Flash Fiction by Sara Jacobelli

The Professor and the Gangster

Bridgeport

He smiled, a soft brown beard, a professor’s jacket. We stood there looking at each other. Lesley came back from the bathroom. “Why are you standing out here, freezing to death? Get in.” She drove from the gas station, and the professor kept looking at me. He must be an English teacher, and as I looked through the rear window, I pictured the life we would have. Cocktail parties steeped in witty talk, trips to Europe, the books we would publish together and Lesley maneuvered her faithful Dodge Dart onto the highway bringing me back to East Main Street, the screaming babies, the crowded railroad flat, the blaring TV, the welfare, the food stamps.

Palermo

He got out of the car with a smooth masculine gracefulness and when I knew I was going to walk by I tried to think of something to say. My boyfriend beside me seemed too tall and American and white and clumsy. Pasolini described all Sicilian men as having an air of “shepherds asleep armed with knives.”

I passed in front of him, the limo door open, the driver and bodyguards standing still, everyone looking at me as if our tableau was intended and our eyes met, I said, “permesso” and he said, “prego.” I still sense the darkness of his dangerous eyes, the smoothness of his skin, the deepness of his voice.

Originally published in Postcard Shorts, January 22nd, 2012.

The Bingo Game

Aunty Ruth loved Bingo. She’d drag me and my brother Nicky to the church hall every Friday night. I was fascinated by the chain smoking ladies with curlers in their hair who managed to keep track of ten different Bingo cards at once. We giggled about Franny, Aunty Ruth’s friend who always wore pin curls in her hair, day after day. Nicky would say, green eyes gleaming, “WHAT, is the Big Occasion she will finally take them out for?”

We’d roll on the floor, and Aunty would glare at us. “Don’t embarrass me, or I’ll smack you good!” she’d threaten, and we’d run around the tables taunting her. We knew she wouldn’t bother to try to catch us; she wouldn’t dare miss a called-out Bingo number.

This was a woman’s world. The men were out playing poker or shooting pool. The only man in the parlor was the priest, a young, dark haired dreamboat with emerald eyes and long eyelashes that, according to Nicky, some of the curler-clad women had crushes on. This was a fact I found interesting, a clue to the Mysteries of the Adult World.

Aunty Ruth would buy us one card each, but I usually got distracted by the donuts and the other kids. Nicky would play his card very seriously, writing down various strategies the chain-smoking ladies gave him.

When I asked why Mom never came anymore Nicky whispered, “Poppy’s jealous. Of Father Reilly.”

“Why?”

“Says I have his eyes.”

Originally published in Postcard Shorts, August 24th, 2014.

Ice Cold

Whenever my old man brought home something new, like a stereo or a TV, he’d say “Don’t touch it kids, it’s hot.” We’d touch it. “It’s not hot, Poppy.”

Mom seemed nervous about the new car, which was strange since she was always happy to get a TV, stereo, toaster or blender. The origins of these treats were a mystery. Fell off the back-of-a-truck, Mom would mumble. I was only nine, but I knew damn well a Cadillac convertible didn’t fall off a stinking truck.

The best surprise, before the Cadillac, was the time we got new bikes. A gloating tribe of Richie the Rich Kids on our sparkling new rides, until some creep broke into the garage and stole them. “That’s ironic,” Mom said.

When Poppy took us for top-down highway rides, I was scared I’d blow away in the speeding wind, so I held onto the seat real tight. He gunned her up to 90–100–110 and we’d all scream. Mom’s kerchief would blow off her head, she’d yell, “Tony, my God damned hair!”

One night everyone was asleep and Poppy got a phone call. I listened against the door. “I’ll be there,” was all I heard him say. I walked gingerly into the kitchen on bare feet and spied him slipping a gun into a leather holster under his jacket. “Poppy, where you goin?”

“Listen kid. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“But I’m scared you won’t come back.” I leaned against him, smelled the cologne and cigarettes and whiskey and beer and poker rooms and pool halls. “Is that gun, is it hot?”

“It’s cold. Cold as can be.”

Originally published in Postcard Shorts, October 8th, 2014.

You can find that author at https://capitareafagiolo.wordpress.com/ or on twitter @SaraJacobelli