Headstone City

ninth grade, the rage as harsh and alive inside him as it had been the day she turned him down.

He drank too much but never managed to get drunk. It made him a little stupid, and he wound up doing things like stealing jeeps and driving over to the target range. He'd wait out there until they'd start shooting. Rifles, grenade launchers, or 20mm chainguns. While he waited under the jeep, on his belly in the dirt while the explosions heaved fire around him, he'd think to himself, I'm not suicidal. I'm not really sure what this is all about.

Now he was sitting on his grandmother's couch, those same webs of memory tugging too much into his head at one time. He sort of just awoke from time to time, staring at the television and drinking 151 rum, hating the taste but still hoping it might quell his noisy mind.

Grandma walked in, smiling, her pocketbook swinging on her arm, jingling a plastic container full of pennies. It was bingo night and she must've hit on one of the round-robins, the way she was grinning.

Her fingertips were stained red from the dye she used to blot numbers. She'd been playing for maybe fifty years, and still, every time, she got her hands covered like she'd found some guy in an alley with his throat cut and tried to staunch his arterial spray.

See, like that. You think about your grandmother playing bingo and now JoJo Tormino is dying in front of you again, and the boy with the sick brain whose skull sutures are tearing apart. You feel the hot wind of another memory coming in fast. Ma in the kitchen putting icing on your birthday cake. Six years old, you got the little pointy hat on, the rubber band holding it tight to your head and cutting into your chin. Ma using a rubber spatula to finish covering up a chocolate angel food cake. The phone rings and she turns to answer it, the smile seared onto her face, the fear always there that the caller will tell her Dad is dead. That same hideous smile every time the fucking phone rang.

He threw back his drink and let the ice rest against his teeth for a second. Since he'd gotten back to the neighborhood he'd been moving fast without any focus. He had to work on that too.

Grandma Lucia spent ten minutes washing her hands but couldn't get them entirely clean. She sat beside him, sniffed, made a face, and said, “Che puzz! Rum. It'll make you sick.”

“I'm okay.”

“You drunk? If you get sick, don't throw up on my nice rugs.”

The rugs might be nice, but they were mostly covered by plastic runners. He didn't think he could hit the carpet if he tried. “I'm just trying to wind down.”

“There's licorice in the candy dish. Have some. It's good for you.”

“All right.”

“You're like your grandfather, you should stick to wine. You drink wine and maybe you chuckle every now and again, remembering something funny. Maybe sing some opera. You drink anything else, and you start thinking too much about your troubles. Just like your grandpa, he'd sit around the house with a bottle of amaretto and mope and fume. He'd shine his shoes until they shone so bright they'd blind him. Liquor doesn't do for you what it does for everybody else. It closes you up even more inside.”

“That's what I'm hoping for.”

“It shouldn't be. You can never get so closed up that you don't hear your own thoughts. What's'a'matter for you? Try more wine. You might laugh a little.”

The two of them stared at the shelves of photographs hanging over the television. Different kinds, going back to the late 1800s. Old Italians who had been dead for Christ knew how long, with names he couldn't pronounce. Black-and-whites of his parents in the sixties, his father looking hep cat cool, hair greased into a DA when it was already out of style. Dad had held on to something long gone, the same way Dane now did. It gave them more common ground.

Looking at the pictures used to calm him, even get him mellow sometimes. But if he kept at it too long, the assault of the past shoving at him too hard, it made him even more edgy. He turned and saw the muscles in Grandma's jaws clenched tightly and thought maybe the same thing happened to her.

“I've been dreaming about that JoJo Tormino,” she told him, organizing her pocketbook, taking out her bingo chips, the blotters, the used-up sheets and boards. “Always dressed so nice, with a fresh flower in his lapel. Never went by without saying hello. You didn't tell me you were there when he got clipped.”

Why hadn't he said anything about that? He'd walked into the house and she'd yelled about the biscotti, and he'd turned around and walked out and gone to another bakery to get them, the pignoli cookies, sfogliatelle, and cannoli. He came back and they had dinner and he never mentioned talking to JoJo while the man died in front of him.

“He's still got a heavy heart that won't let him rest,” Grandma said, patting his wrist, telling him something more in her touch. That Dane shouldn't go out the same way, or he'd just hover around the neighborhood forever, like so many of them. If he could lighten his load any before the curtain, he would.

“He had some unfinished business,” Dane said.

“That JoJo,” she said. “I always liked him. He didn't go out alone, did he?”

“No.”

“How many did he take down?”

“All three shooters.”

“Dio!” Grandma giving a smile, showing her admiration for that. Dying with a gun in your hand, a bloody carnation on your chest.

Dane figured he'd keep the rest of the story to himself, about the ring and swearing an oath to tell Maria Monticelli that JoJo had always loved her. If Grandma dreamed about it, then fine, but he didn't have to let her know every goddamn thing.

She said, “The.38, it's still under your pillow. I think you should start carrying it. Now that you're walking in on hits, it'll be safer for you. And I shouldn't have to say these things to you. You should know them already, if you want to stay alive.”

“You're right. I will.”

“I told you already, have some of the licorice. Your breath.”

Grandma picked up his empty glass, started for the kitchen, and stopped short. She looked at the video box on top of the television, turned it over in her hands.

She hit the play button on the machine and the movie started from where he'd left off twenty minutes ago, right at the end of the pole-dancing scene. Glory Bishop panting, her hair a wild wet tangle, jugs dripping sweat.

“Madonna!” Grandma Lucia shouted, throwing a hand over her eyes. “What's this you got? A porno movie?”

“It's an action flick with a racy scene in it. I drove her out to Long Island, that actress, yesterday.”

“This putana? This is the clientele you're picking up now? Escorts? You're gonna get arrested again.”

“She's a real actress.”

“Yeah, I'm sure the Academy Award committee is gonna shortlist her.” Walking out of the room, crossing herself, and talking over her shoulder. “You think she'll do that dance at the Oscars?”

He stared at Glory Bishop on the screen, watched her doing her thing again, and thought, Oh, Holy Jesus Christ. It got him going, imagining her in a hot tub with another woman. He rewound the scene and watched it again, and once more.

An intensifying ache expanded within him, trying to free itself with such influence that Dane had to hug his guts in while he shrugged back a grunt of despair. Abruptly, Angelina was sitting beside him.

“You should visit me,” she said. “It'll make you feel better. You don't have anything better to do most days anyway.”

Chewing his tongue and tasting blood, he tried to say her name but couldn't do it. There were a great many words of power in life-common ones, familiar ones somehow too hard for him to speak. He wondered how you did it, died with style, drinking coffee and a sucking wound in your chest.

“You need to go, Angie,” he said, urging her on, trying to shove her through the veil. “You're not doing either of us any good. I don't want you here anymore.”

“Of course you do.”