The Four Corners of Palermo Read Online Free Page B

pistol by his side: he did.
    “I need to go home and see my mother and father for half an hour, they haven’t heard from me since yesterday.”
    “You can’t use the Ford Fiesta. Totuccio saw it.”
    “I know; it’s put away, downstairs, in the garage. I’ll take the bus. I’ll be back soon, I swear.”
    She bent over Marinello, her lips pressed against his: a gentle kiss. He brushed her hair off her forehead, felt its texture, smelled the scent of conditioner. Then his hand slid down, brushing her breast, which rose and fell restlessly under her Fiorucci T-shirt. A cherub printed on cotton that concealed a treasure. And Marinello was with her, with his beloved, on the treasure island. But unlike her, he understood how easy it would be to invade that island and take it by force: the Spataro family had no idea what the word “peace” even meant.

    The number 3 bus came by every so often; it stopped at a stretch of sidewalk where, for the past ten years or so, a bent orange pole indicated that this was a bus stop. Rosalba checked to see if she had enough coins to pay for the busticket; in her pocket she found two twenty-lire pieces and two ten-lire pieces: sixty lire. It was the afternoon; her father was still at work, and her mother was at home.
    A woman carrying a cloth bag full of oranges came up to the crooked bus stop. They waited together. Ten minutes later, the green-and-black silhouette of a Palermo city transit bus drove into view at the end of the street.
    It slowed down and stopped by the pole, without opening the doors.
    The woman shouted: “Door!” The driver hit the horizontal lever next to the steering wheel, and the rear doors swung open with the sound of someone expelling breath. The ticket vendor, sitting on a tiny bench, tore off two tickets. Fifty lire.
Grazie
, Rosalba said with her eyes.
    She went and sat down in the front, on one of the wooden benches. The lady sat down three seats away: they were the only two passengers.
    “Young lady, you have sad eyes,” the woman said as she clutched her cloth bag in her hands. “Do you want an orange?”
    Rosalba looked at her. She would gladly have burst into tears.
    “No, signora,
grazie
, it’s nothing.”
    Then, making a supreme effort, she smiled at her sweetly.
    In ten minutes the number 3 left the outskirts of Palermo, heading toward the residential districts of the city: the boundaries around Palermo have always been mobile, and closer than they seem. They reached Via Leopardi, then Viale Piemonte. Rosalba got out in front of the bakery where they made the best deep-dish pizza in Palermo.
    She lived on the fifth floor. The lobby smelled of chicken broth. The concierge gave her a cheery greeting: “
Addio
, Rosalba!”
    A fond, old-fashioned greeting, traditionally accompanied in the street by a tip of the hat.
    “
Ciao
, Benedetto,” said Rosalba as she stepped into the elevator.
    “Mamma, it’s me.”
    “My darling, where on earth have you been?”
    Mariapia was a woman who wore an apron when she was at home. She’d never had a job; she’d devoted her life to her husband, the man she’d given herself to when she was just eighteen, and to that daughter who was born to them after they’d been married for a couple of years.
    “Sweetheart, you’re dead tired. Come here, let me take a look at you.”
    “I’m going to get washed, Mamma, then I’ll tell you all about it.”
    Her parents knew that Rosalba had been dating Marinello for almost a year, and that he wasn’t a boy like the ones who attended the Liceo Garibaldi. He had a powerful car and they went on trips all over the island of Sicily; he wasn’t much older than her, it’s true, but in their eyes he was already a fully grown man. And all this worried them. They assumed it might hurt her schoolwork, now that she was about to take her final exams.
    Rosalba turned on the water in the shower. She felt the warmth spread over her flesh, the slow flow, the low pressure you find