But still, even then, he felt the void, the part that was missing. He felt her absence, when he wanted nothing more than her presence.
And, if he were being honest, he felt something else then, too . . . a craving for the sensation he had had the night before.
* * *
The Rosewood Room was near the Children’s School of Music and just down the street from an old closed down theater, one that used to play movies for a quarter in the summer of 1972.
Vincent had been just a kid at the time, slightly rebellious yet highly impressionable. He would often leave his house on Felton Drive, two blocks past where he later settled with his own family, and slip away to that theater without his parents knowing. It was at a time when he and Celia came and went as they pleased, not long before the brutal underground wars broke out that changed everything. Before their parents tightened their grip and started monitoring their every move . . . before they came to the realization that they needed to.
His mother had been strict and maybe already a bit delusional, refusing to let them watch television, not wanting to poison their minds, so he would lie whenever she asked and tell her he was going to the park with friends.
The Godfather came out that year. Vincent saw it one cloudy Tuesday afternoon in July, sitting in the back row of the packed theater. Those three hours altered his life, turning everything he thought he knew upside down.
Until then, he only had a vague understanding of the Mafia, based on the things he had witnessed and his mother’s volatile rants. He thought it was a club, maybe part of a union, considering he had seen his dad take money from Teamsters. But reality made itself known that day, playing out on the massive flickering screen.
Vincent had been so fascinated by the film, so rocked to the core, that he hadn’t noticed a dozen of his father’s close friends sitting in the audience with him.
He ran home that afternoon with a million questions running through his head, absentmindedly navigating a path he knew by heart. Two blocks over, one block down, cut through the small alley the next street over, then it’s only four more blocks south to his home. He could zigzag through the streets without thinking, making it there within minutes.
And years later, as Vincent strolled away from the wedding hall after taking one last look at his family, his feet seemed to instinctively remember the way. He walked past the old theater, surveying the boarded-up windows and crumbling bricks, and he thought back to that day he watched The Godfather. He intended to question his sister when he made it home, but he never had the chance.
As soon as he opened the front door of his house and ran inside, his father’s boisterous voice rocked the downstairs. “Vincenzo Roman!”
Vincent’s feet immediately rooted to the floor as he cringed at the sound of his full name. Glancing in the direction of his father’s voice, he saw him standing in the doorway to his office. His heart beat wildly. Not good, not good. “Yes, Dad?”
“We need to talk.”
Antonio disappeared inside his office. Vincent stood there for a second, intentionally delaying, before forcing his feet to move that way. He took a seat in front of his father’s desk.
“So what did you do today?” Antonio asked, leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped across his bulky chest.
“Went to the park.”
“The park, huh?”
“Yes.”
“And how was the park, son?”
“Fine.”
“And you were there all afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Fascinating,” Antonio said. “I do wonder how you did it, though, being in two places at once. You see, I got a call a few minutes ago that you were at the theater this afternoon, and I know you wouldn’t lie to me, right?”
The color drained from Vincent’s face. Antonio stared at him intently, waiting for an answer that never came.
“You can’t think I won’t know these things, that I won’t find out,” he continued, realizing Vincent intended to remain silent. “I got eyes and ears all around this city. Someone can’t take a piss in my neighborhood without it getting back to me. And I don’t like the fact that my kid, my only son, thought he could get one over on me. Do you think I’m an idiot? You think your father’s a jamook?”
Vincent shook his head feverishly. “Of course not.”
“You got questions, you want to know things? You come to me. You don’t go out there and get information from everyone else.”
“Yes, sir.” Vincent paused, thinking that over. “I just wanted to see a movie. I didn’t realize . . .”
Antonio stared at him as he trailed off, letting out a deep sigh as he leaned forward. “Look, son, there’s this saying—fortune favors the bold. If you want things, if you want to be successful, you have to take chances, you have to accept risks. You have to, you know, do some things that maybe other people won’t do. Life, it’s kind of like a game of chess. You know about chess, right?”
Vincent slowly nodded.
“So you know the king is the most important player. As long as he’s standing, the game continues. And that’s just like in life. You want to be the king, even if that makes you the biggest target. The king, he’s the key to it all, make or break. You never want to be a pawn or a rook or a knight. You never want to be disposable, just another piece in the way. You want to control the game. You get what I’m saying?”
He nodded again.