Nicholas: No one is reviewing this story and it is making me sad. I'd threaten to stop writing, but I won't be able to back that up because there's too much I want to do with this. So here is my next chapter.

Regarding the "Part Two": In my Word Document, I don't have this separated in the chapters that coincide with these. So far, I've just now reached part two, and it happens to have started half way through this chapter. Awkward ain't it?

It went off like a bomb in his mind. Something trivial that shouldn't have mattered to him like it did. It invaded his thoughts and distracted him from a plate of spaghetti—the crappy, Americanized kind—that would probably make his mother turn in her grave if she knew he was eating this. However, he couldn't take his mind off of "that plate was my grandmother's." It didn't make sense, she was an orphan. From what he knew of orphans, there were no living relatives that could take her in, thus…no Grandma.

"Who did you say that plate was from?"

"Gramms," Angie replied simply.

Still, it perturbed him, and he knew that it shouldn't have. He didn't care, honestly, but damn it if he wasn't confused. Should he ask? Would she get all pissy and whiny about something long past, or some shit like that? Marco didn't want to deal with that. Yet, it still stood that she owed him. "Hey, I'll told you my fucked up childhood," he stated, "you mind telling me something about yours?"

"I'll say 'I do mind' and you'll ask your question anyway."

"Pretty much. If you're an orphan, how do you have a Grandma?"

"I don't."

"Th'fuck—?"

She shushed him and poked at her spaghetti. In the chair, she didn't sit like a normal person would. Her legs were bent underneath her and her hand—the one not occupied with a fork—was under the table, picking at the old wood.

"Don't fucken 'shhh' me," he snapped harshly. From his place on the couch that he never moved from, he tossed his plate onto the table. Glaring, he went one: "I'm sick of you sifting through my fucken tragedy and I got no fucken thing to show for it. You're a fucken hypocrite, that's what you are." At this point in any argument, he would have been pacing angrily or walking over to her and smacking her for this shit she was putting him through. However, his bum leg was not in that position. For a moment, he felt how Philly must have felt when them Deuces dropped cinder blocks on his car.

"So what? You're a dickless bastard."

"What was that?"

"You heard me." Her eyes were narrow slits as she looked up at him. Suddenly, she seemed to have been anti-conversational. "Just shut up and eat."

"My mother made better spaghetti."

"You mother was a wop. I'm Brittish, so shoot me."

A flicker of threat flowed over the gleam in his eyes. "Shut the fuck up," he snapped viciously, teeth bared and throat growling behind every word. "Don't talk about her."

"MA!!!"

I didn't know what I was hearing. Everything was just so fucked up that I didn't know up from down. I couldn't believe that things could go so completely under in just a few short months. How did I ruin my life this quick? Fuck…my life was condemned the day I was born.

"MA!!!"

I knew what that was. A piercing siren through the rain and thunder made my spine quake in my body. I'd never heard something so frightening, so utterly penetrating as that anguished cry. God, my skin crawled over my bones and I had to stand. Jimmy Pockets had already left, that crazy bastard and I should too. I remember wanting to leave, needing to go out and see what was happening but I was terrified that I already knew. No one needed to see me like this: frantic and scared. I'd only embarrass myself.

"MA!!!"

I had to get out. These walls sunk in on me, pressing me back across the floor towards the eminent exit of this terror. Damnit! I was the leader of the Vipers! I was one of the most feared men on Sunset Park and I was afraid of the thunder. This is ridiculous…Even thought I knew better. I wasn't afraid of thunder at all. I was afraid of facing what I may have done.

Outside, rain plummeted and pounded the street and cars and buildings of Sunset Park. I could barely see anything in the deep dark of the night. Even from this spot where the eave hung over me, I felt the moisture sting in a clod burst over my hands and face. I was drowning with every delayed breath. Shrieking laughter seemed distant even though I knew damned well that it was Jimmy Pockets sitting beside me. This was like being glued to a wrecking ball as it slammed into solid, reinforced concrete. There Leon kneeled in the wet and rain with Mrs. Esther totally hysterical over young Alley-boy's dead body. Creepy.

Suddenly, he was standing, glaring murderously at me. Utter fury and betrayed despair gleamed in his eyes just as well through the sheets of rain coming down between us. "I warned you, Marco," his sharp, echoing voice boomed in my mind. "I fucken warned you. I told you not to sell him drugs."

He had, hadn't he…That didn't matter because I didn't sell him anything this time. I thought I was completely clear when I said to avoid this poor kid. Ear-splitting, uproarious laughing came from down at my side and I registered it as an interruption this time. Jimmy just couldn't shut up, the idiot. I found my anger an easy escape from fear. I kicked him off the steps.

"You moron," I snapped, ignoring the mournful scene of the Esther family collecting their deceased. "Get the fuck out of here, you fucken junkie."

Part Two

It was getting to be August. The days weren't so long anymore and the nights were more drawn out. As time moved on, her meals and conversations with Marco felt less hostile—even if a little bit uncomfortable still. He never did go into detail about Leon and his life before prison. He didn't seem to go into detail on much about himself since that night after the cemetery. Angie stopped bugging him about it and noticed how much easier it was to be around him when he wasn't angry or annoyed. Every night seemed to get lengthier and lengthier and the contact more prolonged.

The urge to get him out of her house didn't go away, but it faded a little. Angela was even considering offering to let him stay here for the rest of the year as some sort of assurance that he'll be properly forgotten before he went out on his own again. However, he'd already pointed out that he'd made a mark so deep on this block that "no one'll forget me, never." That was probably the gloomiest thing he'd said to her off-topic, and she was having a hard time keeping that loathing of him in mind. Something about him kept her from kicking him out the day he could walk without the damn crutch.

She thought about all of this while she did the daily, trivial things that she did. While she was at work, she wondered the answer to the puzzle that he was. When she went grocery shopping, she noticed that she'd purposely become accustomed to wonder what he wanted for dinner. Before she went to sleep at night she remembered with ease that there was a man in her living room snoozing on her couch. If it were anyone else, Angie had the feeling that she would probably like having him around. Living alone has made her crave human contact, but Marco Vindetti…she wasn't sure this was what she wanted. In fact, she had a hunch that it wasn't, but she put up with him anyway.

He's getting better, she thought to herself in the shower one night. The water was warm enough to not be too hot and the steam that settled about her feet made her feel strange. She wanted to distract herself. He hasn't tried to kill me yet and I thought I saw an actual smile on his face the other day. Laughing, she realized that the measure of progress was depressing at most. Why did she take on this challenge?

She put her head under the water flow and let her hair get wet even though that tell-tale fog was still fluttering about the shower. It was unsettling; she didn't know what, but it was.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door behind her. The sharp snap of hard knuckles on wood made her start. She almost slipped and fell and died because of it, and nothing would have been more embarrassing than death by bathtub. "How long are you gonna be in there?" Marco called from outside. There was a sort of playful irritation in his tone. Playful was a stretch, however, because it was more like he was making fun of her for being so girly that she took too long in the shower.

"What do you want?" she called back, hiding her unsteady heart rate.

"I have to piss."

"You'll have to wait."

The door opened anyway and a low flow of air sneaked under the plastic curtain to shill her legs. No her heart was beating quickly for a different reason. Each limping footstep into the room made her cringe slightly father against the shower wall. "Get out!" she shouted harshly.

"Keep your pants on." She didn't need to point out his error because she heard him scoff in frustration. "Or whatever. It's not like I'm going to fuck you slow and hot against the tile wall, so calm down."

Warm-hot moisture didn't help that her throat went dry. Leaning her shoulder against the cool tile, she wrapped her arms around herself and followed his shadow behind the curtain until he'd crossed to the toilet. The seat clunked when he lifted it and Angie suddenly forgot any nice feelings she'd had towards him. Recovering from his statement, she shouted at him again. "Get the fuck OUT of here!"

"Feisty tonight, aren't you?" He was acting cool as a cucumber, but he had to know what he was doing to her just by being in there.

She was afraid, terrified actually. Dead bodies strewn about a boat yard in the middle of the night, no problem, she frolics through like it's a field of flowers. Marco intrudes in her bathroom when she happens to be naked and she's ready to curl up in a corner and die.

"I made you curse again, tho', so I'm proud." As his zipper ripped down, she slid down the wall of the shower and sat there waiting impatiently for him to leave. The stream of warm water fell just in front of her and the steam surrounded her in the tub. "You still alive in there?"

She didn't answer. It was hard to ignore him with the sound of the toilet and his silhouette on the shower curtain. Just the thought of it sent chills over her skin. She hated this situation, that strange sigh when he began to relieve him, the stink that was and always will be Marco, and that exposed, vulnerable feeling that she hadn't had to experience since she was sixteen. "Get out." Her voice sounded and felt drained, barely anything under the liquid beating on the shower floor and in the toilet bowl.

The scent of cigarettes floated over the curtain when he looked over his shoulder. With a raised eyebrow, he blew smoke out of his nostrils and considered her. It was strange, that tone of voice. "Are you crying?" he asked gruffly.

"I'm trying to bathe in peace. Please go away."

"What the hell? It's not like you have anything I haven't seen before." He shook out the last bit of piss and zipped his pants back up. "Th'fuck are you crying for?"

"I'm not."

"And I'm Jesus Christ." The first thing she noticed was that he didn't wash his hands. Second, he didn't put the seat down. Thirdly, he didn't flush the toilet. So there was something of courtesy among his anal-retentive, asinine antics. "Whatever, I'm leaving, so you can finish playing with yourself or whatever the fuck you were doing."