I wondered if Slim knew what was happening. If he was waving his little stump in the air in anticipation of the smack, or if that was too much for his little brain to remember. Maybe this felt new to him, falling from Rick to me. Maybe he was having a good time.

Hit Man of the Year

hit man of the year

Ambruzzo came out fists first. He was wet and blue, and his grandmother, in a panic, wrapped him in her apron and set him in the oven to keep him warm. As she bent and peered at her grandson nestled between the metal racks, Nonna felt an eerie dread that stayed with her even after she saw the color rise in his skin, like one, she would later say, coming back from the dead. She said a Hail Mary quickly under her breath and used the mitts to pull him out of the oven.

Earlier that afternoon, Nonna had found her daughter in the back room of the family bakery, dusted in flour and marking a rolling pin with her teeth.

“I’m pregnant,” said Sylvia, her voice like the growl of a dog. She’d always been a plump girl and her mother hadn’t noticed the changes. Later Nonna would remember them all, but for now she made space on the mixing table; she pushed the sugar, salt, and butter aside, then helped her daughter up.

When the contractions came closer, she asked her Who, but Sylvia wouldn’t answer. Not in the white heat of muscle tearing. Not in the timed pool of numbness in between. Not when a piece of her broke loose inside and Sylvia slid with the blood away from her body, across the table, till there was nothing left and she was gone.

Nonna buried her daughter and brought up the baby in the bakery. She watched his brown curls grow, his blue eyes darken, and looked for signs of the man who had killed her little girl. She watched for him in the streets, on Sundays in church, and at the festivals: San Gennaro, San Antonio, Corpus Christi. She was a patient woman. She bided her time, filled and measured it like flour and piled it around her heart.

She decided to name the baby after her great-grandfather, whom she had only seen once in a blurred photograph, a splash of white obscuring his face—the glare of the sun, or perhaps a mustache. Ambruzzo Spagnetti was a quiet child. He grew to be clever, and his grandmother began to depend on him.