“How Can I Get Muscles Like Yours?” — The Mafia Boss Froze When the Maid’s Little Girl Walked Into His Private Gym

The war for Chicago lasted fourteen days.

It was not fought in the streets where the people with televisions could see it. It was fought in the basements of dry cleaners, in the back rooms of butcher shops on Grand Avenue, and in two warehouses near the Calumet River where the coal dust was thick enough to choke a horse.

I didn't see it.

I saw the gym.

Every morning at nine, I limped down the stone bridge, down the narrow stairs, and sat on the bottom riser with my bandaged foot sticking straight out like a wooden peg.

Dominic didn't miss a day.

He had a purple bruise the size of a saucer over his left ribs on the fifth day. On the eighth day, he had three butterfly bandages holding the skin above his right eyebrow together, the edges crusted with dried, amber serum.

He didn't grunt.

He did his dips.

*Hssst.*

"Uno," I said.

"Due."

"Tre."

On the twelfth day, he stopped at twenty.

He stood in the middle of the rubber floor, his chest heaving, his gray hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He looked at the tall glass wall.

The snow had melted, then frozen again into a thick sheet of gray rime that made the garden look like it was underwater.

"Frankie is dead," he said to the mirror.

I held Benny by his body now. His ear was fine, but I liked to keep my thumb over the blue stitches; they were rough, like the edge of a coin.

"Who was Frankie?" I asked.

"The man with the camel coat," he said. "The one who laughed about the fish."

"Did Buster get him?"

Dominic looked at me through the glass. "A different dog," he said. "A dog from Kenosha."

"Did you put him in the garbage?"

"Not yet," Dominic said.

He walked over to the water bottle, took three swallows, and then did something he had never done before.

He sat down on the bottom step next to me.

He took up three-quarters of the wood. His scarred thigh, thick as a tree trunk, pressed against my small, flannel-covered knee. He smelled of salt, arnica cream, and the iron of the weights.

"Your mother wants to take you to California," he said.

My heart jumped into my throat. "California has oranges," I said.

"It does," he said. "And earthquakes. And people who talk about their feelings until your ears rot off."

"Do you have oranges?"

"I have a box coming from Florida on Friday," he said. "With the green leaves still on the stems."

"Can I have three?"

"You can have the whole box if you don't go to California."

I looked down at my white-taped toe. The tape was gray now, dirty from the floors of the carriage house and the gravel in the court.

"Mami says you're dangerous," I told him.

Dominic looked at his hands. He spread his fingers out on his knees. They were wide, flat, the skin between the knuckles scarred with white lines where knives had slipped or glass had shattered thirty years ago.

"She’s right," he said.

"She says you're going to hell."

"That’s also likely," he said. His voice was very quiet, perfectly calm. "The Morettis have seven pews reserved in the lower circle. My father has the one by the fire."

"I don't want you to go to hell," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because," I said, leaning my head against his sweaty, scarred shoulder, "who’s going to fix the car?"

Dominic didn't move. He stayed stiff as a post for five seconds, ten seconds, his breath caught in his huge chest like a bird in a chimney.

Then, very slowly, his left arm came around me.

His hand was so large it covered my entire back, his fingers resting lightly against my ribs. He didn't squeeze. He just held the space around me, the way a wall holds the cold away from a stove.