Tom Piccirilli: Headstone City

“You've completely cracked.”

The radio began to murmur and cackle with the voices of his parents, his father in there sort of laughing, nobody crying at all. His mother, sounding happy, her hands coming together in excitement.

Dozens of others, maybe hundreds, all his relatives going back twenty or thirty centuries, to the Sicilians who revolted against Roman, Carthaginian, Norman, and French rule.

“The Don is dying,” Vinny said without sorrow. “He's got cancer. Pancreas, liver, and prostate. He's rotting inside. All the damn doctors can't believe he's held on this long. He should've been dead more than a year ago. Only weed helps him with the pain. But he's making the effort to keep going for one reason.”

Vinny stopped and waited for Dane to play his role and ask the question. You could only improvise for so long, and then you had to go back to the script.

“Why?”

“He wants to go out with a bullet in his head. The way his father did. And his grandfather. And his uncles, and everybody else in my family going back about a hundred years or more. You'd be doing the old man a favor.”

“He's your father.”

“And I love him. That's why I want you to do this. For me. I'd do it myself, but that's not how it happens. I don't have that choice. You're going to take over the business. After I'm gone.”

“Where are you going? You going to produce movies in Hollywood for the rest of your life? Working with the feds? That why you've been laying the groundwork?”

“There is no groundwork.”

“So how's it going to help Maria into the movie biz? How's it going to be an advantage?”

“It isn't.”

Like talking to a slab of concrete in the street. “Then why do any of it?”

“For you,” Vinny said, and he was serious.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“To help you set it up for Maria. To win her over. To show her how much you love her. Everything I've said, you're going to do it all for her and yourself. Nobody else.”

Dane thought about it for a minute and realized, So at least one of us is totally insane here. Maybe both of them. But that didn't matter much now, at the end of things.

“Don't feel bad, man,” Vinny said. “It's supposed to be this way. I saw flashes of it the day we went through the glass.”

Dane looked around and noticed he had parked back in the same spot, in front of the gate where his old man had died. Where he was supposed to die too.

“Death is nothing,” Vinny went on.

The girl in the backseat lay down with eleven knife wounds in her kidneys, stared at the roof of the Caddy, and let out a cry fashioned from the incomprehensible loss inside her, a scream from the bottom of such intense anguish that Dane had to cover his face.

On the radio, his mother was giggling.

“We beat it a long time ago, when we went through the windshield,” Vinny continued, certain that Dane would come to believe it too. “You didn't know that?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Here, watch.”

Dane thought, Here it is, I'm about to be put down with my own gun.

Vinny yanked the.38 up in a beautiful move, showing just how incredibly fast he was. No one could ever have a chance against him. He pressed the barrel between Dane's eyes. “This won't hurt at all. Trust me.”

An enormous blast like the truest name of God roared up from every corner of the world, as the night folded itself into all the contours of your worst fears. Dane's head flew to pieces.

Death is nothing. We beat it a long time ago, when we went through the windshield,” Vinny said. “You telling me you didn't know that? Here, watch.”

Vinny yanked the.38 up in a beautiful move, showing just how incredibly fast he was, no one could ever have a chance against him. He pressed the barrel under his chin and gave a grin that made Dane start to groan.

Dane leaped forward and grabbed Vinny's hand, twisting it backwards so he'd drop the gun. But he wouldn't let go. Somebody pounded on the doors of Dane's skull, wanting to be let in, or out. There was hardly any room to move. Dane chopped at Vinny's collarbone, once, twice, hearing it snap. It just made Vinny yelp and tug harder until the.38 was pointed at Dane's gut.

The bullet took Dane low in the stomach and punched him backwards against the driver's door. He hit hard, the window cracking beneath his head. He felt everything rip inside him and slosh to the left. He opened his mouth and red foam bubbled over his chin. He was going to die with no style at all, but at least he was still behind a steering wheel.

“You stupid, lousy prick,” Vinny said, still smiling, shaking his head, with his busted collarbone poking up a half inch through his raincoat. “You got shit and black blood coming out your belly now. That means you're finished.”

Vinny coughed and panted, pressed a hand to Dane's clammy cheek, and told him, “Don't do that again. Right?”

Death is nothing.”

“It's something,” Dane told him.

“We beat it a long time ago, when we went through the windshield,” Vinny said. “You telling me you didn't know that?”

“No, I don't think I did.”

“Do you now?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You're the pazzo fuck.”

Dane thought that maybe he understood what it had been like for Vinny all along. He felt the draw, the separation of himself heading down toward another life. He stood on one path and looked around, then saw there might be another slightly better chance for happiness if only he made a choice that took him there. There. There.

“Don't do it, Vinny.”

“Look, there's nobody in the middle anymore. Here, watch.”

On the radio, Dad mumbling about the rules of the road, always wearing your seat belt, being courteous to your fellow driver. The girl in the backseat lay down with eleven knife wounds in her kidneys, stared at the roof of the Caddy, and let out a cry fashioned from the incomprehensible loss inside her.

Vinny yanked the.38 up in a beautiful move, showing just how incredibly fast he was. No one could have ever had a chance against him. He pressed the barrel under his chin and gave a grin that made Dane whimper, thinking, How will I explain this to Maria?

Vinny pulled the trigger and took off the back of his skull, fucking up the beautiful interior of the '59 Caddy. He managed to heave a sigh of satisfaction as he flopped into Dane's arms.

They stayed like that for a while.

Despite it all, having crossed so many of these lines you never thought you'd step over, tears still clinging at your beard stubble, it felt proper to finally have a clear and unswerving purpose. This is what you've always wanted.

On his way out to the Monti mansion, with Vinny's body in the trunk, most of the inside of the Caddy cleaned up, Dane passed St. Mary's and spotted a bright blue hot-air balloon hovering about three feet above the lawn. Vinny had mentioned it back in Chooch's. But what did something like this mean, what symbolism could you find, when a piece of the sky was hanging down in back of your church?

About forty people clotted the front doors of the rectory, trying to keep warm. A handful of the elderly, a group of teens, a few six-year-olds, and even a couple of the modern nuns who didn't completely cover up in black head to toe.

A priest he didn't recognize stood looking at the basket, scared to let the kids get too close, with the rising wind, and the increasingly heavy rain coming down. Dane had the feeling God was presenting him with one last chance to get out of this-hop in the balloon, cut the ropes, and just drift away.

The priest caught his eye and immediately understood something was wrong. His gaze filled with alert apprehension and meaningless concern as he walked over to the car. “Is there some problem?”