Zero, What a God!

Chapter 5

The divorce papers hit the floor at Vittorio's feet.

"We never introduced you to anyone, you know that? At every wedding and every Christmas party, we told people Vanessa's husband worked nights. My sister still thinks you're a doctor on the night shift, and I never corrected her." Diane twisted her pearl necklace between two fingers.

Kyle snorted behind his phone, and Vittorio kept his eyes on the papers at his feet.

Last Christmas, he had spent the Carter party in the kitchen, washing glasses nobody asked him to wash. Every time a guest wandered in, Diane steered them back out before they could shake his hand. So that was the reason, and they had been hiding him the entire time.

Diane stepped over the folder. "You couldn't cover this rent alone for a single month. My daughter paid the water bill while you ate gas-station sandwiches, and she cried to me about it every Sunday."

There was no rent, and Vittorio let that lie pass along with the one about the water bill.

Ignoring his silence, Diane wrinkled her nose at the peeling wallpaper. "Look at this rat hole! The whole place stinks of bleach from that laundromat downstairs."

The smell of bleach had been on Teresa's apron every evening when she came home. For Vittorio, bleach had always meant the door opening and her voice calling his name from the hallway.

Kyle turned the camera toward himself and grinned. "Say hi, everyone. You're about to watch a parasite get evicted from the apartment he never paid for. Drop a heart if you think he cries!"

Laughing faces scrolled up the side of his screen, and somebody typed rent-a-cop three times in a row. By noon, half of Port Halden would see his bruised face on their phones. Ron would probably play the clip in the guard post and pretend he had never knelt under a chair.

Then Diane pointed a red nail at Vittorio's chest. "That old maid picked a stray out of a ravine and dumped him on my family. My father fell for her sad stories, and my daughter wasted a year on her leftovers. Teresa should have left you at the bottom."

Teresa had dragged him out of that ravine with a neighbor's truck and a rope. For a month afterward, she held his arm every evening while he learned to walk again, one step at a time across this same living room floor.

She had fed him soup from a chipped blue bowl and kept her tips in a coffee can so he could buy his first pair of work boots.

Diane leaned closer, her pearls swinging. "She scrubbed toilets for the Rhodes family until they caught her stealing, and you want to call this place a home?"

Vittorio's hands closed into fists until his knuckles turned white. As Zero, he had stood in rooms where armed men begged him for their lives. This morning, a woman in pearls called his mother a thief in her own living room, and he let her talk.

One punch would end this. Diane would fly back against the wall, and Kyle would finally get the clip he wanted. Then the police would come, and his face would end up on every news site in Port Halden, where the wrong people were watching.

The man Teresa raised did not hit women in her house, so Vittorio held his fists at his sides.

Vanessa crossed her legs on the couch, and the diamond flashed. "Trent comes from old money, Vittorio. He takes me to restaurants where the menus don't even have prices. I wasted a whole year of my life on a man who rides a bike to work."

A whole year.

Vittorio had come home every morning with warm bread from the bakery on the corner, and she had never once turned around in bed to take it. He had worked double shifts through the flu. In February, he had sold his winter coat to fix her phone screen.

What else could he have given her? Which part of that year had been a waste to her?

"Sign the divorce, and sign this apartment over to Vanessa too. Call it payment for the year you stole from her," Diane said, tapping the papers with the toe of her shoe.

"This was my mother's home," Vittorio said, his voice rough.

"Hurry up, loser. We don't have all day." Kyle shoved Vittorio's shoulder with his free hand.

Vittorio caught Kyle's wrist with an ordinary grip. Kyle yelped, and his phone nearly slipped from his fingers.

Then Vanessa shot up from the couch. "Leave him alone! Are you going to break his wrist too, like you did to Trent?"

Vittorio let Kyle go and looked at the diamond on Vanessa's finger. The thin gold band he had bought for her was gone.

For three months, he had skipped lunch on every shift to pay for that band. He still remembered the jeweler counting his crumpled bills twice because there were so many small ones. That small, empty spot on her hand hurt more than all the shouting in the room.

He picked up the folder and signed the papers on the coffee table, and the pen tore through the paper on the last letter of his name. Then he set the pen down, walked to the kitchen, and came back with Teresa's tin box.

He laid the deed on top of the divorce papers and turned it so Diane could read it. The mortgage line was stamped PAID in red. Teresa's will was clipped behind it with his name on the last line.

"My mother paid this apartment off eight years ago, one cleaning shift at a time. Her will leaves it to me, and the lawyer who wrote it still keeps an office on Harbor Avenue," Vittorio said.

Diane's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Next to the deed, he set down a stack of receipts held together with one of Teresa's old hair ties. There were twelve water bills and twelve power bills, each one paid in cash on the morning after a night shift.

"You said your daughter paid the water bill, Mrs. Carter. Every receipt here has my shift date written on the back in pencil. When does she plan to pay me back?"

Kyle lowered his phone, and the laughing faces on his screen stopped. One new comment rolled up before he stopped filming. [The guard has receipts.]

SMACK!

Diane's palm cracked across his bruised cheek, and his head did not even turn. Trent's fists had hit harder last night. Next to that, Diane's slap was only a sting.

"Ungrateful dog!" Diane hissed, shaking out her hand.

Vanessa pulled the signed papers out from under the deed and stuffed them into her bag. "Keep your rat hole, then. Trent's buying me a Porsche at Prestige Motors this morning, and a guard like you couldn't even buy me a tire!"

Prestige Motors was the same showroom Celine had sent him to at ten. Diane swept out of the apartment first, and Vanessa followed without looking back.

At the door, Kyle shoved his phone into his pocket and sneered over his shoulder. "Trent's family is going to bury you, loser!"

The door slammed behind them, and the silence lasted three seconds. In the bedroom, the cake still sat on the dresser with its pink letters untouched. One year of marriage had ended in less time than it took the icing to dry.

Vittorio looked at the clock on the microwave. It was a quarter past eight, and Prestige Motors opened at ten.

For the first time in two years, he smiled.

His phone buzzed with a message signed S. [Mercer Street, above the laundromat. You never could hide from me, Commander.]