Visitation
"Franchetta."
"Did you see her? She's here."
"She's here."
"It's Franchetta. Franchetta."
Franchetta heard her name all around her. It arrived at her ears as subtle whispers, and if her name had not been part of the murmurs from those paying their respects at the Siri household, she would not likely have even noticed their hushed exchanges, would probably have discounted them as nothing more than white noise--background, unremarkable. But her senses were on high alert. She felt as though she could feel the air against her face from each mourner's surprised exhale on her name.
After all, how long had it been since she had done this--attended the wake of a fallen officer? Five years? Seven years? She could not remember the last one, and she counted that a blessing.
She would not have come today if Marie Siri had not personally asked her to stop by, for all that she had read of Joe's suicide in the Times obits, with its listing of the schedule of memorial services and the laying to rest.
If Marie had not called she would not be here now. If she had made a polite excuse she would not be here now, holding the as-etiquette-required 13x9 pan of homemade pasta--still warm--she had made for the Siri family, and listing out the choices and actions that had brought her here. If only.
She wished again she had never received that call--or that she had had the fortitude not to answer the line when her caller ID popped up with Joe Siri's name--the same Joe Siri whom she had read about in the obits two days before the call rang her phone. But still she had answered, knowing too well that it would culminate in some version of this; standing in the Siri home as she had so many times past--too many--surrounded by NYPD officers, their dress blues suffocating her even across a distance, their hats--"cover" as they called them--hanging in state beside the door as though they each lived here, as though each had a right and obligation to this apartment, this family--this marriage.
For a moment she again felt that sensation she had left so far behind her--that tightening in her chest telling her that she could not breathe, that she needed air and space and liberty and things of her own--just her own--to which no one else had a claim or a right.
She demanded her lungs inhale normally, and willed herself away from that old feeling; ignored the bile rising in her throat.
Very well, she would quickly locate the cluster of visitors that always coalesced around the bereaved, make her way through them, speak with Marie, stay fifteen minutes--not a second longer--walk toward the sign-in book, add her name, walk back to the new widow, make her farewells. As genuinely as possible encourage Marie to call if she needed anything, and beat it to the door, no-holds-barred. If only she could find somewhere to hand off her hot dish, she'd gladly leave the pan without a second thought to ever getting it back--or ever coming here again.
Heaven help her get through this.
As she looked around she added, not without sentiment; heaven help them all.
And heaven help the person that got in Franchetta Dante's way.
She had kept the Dante after the divorce. And why not? She figured she deserved it, a sort of trade-off for the at-times poorly concealed "undercover" officers that still haunted her life from time to time.
Stalked, she thought. I should remember to think of it as being stalked. She knew that was not how her first husband thought of it--'protected,' he would say, 'safe.' So she was 'protected,' 'seen to,' 'kept safe.' Occasionally she would forget to notice the shadowing, but either way, she had decided long ago that whatever doors the Dante name could open, whatever benefits it could provide in a city whose wheels often needed greasing, she'd earned the right to use it, as it had used her.
It was the only thing of her first husband's that she had agreed to take when she left him. As for the rest--the furniture, the dog, the linens--she'd left them all behind, just as she had left the life of a police captain's wife behind.
How she had hated it. For others, she knew the dread of it lay in the waiting, the long hours of not knowing, the nights alone. The constant and often paralyzing fear of your man dying without cause, or reason, or preamble. But for her it lay in the atmosphere that at some point she had realized she found stifling. Being watched, being looked to to be something for others to--to what? She didn't know, she only knew that a captain's wife had certain things expected of her; duties, behaviors, a protocol of sorts, like manual to follow, a scorecard to keep. Parties, weddings, funerals, births--an endless stream of appointments demanding she take part in (and at times even command) the lives of others on the Force.
They were encouraged, trained and groomed to act as one family, one brotherhood. One giant frat house--with guns, she thought. La Famiglia--the Mafia, she had finally settled on, but with badges.
But she had wanted her own life, her own way. She always had. Trying to do things any other way had been nothing but fooling herself. Then again, she was an expert at fooling not only herself, but others. You could say she had a black belt in deceit. After all, she had been taught by the very best.
It had come in handy in her work with city management--this ability to make things seem to others however she wished them to, however best to put them to her advantage.
She was known for being hard, but right, her word and her actions unimpeachable. She was known for being beyond all reach of corruption or special interests. It was a reputation she had worked very hard to procure; despite the myriad opportunities and under-the-table deals she had declined in order to acquire it. She might paint things prettier than they were, but no one could--or wished to--question her veracity.
She made her way up to the cluster of people surrounding the bereaved. At its center was Marie, standing with her grown children. Franchetta had not been there a moment when Marie took notice of her and grabbed her arm with a free hand--the one not holding the Kleenex.
Marie did not have to say that she was surprised Franchetta had come. After half-a-decade or more of little or no contact outside the exchange of perfunctory Christmas cards, their estrangement--Franchetta's doing--was a foregone conclusion.
"Bring that into the kitchen, won't you?" Marie asked, in regard to the hot dish of penne Franchetta was holding.
Still the concerned hostess, Franchetta noted. Her life was so odd to her sometimes. This was one of those times, a time when something as normal as walking into an old friend's familiar kitchen had a strange, not-quite-bitter aftertaste to it. She had always liked Marie. It had always been a regret of hers that to cut ties to the police community meant to lose Marie as well.
Marie moved to a cupboard to get a serving utensil for the penne.
She saw the way Marie had looked at her. Franchetta had always been one for knowing what others were thinking. And as the other woman rustled through a drawer by the sink, Franchetta saw the truth--as Marie saw it. Marie, in her AARP-ish comfortable cardigan sweater, her hair neatly done, but grey, nearly-spent grief showing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. And herself, just young enough in comparison to be threatening, her stylish, uptown--but far from flashy--dress, tailored to show off the figure of a fit, healthy woman in her forties who had never carried a child to term. Her hair still black and full, with only the remarkable grey streak she had had since her teens hiding behind her ear, a trophy of sorts that she had stopped dyeing to match the rest some fifteen years earlier.
And finally, herself, the captain's wife--always the captain's wife in their eyes--no matter the decree for divorce she had won those years ago in a New York court.
Mrs. Siri and Mrs. Dante, Franchetta thought, neither of us any longer captain's wives, yet, always captain's wives. The Widow, the Ex.
Franchetta moved toward the counter with the dish as Marie cleared a space for it among the already very generous spread of food.
"I'm glad you came," Marie said, looking down at the still-warm penne Franchetta had uncovered. Her voice, spent of emotion, gave little indication as to her sincerity.
"I'm sorry about Joe," Franchetta said, knowing that both Joe and Marie had been good Catholics--much better than she had been of late--and knowing what his death being ruled a suicide meant to Marie, and to the rest of the Siri family.
"Oh, Fran--" Marie began, her voice ready to break. "He had been so happy since he retired--we both had, and then--I don't know. I just--don't know."
And in an instant it was like remembered times, no more appraising looks from Marie, no more doubts as to the other woman's genuine feeling toward her. They were simply two women whose husbands worked together, standing in a kitchen, speaking like people. Talking--like friends. For a moment she could forget all the uniforms standing in the next room, could forget men like Jerry Orlinsky, their eyes on her like bloodhounds, like guard dogs spotting the thing they were sworn to protect, to give their lives for, from the moment she opened her car door and arrived on the Siri's street. She could forget how she hated them.
For a moment, as Marie confided in her, spoke to her as an equal, one of the group, Franchetta was tempted, ready to accept the unspoken re-instatement offered to her by the other woman, but for a second--that single second--she held back.
And in that single second the swinging door that led down the short hall to the bathroom pushed open behind her, and she heard his voice before she saw him, as he addressed Marie.
"Marie," he began, solicitous and endearing, as he always was among his flock. "Lemme get you a chair--you been standin' too long."
And she saw Marie's immediate reaction to his concern. It was as though he had embraced her, offered her a cup of warm tea and told her nothing too terrible would ever happen again. If she had not witnessed similar reactions before she would have been tempted to say that Marie Siri was in love with him. But as she had seen mirror incidences among three-fourths of the crowd in the other room at one time or another over the years, she knew--this was simply how people reacted to her first husband. When he wanted them to.
Marie positively glowed at his attention--muted, doubtless, by her current circumstances, but a glow was there, nonetheless.
Franchetta heard his gait stop short, still behind her, and she heard his tone modulate. It became younger somehow; pleased, charmed.
"What is that I smell? Did someone bring--" and then his voice caught and cut off. She imagined he had seen her penne--or maybe it was the streak of grey in her hair, so visible from the back. She knew his face well enough to imagine the expression it wore; mouth open, jaw cocked, dark eyes nearly ready to smile or turn cold, depending.
It was not that she had been foolish enough to think that Bruno Dante wouldn't attend Joseph Siri's wake, but she had hoped with all faith that he would be gone by the time she arrived--or that Fate would be kind and they simply would not cross paths.
She had been sixteen. No, she had been fifteen that year at the Festival of St. Bernadette. Only months before her mother had noticed the first sign of the white streak in her black hair while brushing it out for the night. But Mama would not let her dye it. Fifteen-year-olds--and modest Italian Catholics--did not dye their hair, no matter what freakish, beyond-your-control things nature visited upon you.
But Mama had agreed to cut it, the entire patch, close to the head. As it was located just below--and to the right of--Franchetta's ear, the resulting bare spot was easy enough to cover up with the rest of her hair when it was worn down, or in a bun or braid.
Age fifteen was a full two years after she had first kissed Bruno Dante, and despite what the nuns had tried to instill in her, she was seriously considering adding second base to her repertoire. So when the other girls clustered around the fortuneteller's tent at the carnival, it seemed like a good idea to find out whether second--or even third--base was going to pan out with Bruno. She did not have (and at that point had never had) designs on anyone else.
Most of the girls entered the gypsy's tent in pairs or larger groups, paying after they passed through the curtain, and returning with exciting news about life and marriage and babies and fortunes made, but Franchetta had had to make a last-minute dash for the port-a-lets, and when she ran back to the tent she found the other girls gone. She was deciding what to do next when the curtain parted and a grizzled old woman--more prune than person, glittering in coin jewelry and resplendent in soft scarves and layers of skirt--asked her in.
"What is your name?" the old woman asked once they were seated inside.
Franchetta told her. All four.
"A good name for you, I think. Franchetta Caprice. Free, fanciful," the old woman looked into her eyes, searching--or finding. "Speranza, for hope. But this Pia? Devotion?" She shook her head like she had been told a wrong answer. "An afterthought by your mama, I think--to make up for the rest of you, ah?"
It was at this point that Franchetta began to suspect this woman was just another carnival act. After all, what could you tell of someone from a name--or four? But she still drank the woman's tea and surrendered her hand for examination, waiting for her crackerjack fortune: the love of a tall, dark man, many children, happiness and old age--travel.
As she held Franchetta's hand, the woman spoke, her eyes closed. "You've been marked," she said, opening them.
Before Franchetta could protest, the old woman added, "you know where," and touched a free hand to her own head, mirroring the spot of Franchetta's now-shorn grey streak.
At this, she cast Franchetta's hand aside almost hurriedly, and took up the china cup of tealeaves, tilting them toward the light of the candle burning atop the table.
"You will marry an evil man," the fortuneteller said so quickly it sounded like one word, continuing brusquely, "and you will never know love." She set the teacup down and added, though it did nothing to soften the impact of the fortune, "when hope is gone, my Free-One, there is only desire."
Franchetta sat, stunned for a moment. Had she truly heard what she heard? The spot on her head where the grey streak grew turned hotter than olive oil in a pan on her mother's stove. It blazed against her skin like an inferno.
To be told such things was a mean trick--nothing more--and she would have none of it. She repudiated this nonna's divination. She renounced the future given her in this, her fifteenth year. And she overturned the teakettle on the old woman's lap and ran from the tent. She did not scream, she did not cry. But secretly, in the weeks after, she began to buy bottled dye from the ragman, and covered the grey streak in her hair, as though fearful it might betray her--and her destiny--to other seers as well.
She had never directly spoken to anyone of that afternoon's prophecy, from that day to this.
Standing in the Siri kitchen, her first husband at her back, Franchetta was still resisting the inevitable, trying to see how long she could keep from turning around to face him. She did not expect him to make a move toward her in either voice or action with Marie present, so she still had some time to prepare.
"It is a great comfort to me that you were here that day, Bruno," Marie said. She looked to Franchetta, unnecessarily explaining. "He stopped by that day, you know, to see Joe--just to pay a little call."
He spoke. "Marie was at her sister's."
Franchetta knew he was looking at her--not at Marie--directing his gaze to the curve just above the small of her back. If she thought about it for too long she could start to feel a patch of heat growing there, in that spot. She willed herself not to shift her stance--not to give away that she could feel his eyes on her.
She re-focused her energy on getting angry. She had always found a cold anger was an effective defense, an efficient wall--and it took little effort for her to conjure such feelings, they were already close enough to the surface. And cold rage was something Bruno Dante had never fully understood--especially not from her.
"I was in the neighborhood," he was still speaking to Marie, "so I dropped in to check up on Joe."
"Funny," Franchetta let drop, her voice quiet, toneless. "I don't remember reading that in the Times."
The others ignored the remark.
"We talked about some things, Joe and me," he directed to Marie. "About his retirement, about his life, his plans for the future. Things."
"He didn't seem unhappy," Marie said, glancing first at Franchetta, and then Dante, her look resting on him as though she needed his confirmation.
"No, Marie, he didn't seem unhappy. But if I thought for a moment that my stopping by somehow--" he paused, and Franchetta could see him in her mind's eye, raising one hand to his heart, sincerity all over him like an intoxicating cologne. "I could never forgive myself."
"No, no," Marie keened, bringing her Kleenex to her mouth. "You mustn't think that way."
Joseph Jr. came through the swinging door that led from the living room into the kitchen. "Mom," he reminded Marie of her obligations, "we've got some new arrivals." He looked aside for a moment and nodded his recognition to Franchetta and Dante.
"Oh, yes, yes," Marie answered. "I--I forgot myself for a moment, there." She did not reference (or even seem to notice) the awkwardness of the situation she must have known she was leaving an acrimoniously divorced couple to sort out with her departure. "Excuse me."
And they did.
"Look out for your mother, Joey," Dante instructed Joe Siri's eldest. "Don't let her stand too much longer--you get her a chair."
"Yes, sir," Joe Jr. said, as respectfully as if to his own father.
The swinging door settled with the Siris' exit, and Franchetta and Bruno Dante were alone. Again, Franchetta had a hard time counting the years since such a thing had happened. She had gone to some lengths to ensure that it never had. It was possible that at least two of her subsequent marriages could be chalked up to such an attempt.
She turned around, not slowly as though she looked forward to seeing what was there, nor as though she dreaded it, but instead rotated her head first, and then the rest of her body, casually. As though she had always expected to find him behind her at any moment during any day, and as though that expectation bothered her not a bit.
"My wife," he said to her, his bottom lip pushing out in the way it did when he was sizing things up--situations, people. There was some satisfaction in that; that he still considered her interesting enough--unpredictable enough--to take her measure.
Like the others in the room beyond, he was dressed in his blues, all ribbons and pins and badge, buttons catching the fluorescent light overhead.
That should make it easier, she sighed to herself. "Mr. Dante," she greeted him, sarcastically choosing the formal address, and in doing so hoping to distance herself in his mind as well as in hers.
"Mrs. Dante," he countered her perfectly, and he knew it, letting his mouth open enough in a smile to show his gapped teeth in triumph. His eyes were sparking now.
She hated that he was enjoying the moment.
"Your penne smells good," he told her, always a sucker for her cooking.
"So have some," she replied flatly, looking bored.
He was not deterred. "It's nice that you're here. I'm surprised. Wouldn't have thought of all people it was Joe who could bring you back in." He smiled. "Can I expect yourself and your penne at my funeral as well?"
"My only hope," she replied, "is that you go first, so that I can have the pleasure of it." She smiled thinly.
But instead of adding another barb to the conversation, the easiest comeback being that he could still manage to give her pleasure--she'd left herself wide open to that, he slickly changed subjects, walking to lean against the counter as though he felt at ease, and throwing her an appraising glance. "You look good, Franny." He cocked his head to the side, doubtless waiting for her to say the same to him.
Franchetta looked down at her hands and saw that she had gotten a bit of sauce from carrying her dish on one of her cuffs. It distracted her for a moment, and she found herself walking toward the sink, to the left of where he leaned, to put some water on it.
She did not reply to his compliment, nor did she add one of her own to it. He knew how he looked as well as she knew how she looked.
His strong appeal for her had never been chiefly visual. There was nothing wrong or unattractive about him, but there was nothing remarkable, either. Whatever you came away thinking about Bruno Dante after meeting him, what you remembered were his eyes, his carriage, a certain machismo and charisma--and the raw sort of instinctual response that strength and power and cunning could elicit from you.
And he looked good. Trim, vigorous, and in charge. Literally biting her tongue to distract herself, she tried to stifle her reaction to the sight of him. She would not let him have that. She would not let him have anything ever again.
"What are you doing, Franny?" he asked, so close to her she could see lint on his shoulder. She would not look. She turned on the faucet.
"Washing some sauce off my cuff," she answered, avoiding the real question he was asking her--avoiding it herself. Had she come here for this? Had she? She did not think she had meant to, did not think standing in a kitchen with her first husband was some sort of unconscious itch she was trying to scratch. No, she was just a woman standing at a sink getting a stain out before it set, and then she was going to be a woman leaving a wake alone, heading for the door and her car beyond.
"Now," he was removing his coat, the one heavy with ribbons and medals, which left him in his shirtsleeves. "You never could get this right--I suppose you send everything out, still?"
She didn't reply at once, continuing to work at the cuff with her hand in the cool stream of water running in the sink. "And I suppose you don't?" she asked.
"Well, of course I do," he was moving to a cabinet. "But seventeen years of your penne, Carina, at least left me with enough sense to know how to get out a little stray sauce." He took down a bottle of club soda and held it out to her. "Before you ruin your pretty dress."
She turned her head to look over her should at him, standing behind her in his shirt and tie--the badge and ribbons and medals gone--and he looked more human to her, more like a man and less like a cop. He looked familiar. In response to that feeling of nostalgia, she held up her cuff--her right arm--with a gesture that said, with a single arm at her disposal she did not know how she was going to get club soda on the stain without dousing herself as well.
"Come here," he said, taking more of an invitation than she had given. She was still front to the sink, and he walked over to stand behind her, his arms circling her from the back, one hand holding her wrist, the other applying club soda sparingly, his chin near her shoulder, his cheek next to hers.
She could feel his chest expanding from his breath, could feel his hips against her, contrasted with the coolness of the club soda against her wrist; his belt buckle in just that spot in the small of her back that until moments ago had been the object of his gaze.
He worked, neither spoke. His breaths were like a long-forgotten rhythm to her, of long nights in their bed, evenings on their sofa, times when they were inseparable, breathing as one life.
"It could be like this for us," he said finally, so quietly she wondered for a moment if he had even said it out loud--or if she had somehow read his thoughts. "Tesoro," he added, kissing the crook of her neck lightly. "You know it could."
In response to the term of endearment and his lips on her skin, Franchetta started, jerkily--as though he had suddenly frightened her awake from a dreaming sleep--and with the start her wrist collided with his hand, and the club soda went flying, shooting across her dress, and in his face, the bottle landing on the floor, the last of its contents fizzling out on the linoleum at their feet.
They had jerked apart. Now, separated by the spill, they were standing self-conscious as chastened children waiting for their mother to walk in and scold them. Franchetta was thankful for it. Unentangled, she could leave, as she had always planned to do.
She determined to take the penne with her as well, as a show of resolution. To rescind her part of the wake, to obliterate completely the fact that she had come. As she reached for the pan she heard it--coming from just the other side of the door out to where the others were--a cough--the very distinctive smoker's cough of that beast Jerry Orlinsky. She thought her eyes might roll back into her head and she might start to convulse. He was standing guard outside the kitchen to ensure that his master--this man still dripping of club soda--was not disturbed. It was the last straw.
She never acted like this. She was an adult, a capable, respectable adult. Member of the Chamber of Commerce, with the mayor on her speed dial. Probably the most efficient, indispensable member of city management. No one she knew would even recognize the person she had devolved into in the past fifteen minutes, but she did. She had reverted, as sure as if time were slipping, into the wife of Bruno Dante--anywhere from age nineteen on. Spiteful, angry, confused, hormonal, and other things she did not wish to name at the moment. All because he was in the room; as though he could deconstruct her, dismantle her like Lincoln Logs down into the smallest, base-est segment of who she was. She could have gotten through this day--the awkwardness of this wake--with some dignity, some grace, had he not also been there. She could have left with something of the post-Bruno Dante life she had made still in tact if he had not crossed her path.
She heard Jerry Orlinsky cough again, just as she stepped past the segment of counter where Bruno's coat lay. Dante looked at her. She looked at him. In less than a heartbeat her hand went into the penne, sauce oozing up around her rings. To prevent him anticipating what she was about to do, she did not smile. Stony-faced, her hand came out of the penne, dripping in her thick, homemade sauce, bits of pasta stuck to her hand, which, with a flick of her wrist, she flung at the dress blue, where it slopped onto ribbons and badge and medals. It was a small attack on what she hated--this man, his job--but it left her satisfied. She took two brisk steps toward the door.
"Funny," he said to her back, as though her actions had not fazed him. "I can remember a time when you couldn't wait to get those off me."
Every last drop of her self-possession lost, she spun, in her mind planning to dump the rest of the penne onto him directly for that remark, but as she turned he caught her arm in expectation of what she was about to do, and instead the dish plopped face down onto the floor, ineffectually splashing on no one.
"What do you got to be so upset about?" he asked, and before her mind registered it they were locked in a kiss, as though her reasoning functions had been taken out of the equation.
Forgetting about the penne, her mind blanked from the breathlessness of the sudden embrace, she put her hand to his cheek, fingers along his cheekbone. His hands were in her hair, which he had always liked her to wear longer, as it was now.
The kiss went on and on.
His grip found the grey streak in her hair--she did not know how she knew that it was the exact spot--down to the millimeter--where it was, she just knew. Bruno had always been fond of her streak--he even had a few nicknames for it--though at the time they were married she had kept it dyed. He had always teased at her, told her not to, told her it was a mark to wear proudly, like a badge. She thought of that now, of him saying that, even while she was locked in this momentary embrace with him. She thought of the fortuneteller. And her marinara-covered fingers--their nails sharp enough for the task--began to sink, almost voluntarily, into the soft skin of his cheek.
He got the message, and as suddenly as it began, the kiss ended.
Free of her mouth, Dante sucked in his breath. The sauce no doubt stung going into the half-moon cuts her nails had left.
"Why can't you--" he began to ask her, his tone far from quiet.
She thought of the shouting match that was likely to come, of the noise of the fallen penne pan and the fact no one had checked to see if everything were all right. Orlinsky was at the door, and the rest of the guests were doubtless familiar with Mr. and the ex-Mrs. Dante's past exploits, and those who weren't were likely being informed now. No one would interrupt, no matter what happened.
"Why can't you be like other women?"
"You don't want other women," she replied, as he went toward the sink for a towel to wash off his face and wash clean the tiny cuts--she could hardly see them from here.
"You make things difficult," he spat out and turned on the water.
"You like difficult."
He sighed, exasperated. She had finally won the moment--if not the battle.
He extended an extra towel to her for her hand. "Franny, you're the only woman--"
She cut him off, "what, that you've ever loved? No."
"You're my wife."
"No, Bru, I was your wife. And then I was Gianni's, and then I was Carlo's. And now? I'm just mine."
He did not say that she had trouble keeping husbands. He did not heckle her that she had married weak men who had never interested her very much. He did not say that she had married men that she could possess but not be possessed by. He did not say (because he did not know) that she had divorced her first husband and in his place married men that would never have a capacity for evil--or much of anything else. He did not say that she had never been loved by any of the men she married or otherwise consorted with.
He could have said all these things, and they would each have been true. But he did not. Instead, he asked her a question.
"So, what do you want?"
She answered with the first thing that came to her mind. "I want to leave."
Finished with his cheek, he moved from his place at the sink toward his coat. From the pocket he drew out what she expected to be several of his ubitquitous cigars, but instead turned out to be a pair of bifocals, and he stepped again to the sink to wash the sauce off of them.
She had never seen him in glasses. She had never seen him admit a weakness, even one so small.
She no longer felt like the angry Mrs. Captain Dante anymore, that person had left the room. She felt again like the former Mrs. Captain Dante, the older Mrs. Dante, who still wore the name but had surrendered the position. "What do you want?" she asked.
"The afternoon," he replied, not looking up from the sink.
Franchetta, with her gift for seeing the truth, saw it now, and named it. "There's nothing left between us." She smiled sadly as she nudged the overturned pan on the floor with the toe of her shoe. "Not even a good fight." She stepped toward him, his back still turned, and put her hand up to the back of his head.
"That part of me that you know--your Franny?" she told him, though she knew it wouldn't matter, though she knew he wouldn't believe it. "She doesn't even leave the house anymore." She brought her hand along the right side of his face, where the mark of her nails was, and brushed her fingertips over it gently, crooning 'shhhh' softly under her breath as you would to a child with a skinned knee.
He did not need any further invitation. Bruno Dante turned and grabbed her hard, in the way she had forgotten that she loved to be grabbed--in the way that took her breath away.
She knew there was no real hope for the two of them, for all that she had granted him the afternoon.
From the other room, voices raised in a slightly off-key chorus for Joe. Joe Siri had lost hope, and grew to desire death, she supposed--at least that's what the Times-reported circumstances of his death would have readers believe. He had lost hope, and in doing so desired only death, and so took his own life.
It was not that easy for her, what she desired was so different from what a man like Joe Siri might need, and death would not accomplish it for her. Death would only end her purgatorio, and somehow she was not ready to give up that, for all that she believed nothing would ever come of it.
Franchetta Dante knew she had no hope--no future--perhaps she never had. Desire was all that was left to her. Desire not for the numbness of the grave, the cessation of all human feeling, but rather desire for the opposite. There was something dark in her, something she had denied so long, refused to look at--but something that fortuneteller had seen in her fifteenth year. It was that darkness that could let her give this man, her first husband, the afternoon he had requested--and likely the evening beyond. She had no business doing it, she had no hope of anything coming from it, but even so, she desired it.
Dante's hand had again found the spot where her grey streak grew, and even now, unaware of it himself, he was twining it through his fist like a cord, a string to hang on to. She let him.
She never should have come.
...the end...
Franchetta Caprice Pia Speranza Dante's Famous "For the Fallen of the 11th Precinct" Penne
[feeds eight regular people, only about four grieving cops]
Ingredients:
Imported olive oil (Do not scrimp on price. If your olive oil sucks, so will your penne.)
8 cloves garlic, slivered (Cut lovingly by hand. No food processors, Rookie.)
2lbs. hot Italian sausage (Tell Mr. Fabrizio, the butcher on Woodman, Franchetta sent you.)
8c cut broccoli florets, vary the cut size.
24oz. homemade penne from Seminola flour (You made this last night, when you couldn't sleep.)
1/2c grated Parmesan (Do not even THINK of using the Kraft in the green shaker.)
1t Fennel Seeds (This, you should already have in your good Italian kitchen.)
6T chopped Fennel Ferns (This, you pick from your herb garden early, the morning of the wake.)
2 Roma Tomatoes
1/2c Cream
2c white wine (Drink one cup to steel your nerves.)
Cut onion to taste (Cry if you had feelings for the deceased, or use onion to help simulate grief, if necessary.)
Salt
Black Pepper
1. 2T imported olive oil, heated in large skillet. Add garlic. Sauté (medium heat) until golden and crisp. Remove garlic, set aside.
2. Take sausages out of casings, crumble. Add entire 2lbs. of sausage to skillet. Brown. Cover, simmer until cooked through. Remove meat, set aside. Leave at least 4T fat in skillet.
3. Boil large pot of salted water. Blanch broccoli. Drain. Rinse and set aside.
4. Bring water in large pot back to boil, add penne. Cook until tender. Drain, reserve 1c of cooking water/liquid. Keep penne warm.
5. In large saucepan, heat sausage, broccoli, reserved 1c of cooking liquid, 8T olive oil. Wait, long enough to fully reconsider whether or not you want to attend the wake at all, then add Roma tomatoes, and cream.
6. Dump penne into 13x9 deep-dish pan with handles for easier carrying (you are, after all, going to have to transport it in your car). Add sausage mixture. Top with Parmesan, salt, fennel seeds, pepper, fennel ferns. Toss and add garlic. Cover with foil to keep warm on your way to the wake.
Definitions I had in mind when writing...
visitation: n. 1. a visit of punishment or affliction, or of comfort and blessing regarded as being ordained by God. 2. a calamitous event or experience; a grave misfortune. 3. special dispensation; communication of divine favor and goodness, or, more usually, of divine wrath and vengeance; retributive calamity; retribution; judgment. 4. [at least in my neck of the woods] the open house prior to, or directly following a funeral, during which friends and family members gather at a house or funeral home to eat, drink, socialize, and reminisce about the deceased. See also wake or lay out.
Sanity Statement & Reality Check: I do not own Witchblade or the rights to its characters. That's right, Rookies, when you look up, "Witchblade" in the dictionary it doesn't say, "property of Neftzer" Nor, Mr. Irons, does it say, "Property of Vorschlag Industries." Rather, it says something about Top Cow and TNT. And until the Vorschlag legal department can file some creative paperwork to change that, it's as it should be.
Consequently, I am making no money from this fan-based creation. But I imagine you knew that already, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be downloading one of, http://www.dehpenguin.com, DEHPenguin's fantastic vide-ocular treats? Or paging through, http://www.wormieness.com, Dante's Daisies? Huh? That's right--because you're just that much of a rookie.
by: Neftzer 2002
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