saltwater

Though Angelica appreciates the occasional bacchanal, she’s happiest at home with Nadia. Thanks to an excess of free time and a subscription to the cooking channel, the dinners they make are now as lavish as any they would order at a fancy restaurant. Angelica buys terra-cotta window pots and plants lemongrass, basil, mint, and thyme. 

Slowly, Nadia gains back the weight she lost. Her hair almost passes for a pixie cut now; one side is buzzed in preparation for her new tattoo. They can’t go to their old haunts, so they find a seaside shop with no gang affiliation. It is a small, shadowy space that barely fits a desk, massage chair, and pair of stools. The only concessions to comfort are an old-model television and a bowl of cheap chocolate candy. 

Angelica looks around warily, fretting about hepatitis and tetanus until Nadia elbows her in the ribs. The proprietor, an old woman in blue eyeshadow and ripped jeans, motions them inside. Nadia hands her the angel wing sketch, and the woman nods, guiding her into the vinyl seat and moving her head to the side none-too-gently.

“Name’s Fiorella. You want it in color?” 

“No. I want it in black.”

As soon as Fiorella lifts the razor to her scalp, Angelica grasps Nadia’s hand. With the other, she pulls her ruffled black dress down to cover her thighs, which are sticking to the hot plastic seat. At first, she is riveted by the tiny movements of the gun; she’s never been squeamish about blood, and she’s fascinated by the way the ink pools beneath fair skin. But then Nadia’s clutching her hand tighter, and the thought of Nadia in pain is enough to make her dizzy. She concentrates on the TV, instead. A Columbo marathon is playing, but the volume is too low for her to understand what the detective is saying. She and Nadia make up their own plot. 

“That pregnant blonde is his cousin, and her father shot him to protect their reputation.”

“No way! He found out his family ran a drug ring, and his father killed him because he wouldn’t go along.”

“Maybe it’s a serial killing. He’s trying to cleanse the town of sinners.”

The tattoo artist huffs, rolls her eyes, and declares that she’s taking a cigarette break.

As soon as she’s gone, Nadia snorts, “She reminds me of my grandma.”

“A hard woman?”

“I barely knew her. She died when I was six. But I remember that she was impatient like that. To hear my father tell it, she didn’t give a damn about anybody. All she cared about were cigarettes and buraco. She was great at buraco, actually. And she was a great shot.”

“You don’t take after her, then.” Nadia raises a brow, and Angelica laughs, poking her side. “Fine, I’ll admit you’re a great shot. But you’re not hard, you know.”

“I am, sometimes.”

“You protected him,” Angelica says, and her voice is firm. “And you protected me.” 

When Fiorella turns on the gun again, Nadia seems to fade. She’s nearly unconscious from the rush of endorphins, and her hand is loose in Angelica’s. Angelica keeps close to her anyway, admiring her long eyelashes and fighting the urge to kiss her forehead.

The tattoo artist holds up a mirror for her to see the finished work, and Nadia smiles, satisfied. Angelica smiles, too, as giddy as if the ink was on her own body.

—-

That night, Nadia tosses and turns. Angelica can’t sleep when Nadia is restless, so she stares at the ceiling, worrying that this tribute has done more harm than good. Has it reminded her too much of her grief? she wonders. Will she ever get over him? Will we always live in turmoil like this?

Though they usually sleep deeply, there are still nights when they dream about what was taken from them. They even wake up screaming, every once in awhile. 

Thankfully, neither has heard from any family members or old associates. They keep a gun in the entryway anyway. There’s a bat under the bed and an antique vendetta knife in Angelica’s purse. Nadia has been teaching Angelica to lift weights, and they plan on taking up boxing someday. “I watched Aureliano practice so many times. I must have picked up something,” Nadia insists, acting as spotter as Angelica struggles with the dumbbell.

In this house, they are safe-or at least, safer than they’ve been in a long while. Angelica likes to imagine them as music box miniatures, dancing in circles between mirrors; when the music stops, they are tucked away in black. But she knows that they were not bred to live in such sweet domesticity forever. Their darkness is full of sharps.

Nadia sighs and sits up. “Hey,” she says, yawning, when she notices Angelica is awake beside her. “Did I keep you up? Should I crash on the couch?”

Angelica yawns reflexively back. “No, I was just thinking...do you think something is wrong with us?”

“Plenty of people have insomnia-especially after they got their head inked and they can’t find a comfortable position.”

“No, I mean. The nightmares.”

“Oh god, did you have another one?” Nadia is suddenly alert. She moves closer.

“No, no. It’s only...I dream about what they did to me.”

“...Me too. That’s not so strange.”

“But I don’t dream about what I did.”

“That’s because you know deep down that you did what you had to,” Nadia says firmly. “I shot when I had to, and I’d do it again.”

To Nadia, killing is practical. But Angelica is skeptical that Nadia has ever known true hatred, the kind that she feels in her chest and the back of her throat. Angelica’s motives have never been so pure.

She fantasizes about the moment Manfredi realized he was done for, and the pleasure she feels imagining his terror borders on the erotic. She recognizes that it is a sin. But that’swhat it means to be human, she tells herself, praying the rosary. A feeling that is so commonplace could not be truly wrong. We all contradict ourselves. How else could we go on?

In this way, she and Spadino were the same. She knows he would have been as gentle to their daughter as he was to her, in the end. She loved him, her partner in literal crime, her wannabe emperor. But he was snarling and cocky, clever and theatrical, and he reveled in his own ruthlessness. Angelica was stronger, though, and more decisive. She hated his uncertainty, his fear, and his capacity for mercy. They proven more destructive to her than any deliberate cruelty. Nadia, she notes, remembering that stern, beautiful face behind the barrel of a gun, would not hesitate.

Angelica wonders why she refers to Spadino in the past tense. She refuses to consider where he is now, or who he’s with, or what he’s learned from their mistakes, treating him like he died in that shoot-out with his brother and the man he loved. Instead, she turns towards Nadia and asks what they should do later in the day.

“We’ll fall asleep eventually. Let’s turn off our alarms and laze all afternoon.” Angelica is clutching a pillow to her chest, and Nadia puts a hand on her wrist. “Dream of happier things.”

Angelica closes her eyes, and she starts to believe.