Read Online Earthquake I.D. by John Domini - Free Book Online Page A

morning Mass and evening Mass, people in this neighborhood preferred to stay home with the appliances. Now Barb had the purse in her lap, her hands in fists around the handle. “Why are you telling me this?”
    â€œWhy are you complaining to me about some so-called power in a marriage? In this world, power is a piece of iron pipe. It’s a wallet full of Euros.”
    â€œOh, Father . The two that hit my Jaybird, that night they would’ve had the Euros. Now don’t you think they would’ve taken the money and run? That’s what the police think, they hightailed it for Norway or someplace that very night.”
    Cesare had kept his own arms down. In another moment, unflappable, he undid what he’d just done. He pointed out that Jay’s attackers had had a motorcycle, which meant they must’ve worked with some under-the-table dealer out on the city’s periphery. Out in a mob neighborhood like Secondigliano, for instance. The two men the priest was keeping in the cellar, on the contrary, had shown up on foot.
    â€œOne could see that they didn’t even have 90 cents for the funicular.”
    Barbara hadn’t quite shaken her panic, her blood-rush. “If you’re saying there’s no power dynamic in a marriage…” She tsked, irritated at her vocabulary, power dynamic . “If you’re saying it wouldn’t be about power out at the Refugee Center, the Glorious Jaybird Show, then you’re the one who doesn’t know how the world works.”
    â€œBut think of the reason you couldn’t stand to see him in power. If that man had power, signora, it was because you loved him.”
    Sighing, Barbara lifted her purse and set it back down.
    â€œIt was love between you two,” the priest said.
    At least she resisted the counseling-session response, I acknowledge that . She looked to the altar. A thing of glazed concrete, flecked with shards of glass in purple and green, it hardly seemed an Italian piece. It was New Age California.
    â€œWell, and wouldn’t that love be the reason you still find yourself making love, actually, Mrs. Lulucita?”
    â€œOh, so far as that goes, listen.” Another reason she’d chosen this priest was how willing he was to talk about sex. “We can’t be sure what’s going on, so far as that goes. What does any of us know, honestly, when it come to the libido?”
    â€œI suppose. But you are some years past forty.”
    â€œSome years. Some years, there’s a nice way to put it.”
    Much as she preferred straight talk, Cesare’s collar didn’t give him the right to check her hormonal balances. Whatever menopause or its approach might have to do with Barbara’s ongoing Neapolitan upheaval, she could handle that part of it herself. With Jay, she’d gone so far as to use the expression “change of life,” just the night before. This was after another spasm of clutching and gasping, turning to glass and tumbling through glass; her energy had been up.
    â€œBut,” the priest replied, “I’m not just talking about your body and its changes.”
    â€œCesare, I had five children, you know what I’m saying?”
    â€œIndeed I do, signora. Your body and its changes, that’s your own affair, finally. What I’m trying to talk about is a long and happy marriage.”
    And faithful too, Father. Barb, nodding, sighing again, recalled in silence her lone suspicion of adultery. She’d suffered a wondering night or two early during her final pregnancy—and in the next minute, never mind that she and Cesare weren’t in the confessional, she told him about it. “There were just two nights in twenty years,” the mother said, “two nights of something jay called a late inventory check, down at Viciecco & Sons.” And whatever kind of inventory the man had been taking, it was over and done with by the time the twins had