Book II: Winter 1997

Chapter IV

Seven years slowly passed and Juanito taught Leo everything he knew. He taught Leo basic and applied mathematics to help in the business and more importantly, he taught Leo how to cook. Leo helped around the kitchen as much as he could and became as skilled as cook as Juanito. Soon, Juanito was able to handle the kitchen all by himself while Juanito stood by at the counter taking orders.

As Leo became older, he showed more of an Italian personality with a sort of brashness towards superiority, wisdom towards complicated situations, cowardice towards what he feared, and leadership amongst all. Juanito taught him how to speak Italian as well as he did English, and they usually spoke in Italian either when they were passing orders or having private talks.

It was truly a father-and-son business. Every customer had even thought it so. They made the business better than ever, but thus made it prone to extortion offers and even threats from every family except the Corleone Family. Ever since the incident involving the discovery of Vincent's corpse, the Corleone Family respected Juanito's Deli rather than threatened it.

On certain occasions, Juanito would task Leo with special deliveries or would make him a messenger to other local businesses or friends. Leo did each job without arguing or complaining; he was a very obedient boy.

At the end of the day, before closing up, either Leo or Juanito would bake a pizza or some special Italian food for dinner and they would talk until it was late in the night. Then, they would both go to bed (Juanito in the basement and Leo in the upper floor) and would wake up early the next morning to set up the deli for business.

Winter broke in as snow fell on the rooftops and streets of New York, and engaged the children of Little Italy into a merry variety of games. And despite the innocence of his childhood, Leo refused to step out and join them. He had to work.

So instead of playing with them, Leo sat indoors watching the young children play. Since Leo woke up first, he usually had the pleasure (or the pain to some) of speaking in monotone to himself, as if he had no one else in the world but himself. He would speak in hushed tones though so that no one could hear him, especially Juanito, who seemed to have a heightened sense of hearing, or so Leo thought. Sometimes, Leo sang instead of speaking, but he still did so quietly since like Juanito, Leo was always an octave off.

"Ce' la Luna o mezzo mare…" he began singing the folk song and tried to think again of old days when Juanito would take him around the street to the theatre to enjoy some Italian talent. Sadly, the theatre had been destroyed a year or so back when the manager had refused to pay extortion money to the Tattaglia family. They made the manager an offer he wouldn't refuse, and the day after, no one was able to ever go back inside the theatre.

Leo knew very little about the Five Families. He knew their names, but he didn't exactly know whose business was whose, and who controlled which area of New York. He did know though that there was a joint ownership over Little Italy by the Cuneo Family and the Stracci Family. Then again, which six-year old child knew everything about the Five Families? Leo had a pretty good idea about how they operated and wondered them on many occasions. During their talks, Juanito would sometimes even mention them once or twice. Not a day went by that Leo did not see any soldiers of the Five Families walk by the deli or around the streets with magnums in their pockets. Leo would even feel shaken if he saw something larger than a magnum in their pocket.

Leo glanced at the wall clock and saw that it just struck fifteen past eight. He scoffed. Juanito usually woke up at eight-ten. Or maybe he was just heating up the oven for breakfast. Leo already ate biscotti.

Two minutes had passed after this when Juanito finally emerged through the kitchen door. He was still fat; one could even say he was larger than before. His head was still devoid of hair, but tiny hairs and little discolorations were widely visible. His mustache had fully grayed and wrinkles had begun to appear underneath his eye sockets. The years of twilight had finally fallen upon Juanito.

"Buon giornio, figlio mio," Juanito greeted.

"Buon giornio, papa," Leo returned the greeting.

"Have you eaten yet?" Juanito asked. Leo looked up at him.

"Biscotti," Leo answered.

"Eh, that's not enough. Let me make you carbonara or something…" Juanito then told Leo.

"It's okay, pop."

There was a silence that followed. Juanito walked over to the front of the deli and flipped the closed sign to declare the deli officially open for business. He then walked back over to the counter.

"What time does the bistro down the street open?" Juanito then asked. He had begun tying his apron on.

"It should be open now, why?"

"I need you to give a letter to Don Givinni," Juanito informed him. "You know the owner of the bistro." He reached underneath the counter and took out a small envelope with the name "Givinni" boldly written on the front. The back of the envelope was sealed to assure that no one could take a look inside besides Givinni himself. Juanito handed the envelope to Leo. "Can I be assured that you will give this to him?"

Leo only nodded. "But what about the first orders?" he asked as he took the letter and got off his seat. He had taken his cap and his delivery pouch even though he was giving just one letter.

"I can handle the first orders," Juanito answered. "I own the deli." At the end of this, Leo was already outside the deli.

The street Juanito's Deli was on was an intersection. The deli sat on the left side of the street beside Wallie's Pawnshop and the back alley where Juanito found Vincent's corpse and Leo's box. At the end of the street was a little green bistro, which some had described to be equal in quality to Juanito's Deli, if not superior. It was owned by Givinni, who was Juanito's childhood friend. On occasions, Juanito went with Leo to the bistro and they would get a special table near the stage to watch the entertainers perform different numbers and songs local to Palermo, Sicily, and Naples.

Leo liked Givinni. He thought of him as a second father. In a way, he was a like a godfather to Leo. Juanito trusted his life to Givinni, and knew that if he failed to be a parent to Leo, he would pass the privilege on to Givinni. Givinni had a niece who helped around in the bistro. She served drinks and was to Leo what Givinni was to Juanito.

Since the death of Juanito's father, Juanito and Givinni had taken ultimate control of their restaurants since Juanito's father had a joint ownership of the bistro with a businessman who was killed in a bank robbery. The two businesses had an effect over the street, which was in ways similar to the effect that the Five Families had over New York. They came to a point in which their businesses more or less owned the whole street.

In a way, they became considered as the heads of the businesses in Little Italy, which meant not too well for the Family with control over Little Italy. Juanito and Givinni had the strength of the businesses behind them.

The street was decorated with showers of snow and wet streets, which varieties of cars still drove through. Leo walked across the street dodging the slow but small traffic of the scene. He figured that traffic was slow either because of the slippery streets or the playing children in the middle of the intersection.

He ran down the sidewalk across the street as soon as he reached it and avoided hitting any of the pedestrian men and women.

Some had believed that the image of Little Italy in the nineties was still the same image it had in the thirties and in the fifties when men still wore open suits with fedora hats while the women wore their elegant yet creatively modest clothing from decades past. There were even some children who wore those old flat caps from the fifties, but they was about to lose its style to the modern day caps.

The bistro was on the outside a large dark green stoop with windows covered by drapes and a green door with a sign that read "open for business." Above that was a sign that read "La Bistro Givinni." Like Juanito's Deli, there was a back alley in the bistro and that also led to the kitchen. Givinni's niece usually sat around here since the kitchen was extremely warm and the cool breeze of fresh air relaxed her.

Leo walked through the bistro entrance into a dark room illuminated by few colored spotlights that shot towards the stage. On the side, dim lights revealed the bar and the bartender to patrons.

The bartender was probably the most distinct among the people in the bar. He had a thick gray mustache and frizzy brown hair on his head. The head hair was graying too, but not too much to be noticed. He was the owner of the bar; he was the owner of the bistro. He was Don Givinni.

Leo approached the bar and being able to be seen in the light was shouted at by Givinni in his thick but wheezy Italian accent, "Kid, you old enough to drink?" A few seconds after this Leo was in the dim lights of the bar and could now be seen by Givinni.

"Hey! Leo, what're you doing here?" Givinni rephrased himself at the sight of Leo's face.

Leo said nothing and took out the small envelope from his delivery pouch. He handed the envelope to Givinni saying, "From papa."

Givinni reached out for the envelope and grunted as he did. He was a few years older than Juanito, which made him a few times weaker now. Givinni took the envelope in his hand and as he read his name on the cover, he nodded and grunted again. "Okay, thanks, kid. Wanna stick around for awhile? Kayla's got some ravioli coming in awhile."

Leo smiled. "Sure."

"She's out in the kitchen," Givinni raised a thumb pointing to the kitchen door. "You can go if you want."

With a smile still on, Leo went into the kitchen. It was much more professional looking that Juanito's kitchen, but it was still as hot as a summer day in the Middle East in there.

Kayla was Givinni's niece and godchild from Givinni's sister. Givinni's sister had married an American businessman, and they lived a successful marriage together and had Kayla. But as any family does some time, it all came to a downfall when they had become bankrupt. Kayla's parents lived together still in Louisiana, but Kayla was sent to work in her uncle's bistro down in Little Italy.

When she just moved to New York, she was the shyest being you would have ever seen. She was a good cook around her house in Louisiana, and was surely a good cook in the bistro, but she was shy. The night she moved into New York, as soon as the restaurant began closing down, two guests came over to the bistro and these guests were widely welcomed by Givinni with open arms.

These two guests seemed alien first to Kayla, but as she ate with them along with her uncle over dinner, she learned that she had nothing to be afraid of. These two friends were Italians and they were good men. The first guest was an elderly man; he was Givinni's childhood friend. The second guest was much younger; Kayla believed he was the first guest's son. And he was. The second guest became a good friend to Kayla. His name was Leonardo.

They were close friends from that moment on; as they say in America, "They stuck like two peas in a pod." They helped each other whenever the other needed it most, and became the best of friends ever since they met.

Kayla was said to look as beautiful her mother, but she also seemed to have missed out on the Italian gene and took up instead the American gene her father had. She acted more like her father than her mother, but nobody really blamed her for doing so.

"Hey, Kayla," he greeted as she turned a knob on the oven. She didn't notice him enter the kitchen. But after he spoke, she turned her head and smiled.

"Hey," she greeted back. "How are you now?"

"Good," he answered. "You busy?"

"The ravioli might be able to take care of itself," she told him. "Uncle Givinni can handle it if things go wrong. Why? What's up?"

"Nothing much," Leo started scratching the back of his head. There was a sort of nervousness that tingled up his spine as he said this. The nervousness increased when he asked her, "Want to walk?" He was unsure of why he was nervous, but he constantly questioned himself in his mind why he did.

Kayla smiled at him, "Sure." She took off her apron and they both walked out of the back door into the back alley of the bistro.