Daddy's Princess

“And the wine, Ginny?” asked uncle Joey.

The waiter had topped Giana’s glass almost to the rim.  She held the bowl now like a skull in her palm as she swirl its dark red contents and breathed a heavy whiff of cherries and oak.  “Fine,” she sighed, and downed the rest.  “Just like the bread, and the cutlery, and the…”

“You ever seen an olive this big?” chimed uncle Pauly, waving the thing around on the end of a toothpick.  “I swear it’s the Hindenburg reborn as an appetizer.”

“It’s almost the size of that mole on your chin,” jeered uncle Frank.

“And twice as big as your prick!” retorted the other.

“Hey, hey, hey!”  Giana’s father spread his hands before him like a preacher, and the commotion fell to silence.  “Let’s keep it classy,” he wheezed between great puffs from a cigar equally enormous.

“Right, Pops,” said Swift Lou.  “It’s a special occasion, ain’t it?”

Giana groaned.  He was the worst of them, that Lou.  Worse than her father, the Don.  Worse than her hundred hair-slicked, wise-talking, cologne-soaked uncles.  Worse than the worst movie cliché.  Worse than an impersonator of one.

She sank another glass of shiraz viogner.  Is this what they do every time someone gets “made”?  Sit around and smoke and laugh like idiots? Which raised another point: why had her father insisted upon her attendance?

The answer presented itself immediately.  Giana’s father slid his chair back, rose and tapped his glass decorously, and the clamour of conversation fell silent once more.  He began a rambling speech about Swift Lou, and how he’d acquired the name in a bungled robbery.  Every face wrinkled with laughter but her own.  Glasses were raised and ribs were elbowed.  It wasn’t until halfway through this raucous address that two words caught her ear:

“My Princess....  My little girl.”  He was looking at her now, eyes bright with drink and a father’s mushy pride.  “My little angle Giana.”

Oh God!  Her heart stopped.  She felt her cheeks burning.  Swift Lou was staring at her too.  Why hadn’t she pieced it together before?  Her mother had always said, “Isn’t he quite the charmer?”

Of course, she’d retorted a stern and immediate, “Ew.  No.”

“Still,” her mother had pressed, “he does well for himself, and that’s something a woman has to consider.”

So now, as the whole ceremony had turned to her, she found herself increasingly in need of another glass of wine and a stern talking-to with her father, (who continued to praise both her and the man for whom she were intended.)

“And that’s why as we bring you into our family, Louis, we want to bring you into our family.”  This double entendre earned another round of roaring laughter.

Giana had half the mind to storm out in a fuss.  That would show them.  But she drew one deep breath, simmered a while, and remained.  After the announcement, came many clanging glasses and pats on the back.  They seemed to forget she was sitting there.

Then the Don leaned in his chair to whisper to his daughter, “You’ll be happy with Lou.  I know you will.”

“And when did I ever give you the impression that it would be ok for you to....”

“And!” he slurred, swaying a little now and lighting another cigar.  “I know he’s done good in his work.  You don’t know too much about what goes on, but he did good with the Russians.  Giana, if you only knew, how close we came to war with those Ruskies.  But Swift Lou, he’s got a diplomatic touch to him.  A real Henry Kissinger, if you know my meaning.”

“Dad,” she moaned.  “You’re not listening!  I’m not marrying....”

“He doesn’t have any enemies.  Not one!  You ever heard of a feller who has no one that wants to do him in?  It’s unheard of, sweetie.  Unheard of!”  He winced like he might begin crying, but found the composure to interrupt her again.  “I’m just thinking of your future.  I’m an old man and I have an empire, and I have to think of these things.  And I have to... I have to....”

“This is the 21st century, and you haven’t even consulted me once...!”

You’re my Princess,” he croaked.  “And now you finally have a Prince.”

He seemed not to have grasped a word she had said.  She fumbled for the wine, only to find the bottle empty.  Where is that waiter?

Eventually the Don got up to relieve himself, and stumbled away for the restroom.

Swift Lou caught her eye across the table.  “Ginny, baby.  Don’t worry, I’m a class act.  I’ll be real gentle on our honeymoon.  Promise.”  He finished with another sordid wink. 

She cast her eyes around the restaurant, in the hope of someone to come to her defence, but they were all too drunk and rowdy to have noticed the remark or to have cared.  She found only the waiter, slipping insidiously in the background to deliver another bottle of dry red.  She slid from her chair, snatched the bottle and a candlestick from the table, and hurried outside.

#

“What’s going on!” cried the Don, as he staggered up the steps into the street.  All the family’s cars were waiting, all finely-polished and neatly parked.  Except for Lou’s, which burned in a blaze that lit the street like 4th of July fireworks.  “What happened!”

Everyone seemed to shuffle around in a daze of confusion, except for Ginny.  She was holding herself and shaking.  The tears brought the mascara down her cheeks in dark rivers.  “It was some guys in suits,” she wailed.  “I don’t know who.  Russian looking guys.  They said something about getting even!”

The Don’s thick, gorilla-fists tensed into tight balls.  He stared at Swift Lou, who was throwing his arms up hysterically at the sight of his smouldering automobile.

“You!” the Don roared through gritted teeth.  “We need to talk.”

WC: 988