Peril

considerations meant nothing, her little allurements added in vain. There was no glimmer of romantic appreciation left in Leonardo Labriola, and so she knew that what little power she thought she might have had over him had long ago dropped away.

He blinked dully, his eyes on her eyes, wandering nowhere, so that Celia knew that she was as unrecognizable to him as the little boy he’d sired, no less a foreign, unknown, crumbling thing. And yet he had loved her once, hadn’t he? He had said he did, and she had believed it. He had whispered it in her ear softly, gently, and through all the years that had passed since then, she had harbored the belief that it had been true. But now a wholly different truth emerged, the terrible nature of her gullibility, the lie she’d swallowed and then nurtured through the years, telling herself that once she’d been loved by a smart boy, a handsome boy, a boy with class, with a future, a boy on his way to college, that once, just once, she’d possessed the looks and manner of one who could summon the love of such a person. She had come in the hope of reluming that memory in the man who stood before her. Now she realized that no such possibility existed, or had ever existed, that she was merely one of many others he’d known briefly, then discarded.

“When we were . . .” she began, then stopped since there was no point in appealing to the past, the night in the car, the talk of love. All of that was dead. And so she said, “My daughter lives across the street from your son. That’s what I got to talk to you about, Leonardo.”

The way she’d used his first name appeared to drop a stone in the deep well of his consciousness, release a few small ripples into his mind. “What’d you call me?”

“Leonardo,” Celia answered. “I called you that in high school.”

Labriola’s eyes squeezed together but without recognition.

“The thing is, I want you to leave my daughter alone,” Celia said.

“You what?”

“You came to her house,” Celia said, but without the boldness she’d hoped to show him. Instead, she felt a rising fear she met the only way she knew how, which was to harden and grow more bold. “You threatened her. You came to her house and threatened her.”

Labriola leveled a lethal stare in Celia’s direction and stepped out onto the porch. “What I do is none of your fucking business.”

She could see the full depth of what he had become, the serpent that lay coiled within him. She felt like a small brown sparrow, he the hawk circling overhead. Her only choice was to act like a sparrow, charge the hawk as if it were the same size, inflate herself with courage. “Just leave my daughter alone,” she snapped back at him.

Labriola stepped toward her, and she felt the force of all the violence he’d known. It came at her like a wind, dry and brutal, and she lifted her hand as if against a blow.

“Don’t touch me,” she blurted out.

Labriola seemed to expand on a breath of hatred, grow immensely large in his fearful rage and spite. “You tell that daughter of yours she better keep her fucking mouth shut.”

Celia stumbled backward as Labriola pressed forward relentlessly.

“That bitch is going to pay,” Labriola screamed. “That fucking bitch that left Tony.”

She turned and headed down the stairs, moving far more quickly than she’d have thought possible, her arthritic limbs now scared into obedience, lubricating her arid joints with panic’s slithery oil.

“And if anybody gets between me and that worthless cunt, they’re going to pay too,” Labriola bellowed.

She reached the bottom of the stairs, then hurled herself down the walkway and through the gate, Labriola’s voice still rushing at her like a snarling dog.

“You tell that to your fucking daughter.”

She knew he’d stopped at the top of the stairs, but she didn’t dare look back to make sure, afraid that such a glance might inflame him further, send him flying through the clanging gate and after her again, his breath upon her back like a raging bear. And so she raced on down the street, her legs aching beneath her weight, her ankles shooting tongues of pain into her fleshy calves, until she finally stopped beside a tree, darted around it, then pressed her back against it, exhausted, panting, her mind still whirling in the aftermath of a meeting she’d thought might go well but which she would now remember only with a bitter taste, the last sweet thoughts of youth now shattered beyond repair, Labriola no more than a brutal old man, and she the fool who’d loved him all her life.

SARA

He arrived with roses wrapped in clear plastic, the stems secured with a blue rubber band.

“I got them at the corner deli,” he told her. “I figured they’d brighten the place up a little.”

She took them from him. “Thanks.”

They walked up the stairs, and she stood silently while he fumbled for the keys, retrieved them at last, then opened the door.

“Lucille used to have a vase in the kitchen,” he told her. “Top shelf.”

He found the vase, filled it with water, stuffed the flowers into it, and returned to the small living room, where he stood, glancing about. “You can rearrange things any way you want,” he said. Then he placed the vase on the small wooden table next to the front window. “Place could use a little light,” he said as he threw open the curtains.

A bright shaft of light swept down in a gleaming slant.

“I’ve never seen the curtains open,” he said, turning to her. “Lucille was, I don’t know, she didn’t like too much light. Actually, she didn’t like any at all.” He looked at the flowers. “Lucille didn’t like flowers either.”

“Why was she so unhappy?” Sara asked.

“I don’t know,” Abe answered. He faced the window. “Nice street. So, what do you think of the place?”

“I like it,” she said.

He moved to the piano and put down the music he’d brought. “I was hoping you’d sing again.” Before she could answer, he placed the music on the music stand. “I put them in the order I think they should be sung,” he told her. “I mean, if it were an act.”

She started to say no, to repeat once again that it was impossible, but he sat down and placed his hands on the keyboard. “Ready when you are.”

“I can’t,” she said.

He looked at her sternly. “You have to,” he said. “You have to, Samantha, or you’ll”— his eyes appeared almost to melt in the intensity of what he said—“or you’ll give up on everything.”

Tentatively, she stepped over to the piano, looked at the music, and began, singing softly at first, her eyes meeting his briefly, then leaping away.

She finished four songs before he said “Okay, that’s enough for now” and lowered the top back over the keys. “What you need is an audience,” he told her. “Feedback.” Before she could respond, he plunged ahead. “I don’t mean a full act. Just a few songs for a few people. The late-night crowd.” He smiled. “How about tonight?”

She felt her stomach draw into a knot.

“What’s the matter, Samantha?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have to stay . . .”

“What?”

She shook her head.

“Hidden,” Abe said. “Isn’t that what you told me when I offered you a job? That you couldn’t take it because you had to stay hidden?”

She nodded.

“Who are you hiding from?”

She turned away, but he took her shoulders lightly and drew her back to him. “Some guy after you? Boyfriend?”

She shook her head.

“Husband?”

“No.”

She tried to turn away again, but he held her more firmly. “You in trouble with the cops, something like