And Sofia feels a small flicker of fear, thinking about Antonia having another baby. She almost didn’t come back from the last one.

—

Late at night, Antonia turns to her side and cranes her neck to look out the window at the head of her bed. She stretches out an arm and presses her hand against the brick wall there. The wall presses back, cool, alive. Antonia shuts her eyes and she imagines being five, feeling for Sofia on the other side of their shared wall. Tonight she feels she might be the only person for a thousand miles; not even Sofia can help her. The cavern of surprise loneliness, unexpected disappointment, sucks her in and spreads out around her, blacking out all the light. If you can see me, she prays, I must be here.

—

But out in the dark, Antonia knows, Sofia is doing God-knows-what. With God-knows-whom. For God-knows-how-long.

Chapter 25

It is October in Red Hook, and Saul is leaving his Fianzo meeting, driving his feet into the metal of the stairwell. He bursts outside and lets the door crash shut behind him; the sound echoes back up the building and out over the water, as though he has slammed the door on Red Hook itself, on New York, on the rules of this strange world in which he finds himself.

Saul has been taking these monthly meetings alone since July. But today, as though Tommy Fianzo had coordinated his transition with Joey’s, Saul met with Tommy Fianzo Jr. I’ll waste no time, he had begun, smirk crawling like a centipede across his face, I’m going to be doing things differently than my father did. He was comfortable with you running things. I’m not. Tommy Fianzo Jr., with his slick-greased hair and his grease-slick nose; with his thick Fianzo fingers like sausages, pulling violently at the laid slices of capocollo on a plate on his desk; his mouth like purple worms; like viscera; the red wine stains in circles on the table. Saul didn’t touch his own wine; he took a certain satisfaction in refusing the ceremonial trappings of congenial meetings; he could assert, at least, that he was no fool.

Tommy Fianzo Jr. had looked at Saul like a dirty thing. Saul had swallowed the salt and bile of being unable to say what he so longed to say. With anyone else, he would have scoffed, said, your comfort is not my concern. But he is sobered by the seriousness of this feud; he is quiet with disbelief that Joey never found a way out of this atrophied and bloodstained relationship.

I’ll be watching you, my Jewish friend, Tommy Fianzo Jr. had said, before taking Saul’s meticulously filled envelope and tossing it in a drawer, pointedly careless. Very fucking carefully.

—