Barbara finished with her clothes, also working her tongue in her mouth, trying to clean. Enough with the kiss of disease. Around her the stipples of reflection across the wine had to be streetlamps and headlights, night traffic.
“Mr. Paul,” Jay said. “You had two today. Knock anyone for a loop.”
“But that’s just what I’m, I’m saying.” The boy turned over a limp wrist.
“Hey, big guy. Nothing to be ashamed of. I can’t tell you how often your Mom and your Pop have been knocked for a loop.”
“But, but, o-ordinarily I could never’ve done this second wuh, this second one. That’s what I’m saying. I couldn’t’ve, I couldn’t’ve done this one if, if, if…I couldn’t’ve done it if it wasn’t the last.”
On either side of the family, now, the Marines stood waiting. Nobody was going after any hostiles until the civilians were secure, and Barbara figured she’d find their CO. first, the ranking officer on the scene. Also the police bided their time, though she could hear the click of the cuffs as one of them shifted his grip on Fond.
“It’s not,” the ex-miracolino was saying, “it never happens i-in words. If Romy were here, she’d uh, she’d understand. It doesn’t a-add up to like, words and a story.”
“I hear you,” Jay was saying. “If today, these healings, if they were ordinary, hey, two of them, there’s no way. I hear that.”
“I could do it because this, this with Mom, it was the last.”
Barbara noticed the boy’s gesture, effeminate again. He stood hipshot, pouting, looking more and more like a younger Aurora.
John Junior broke in. “Hey! Hey my man, the P-man!” He raised a long finger. “I got it, the laws of the universe. I got how this worked.”
The big teen whipped his finger around the oval of family faces. “Check it out, you completed a circle. Check it out, the first was Pop, the last was Mom. A circle, my little big man, that’s how it worked.”
“Or think of it this way,” Chris said.
“Oh, here we go,” JJ said. “Alternative theory.”
“Now, Junior. Try to think for a minute.”
“See, my brother never learned, he’s the alternative theory.”
“Try to think of it this way, okay Junior, and then we’ll all get down on our hands and knees and look around for your I.Q.”
“You guys,” said Paul.
“Well, think of this — five children, five episodes.”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Dora. “Sylvia, count. One was Papa, two was that girl, that Romy, and then—”
“Five equals five.” Chris poked his glasses at Paul. “Could be, Mistah P.”
“Hey,” Jay said. “Save it for Dr. DiPio.”
The mother liked both theories, actually. Either of them made more sense than most of what she’d had in mind back when she’d come to Naples.
“Whatever,” said her middle child. “It’s not going to h-happen again.”
John Junior was nodding. “Five children, five episodes.”
“Good, bro. Good boy. Now for our next act…”
The girls were looking from brother to brother, spinning, delighted. Barbara had to move the other way, towards the exit, the uncertain lights of the city above.