John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

“I hear you,” Jay was saying. “If today, these healings, if they were ordinary, hey, two of them, there’s no way. I hear that.”

“I could do it because this, this with Mom, it was the last.”

Barbara noticed the boy’s gesture, effeminate again. He stood hipshot, pouting, looking more and more like a younger Aurora.

John Junior broke in. “Hey! Hey my man, the P-man!” He raised a long finger. “I got it, the laws of the universe. I got how this worked.”

The big teen whipped his finger around the oval of family faces. “Check it out, you completed a circle. Check it out, the first was Pop, the last was Mom. A circle, my little big man, that’s how it worked.”

“Or think of it this way,” Chris said.

“Oh, here we go,” JJ said. “Alternative theory.”

“Now, Junior . Try to think for a minute.”

“See, my brother never learned, he’s the alternative theory.”

“Try to think of it this way, okay Junior, and then we’ll all get down on our hands and knees and look around for your I.Q.”

“You guys,” said Paul.

“Well, think of this — five children, five episodes.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed Dora. “Sylvia, count. One was Papa, two was that girl, that Romy, and then—”

“Five equals five.” Chris poked his glasses at Paul. “Could be, Mistah P.”

“Hey,” Jay said. “Save it for Dr. DiPio.”

The mother liked both theories, actually. Either of them made more sense than most of what she’d had in mind back when she’d come to Naples.

“Whatever,” said her middle child. “It’s not going to h-happen again.”

John Junior was nodding. “Five children, five episodes.”

“Good, bro. Good boy. Now for our next act…”

The girls were looking from brother to brother, spinning, delighted. Barbara had to move the other way, towards the exit, the uncertain lights of the city above.