Headstone City by Tom Piccirilli

tangle, jugs dripping sweat.
    “Madonna!” Grandma Lucia shouted, throwing a hand over her eyes. “What's this you got? A porno movie?”
    “It's an action flick with a racy scene in it. I drove her out to Long Island, that actress, yesterday.”
    “This
putana
? This is the clientele you're picking up now? Escorts? You're gonna get arrested again.”
    “She's a real actress.”
    “Yeah, I'm sure the Academy Award committee is gonna shortlist her.” Walking out of the room, crossing herself, and talking over her shoulder. “You think she'll do that dance at the Oscars?”
    He stared at Glory Bishop on the screen, watched her doing her thing again, and thought, Oh, Holy Jesus Christ. It got him going, imagining her in a hot tub with another woman. He rewound the scene and watched it again, and once more.
    An intensifying ache expanded within him, trying to free itself with such influence that Dane had to hug his guts in while he shrugged back a grunt of despair. Abruptly, Angelina was sitting beside him.
    “You should visit me,” she said. “It'll make you feel better. You don't have anything better to do most days anyway.”
    Chewing his tongue and tasting blood, he tried to say her name but couldn't do it. There were a great many words of power in life—common ones, familiar ones somehow too hard for him to speak. He wondered how you did it, died with style, drinking coffee and a sucking wound in your chest.
    “You need to go, Angie,” he said, urging her on, trying to shove her through the veil. “You're not doing either of us any good. I don't want you here anymore.”
    “Of course you do.”
    “No, really.”
    “What do you think, I'm gonna play the harp, Johnny? You think that's what it's like over here? You want me to tell you how it is?”
    “No.”
    “I didn't think so.”
    Angelina enjoyed taunting him the way the last person to leave a party cherishes the power of staying too long. She slid up against him, put her head on his shoulder, her hair covering him the way he dreamed of Maria's hair draping over him, even though he couldn't feel it. They sat there watching Glory Bishop distract the terrorists with her tits, the government assassin in the back of the room screwing around with his high-tech laser scopes and shit.
    “It's okay,” she told him. “I can make it all right, if you'd only let me help. We're gonna get through this.”
    “I'm not so sure most of the time,” Dane said, quietly, hoping his grandmother didn't have her ear against the wall.
    His regrets seemed to have sinuous limbs that reached into places where the living couldn't fit. The girl here, always around him. “They're going to come for you soon.”
    “Your brothers and the Monti crew?”
    “Berto thinks you've been out long enough now. They've been spreading the word around the neighborhood. People are waiting to see what happens.”
    “I still don't know why they haven't made their move yet.”
    “They're weak,” Angie said with a cute giggle. “And JoJo single-handedly killing three hitters who ambushed him has sort of set them back. They're scared of you. They think you might've learned all kinds of assassin stuff in the army.”
    “They watch too many movies,” he said, with the government assassin movie playing out on the television, Glory working her way to her one big action hero line. “What's he got planned for my spectacular exit?”
    “I don't know.”
    “Vinny isn't saying?”
    “Vinny doesn't say anything.”
    That didn't sound right. “What do you mean?” Dane asked, but Angie just stared affectionately at him, like she was watching a dog trying to perform a difficult trick.
    Berto didn't have much of an imagination, so he'd leave it to Joey Fresco or Big Tommy Bartone. Those guys knew how to whack somebody and make the rest of the town grimace.
    “Your mother,” Angie said. “She wants me to tell you something.”
    Stopping there, staring at him with sad but loving eyes, waiting to see