10
Angelina sat at poolside, writing postcards then tearing them in little pieces.
She couldn't send them, clearly. But it was noon, she was faced with a chasm of empty hours before she could resume her quest, and she needed something to occupy her mind.
What did people do when they were on vacation? she wondered, glancing absently at towel-clad and naked men, late risers, as they straggled to the pool for their wake-up dips. Vacationers went sightseeing, she supposed. But that seemed like a lot of work when the temperature was ninety-three and the relentless sun caromed off the pavements and tripped you up behind the knees.
Maybe couples stayed in their air-conditioned rooms and made love through the heat of the day. Angelina could imagine that, sort of; and did. The details of the act itself remained teasingly hazy behind a curtain put up by her mind and the nuns and her mother; but the accoutrements of the moment she saw very clearly: the champagne chilling in its water-beaded bucket, a single perfect flower in its cut-glass vase; under silver domes, fancy eggs nestled in a warm and creamy sauce. Lovemaking became linked in her mind with toast points.
Or maybe what people did on vacation, Angelina thought, was wonder what other people on vacation were doing.
Like Michael. What did he do after eleven at night, by which time Angelina had had it, and he seemed just to be coming awake? Did he go off and have the kind of adventures that Angelina would and wouldn't want to hear about? Or did he stand around at clubs, ankles crossed and an elbow on the bar, too shy to ask someone to dance?
Angelina tore up another postcard, let her bare legs flop down against her lounge. Who knew what anybody else thought, or felt, or wanted? She sighed, watched with imperfect detachment the forms of undressed men, swimming, sunning, toweling dry. It was challenge enough in this life to have a clear idea of what oneself was thinking or wanting or trembling in the face of. It was enough to feel, once in life, the pure unceasing gravity of a fierce and un-deflectable desire.
* * *
At the Gatto Bianco Social Club on Prince Street, Paul Amaro had called a meeting.
His brothers Joe and A1 were there, A1 with his wrinkled shirttail hanging out. Funzie Gallo was there, his fat eyes pinching closed, his fingers sticky with strawberry glaze. Attending as well were seven or eight of the young and unreliable and half-the- time-on-drugs soldiers left in Paulie's brugad. As a token of respect and in recognition of the seriousness of the occasion, Benno Galuppi, the Fabretti family underboss and Paulie's direct superior, stopped by, wearing his amber-tinted glasses that changed to opaque brown when he turned away his gaze.
The Paulie Amaro they saw there was not the man that they were used to. The past few days seemed to have chastened him in ways that nine years in the can had not. His alert dark eyes looked flat and sluggish. Something tentative had crept into his raspy voice. The proud chest had caved in a little; for all his bulk, he seemed to be cowering under the soft wool of his dark blue suit.
He rose now at the front of the room; to mask a moment's lightheadedness, he leaned an elbow on the old Formica counter that held the espresso machine. He put down his coffee cup and began. "Most of you already know that my daughter Angelina is miss—"
His voice broke and he was ashamed. He drank some water and summoned rage to bully out the humiliating fear. Rage came easily as he looked out at his colleagues, sitting at card tables on ill-assorted chairs or leaning against the pool table where no one ever shot pool. These men were his allies, the closest thing he had to friends, but he would be ready in a heartbeat mortally to hate any of them, even his brothers, if it turned out that anything they'd done had led to Angelina's disappearance.
"—missing," he resumed, his voice edgier, louder. "We're here today to see if anyone has any idea where she is or how she got there."
His eyes panned accusingly, his mouth twitched, showing teeth. No one spoke. A few of the men had espresso cups in front of them, but they didn't pick them up, they didn't want to draw attention by even the softest rattling against the saucer. In the silence Paulie's anger and frustration swelled like mushrooms in the dark.
"Pete!" he spat out after a pause, and a thin young man whose nerves were chafed red on amphetamines jerked in his chair like a yanked marionette. "You still fuckin' with Pugliese union s?"
"No, Paul. No," said the wild-eyed soldier. "Funzie tol' me back off on that, I backed off months ago, I swear."
Paul sucked his gums, drank more water, turned on another of his minions.
"Butch, your Florida stuff—you makin' enemies wit' that?"
Butch was calm, well-dressed, and businesslike. "Everything's been divvied up," he said, "negotiated. I don't see that there's a problem."