Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

“Don’t play around, you’re gonna stretch it,” Nina said. She was broiling sausage and peppers. She had to check on them nineteen times, and Sandro had to move his chair every time she did.

“What ‘stretch it’?” Sandro said. “It’s plastic.”

Nina asked him if he was through with the mouse. Was she going to have to hire someone, thirty-fi’ dollars an hour? Sandro ignored her.

Joanie took time out to track her feelings, like a little weather map. At this point she was hoping her husband wouldn’t call. She wanted it unanimous, what everyone thought of him. She wanted it consistent the way he treated everyone. She looked at Todd and his bad haircut and the little Band-Aid that wouldn’t stick on his hand and was surprised, the way she was always surprised, not by her own meanness but by its persistence.

Sandro got back on his hands and knees with a Mother of God sigh and clacked around under the sink again with the broom handle. It was like he was trying to warn the mouse, not catch it. Nancy poured Joanie more wine, then sat back and made fun of her vacant expression.

Joanie woke up and nodded. Nancy pointed to her gift, finally about to be unwrapped. Todd was working on it like it was a bomb.

“You don’t have to save the paper,” Nancy said. “Really.”

She was Joanie’s best friend. Joanie hadn’t talked to her at all about Gary’s leaving, and it had been two months. Nancy would come over and they’d go to a movie, split a Greek salad. Once, early on, Joanie had been crying upstairs, and Nancy sat in the kitchen and waited a half hour and then finally went home.

Todd was holding up her gift: a book called Italian Folktales.

“Oh, a book,” Nina said flatly. No one seemed to know what to make of her tone. Nancy taught at Stratford High with Joanie — English and history — and liked to give Todd books.

“See if there are any stories about Mucherinos in there,” Sandro said.

“That’s in the famous-crime-stories book,” Nancy said.

“Take that off,” Nina said. “You’re sweating in it.”

“I need this for the mouse,” Sandro said.

The phone rang again. Sandro got it, in the lacrosse helmet. He clacked the plastic receiver against his earhole and kept going, “ Hel lo? Hel lo? ” like it was a vaudeville routine. It got a laugh.

He said, “Joanie, it’s Bruno,” and handed her the phone. Joanie gave Nancy her “I’m not encouraging this” look.

Nancy had gone out with Bruno for a little while, high school and afterward. She still had a thing for him. She was sitting here hoping he wouldn’t call. We’re all sitting around hoping guys won’t call, Joanie thought.

“What’s up?” she said into the phone. “You hit another snag?”

“I’m on my way over,” Bruno said. Something was being whacked behind him.

“What is that?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know,” Bruno said. “They’re screwing around. I’m over here by the deli. You want me to bring anything?”

“We got everything,” Joanie said. “You’re missing all the presents being opened.”

“I was over here, you know, I thought I’d call, see if you needed something,” Bruno said. “I’m five minutes away.”

“What’s that noise behind you?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know, these fucking guys,” Bruno said. The line went muffled, as if he’d covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and when he uncovered it, the sound was gone.

Joanie shifted her weight. Todd was opening more presents. Somebody’d given him some kind of board game he wouldn’t play in a thousand years. “So you coming?” Joanie said in her “I’m getting off” voice.

“Tell ’im we got the Great Mouse Hunt goin’ over here,” Sandro said. He was whisking around under the stove now.

“Listen. Nancy there?” Bruno said.

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Nancy looked up at her. “Wanna talk to her?”

“Don’t bust ’em off,” Bruno said. “Her mother there?”

“Yes, she is,” Joanie said. Elena was over by the door, hadn’t said two words all night. “You wanna talk to her?”

“Yeah, give her a message for me,” Bruno said. “Tell her, ‘Mangia il gatz.’ ”

“You tell her,” Joanie said.

“I’m on my way,” Bruno said. He hung up.

She came back to the table and sat down. Nancy was looking at her. Joanie shrugged.

“Where’s the dog?” Nina said, like she’d just noticed the dog wasn’t around. “Why didn’t you bring the dog?” She was probably thinking of the mouse.

“She ran away again,” Joanie said.

Audrey’d had a tough last few months and had taken to running away after dinner for a few hours. Todd would go look for her, stand in the yard and wait for her to come back.

Nina turned the peppers, which had to be done by now. “That dog’s gonna be out in the woods, she’s gonna be running around, she’s gonna get bit, she’s gonna get rabbis,” she said.

“That’s rabies, ” Sandro said. “Jesus God. Ra bies.”

Nancy laughed. Nina was used to it. Her husband said she butchered the language like Leo Gorcey. Bruno said she had her own way of communicating, and it didn’t work.

“You are something,” Sandro said. “The other day she goes to me, talking about that poor chiboni who hit the kid, ‘Oh, baby. Nothing goes right for him. He’s got an albacore around his neck.’

More people laughed, even Elena. “Nice image,” Nancy said.

“You believe how fast they go on that curve?” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. These people and that curve, it’s a sin.”

“I think the parents are now ascared the guy’s gonna get sued,” Sandro said.

“I’d sue ’im,” Nina said. “Three times the car flipped. They had to get that thing and tear the roof off to get him out.”

“The kid was just walking there, too,” Elena said from over by the door. “Going to get ice cream. You believe that? It’s a shame.”

“Her eyes’re open now,” Sandro said. “Her mother’s there every day, soon as the hospital opens.” He had his helmeted head on the floor next to the stove, and he seemed to think he saw something.

“ Three times that car flipped,” Nina said.

“I went there and visited,” Elena said. “You go?”

“I went there the second day, with the mother,” Nina said. “You believe the perfume she wears? I think she marinates in it.”

“Ma,” Joanie said. “How about giving her a break? Her daughter’s a vegetable.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Nina said.

Joanie felt bad she’d put it like that. She’d been around Bruno too much. “They hope to God she’ll come out of it,” her mother said.

“They don’t know,” Elena said bitterly. “ Doc tors.

“I don’t believe that perfume, though,” Nina said. “And expensive. How could you spend so much on perfume?”

“Ma,” Joanie said.

“Hey, you ever see her?” Sandro said. He gave up and got back in his chair. He was trying to get the lacrosse helmet off. “The least she could do is smell good.”

Nina took the pan with the sausage and peppers out of the broiler and dropped it on the floor. Everybody jumped. The peppers spattered over a big area and just missed Sandro’s leg.

“Ho. Ho, ” Sandro said. Everyone else made exclamations.

Someone banged on the screen door. Elena always locked it when she visited: her cousin’s sister on Stratford Avenue, one day they walked right in.

“What’s the deal with the security?” Bruno said from outside. “The Mucherinos sense trouble? Gangland hit? ”

“You’re not gettin’ in without a present,” Sandro said. He was lifting his feet so Nina could clean under the table. Joanie got a sponge and some paper towels and helped out.