“Can’t wait. Next month will you make pierogis?” Marianna asks, and then makes a scene clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Please, Zia, please.”
Her aunt laughs, always laughing at Marianna, and agrees. She pulls my wife, then me, and then Sasha in for tight hugs. Business isn’t mentioned, Marianna gives no hint to our plans, we just leave after ninety minutes of visiting. And then we’re off down the road the way we came.
Halfway back into Boston, though, Marianna brings the car into the parking lot of a butcher next to a Dunkin’. She stops for a coffee first—one cream, three sugars—and tells Sasha to get the cooler from the car. In the butcher’s shop, the man working is Irish, and greets Mary warmly, yelling that it’s been too long and just who the hell has she been getting her guanciale from if not him.
She hands him the fresh coffee. “I haven’t been cooking! Didn’t you hear I got a rich new husband who follows me around and has a private chef for us?”
The butcher looks at me as if just noticing I’m here, sizing me up. “She eating right?” he asks me.
“Of course,” I say. “Whatever she wants.”
He can respect this, mutters that she’d better, and offers a sturdy thud on the shoulder as we pass him to go to the back.
We pass through the back of the old, tidy shop, and I think we’re going to go old school and find ourselves in one of the freezers, but Marianna leads us out the back door and up a set of exterior steps to an apartment, opening the door without fanfare.
Three men sit shooting the shit at a table, and one of them pales when they see Marianna.
If I had to guess, that’s our guy.
“Shadow,” he starts after clearing his throat, trying to act cool. I’ve never met the man, but he can’t be that much older than me. “What brings you to these parts today?”
“Ms. Morelli,” another man greets.
“It’s Orlov now, Ronny.” She wiggles the fingers of her left hand, her ring impossible to miss. I feel an absurd urge to preen at her correction, though she was just calling me an idiot this morning.
“Have you met my husband?” She nods in my direction and I nod at the three sitting around the table. “I wanted him to meet my uncle. Thought I’d stop by here after.”
Mary takes her cooler into the kitchen like she owns the place, and the quiet that follows is unsettling. Two of the men at the table look at the one who’s now sweating, their faces grim. If I was a betting man, I would bet his name to be Hugh Sullivan.
The man puts his cards down after tapping them on the table a few times.
“I think I should be going. Duty calls and all that.”
“Nah, Hugh, I just got here,” Marianna calls from the kitchen. “Sit.”
His eyes flash, terrified, and he looks to where Sasha stands with his back against the front door, arms crossed over his chest. Sasha smirks at the man.
“I, ah—” Our Hugh stands as Marianna reenters from the kitchen, four short glasses in her hands.
“Sit the fuck down,” she says, nothing friendly about it, and he does. Mary takes her time sitting at the folding table after setting the glasses down. She slides one to each of the players, then chuckles to herself and switches two of them.
A bead of sweat slides down the side of Hugh’s forehead.
“Baby, why don’t you sit down?” she says to me, standing from the chair so I can take her place. As soon as I do, she sits onmy leg, shocking the hell out of me, doing so like she’s done it a hundred times.
Nobody touches their glasses, and Marianna snaps like she’s forgotten something, retreating into the kitchen only to return with a bottle of Vodka. She sits back on my lap and my arm snakes around her waist settling on her upper thigh.
The man across from us watches the movement.
“I didn’t get to congratulate you,” Hugh says. “I heard it was a beautiful wedding.”
“It was,” Marianna says. “You know, I worried people would be mad about it. Maxim’s such an eligible bachelor, he’s got so many ears and eyes around the city, and well, I’m just—what’s it we heard recently?” she asks me.
My lips part and I answer, “A little psycho.”
The words burn coming out of my mouth, no matter if it’s part of her game. She doesn’t act like they hurt her, but after hearing it enough times, it’s bound to. Marianna grins and snaps.
“That was it. But people have been really supportive. Blending families is nothing new around here.”
