Il Cielo in Una Stanza

(The Sky Inside a Room)

When you are here with me

This room has no walls anymore

but trees, infinite trees.

When you are here near me

this purple ceiling

doesn't exist anymore…

I see the sky above us

who remain here, abandoned

as if, if there were nothing else,

nothing else in the world.

A harmonica is playing:

it seems to me like an organ

that vibrates for you and for me

up in the immensity of the sky…


February 1974

The Mill

Dimitri stared at the road ahead through the windshield of the pale blue late-model Lincoln Continental. He had no idea whose car it was they were driving, he only knew it didn't belong to Sergio. His ride was a cherry red Alfa Romeo, as he informed anybody who would listen whenever the opportunity arose. Most people who'd met Sergio Parisi hated that car on principle for the sole reason he never shut up about it.

Sergio never shut up, period.

The guy hadn't come up for air since turning the key in the ignition. Words spewed from his mouth unabated, endless words, every single one of them either a curse or a complaint. Nothing was fair, he was never responsible for his actions, everyone who wasn't him was just a 'fuckin' asshole', and women were always sluts, bitches, or tricks. They'd barely cleared the vacant lot next to Loughran's Gym before Dimitri was thoroughly reminded of just how much he didn't like the guy. His dislike for Sergio Parisi was palpable, and at the moment, a hairsbreadth away from all-encompassing.

Dislike was putting it mildly.

"So we don't have any idea where this guy went. He just fuckin' disappeared on us. One minute he was sitting at the bar, the next minute, poof!"

There was no mention of the car's rightful owner amidst all of his bullshitting, but whoever it was, they were none too concerned with cleanliness. The interior was sticky and reeked of stale smoke. It was too dark to do a full survey of the cab, but Dimitri noticed the ashtray was crammed so full of stubbed-out Macanudo cigarillos the lid wouldn't close.

None of the Italians he'd ever met smoked Dominicans. It was doubtful he knew the guy.

He didn't care whose car it was, truth be told. The small mystery was just another something to distract him from Sergio's incessant yammering and the overwhelming sensation of dread slowly creeping up the back of his neck, threatening to swallow him whole, top to tail, at any moment should he slip up and let his walls down long enough to fully experience it.

What was all of this about?

What could they possibly want from him now, after so much time had passed?

Dimitri had gone out of his way, way far out of his way, to become as amicable a persona non grata to these people as he could be; gone and forgotten, walking the straight and narrow with a fucking choir book in hand. Unless this was something to do with Bobby Lombardo's enormous outstanding tab at the butcher shop or Spoon's gambling debts with a few different bookies around town, he couldn't account for this late-night compulsory field trip at all.

Wake up, run, train at the gym, work, train at the gym, sleep - his schedule for months now. His profile couldn't be lower, aside from all the noise surrounding his upcoming title fight. Spoon handled all the fight promotions and any requests for interviews the gym received from local papers and television stations, all respectfully declined as he wasn't the showboating kind. He ate whenever he could, he helped with household chores when asked, and he hung out with Mickey just often enough to prevent his whining about not hanging out enough. His own mother hardly saw him anymore!

Dimitri was in the best shape of his life, and he was the palest he'd ever been in his life because of the semi-nocturnal hours he kept. Mickey started calling him the Heavyweight Emily Dickinson. He said the long dark brown hair didn't help dispute the title. The Heavyweight Emily Dickinson was still better than The Russian God, a nickname he hated that stuck like flypaper since it was first assigned to him a while back by…some jagoff in Philadelphia or some Masshole near Boston? He couldn't recall.

But they'd been wrong. He was no god. Most days he wasn't even a particularly good man.

His troubled mind circled back around to the comforting notion of his best friend. Part of him selfishly wished Mickey was there in the car with him. Mickey would be able to talk away both their nerves. He'd smile and joke, and get Sergio back five times better than he gave in snide remarks. Mickey would probably even manage to sandbag Sergio into stopping for food. He'd find burgers and strawberry milkshakes somewhere along that desolate stretch of nothing road, conjuring them out of thin air with nothing more than his innate Mickeyness and the loose change in his pockets.

Who was he kidding? Mickey would have conned his way out of getting into the car in the first place. His clever ass never would have warmed one of those seats, even if he had to resort to the old point-and-run trick, 'Hey, what's that over there?!' They'd be halfway to Canada by now, eating fried chicken with greasy fingers and dying their hair in the bathroom of a Texaco had he followed a more Tanner-like trajectory.

It was too late for cleverness now.

Sergio took the longer route down I-80. Conditions were icy but still passable. There were surprisingly few cars out given the time of night and day of the week. The highway was all but abandoned, eerily so.

Looking out into the night, Dimitri allowed himself to wonder if maybe somewhere between Loughran's Gym and the city limits of Dover something happened that altered the world forever. Maybe there had been an apocalypse and they were just amongst the last to know. An opportune nuclear event? Or perhaps something more biblical in nature - a flood? He momentarily switched his view from the windshield to the passenger side window and found himself hoping there would be locusts piling up against the glass.

Not a bug in sight.

Hope really was just the pathetic iteration of wondering.

He faced forward.

During a regular commute on that same road, an absence of cars would be an unexpected stroke of luck, but given the particulars of his current situation, the lack of traffic just meant Dimitri was making excellent time on his journey to a place he had no intention of ever setting foot inside of again for as long as he lived.

A global apocalypse would be better.

"So we go back to the same fuckin' bar we were at the night before, and the fuckin' guy is somehow still sittin' there drinkin' and chatting away. He never left!"

Colon cancer would be better.

What's the opposite of luck? Bad luck is still luck.

Trees whizzed by in the high beam headlights - scratchy white pine dusted with frost, red oak, and tulip still barren from winter. Each tree they passed felt like another landmark to Dimitri. Two hundred trees farther away from home, three hundred trees farther away from home, seven hundred trees closer to uncertainty, a thousand trees to go until they reached the threshold of an unending night. Trees didn't care that a person might be about to die, they died a little every year only to be resurrected come spring, and springtime always came. The trees outside his window just now were nothing but a bunch of tall and majestic smug little fucks, only slightly preferable to the smug little fuck sitting next to him in that car.

At least the trees didn't wear too much cologne.

Dimitri could taste Sergio's cologne. It blended with the thick stench of aging tobacco ash, and he just knew his leather jacket was going to smell like a barbequed gigolo for weeks.

"So my buddy asked him what happened, and he said - get this - 'I passed out over there on the floor, but then an angel with no arms and no legs flew down from the sky and healed me with his magical powers.' He called it divine intervention."

Dimitri found it somewhat reduced his stress levels to block out everything else going on around him and to focus his attention directly on the lines in the road. The yellow and white stripes down the middle of the highway were continuous…monotonous…they represented order…civility…he could zone out staring at them for miles…and miles… They didn't rub his nose in all of the terrible decisions he'd made in his life that led to this moment. They were merely lines that indicated where a person should drive their car to avoid perishing in a fiery wreck after plowing directly into oncoming traffic, leaving behind them a trail of twisted metal and carnage the likes of which most people would never see in their lifetime and certainly would never be able to forget if they had.

Soothing.

"So I get up to go to the bathroom, and down at the other end of the fuckin' bar is a guy with no fuckin' arms and no fuckin' legs! It was Tony's angel! The bartender told me everybody just called the guy Stumps, and he made his money sellin' speed and blowjobs to long haul truckers at all the rest stops up and down the 280. Now that is the story of how Tony Rizzo earned himself the forever nickname of Johnny Angel."

Soothing.

They passed a dead deer on the side of the road. The nearly-bisected animal's pink and primary red innards were splattered all over the uneven space where pavement met pebbled dirt. It must have just happened, the carcass was still steaming in the cold night air and rigor mortis hadn't set in yet. The poor creature's eyes were probably still clear if they were still intact.

A vehicle would have to be substantial in size to collide with an animal like that and continue on its way without leaving behind more evidence - skid marks, shattered glass, a ruined bumper, etc. They hadn't seen another car on the road for miles. No blinding headlight beams flashed in the distance; no tail lights just up ahead to follow at a respectable delay of at least three car lengths. The circumstances surrounding the deer's grisly death were just another tiny mystery to toss on the heap.

"It's not like I knew the guy was already in there, and it was only a flesh wound for Christ's sake! I'm tellin' yuh - bitch, bitch, bitch."

How slowly were they moving that he had time to observe all this? With the way his heart was hammering in his chest, it felt like he was being propelled forward, belted to the front of a runaway train as it hurtled off the tracks toward oblivion, but everything he saw through the tinted glass appeared stagnant and warped. The trees weren't shooting past them as they were before, now they seemed to crawl without movement.

"All I'm sayin' is, would it kill her to eat a salad?"

And through it all, haunted trees and dead forest creatures, over hill and dale, Sergio Parisi never…stopped…talking…

"Belikov? Hell-o!"

"What?" Dimitri flinched.

He shouldn't have asked that. He didn't care what.

"Oh, so yuh do have ears under that brown mop yuh have on your head. Coulda' fooled me, Comrade."

He didn't care that the jackass had probably just been repeating his name for a solid minute before insulting his hair and country of origin. He didn't care about the atrocious fake Russian accent he'd used pronouncing the word 'comrade'. Dimitri's mind was no longer a porous entity - nothing new was sinking in, and his body was so tense it was likely to shatter. Annoyance and anxiety were not supposed to mix at this level of concentration.

It was unnatural.

Volatile.

"A word to the wise," Sergio began, his eyes trained on the frozen road, "yuh can play aloof all yuh want with me, but I don't recommend this sort of behavior once yuh head up to Bobby's because he has no kinda personality for it tonight. Yuh better come through with something to say to him or he'll give yuh your ass to wear as a hat."

Dimitri shot him a sideways glance in the dark. "Thanks."

Two words spoken in three-quarters of an hour, and they still felt like a mammoth accomplishment. Dimitri had to wrench them from his voice box and clamp his mouth shut right after just in case they tried to worm their way back inside of him. He wasn't aloof, he was unraveling without making any sound.

Not everybody needed to make so much noise all the time! Some people preferred calm, quiet fucking reflection to the sound of their own miserable voice.

The car bounced a few times, then dipped off of the asphalt and onto gravel. Dimitri was so deep in his head just then, he missed their exit from the interstate and the two rights and one left it took to reach their destination.

They were at the end of the line and he wasn't ready.

Face the music, pay the piper, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye - all the old cliches he used to roll his eyes at in the movies were suddenly so relevant to his own experience as he gazed upon the harbinger of what was fixin' to be a very bad time.

The Mill.

The Mill looked like any other old guard roadhouse restaurant watering hole dive. It was a large two-story wooden building situated just off the interstate. A rickety sign made of the same wood suspended from the upstairs balcony advertised Cocktails, Billiards, Steaks, Clams, and Italian Food with a newer neon tacked on below it featuring the words "Live Music" in cursive script. The Mill was a place where people with an aversion to white linens and place settings with more than one fork could go for a decent night out away from the kids - a shithole with an appeal. The patronage mainly was respectable, if a bit low rent, with the occasional exception of the odd passing group of bikers setting up shop in the bar area for an afternoon or late night on their way to somewhere from someplace else, but they always knew better than to start any funny business at one of Bobby's spots.

Bobby was already using the place for his own funny business. They were all full-up.

Sergio brought the car to a stop smack in the middle of the gravel parking lot surrounding the establishment. Dimitri knew there weren't formal spaces mapped out on the lot for people to pull into, but this particular vehicular placement was a bit much. Parisi probably fancied himself Steve McQueen in this situation, skidding to a halt wherever the hell he damn well pleased on account of who he was and what he looked like - so smooth, so very, very smooth.

Sergio Parisi was no Steve McQueen. He was a punishment that breathed and metabolized.

"Yuh don't gotta keep eyeballin' her, Comrade. Not a goddamn thing ever changes about that big wooden bitch but the mud." Sergio threw open the driver's side door and grinned at him. "And it's tits high tonight, boy! I hope yuh wore your boots."

He hadn't. Of course, he hadn't.

Be cool.

It was a slow night at The Mill, not a lot of cars parked outside, not a lot of tables filled inside by the looks of it. The roads were empty, it made sense that the bars would be too. Dimitri climbed out of the car and was promptly greeted by Louis Prima's rendition of Buona Sera radiating from the building at peak volume. He closed his eyes, counted ten under the guise of stretching out his neck and shoulder muscles, and tried to remind himself that a drive out to Bobby Lombardo's place didn't necessarily mean something twisted was about to go down. He'd been there several times before only to be handed an envelope full of money for a recent job well done, with a huge medium rare porterhouse on the side as compliments from the house. A little salt, a little pepper, and he was out of there no harm, no foul.

…But those were visits to the front of the house, not the office, and he hadn't made a collection for these people in a long time. He left the game behind, quitting while he wasn't too far behind. At least, he thought he had.

Harm.

Dimitri took a few deep breaths, ignoring the smoke from Sergio's freshly lit cigarette. The freezing air would have stung like fire coming in anyhow, his plume of mentholated smoke just added a little extra body to the cold burn, like huffing the fumes from a tin of Tiger Balm.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em - another cliché that now held the ring of truth. He thought about risking further commentary by asking to bum one but quickly decided against it when he noticed his hands were shaking. Nicotine would just make it worse. He'd have to walk in there with his fists clenched, at least until he found a stiff enough drink to steady himself.

Anything but Sambuca.

Foul.

Sergio sauntered ahead, already removing his leather driving gloves and heavy coat in preparation for The Mill's backroom office and its notoriously aggressive thermostat settings. The bar and lounge area were kept temperate as that half of the property was for paying customers, but the back half of the joint was where Lombardo tended to the lion's share of his interests. He wielded the central heating and air in his office like a weapon of psychological warfare. No one could ever really be that cold, even in the dead of winter. He liked to watch people sweat and squirm while he called the shots. In the summer he made their teeth chatter.

They bypassed the stairs to the front entrance and hooked around to a narrow walkway lining the back perimeter of the building. Twenty-five paces and they would reach the evergreen-painted door to Bobby Lombardo's office. Nobody used that macadam path who wasn't part of the family business or on the take. In the past, Dimitri privately referred to this thoroughfare as Scumbag Lane. He'd only strolled down the lane a dozen or so times before tonight - the first time was to enlist his part-time services to Lombardo's crew as an associate on a strictly trial basis, with a major caveat piggybacking on a personal favor bundled into the deal, and the last time was to respectfully rescind that enlistment at the top of his lungs.

Everything in between blurred together in his memory.

Be cool.

Be cool.

It was easier thought than done, especially given that 'tits high' had only been a slight exaggeration of the muddy conditions surrounding The Mill tonight. Dimitri's old pair of leather Everlast high tops he only wore now for bag work would have gotten him straight home from the gym alright, but out here they were properly ruined and sopping wet.

Big wooden bitch, indeed.

Be cool.

His pulse was a friggin' freestyle jazz solo, swinging erratically through his veins and major arteries, syncopating with the force of a battering ram from his heart, into his ears, and back again. That his legs kept working on their own accord was an anomaly; he was fairly certain he was only one or two more experimental cardiovascular downbeats away from face-planting in the brown, wintery slush.

Be cool, daddy-o.

Sensor-controlled lights triggered by their footfall illuminated the last few steps of the way. The harsh white glare stripped away any shreds of denial Dimitri still clung to regarding his surroundings, here he was again - goddamnit and tarnation - having another great big roll around in the scum. It was shaping up to be another four-shower day.

Just shy of the doorstep Sergio made a point of swapping spots with Dimitri, practically lunging for the knob so he would be the first one over the threshold as if forcing him to trail a little behind solidified a formal pecking order - one that anyone else gave a toss about. It never occurred to him that maybe Dimitri would prefer not to herky-jerk his way on into a scorpion den full of lions and scorpions, unannounced and unarmed.

Be cool.

As Dimitri was soon to discover, unannounced… would have been an idea.

Sergio flung the door open, full force, forgoing the customary courtesy knock entirely, and resumed the position of never shutting the fuck up, not-ever-not-once, with zeal.

"Ask and ye shall receive," he declared. "Behold, I bring yuh Mother Russia's answer to Wilt 'The Stilt' Chamberlain: Dimitri 'Frozen Stick Up His Ass' Belikov!" Voice too loud and stance wide, he gestured back at Dimitri without bothering to check if he was even still there - pleased as punch with himself.

At least he's not making obscene noises with his armpit.

Yet.

Bland indifference and the sizzle of veal piccata cooking away on an enormous ceramic-coated cast iron skillet were the only responses issued to Sergio's circumstance-less pomp by the five men already present in the office upon their grand entrance. Dimitri had no doubt these men often chose to ignore him rather than indulge in his childish mugging. It was a wonder Sergio Parisi was even still alive, he was so criminally lacking in self-awareness.

Bobby Lombardo's office was essentially a one-room apartment located out back behind the bar with a couple of large steel desks positioned where a loft bed would ordinarily be in a city inlaw unit of comparable size. More than half of the remaining space was taken up by a perpetually well-stocked kitchenette. Bobby was an avid cook who preferred to prepare his meals on-site whenever he was too bogged down with work to sup at home with his overly attentive wife and three thoroughly unremarkable children.

Tonight must have been such a night.

Dimitri lingered in the doorway after closing the door, dragging out the process of wiping his feet on a black rubber mat to delay having to talk to anyone for as long as possible; it also allowed him to quickly scope out the current state of a room he'd seen so often in dreams - his shittiest ones. Time passed, but the digs hadn't changed much.

Except for the faces.

It certainly struck him as odd that he didn't recognize anyone in the room aside from Sergio and Bobby himself. He'd worked with several members of Lombardo's organization at one time or another during his brief dalliance with the world of organized crime, and those he hadn't worked with he knew by sight. The four anonymously hardened looking caucasian males in there now were exceptionally anonymous and that couldn't have been the result of chance.

Bobby didn't leave things to chance. He dealt exclusively with sure things.

The muscles at the base of Dimitri's spine clenched involuntarily as he made the final steps onto the orange chenille area rug that covered most of the office's black and white checkered linoleum floor. It took more thought than it should for him to appreciate the cramping sensation was most likely round two of his body pulling rank on his force of will by warning his flailing brain to watch his ass - his frozen stick-less ass. Even his flesh knew he was in over his head.

Either that or the uncomfortable bench seat in the Lincoln tweaked something in his back.

He couldn't quite put his finger on what was confounding him about the space he'd just entered. Nothing was wrong with what he saw, but none of it felt real. Everything was too brushed up and on its best behavior, from the shiny clean floor to the dirty so-and-so's in shiny clean ties - like the cracks had been painted over and all the filth about the place was hastily stuffed under a bed somewhere.

Small acknowledgments were offered to Dimitri in close-ish succession once his feet were well and truly wiped and the funk of Sergio's introduction cleared out, a nod here, a click of the tongue and mock salute there, all of it tinged with a subtle whiff of horseshit. Insults passed off as good-natured ribbing were customarily woven into the salutations around these parts - breaking balls to test a newcomer's boundaries or to strengthen existing fellowship.

'Nice jacket. Do they sell men's clothes where yuh got that?'

'Sorry I'm so tired, I was up banging your sister all night. Christ, she's a real goer, that one. Mouth like a fuckin' vacuum cleaner.'

Dimitri guessed the whole lot of them were given direct orders to be polite to him within the confines of believability. On any other night, one of them would have already taken to calling him Lurch.

He felt like a mark.

"Dimitri, my boy!"

Then of course…there was Bobby Lombardo.

Breathe and be cool.

"I'm up to my elbows in veal back here. Come in, take a load off." Bobby all but shouted over the sound effects of his mise en place. The imposing thatch-headed master of the house stood in the corner manning the kitchenette's gas stove like a ship's captain at the helm of a yare vessel, his broad back slightly hunched and turned to the room. With his shirt sleeves rolled up and a tea towel draped over his shoulder, he almost appeared the picture of masculine domesticity - almost. A giant wall rack of semiautomatic weapons and a modest dining table laden with stacks of cash, several duct-taped kilos of what was most likely heroin, and a bill counter situated not too far away from his crockery and spread of imported olive oils and spices somewhat detracted from the wholesomeness of the tableau.

"I see you made it here without incident." Bobby leaned back somewhat awkwardly, offering a quick glimpse of his rectangular profile, but didn't turn fully away from the stove to formally greet him. "Beauuuuutiful! Forgive my rudeness in not welcoming you properly with a handshake after such a long hiatus in our acquaintanceship," he held up a wire whisk with his dominant hand, "but at this stage, my sauce could break or the flour could clump like THAT. My mother would have kittens if she found out I cut corners on her recipe. I swear that woman can smell separated oil in one of my pans from her house over on Staten Island, and the back of her hand can reach twice that far!"

"Evening." Dimitri resisted the urge to clear his throat before adding more to his opening line, lest he run the risk of appearing less of a man. In this world, posturing was a major part of politicking - a real man didn't need to rely on phlegm to command the attention of a room, he did it himself. Handshakes were firm but not too firm, and asses were selected carefully before being kissed thoroughly. "It's smelling good in here, Bobby. Please, take your time. I'm in no hurry." He assured the man.

It was a pack of bald-faced lies.

Dimitri was in a considerable hurry to get out of there. Sitting down anywhere in that room was the last thing he wanted to do, and the scent of hot capers, cave-aged cheese, and lemon peel held distinct sweaty jizz and furniture polish notes he couldn't ignore once he made the connection via sense memory. Nevertheless, he pulled a stylish wicker chair away from the table, angling it strategically so he could observe everyone in the room while still appearing to be relatively at ease. A strong front felt like the only way to make it through the night. He would not bounce his foot. He would not tap his index finger on the tablecloth. He would simply sit and stay seated.

He already knew the office's schematics from a security standpoint - one door, one window, one fire extinguisher, multiple potentially violent criminals - but this new vantage opened up the room to fresh scrutiny. Small things jumped out at him when they hadn't before. There were evident delicate touches to the décor that Dimitri didn't recall having been there on previous visits, the kind of intelligent little pluses here and there he was wont to attribute to a woman's positive influence over the man, or men, in her life. While it was true some men had an artistic eye for decorating, most women he'd met in his life could make a house a home.

Cooking aside, Bobby wasn't the sort.

The heroin table sat eight and was draped in a red and white checkered tablecloth, there was a handsome glass vase nestled amongst the piles of ill-gotten lucre, the woven mat on the floor in front of the icebox coordinated perfectly with the fluffy dish towels folded in a neat stack at the end of the metal countertop, and the oversized leather sofa - which Dimitri knew frequently served as Bobby's bed when working hours ran over and the drive back to his family home in Newark became too much of an undertaking - had a rich brown fur throw resting just so over one of the arms. Someone with modern taste and classic sensibility put effort into sprucing up the place. The enormous gold-framed velvet painting of Dogs Playing Poker hanging behind one of the desks notwithstanding.

"How was the drive over?" Bobby asked after allowing him time to get settled. "It was a might slippery out there when I came in this morning."

Never before have I longed so fervently for death to claim me.

"I made it in one piece."

"We all figured you would, Dimitri. There was, however, some debate over your escort's chances of arriving unscathed." Bobby added wryly. "I told them all you were too smart to do anything too stupid."

My being here right now is supremely stupid.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I have my moments just the same as anybody else." Dimitri tried to smile politely. He felt his face crinkle in places, but couldn't determine if it was a smile he'd achieved.

"Well you may have your moments, but I've known a few guys around here who've had their hours!"

Bobby laughed at his own joke, loudly.

The performative sideline conversations going on around them stalled as the men picked up their cue to return the boss's laughter in kind. They had no choice. The king made a droll remark, and the plebes laughed on pain of death - just as it had always been for as long as there were kings and plebes.

Dimitri limited his reaction to a tight smile and a rap of his knuckles on the checkered tabletop. He was no longer required to brownnose, polite acknowledgment was a respectable enough play for the round. He would look appropriately withholding, especially now that he was certain all eyes and ears were on him.

All eyes except for Bobby's, that is. He was busy cooking.

"I apologize for the state of the Lincoln Continental you rode in on, Dimitri. Believe it or not, that was my primary vehicle until six months back when I gifted it to my sister. Her family car died on her again, and she needed something more reliable for carting around her kids, running her errands, and whatnot. I tell you, if I'd known at the time that good-for-nothing husband of hers was going to smoke in it the way he does, I would have saved myself the trouble. He doesn't even bother with opening the window when he lights up. It smells like the floor of a Panama casino in there."

There was one mystery solved. Now Dimitri just needed to figure out why the hell he was there, and who killed that deer out on the highway.

"I've taken longer trips in worse."

Bobby laughed again. "Isn't that just the truth, huh? Growing up, my parents smoked pipes - both of them. Every single thing we owned turned brown over time or had burn holes in it. I went to school each day looking like a London chimney sweep. This situation, though, it's more the principle of the thing. That car was a present. A man should never disregard another man's courtesy like that. He's a bum!"

Dimitri's head was fogged. The heat was already getting the better of him. He was molten under the collar and moisture from all his crevasses was pooling together into a single swamp. Miserable as he felt, he didn't dare remove his jacket. Projected weakness amongst professional criminals came in many forms beyond errant throat-clearing. He was only wearing a t-shirt underneath his leather blazer and the rest of the men in the room were at least in dress slacks and fresh shirts. Showing up underdressed for the occasion of business was a distinct disadvantage.

His tongue feeling like lead in his throat and his balls being plastered as they were to the side of his leg with flop sweat, thus making it uncomfortable to shift even slightly in his seat, were additional disadvantages.

The disadvantages were stacking. Soon they'd topple - probably while Bobby was still talking.

" - Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm taking the car in tomorrow to have it worked on at Greco Bro's just down the road here, so I had it with me tonight. Mr. La-di-da over there's Alfa Romeo wouldn't make the first two feet of a country mile out on that ice."

Bobby's final remark was followed by snickering from more than one individual in the periphery. This time the laughter sounded genuine.

Be cool.

Dimitri would not crack a smile.

He needed to stay sharp.

This was no time for screwing around. He would not allow himself even one second to revel in the fact that Sergio was still the frequent butt of jokes within Bobby's ranks. He couldn't afford to be further distracted by pettiness. He needed to devote his energy to finding out what was going on here, and not to how much fuck that guy.

"Dimitri?"

Even if he did firmly believe fuck that guy.

"...Dimitri?"

"I'm sorry?" He shook his head slightly at the sound of his name and immediately regretted it. No throat clearing, no head shaking. He recalibrated his focus on Bobby's back, willing himself to be more present in the moment. If he couldn't be gone, he needed to be present as shit.

The ghost of Christmas present.

Be cool.

Mind like a dagger, Belikov.

"I asked if you'd like something to drink. There's beer and wine in the ice box, or we can have something sent over from the bar? I overindulged last night, so it's just mixers for me at the moment. You shouldn't let that stop you from imbibing, though." Bobby continued the charade of addressing Dimitri from over his shoulder and reached for a half-empty Coca-Cola bottle on the butcher block to his right to illustrate his claim. "My friends here seem to have forgotten their manners. Someone, get the kid a drink if he wants one. I swear you were all born in the same barn!"

"I'm alright, thank you," Dimitri lied. Drinking when the boss was abstaining was located somewhere halfway down a long list of 'do not do's for a plethora of reasons, and not all ones relating to decorum. Alcohol was only a helpful agent of discourse if everybody was drinking it. The dynamic couldn't be lopsided or someone was undoubtedly more the fool.

"You sure? I promise you it's not all cheap table Chianti in straw bottles around here."

"I don't doubt it, but after an eight-hour shift and four hours of training, wine would probably just put me to sleep."

Bobby wasn't taking no for an answer. "Water then? Sparkling, mineral, lemon…?"

"A glass of water would be appreciated," Dimitri relented. "Tap is fine. If it's not too much of an imposition."

"You see! Listen to that, you bunch of chuckleheads." Bobby remarked to the room, mostly in jest. "You all should be taking notes because this is how a polite young man behaves in company." He was in his element holding court with a spatula in place of a gavel. "He doesn't accept alcohol when his offeror is abstaining, he denies that he is thirsty to spare his busy host the additional burden of waiting on him, BUT he promptly accepted when the offer of hospitality is renewed a third time with greater insistence so as not to offend the patron of the house - I know a boy who was raised to obey his mama when I see one. I always suspected it of you, Dimitri, but this cements it. Get the man some water."

Dimitri bristled slightly at the allusion to his mother. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

Be cool.

"P's and Q's are very important things to mind in this world, Dimitri, and for some reason which I do not understand, I surround myself with uncouth hoodlums who chew with their mouths open and don't flush the toilet if it's only a piss they've just taken. An enabler of barbarism is all that I am."

Bobby's flowery turns of phrase were old hat for his subordinates, especially when put to use doling out insults. He rarely swore, unless the moment truly called for it, and he'd long since done away with his Jersey-by-way-of-the outer boroughs accent in an attempt to class up his act. Dimitri found his pronunciations peculiar, with every consonant punched all to hell on a thesaurus's worth of fifty-cent words. There was an alien quality to it, a strangeness that put a person on edge, which was maybe the point.

Artifice.

A simple word that annoyingly evaded Dimitri since Sergio first opened the office door finally broke the surface.

The energy in Bobby's office was edging on rancid with the ring of falseness. There was staging to this set - blocking and scripting. The men he didn't recognize were all so invested in looking casual that they forgot how to behave like real people. They kept leaning in different positions, examining their nails, checking their watches, and yawning like jungle cats at the zoo. It was almost as if Dimitri stumbled upon an elaborate FBI sting operation mid-progress or the filming of an episode of Candid Camera. He was certain everything transpiring around him at that moment, the cooking demonstration included, was arranged for his benefit.

Or to his detriment.

Whatever phase of Bobby's plan they were in now, it was likely working. He felt every ounce the fish out of water at that moment, even though he'd been to this place before and knew what these people were, if not who they were individually.

If you look around the room and can't identify the mark, then brother, you are the mark.

Countless downright painful minutes passed before Bobby spoke again. "I'm almost done over here, I promise. Just a few finishing touches. You're probably sick of watching the back of my head by now, ehhh Dimitri old boy?"

Sick was a good word for how he felt. He was sick and tired down low, and weird on top. There weren't enough bummed cigarettes or double shots of rye in the world to plug the gaping maw forming in his spirit. That room was sucking him dry.

Be cool.

Dimitri was never a fan of conversation just for conversation's sake. As a rule, he generally preferred silence to the alternative, but the silence winding its way through Bobby's office was proving an exception to that rule. There was a malignancy to it. It kept morphing into something more noticeable than before, general unease evolving slowly into new torture.

Somehow, they effectively recreated and weaponized the emotional experience of sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office, except it was too hot and not too cold. He was nervous and impatient, and there were even people staring at him over the tops of magazines they were only pretending to read.

Sergio was holding an upside-down copy of last Sunday's newspaper.

Idiot.

To make matters worse, the uneven pauses in dialogue were now maddeningly accompanied by the sound of dueling musics - Dean Martin's slouchy baritone spilling out the choruses of two different songs at the same time, one on the jukebox out in the bar & grill, and the other coming from a small radio in the kitchenette. The moon was a great big pizza pie and it was all a giant fucking kick in the head.

He needed to say something. It was his turn to talk. He'd already skipped a few turns and it showed. The monster silence currently stalking the room was mostly his creation. He just couldn't think of anything good aside from the obvious, 'Why am I here? What is all this about!? Your cooking smells like a teenage boy's secret cumsock doused in Lemon Pledge, and I hope you all die in a fire.' 'Please, let me go. I'm begging I'll do anything.'

All leads that required burying.

"They say a watched pot never boils." He eventually blurted, wincing a little because it was awful, so awful. Bobby offered a grunt, acknowledging his contribution, which was honestly rather gracious of him considering.

A glass of water appeared on the table near Dimitri's elbow. He didn't see who had placed it there, it was just suddenly there where it hadn't been before. He was a mark and an easy one at that. One tiny facial expression, one trite remark, and somebody seized the opportunity to pickpocket him in reverse. They watered him like a goddamn houseplant!

Dimitri took an obligatory sip from the glass because they were all watching him, and because it was something else to do besides overthink. He noted that the water tasted filtered and was the perfect temperature. It figured. Just then he could have gone for something rusty and hard to chew on - bad water from old pipes or a mug of nails to keep him mean. Now he'd have to drink this refreshing bullshit and maybe even say thank you for it afterward.

What he wanted to do was chuck the full pint glass at Bobby's radio. If he missed, he'd throw a shoe.

That'd show 'em.

Dean Martin. Deans Martin.

He vaguely remembered reading somewhere that Dean Martin wasn't nearly as much of a drunk as he pretended to be in his act. His martini glasses onstage were often filled with water during all those Rat Pack engagements at The Sands, much to Sinatra's displeasure. His birth name was Dino Paul Crocetti, and he'd been a prize fighter before he became a crooner. He got a nose job to make himself look less 'ethnic' by 1940's Hollywood standards, and he was a lousy father who just kept on making more children with new wives and the alleged hog he had dangling between his legs. His Babushka always preferred Sammy Davis Jr.

Old Dino was bringing it home two times when Bobby announced that his New Jersey secondi was just about ready.

"I do believe with this meal I've painted my masterpiece!" He bragged, turning his body away from the stove for the first time since Dimitri's arrival. His ruddy face was beaded with sweat from cooking in a room that already felt like an oven, and there was a small white kitchen timer ticking away in his whisking hand. "The water is almost boiling, and then the macaroni will be done in about twelve minutes. I think that's plenty of time for you and me to have ourselves a chat."

The timer... was loud. Of course, it was.

Dimitri didn't understand the logic behind setting a timer for an undetermined amount of time plus twelve minutes, but then nothing made any sense to him right now so at least there was consistency within his state of confusion. Sure, why the fuck not? Set a timer, an obnoxious timer, for an arbitrary deadline based on a guess. Foreverty-hundred hours with twelve minutes crammed up into it because there is no God and there never has been - at least not in that room.

Bobby took a seat at the table, placing his cola bottle next to Dimitri's still-full water glass. He studied Dimitri's face while arranging his outsized frame on one of the matching comically undersized chairs, no doubt trying to sniff out the best way to engage the historically reticent Russian.

Dean Martin took a bow to applause on the jukebox out in the bar area, and his voice faded to black a few seconds later in the kitchen. Someone turned the radio off after that. Or maybe the place really was haunted.

With the music so went all the phony side conversation. The warm-up act was through.

"Money," Bobby stated, holding after for a few beats to allow the gravity of the word to do its usual thing. "I brought you here tonight to discuss the topic of money." He pressed his hands together, palms apart, in a thinking man's steeple. "Let me start by asking you this: what do you think my current overall financial situation is, Dimitri?"

A beat, followed by another beat, and then an elaboration, "When you look at me, where would you place me in the grand scheme of things?"

Dimitri hesitated. Those were two different questions. The first question he couldn't answer without running the risk of sounding stupid, and the second he couldn't answer truthfully without the possibility of being murdered and having his body disposed of in the Pine Barrens.

He stuck with hesitation.

"Just take a guess, son. Give me your honest appraisal and don't worry about offending me or feeling embarrassed. We are but conversating here." Bobby indicated to the other men around the room, waving them off with a soft "pfft." They were wallpaper as far as he was concerned.

The reassurance did little to alleviate Dimitri's oppressive feeling of being studied as a specimen under glass, but he wanted this over sooner rather than later. "Candidly," he prefaced, slow and deliberate, "my frame of reference for personal wealth is severely lacking. I wouldn't even know where to begin evaluating a man of your position."

It wasn't a lie. It didn't mean anything either.

Bobby's chair creaked slightly under his substantial weight. He wasn't fat but sturdy - burly and a bit coarse. He looked Dimitri up and down another time. "Fair enough. Very diplomatic of you. In the interest of saving time, in my self-estimation…I do okay. I own a large house, I own a few small apartment buildings as well as several commercial spaces, I hold the controlling interest in two other bars much like this one, I own multiple cars, and a pleasure boat, I collect expensive watches, and my clothing is mostly custom made. I would venture to say that I am quite comfortable with a few extras added on here or there."

Dimitri nodded. They had different definitions of the word comfortable, but he wasn't inclined to nitpick.

"That being said, do you know what I have quite a lot of in addition to all of these comforts and little extras?"

Silence.

Silence except for the 'tick, tick, tick' of the little white kitchen timer over by the spoon rest.

"Overhead," Bobby answered. "I have oh-so-very-much overhead looming around right over my head." He pointed a finger skyward and gave it a little twirl. "I am blessed with a large family which I maintain at a rather high standard of living - children with horseback riding lessons and braces on their teeth, a wife who couldn't stay away from Bergdorf's even if she tried - which she does not, an elderly mother who requires a live-in nurse, and so forth. I have many employees on my various payrolls, I spend money wining and dining business associates to make and retain the necessary connections, and I have to grease a lot of palms and pay off a lot of people to keep this whole machine running efficiently. I make an enormous amount of money in my line of work, and that's a very good thing because I have to spend an enormous amount of money just to be in my line of work."

Bobby swallowed a little thickly before continuing. No one was copacetic with how hot that room was, not even the devil himself. "The point I'm trying to make is that even though I'm top cock around these parts, I still need to take my paydays where I can get them to keep the taxman off my doorstep and the foxes out of my henhouse. That's what I'm getting at. People have their ideas about what goes on out here, but they are usually wrong - as you know. I am not an evil man. I am not a king sitting on a gold throne inside an ivory tower. I am merely an entrepreneur. I live my life under the scriptures of capitalism, same as anyone, and under the scriptures of capitalism, man is coerced into carrying out the endeavors of individualistic pursuit."

It wasn't a lie. It didn't mean anything either.

"I can…appreciate that. I just don't understand why you're telling me all this. Tonight. Here. Any of it." Dimitri knew he needed to tread lightly, but he was growing more and more impatient with each tick of that rat bastard kitchen timer. The sound of it made him miss Deans Martin. Both of them.

Everybody needs somebody sometimes.

Bobby changed his track. "What is your current monetary disposition, Dimitri?"

"Disposition?" He loathed answering questions with questions, and yet -

"Is money no object for you?"

"I don't -"

"Do you have so much of it at your disposal right now that an opportunity to earn more would hold no appeal for you?" Bobby cocked his head and dropped a fraction of a smirk. "Have you become a Buddhist monk? Are you no longer permitted to handle money due to religious beliefs? Or perhaps you have brought Soviet inclinations with you over here from the old country which could not be dispelled through the process of naturalization?"

Sergio barked loudly from his spot by the office's lone window, earning him a quick forearm across the gut from another young man sitting nearby. This wasn't the time for audience participation. Bobby clocked the interruption, his line of questioning snagged some, but he didn't spare them a glance. "OR are you a man such as myself, a man who has overhead, a man who is very concerned with fulfilling his financial obligations and meeting his ends?"

"I don't believe I've ever met a man for whom money was no object," Dimitri replied honestly.

Bobby smiled, smug as can be. "Neither have I."

"Why am I here?" Dimitri asked point blank, finally cracking. "I don't want to be rude, really, but I don't work for you anymore. I haven't worked for you since Pittsburgh when you said I was free to walk away. How do I still factor into your 'individualistic pursuits' after a year of no contact?"

They stared.

"No pussyfooting, huh?"

"Not usually. Not if I can help it."

"That's a lad. Alright, shooting from the hip - you have a momentous fight on the books that is fast approaching. The odds coming out of Atlantic City are all in your favor, and the action already drummed up by this event is staggering for an amateur competition. Unprecedented. There's talk of your going pro, of management offers already pouring in. Hell, some people are saying you might even be next in line to fight Muhammad Ali once he gets over this hard-on he has for Joe Frazier. The big dogs over in Philly are very interested in the outcome of this event - very interested. Not one person in the tri-state area believes Mendoza is going to best you or even make it past the first three rounds against you, so totally and completely outclassed is he by you."

Bobby was a man who talked with his hands. Most of the words he used were paired with gestures for clarification or emphasis - fists, flat palms, and thumbs all a blur. He stilled when a thing was really important. What he was about to say was going to be pretty important.

"Can you just take a moment to try and comprehend the season of fiduciary providence a man could bring about for himself were he to throw down a sizable wad of cash on the one-in-a-million chance of 1974 just not being your year?"

Tick, tick, tick...

"It's not such a stretch of the imagination." He continued. "Any number of things can happen in a man's private life to throw him off his game, especially when he's performing at such high levels of excellence. He might have a nasty row with his sweetheart, there could be a death in the family, he maybe comes down with a bad cold that he just can't seem to kick, or even something as simple as a bad oyster at cocktail hour. So many possible unfortunate eventualities and so many thousands of dollars to be earned. Hundreds upon hundreds of each."

Tick, tick, tick…

Tick, tick, tick…

Tick, tick, tick…

That kitchen timer was done for.

Just as soon as the room stopped spinning, Dimitri was going to destroy it with his bare hands. He needed to wait until he could breathe again and comprehend the spoken word - two things he was certain he'd been capable of before the spinning began - but it was only a matter of time before he made his move.

Tick, tick, tick…

"Dimitri, is this something you have ever stopped to consider?" Bobby repeated.

"No." he somehow managed to answer, his eyes locked with those of the inquisitor, even as he fantasized about the destruction of time itself. Even as he struggled to regain his equilibrium. He'd never, never been forced to suppress so much rage beneath a completely neutral exterior before. It was the oddest sensation. His skin needed to be bigger or there should have been more of it to contain the spike in pressure.

Tick, tick, tick…

Something dark flashed in Bobby's eyes, a bolt of animus gone too quickly to be sure of, but his small humoring smile remained. "I didn't quite catch that, son. My hearing isn't what it used to be, I'm afraid - one too many lead pipes to the dome back in my schoolyard days." He gave a tiny fake bat swing and clicked his tongue before leaning in just a little bit closer to the borderline of Dimitri's personal space. "I've got tinnitus in both ears now, used to be only the left. What did you just say to me?"

"No." Dimitri ground out through a clenched jaw, louder this time. Every single part of him had clenched; he was a full-body fist longing to strike. "No, that is not something I have ever considered."

"Do you - "

"Nor would I ever consider it."

He was on fire. Dimitri was either on fire, or he was drowning. Or he was drowning in fire. Earlier in the night he'd hoped for something biblical to smite the earth, he wished for it blithely from the passenger seat of that cursed Lincoln Continental, and here it was, a river of hellfire no one was capable of seeing but him. Fate skipped straight to the book of Revelations and now he was flailing in it.

What hast thou wrought, you unparalleled moron?

"And you do not anticipate a shift in this paradigm as you have the courage of your convictions regarding the matter?" Bobby asked calmly, a final turn of the screw given with a small, insufferably placating upturn of his mouth.

"No I do not, and yes I do," Dimitri answered in strangled staccato, looking to end a conversation he found morally reprehensible, now. As far as he was concerned it was all over but the shouting, stabbing, or sobbing. The next move was Bobby's to make.

Tick, tick, tick…

Bobby Lombardo's poker face rivaled that of Dimitri Belikov's. He couldn't be pleased with the answer he'd just received, but dammit if a person was able to tell by the looks of him. Dimitri was at his mercy and he appeared to be at his leisure.

They sat.

Tick, tick, tick…

And they looked.

And they looked some more.

This was not a typical showdown of macho stubbornness. These weren't a couple of pissed-off shitkickers disguising lockstep hissy fits beneath matching thousand-yard stares. It was a tense eon passing between two stony mountains - glacial and potentially cataclysmic. Dead calm exteriors, salty wet foreheads, and pretty damn boring to witness from the cheap seats as it continued...and continued...

Tick, tick, tick…

A motherfuckin' stalemate.

Tick, tick, tick…

Bobby gave in first.

"That's a shame!" He declared, slapping the clothed tabletop. His demeanor instantly rebounded from serious to affable with the flip of a switch - there was no daylight between the two attitudes. "Can't say I wasn't expecting it, though." He sighed, shaking his head ruefully. "I know how seriously you take all this fighting business, as seriously as I take my business, and I respect that. It's like Popeye says, though, 'I yam what I yam.'" He released a long stretch of air from puffed cheeks, the overall effect landing somewhere between Lamaze and a balloon deflating. Then he grinned. "I do believe that is the sound of my water boiling." With a harkening gesture followed by a swing of his heavy thighs, Bobby was out of his chair, on his feet, and back over by that godforsaken stove again before Dimitri remembered how to blink. He left him reeling in the dust.

Seething and reeling.

Dimitri wasn't surprised that Bobby had the gall to proposition him with collusion - the man was a born thief and there was, after all, no honor amongst thieves. Similarly, he wasn't shocked by the mendacity of their ambushing him and the light kidnapping that followed - these men were, after all, liars and kidnappers. Unscrupulous behavior was their bread and butter. They committed crimes for the same reason a dog licked its own asshole - it's just what they did. Because they could. All this he knew, had known for some time, and yet somehow he'd been completely blindsided tonight. He was furious about everything having to do with his current situation, but his naivety was really the bitch of the bunch. That sting was going to linger.

This wasn't over yet, not by a long shot. All of their planning, all the strangely menacing food preparation foreplay, the audience of carefully selected strangers taking valuable time away from real work just to sit and melt while watching him sit and melt wouldn't be qualified or quantified by a simple "no'' and the lovely parting gift of veal cutlets. His immediate slap-down of Bobby's long-winded yet surprisingly restrained sales pitch, without any contemplation or the expected hemming and hawing, wouldn't be the final word on the subject.

Tick, tick, tick…

It couldn't be.

Tick, tick, tick…

That talk was only the first shoe. There were always two shoes, and the second one usually dropped right on your head. This hold for boiling water was merely an intermission.

The metallic clanging in the kitchenette grew louder and more chaotic through Dimitri's brief mental reprieve. "I admit defeat, Dimitri." Bobby sighed, head down, wilting dramatically against the countertop. "After that fruitless powwow of ours, I need a drink to revive me - a proper one. Ahhh, teetotaling is a Protestant man's game, anyhow," he straightened back up, "it's no wonder it never agrees with me! Speaking of, you a scotch man?"

"Sometimes," Dimitri replied dumbly. He was still having trouble with word comprehension.

Scotch?

No.

Man?

No.

Sometimes?

No.

If he didn't get the hell out of there soon he'd require a translator.

Or a gun.

"Twelve minutes on the macaroni," Bobby returned to the table with a dusty green bottle, the paper seal around the cork still unbroken, and two glasses, "and eighteen years in that there bottle. Poetry in motion. I've been saving this little number for a rough night or a great one, and we seem to fit that bill just right, wouldn't you agree?" He swiped his thumb around the top of the bottle to crack the seal then paused. "Jesse!"

A lanky young man, the one responsible for whacking Sergio in the ribs earlier, looked up from a cigarette he'd just finished rolling. Seated in a deep recline with his ankles crossed on one of the desks, he looked about seventeen and not too bright. "Yeah, Bobby?" He asked, his jaw noticeably slack.

"Head out front and tell Meredith mangia, will you? You can take off after that." Bobby poured three fingers of scotch into a tumbler, slid it across to Dimitri, and poured himself one of the same. "No rocks in this one, son. Trust me." He winked then turned back to Jesse. "Let her know there's someone here I'd like her to meet, and tell her I said her hair already looks perfect so make it snappy." His last instruction was issued through a heated expression that made Dimitri even more uncomfortable than he already was - a cold man, a hot room, tepid whisky in a cup, a cutesy warm smile, and all of it too much.

Jesse didn't have to be told twice. He grabbed a pale gray wool overcoat from the back of the chair and lit his rollie cigarette on his way out the door. There was marijuana mixed in with the tobacco, potent stuff by the smell of it.

Tick, tick, tick…

Dimitri watched Jesse go, slipping through a small crack in the door, and he kept watching after the kid was gone. He was jealous of the spliff and even more jealous that he got to leave. Somewhere under the steaming pile of his brain, a small voice whined, 'Huh? That's not fair!' His id talking or his inner child acting out in response to the dearth of superego surrounding him.

He sipped his scotch to quiet the voice. The peat was stronger than he preferred, reminding him of Band-Aids' smell, but the whiskey was a high enough proof that he didn't give a shit about flavor nuances. He had to force himself not to slug it back in one go before helping himself to another without asking for permission. He shook his head at the thought - bad manners. Bobby was a prick, but a man's special bottle deserved some respect.

Spoon taught him that.

"Every liquor has its own drunk, but not every drunk has his own liquor."

"He's older than he looks." Dimitri turned away from the vanishing cloud of smoke in the doorway and his memories, looking to Bobby for clarification. "That's my cousin's eldest boy," Bobby nodded to the closed door, "Jesse. His last name is Zeklos, by the way. Half of him is from your family's neck of the woods. His grandparents are Russian on the father's side - or were, I should say. They aren't anything now."

Bobby swirled the amber liquid in his glass, letting it breathe.

"I don't usually condone drug use on the premises by my employees, but I'm telling you, that boy just ain't right without reefer. He -" Bobby paused, choosing his next words, "his brain is wired strangely. He's excitable. He can't sit still and pay attention to save his life. His grades in school were always in the toilet no matter how many beatings he took from his father because of them. There was a time when we thought military school would maybe set him straight, but then…with a war on…? It seemed cruel to send him off to die in a jungle halfway across the world just for being a little funny behind the eyes."

He finally drank.

"Man, that's good stuff." The head shake that followed was slower than Dimitri's had been, appreciative disbelief as opposed to the dismissive kind. "Those skirt-wearing gingers surely do make some fine whiskey. Where was I? Oh, yeah," his reverent head shaking transitioned into a single nod, "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, but a puff or two of grass, and Jesse's a different kid entirely. He's still not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he hunkers down and takes direction like a pip."

Dimitri was only sorta listening. He was busy counting the seconds between sips to avoid looking as desperate for numbness as he felt. And he was plotting. It wasn't realistic that he would be off the hook for all of this garbage yet - that was optimism to the point of folly, but he might be able to finesse the situation a little, knead out this brief intermission into a lengthier one - something more along the lines of a raincheck or a to be continued.

Tick, tick, tick…

A stay of execution. Anything.

Bobby could show up at the gym first thing tomorrow morning and smash up both his legs with a fucking tire iron for all he cared. He just wanted out of that room. He needed a timeout. This storm would be so much easier to weather if he could go home tonight, have a shit, shower, and a shave, and eat his way through the entire contents of his mother's refrigerator - every single leftover she had stored in there down to the last pickled mushroom. Then he could lay awake in bed all night, unable to sleep, and stare up at the ceiling through bloodshot eyes. Maybe he'd do a little crying behind closed doors? An emotional breakdown was inevitable once he was alone in the dark, with time to reflect upon what this man just asked him to do.

Tick, tick, tick…

On what they were trying to take away from him - the only thing he had to take.

Tick, tick, tick…

Everything would be fine if only he could exit.

If only he could exit through that door - that door right over there.

Dimitri's vision tunneled around his new goal, as it did with an opponent in the ring, so intensely he nearly jumped from his seat when a knock to the tune of Shave And a Haircut picked up on the other side of it. He'd forgotten the only way out of that place could also be a way into it. It was difficult for him to fathom that someone should want to enter there. He took another drink and righted himself just in time to catch the playful foot-tapped addition of 'two bits.' The knob turned and the door eased open allowing a wondrous stream of cold to pour in through the widening gap. It occurred to him that there hadn't been a similar merciful blast of cool air when Jesse slunk out a few minutes or centuries back. Was it possible the stingy crack he'd climbed out of was by design and not by accident? That it was not the result of a simple lack of depth perception? Had that little puke done it on purpose just to fuck with him?!

There was no time to decide if this line of thinking was likely the onset of paranoia or if it had legs to stand on because standing there in the wide open doorway on a pair of long shapely ones, awash in the rosy-cheeked nighttime chill and haloed by the white sensor lights outside, was a very, very lovely girl.

"Call out the National Guard - trouble!" Bobby hooted from his seat.

"A little birdy told me the honor of my presence was requested in the office, presently." The young woman, presumably Meredith, cooed back. There was a slight cheek to her delivery implying those had been Jesse's precise words. She closed the door behind her with a one-handed flourish and sashayed into Bobby's office like she owned the place, shucking off her waist-length fox fur jacket and tossing it onto the nearest desktop before turning to the small red enamel-framed mirror hanging on the wall to the left of the door to check her appearance - which was objectively pleasing. She produced a silver tube of lipstick from God knows where in the fitted, pocketless navy blue sweater dress she had on, and set to work correcting any damage the outside elements might have done to her full ruby pout.

"At the risk of sounding like an old nag, the mud out there is an accident waiting to happen, Daddy." She stated in a level, dulcet tone - not whining, just mentioning over her shoulder. "I almost broke my neck on the way over here."

Dimitri was unsure who Meredith was. He was unsure if the beautiful young woman who'd put away the lipstick and was now running her French manicured fingers through her long strawberry blonde hair, feathering it to her satisfaction, was in fact the aforementioned Meredith. But he was sure of the fact that he did not like her breathy application of the word 'Daddy'. He cringed at the sound of it, praying for both their sakes she wasn't the adult daughter he never knew Bobby Lombardo had.

A daughter whom he looked at like that.

Bobby's eyes were glued to her cashmere-draped haunches and they weren't budging. His countenance altered entirely with the appearance of this girl. The menacing cordiality he'd dominated the evening with so far - just sloughed away. He looked giddy. Smitten. Dimitri found the sudden change in Bobby's disposition decidedly gross; he didn't know what to make of her at all. She was young. Too young. And the other men in the room appeared to be ignoring her even more than they had him. Their eyes noticeably averted to any other fixed point available promptly after accepting the polite little hellos she dealt out with ease.

Everything about this night was as clear as the driven tits-high mud.

"It'll take more than a little weather to lick you, sweetheart." Bobby teased, tossing back the last of his drink. "Besides, that which does not kill us only makes us stronger." He climbed to his feet, knees creaking on the ascent, and headed straight for those feminine haunches.

"Is that right?" The girl asked into the mirror, a warm blush on her face and in her voice indicating she knew he was coming her way. "Well, I'll be sure to offer that little gem of downhome wisdom to my aunt Alberta the next time I see her. She had polio as a girl, and spent most of her childhood in an iron lung."

Bobby growled at her smart remark and lunged, snatching her up from behind in a handsy embrace. She squealed in protest as he grabbed her, and giggled encouragingly when he began kissing her face and neck. With her back firmly locked against his front region, she was defenseless, and all that effort on her hair and lipstick was wasted. "Christ, it's hot in here." She noticed after a little more groping and flirting. "Jesse said it was time for dinner, not time for a group schvitz. Is the heater broken or something, Daddy?"

Excellent question, mystery girl. Yes, why is it so hot in here?

…Daddy.

Dimitri cringed in his seat again, and this time he did reach for the scotch - special bottle be damned.

Tick, tick, tick…

Rather than explain to the girl in his arms that the room was suffocatingly hot because he was still in the middle of trying to destroy another human being's tenuous hold on sanity, thus making him more pliable and therefore easier to bend to his will, Bobby began singing to her in Italian. A slipperier bastard the world had never seen.

"Quando sei qui con me, Questa stanza non ha più pareti - " Taking her right hand in his, he spun her out then reeled her back in hold, face to face now, he led her into a slow dance serenade.

"So much for not drinking tonight." She accused, after a peal of slightly embarrassed laughter.

"Ma alberi," Bobby dipped her, lifted her back up, and paused his singing to reply, "I only had one." He spun her again. "Alberi infiniti…" And followed with dip.

"Wasn't there someone you wanted me to meet?" She jerked her head in Dimitri's direction while hovering supine a few inches above the ground. "Mr. Tall, Dark and Miserable over there, perhaps?"

Bobby pulled her back up."Quando tu sei vicino a me, Questo soffitto viola - "

"Daddy, I don't know what's gotten into you this evening, but whoever he is," she glanced at Dimitri again, "I really doubt he's here tonight to observe the bizarre mating rituals of dirty old Italian American men."

"I'm forty-four years old, sweetheart - I'm in my prime." He dipped her again as a testament to his youth, way down low then back up again.

"Okay, Romeo," she yanked herself free, effectively ending their interlude, "I feel like I'm fifty-four right now and going through the change of life." Fanning her face with both hands she pivoted toward the far wall. "I'm turning down that heater before we all turn into puddles on the brand-new rug."

Dimitri silently recanted every single negative thought he had about Meredith since she walked through the door. She could call her boyfriend/father whatever the hell she wanted. Her dress was not too tight - or too short. She was an angel of mercy.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…"

Fuck.

"Not so fast there, Mere," Bobby's arm shot out to block her from advancing upon his thermostat. Meredith would have clotheslined herself on the thing if her reaction time hadn't been so quick. "There'll be time enough for that after you've been properly introduced to young Dimitri over here." His proprietary reach transitioned quickly into a gesture of presentation.

"But -"

"Ahh...now who's being rude? Introductions first, my impatient little beauty, and then we can address each of your multitudinous grievances." He kissed her forehead, grasped her shoulders, and aimed her to where Dimitri sat tilting his glass back as far as it would tilt. He could feel their eyes on him - certainly not his most dignified first impression, but then Bobby was just singing.

"You are a mental case, you know that, right?" Meredith groaned. Clearly, there was no arguing with the boss. "Fine. I'll be polite enough for both of us, but then I demand to be served my evening meal in a non-tropical climate."

"I'm only crazy about you, sweetheart," he promised, swatting her hindquarters and sending her on her way.

"Don't sell yourself short, Daddy," she shot back, stopping in front of the chair Dimitri was beginning to feel he'd been born in and would probably die in - preferably soon. "Hi. Dimitri, was it?" She held out her hand. "I'm fucking starving, but you can call me Meredith. Oh, please don't get up." She added when she saw he was about to stand. "After that little dance number you just had to witness, I think we can skip the formalities, don't you?"

"It's a pleasure," he replied. They shook hands, both doing their best to ignore the dampness of the exchange. Introducing another person to the room did little more than increase the levels of moisture in the air.

"I know we just met, but may I ask you a question, Dimitri, without you thinking me too forward?"

"You may."

"Is the accent I detect Russian by any chance?"

He smiled, only slightly forced. "It is. My family is from Siberia, originally. I moved to the US when I was still a child, but the accent has stuck with me for life." The stock response he'd rehearsed many times. Teachers, customers, newcomers at the gym, women hitting on him - they all got the same answer.

"Interesting. Well, being that you are Russian, at least by birthright, I guess that you've been cold before. Would you not agree that it is hotter than a witch's teat in this room? I'm doing a poll."

Dimitri laughed at that. A real laugh. He'd almost forgotten what they felt like. "I hadn't noticed."

Meredith's eyes narrowed. "Liar. It's broiling. And believe me, he needs another person around here blowing smoke up his butt like I need a hole in the head." She placed her clammy right hand on her hip, all charming attitude.

"Careful, I heard that," Bobby cautioned with a lilt, returning to the table and his empty drink.

"You were meant to. I wasn't whispering." She mimicked.

"Meredith is my special lady friend, Dimitri, that's why she's allowed to treat me so mean," Bobby explained. He poured himself another scotch, opting this time to remain standing. "She has her real estate license, and she runs her own business. Can you believe that? A girl her age and already a distinguished businesswoman in her own right." Meredith pulled a self-deprecating silly face at the word 'distinguished' but nonetheless basked in the warmth of his praise - the only additional source of warmth the room could yet withstand without liquifying entirely. "That's how we met, actually. An old friend of mine hired her to sell his beach house last spring. Fate threw us together by way of one last chartered sport fishing weekend on the coast that I couldn't get out of no matter how many excuses I made up. She was there on her day off handling a major crisis."

"That friend of yours couldn't locate the building permits he insisted he 'had somewhere' for the entire story he added onto the original structure of the house while he owned the place. He kept blowing me off about the paperwork until he finally realized I couldn't include the add-on as official square footage in the listing without the permits and proof he'd used a licensed contractor to do the work - which he did not, the work looked like garbage. None of this was my fault, mind you, but I still had to leave my college roommate's wedding reception - in a bridesmaid's dress - and take a cab out there to dig through every drawer, cabinet, safe, and hidden removable floorboard for ten lousy pieces of paper because he was drunkenly threatening to go to another agent."

"I said he was an old friend, not a dear one. Anyway, I took one look at her bent over a desk in pink crinoline, and I thought…I wouldn't mind that in my lunchbox." Bobby finished his whisky with an audible gulp. "I didn't catch a single striper that weekend, but I sure landed me a keeper."

"It says a lot about the kinda girl I am that I find you comparing me to a seabass you can't decide if you'd rather eat or screw romantic." Meredith rolled her eyes and twirled a lock of her hair. "I suppose this is the part where I ask how the two of you know one another. It's not often I'm invited back here to the boys club during business hours, Dimitri, and Bobby making his world-famous veal, no less. You're really getting the red carpet treatment."

Her question was met with an awkward silence. The question was deceptively complex given the nature of their relationship. Both of their relationships. Naturally, it was Bobby who proffered an answer, him being the master of deception. "Dimitri's an independent contractor who did some work for me a while back. I asked him out here tonight to try and convince him to get back into bed with us on a new project I have coming down the pipeline. He is, so far, unmoved by my gentler methods of persuasion. I was just about to rethink my tactics altogether when you showed up, my dear."

"Independent contractor? What line of work are you in?" Meredith asked.

"I cut meat."

This threw her.

"So... Bobby's trying to recruit you to work in one of the restaurants, then?" She brightened. "Well thank heaven for that. Bobby, I love Beto, don't get me wrong, but the menu he serves up front is so tired! I had a piece of chicken breast a few weeks back that was tough as old boots, and the Sunday gravy is ketchup half of the time. You could use some new blood around here to shake things up."

Bobby smiled at her indulgently, and Dimitri wondered how much of his life he concealed from this young woman. Did she know he was married and had a family? Did she know he had a reputation for slinging his cock into anything with a pulse - that he was often dealing with the symptoms of lower-rung venereal diseases that plagued him as a direct result of his philandering, or at least he used to? The fact she seemed to earnestly believe this meeting had anything to do with the restructuring of kitchen staff spoke directly to her ignorance. She was permitted certain liberties with the man, to be sure - he'd never witnessed anyone make jokes at Bobby's expense to his face the way she'd just done. Perhaps that was because she was unaware of his penchant for ruthlessness and guile.

Or maybe she was in on all of it, and this was just another part of the show? She was there to disarm unsuspecting men with feminine wiles as a last ditch effort - the sister of a black widow spider, giggling and winking them deeper into the web of no return.

It seemed unlikely. She had kind eyes.

He watched Meredith smile at Bobby's suggestion that she get out the plates and utensils to set the table for dinner, "Always delegating the hard labor, Daddy." He hadn't noticed until now that the tabletop was cleared of the stacks of money and drugs before her arrival, a task likely completed by the same specter that issued his glass of water. She bounced off to the kitchenette, returning with an armload of plates, and dropped them onto the checkered cloth with a multilayered thunk. "Will you be joining us for dinner, Dimitri?" She asked, counting persons in the room and available chairs to determine how many places needed setting.

"I..." He was slow to answer - very slow. Her eyes swung his way when an answer still wasn't forthcoming.

Dimitri surveyed the table dubiously, taking in the detritus of his evening thus far - his full water glass, Bobby's empty cola bottle, the half-drunk bottle of whiskey, two tumblers still fuming with traces of alcohol, all of it offset now by a hefty stack of stoneware and the vase Meredith kept futzing with to properly center everything. He did not want to sit down to what promised to be a lengthy, heavy meal at that table. He wouldn't be able to chew and swallow or engage in conversation, the basic requirements of 'dinner'.

"It's not that tough of a question." She laughed, thinking him silly. "You - Dimitri, me - Meredith, him - Bobby, dinner now? Yes, no, maybe so?"

"I'm not sure - "

"Oh, I think Dimitri has enough on his plate already, sweetheart" Bobby interrupted, his previous mirth suddenly gone.

"Well, poo. That's a shame."

"It is, isn't it? It's a shame. That is precisely the word I used to describe it." Bobby's expression remained neutral but there was a faintly manic edge to his words - an edge sharpened by the fact that he was speaking to Meredith while staring at Dimitri. "But then, life is just chock full of bitter disappointments. What's one more in the mire?"

Tick, tick, tick...

"Wow, take it easy, fellas," Meredith said, trying to gloss over the out-of-whack energy she was finally picking up on between the two men. "It's just dinner. No need to be quite so grim about things."

She wasn't the only one who felt confused. With dinner now a nonstarter, Dimitri didn't know what his next move should be or what Bobby's plan was - all he knew was it started and ended with a bottle...

"You really forced my hand here, kid. This one's on you."

Out of nowhere, in an astonishing display of unprovoked violence, Bobby picked up his empty Coca-Cola bottle from the table and smashed it across Meredith's lovely, unsuspecting face. Glass shattered against the cartilage and bone of her delicate upturned nose with a resonant crunch - not unlike the sound a knife makes cleaving apart a fresh head of cabbage. She stumbled backward before sinking to the ground, knees and right hip bearing the brunt of the fall. Her first cries were silent ones as she struggled to breathe.

Dimitri jolted in his seat, almost toppling to the floor himself. As a trained fighter - and a human being with the capacity for empathy - his first instinct was to defend and counterattack. He threw himself forward, deliberately this time, trying to reach the young woman who was now choking and bleeding all over everywhere at their feet. He didn't get far. A set of strong, thick-veined hands placed on either of his shoulders slammed him back down onto the chair; it buckled beneath him but didn't give way. He hadn't seen the two goons circling toward him amidst all the awkward conversation and ticking clocks. They were on him before he knew which way was up. Bobby wanted him to see this show, and they were going to make sure he damn well did.

Meredith made a feeble attempt at crawling, dragging her body away from her lover - her attacker - by her fingertips. She scraped ineffectually at the bloodied orange carpet, digging down and in instead of pulling forward and out, gagging on the absent sound of her whimpers. It took an eternity for her to advance a foot, maybe two at most, and still no one helped her. Bobby wasn't even looking at her. His eyes were still on Dimitri.

She temporarily abandoned the idea of escape when her voice returned; she froze in place. "Why?" She choked out, over and again through newly spoiled lips. "Why?"

As if there could be an acceptable explanation.

Speaking her misery must have split her concentration or drained the remainder of her strength - her arms buckled and she collapsed onto the floor. Her sternum smacked an edge of linoleum hard on impact, knocking the wind out of her again in a brutal wheeze. She curled into a fetal position and clasped her hands over the lacerated mess of her face, trying to hold the pieces of it together without touching any jagged protrusions of glass or contributing more to all of the pain. Blood mixed with tears and saliva oozed out from between her fingers as she began to wail.

She cried to nobody in particular for help.

She asked for her mother.

Bobby Lombardo slowly walked back over to the kitchenette, a path he'd worn holes into since Dimitri's arrival at The Mill that night, and returned with another tea towel. He continued watching Dimitri watch Meredith as he wiped small deposits of gore from his hands. Meredith's blood splattered all over him pretty good before she hit the floor. Her nose was almost certainly broken.

Tick, tick, tick…

"Alright, c'mon, get her up from there," Bobby ordered. A man wearing a banished expression identical to his stepped forward to haul Meredith to her feet. It wasn't easy, the girl's legs were jelly. "Take her over to General. Make sure it's one of our guys who attends her - Keogh, Mitchell, or the one from India…Dr. Singh." He rattled off. "They know where to send the bills."

"Got it." The man nodded and adjusted his hold on Meredith who kept slipping in his grasp. Dimitri supposed he wasn't used to handling a person's dead weight deferentially. A body rolled up in a bit of old carpet required little accommodation before it was tossed into a shallow grave or set on fire.

"And I want her in a private room! Something with a window." Bobby added, discarding the soiled towel in the kitchenette trashcan before finally taking a good long look at what was left of Meredith. He went to her, and moved in close so his chest almost brushed against the arm of the man he'd charged with dragging her from the room and out to the backseat of one of his cars. Probably the Lincoln. For a second time that night, he visibly softened in her presence. He gazed down at her tenderly, sharing a private romantic moment with her slumped head as though her face wasn't carved up like rare roast beef and he hadn't done the carving. He bent down to murmur something in her ear. Dimitri couldn't make out the words, they were spoken too low and from too far away, but he heard Meredith's side of things. Her moans and halted breaths altered slightly with his words, the noises growing more deliberate, no longer stunted, strung together tiny releases of tension.

They sounded like forgiveness.

"C'mon," Bobby said aloud, coaxing her with a light touch of her elbow, "let me see that pretty smile so I know you still love me."

Never in all his years had Dimitri seen anything quite so grotesque as that giant brute of a man tenderly goading the woman he'd just mutilated into smiling at him through her tears. That is...until he watched Meredith slowly raise her head to grimace at him as sweetly as she could. Her teeth were the same color red as the dead deer's guts had been lying scattered alongside the highway - the delicate ivory keys of an accordion smeared with carrion. "There she is. That's my good girl. Now go on and get yourself fixed up." He glanced back up to the man keeping her on her feet. "Take her out the back way, and don't let anyone see you leave this time. That's the very last thing I need in my life right now."

Bobby waited for him to carry the battered girl out of the room.

Tick, tick, tick…

He kept on waiting after they'd gone. "Sergio?"

The spine of a magazine slapped down onto one of the metal desks. "Mhmm?"

Another pause.

"Get a mop! Get some baking soda. What the hell's the matter with you? Meredith just ordered this rug."

Sergio at least had sense enough to can it with the running commentary until after he slammed the door.

"You two can let up. He's not going anywhere now," Bobby waved off Dimitri's guard detail. The two men seamlessly faded back into the woodwork with newspaper sections and lit cigarettes soon in hand. Bobby flipped his former chair around, and took a seat in front of Dimitri, straddling the backrest and leaning on forearms - the 'good cop' perch.

Tick, tick, tick...

"Christ, you look like a hundred miles of rough road, kid. Here." Bobby handed him the bottle of scotch. Dimitri pulled the cork with his teeth, spat it out onto the largest bloodstain on the rug, and took a good long pull - no longer caring if he killed the bottle or how hard the booze would hit on an empty stomach. "You said something earlier that stuck with me." Bobby took back the bottle, pouring the remainder into his glass. "You said you don't work for me anymore. I remember the day you were referring to, the day you came in here all worked up in a lather because something went down all wrong on one of your collections, and you just couldn't stick it after that. You walked through that door and started making demands of me. Ordinarily, I take exception to someone coming into my house making demands of me, but I let you wear yourself down and walk on out of here in one piece because you were spooked. Men do especially foolish things when they're spooked. What I don't remember about that day was you and me making official arrangements as to the terms of your employment. I didn't sign any dotted lines. We didn't spit in our palms and shake hands and part as friends."

One of the other men in the room sneezed.

"I seem to recall another day you came to see me, though, and that day we did shake hands - do you know which day I'm talking about?" Dimitri's right eye twitched. Bobby accepted it as confirmation. "Yeah. I figured you might. Sergio brought you in to see me and discuss the possibility of you earning a little extra income for your family by running a few errands on the side and playing a little muscle for hire now and then. No guns, no blades, just fists - you were adamant about that. All pretty cut-and-shut stuff in my way of thinking, but you had a special favor to ask of me, didn't you?"

They stared.

"And what was that favor, Dimitri?

"...Protection for my family."

"That's not what you asked. Those were not your words. Don't start taking it easy on yourself, not now. What did you ask me to do for you?"

Dimitri gritted his teeth. "I said there was someone -"

"Not just your average someone, though, was he?" Bobby taunted. "If memory serves, he was your father - your father with a rather interesting last name, I might add."

"He was."

"You told me this guy by the name of Randall was a real, real bad man, and he'd been sniffing around your yard where he didn't belong. You came in here, sat down on the other side of my desk, looked me in the face, and you asked me for a bucket of blood. Randy's blood. I held up my end, didn't I?"

"Yes." He'd reverted to single syllables, as he always did in times of strife.

"Are you holding up yours right now?"

Tick, tick, tick…

Dimitri glared.

"We need to disabuse you of the idea that you are in some way deserving of special consideration here. Reciprocity is ALL in my world, and the way I see it, we aren't squared yet. So you still work for me. You work for me as long as I say you do. You work for me just like the whores work for me. You work for me just like the dealers work for me. Do you think because the money you handled on my behalf was always the squeaky clean, fresh out-of-the-laundry type money instead of whoring money or dirty junky money or blood money that somehow makes you an innocent party? You still took your cut, and it all comes from the same place in the end - my place. You had a man killed! HUMBLE YOURSELF!"

Bobby inhaled deeply, shaking but striving to regain his composure.

Tick, tick, tick…

"You have women in your life, Dimitri. You have a mother. You have a grandmother. You have sisters. Your sisters have children, and some of those children are daughters. Now, I'm sure they are all wonderful women - just neat, neat ladies every last one of them. But I don't know them. They're nothing to me. I know where they live, but I don't know them. You saw what just happened to Meredith. You saw how I took a glass bottle and stuck it up her nose like I was feeding a fucking parking meter. Believe me, when I say, she didn't do a thing to deserve that. Not a damn thing. And I fucking love that girl! I love her, but I still did it."

He didn't need to fill in any of the blanks. What he'd be willing to do to Dimitri's family if -

"This fight of yours, I don't care how many rounds you go or how you get taken out - so long as it looks natural. At some point during this fight, you are going to take a hit, you are going to hit the canvas, and you will not be getting back up. Period. End of sentence. Case closed. This. Ain't. Your. Fucking. Year. Son." He leaned forward, pushing his chair to its structural limits. "Do you take my meaning?"

Tick, tick, tick...

Dimitri nodded, barely.

He wasn't entirely present in the room. His body was there, but the rest of him was...thousands of miles away and a decade or more back in time watching his dead, pathetic excuse for a father beat his mother within an inch of her life on the threadbare carpeting of her bedroom floor in Siberia, crippled with fear and still far too much a boy to do anything to stop it. His sisters' terrified cries from long ago harmonized together in his memory with Meredith's repeated question, 'Why!? Why!?' A recent and distant Greek chorus of women suffering horrifically at the hands of so-called men chanting and howling around within the confines of his throbbing skull. "Stop. Why!? No. Please. Why!? Why!? Why!? Why!? Why!?"

A scant nod of the head suddenly seemed an insurmountable task, but he still did it. He did it because he was a coward whose life was now over, maybe not in the literal sense, but in most of the ways that counted.

"That isn't enough, son. I need you to say the words," Bobby insisted. "Say you understand me."

Tick, tick, tick…

"I. Understand. You." He answered in a voice not recognizably his own.

Bobby inspected Dimitri's face, lingering around his brow and the sides of his mouth, searching for telltale signs of duplicity. Satisfied, he replied, "Good. Put 'er there," and extended a hand. Dimitri took it. His grasp had never been so limp in all his life. "You follow through on this and things between us will be little lambs eat ivy from here on out. You don't know me, and I've never heard of you." He stood from the chair and returned to his cooking station to begin the task of transferring food to serving dishes.

Tick, tick, tick…

"There's a taxi out front waiting to take you back to Loughran's. I'm sure you've got plenty to think about right now, and no one can get any thinking done with Sergio around. Marrone, that boy never shuts up. If he wasn't such an earner, he'd be the next one catching a bottle to the face." He was back to addressing him from over his shoulder. He no longer needed to look at Dimitri now that he'd won. Children rarely cared about the ants after they'd had their fun drowning them.

Dimitri sighed and it was almost a sob. His eyes fell to the steamy window for a moment. That no-show apocalypse he'd briefly suspected earlier in the evening had really done him wrong by not showing. Right now he could be blissfully slumbering against the icy bosom of nuclear winter, instead of being here. Oh, how sweet permanent hibernation would have been.

No such luck - the opposite of luck.

"Let me pack you up some of this veal for the road," Bobby said, shaking the water from his pasta in a large metal colander. "Gene, grab one of the Tupperwares from up above the sink for Dimitri. My wife just ordered the whole new Avocado Breeze color line at a party a couple of months back - really primo-looking stuff."

The kitchen timer finally went off.

The alarm was loud. Of course, it was.

Dimitri placed his head in his hands.

"Swell."


Notes

This is a 1970's story, and this chapter is my homage to gritty 1970's cinema.

It's not quite DONE, but I needed to stop looking at this doc. It was killing me.

I went back and added a small reference to Meredith's portion of this chapter to the scene in chapter 6 wherein Rose wants to name Dimitri's truck by smashing a bottle against it like a ship. It's been so long since I wrote that scene I honestly forgot it was in there. Oh well. Now it ties in nicely. I mean...I meant to do that.

There are four shorter segments featuring key moments for Dimitri in the aftermath of the scene above: Dimitri / Loretta, Dimitri / Spoon / Paul (Karolina's son), Dimitri / Olena, and Dimitri / Mickey. I'll add them soon (this time I mean a regular human's definition of soon and not my 3-4 month version) as a subchapter.

GET READY FOR DISCO, BABY! There is only one other dark chapter ahead in the future, and the rest is SEX MAGIC!

Soundtrack

Il Cielo in Una Stanza - Mike Patton (A beautiful contrast to terrible events.)

Il Cielo in Una Stanza was a popular Italian love song from 1961, originally recorded by Mina. The version of this song I'm most familiar with was recorded by Mike Patton (Faith No More) in 2010 for his Mondo Cane concept album. He sings the absolute crap out of it in Italian. (I can't speak to his accent or mastery of the language, as I'm not from Italy. I did see him perform it with the entire orchestra in Golden Gate Park for free back in 2010 at Hardly Strictly, and it was BONKERS.)

Bonus Track

Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown - Jim Croce (Bobby's theme / Roll Credits)