Mr. Mafia Part Two

We are in a storage unit. I’ve been told not to ask any questions. I stand in the entryway of a dark hallway, staring out across an even darker parking lot, lit only by the raindrops glistening against far away headlamps of traffic on the roadway. Patrick and Mr. Mafia are struggling past me with huge pieces of carved wood furniture; a table with delicately patterned legs, a head board with chiseled scrollwork. I feel Uncle Frankie’s breath against my neck as he leans in to whisper in my ear, “From Egypt. Imported”. Imported indeed. 

 
Mr. Mafia had gotten typically drunk the night before. Where he suddenly had all this money to splash out on happy hour night after night was quickly becoming less and less a mystery. He’d spent the entire walk home from SomeBar bragging about his father, the great import Don of the entire upper west coast. Shipping from foreign countries. There was money in it. Alot of money. And if Patrick was free tomorrow, they could have some it. So here we were.

I cross my arms, forever cold in the unforgiving Seattle rain as Patrick and Mr. Mafia scurried back and forth, moving things from one storage unit to a different unit across the walkway. I want to ask. So badly do I want to ask. It burns how badly. I rock back and forth on my heels, holding myself against the sheeting wind, concentrating on how tightly I could keep my lips pressed together. 

I was hoping I would actually get to meet Mr. Mafia’s much lauded father. This great import magnate. I imagined him with a marble cane, gold topped, ruling his seven sons and everything else with a commanding stoicism that rendered the world silent in his wake. This man who had forced his son into humility for his own salvation. This man of largess, with an even larger reputation. I was prepared to fall silent for him. I was disappointed. 

We are finished and I watch Uncle Frankie slip Patrick a small stack of cash I know I will never see again. Uncle Frankie catches me watching and puts his arm around me, “Don’t worry beautiful, we’ll get you some pretty new clothes, huh?” But I’ve seen that episode of CriminalTVShow before. I get the pretty new dress, then new shoes I can barely walk in, the new pimp. I shrug him off and climb into the car next to Patrick. I avoid Uncle Frankie’s glances in the rear view mirror and focus on my lap, on my hands. On the fingernails that haven’t seen polish since I can’t remember when. 

We pull up to the roadside motel we’ve been holed up in. Mr. Mafia spills out of the front seat and I vaguely think about how quickly and stealthily he manages to get shit faced every night. I hadn’t even seen him drinking. 

“Let’s go to SomeBar” he tells Patrick as Uncle Frankie drives away. 

“Hey guys can I just hang out here tonight and crash? You guys have a guys night out?” I am hopeful. I need a break. I need silence. I need the black void of sleep. 

“No way!” Mr. Mafia says, quickly at my side to grab my arm. He propels me forward. “We can’t let you out of our site, a pretty little girl like you!” There is menace beneath his smile, his fingers dig into the underside of my flesh. 

“I’ll lock the door” I suggest feebly. 

“It’s not safe” Patrick says, staring ahead. He doesn’t see me. He can’t see the pleading look in my eyes. I am starting not to recognize him. I am starting not to recognize me. We begin to walk toward the bar. 

“Do you know who you remind me of?” Mr. Mafia asks me for the fiftieth time since I met him. 

I hate these conversations. Each time the conversation begins the same, but lately, it has taken a dark turn. I no longer want to hear about this girl I remind him of. It is becoming harder to convince him I am not her at the end of a night like these. “Lori,” I tell him. “I remind you of Lori. I’m not Lori”. I think Lori is dead. 

“I think maybe you are Lori, and you’ve come back to me,” he announces. “I think you have come back…..” he pauses, getting louder. “I think you came back to FUCK WITH ME!” 

I recoil and look around for Patrick as he draws the attention of everyone around us. He leans back laughing then leans forward again and whispers, “I’m going to call you Lori”. 

“What happened to Lori?” I ask for the fiftieth time since I met him. I am afraid to look him in the eye. 

“Lori,” he repeats. He grows very serious, studying his beer. I have to strain to hear him. “She’s gone.” I slide off my barstool and go searching for Patrick, finding him engaged in a deeply philosophical discussion about astrology with a brunette on the other side of the bar. 

Mr. Mafia destroys my bag that night in the hotel room. He is enraged that I won’t give him my mother’s telephone number and address back home so he can always find me if ever I should leave. I want to leave. I want to leave now. Patrick by my side or not. I grab my bag and before I reach the door he is in front of me, tearing the bag off my shoulder, slamming me backward onto the bed and strewing my belongings across the floor. He grabs my blow drier, slams it against the wall. Picks up a shirt and begin tearing it at the seams, pulling off the buttons like a madman. The violence has me stunned, and I am frozen in place, half on the bed, half on the floor, terrorized. Patrick puts his hands out ineffectively, “Whoa, whoa dude, calm down!” 

How is this just alcohol, I think. Time seems to slow and though I know there is so much noise happening I hear nothing but silence. It occurs to me that no policemen will be coming here to save me because, well, who is going to call them? The prostitute ring renting the room to the left? The non-english speaking Russians here on "business" in the room to the right? I pick up the nearest sharp piece of my broken hair dryer. 

Mr. Mafia grabs his hair with both hands and half-screams, half-growls before storming into the bathroom and slamming the door. My brain kicks into action. 

“Patrick let's go!” I beg as I scramble to gather my clothing and shoes from the room. “Please let’s go let’s go! Right now!”

 
“Ssshhhhh!” Patrick scolds me, grabbing my wrists. “We can’t leave right now, in the middle of the night! We have nowhere to go!”

 
“I don’t care!” I squeal! I am crying. I am prepared to go now, into the night without a dime in my pocket. Or a plan. I will sleep under a bridge. Again. 

Mr. Mafia opens the bathroom door and we freeze like children caught in the pantry. He walks up to where I am crouched and stands there stiffly while I slowly look up at him. He is eerily calm. Too calm.
“I am sorry for my behavior,” he announces stiffly. He hands me his hair dryer. “I did not mean to break your things”. 

Satisfied that I have been duly compensated, he turns his attention to Patrick and I am dismissed. I sit at the table under the dim pendant lamp with my back to the wall and my foot to the door and watch them pass a joint back and forth. Neither of them give me another glance. 

“But don't you think he’s obsessed?” I ask Patrick two days later. We’ve been at Somebar for an hour and Mr. Mafia has just called me Lori again. “It’s like he can’t tell the difference between reality and I'm worried. I don't think it ended well for her and I don’t think it’s going to end well for me either. Especially since he seems to think I AM her!” 

I’d given him an ultimatum earlier. We leave, or I do. Patrick takes another large gulp of cheap tap beer and shakes his head. He begins to slide off his bar stool at the exact moment Mr. Mafia begins to yell “Lori!” at me across the bar. I don't answer. He throws his beer at the wall behind the bartender and it shatters and we are thrown out. 

This appears to be the last straw for Patrick. He waits until Mr. Mafia is sleeping that night before giving me the all clear. We slip out of the motel and into the cold black night. 

It’s been a week and we still haven’t left SeaTac. We are practically just down the street from Mr. Mafia in another motel I’m convinced Mr. Mafia will check into at any moment. We have no plan and no prospects. Things are tense and we are fighting all the time. 

“How about if I come with you tonight and keep you company,” I offer an olive branch. Patrick has been offered temporary labor from the labor center parking cars at the rental lot tonight. 

“Won’t be able to spend much time together,” he replies without looking up. “I’ll be working the whole time. What would you even do”? 

“I can read, hang out with you on breaks…” 

I take his silence for a yes and so three hours later I am parked under a streetlamp on the car lot, reading in silence while he works. I haven’t seen him since he clocked in. Finishing a chapter I glance up and around. Because the air is always wet where we are, the headlamps of the traffic on the street look like glittering orbs and I watch them passing by, transfixed. A pair of headlamps looms past, slows, actually backs up in traffic, and pulls into the car lot. 

I have no reason, no logical reason, to know this car is for us, but I do know and my heart begins to explode out of my chest. The Cadillac drives right past the normal customer entrance, fixed on our car parked like a neon sign directly under the light, and pulls into the empty space next to mine. I try to lock the door without being obvious but Uncle Frankie is already watching me with those squinting hawk eyes that don’t miss anything. He motions for me to roll down the window. 

“Where is Patrick?” he asks. Mr. Mafia sits like a petulant child in the passenger seat, arms crossed, refusing to look at me. I motion to the parking lot. 

“He’s working.” 

“He is supposed to work with me. Tomorrow.” 

I stay silent because I don’t know how to reply. 

“Is he planning to show up?” Uncle Frankie demands to know. "We have a house to paint."

“He didn’t tell me anything about it. I don’t know.” 

“Where you have been staying!” Mr. Mafia breaks his silence, leaning across Uncle Frankie to demand. Uncle Frankie pushes him back with his forearm, never breaking eye contact with me.
“You have him call me.” His voice is lower, icy. “You have him call me tonight!” 

They throw the car in reverse and drive slowly away. I realize I have been holding my breath and exhale loudly. I don't see Patrick for the entirety of his shift. When I see him walking toward me I get out of the car and run toward him, spilling out what happened hysterically. I ask if he he’d been talking to Uncle Frankie behind my back. How else would they have had these plans after weeks of not seeing them? Patrick doesn’t answer me in a way that gives me any confidence he is telling the truth, but we leave for Seattle before sunup. I leave Seattle for Denver not long after, and though I will see Patrick again years later, I never again see Mr. Mafia. 

_____________________________________________________________________________

Many many years later I am in SeaTac for business, on a road I suddenly realize I recognize. I pull into the parking lot of SomeBar and sit in the car, staring at the front door of this little tavern I never made peace with. I walk inside and sit down at the bar, ordering a beer. The bartender, an older man, serves the same brew on the same coaster. I slip the coaster into my purse. 

“For memories,” I tell him. I ask him if he’s worked there a while. He has. Almost twenty years. 

“Do you know a man, an older gentleman, goes by the name Wolfman?” 

“Yeah yeah I remember the Wolfman!” the bartender chuckles. “Hell of a guy. He was a staple.” 

“Was?”

 
“Yeah he’s been gone for a good ten years now. Heart attack. How’d you know him?” 

I ignore the question. “Whatever happened to that crazy nephew of his?” 

The bartender grins, remembering. “Ain’t been around since his uncle died. Never saw him again.”

I thank the bartender, tip him, and open the heavy wooden door, squinting into the sunlight.

Mr. Mafia Part One

I still don’t know if I was a part of the mafia for one brief moment in time, or if I was a part of another man’s vivid fantasy world, created especially for us. I try to look him up on Facebook twenty years on, sure that I still have his name spelled correctly, remembered correctly, burned into my mind. He is never there. Almost as though he only ever existed in my own memory. 

I met him at a homeless shelter. This was at the end of the most incredible road trip along the west coast, the part where the magic began to fade and reality was setting in quickly. He wants to be called Al. He and Patrick become instant friends over their mutual dislike of the authoritarian establishment that was the homeless shelter, with me along for the ride, a silent passenger in the backseat of my own car, because Al has errands. 

Al isn't supposed to be there, doesn't have to be there, he’s informed us. He is only there to learn “humility”, ordered there by a rich mysterious father. Presumably the baby of the family, he’s been too out of control and is now "learning a lesson". Patrick hangs on his every word, enamored. This is a cathartic concept for him, that a man can do this, live this, in the context of simply learning a lesson. In an abstract way, I watch him take himself out of the responsibility of our situation and begin to look at it like he is only an observer. 

The homeless shelter is run by an executive committee of some of the other homeless people who live at the Hawaiian House, who are further along in the program. The program is simple. Residents are required to work security and front desk shifts in three hour segments totalling 12 hours per week in return for a free room. There are two rules: no drinking, and hold a job. We manage to violate both inside of a week. 

Perhaps it is because we cannot immediately find jobs that we find ourselves at the bar. Maybe I prefer to remember it wrong and it was the other way around. But like every night after desk shift, there we are, the three of us. Al and Patrick are scheduled to pull security shifts promptly at midnight so I am promised we will leave in time. But like most promises made on this trip, this one too is broken. And so at half past one in the morning, I find myself silent in the backseat of my own car, listening once again to Al rant and rave about how, if we are about to get kicked out, it won’t matter anyway because he is important, his family is important, and he doesn’t have to be there. “If one falls we all fall” he and Patrick shout from the front seat, Patrick forgetting in the passion of their rebellion that he did in fact have to be there. 

By the time we arrive back to the shelter, Al has changed his name back to his family name (I'm going to refer to him as Mr. Mafia because I can’t think of any other mafia names that would suit him.) and he and Patrick have worked themselves into such a frenzy they have convinced themselves they are walking into a war, fighting the injustice of rules like “Don’t get shitfaced”, and “Don’t be a homeless person”, because how dare the establishment try to help you off the streets. I however, still have a naive glimmer of hope and so when we drive up to the shelter, I order Mr. Mafia to stay inside the car until we come out to get him. 

“I’ll pull your shift for you, just stay out here in the car,” I explain to him reasonably. “We’ll tell them you had an emergency with family earlier and we just dropped you off at the hospital so you couldn’t call but that you’ll be back in the morning. And then we’ll sneak you in when everyone’s gone to bed”. It would have been the perfect plan. 

The Head of the Committee, who happens to be on shift that night, and whom Patrick and Mr. Mafia are supposed to relieve, is angry with our lateness and seems suspicious of our story. But he agrees to let me work Mr. Mafia’s shift alongside Patrick and heads upstairs to his bedroom. Not even ten minutes have gone by, just enough time to think we may be getting away with it, and he comes thundering back downstairs, raving about having an emergency committee meeting to kick us all out. Apparently Mr. Mafia has climbed out onto the hood of our car and is sitting pretty-as-you-please chugging a six pack he's appropriated from the bar, directly under the glare of the streetlamp. Directly under the window of the Head of the Committee. 

They have breathalyzers! Little portable breathalyzers in a locked cabinet in this room filled with committee members, that I have never been inside of. The committee members sit at the front of the room behind a long table, side by side like an actual legal proceeding; the three of us in metal folding chairs in front of them. Mr. Mafia is the first to be tested. Almost three times the legal limit, but the smallest amount wouldn’t have made a difference here. 

In rare deference to my, by now, extremely fragile state of mind, Patrick informs them that after his test they needn't waste one for me as I will be going wherever he goes. To this, Mr. Mafia again raises his cheer, “If one falls we all fall”! and I wish that I actually did have anywhere else in the world to go in that moment. Instead I stand with a ram-rod straight back and as we walk out the door, I fall with them. 

“Don't worry”, Mr. Mafia tries to soothe me as we were escorted to our separate rooms to pack our belongings, effective immediately. “I have a good friend, he’ll come get us. He has money. We won't have to worry about it.” I want to scratch his face off with my fingernails and am glad when they led him to his room, away from us. 

They stand in the open doorway of our room watching us pack our meager belongings, suspicious now that because we are leaving against our wills we might try to steal from them what few things we could fit into our bag...like the sink faucet perhaps, or a patch of the carpet that was coming up in the corner. A man I've only ever seen in passing has the decency to let me unpack my underwear drawer with his eyes cast to the floor, but the woman standing beside him stares directly at me, nostrils flared in distaste of the lace in my hands as though she’d known it would only be just a matter of time. 

Mr. Mafia has taken no time at all to pack and is waiting for us in the lobby, looking bored and unaffected. I still want to scratch his face off so I stand behind Patrick. “We’re just waiting on my friend to show up,” he informs me nonchalantly. We are not being allowed to take our vehicle off the property for 24 hours because we have been drinking. We are also not being allowed to sleep in the car either. If they see us on the property before 24 hours have passed, and for anything other than picking up our car, they will call the police. 

“Well you all need to leave the building so he better hurry up!” our escort tells Mr. Mafia with a sneer. A girl that they have woken to taken over the front desk shift looks at us through lowered lashes and I wonder if I still looked young like her or if I have aged like the others. I wonder if she will too, or if she'll do the right things and get out the right way. I hope she gets out the right way. 

A shiny red car pulls up in the valet port, unused in this motel’s modern reincarnation as a shelter. “He’s here,” Mr. Mafia smiles and stands up, picks up his single bag like a businessman whose taxi has just arrived to spirit him away into the city. “Follow me!” 

Suddenly the perfect gentlemen, Mr. Mafia informs me that ladies sit up front and holds open the door for me. I slide in next to a tall skinny man who looks at me with kind eyes but who does not smile. Patrick and Mr. Mafia get onto the back seat and we take off into the night, none of us saying a word. It is me who finally breaks the silence. I can’t bear it a second longer. The men in the car all seem to know some secret about our future, or maybe its just that they do not care. Theirs is a comfortable silence. But for me it is screaming. 

“Thank you for picking us up,” I say, glancing quickly at the driver. He looks at me but says nothing. I clear my throat. “You have a very lovely car. What kind is it?” 

“It’s a 2002 Mercedes,” he answers gruffly. I nod and look out the window frowning, as it occurs to me that we are only in the year 2000. I can feel the smugness wafting off Mr. Mafia in the backseat like an odor and sink further into the seat, a little closer to the door as I suddenly begin to entertain thoughts of what it would it mean if Mr. Mafia had in fact been telling us the truth about who he is. 

We ride in silence for what seems like hours. I fight a constant battle with myself not to ask where we are going or what is going to happen to us now, because as scary as not knowing is to me, I have decided that at this point, knowing might be worse. I try to close my eyes, let the flashes of streetlamps darting across my eyelids lull me into a trance, but I can feel Mr. Mafia watching me, his eyes trained on the back of my neck and it rattles me. 

By the time we pull into the casino parking lot I have myself convinced that I am getting kidnapped into the sex trade and that my boyfriend is going to meet a bullet to the back of his head before sunrise, and I fight the urge to bolt from the car. I wouldn’t have succeeded. I have worked myself into such a state of panic that when the driver opens my car door I fall right out onto the pavement. “I'm not drunk,” I grumble miserably as he helps me to my feet. "If one falls we all fall," Mr. Mafia cheers from the backseat. 

“She doesn’t drink much!” Patrick boomed as he came around the car. “She’s just a little overwhelmed”. I let out a harsh bark of a laugh that is half sob and turn away from them both, following Mr. Mafia across the parking lot. We march single file around the building to the back door and crowd up on the steps. Mr. Mafia gives a quick knock and a waitress opens the door. 

"Mr. Mafia!” she crowed happily as she lunges into his arms. She gives him a noisy kiss on his cheek and steps back to look at him. “Well! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Come on in, your uncle’s already waiting for you!”

We are ushered inside and seated at a large table in the back kitchen of the casino, a private table for employees. A large older man with thick black hair and gleaming black eyes sits at the head of the table, working a giant plate of pasta. Mr. Mafia introduces him as Uncle Frankie. “The Wolfman,” he tells me as he shakes my hand. I nod, afraid to break his gaze. What big eyes you have. 

I am scared that if I speak I will begin to laugh maniacally and not be able to stop, like I am perched on the edge of hysteria. I sink into the chair he offers beside him. Almost instantly, plates full of steaming hot spaghetti appear in front of us and I tuck in like I am the wolf, forgetting for the moment to be terrified.

Wet Blanket

I woke up shivering and reached for the blanket. It was wet on one corner and I sat up in confusion. It took several moments for my mind to unfog itself enough to realize that the car’s front window was open again. And like usual in the cold, damp night of the Pacific Northwest, it was raining. I shoved the blanket off me and looked over at Pat who was asleep on the back seat. He reminded me of a giant, all tucked up into himself on the bench seat that I could stretch almost my whole body out on. An intense urge to slap him mingled with something else; love maybe. 

I did still catch myself feeling that way for him, like a glimmer of something I had once been embraced by but now only stood on the edge of. Deciding it was easier to feel this way when he was asleep and peaceful, the way he was right now, I chose not to wake him and leaned over to roll the window up myself. 

Yes, I loved him. I had to. If I didn't, what was this all for in the end? If I didn't find a way to hold onto it, this edge I was standing on with him, there would be no justification for all of the rain. I wrung out the soppy corner of the blanket and repositioned it so the wet end would be past my feet, but I could still feel the moisture and it was making me cold. I flipped over to my right side and after a few moments back to my left, then sat up again.

I listened to the rhythm of Pat's breathing filling the darkness. Carefully, I pulled Pat's blanket off him and replaced it with my smaller, wet one. I told myself he would not have deliberately opened the window for me to get rained on. Not knowing how sensitive I was to the cold. Not when sleeping in this car had already been the ultimate insult. He loved me. And therefore he would, of course, want me to be warm. Were he awake he would undoubtedly tell me so himself. I burrowed into the warmth of the blanket and went back to sleep.

Eternal Night

It's dark all the through the wood

My fate is carved in stone

And there were I once stood

I stand once more alone

A loneliness this night

Above all others past

There is no dawn in sight

The runes have all been cast

And when the midnight stars appear

Among the yellow moonlight

I will still be standing here

In this eternal night