He grunts but doesn’t answer me.
“Antonio?”
“Mia, Mia’s pizzeria.” He starts to laugh uncontrollably.
“Antonio!”
“Yeah,” he answers, his amusement dying. “I was there.”
“Antonio?” I call his name with an exasperated grunt as I start to hear his breaths becoming heavier and heavier. The ass, the fearful Antonio Moretti, is falling asleep out there and there’s no way I can let the conversation end, not after that. All the details start to connect. When I saw him leaving with Vinnie—that’s where he was going, wasn’t he? To my father.
“Antonio! Antonio!” I bang against the door.
He coughs, groans, then clears his throat. “Yeah?”
“What did you do?” I ask, “Why did you go and see my father?”
“Your father? Your father was unfinished business. Come on, you know that. I did what I had to.”
I stand up now, kicking the door with my heel. “Antonio! Answer me properly—what did you do? Where’s my father?!”
He laughs then coughs, annoyingly so, his attitude testing me. “Yeah, your old man and I had a little sit down. I thought it was time we talked.”
“What does that mean?” It feels like my stomach jumped to the back of my throat. Sit down, talked. That could mean anything. “Antonio?”
“You know what I don’t get about you? This whole time you’ve been so fearless. You somehow made me believe that you’re into this lifestyle, that danger turns you on, and that you’re not like the others. That you can coexist by my side. But I doubt if any of that is true. You’re nothing more than a tourist, isn’t that right?”
“My father, where is he?” I cut him off from his nonsensical talk. What could he possibly understand about my feelings? Nothing. He’s all speculation and self-indulgence, and it’s because of that, that I fear for my father’s safety. I don’t imagine it would take much for Antonio to act on something if it meant he could save his pride. And the biggest pride you get in the life of violence and crime is from punishing those who had wronged you. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is, and it scares the shit out of me.
I start to cry as memories of my father flash before me, my emotions fearing the worst. Whatever re-enactment I make in my mind, I can’t hide the image of my father’s body on the floor. The anger, the hurt, and the fear I feel build up inside me and boil over.
“How could you, Antonio?” I shout. Then, I cover my mouth and run over to the wastebasket in the corner of the room and start to throw up, start to sob uncontrollably.
With that sadness toward even the mere possibility that my father is no more, the cloud of disillusion that settled within my head gets lifted. It feels like, somehow, I had subconsciously dismissed the fact that it was my papa’s life on the line, selfishly so. I can see his face, the way his smile climbed up the right side of his cheek. How the bags under his eyes swelled with joy when he watched me reading the narration of my school play. They’re all things that I had forgotten about in my excitement of being held hostage. I’m crying because I’m angry, but I’m mostly angry at myself for thinking that this was all a game.
“We all make our choices, Mia.” I hear a thump against the door as Antonio throws his head back. “You hear me? Choices we have to live by, and our debts always have to be resolved.”
“Fuck you!” I run over and kick the door again. “Choices, choices, it’s so easy for you isn’t it. You and your family. Just take and take, everybody owes you. But what about you? Huh? What about the choices you make? What’s the price of your debts to this world?”
I kick the door over and over, wishing for him to feel my anger. When I hear nothing, I flip, run and knock over the table, pull the sheets from the bed, take a chair, and throw it against the wall.
“You make me sick!” I spit out the words then drop in my misery, laying with my face against the carpet.
Antonio’s lighter flicks again. There’s an inhale, a beat, then an exhale. “Are you done? Because that was quite the performance in there, at least it sounded like it was.”
I don’t answer, instead I let my breathing fill the room. If there weren’t bars on the windows, I would jump out, just to see how Antonio deals with that mess.
“It’s my father’s last days, I can feel it.” Antonio tells me as if the death of his father will compensate me. I listen only because I have to. He drunkenly continues down the road of his self-indulgent speech. “He knows it too. What a trip. Not sure what’s better—to let a bullet take you in an instant, or to wait with the painful knowledge that your time will come in a matter of days. What a fucking torture, waiting to die, while you relive all your disappointments. I wonder if my mother even makes an appearance in his memories. Probably not. Wonder if he thinks of me, my brother, or my sister in the last moments, or instead dreams of all those hookers he spent so much of his time with. Apart from the family business, it’s probably the latter.”
He knocks on the door. “Mia, you still there?”
My silence stays, soaking into the carpet with my tears.
“Your father—his mind was only occupied about one thing. You should know that.”
I sit up.
“It wasn’t polluted by other, unimportant things. You could see it. He was thinking of you. For that, at least, you should be grateful.”
On my knees, I crawl to the door. I call out for Antonio again, but he doesn’t answer, instead he snores with every inhale of his breath.