to do if I can get near him.

What I need is a way to track his whereabouts, which makes me think of the electronic ankle bracelets that they clamp on felons’ legs and that my dad walked around with one time so they always knew where he was so he couldn’t flee to a safe house in Reggio Calabria or wherever to hide. But how ridiculous is that? So I have to come up with a real plan.

But then my phone rings. And of course it isn’t Michael. It’s
Vogue
magazine. W-H-A-T?

I’m not sure what I’m hearing at first. But then I realize that the assistant to the fashion editor named Clotilde Marie Saint-Just is asking me to pose for them for an upcoming issue called “Under Age and Over the Top,” which would basically be about famous young girls in the news, even though I’m not exactly famous and not exactly in the news either—not unless you count the TV cameras they stick in our faces whenever our family goes out somewhere together because they love to stalk my dad. But, whatever, because if they do the story, I will be famous in a different and better kind of way, so the idea blows me away.

I mean
me
? In
Vogue
magazine? GET OUT. I call Ro.

“How do you know it’s not some perv who wants you to take off your pants, Gia?”

“To start, the caller ID said Condé Nast, okay, and I don’t think you can set that up on your own. So, no, it wasn’t bogus. And then they gave me the name of the photographer who’s shooting it and his name is John Plesaurus and he is
big
and does a lot of their covers and you can find his name in any issue. And anyway I called his studio to check and they said yes, yes, yes, the shooting is scheduled for four weeks from now and it’s legit and yada, yada, yada.”

“One other thing, Gia. Your dad will never go for it.”

I don’t answer.

“Gia?”

“I’m thinking.”

My dad is nothing if not vain, and I am his daughter with his DNA and his looks. We both have honey-blond hair, tawny skin, and green eyes. Me in the magazine would be a compliment to him. So bottom line, I have my game plan.

“I can do it.”

“Do what?” Ro asks.

“Convince him.”

“How?”

“I’ll call you back.”

Whenever my mom makes pasta con sarde, no matter what, my dad comes home early. His grandparents grew up in a small town near Palermo and they fed him pasta con sarde before he had breast milk, I think, and they passed that love to him in their genes, so the fresh sardines with the sweet currants and the parsley and the thick bucatini pasta just about transport him back to his childhood.

Tonight is pasta con sarde night, which may work in my favor. I help my mom with the salad and put in extra arugula, because my dad loves arugula, and then I dress it with oil and balsamic vinegar. I bought a chocolate truffle cake at Ro’s dad’s bakery and after we finish dinner I cut him a big piece and bring him his espresso and then I’m silent and patient and all attentive, transformed into perfect daughter mode, waiting for just the right moment as he sits for a little while enjoying the pasta con sarde afterglow or whatever until I can’t stand it anymore.

“So guess who called me today?”

He shrugs. “Tell me.”

“
Vogue
.”

He narrows his eyes, not getting it.

“
Vogue
.
Vogue
magazine. They want to do a photo shoot of the best-looking daughters of celebrities.”

I leave out the underage part and put a second wedge of truffle cake on his plate. My dad stirs his espresso with the small silver spoon and very slowly runs the sliver of lemon peel around the edge of the gold-rimmed cup. He shifts slightly in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, before cocking his head to the side.

“In what, in bikinis?” he asks, because he’s afraid of saying thongs or panties and sounding pervy.

“No, Daddy, in
designer
clothes!” Not that I have a clue what they’re thinking, but it’s
Vogue
and what are they going to use, low-end polyester shit from Walmart?