Mafia Girl Read online

“A reporter may call you,” the editor says. “Just a few questions for the lead in.”

  “No problem.”

  I put on my coat, then kick Frankie’s chair to wake him.

  “Start talking to them about buying the dress,” I whisper, pointing to it hanging over a chair.

  “No,” I hear them say when he asks. “No, it’s impossible, impossible. We have to FedEx it back to Paris.”

  But Frankie keeps pushing and takes out his fat roll and starts counting out the hundreds, then adjusts the Glock in his ankle holster, getting impatient, cursing them out, and within a split second, they are exchanging looks and then packing up the dress, which he got for just under a thousand dollars, I think. And we’re out of there.

  After that, all I can think of is wearing it to see Michael, which is insane because exactly where is Michael? And what am I supposed to do—go back to the grunge bar and wait for him again? As if I could with my dad now on my case and Frankie and Vinnie taking turns spying on me. Calling Michael wouldn’t work either because he won’t take the call. And anyway, it is so his move.

  What does give me some peace of mind is thinking that he is probably suffering the way I am, up at night fantasizing about me—assuming he doesn’t have a girlfriend, which he probably does, but whatever. I am not like her, I am sure, because if there’s one thing that people say about me all the time, it’s “Gia, you are one of a kind.”

  After I call Ro and tell her about the shoot and call Clive and then call Candy, I go home and sneak the dress up to my room so my mom and dad won’t realize that the entire back is missing. Then I call Dante.

  “Come over,” I say like a command because I need male feedback.

  He’s there in a flash and I lock the door to my room and take off the robe I have on over it and turn around so he sees the dress or what’s missing from it.

  “What do you think?”

  He goes ape shit and grabs me and yada, yada, yada in a heartbeat and he says, “I’ll get you sports tickets for the school fund-raiser. I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  So the dress is already paying for itself.

  SEVENTEEN

  The writer who’s doing the intro to the pictures for Vogue calls a few days after the shoot.

  “Do you have a few minutes?

  Happy to take a break from bio, I close my notebook. We chat about the kind of clothes I like to wear.

  “Designer mixed with H&M and other stuff.”

  Where I shop. “Everywhere,” because off the truck won’t cut it.

  “Do you have a boyfriend? ”

  “No…I don’t.” To be safe.

  Then I think the questions are over because she says she really enjoyed chatting with me and I thank her and say I enjoyed it too, then she says, “Oh, one last thing.”

  I hesitate. “Yes?”

  “You live in a very high profile world.”

  High profile?

  “Your dad is in the newspapers all the time…and on TV.”

  I hold my breath.

  “How does that affect you?”

  Never talk to reporters, Super Mario once told me. They’re your best friends until they sit down at the computer. The seconds go by. My face gets hot. I want to hang up and not have this conversation. “If I wasn’t his daughter, you wouldn’t be interviewing me for Vogue magazine—”

  “Yes, but I mean the…”

  I know what you mean. “So I’m really honored to be part of the story, thank you.” I press end and hold my middle finger up to the phone.

  I forget about Vogue magazine and do homework. And then I’m having a four-way conference call with Ro and Clive and Candy and checking email and searching online for the perfect red silk thong because I’m thinking about New Year’s Eve and imagining a romantic night with Michael with dinner and champagne and chocolates. Although that is out of the realm and anyway, he’s probably more of a hamburger and beer guy. But then I stop fantasizing when I hear loud voices downstairs.

  My mom is crying.

  Frankie and Vinnie are shouting. A sick familiar feeling creeps up my spine.

  “I have to go,” I yell into the phone. I know the cops are after my dad for something because they probably bugged his phone or the social club and decided that whatever he said or didn’t say fingered him even though by now he knows to be careful and talk in a code that only he and his friends can understand.

  “Ma, what is it? What is it?” I say, running down the stairs.

  “Find your brother, find Anthony!” she yells, shaking her head. I have no idea where Anthony is, but she always feels better when he’s around. So I get on the phone and start texting his friends to call me now!

  This has happened before and I shouldn’t get scared, but I always do because deep in my gut I get this feeling that life is spiraling out of control and all of us are powerless to stop it and my dad is always the target, always. And I mean how many times can you dodge a bullet?

  Last time there were about twenty feds along with NYC detectives and it looked like they were trying to stop a terrorist attack instead of just bringing my dad and a few of his associates in, as if that was so hard. Then to make it worse, they made sure to call the Daily News and the Post and TV too so they could embarrass us and make themselves look good.

  Within five minutes the outside of our house is lit like a movie set even though my dad isn’t even home and we’re stuck inside peeking through slits on the side of closed drapes to see what’s going on.

  When they finally find my dad in a restaurant, they make a show of cuffing him while his manicotti sits there half eaten. Like what would he do, try to run with fifty cops surrounding him, guns drawn, ready to shoot? With his hands cuffed behind him, they perp walk him across the street with the TV cameras rolling and then book him downtown for RICO and murder or manslaughter even though my dad actually never personally killed anyone. I know that. I believe it.

  Anthony comes home in five minutes and he has to parade past the TV cameras too, trying his best not to smack them out of his way, which he is dying to do. Not to mention cursing them out while they’re yelling questions in his face about what he thinks about what my dad did or didn’t do and then wanting to know, “are you taking over after your dad? Are you next in line?”

  He comes in slamming the front door hard and talks to my mom and Vinnie and Frankie who is perpetually cleaning his Glock, and they have a conference call with Super Mario who is already in his car on his way to help my dad.

  “It’s time for dinner,” my mom announces, going into her default setting. She heads for the freezer and takes out a pan of lasagna because God forbid in life you should miss a meal. She slips it into the oven and slams the door too hard and we sit and fold our hands and pretend everything will be just fine and that we should try to eat and relax and act normal, even though there’s no normal in our family.

  Anthony opens some Chianti and I dive for it and drink about five glasses because aside from everything with my dad, how will I face everyone tomorrow at school in the middle of this media circus?

  EIGHTEEN

  The only thing I want to do when my alarm wakes me is hurl it against the wall. But not showing up will send a clear message to everyone at school that the don’s daughter can’t deal, and screw that, so I get out the door. And even though I’d rather hide on the subway wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, that’s not happening.

  Frankie and I don’t talk on the way to school, but he keeps looking over at me to see how I’m doing. And then I get a text and it’s just xs and os from Clive, who doesn’t know what to say but just wants to send me love, which is why I love him. He’s one of the few people who knows and accepts the real me even though sometimes I’m not sure there is a real me with a single identity anymore.

  I decide to hide out at Clive’s after school to get away from Little Italy and the reporters. And for the second time I call and cancel work and they’d probably like to fire me, but they can’t becaus
e my dad and Ro’s are best friends and associates and yada yada.

  Nothing really special happens at school in the morning. I guess even Christy and Georgina are afraid to open their mouths because with all the attention on my dad and the arrest I might explode and blow them to bits. There are no metal detectors at Morgan, at least not yet, and there’s a chance that Mafia Girl might be packing heat, which isn’t so remote since I know where Anthony keeps his gun and I did go with him to a shooting range when we were out West and I took lessons and no one could believe how good a shot I was.

  I remember what the instructor all duded up in camouflage gear said, “Shit, girl, you’re a natural born killer.” That was a compliment, I think. So after that I asked my dad for a gun like the little .38 pink lady revolver I saw online, and he smiled but didn’t answer, which wasn’t a yes, but wasn’t a no either.

  After lunch I need my math book, so I head to my locker. Mafia Slut has been sanded away, a fresh coat of paint covering the evidence.

  Amped-up heartbeat…early warning system.

  Only now there’s a folded piece of paper wedged into the side of the locker door. Someone copied a newspaper picture of my dad with the headline: Mob Boss, and underneath it scrawled: Like father, like daughter.

  When I look up I realize that I’m not the only one to get the flyer. They’re sticking out the sides of every locker door.

  I must be on Clive’s radar screen, because a moment later he runs over to me waving the copy that he got.

  “These people are pigs,” he says, making his way along the row of lockers, removing the flyers, tucking them into his notebook. “Every one of these is going to the principal’s office.”

  “Like that will help?”

  My mom calls and tells me to come home after school, but I can’t stand all the cameras so I have a fight with her and win and Clive and I walk across the park and go to his apartment.

  “Are you okay, Gia?” He puts his arm around me and pulls me closer to him.

  “Sort of,” although this never gets easier. I look over at Clive. “I’d never admit it to anyone but you, but what I wish is that I could be anonymous like everyone else with a dad who has a normal, boring job like a teacher or an accountant or a salesman so everyone would think his work is so dull that they’d never bring it up.”

  “I know,” Clive says, staring off.

  “I wish I had other kids’ problems, like how am I going to afford new Uggs or a down jacket from the Gap or a trip to Disney World or whatever, you know?”

  He nods again, biting his nail.

  And not be bullied on a regular basis or see full-page ads in the papers about upcoming documentaries about the mob or think about my dad being dragged off to prison and our family becoming the target of my dad’s enemies who want to show their muscle by gunning us down.

  “I just want all the crap with my family to go away.”

  Clive must read something in my eyes that he’s never seen before because he does something he’s never done before. He opens up to me about his parents and how everyone thinks he’s the luckiest person in the world because his family is rich.

  “All I ever wanted was to have a brother or a sister and parents who came home at the end of the day and cooked dinner and sat down with me around the kitchen table and asked me about school or my friends or whatever.” He shakes his head. “People who cared, Gia,” he says. “I never even had anyone to fight with. No one.”

  I can’t think of what to say to that because, I mean, who is he telling, Miss Average American Girl? My family is dysfunctional too, just in a different kind of way.

  “Maybe friends have become the new family.”

  He considers that but doesn’t buy it. “It’s not the same.”

  The truth is that even though my life is crazy, I’ve always had the family stuff, usually too much of it. When it comes to being loved that’s one thing at least that my parents got right. Only our family is so tight and afraid of outsiders that we don’t let anyone else in and other people see that and don’t let us in.

  So Clive and I are both lonely and strung out in our own different ways, but I mean maybe other people are strung out in their own ways too, because I don’t really believe that people who I think look normal are really happy, happy, happy all the time either.

  But instead of thinking too hard about deep stuff like that we veg out in front of the TV. And while we’re surfing past the History Channel and prohibition stuff and Sopranos reruns, which remind me of me and my life, I yell stop when Clive starts to skip past the New York 1 story about my dad being busted.

  It’s not because I want to see him on the big screen. It’s because while I’m watching, I’m looking at the people around my dad and all the back-up cops, and my eye catches something in the corner of the screen, and I sit up straight and focus and—Holy Christ!—one of the faces of one of the cops looks familiar. Is it Michael?

  Only no, it’s not. My brain is playing tricks on me and I have to stop this obsessing because Michael is on some other planet.

  Or might as well be.

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  NINETEEN

  “Sure you’re okay?” Clive asks.

  I walk away from the TV and toward the window and look down on the entire panorama of New York City and Central Park and the crowds of people swirling around below us in slow motion, each of them going off purposely in one direction or another, like they’ve captured by some filmmaker who’s made a living map of the world.

  Only I’m not on it.

  And I am feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt and I don’t know where to turn anymore because if the guy I am obsessed with actually was one of the massive NYPD patrol that backed up the feds assigned to put my dad behind bars for the rest of his life, where does that leave me? And even if he wasn’t, he is on their side. Otherwise what is he doing working for the NYPD?

  Ro is right. Someone like me cannot fall for a cop.

  I start feeling this overwhelming rage at Michael and everything he stands for. Then again, what did I expect? It’s not like he led me on. Everything that’s happened was my doing.

  So really, what’s left? Go home and maybe call up Dante. Tell him that I’ve been thinking about him, and I know where that will go. But at this point I don’t care anymore. At least I know who he is and which side he’s on and all that truth means a lot, and anyway, he’s not all complicated like Michael and I can just close my eyes.

  Clive comes back into the living room holding two mugs of hot chocolate. He hands me one, which I don’t feel like having, but there’s an expression in his eyes like a little kid who hopes you’ll like his surprise. I take the mug and smile at him because that is so Clive to think of something like hot chocolate at a time like this. I sit down next to him and sip it.

  “It’s the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.”

  He smiles this megawatt Clive Laurent five-year-old happy-to-please grin, which does make me feel better. Not only that, something about sharing hot chocolate with him does help, which could be the chemical perk-up thing in chocolate.

  But whatever, Clive knows my mood is changing because he picks stuff like that up on this visceral level. I finish the whole thing and get warm inside and say without really thinking, “it’s so warm in here, don’t you want to take off the scarf?”

  He looks away and doesn’t answer.

  “Clive?”

  He turns back to me and his face changes and grows distant, which gives me an uneasy feeling. He looks down for a few seconds as though he’s deep in thought before he reaches up and slowly unties the scarf. I sit back and look at all the books on his shelves, half of them about history, and think about how he reads so much and how smart he is. And I look up at him again just as he pulls the scarf away, watching my face, waiting, with this expectant look.

  My eyes get wide and I feel my mouth open. There’s a thin white scar all alo
ng his neck.

  “Now you know why I wear the scarf, Gia. I tried to kill myself.”

  TWENTY

  I’m speechless for I don’t know how long.

  Something like that never, ever, entered my mind and I’m in free fall and feeling sick inside at the thought of my wonderful, decent, gentle, sweet, loving, brilliant Clive actually doing something like that, which seems so desperate and not like what he would do. Almost worse is the thought of him suffering so much that he’d get to that point.

  “No one knows,” he whispers. “Please don’t tell.”

  I stare at him and swallow and finally hear myself whispering, “Never. Never…don’t worry…when…when did it happen?”

  “A little over two years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  He bites the corner of his lip and he looks so sad suddenly, so alone and so young. “I was home alone one night and the maids had gone to bed.” He stares off, a hurt look on his face, as if he’s reliving it. “I wanted to call someone, to talk to someone, anyone, because I felt so lost. Do you know how that feels, Gia? To need to talk to someone and have no one in the whole world to call who will listen to you? No one to confide in or trust? No one who cares? I went over all the names of the people I knew and I realized I had no one—not one friend to call. No one I could talk to who would understand everything. I started thinking that I had nothing to live for anyway and that if I were dead it wouldn’t matter to anyone.” He shrugs. “My parents obviously didn’t care enough about me because they were never home and their work was more important that I was…”

  I stare at him and feel the tears welling up behind my eyes.

  “It was so easy, Gia. Just me and the razor. It would be over fast. So I went into the toolbox and grabbed a new blade out of the pack and did it—one straight clean cut, then another.”

  “Who found you?”

  “My dad. He came home for a day or two—I wasn’t expecting him.

  “His timing was impeccable because I had just done it.”