The fight-or-flight response is sometimes called hyper-arousal.

***

"Are you well, my dear?" a raspy, old voice asks solicitously, even though I can't see the speaker. Who spoke to me? Why would anyone be speaking to me in a deserted cemetery? Shouldn't they all be at the funeral of the mafia boss Rosario Tangorello?

I release the cross and spin in a slow circle, disoriented until I locate an old lady. No wonder I didn't see her right away. She is so tiny and gray, she can easily blend with the funerary monuments. She shuffles to me, head tilted to one shoulder like a bird's. Her eyes are also like a bird's: bright, inquisitive, beady.

"I'll be fine," I croak, still clinging to the gravestone. Why would a girl like me cling to a gravestone? I need a credible explanation, something that skips bullets and hot hitmen. "My celery cleanse makes me a little faint in the afternoons."

"Oh, dear..." the lady tucks a dolly she was probably knitting into her purse and lowers herself on a bench next to my position. Once settled, she digs through her belongings for an extraordinary long time. Like a doofus I watch her glasses, pill bottles, gloves and no less than two handkerchiefs pop out, then disappear back into her purse.

"Oh, dear, dear, why?" she asks me, while sifting through her stuff. "Do you want to look like a stick insect? The fashion nowadays, I don't get it. Ain't nobody needs a woman that won't fill a man's arms."

Finally, she fishes out an energy bar with a triumphant squawk.

"There you go, my dear. Eat, eat, don't be afraid." Her wink is that of a conspirator. "Don't you ever believe men who say that they like skinny women, vodka and Heavy Metal. They all love beer, Beatles and something to hold on to in bed."

"Aha. Th-thanks for the tip."

That wink... Gosh, that wink! It doesn't matter that the old dear's glasses are thicker than a telescope's lenses. Her hawk-eyes must have spotted Scali dragging me away by the scruff of my neck. Maybe she even noticed us diving to the ground in an embrace and made her own conclusions. The earpiece sitting jauntily behind her ear, out of place, explains why she hasn't heard the two muffled shots. Oh, boy, what a dirty mind you have, grandma.

I chew on her energy bar. The sticky goop that binds almonds and dry berries glues my teeth together, giving me an excuse to mumble something agreeable instead of giggling. I chew and smile, smile and chew.

The old lady smiles back and the world is suddenly at peace. She looks a lot like my granny with her wrinkles and tightly curled gray hair. So old, she probably remembers when Rosario Tangorello was a toddler, heh.

Hold on a second.

I suck on my teeth, dislodging a miniature chocolate chip. Sugar from the energy bar hits my bloodstream. All systems go.

Holy crap! This woman is a gift! I stand up straighter. "So, do you know this Tangorello fellow they're burying?"

"Rotten family, those Tangorellos." She pinches her lips before leaning forward me and whispering. "I went to look at Sal to see that he's actually dead. They should've driven a stake through his heart just to make sure, if you know what I mean."

"Wow! Was he that bad?"

The old lady slumps back, closes her eyes and bobs her head to private thoughts.

Scali's father could be a vampire—why not? His coffin could have given Dracula a case of coffin-envy—but I'm definitely not a telepath. "Ma'am? You were saying Sal Tangorello was an evil man?"

"Sal Senior, yes. He went to jail for ten years fora murder."

A shiver passes through me. I was shot at five minutes ago! I could have died...so, yeah, Tangorellos and murder go together.

"The lawyers twisted it so it sounds like something different, but it was a murder. Everyone knows that," the old lady says.

"Uh-huh," I agree. "That's not good. Do you know anything else about this family?" Anything about his bastard son, Matteo Scali, for instance?

"Sal was always prancing about with a new wife, every few years or so."

Hotter, but not quite what I want. Still... "What a jerk!"

"Yes, yes... I always told Sal... Sal, women aren't going out of style. You don't need to keep up with the latest fashion." She sighs, darting her beady eyes at me from behind the thick lenses of her glasses.

I assume a sufficiently scandalized expression, half-expecting her to exclaim, O Tempora, o mores! after her contemporary, Cicero, but she drones on.

"Sal drove one of them to a mental asylum, yes," the old lady says. "Drugs, I suppose, and jealousies. Or maybe she was crazy to start with. A woman must be to touch this awful stuff."

"Absolutely, absolutely..."

"Can't tell you how many times I saw the poor woman wandering around ranting mad and screaming. Sal would send his goons to knock her out and bring her back inside."

"Jerk!"

"Sins don't go unpunished and unnoticed, my dear." She finds the bell tower with her eyes and makes a sign of a cross. The judgmental veneer of her ranting is so old-fashioned, I could smell naphthalene and napalm on her words.

It's fascinating, but it doesn't bring me closer to Scali's villains. "Ah... What of Sal's sons? Did you know them?"

"The two young rascals took after their parents."

Rascals? Did I step into a rehearsal of 'Gone with the Wind'? And young? The two men in the church looked like seniors to me. But my source is way, way older and my grannies also judge everyone's age to the yardstick of their own.

"It figures," I echo. "How young did you say those boys were?"

She gives me an alarmingly sharp look like, I didn't say that. Don't try to gaslight me, my dear. I'm not out of my mind yet.

Before I blush and apologize, she rambles on, "They're in their fifties now. Sal Jr. could be closer to sixty. Let me think for a second."

I can see her think, her mind churning behind the wrinkled forehead, lips moving. But after a few minutes of this frantic brain activity, she returns to the crazy Mrs. Tangorello, not her sons. Amidst the chaff of the old lady's gossip—my lady-friend, not Mamma Tangorello—I pick a few useful kernels.

The younger 'boy's' name is prosaic Johnny, and there're at least three uncles in the mix. So, the first crop of the Tangorello brothers includes Sal, Tony, Paulie and Frank.

Sal has these two sons, Sal Jr., and Jonny. There's also Matteo—never forget Matteo Scali!—born out of the wedlock.

Tony, Paulie and Frank probably have children of their own, but, thankfully, I manage to steer the conversation clear of all these Lukas and Ginas. Good grief, no wonder Scali ended up on the outskirts of the funeral party! There's a wagonload of the Tangorellos. A girl marrying into this family would need a genealogical software to deal with her relatives. Ouch!

The two gentlemen in the church could have been any combination of these five surviving Tangorello men, so without Scali and without my phone to show the lady their picture, I can't positively ID them. However, they seemed far more youthful than Sal Sr., so I suspect they're Scali's half-brothers, not his uncles, so Sal Jr. and Johnny.

By the time I insert my goodbyes between the irrelevant bits of Tangorello saga and leave my newfound Auntie Clara, I conjure an explanation in my mind.

Suppose, after his father's death, Scali gets awarded this Gigliata. Whatever the Gigliata is, his half-brothers want it. But, for whatever reason, the old guard, aka the three surviving Uncles, side with Scali. An internecine struggle in the clan issues.

Hence the shots at the cemetery, hence the running assassin, hence my missing phone.

This sounds like something now streaming on Netflix, rather than a response to my mom's next-phone-call opener, 'How was your Saturday, sweetie? Did you have fun?'

But it seems that I'm an unwitting extra in a mafia drama, with a protagonist born out of wedlock. It's easily the most interesting thing that has happened since I've graduated and had to pursue gainful employment. It's thrilling, damn it.

A heavy sigh escapes my lips. If Mom got a whiff of it...well, she would go on and on. If I put together more job applications for assistant this and junior that, I wouldn't be in the danger's way...blah, blah, blah.

But what if I liked it, Mom? Does it make me crazy?

I sigh again, even heavier. My mafia adventure is over. Matty the Trigger might be dead at this very moment and I'll never know. An invisible hand squeezes my heart at this thought, and it protests in its grip. Scali isn't dead! He can't be. He's just not coming back to save me... or return my precious phone!

The way my Saturday morning and the afternoon went, I can't believe how normal the evening is. Sheila snaps at me non-stop to work faster and stop daydreaming.

"Thank you for being you," I tell my boss with a genuine feeling. Nothing puts distance between me and my bizarre adventure faster than her nagging. It goes well with my resolve to live a virtuous life of boredom.

"Will you stop dropping things?" she replies.

The response hangs off the tip of my tongue. 'I pulled my shoulder when Matty the Trigger dropped me to the ground. You know, when a mafia hitman shot at us.'

Too bad the risk of secret assassination attempts don't feature prominently in my contract. Or I would have asked for a bonus pay.

I sigh, pick the garbage bag I've dropped and stuff it in the back of the van.

"Maybe I will," I say to Sheila. "Maybe I won't. Someone has to keep you on your toes, Boss."

With what I hope passes for an enigmatic smile, I hop into the driver's seat and drive away from the emptied church parking lot with a van full of greenery for the environmentally conscious composting. The orange Lamborghini is nowhere in sight. I cross my fingers that the absence of Matteo's hell-car means what I think it means. He has left already. He is alive and kicking somewhere on Earth, besides my thoughts.

The traffic is stop and go all the way to Santa Monica. After there it's stop, and stop, and stop. There is no better time to navel-gaze than in the rush-hour jam. With my foot on the break and one eye on the bumper of the car in front, I rummage through my Scali-adjacent emotions.

Mostly, I'm confused about the tingling, quivering and oozing from the full body contact with Scali. I've never particularly enjoyed sex with my few lovers, but the what and how and when and why I picked my men before today was totally different from Scali. They were men who jived with me on a social and intellectual level, not my complete opposite. It seems wise to choose men that way, no?

But Scali? He's my total opposite number. And he was so fucking exciting!

He fed me the one-liners that Nietzsche did better a hundred years back. He pierced my overalls with X-ray vision and pontificated how the content was sweeter than the packaging. He nearly killed me with his dangerous driving. And, as a grand finale, he saved me from a sniper's bullet.

Like, wow! So intense, so acrimonious! Wow...

But nothing, absolutely nothing about these screwed up Saturday justifies the growing sense of missing out on one of a kind experience because Scali didn't kiss me. Gosh, I want to know how his kisses feel!

Except, why am I so sure he wanted to? A baseless assumption, I decide, climbing to the eighth floor instead of taking the urine-stinking elevator in my apartment building. My Scali-will-kiss-me fantasy was a product of an adrenaline released during the shooting. It's not as monumentally stupid to daydream about him as wasting time on substituting his carnations, but it's still damn stupid.

I don't care about Matteo Scali, and Matteo Scali doesn't care about me. We'll never see each other again.

Hallelujah?

I step inside the shoe box that the asshole of a real estate developer calls an apartment studio, and... Hallelujah! Matteo Scali hasn't forgotten about me.