White Shotgun

“He’s my boyfriend,” Zabrina answers.

“You vouch for him?”

“I vouch for him.”

Fat Pasquale opens the screen door. The kitchen is even hotter. The middle-aged woman with the black hair, now wearing an apron, sweat running down her temples, chops tomatoes at the sink.

“Maria Luisa gets a bigger allowance than me,” she is saying.

“I know.”

“Her husband was unlucky, that’s all. He got in the way of a bullet. But my Peppino is a capo, who is in jail today because he is protecting all of you.”

“I know.”

The Puppet, wearing white trousers, a lizard belt, and an expensive linen shirt, is sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, relaxed. Before him is an array of bags of white powder, a digital scale, vials, and small spatulas used for paint, neatly lined up on butcher paper laid over the oilcloth. Disregarding the woman and her complaints, he gives instructions to his bodyguard, who is mixing the cut. That same guy was here last time; Zabrina recognizes the jade disk around his neck. She avoids looking at the boss’s strange black wooden fingers, staring instead at the pattern of tulip tiles on the wall. One tulip up. One tulip down. The pain in her abdomen is unbearable.

“Three years in prison and sixteen months to go!” the woman goes on, shaking the knife at the Puppet. “You tell Don Toti I deserve a bigger allowance than Maria Luisa!”

The Puppet ignores this, peering closely at the powder dissolving in a small glass dish. He raises his prosthesis and motions to Yuri.

“You! Sit here.”

Yuri slips into the chair, homing in on the ritual as the bodyguard loads the syringe.

“Who vouches for you?”

“Zabrina.”

The Puppet’s eyes rise to the girl waiting impatiently. Silently he nods, bestowing his approval on her guest.

“Where you from?” he asks the boy kindly.

Yuri stares hungrily, tightening a bandanna around his arm. “Albania,” he replies.

The bodyguard passes the syringe to Yuri, who slips the needle into his vein.

“Are you listening to me?” demands the woman at the sink. “Will you talk to Don Toti?”

“Talk to him about what?”

The woman stares at the Puppet with stymied hate.

“Next,” he says. “You, signorina. Che bella! I have seen you before. I would not forget such a beautiful face.”

“Thank you,” says Zabrina, but Yuri isn’t standing up. She needs her turn. His torso contracts, like he’s taking a very deep breath, then his eyes roll up, and he slumps sideways and falls out of the chair.

“Yuri!”

“What is this?” the Puppet inquires.

“I changed the cut,” says the bodyguard. “Like you said.”

“Too strong. Make it weaker.”

The bodyguard goes back to the powder, ignoring the young man on the floor, who has gone into full-body convulsions.

Zabrina is on her knees, screaming, “Oh shit, oh shit, he’s overdosing!”

“Get your boyfriend out of here.”

“Help me. Do something! He’s going to die.”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“Yes! Call a doctor. Get him to a hospital!”

She tries to drag Yuri’s heavy body toward the door.

The woman, who has been watching all this with disgust, shakes her head and leaves the kitchen.

The Puppet looks at the watch strapped around the prosthesis. “Get them out of here.”

The bodyguard sighs and calls, “Pasquale!” No answer. He gets up and opens the door.

“Pasquale isn’t here. I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re supposed to know!”

By opening the door, the bodyguard has allowed a score of skinny children in wet bathing suits to pour inside and rush to the refrigerator to shout for Kool-Aid. Seeing Yuri writhing on the floor causes them to stare, and then to all start shrieking at once — a chorus of high-pitched shrieking — some laughing, some shrieking just to shriek. Deep inside the apartment, there is banging.

“This place is a filthy zoo,” says the Puppet. “Where is that witch? Where is the coffee?”

“What about him?” asks the bodyguard, pointing at Yuri.

“In five minutes he’ll be dead,” says the Puppet, and instructs the bodyguard to mix up another batch.

Zabrina is sobbing, trying to stop the convulsions by massaging Yuri’s arms and legs. Meanwhile, looking as if she is doing nothing at all, the woman has meandered down the hall and unlocked the door to the bedroom.

“We need a doctor,” she says. “A boy is overdosing.”

Cecilia Maria Nicosa stumbles out, dressed in oversized men’s sweatpants in the furnacelike heat, two thin ratty undershirts one over the other, to avoid indignity. Her auburn hair is piled up haphazardly. Once upon a time she had a pedicure. There are purple bruises down her arms and across the side of her face like the shadow of a hand.

“Where?” she croaks. She hasn’t spoken out loud in days.

The woman points to the kitchen.

Cecilia moves unsteadily down the hall, enters the kitchen, and kneels by the boy.

“What is she doing here?” the Puppet demands. “She belongs inside!”

“You don’t listen to me; I don’t listen to you!” says the woman, and folds her fleshy arms.

Yuri is unresponsive. His breathing is rapid and he’s sweating. Cecilia feels the pulse at his neck. His skin is burning hot.

“He’s going into hyperthermia.”

Zabrina raises wild eyes.

“What does that mean?”

“We have to lower his temperature, fast,” says Cecilia. “We need to stop the spasms or he will have a heart attack. Get him in the bathtub and pour cold water over him and fill the tub with ice, if you have it.” With their faces almost touching, Cecilia asks, “Do you have any Tylenol?”

“I have Valium,” Zabrina says.

But Zabrina is not hearing the words, and Cecilia is barely aware of saying them, both shocked by recognition. Zabrina sees the lady’s lip is swollen and a tooth is chipped. In the fever of withdrawal, she looks so deeply into the fierce eyes of the captive that she believes she can see the crystalline cells. The lady stares back intently. Detached from the cacophony of shrieking children and back-and-forth shouts between the woman and the Puppet, Cecilia and Zabrina realize that they know each other; they have met before, but where?

“Who are you?” whispers Zabrina.

Before Cecilia can answer, they are roughly jerked apart by the bodyguard and Fat Pasquale.

“Give him Valium!” Cecilia manages, before she is pushed back into the bedroom and the door is locked.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the Puppet is shouting at the woman. “You listen in on every phone call; you know exactly what is going on with Nicoli Nicosa’s wife. We are doing business here! I’m warning you, don’t fuck with me!”

The woman turns her back.

“You!” she says to the children. “All of you! Help with this boy.”

The kids and the woman drag Yuri’s inert body to the bathroom and heave him into the tub, flooding it with cold water until his shorts float. One of them empties a tray of ice cubes.