His brown hair was greasy and unattractive. He knew this to be true, but he pretended otherwise. The bottle of hair gel sat on his counter and stared at him. He cursed at it, and slabbed it onto his scalp. He considered going without it tonight, because she always liked it that way, but was too self-conscious. His dark locks stuck to his skin now, and he liked it this way.
He moved on to his ascot. His eyes went to the red silk one lying on the back of his toilet, and his hands reached for it. It was attractive enough, and he was sure to grab attention. But he stopped. The black one was more appropriate, he knew. Tonight would be full of grieving.
Luigi Largo was always a strong figure- strong and harsh and frightening. His knife was better known to all of Los Angeles (or what was left of it) than he was. Luigi was virtually invincible. He had been quoted saying more than once that he did not know the definition of the word "fear". God, what a lie that was. None of them would ever know how hard his hands shook as he tied the ascot around his neck.
Born the eldest son of Rotti Largo, he had been raised in pure luxury. His father was the king of the world, and he was the prince who would one day inherit it all. To the public, they were the perfect family. Rotti would smile and hold Luigi when he was a mere toddler on the cover of magazines all over America. His siblings, Pavi and Carmela (known today as Amber Sweet), shared in the glory, but did not have Rotti's love like Luigi did. It is no surprise he grew up with his dangerous ego, and feeling of invulnerability.
As time went on, and Rotti's health worsened, it became clear the man Luigi was destined to be was not the one they had been hoping for. He got in street fights regularly, took up drinking at age 15, and grew a dangerous distaste for his other family members. His relationship with Rotti became strained, and when his mother died giving birth to Amber, matters were only made worse. He spiraled into destructive behavior and deep depression. Soon, he was pushed into more severe violence- murder, even- and this was the side of him that would be forever remembered by the world.
Luigi's fine features creased into his signature scowl as he thought back, and he threw his bottle of hair gel at the mirror. It shattered, but slightly. He cursed at himself and stormed out of the bathroom. His favorite gofer waited for him by the door; Luigi did not greet him. This was in part because he still hadn't learned the poor kid's name. In his mind, he referred to him as "Ballstrap". The kid had in his hands a cup of coffee, and he timidly offered it to Luigi. Luigi considered throwing the cup across the room, but decided to ignore the gesture instead.
"Get my jacket. I'm leaving," he said finally as he took his gloves from a bedside table. Slipping them onto his hands he motioned for Ballstrap to hurry. Within a minute, his jacket was given to him, and he wasted no time putting it on. He liked being able to hide in it, and looking larger in it at the same time, though he would never admit that.
He left his apartment and let the door close with a loud bang, just to give Ballstrap a little scare. His jacket bunched around his ears as he pulled his shoulders in tighter, and he stormed down the hall and to the elevator. He thought he was going to see his father, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
It was not often he visited his father's office to ask of something; he did his best to avoid wanting anything from Rotti, and in that way avoided his father's cruel wrath. He spent a lot of time in the office, yes, but that was usually when he was called in there for meetings, or for punishment. The last time he had left for that room on the top floor of the building of his own accord was twenty-two years ago.
Luigi was fifteen. His hair was still greasy and unattractive all those years ago, but it was only just after he had started gelling it. He hadn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, and his bangs hung awkwardly in his face. His adolescent heart beat unusually fast as he took uneasy steps out of the elevator. His father's desk was right across the room, and he was doing his best to take his time.
He took tiny steps, looking down whenever a GENtern or some businessman passed him. I'm Luigi Largo, he thought each time he did this, I shouldn't be hiding from them. But he continued to hide, just as he knew he would hide from Rotti when the time came. Even at fifteen, he knew he was a lying coward. But I'm Luigi Largo. I have every right to be whatever the fuck I want to be.
Finally, he had completed the long walk across Rotti's office. His father's grey head was bent over some paperwork; he didn't budge as Luigi came right to the desk. Luigi stood silently, watching his father work. He contemplated speaking up, and opened his mouth to do so, but could not find the courage. He looked down and sat at his chair on the right side of Rotti's desk. He sat waiting for his presence to be noticed, not saying a word.
"You know I can see you there," Rotti said, breaking the silence. His voice was soft and soothing, but the statement still made Luigi want to hide. He did not look up from his work, did not stop what he was doing at all. "If you have something to say to me, you need to go ahead and say it before I lose my patience with you."
"Yes sir," Luigi whispered, his head bent. He pulled his shirt out of his pants, where he had carefully tucked it in himself, and started toying the fabric between is fingers. He looked up and noticed his father was wearing an ascot. I should be wearing one of those, he thought, I'm so fucking stupid.
Rotti sighed and put down his pencil. "Luigi," he said, finally looking at his son, "I don't have a lot of time here. What do you want?"
"Well," he said quietly, his voice cracking from the strains of puberty, "I've been thinking a lot about Mama these past few days."
"She's been dead three years now," Rotti said with no feeling.
"I know, Dad," he said, his heart fighting the urge to break, "but I've been thinking a lot about her. She loved music. You used to, too. That's how you guys met, remember? I've seen the clips of you guys in that old show together at least a thousand times." Luigi smiled.
Rotti did not return the smile. "What is your point? I know very well how I met your mother."
"Yes," Luigi said, attempting to assert some confidence, "Since she's died, GeneCo hasn't really had any…music. I was thinking some music might be good for, like, business…and stuff."
Rotti began to show a tiny bit of interest. He picked up his pencil. "What do you mean by music, diletto?"
Luigi's heart began to beat faster. He was getting somewhere; he was getting affection from his father. He had to choose his words carefully. "Maybe, we could start putting on shows ourselves? Like the kind you used to be in. I've even been looking for some singers around town. There's an opera house on the bad side, and no one uses it. We could fix it up, and have like a weekly show or something. We'd bring in a lot of money."
Rotti was scribbling furiously away on the margins of his paper. "My maschio, that's a grand idea," he said with a smile. He put down his pencil and looked over his notes. "Yes," he said, "How did you ever come up with this?"
Luigi smiled himself, but he lowered his head. He did not want to give away his beaming pride. "I just missed hearing you and Mama sing to us all the time. Now maybe we'll all start singing again."
Rotti nodded. "Perhaps," he said, "But that all depends on whether or not you can find us a star."
God, was that really over twenty years ago? Luigi shook his head in disbelief and lit a cigarette as he waited on the elevator at the end of the hall. He had been scared out of his wits then; he was scared out of his wits now. The last time he had visited Rotti in his office things had gone smashingly. He hoped with all his being that he would have the same luck.
He heard a ding, and looked up at the light that signaled that the elevator had arrived. Finally, he thought. The doors opened, and there stood Pavi inside. The face he had chosen for tonight was one of his worse yet- a large, twisted grin pulled back to almost the very edge of the stretched skin. Luigi was used to looking beyond the mask to read Pavi's expressions, and he could see that Pavi was frowning. To the blind eye, though, it would seem he was grinning eternally. Luigi's thick eyebrows furrowed in disgust.
"Good-a evening, jackass," Pavi said in his awful, over-the-top accent. He smiled slightly, and his dark blue eyes twinkled.
Luigi rolled eyes. "Fuck off," he said, "and get your ass off the elevator." He stomped in, and pressed the button for the next floor up.
Pavi giggled. "I'm-a going up, too," he said, patting his older brother on the back. In a quiet mutter he added "dumbass".
Luigi groaned. "Fucking super," he said, slapping Pavi's hand away. Trying to ask this favor from Rotti was going from difficult to almost impossible with an added audience.
The elevator moved up with a jerk, and the brothers avoided looking at each other. Any sign that they had been fighting would be enough for Rotti to send them both away immediately. Luigi felt his fingers inching towards his knife, but clenched a fist to stop them.
Another ding, and the elevator stopped. The doors opened, and Amber stood waiting. Her newest hair was an obvious wig, and a hat attempted to hide her face with a shadow. It did not succeed, and both Luigi and Pavi saw that her usually smooth and artificially perfect skin was now red and rugged and disgusting on one side. She turned her head away, and acted as if nothing was wrong.
Both Luigi and Pavi burst into laughter.
"Shut the fuck up," Amber said, shoving her way into the elevator, "I'm going to get it fixed anyway."
"You're such a fucking idiot!" Luigi managed to say between laughs, "Jesus Christ, not even that dumpster rat who gives you those drugs would fuck you now!"
Pavi's laughs grew high and girlish. "She wouldn't even-a fuck herself!" he cried.
The brothers held each other by the shoulder as they laughed, and Amber shoved them out of the elevator. As soon as their feet touched the floor of Rotti's office, they stopped.
"Stop fucking laughing," Luigi whispered.
"You first!" Pavi cried back.
They pulled away from each other and looked across the room. Their father did not notice their arrival, and stood looking at the screen covering the back wall of the room. It was showing him his pictures from the Wallace kid's file, and his gold box was out on the desk.
"What the fuck is he doing?" Luigi asked.
Pavi had no answer; he just looked straight ahead. Finally, he said, "I don't know why you're-a here, but I'm a-talking to Papa first." And Pavi began walking towards their father.
"Oh, hell, no you're not!" Luigi roared, grabbing his younger brother by the shoulder. Pavi shot back a feeble slap, and Luigi punched toward his face and missed. Pavi placed a light food ahead of Luigi, and Luigi wrapped one hand around his small neck. Pavi pushed the hand away, and gave Luigi another slap- this one harder. Luigi slapped back, and it continued. By the time they finally reached Rotti's desk, they were interlocked in nothing but a weak catfight.
Rotti turned from the screen, and the images disappeared. He watched his sons, and his distaste for them grew. He put away the document and gold box that were on his desk, then cleared his throat audibly.
Luigi dropped his hands immediately, and Pavi did the same. Quietly, with their heads down, they took their seats in front of Rotti's desk.
"I'm sorry, Daddy," Luigi said quietly. Pavi said nothing- only fixed his hair in the reflection of his pocket mirror.
Rotti put a hand to his temple. "Why do you do this to me?" he asked, "Why do you bother me tonight of all nights?"
Pavi spoke first. "I come here to-a ask a favor for one of the-a GENterns who-a did my-a new face. She-a was wondering if you would-a consider inviting her to audition for-a next week's Genetic Opera."
Luigi's breath caught in his throat. Of course, Pavi had to bring it up. He closed his eyes, and tried not to think about who the new Voice of GeneCo would be. Besides the fact that he didn't want to lose the old one, it was unfair for Rotti to throw away the talent he had spent months trying to find.
When Luigi had first been instructed to find a singer fit for GeneCo's operas, he began searching the numerous small theaters around town. He sat through what seemed like hundreds of mediocre productions, listening for the perfect soprano. The Phantom of the Opera'sChristine was whiny and fat, Sweeney Todd'sJohanna was constantly out of tune, Les Miserables'sCosette had no expression. The night he had dismissed an Evita with far too much vibrato, he ran into a group of singing children. He recognized the tune as O babbino caro, which had been one of his mother's favorites. He grabbed the nearest child by the wrist, and pulled her to him.
Her dirty face was stupid, and he held her firmly by the shoulders. She began to cry, so he loosened his grip. "Shh, shh. Shut the fuck up!" he whisper-screamed, looking around to avoid the stares of passers-by, "I'm not gonna fucking hurt you." He pointed to one of his posters on a nearby fence, and smiled like in the picture. "See? I'm the nice guy on the poster. Just shut up!"
The girl slowly quieted down. "Can I go back to my brothers now?" she whimpered.
"Sure, kid," Luigi said, "Just tell me where you heard that song."
The girl's directions were vague, but Luigi knew the district well, and found the place easy enough. Behind an old diner, there was a small girl with a fire. About ten or fifteen people crowded around her, and they were all listening to her sing. It was no question why.
Luigi shoved past everyone to get to the very front of the crowd. Her voice was beautiful. It was magnificent. It was perfect. It reminded him of his mother's. He stepped almost all the way up to the fire, but the girl did not look up. This frustrated Luigi, but he stayed, and he listened.
She looked to be older than him, but it was really hard to tell because she was so tiny. He judged that she had not eaten in weeks. Her dress was dirty and torn, and her black hair was so long it almost hit her feet. She needed a haircut to go with that shower. But none of this took away from her voice. When she changed songs to The Queen of the Night, Luigi could have cried. The Magic Flute had been one of his favorite operas as a child.
As the people came and went, the girl never wavered. After about an hour, Luigi could take no more. He leaned toward the nearest man and asked why the girl took no notice of the people around her.
The smelly man laughed. "Are you kidding?" he whispered, so as not to interrupt the beautiful singing, "We call her Blind Mag for a reason!"
"She's fucking blind!?" Luigi said. At only fifteen, he had never met a blind girl before, and was suddenly scared. He was very careful when he sat down near her, trying his hardest to not ruin the beautiful song. Hours passed, and he barely moved a muscle, now painfully conscious of the fact that she couldn't see him. Eventually, he was the only one left by the fire.
She hit the last note of her current song, then sat quietly for a few moments. She knew everyone was gone, and turned to blindly putting out her fire. Luigi was so scared she would hurt herself, and quickly did it for her.
"Is someone still here?" she said quietly, "I didn't know. I'm sorry. I'll keep singing."
"No," he said, sitting up and cautiously moving towards her, "You don't have to keep singing. I just want to talk to you. My name is Erik." He chose the name in reference to his father's most famous stage role, and also because even a blind girl would know of their family. He did not want her to feel pressure.
"I like that name," she said, and smiled. "I'm….Blind Mag." She said the last two words quietly, almost ruefully.
"That's not your name," Luigi said, "Your parents didn't decide to name you Blind Mag, just like mine didn't decide to call me Sexy Erik."
The girl laughed and pushed a lock of hair away from her face. "I don't know my parents. They could have very well called me that. The name I've always been called is Magdalene. I'm not sure where it came from."
"That's weird," Luigi said, standing up. He gently took her hand in his and helped her to her feet. "But Magdalene is a pretty name. You shouldn't call yourself Blind Mag."
"But I am Blind Mag," she said, looking down, "Magdalene is a pretty name for someone with an identity. All I do is sing here."
Luigi frowned. "You don't ever do anything else?"
"No."
"But you like singing, don't you?"
"Oh yes," she said, her smile returning, "I was taught to sing at a school back at home. I didn't have many friends there, but I always had the songs. I just don't like this alley. The people here are rude and I never get a break. I'm sorry; I'm prattling on about myself."
"It's kind of interesting," Luigi said, again taking Magdalene's hand. "Do you ever go anywhere else?"
"Not really," she said with an embarrassed laugh.
"Well, I'm gonna take you out tonight. And I think I have a proposition we're both gonna like."
Like the last meeting in Rotti's office, that night at Magdalene's fire had been twenty-two years ago. He remembered it like it was yesterday. To him, it was yesterday. He opened his eyes, and watched his brother and father argue over the GENtern who wanted to be a singer. He thought again to when he had first met Magdalene, and decided to speak up.
"Pavi, shut the fuck up," she said loudly.
Rotti looked to his older son. "Please watch your language, Luigi," he said quietly, "And wait your turn. I'm dealing with your brother right now."
"No," Pavi said, "Let Luigi speak now. I'm-a so interested in-a what he has to say that's-a so much more important than-a my problems!" He sighed and crossed his arms.
"Very well," Rotti said, "What is it you want, Luigi?"
Luigi cleared his throat. "I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Mag."
"We've been over this. It is set in stone. I am not changing my mind." Rotti's tone remained even, but his eyes gave his anger away.
"I don't understand why though!" Luigi shouted, standing up. "Okay, take her fucking eyes back, but you can let her live!"
"It's not up to me. If Nathan choses to let her live, she will live. I am not the man to have this conversation with."
Luigi took a step forward and his hand moved again to the knife concealed beneath his jacket. "Don't pull that shit on me. You know good and well that everyone in the fucking world doesn't do a goddamn thing without your approval. We all do what you want, and Nathan is included in that. He's gonna kill her, because you want her dead."
Rotti stood up as well. "How dare you say such a thing about me! I love Mag. She has served me well these years. I hate to see her leave GeneCo, but it is her choice. I'm taking her eyes back, and whatever else happens is none of my concern. There will be water if God wills it." His voice remained the soft soothing whisper that Luigi had loved to no end as a small child.
Luigi's heart began racing again. He took another step forward and placed a gloved hand on his father's desk. "If you love Mag, you can tell Nathan not to kill her. You have the power to give him those fucking orders, and you know it. I know you don't love Mag, but there's still a chance you love me. I'm your fucking son! Why can't you let her live for me!?"
"Calm yourself," Rotti said in a low voice, "You are not old enough to understand."
"I'm 37 years old, Pop," Luigi said, his grip tightening on his knife, "I'm a fucking adult. You, on the other hand, are just a fat piece of shit who sits in that dumbass chair all fucking day long to make other people miserable. You didn't even give a fuck when our mom died! She was your wife, jackass!"
"Do not say another word, Luigi. I refuse to hear any more of this."
"I don't need to say another fucking word." He pulled the knife out of his jacket, and jumped across the desk. He held the point firmly against his father's neck. "Actions speak louder than words." He laughed, not completely aware of the action.
Pavi didn't say a word. He was pressed into the back of his chair and looked down.
"Either you let Mag live, or I fucking kill you right now," Luigi said calmly, his thick eyebrows furrowed tight over his harsh blue eyes.
"You won't kill me," Rotti said harshly, "You idolize me, and you know it."
"Fucking try me," Luigi whispered, tightening his grip. He pushed the knife slightly forward, and a drop of blood hit Rotti's expensive carpet.
It was then that the old man moved, and with all his force mustered together, he threw a fist against his son's face. Luigi crashed onto the desk, and his knife cluttered across the floor. He looked up at his father, scared and embarrassed and hurt and sorry. He put a hand against his nose and winced. He looked down quickly and hid his pain from Rotti's condescending gaze.
"If you touch me like that again, I can't promise I'll be that gentle on you," Rotti said in his calmest tone, "Now leave my office. I have no wish to look at you for a good long while."
Luigi nodded, biting back a hard, heavy flow of tears. He stumbled to his feet, then bent his head beneath the high collar of his jacket. He all but ran from the room, and Pavi's laugh echoed in his ears for years after.
Alone in the elevator, Luigi wept. The tears stung his nose, and he hated himself more than ever. He wanted to die, and he wanted to kill. He missed his mother, and he missed his father. He wanted to apologize; he wanted Rotti to wrap him a hug and forget it ever happened.
More than anything, though, he wanted to see Mag. He pressed the button to take him to the ground level, and made up his mind. He refused to let her die. He refused to take a blow like that from his father in vain. He harshly wiped the tears from his face and took a few breaths to steady himself. I'm fucking Luigi Largo. I can be whatever the fuck I want. I can be strong, and I can be the hero. I can fucking save Mag, and I can kill Rotti when I'm done.
The elevator doors opened to GeneCo's lobby, and he stormed out of the building, coldly avoiding all the conversation that came his way. When his shiny black shoes hit the dirty pavement, he turned and began walking down the road to the old opera house where Magdalene waited.
She was in her dressing room alone, and she knew she was going to die.
Luigi knew she was going to die, too, but he was Luigi Largo, and he could do whatever he wanted. If he wanted to convince himself that he would be able to save her, then that's exactly what he would do.