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“Your pie, Mr. Ricci.”
Florence sets the plate down carefully, hardly glancing at him as she wipes her hands on her apron. Across from the man sits a broad-shouldered square of a giant and his lips tilt upward knowingly. A warning bell clangs inside of her head- you’ve been found out, abort, abort- she swallows hard and takes a step back.
Clearing her throat, Florence drags her attention back to the two men, watching with muted glee as Nino grabs for a fork, practically salivating.
“You always know what I like. What do I owe you, Miss Flo?”
A coffee. A moment of his time. A night on the town and a peck on her cheek if she's lucky.
Nervous energy bounds out of Florence’s stomach to claw its way up her throat, but she simply smiles and waves the man off.
“This one’s on the house.”
Nino pauses, his eyebrows lifting with surprise, and Florence’s heart thuds hard against her ribs. His lips tilt up just slightly; she forcibly ignores the heat curling up her spine as his focus on her sharpens for a moment.
“You’re too good to me.” He gestures to the pie and then to her. She shrugs in response.
“We like to treat our regulars well.”
With a quiet smile, Florence turns to Nino's companion- Vittorio Puzo, she's well aware who owns this place- and nods towards his coffee cup.
"Refill?"
He nods and as Nino inhales a piece of his pie, she disappears into the kitchen for another pot.
*
Walter is humming to himself and idly scrubbing his station, but he stops and turns when she enters the room. A wry grin appears on his face and her cheeks flush with heat.
"Mr. Ricci's here then."
Florence shoots the cook a playful glare and busies herself by hunting for the sugar. The man is irritably excellent at recognizing what she never speaks aloud, but when it comes to Walter, she doesn’t mind all that much. He reminds her of a younger version of her grandfather and that requires enough joie de vivre that she almost appreciates the ribbing.
“Don’t. He likes the food here.”
“I’ll take the compliment, but that’s not why he comes ‘round, kid.”
She’s glad there’s not a cup in her hand when he says it; the statement startles a nervous laugh out of her throat and she ducks her head below the counter to grab a set of napkins.
“Then I’m glad to provide.”
“Just be careful where you tread, Florence.”
She pauses this time and looks back at Walter, touched and irritated all at once by his concern. If she hadn’t been round and round in her own head for countless nights, she’d consider this possibility of “treading” into Nino Ricci’s world ridiculous, a nonsense daydream.
But the man keeps coming round, sometimes alone and sometimes with his big bad buddies, and she keeps baiting him with pie and smiles and conversation with the hope that he’ll continue to do so.
She was fairly sure in the beginning that it was nonsense, that it was some phase her father would disapprove of, and she’d catered her imagination to the idea of coming home a vamp. She would wrap her fingers around Nino’s arm and flutter her eyelashes at his colleagues, then trail behind him that evening and retire to the back room to sand down his rough edges.
Then came the evening he’d leaned back in his booth, casually asked her if she’d seen The Jazz Singer and what she’d thought of it, and Florence realized that she’d falsely, cruelly assumed a gangster was all that the man was capable of being.
She should know better than that, to connect all of a person's value to their work. If she is nothing but a waitress, a living transport of food and drink, then it would be a wonder anyone looked at her at all.
It's bad enough that she works in the first place, that there's no man to bring home the bacon, and she can almost hear the pitying thoughts of some of her customers. She’s gotten used to the petty complaints of young mothers and the appraising glances of every man that steps foot in Vesuvio. It's better here than most places, she's heard. Vittorio Puzo does not seem to care for those that grope the women of his establishments and for the most part, they keep their hands to themselves.
She'd noticed very quickly that Nino's hands never drifted beyond the table. Sometimes, in her lesser moments, she wishes they would.
*
By the time she's returned to their table, Florence is blushing again, embarrassed by the momentary lapse in her service caused by her thoughts.
She places a new steaming mug of coffee down next to two discarded gloves, but she's caught the sudden pause in their conversation. Nino's lips clench tight around his cigarette and his boss slips something quickly into his coat pocket.
Florence knows this dance well. She'd watched the man flip the open sign at the window, glimpsed the two goons at the door. No customers for half an hour now and she's not ignorant. She knows how a man's shoulders shrug just so when he's keeping something quiet- and Nino's abandoned his pie.
"Think you could work a double tonight? Special customer."
She should have asked her manager who it was. But she didn’t; she never does and she never will. Florence doesn't ask questions and she keeps her mouth shut.
By now, she should expect these kinds of shifts.
Without looking at either of the two men, Florence whisks their two empty plates from the table and spins on her heels for the kitchen.
She knows when to become scarce.
*
It’s a long discussion, this one, and it’s hard not to hover.
She’s finished all the dishes and scrubbed the kitchen counters twice and still, the two men show no sign of finishing their meeting.
Florence waits at the edge of the kitchen, her attention centered on their table. It’s probably foolish, watching these two men in particular. They’re used to being watched, used to being targets, and she knows it could be any moment that one of them might shift just enough to notice her.
It could end poorly, she knows that; she could be out of a job in a moment, or worse. Still, it’s hard not to watch suited gentlemen who sit in her diner with such purpose. She wants to catalogue each of their movements, piece together their stories with nothing but what she can see. She’d like to try and make sense of her longing, try and explain to herself why she fancies the mouse of the two so very much.
Florence’s eyes glance over Vittorio Puzo for a moment, drinking in the way his suit hides what she knows must be toned muscles by now. The man is a force unto himself, an advancing wolf with a snarl in its throat. She thinks sometimes that he came out of a storybook, a real life example of a man you don't cross. He's feral almost, impressive in his guarded, tactical strength.
And for all his calculated moves and murmured commands, she should be salivating over him. He could provide protection, if she endeared herself to him enough. Money. Power. She’s heard enough women whispering every time he enters or exits a room- “Why worry about rent, I’d bet he owns half the block.” “Don’t stare. We don’t want trouble.” “What’s under all that silk, do you think?”
It should be him she wants.
But Nino, with the quiet intellect of a right hand man, has always drawn her eye first.
She’s mapped his face numerous times, carving high cheekbones and sly smiles into her sketchbook more than she has any other item of interest. It’s an excellent practice for expressions, trying to capture the tiny shift in his eyes when he looks at her. He’s got it down pat, masking whatever he feels about whatever it is that day, like a true mobster, like some ace at cards.
Florence has decided he’s excellent at cards.
She knows what he looks like to most people. A man of small stature, always hopping around under his master’s orders. Nothing but some street thug who cleans up nice. But she’s seen the way he watches a room, the way his eyes carefully glide over the man in the corner, the way his back straightens almost imperceptibly anytime a person of note is mentioned, the way he spins a cigarette between his fingers when he’s focusing particularly hard on the nearest conversation.
It’s easy to assume he’s just another yes man, a bit of muscle to back up a fight. But she’s seen the glint of steel beneath his jacket by now and she knows what fangs look like.
Florence blows a short, exasperated breath out of her nose and forces her attention to the gleaming tiles beneath her shoes.
It’s not proper, not appropriate for her to get flustered like this when the extent of their relationship hardly goes beyond chatting. He orders a meal and quips with her; she serves him a dish and teases back. They’ve discussed talkies and music and lemon custard pie.
Beyond that, their worlds are very different and sometimes it is best to accept such things and move onto the next catch. There are plenty of other men in New York looking for a lady, looking for a wife. Plenty of other men who don’t roam the streets with guns and cars and puppet strings.
But they are significantly less interesting than Nino.
She would like the chance to prove her own worth to him in return.
Florence has her own points of pride, moments when she’s escorted an angry customer from the restaurant or calmed a child in the throes of a tantrum. Perhaps both were less life-threatening than a shootout, less stressful or exciting than hauling in an entire month’s stock of rum right beneath the police’s noses. But she has enough moxie to keep up and enough sense to keep quiet.
And she is more than a frail woman pouring coffee and baking bread. She wishes Nino could see her outside of the diner, where she exists on paper in streaks of lead and charcoal, in shapes and the thoughts she can’t speak, rather than as a food transport in an overused apron. She wishes he knew the simpler things about her, that she can remember a face from a year before like it was yesterday, that her hands are steady but sometimes creased with dust, and that sometimes, sometimes she believes that she’s quite lovely.
The angry naysayer in the back of her mind hisses that she’s no made man’s girl, but the hopeful romantic in her wants just a moment to prove it wrong.
With a tired sigh, Florence straightens her apron, focusing on the rough material beneath her hands and the slow, even breath rising up through her lungs. She counts and fiddles with her hair, determined to appear controlled when she’s called back into the lion’s den.
And there it is. As she glances out into the dining room again, she catches the slightest flutter of Nino’s hand. A measured, but appreciative smile sits on his lips and she recognizes quickly that his dessert plate sits empty.
Right.
“Anything else I can get you, gentlemen?”
“The bill, if you please.”
She’s already written it out, though it is uncommon for Vittorio Puzo not to simply add everything to his tab. She often feels guilty charging him at all, when the place belongs to him, but she’d heard once that he prefers routine and the “simple” rules of dining out. And she’s not dumb enough to argue.
Florence fidgets for a moment, realizing with a start that as impatient as she’d been, now that the two men are ready to go, she’s disappointed. It tends to happen a lot, when Nino abandons his booth, that sudden feeling of loss. The logical part of her brain reminds her he doesn’t live there, that he has his own life, and that there’s no actual leash keeping him around. Customers come and go.
But when the Puzo famiglia frequents the place, everything feels a little more exciting, and when Nino comes around, she feels so blessedly relevant.
“Have a good night, Miss Baker.”
Mr. Puzo draws her eyes again with a nod and a quiet chuckle. He and Nino stand and carefully slip towards the door; she can’t help but watch as they do. Her cheeks flush as Nino glances back- it was inevitable that she get caught tonight, acting like some female in need of a fainting couch. But Nino simply pinches another cigarette between his teeth and shrugs his shoulders in her direction in what she hopes is his own personal goodnight.
The door clicking shut behind him is a little too loud.
Slowly, Florence’s shoulders relax again- she hadn’t noticed that they’d stiffened- and she approaches their table, eyeing the larger than normal stack of cash tucked neatly beneath the bill. Heavens, at least the rent will be easier this month.
As she reaches out to pick up one of Nino’s empty glasses, her eyes catch on the black fedora on the seat beside her.
Oh!
Her hand stretches out towards it before she can think and she wraps her fingers around the brim, jerking it backward. Florence runs for the door and bursts through it.
“Mr. Ricci!”
He’s there, slowly opening the driver’s side door of a Ford Sedan. He looks less surprised to see her than she’d expect, but she waves off the thought, approaching him quickly.
“You left your hat.” She reaches out to offer it to him, but her fingers catch on something smooth and flat tucked into the band. It comes away between her fingers and she glimpses a tiny bit of text scrawled across a small card.
With a start, she looks away quickly and offers it to him as well. Not her things, not her business.
“And your card. Sorry, that too.”
Nino pauses for a moment and considers her, his hands draped carefully over the top of the car door. He slowly leans forward and gently pulls the hat from her grip, but one hand returns the card back to her.
“The hat is mine, thank you. However, I believe the card is yours.” When she stares at him, a rush of non-words flitting about her head, his grin widens.
“You should join me for dinner next time, Miss Florence.”
Her eyes bump clumsily between the card and Nino and a sudden rush of heat she knows is visible blooms at the base of her cheeks. She straightens, embarrassed at him catching her so off guard, then tucks his business card into the palm of her hand. She nods, desperate to squash the swelling delight back down into her stomach before he sees.
“I’d like that. Goodnight, Mr. Ricci.”
“It’s just Nino.” He grins again and slips into the driver’s seat, clapping the door shut behind him.