His father's baffling order to Paulie made Charley so restless that he had to scrub the kitchen floor to try to calm down. He filled a pail with soapy water and added his own formula of rubbing alcohol and straight ammonia, because he had it from the Prizzi chemist who cut the cinnari that it was stronger than household ammonia, and Charley insisted on a spotless house. He had always been a Mr. Clean. His mother had run the cleanest house in Brooklyn and nobody needed anybody to tell him why clean, cleaner, cleanest was the only way, because that was the facts. He rolled up his trousers, got down on his hands and knees with the pail and a wire scrubbing brush, and revenged himself upon the kitchen floor.
When he had finished, he washed all the windows on the bay side of the apartment while the kitchen floor dried. When he could get in there to begin to make dinner he took the home-made cuddiruni pizza, with the sardines, the cheese, the tomatoes, the garlic, the Oregano, and a stuffed artichoke, out of the freezer to let it warm up a little before he put it into the microwave. All the hard cleaning work had made him stop brooding about his father's order to Paulie. He was hungry.
He took the fungi 'Ncartati out of the refrigerator and looked at it lovingly: the best mushroom caps in the market, which he had grilled himself with breadcrumbs, minced anchovies, pecorino, garlic, lemon, and oil—and a little prezzemolo. Even Pop, a really heavy fork, preferred to eat at Charley's because the food came out like Momma's food.
He put the pizza into the microwave oven, took the cork out of a half-drunk bottle of red wine, set the kitchen table for one, propped up the Daily News against the wine bottle, and had himself another great dinner. How could restaurants stay in business, he marveled, when anybody who could read could cook?
He ate slowly. He chewed carefully. His mother had raised him critically on the point of chewing carefully and he knew, secretly, that he had the best bowels of anyone in the Prizzi family. He wondered if Irene chewed her food carefully. He tried to remember how she had eaten the food at the spic restaurant but he couldn't get it together. She had terrific skin and a fine, healthy deep chest. Her teeth were one of her best features, after her eyes. Her teeth were square and white and the gums were a good pink so, until he could actually check it out, there was no reason to worry. It stood to reason that she had to have been exercising those teeth all her life so, he reasoned, she had to have a great set of bowels.
But when dinner was over, while he was cleaning up, his mind went back to why Pop had called Paulie. He could see the shot of Pop and Irene in his mind very clearly. She was listening to Pop, concentrating on what he was telling her, and Pop wasn't making any wedding party conversation. They were standing alone and out of the way, in an alcove, and if Charley hadn't hit the photographer with the C-note and Paulie's card, nobody would have noticed them talking. How could Pop tell him he didn't remember talking to Irene when it was such an intense talk? Jesus, anyway, how could anybody say he couldn't remember Irene?
When he had put the silver away, Charley went back to the terrace and sat there with the telephone in his lap staring out at the bay, trying to figure out what he was going to do about Irene. He was in a different kind of business, after all. Women could certainly be expected to resist his business unless they were born into it like Maerose. If Irene had been connected with the family all her life she would understand that it was just another business that got the people what they wanted—but in this case, things the law said they couldn't have, because that kind of law got the politicians reelected. People had always gambled. People had always rushed in to grab sensations that they were told they couldn't have. People had reasons for not borrowing from banks. All that produced a lot of money and there were a lot of hoodlums who got ideas about stealing some of that money so the system had to have men like himself who put them down when they tried to make their grab. He had never wasted a legit guy in his life. He was like the chief security officer for the big business that got the people what they wanted and that was all. If Irene had grown up with that she would understand it, she would accept it the way Maerose did.
But she hadn't grown up with it, so what was he supposed to do—look for some other kind of work? Nobody in the family would understand what the hell he was trying to do if he did that. They would look right through him as if he wasn't there anymore and nobody would ever be able to trust him again. Anyway, what kind of business could he operate in? He had a future where he was. Vincent Prizzi was maybe sixty-five years old. His own father was seventy-four. Charley was next in line because he knew the operation backward and he had fear and respect going for him. All the other Prizzis on Vincent's side of the business were either dopes or kids. Most of the Prizzis were on the legit side of the business or they had left the family to be doctors or engineers or sports announcers. Don Corrado couldn't keep going forever, at eighty-four, but even if he did, when Vincent went, the don would put him, Charley Partanna, in charge of the whole thing. Was he supposed to turn his back on his life because he couldn't figure out any other way to marry a woman?
He sat quietly, sweating in the cool summer night, because he couldn't get a handle on what he was supposed to do. She was a married woman without a husband. Let him stay lost, she said. He began to think about that. They were going to need at least a couple of years together until she was educated at least a little bit to understand why he had to stay where he was. Sooner or later she would have to catch on that he was in the environment. She would put two and two together. The women would wise her up. She was an American. She knew that the country needed people like the Prizzi organization to get a little relief—why else would they lay on the glamour in the TV and in the books and in the movies, which always showed the people in the environment as being very glamorous people? Maerose would set Irene straight. After all, Irene didn't need to know exactly what he did. She would know that he was in the environment and that he counted in the Prizzi family. Very few people could prove what he did anyway. If he took his time about the whole business of wising up Irene they could be home free without her going into shock. She would gradually meet all the Prizzis, Sesteros, and Garrones and see what terrific people they were—warm, real, stand-up people.
But suppose the husband showed up before Irene was ready to have everything worked out for her? That could be bad. Also, it could even be bad if the husband stayed lost. He couldn't introduce a woman to the whole family unless it was seriously set that he was going to marry her. Don Corrado was a religious man. They couldn't get married if the husband stayed lost. A divorce was no good because the Prizzis, Sesteros, and Garrones didn't go for divorce. They were old-fashioned.
Irene needed to be made a widow. That was it. She had said herself that she had no use for the guy. She hadn't seen him for four years. If she was made a widow it couldn't hurt her. All he needed was the husband's name and a little basic information so his people could find him. But he had to be careful. Irene was smart. But maybe Maerose could get it out of her, then pass it along. He could have the husband set up wherever he was and have the job done on him. Nobody could connect him with it. Then he and Irene could get married at Santa Grazia's just like the rest of the family, and everybody would be proud to send them Christmas cards.
He was so elated that he called Irene.
"It's Charley."
"Aaaah."
"I'm a wreck."
"Can you get out here this weekend?"
"Jesus, I don't think so."
"Tell me."
"I love you."
"Truly?"
"It's real." He was helplessly in earnest. "Maybe it's not scientific but it's real."
"Scientific?"
"I read in a magazine that, according to a doctor, when two people try to make one stable couple that what they are doing is looking for what they thought they needed from their mothers."
"Charley!"
He wondered if he had made some terrible mistake.
"I can't even remember my mother."
"But that's the scientific part. Your head still knows what you think you needed from your mother whether you can remember your mother or not. That's what you need and it's a deep thing, an emotional thing, so when you think you see that in somebody that they can bring to you what you know you needed from your mother—that's what falling in love is. The magazine was very clear on that. A doctor wrote it."
"But, Charley, I can't suppose that what I wanted from my mother was that she be six foot two with a voice like a taxicab and an appetite for pasta like the entire Boy Scouts of Italy."
"No, not that. Not what you can see with your eyes. It's what you sense—like someone who will always protect you and take care of you, someone who will be kind to you and won't yell at you, someone who doesn't want anybody else but you. It's possible, the theory."
"All I know is, whether I think I know it or know I know it, I have to know when I'm going to see you again."
"This weekend. Absolutely. I have to know that also. We have to be together this weekend."
He got to bed at eleven o'clock. He fell asleep thinking about how he had to get some hot airline blank-ticket stock from Ed Prizzi to set himself and Irene with plenty of back-and-forth transportation. At a quarter to twelve, the phone rang. It was Pop.
"Cholly?"
"Yeah, Pop."
"Vincent wants to see you."
"Tonight?"
"Tomorrow. Two o'clock."
"Okay."
"Not at the laundry. At Ben's."
Ben Sestero's house was where Corrado Prizzi lived.
"What the hell is this, Pop?"
"Whatever it is," Pop said, "it hit the fan tonight."
