Joey taps his fingers on his desk in thought. Sofia doesn’t know what she’s doing, and if a goon with two brain cells like Freddie could tail her, so could anyone: your average overachieving newly minted police officer who hasn’t learned better yet, or worse, Eli Leibovich’s men, who are neither stupid nor newly minted, or worse than that, some Fianzo kid, a new guy wanting his bones, hoping to bag Sofia as a bargaining chip. As bragging rights. Sofia insists on risking her own life as well as the safety and security of his entire Family.
Something will have to be done.
* * *
—
When Sofia gets home that evening, a sleeping Julia in tow, there is a bouquet of roses waiting for her on the kitchen table and Saul is listening to the radio in the living room. In Paris, victory celebrations are in full swing, it says. Sofia points at the bouquet and raises her eyes at Saul to see if he knows what it is. “There’s a card,” he calls to her. And then, “And the war is over.” The young people are marching up and down the boulevards, singing and dancing and waving flags.
Sofia looks at Saul. “The war is over,” she says. She walks to the table and picks up the envelope there. “It’s open,” she says to Saul.
“Your dad gave me a heads-up,” he replies. His face is strangely empty. Sofia lowers her eyes to the small card. It reads:
Sof: It seems you might like a job. Ask and you shall receive. Love, Papa. PS: Stop tailing Saul.
Sofia looks up at Saul. “He’s going to let me work,” she says. She grins. Sofia Colicchio, lamp-lit and triumphant.
“So it seems,” says Saul. Joey had called him that afternoon. He had said, you know our Sofia isn’t exactly typical. He had sighed, and then said, ruefully, truthfully, she’ll be better at this than either of us, if she decides to be. And then there was quiet in the conversation, and Saul could feel the wind as the door beyond which other possibilities, other jobs, other lifestyles, existed slammed shut. No California, no Upper West Side. No painter, no pediatrician. So now Saul is staring down the barrel of the rest of his life. He is mourning something that would never have happened.
In Europe, Russian and American soldiers are firing their guns into the air in celebration. Nazi officers are slipping cyanide pills into the hands of their wives and loved ones. His mother is a breathing skeleton somewhere, or a pile of ash, and Saul has become unrecognizable to her. How will they find each other?
“You’re mad,” says Sofia. She doesn’t want Saul to ruin this for her. She is almost angry. But there is also an insistent nagging, a genuine concern for Saul, whose shoulders are slumped in defeat.
Saul sits up and switches off the radio and lowers his face to his hands.
“Saul, what?” asks Sofia. She crosses the room and brings her hands to cover his. In her chest there is a small struggling bird that would have been elation and instead is a complicated disappointment.
“I’m not mad,” says Saul.
“Okay, so?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” says Sofia, and it is a command.
“Well,” says Saul. “I came here, and I was so alone. I’ve never been so alone. But then this job—it found me. And you—you found me. And the war was this monster in the background, this thing I was escaping. And then suddenly instead of being alone I was taking care of you, and Julia, and I was doing this job, and I was fighting against the war with everyone I picked up. And I didn’t have time to think about everything I had given up, everything that had changed. It seemed to matter a little less what I had lost.” Saul takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Sofia is silent. The silence presses down.
“But suddenly, today, the war is over. I am fighting against nothing. I’m escaping nothing. And you are—like you always do, you are just blasting into your life like dynamite through concrete. And suddenly I am here, and there’s no reason for it. I could be anywhere now.” Saul sits back into the sofa and feels himself sinking. Blessed are You. “I am on an absolute island, Sofia.”
Over the course of their time together, Saul softens Sofia. It is one of the most monumental changes in her. She becomes the mistress of her own emotional topography. She learns to pause, to take in all the information. She can still react with fire, with tornado. But she is now able to control it. To sharpen it. To aim.
It is this softness and this aim which now compel Sofia to drop herself into Saul’s lap and fill her arms with him, with his shoulders and the desperate hollow of his chest, with the brown curls that spring from his head. She fills her nose with his scent, with the spice of his aftershave and the yellow stench of cigarettes and sweat that collects in his shirt after he’s been wearing it all day. And then Sofia fills her mouth with Saul, with his mouth and his breath, until the only sound in their apartment is an exhale, a collapse, and Sofia does not whisper I need you here but she feels need squeezing her like a muscle and she believes Saul does too.