Live Free or Die
by Louis Scenti
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
We found a spot in the labyrinthine Ramada Inn complex. The lot was already pretty full, and people were walking in their suits and dresses, clicking and clacking across the asphalt. The building was in shadow, but some ground-level lights hidden among the plain-vanilla plantings shone up the walls in bright triangular shapes. One light must have been burned out. It ruined the whole effect. Like a smile with a missing tooth.
Mary looked at me. “You ready?”
I nodded.
She took my hand and flashed a smile. I’d never noticed the two dimples at the corners of her mouth.
Inside, it looked like every wedding I’d ever been to; round tables covered in white table cloths; water glasses already sweaty with condensation. White flowers and white balloons criss-crossed the room like a random stratum of cumulus clouds. Everything was white. I wondered if they might be trying too hard with the whole virginal thing. My singular goal was to locate the bar. Mary was eying two old guys talking to a tall woman who seemed to be commanding their attention.
Mary whispered to me as we walked over to them. “That’s my mother and my grandpa, the guy with the white hair. The other guy’s my Uncle Phil.”
“Hello, Mom,” she said, dropping my hand. They embraced stiffly. Her mother was looking over Mary’s shoulder at me, expressionless.
“Grandpa!” Mary hugged the grandfather in a childlike embrace. I half expected to see him lift her off the floor and twirl her around. “I miss you so much! It’s so good to see you!”
The old guy was cancer-skinny. He had whitish stubble on his jaw and neck where he’d missed with the razor. He stepped back, spreading his arms wide, the suit jacket tenting open, revealing a white-on-white shirt and a fat paisley tie, escaped from 1971.
“Look at you! You are the most beautiful girl in the world! Like golden sunlight kissing the sea!” He blinked, looking at me. “Who’s this young man?”
“Hello, Mr. Deluca, Mrs. Deluca,” I said. “Mike Mancini. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for the invitation.”
Mary had clued me in that her mother had gone back to using her maiden name, as had she, for that matter. Luckily, I’d paid attention.
“What? Mr. Deluca! Come on, Me-kail,” he said. “Call me Cosimo! It’s my given name. You know what it means in Italian?”
“No, sir.”
“It means worldly, grand-cosmic, as you kids would say, eh? But I turned out to be a plumber. A damn good one, too. I’m a plumber with the soul of a poet!”
He turned to the other old guy. “Philly, look at this guy! He’s got a moustache like the one I wore in the olden days.” The old man grabbed my chin and turned my head toward Phil. His grip was fierce.
“He wears it better than you ever did, Cos. Nice to meet you, son. I’m Phil.”
“You too, sir. Thank you.” I could see Mary in my peripheral vision and she looked okay. I must have been believable.
“Why don’t you two get a drink and join us at the table when you’re ready,” said Mary’s mother.
She was younger than I expected. She must have had Mary in her early twenties, maybe late teens. Slim and long-legged, her stature was hypnotic. Her chestnut hair was parted on the side. Wow, I thought, remembering something an older kid in my neighborhood once told me: if you want to see what the girl will be like in twenty years, look at the mother. Mary grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the bar.
“You did great.”
I blew air through my lips. “Okay, can we go now?”
Mary punched my arm. I found myself relaxing. Things were going to plan. Not that I had a plan. But whatever, they were going.
We ordered drinks and stood at the bar for a couple of minutes, Mary narrating people and relationships I would never remember, like characters in a Russian novel.
“Hey, Mary, how you doing?” A stringy, reptilian-looking guy with hooded eyes, wearing a black leather blazer and matching skinny tie, stepped between us. He was weaving slightly, enjoying, it was clear, a head start on the evening’s festivities.
“Hi, Raff, how are you?”
“Good, good,” he said, turning and glancing at me. “Not as good as you, huh? Got yourself a cowboy? No hat, though?”
I held out my hand. “I’m Mike.”
He stared and did not take it. “Louie heard you were coming,” he said turning back to Mary, “so he decided not to. Is that fair, you think? Fair to my brother? He couldn’t come tonight, because of you?”
“Raff, c’mon, you know Louie and I are okay with how things are. There’s no big thing here. And he’s a free man, he can do what he wants. Let’s just have a good time tonight.”
“Louie will never be okay with what you did to him. You tell Tex about it?”
“Raff, you’re drunk. Walk away.”
He gave Mary the middle finger salute, lurching away.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Who was that?”
“My ex-brother-in-law.”
I let that sink in for a minute wondering what the ex-husband must be like.
“What did he mean? Told me what?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry. He’s harmless. Let’s sit.”
“You sure?”
* * *
During dinner I sat back and observed, spoke when I was spoken to and gave thanks for the open bar. The talk was benign, but any time Mary or her mother spoke, the other looked twitchy and irritated. I was sneaking glances at her mother. She caught me once and held my gaze, a vague grin teasing one corner of her mouth, stirring something I quickly squelched.
The band had started playing. I was ready to hate them — they called themselves Gnarly Davidson — but they were really pretty good. I assumed they were a local cover band, but I was surprised by their tight sound and lack of hokum. I loved live music. But I hated crowded venues. This band made for a good compromise, and I felt myself loosen up with the music.
Everything else, the room, the food and overall vibe was pure suburban wedding mill, so I assumed that Mary’s cousin — or the husband — was into music, and that the band was intended to be the high point of the shindig. So, remembering what Kath had said when she cast me for this role, with the first jangling piano chords of Springsteen’s “Prove It All Night,” I asked Mary to dance.
She leaned close and whispered, “You don’t have to do this. We’ve made the point.”
“I’m having a good time. And, you” — I took a breath, realizing the line between me and my character was starting to blur — “you look really good. We should dance.”
She frowned, but allowed me to lead her to the dance floor. When Springsteen was ending, Mary started for the table just as Gnarly Davidson downshifted into Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” A slow dance. I pulled her back. She resisted, but I held her hand, maybe too tight.
Neither one of us said anything. Swaying in space, our bodies drew closer. I didn’t plan what came next. I moved in and we held a kiss, not sloppy, but more than a friendly peck. I opened my eyes. Mary was looking to where her mother and grandfather were seated. We finished the dance without speaking. When the song ended, she pulled away from me, dodging eye contact.
“I think I’ll go the bar,” I said. “You want something?”
She shook her head.
After ordering a double Jack, I turned to go back to the table and almost had a head-on with Mary’s mother.
“Mrs. Deluca, hi, sorry. Sorry! Can I get you something?”
“Call me Cory. No, thank you.”
“Uh, okay. Cory?” I must have looked puzzled.
“It’s short for Incoronata.”
We moved off to the side and stood at one of those small, top-heavy round cocktail tables. In the middle of the encampment of half-empty glasses and swizzle sticks was an ashtray, its cornucopia of butts, testing its capacity. She took out a cigarette and I lit it for her. She covered my hand with hers, keeping it there until the cherry glowed red.
“So, who are you really?”
“I... I’m sorry... ?”
“You’re not Mary’s boyfriend. I know my daughter.” She wasn’t angry or upset, just matter-of-fact. “How long have you known her?”
“Uh, a couple of summers. Since last summer. We just started going out.”
She looked at me, through me. “Look, I know why Mary brought you here. I don’t care. You seem like a nice enough guy. And,” she said with a flirty laugh, “it’s always better to have a date at a wedding, right?”
I agreed with her sentiment, but I had a feeling we weren’t thinking of it in the same way.
“I told her to come tonight. It was creative on her part to bring you.” She reached a long finger and thumb to the end of her tongue, removing a fleck of tobacco, a nonexistent one as far as I could tell.
“She’s angry I didn’t tell her about the diagnosis sooner. There are good reasons. My reasons.”
“Cory, maybe this is something I don’t need to know— ”
“You’re her boyfriend, aren’t you?”
“Uh, I guess it depends,” I said, trailing off to lame silence.
She blew a long veil of smoke and looked around the room. It seemed she might walk away from me, but she turned back.
“My father went out of his mind when my mother died. He’d been there for me and Mary, but that was all he could take. I couldn’t blame him. But I did.”
I realized she’d moved closer to me. She picked up my glass and drank from it, carefully placing it back down in front of me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure it had happened.
“I imagine you’re a nice guy. Sorry you got dragged into this. Mary’s a troubled girl.”
“Uh, Mrs. De- Cory, I really like Mary. I like her, I do. I’m having a good time with her and with your family tonight. I want you to know that.”
“You have no idea what she got you involved in. You should just go back to wherever it is you’re from and to whatever it was you do, before tonight.”
I tried to croak out a response, an apology, but my throat seized.
“Although, I will say, Mary could do a lot worse than you.” She gave me a squinty look. “You do drink a lot, though.”
I tried to defend myself, but she cut me off.
“You live in New York?”
I nodded. The act of inclining my head — even slightly — made me dizzy.
She leaned into me and crushed out her cigarette. Her face was almost in mine, the grassy scent of her hair, unnerving. She stood. “I imagine I won’t be seeing you again. I hope things work out for you in your life.”
The room seemed to part as she went, people swept aside like reeds in a gale.
My heartbeat accelerated. I spied Mary talking to two young women, one wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. I walk-ran over to where she was.
“Here he is. We were just talking about you,” Mary said, laughing a little. I was relieved to see that if she was mad about the kiss, she wasn’t showing it.
“Mike, these are my cousins, Joanne and Michelle.”
I exchanged some polite banalities and asked to see Mary alone. They took the hint and moved away.
“Your mother, she knows... we’re not, you know.”
“It’s not a big deal. She already told me. She said she knew as soon as we got here.”
“She was really strange. She said I should get lost. Should I... you know, get lost?”
Mary shrugged. “That’s your call, Mike. Me? I don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s always something with her. She’s a bitter person.” She gazed around the room. “Doesn’t matter, I’m ready to go.”
“What about your grandfather?”
“What about him?”
“Did you... have you said what you wanted to say?”
“I’m good. We can go.” Again, she looked around the room as if looking for someone. “Thanks for doing this with me.”
* * *
We were holding hands when we walked out of the place, same as when we walked in, but as soon as we were in the parking lot, she let go. Curtain. Show over.
“Mike, I’m sorry. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“You know you can talk to me. What’s going on?”
I opened the car door for her, and she got in and started it up. The crazy thought that I should run away loitered in my head. I kept thinking about Mary’s mother at the bar, trying to decide if she was screwing with me or if I’d suddenly gotten involved with something more bizarre than playing someone’s boyfriend for a night. But I just stood there, holding the door.
Copyright © 2026 by Louis Scenti
