“For two doughnuts, you will have to be very, very good during Mass. Like a little mouse. Can you do that?”
He nodded solemnly, making tiny squeaking noises. Carlo laughed. God, he loved this boy.
“Good job, pal. Let’s get you in the bath, then.”
~oOo~
Carlo didn’t attend Mass regularly in Providence; in fact, he really didn’t at all. His faith was not lapsed, but it wasn’t exactly emphatically active, either. Still, being Catholic was as much a part of his identity as being Italian-American. It was culture to him at least as much as it was religion. And in Quiet Cove, there wasn’t even a question. Mass on Sunday. Period. If a Pagano was in the Cove on Sunday morning, then he or she was sitting in a pew at Christ the King by nine o’clock.
Almost half the population of the small town of about five thousand year-long residents was of Italian descent. The population blossomed in the summer to more than double its census, but far fewer of the summer people had Italian blood. The place became positively WASPy by Memorial Day. Still, the pews at Christ the King were SRO for all four services every Sunday morning.
The Pagano family took up almost a whole row near the front, both sides of the aisle: Carlo Sr., Carlo, Trey, Carmen, John, Rosa—and, genuflecting and dropping his ass at the end just before Mass began, Luca. Even he wasn’t rebel enough to blow off Mass. On the other side of the aisle, Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie—their three daughters were all grown, married, and living away—and Aunt Betty, Uncle Lorrie, and Nick, Lorrie and Betty’s only living son. Joey sat next to Nick. Carlo didn’t like that. Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie were the Paganos most people thought about when they heard the name. Ben, the eldest brother, was the Don of the family; Lorrie was his right hand. Nick was coming up in the family, a capo in his own right.
Of all Carlo Sr.’s kids, Joey was the only one who’d been dazzled by the family infamy. For the others, it was a weight they’d had to carry. But Joey wanted to live in the world of The Godfather—or even Goodfellas or The Sopranos. Those fictional worlds weren’t exactly like the real version, but that had not dissuaded Joey. Uncle Ben, deferring to his youngest brother’s desires for his children to stay out of that life, had always set him away. But if Joey had moved to the other side of the aisle, maybe something had changed.
Carlo Sr. had scowled down the row when Luca had sat down, his motorcycle helmet on the pew next to him, but otherwise, his focus was on the altar. Carlo turned and considered his father’s profile. He got the impression that he was carefully trying not to pay attention to where his youngest son had decided to sit. Not having been home for several weeks, Carlo wasn’t sure whether this was a new thing or not, but the sense he got was that everyone was as surprised as he was.
He turned the other way and leaned over Trey to Carmen. “Joey?”
She only shook her head and rolled her eyes. A talk for another time, then. But soon. He didn’t like this development at all.
~oOo~
His intention to grill Carmen for some information about Joey was thwarted after Mass, when they were milling with other parishioners on the sidewalk outside the church, taking their turn to say a word to Father Michael. As Trey squatted down next to him to study a beetle trundling over the concrete, Carlo turned and came face to face with Sabina. Bina. She must have been at Mass.
Her hair was brushed sleekly straight and held back with a silk scarf fixed like a wide headband. She was dressed in a pretty, brownish-pink skirt that fell below her knees and a snug, off-white sleeveless sweater with a kind of short turtleneck. That sweater showed nothing and everything and was completely stunning.
He looked down at her feet and saw that she was wearing tall, off-white boots with what he would call a high heel. Jenny would probably have laughed at that. She’d always preferred sky-high heels. Still did, for all he knew.
But he was surprised to see Bina here at all, much less wearing heels. Her foot had been in not-great shape last night. The marks on her wrists were gone, too, somehow.
“Bina. Good morning. Are you doing better?”
“Yes. Thank you. And to you, too, good morning. I stopped only to say, again, thank you. For helping me.”
“It was my pleasure.” It really was. Too much his pleasure. He’d been tortured all night by thoughts of her soft skin in his hand. Her laugh. And that last smile as he was leaving. His creative mind had taken those tiny details of the real world and turned them into vivid fodder for his dream world.