the wild
Tis thou canst save amid despair.
Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
Though banished, outcast, and reviled;
O maiden, see a maiden’s sorrow
O mother, hear a suppliant child.
Ave Maria!
She delivered the song slowly, intently. She sang it with all the pain of the banished, outcast, and reviled . . . and all the triumph too. But Esther was no suppliant child. She was no maiden mild. She was a woman who needed no permission and no allowances. She didn’t beg, she bled. She didn’t whimper, she warned.
I’d never heard Schubert sung like that. Esther moaned and wept the words without shedding a tear, and I followed her, awestruck. When she ceased, the room was like a tomb.
“I don’t sing it like my mother did. I’m really nothing like her. Actually . . . I think I probably take after my father,” Esther said to her mesmerized audience, her voice mild but her eyes blazing. “Do you have another request, Mr. Vitale?”
When I stood from the piano a few songs later, Rudolf Alexander no longer sat at the table in the corner. Positioned as I was, I hadn’t seen him go. Maybe he’d left the room after Esther’s “Ave Maria.” Or maybe he left when Esther’s mockery on “Pandora’s Box”—“The secret’s out, everybody knows, people are watching wherever we go”—was still ringing around the room. My good hand was cramping, my injured hand screaming, but more than anything else, I was desperate to get Esther alone and seal us both off from the relentless tension. But Sal was there, standing between us, his arms around our shoulders.
“That was magnificent, Esther. Magnificent,” he murmured as he urged us forward to meet his friends. He escorted us around the room, introducing us here and there. One face blended into another. I wasn’t well, but I was past being able to differentiate between pain and stress, and I let myself be herded about until the room started to thin, people stopped staring, and Sal pointed at an empty table.
“Sit down, Benito. Have a drink. You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I think we are going to go now,” I said, afraid that if I sat, we would be stuck there for hours more. Esther was clearly of the same mind and remained standing as well. She wore the mask I’d come to recognize. Beautiful. Hard. Terrified. Angry. There would be a reckoning when she took it off. The sooner the better.
“Not yet. Sit. Have a drink.”
I took Esther’s arm. “Good night, Sal. Thank you for . . . the evening.”
“Esther. Benito. Sit,” he insisted. We remained standing.
Sal’s face tightened and his eyes skipped around the room. He lifted his hand and signaled to Fat Tony.
“Fine. Go. I’m through with you, and I don’t want you to be sick and ruin all my hard work.” He almost sounded petulant.
“Did you know he was here?” I asked.
“Who?” Sal said, voice mild.
“Alexander.”
Sal smiled, a brief baring of his teeth. “Of course. I invited him. We had business. All done before you even arrived.” He waved his hand in the air, dismissing his words like it was nothing. “It will be better now,” Sal said. “You’ll see. Alexander and I have come to an understanding.” He unbuttoned his pristine dinner jacket and immediately buttoned it again, as though he liked being bound.
“It’s finished. Now go. You’re swaying,” he said, waving us off again.
“What is finished?” Esther asked, voice low. Flat. Emotionless.
“It’s like your song,” Sal said. “The song about Pandora. I liked that one. How did you say it? It’s all out in the open now. He knows that I know. Everybody knows. You’re mine. Both of you. I’ve claimed you. So it’s finished.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t finished. It was just beginning. My missing finger pulsed, and Esther’s hand tightened on my arm.
“Go.” Sal shooed us away. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At the show.”
The two Tonys escorted us upstairs. Elroy was no longer in the elevator. A new attendant was on duty, and he kept his eyes averted from all of us. Sticks had blood on his right cuff. When I pointed it out, he shrugged and folded his hands, one over the other, so the blood was hidden. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and we rode to our floor in silence.
“You’re with us now, Benny. It’ll be fine. You’ll see,” Fat Tony said as the door slid closed behind the four of us and the elevator whirred away. The long hall stretching out