The garden in March had the same dirt as the garden in November had the same dirt as the garden in February had had, and the three sticks where the tomato plants had stood in August were still where Vinnie had cut them off in October and had not yet pulled. He had been telling himself he would pull them on a Saturday for four Saturdays. He had not pulled them on a Saturday yet.
The sticks were going to come up tonight.
He was at the back step in his coat with a pair of gardening gloves Sal had owned and a small pickaxe Sal had used for digging holes for tomato cages in the seventies. The pickaxe had been on a peg in the basement for eleven years. The handle was good wood, oiled once a year by a man who no longer existed.
He went down on one knee.
The first stick came up after three rocks side to side and two pulls. The root was thinner than he had expected. He set the stick on the flagstone next to him.
He did the second one. Same.
He did the third one. The third one had a knot of root that had wrapped around something underground, probably a rock, and it took him four minutes of digging at the base before the root let go. He set the third stick on the flagstone beside the other two.
He stayed on the one knee.
He looked at the strip of dirt.
The strip was eight feet by two. He had measured it last May with a yardstick borrowed from Eddie. It was the strip Sal had planted with tomatoes since 1979 and it was the strip Vinnie had planted with tomatoes in May of '99 and May of '00 and would plant with tomatoes in May of '01.
Two years and two months ago he had been thirty-four years old and on the New Jersey Turnpike in a 2024 he no longer lived in.
Two years and two months ago he had been twenty-eight years old and dead for nine days inside a body in a hospital bed at Saint Barnabas.
Two years and two months from now he had told Elena he would be out.
He stood up.
His lower back said the thing it said when he stood up too quickly from a kneeling position. He waited the half-second. Took the small breath. Looked at the dirt one more time.
He took the three sticks and the pickaxe and the gloves and walked them around the side of the house to the trash cans and the garden shed. Put the sticks in the lawn-waste can. Put the gloves on the shelf in the shed. Put the pickaxe back on the peg in the basement when he went down to check the boiler because he did not like to put a thing in a place that was not the place the thing came from.
He came back up. Out the back. Stood on the back step.
The sky over the spruce had two stars and a plane. He thought briefly of how few stars you got over a New Jersey town and how many he had thought were over Sal's spruce when he was a kid in California in 1995 looking at a postcard from his Italian-American grandmother who had been Sal's mother in a different timeline. He thought about how the postcard memory and the Sal memory were now in the same head and how they had been in different heads two years and two months ago.
He thought about the inventory.
Not the long inventory. The short one.
The short one was that Sal was dead and Marco was in Florida and Donnie was wherever men who took the twelve-hour deal went and Aldo Mancuso was in a hole the Lupertazzis had put him in and Big Pussy was on the bottom of the Atlantic off Long Branch and Richie Aprile was wherever the man Janice had shot at the kitchen table had ended up and Tracee Vargas was at a salon in Tampa Florida that she had not heard the name of nine weeks ago.
That was the short one.
The longer one was that he had a fiancée who slept in his bed on Wednesdays and Saturdays and Sundays and had taken the engagement ring off in her own apartment two hours ago to wash her hair, and a Cadillac in the driveway, and a foreman in Verrazzano who had told him on a Friday afternoon at three-twenty that Tampa worked out, and a partnership with the boss of a Jersey crime family who called him on a Friday at five-fifteen to talk about a construction-side thing that the lawyer had cleaned up, and a banker in Belleville who took his calls, and a hotel chain that paid him twelve grand a month for eight properties, and a city contract with Newark that started its first quarter Monday next week, and twenty-nine men who depended on him for their tribute upward and their split downward, and a strip of dirt eight by two that would be tomatoes in eight weeks.
He thought about the costs.
Sanity at seventy-four. Morality somewhere in the high sixties on his own internal count. Sleep — he was getting six hours most nights, seven on Wednesdays and Saturdays and Sundays because Elena was there. Lower back — chronic. The boxing soreness — chronic and welcome. The funeral dreams — he had not had one in November. He had not had one in December. He had not had one in January. He had had one on the third Tuesday in February and it had been about Pussy on a boat which was a version that had not happened — Pussy had not been on the boat, Pussy had been put on the boat — and Vinnie had woken at four with Elena beside him and had not been able to go back to sleep until five-thirty. He had not told her about the dream. He had told her about a dream and she had asked the bad kind or the regular kind and he had said the bad kind and she had taken his hand and gone back to sleep with it and he had laid awake and the hand had been a real hand.
That had been the cost.
He thought about what was coming.
Cifaretto would do a thing in the next three months that Tracee would not be there for. The Bing manager would tell Ralph six grand had been wired in for the girl's debt by a man he didn't know and Ralph would not believe him and Ralph would hit something. The thing Ralph would hit would not be Tracee. It might be a wall. It might be a different woman. It might be Eugene Pontecorvo who had owed Ralph two grand since November. Vinnie did not know.
Jackie Aprile Jr. would meet a girl at Columbia that year. The girl had a name. Vinnie knew it. The girl's name was Meadow. Jackie Junior would in some month later in the year do a stupid thing in a card game and would die in a month after that. There was no Anna's sister's cousin's Marie in Tampa that would catch Jackie Junior, because Jackie Junior didn't want to be caught. Jackie Junior wanted to be his father.
Tony was going to have a year of his fifty-second year on earth that would put pressure on him that Vinnie was going to be at the corner of. The information pipeline was going to matter more in 2001 than it had in 2000. The Tuesday morning at Satriale's was going to be Tuesday morning at Satriale's twelve more times before Christmas.
Elena's ninety-day Bergen reassignment had been renewed for another ninety days by her supervisor on March first without conversation. She had told Vinnie that night. He had not asked what came next. She had told him anyway. Maybe I'm done with the Hudson side, Vincent. Maybe that's not the worst thing. He had said whatever you decide and she had laughed her one through the nose and said Vincent, you're so careful with me lately, and he had said I'm being careful with the right person, and she had taken his face in her hands.
The Bureau had a name in a file that they were not currently looking at. They would look at it again. Eighteen months from now. Maybe.
He stood on the back step.
The system had been off for an hour. He did not turn it on. He knew what it would say. He had read the lines it would write earlier in the day in the back of the Cadillac. He let them be there without writing them out across his face.
[Arc Complete. Consolidation Achieved. +100 SP. Identity Alignment 99% — stable.] [Canon Deviations to date: 1 (Vargas, T.).] [Ripple Containment: holding.]
He did the small physical thing that was not a smile.
He stayed on the back step for two more minutes.
The plane that had been over the spruce had moved past it.
The wind off the river came up the alley.
The phone in the kitchen rang.
He turned.
Went in through the back door.
Picked it up on the third ring.
"Marchetti."
"Vincent."
"Elena."
"I'm coming over."
"What?"
"I know it's a Friday. I know I have my apartment night. I had a thing today and I want to be at your house tonight, not mine. I'll be there in forty minutes. I'm leaving now. I have my key."
"Are you all right."
"I'm all right. I had a thing. I want to tell you about it sitting at your kitchen table with my shoes off."
"Drive safely."
"I will."
"Elena."
"Yes."
"Bring the diamond."
"Vincent —"
"I'm joking."
"It's on my finger, Vincent. It's been on my finger since I left the office at five."
"Then drive safely."
"I am driving safely. I'm in the elevator. I'm driving safely in twelve minutes when I get in the car."
"All right."
"Forty minutes."
"Forty minutes."
He hung up.
He stood at the wall with his hand on the phone for a count of three.
Then he went to the kitchen sink and rinsed the dirt from under his fingernails because Elena did not like the dirt and forty minutes was not enough to get all of it out from under the third nail of his right hand and he was going to try.
He turned the water hot.
The first stick of Sal's '79 tomato strip was in the lawn-waste can. The second stick was in the lawn-waste can. The third stick was in the lawn-waste can. The pickaxe was on the peg in the basement. The gloves were on the shelf in the shed. The dirt was coming out from under his fingernails. Elena was on Route 280 east. The diamond was on her finger.
He was at the sink.
The water was hot.
He was going to plant in May.
Reading more than one of my novels? Good news — one Patreon, all of them.
patreon.com/TheFinex5
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰
― DECREE ―
More chapters reign FREE upon unwrittenrealm.com.
The throne acknowledges.
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰