Becky
The summer sun bathes Coney Island, as it did when I was a girl. Children are everywhere, their parents herding them, some looking worried, others looking excited, others looking lost. Cotton candy throws its smells into the air and everywhere people are screaming and giggling and enjoying life. It’s the second summer since the incident at The Italian, and much has changed. I stand at the railing—which might be the same railing where Chance and I once stood—with Chantelle in her papoose, smiling up at me. I’m working as a helper for a babysitting company, which means I get to take care of Chantelle at the same time as taking care of the other kids. Right now, the kids are with Genie, my boss; I’m just taking a small break with my bundle of joy.
“I was here once, you know,” I tell Chantelle. “With your daddy. It was winter and everything was white. It was before mommy started saving for school, before mommy started working with Genie. We were here and we fell in love. At least, I fell in love with him, and he felt something for me…I think he did, at least.”
She just grins up at me.
I kiss her on the head and watch the crowd, Genie moving through it efficiently with a trail of kids in front of her, the other helper making sure they all stay in line. They wave at me, smiling. I wave back and reach into my lunch-bag, taking out my sandwiches. As I eat, I think. I think about Dad, who recovered from the gunshot and is now serving time in prison. But he did the unthinkable and cooperated with the police. That would’ve meant death for him if Giovanni was alive, but Giovanni’s organization crumbled when the man died. Other crimes families rose up, but Dad has only given information about Giovanni and Julian, which allowed the police to seize some warehouses, some drugs and stuff like that. So Dad has walked the tightrope between informing but withholding enough for Giovanni’s old men not to be interested in him. Still, going to see him in prison isn’t a fun experience. But last time I was there, he told me that Mom has been visiting him as often as she can. That was how I learnt she’d moved to New York: through Dad.
Maybe they’ll make a go of it now. I don’t know. I hope they do.
Most of all I think about Chance, and how he isn’t here, and how I don’t know what’s happened to him. I ache for him every day, every second of every hour. He’s never far from my thoughts. I keep thinking about how he was the last time I saw him, covered in blood, looking like he could collapse any minute. Maybe he did collapse. Maybe he’s been dead these past fifteen months and I will never know for sure. Maybe Chantelle is already half an orphan. I lie awake at night, listening to the baby monitor and listening to the city, hoping for the sound of footsteps to creep across the apartment. I must be one of the only women in New York City hoping for a home invader.
I munch on my sandwich, cheese and pickle, and watch the children. It’ll be time to get back to work soon. They give me some slack since Chantelle is still only months old, but I don’t like to take that too far. Anyway, whenever I’m stationary, I lose myself in thoughts of Chance. I can never disentangle myself from them. I can never step away and draw a line under the experience. That’s probably why my apartment is filled with pictures which, in some way or the other, related back to Chance: warriors, fighters, protectors, lovers, heroes.
I finish the sandwich and push away from the railing, making toward Genie and the kids.
And that’s when I see him, or what I think is him, a face in the crowd, wearing a black beard now, but with the same close-cropped hair, the same dark blue-flecked eyes, dressed in a black hoodie and blue jeans and brown boots, hands in his pockets, standing still as the crowd moves around him and staring at me with the shadow of a smile on his lips.
I look behind me, and then back to him, thinking that he’ll disappear, but he’s there, staring at me.
“Chance?” I say, moving toward him.
He meets me just outside the crowd.
“Becky.”
“I—” Glancing at the kids, I say, “I can’t talk here.” I take a piece of paper and pen from my handbag and scrawl down an address. “This is my new apartment. Meet me there. Please.” I hand him my keys. “Please.”
He hesitates for a moment, but then takes the address and the keys. “I’ll be there.”
I turn away from him and try my best for the rest of the Coney Island visit to be here, with the kids, and not in my head wondering if Chance will really be at my apartment when I get home. I laugh, I joke, I discipline, and then, thankfully, the day wanes down and it’s time to go home. In the car, Genie asks me if I’m okay, as she’s dropping me off. I lie and say that I’m as okay as ever. But that’s not true. My heart is thumping up my throat like its beating wants to strangle me.
I have to press the buzzer to my apartment, since I gave Chance the keys. The second I press it, the door opens, and the beating in my heart gets crazier than ever. He’s here. He’s really here. After all this time.
I walk up the stairs on shaky legs, and grip the door handle with a shaky hand. Chantelle is babbling peacefully in her papoose. When I open the door, I see Chance standing against the kitchen counter, his beard full and tangled, his eyes staring first at me and then our child. I stop, staring at him, trying to tell myself that he’s real, that the man I’ve spent so long wishing to return has really returned. He stares back at me in silence. Then, after the silence has yawned for several minutes, he says, “What’s her name?”
I tell him. “After you,” I say. “Chance, Chantelle.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” he mutters.
“Wait here a second. She’s spent.”
I go into her bedroom and lay her down in the cot, making sure she’s safe and comfortable, and then smooth down my hair and make my way back into the living room.
“Where have you been?” I ask, once we’re together again. I sit on the couch and he sits on the armchair, leaning forward and watching me.
He tells me about going to the mid-West where he hid out, monitoring the investigation, until it was safe to come back. “They’re done with the Giovanni family now. Cased closed. Nate tells me they’ve taken me off their radar. Apparently, if I’m a good boy they’ll leave me be.”
“And…have you been, a good boy, I mean?”
“I’ve been washin’ dishes at a truck stop,” he says. “No fuckin’ joke.”
I giggle at the thought of Chance leaning over a pile of dirty dishes. “I like the beard,” I say.
“Yeah? Then I figure I’ll keep it, somethin’ to remember you by.”
“Wait? What?”
He’s on his feet, making for the door.
I leap up, chasing him. “Chance! Wait!”
He turns back to me reluctantly, jaws clenched. He lets out a shaky sigh between his teeth. “I came back here to say goodbye, Becky, a proper goodbye, and now I’ll leave you forever. I reckon there’s no redemption for me. I’ve done a lot of thinkin’ this past fifteen months and I reckon you’ll be better off without me. I just wanted you to know I’m safe, is all.”
“No.” I walk around him, standing in front of the door. “No way, Chance. I want you to listen to me, and listen closely. You. Are. Good. Enough. For. Us. Do you understand me? I want you in my life—our lives—not somewhere faraway where I don’t even know if you’re alive! I know you’ve lived your life a certain way, but the mob is gone, now. The Family is gone. Giovanni is gone. Julian is gone. Dad’s in prison. All of that is in the past. What matters is the present, us, our family. So I won’t let you go.”
I spread my hands, blocking the doorway. He looks deeply at me, lip shaking, and then walks to me and wraps his arms around me.
“I’ve wanted to say this for a damn long time, Becky,” he says. “I love you. I fuckin’ love you. I’ve loved you ever since the Ferris Wheel.”
When he kisses me, lust that has waited fifteen months to come out explodes. I can tell Chance has been just as celibate as me from the way he moves, the way we tear at each other. Being quiet because Chantelle is in the next room, we move to the couch, strip each other off, and devour each other: love, lust, heat, orgasms, taken from each other, over and over, in every position we can think of, until both of us are sweaty and tired and panting with exhaustion.
For the first time in over a year, when I close my eyes, I sleep soundly.
***
Chance
“You better make yourself at home,” Becky says, lookin’ at me over the top of Chantelle’s head. I’ve said hello to Chantelle, but she’s just a baby and she don’t know me yet. Maybe she will. Hopefully she will. “Okay? That’s an order.”
I offer her a salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
She leaves for work and I don’t know what to do with myself. I walk around the apartment, doin’ some shadow boxing, and then some push-ups and sit-ups, and then some TV, and then I go into Becky’s room and look at all her paintings. There’s one of a Spartan warrior and another of sort of army guy, all of them with a stroke of blue in their dark eyes. Grinnin’ to myself, I return to the living room and drop onto the couch. There’s somethin’ peaceful about sittin’ here. Since I left Becky, I’ve been livin’ with the idea that I’d never see her again, or see her once and that’d be that. But I haven’t touched any other women, haven’t even thought about it. All I’ve thought about—all I’ve longed for—is my family.
So I spend the day just relaxin’ for the first time in almost a year and a half, makin’ myself some lunch, watchin’ some bad daytime TV, wonderin’ to myself if this is what a normal person does with their time if they ain’t got a murder on the schedule.
Then Becky comes home, sweeping into the apartment like a force of goddamn fire, warmin’ it up. I’m sitting on the couch. She brings Chantelle over to me, lowering her into my arms, and I take her, carefully. “I might break her,” I say.
“You won’t,” Becky promises. “She’s yours.”
I hold her like glass, lookin’ down at her face. “There’s blue in her eyes,” I whisper.
“I know,” Becky says. “I see you every time I look at her.”
Becky places two brand-new, shinin’ keys on the coffee table. “These are keys to the apartment: the main door and my door. They’re yours. To do with what you want. You can stay for a week, a month, or…”
“We can build a life together,” I say. “A home, a life, a family, a future” I swallow. “I never thought a man like me could have that, before I met you, Becky. Come here.”
She sits on the couch next to me, wrapping her arms around me and Chantelle. The three of us stay like that for a long time, me and Becky lookin’ down at our daughter, and then when Chantelle falls asleep lookin’ into each other’s eyes.
For the first time in my life, the idea of havin’ a home ain’t so ridiculous.
THE END
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