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14 Feb. 1945
Henry sits by the phone for a good ten minutes before he decides it can wait, gets into his car, and drives aimlessly between diners and bars until he realises he’s running out of gas and uses that as his next excuse, hoping the attendant takes his time to fill the tank. His first plan was to call Vito about the last job, and casually drop in the idea like it had just come to him, which it had. He’d insist that to himself until death.
This makes him feel like a kid, which he has never felt, not even when people called him that, kid. You’re a good kid, Henry, which he hasn’t heard since he was twenty-four. He’s glad, but it’s all coming back to him, and now he can’t even pick up the fucking phone.
After he wastes a few cents on a beer, he sees a phone booth and pauses, glancing between his car and the phone booth and back again until he’s embarrassed by his own anxiety. And it is embarrassing—for some reason a cathouse feels less intimate than a fucking baseball game.
He heads to the booth, picks up the phone, dials his number.
After a few rings, he’s there. “Hello?”
“Hey, Vito.”
“Oh, hey, Henry,” he mumbles. His call had woken him up. His voice is thick with the morning, low and rough. Suddenly the booth is warm. “Joe ain’t here right now, but I can give him a—”
“No, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh. Alright.” he says, and Henry can imagine his face creased up in confusion. “Well, is everythin’ okay? How’s your leg?”
“I’ve done better, but I’m alright. I can actually walk without fallin’ on my ass now.”
Vito chuckles. “Well, that’s good to hear.” The air thins with every second they don’t speak. “So, uh… what do you want?”
Fuck. “I was, ah…” There’s a couple across the street, and one of them throws an arm around the other, and suddenly his body is pounding. “Listen, I got a surprise for you.”
“Yeah?” he says, “Someone gonna shoot me in the leg, too?”
“I’d be fuckin’ worried if they did it there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll see.”
“Right. Whatever you say.” He doesn’t even sound fazed by it. “Is Joe comin’?”
“No, uh, he’s not,” he says. Maybe a phone call is better—he can’t judge any level of disappointment in Vito’s face. “Think he’s going to a cathouse tonight.”
“So it’s not a cathouse.”
“What?”
“The surprise,” says Vito. “It ain’t a cathouse.”
“You caught me.”
“You really ain’t gonna tell me?”
“I’ll see you later, Vito,” he says, “We’ll take my car.”
Before El Greco fixed him up, Henry tried to make a mental list of all the things he liked as a way of combating the pain. It’s some fucked tactic he learned from his brothers. He’d broken so many bones then, and when the fights were finally over, they told him to think of good things to keep him awake, as if it’d form an invisible thread and stitch his bones back into place. Some of it had to be right—back then he’d think of the warm water and Sicily so far beneath him when he was in the trees, and it became that much more bearable.
But this time there was nothing. Sicily was too far back in his memory and his wife had probably scattered beyond six feet now, into nine summers of soil. His list actually came to a stop after two things: 1. Vito, and 2. Joe, who, even though was sitting at his side, couldn’t make Henry swap their places. He never remembered those lists having a hierarchy, but now they did, and he didn’t know why.
Through all that pain, Henry focused on the first thing on the list as if it was a sedative. When men get hurt that badly, their heads scramble, so nobody could blame him. Not that he’d voice that truth. Not that he had to.
As a result, all he could think of was Vito’s fear in the driver’s seat, his face white. He drove through red lights, but any chance he could he looked back at Henry. Joe was looking down at him to make sure he was awake, but it didn’t stop Vito glancing over his shoulder. He’d seen streams of soldiers’ blood, all of it running out of his hands. Henry couldn’t figure why losing him was any different, but it was, clearly, and he had to thank him. It was the least Henry could do.
When the hour finally rolls around, Henry heads to his car and drives again. He lied on the phone—he’s still lugging all that pain around, his leg becoming a weight he wants to cut loose. He didn’t want to tell Vito that. Didn’t want him to worry. But it’s all Vito does, and when he knocks on the door, he knows he’ll say it.
When he steps out the door, Henry feels wind knocked from him, actually seeing his face, the black suit he’s in, the cuts on his hands. The light behind him bronzes all his skin as he shuts the door behind him, and after a polite hey he says, “Henry, you can hardly stand.”
Then he remembers to look him in the face. “Don’t worry about it.”
Vito rolls his eyes. “Look, if you want me to carry you down the stairs, there’s no shame in askin’.”
“Ah, fuck you,” Henry says and Vito smiles. “Where’s Joe?”
“You were right. Cathouse,” Vito says, following Henry down the stairs. “So what’s happenin’ tonight?”
“You ever been told the definition of ‘surprise’?”
“Hey, I thought I could catch you out,” he says, as they make it outside into the cold, heading to the driver’s side. “You keep droppin’ hints.”
He catches his hand on the door on instinct and pulls back. Henry’s words don’t come to him for a moment, the print of where Vito’s hand had been freezing his skin. “Hey, what are you doin’?”
Vito detects nothing. “What, you actually thought I was gonna let you drive like that?”
“And how the fuck are you meant to drive somewhere you’ve never been?”
“Somewhere I never been, huh?” says Vito, prising the door open, sliding into the driver’s seat. “You know, you’re real bad at this whole surprise thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Henry says, giving in and getting in beside him. “Where are we goin’, then?”
“Uhh,” Vito bites at his inner cheek in thought, rolling out of the snow-lined drive. “Not a cathouse, or a bar, or a restaurant.” The fact he thinks restaurant is on the list makes Henry’s head spin. “Fuck, I got no clue. The movies?”
“You’ve never been to the movies?”
“Hey, I’m runnin’ out of ideas.”
“Then you’ll have to wait,” Henry says. “Turn left.”
“Well, there ain’t nothin’ in Riverside,” Vito goes on after he turns. “I mean, Harry’s in Kingston, but there ain’t much else…” Then it clicks, and his face changes. “Are you takin’ me to a baseball game?”
Henry can’t think of any rhyme nor reason for Vito to even be in Kingston bar the last job. Maybe he drives around when he thinks like Henry, and he goes by the stadium every now and again and drives away the second he arrives like Henry.
Henry shakes his head. “You just couldn’t let it go.”
“No shit,” Vito says, his voice changing too, all bright, like there’s light injected in it. “How’d you know?”
“Joe talks a lot when he’s nervous,” he says, which is half of the truth. After Henry carded back through his list, he remembered the moments between jobs when Vito mentioned what he liked, who he liked, movies and drinking and money. But he noticed he liked baseball the most, turned into a little kid at the thought of it. He’d listen in on news about it on the radio, but never said anything. Apparently his side of his old bedroom was smothered in baseball posters.
In the end, he actually asked Joe if Vito had ever gone to one, which led him to talk until he ran out of shit to say.
“He talks a lot even when he’s not,” says Vito. “But for once, I’m glad he did.”
“Yeah,” Henry says, watching Vito’s joy expand across his face, into his hands. “Me too.”
The irony is that Vito can’t stop talking either, something Henry’s never seen in him before. He often struggles to find anything to talk about. Normally leaves Joe to it. They both do—Henry only talks when it’s necessary, if it’s instruction or breaking up a fight. He assumes he’s just a wedge between them, a way for them to make money. Day in and day out Henry hopes he’s wrong, and now Vito’s hands are dancing around the wheel while he talks, and he nearly misses a few red lights in his elation. He has to be wrong.
“Hey, I get you’re excited, but I don’t wanna die before we get there.”
“Sorry, I just, uh, I never expected this,” Vito admits. “Joe probably told you, but my family couldn’t really afford to do anything like this. Then I was in the service, and I just never got the time when I came back, y’know?”
Henry nods, gentle. “I know.”
“So you like baseball? That why you invited me?”
Henry looks away, into his window. “You want me to be honest?”
“Sure.”
He hesitates. “Baseball isn’t for me.”
Vito chuckles, shaking his head. “So you bought tickets because?”
He sucks the truth down. “Doesn’t matter. What does is that you’ll have to explain everythin’ to me, because I won’t have a fuckin’ clue.”
And once they get there, that’s exactly what Vito does. The moment they sit down he’s too excited to speak, tripping over his words, saying alright, okay, alright between everything. He explains the teams, explains terms in case Henry doesn’t know them. He doesn’t even notice when the sky darkens as the light green of the grass dims until the stadium lights fill the arena, filling his face. Henry tries to listen, but he still finds himself staring at Vito for half the game. He’s so close to him, grabbing his shoulder, look! and Henry does. He still doesn’t really see what Vito sees, all that colour in his eyes, but it doesn’t matter. He always looks through people while they talk. Got it from his mother. Over the years, that habit died away, but it comes back today in full force, and suddenly the game is over.
Even then, Vito has so much to say, and Henry drinks it all, every word that fills the air and the car. He keeps listening in case it’s the last time he gets to hear his voice like that. Or at all. It’s a sound he could listen to forever, in his sleep, when he wanted peace. If he goes to prison, Henry promises himself now not to visit. He doesn’t think he could deal with anger so full in Vito’s face, the antithesis of who he’s seeing now. His luck would be that he wouldn’t want to see him anyway.
“You had a good time, then?” Henry asks, and he expects Vito’s sarcasm on instinct: no, that was practically torture. I fuckin’ hated it.
But he doesn’t even do that. “Yeah, I did,” Vito says. “You’re a really great—”
Then he falls short. Henry looks at him. He braces himself for whatever fills the gap. “A great?”
Vito’s face changes again. “Uh…” And through the dark, Henry sees he’s red in the face. He doesn’t bring it up. “You’re great, Henry, you really are. Thanks for all this. Christ, I mean, sometimes it feels like even Joe has no idea who I am anymore.”
“I get it.”
“Yeah?”
Henry nods. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Since…” and Bettina’s name comes to the surface before he swallows it like a knife. “I get it,” he says again, firmly this time, like the final stitch in a wound.
“No, c’mon,” Vito says. “Tell me.”
Henry breathes hard for a moment, and suddenly he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Betty. She paid attention. Made you feel important.” Vito knows who Bettina was in passing. Henry mentioned it once, and shut it down right after. Maybe, if this doesn’t go to shit, Henry will tell him. “I thought you deserved to feel that, too.”
Vito looks over at him at a red light. “D’you wanna talk about it?”
It’s so direct it catches him off guard, blue eyes so firmly on his. “Another time.”
Silence falls on them then because Henry just can’t think of anything to say. There is nothing interesting to point out outside of the snow and the city lights, which have grown boring for them both over so many years. Henry wonders if Vito gets homesick like him, if he gets sick of forgetting such big fragments of his life that have cut themselves off like diseased limbs, and he nearly brings that up by the time they stop outside Joe’s apartment but Vito halts the train of thought.
“Hey, uh, sorry if I pushed it. I didn’t wanna ruin today.” His hand goes around the nape of his neck, scratching it like he does. “Or anything else.”
Henry softens. “You couldn’t.”
Then it’s quiet again and Vito doesn’t leave. Somehow he seems closer than before, and Henry’s chest grows loud. “Wanna come inside for a drink? I’m sure Joe won’t mind.”
Yes. “I think they got a job for me tomorrow, Vito.”
“Already?” he asks, too late to realise his shock is too big for the car. “You should rest, then.” He flushes. “Thanks for tonight. It means a lot.”
“Yeah, of course.”
But he still doesn’t move, doesn’t even touch the car door. Henry’s so nervous he can’t even fucking look at him. “You okay?”
Vito looks down at the wheel. “Yeah, I, uh…” Shakes his head. He’s just as nervous, but Henry doesn’t want to assume, but if he does, it looks like Vito will regret something if he doesn’t do whatever it is he’s thinking. He’s thanked him enough already, so it isn’t that. It’s getting too uncomfortable to bear, tight around their necks, and he’s so hard to see in the dark.
Then he shifts his gaze to Henry, jaw clenched, and he draws in a breath. Whatever he wants to say and do don’t calibrate, but he’s so close, past the wheel and the gearstick, and Henry moves too whether he knows it or not, and Vito’s face blurs. Then it hits him, what he wants, and his skin is warm under his clothes, and Vito’s hands are spreading, a forest fire. When Henry’s vision momentarily shifts out of the haze, he sees where his olive skin has been cut through, the scars where the wounds have healed, the one running above his jaw, and he draws over it in his mind. His eyes burn through so many shades, a blue that becomes grey becomes navy. The closet is open, the case unpacked, and it’s alright, Henry decides when Vito doesn’t laugh, doesn’t hit him, not like he braced for.
His heart is in his throat as total darkness covers his eyes and he’s so close until he feels him in his mouth, in his hair, pulling him closer by the neck. Then there’s suddenly sense in why he thinks of him in the kaleidoscope between life and death, his own hand on Vito’s jaw, on his back, his hands everywhere.
When Vito pulls back for a moment, he’s still staring at him, breathing hard. “You sure about this?”
Definitely. “Yes.”
Blue, grey, navy. “I didn’t know if it was shock.”
“It’s not,” Henry says without thought. “It’s not.”
So Vito does it again, just for the thrill of it, or maybe to make sure, kissing hard, and his palm becomes a fist in his hair until he pulls back again. “Sure you don’t wanna come inside?”
Henry smiles. “Another time.”
Vito scoffs but he’s smiling, too. “Asshole.”
Then something in Henry finally settles because he doesn’t have to hide this terrible gash anymore and he thinks for a moment it’s being healed; Vito doesn’t tell him he’s kidding, that he’ll tell everyone, you disgust me. No, God, he’s actually encouraging it, he gets it.
“That’s why you took me to the game, huh?” says Vito. “To get in my pants?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Henry chuckles, pushing him away. “If you looked at the date, you could’ve figured that one out yourself.”
Vito blinks slowly, shoving his head in his hands. Valentine’s Day. “God, I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”
“Nah, you’re okay,” says Henry. “You gotta be someone’s idiot, don’t you?”
“What, yours?”
Henry sighs. “Get inside, Joe’s probably wonderin’ what’s takin’ so long.”
“Alright, alright,” Vito says, opening the car door. “I’ll call.”
“Yeah?” says Henry, moving out of the passenger’s side once Vito is out the door. “What about?”
“Another time,” Vito says, and Henry watches as he goes inside, imagines his steps up all those stairs, his smile on the drive home. Then he thinks of Sicily warm, this city in snow, and he doesn’t think of prison once.