Okay, this is my second story. Please refrain from commenting here. I would, however, appreciate it if you commented on "Under Any Circumstances" which is just below this. Thanks ever so.

Men of Business

So this summer, my family had dealings with the Mafia. No one ever believes me when I tell them that, but it’s true. Really! Cheesy threats, guys with twenty-inch necks, heavy Italian accents, the works.

Let me tell you about Richard Conti. The guy’s short, like shorter than me. Five feet, tops, with slicked-back black hair, getting gray on top. Has to use half a cup of gel every morning, I swear. He seems really friendly at first. He’s a lawyer, he’s got to. Anyway, he owns about half of Providence and a good deal of the rest of the state. A hundred and fifty buildings, he says proudly if you ask him. And he wanted another one.

We ran an artisan bakery. The guys who worked there were great. They were all Guatemalan Indians, the most devout Catholics I’ve ever met, except they were willing to work on Sundays. It was a small building with two ovens, massive mixers, and four tables to form the bread by hand. The place always had someone in it, a baker or a packer or someone at the counter. On holidays, it was just me, sometimes my dad, and sometimes Catherine. I did wholesale. Called people every day, “Hi, this is Bess at Daily Bread, just callin’ to see if you need anything for tomorrow.”

I hate calling customers. There were a few places that were really nice when I called, but the rest were wretched. Chefs are the angriest people on earth. People tell me no, they know people who would stab little furry animals and laugh about it, but chefs would do it just because the bread looked a little funny and they wanted to set an example. Roberto from Roberto’s was the worst. He would call if the bread was five minutes late from its six o’clock drop-off, or if one loaf was overcooked, or the raccoons got it before he did. He called me up on the fourth of July once. Now, in Bristol they have this parade that’s been going since before we won the revolution. We’re real patriotic in Rhode Island. Anyway, he calls because the bread’s not there at nine in the morning. The driver missed him because the parade’s going on. The guy’s restaurant is on the parade route, and it’s going on right now. He says he wants me to get it there. I tell him I’m fourteen. Through my tears, I tell him I don’t have my car, much less a license, and I’m the only one here. Tough, he says. Get him the bread. Later he calls back and apologizes for the words he used about me and the “Mexican” driver who needs to “learn to speak fuckin’ American.” By that time we’ve found someone to get him his bread. He says h, that’s okay, he doesn’t need it till five. I hate Roberto. If I didn’t get paid, and if it wasn’t for family I was here every summer, I’d hang up on him. A dollar fifty-one a baguette. That’s cheap, and he only gets twelve. He doesn’t get to complain.

So me and my sister were calling customers this one day in our little wholesale cubicle in the basement and Conti comes to visit with his lawyer and these two guys. I only got a little glimpse of them, but they were big. Like I said, twenty-inch necks. Biceps as big as your head. Dark blue t-shirts with hardware store logos on them. One of them’s missing a tooth. My dad says, “Hi, Mr. Conti, what can I do for you today?” Conti’s our landlord by this point, and we’re in our last month in the building. We tried to sell the business to this guy Arnie, but Arnie had a heart attack on the day of the signing and his wife wouldn’t let him buy the bakery.

We can’t see Dad and Conti and the guys, but we can hear them. Dad tells Conti about Arnie, how he’s doing, et cetera. Pleasant as anything. Dad’s a salesman by trade. His day job is selling phone systems to major companies on the East Coast. He knows how to talk to people. For a second or two, nobody says anything. Then Conti says, “You and me, Bill, we’re men of business. Businessmen, right?” Cat looks at me and gestures like the Godfather. I shush her. Conti goes on, “We understand when things go wrong. But these men, they’re not like you and me. They work with their hands.” And we hear cracking knuckles. Honest to God, cracking knuckles. My dad, completely unfazed, says he understands, but he’s not moving out a day before the lease runs out.

“Il est de la famille,” I whisper to Catherine, and she says, “Il lui donne une offert qu’on ne peut pas refuser.” One of the guys peeks his head around the cubicle wall. He doesn’t understand French. We’re safe. He goes back out and we give this big sigh of relief. Sighing runs in my family on both sides. Then Conti and his thugs leave, dissatisfied. I love my dad.

We tell my mom about this whole scene and she knows it’s true. She’s the only one besides me and Cat who isn’t scared of Conti at all. She calls my aunt the next day and tells her about it. She’s just gotten past the part where Cat does the Godfather thing and she waits for an answer. Then she says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” And she waits some more, and she says, “You know, all I ask is that you believe me. I need to tell someone about this, and I’m not a liar, you know that.” And she hangs up, like that.

Conti still changed the locks two days early, so Dad doesn’t have the stuff he needs to do the taxes. There are security guards standing at the back doors just in case he tries to break in. They were there the whole time we moved out the computer systems and files, so we couldn’t steal anything that Conti owned. Like the three-ton mixers, or the brick ovens bigger than my bedroom. My dad would never steal anything. He’s the most honest guy I know.