In the summer of 1976, Darlene Chase found herself in downtown Norfolk being harassed by the federal prosecutor. The humidity was one of many things closing in on her, but she grit her teeth and rolled her eyes. They were at a stalemate. The unrelenting figure in the corner leaned against his desk with his arms folded. Watching her, trying to scare her, he had her trapped. He laid out pictures of her cavorting with the mob. She swallowed hard, but wasn't about to give in. She could play this game and she could win. After all, Big Sal was waiting for her.
Maybe he would have champagne waiting for her, she imagined, hoping to convince herself of his kindness, even though her memories said otherwise. After all, he was a mob boss. He promised her a life out of poverty. She wasn't about to lose that and he knew that meant that her loyalty was his. Besides, this meeting was pointless. She might as well as go home and take a tan.
As if she wasn't there being interrogated, she casually put her hair into a ponytail and primped, trying to make the best of it. She didn't find much relief from the heat. Sweat beaded on the loose hairs on the back of her long neck, she fanned herself with her file. It had her name in big letters as if she were important. Who knows what it contained? She wasn't a saint, but certainly not a criminal. Not really, in her mind.
Feeling suddenly paranoid, she wondered who else was watching her. Maybe a bunch of these scoundrels watched from behind the mirror. When she turned to look behind her, Ed Giovanni seized the file and deposited it out of reach as if she were a child. She shrugged. Keep it cool, she told herself, reaching for her lighter. She smoked yet another cigarette, taking long, slow puffs to pass the time. He watched, unamused, by her defiance.
"Well?" he loudly asked as if she were deaf, grabbing the table and shaking it. A few things rattled and tumbled over, such as his cup of coffee. She watched him take a lengthy breath, probably planning a different approach. Then he asked, "Aren't you thirsty? Can I get you something to drink?"
Offering a drink was a well-known ploy for obtaining fingerprints. That's why police and lawyers always eagerly provided a glass as if being a considerate hostess. They couldn't care less if I wilted, she sighed. Darlene shook her head and filled her mind with the latest antics from a sitcom. She almost laughed. Maybe he thought she was an idiot. But it was useful to occupy her mind, something she was familiar with doing at her dancing job. She had to put up with a lot of perverse men before Big Sal Bonfiglio took a liking to her. But associating with him had landed her here in hot water.
Still studying her, the attorney paced around with a new coffee cup, which he had refilled twice. She hoped it was decaf. He seemed edgy, maybe because he was getting nowhere in his personal pursuit of one of the more reclusive crime families from New York, who started vacationing at the quiet Virginia beaches to avoid the Law and its scrutiny.
It was going to be a long day, she told herself. She checked her manicured nails for chips and pretended to be lost in thought. By keeping her there for hours, the prosecutor had only succeeded in annoying the hell out of her. He thought he was so damn smart. In his dark suit, he lorded over her like a badass. He demanded too much. Information was dangerous, and he knew it. Didn't he care that he risked her life? At least he was good-looking, she mused while fixing her bra which was riding up. She repositioned her large breasts into double-D cups and wiped off her sweat with his notepad. He gawked in disbelief but couldn't speak. His curly hair and dauntless face made him look adorable – except he was the enemy. He oozed authority, but it could mean the end for her if she snitched. She wasn't ready to die. Besides, she captured more dangerous men than him between her legs, and they usually fell to the ground before her, sometimes literally.
Not giving in, she sat back in her chair and crossed her extensive legs. Her floral skirt barely fell to mid-thigh, a point he didn't fail to notice. That baby-blue top hugged her plentiful chest, and her bra was slightly visible through the fabric. She knew her sassiness went from her bare-toed shoes to her fiery hair to the upturned nose and chin. She could tell he needed to show his dominance if he wanted to break her. She wasn't about to make it easy for him.
He got in her face and said, "You must want to go to jail."
"My only crime is going on a date with a man with the last name of Bonfiglio. Love is not a felony, honey. You just want to be Mr. Big Deal Prosecutor."
"I'm warning you! Tell me where your husband is!"
"That is your job. I came to you for help! He has been missing for two years. What have you done to find him?"
"I will ask you one more time. Where is Bob Chase?"
"And I will tell you once again, you bastard," she snarled. "Bob had a gambling problem. He owed money. He either ran or got caught by the people he owed. I've been waiting two years for you to do something about it. It's been hard. I barely make it. And, yes, I was asked out on a date, so I went. Big Deal!"
She shrugged and went back to her cigarette, which he knocked out of her hand. She bent over to snatch it from the tiled floor, but he quickly grabbed her shirt and pulled her to his eye level. She could feel his breath against her lacquered lips, causing her mouth to open in alarm. Without warning, he planted a deep kiss on her, and she responded to his passion with a wave of pent-up feelings and confusion. Her hands slid through his dark curls, moving down to caress his peppery scented neck as their tongues entwined. That encouragement made him even more ravenous for this forbidden aspiration. He tugged off her tank top and teeny bra to greedily eye the breasts that had taunted him since she arrived. Every inch of her creamy flesh with those blood-encrusted jewels from mafia crimes made his mind reel, but the sight of those natural breasts and how they felt in his hands made him at her mercy. He was intoxicated by her – despite what his ethics warned. As for her, she only felt power when men desired her.
He knelt down, slipped off her shoes and kissed her painted toes before working his way up to her inhumanly long legs, which quivered at their core. He quickly sought access and settled between them. She held him tight to her, digging sharp nails into his back, happily marking him an adulterer. He fell victim to her charms and she hoped he would now remain her ally. That is how she played this game. She naively felt she had won.
However, this man of the law enjoyed the most intimate depths of her just hours after a mob boss did. Maybe their seed met and collided on its way to making her a child – something that her missing husband Bob could never give her. Good and evil, morality and immorality, finity and the desire for infinity grappled for conquest. And soon something would become of it, something beautiful.
After he fell exhausted on top of her, she pushed him aside and smiled. She dressed without speaking to him and then strolled out of the interrogation room and into the awaiting limo, keeping her little secret to herself. She reached into her purse, fixed her lipstick, and daydreamed about this lawyer. But who was she kidding? He would never love her. No one ever did. She only allowed herself one moment of sorrow over that. With a shrug of her shoulders, she pulled out her purse again and popped some pills.
Nine months later a girl was born, and Darlene sent a picture to both Big Sal Bonfiglio and federal prosecutor, Ed Giovanni. Though the irritable child offered little clue as to her origin, Darlene saw her otherworldly eyes and her fiery highlights playing against the darker tones. But what did it matter? Both men supported the child financially, and since Ed Giovanni was married, he didn't let it slip that the child could be his. Big Sal never cared otherwise. Something about the strange girl softened his heart and he treated her like his own.
"My Finity," Darlene said with a sigh, holding the intense child who hated affection. "You could one day be the end of me or an end to a horrible family that took away my husband."
The child barely noticed her. She sometimes preferred the mobile toy over her crib to human faces, from which she routinely turned away. Darlene struggled to bond with this difficult child and with the desire to hide her away from a cruel world. She home-schooled her, leaving her in solitude while others went to public school. Because she didn't have much of an education herself, she used free homeschooling resources. To her relief, the kid had no problem learning.
As she grew, Finity played in the dandelion fields outside of their apartment, but she was rarely alone as her mother had hoped. Finity would regularly put on her best dress, a navy-blue one that made her feel so pretty, and await her usual guests. Though she didn't like most people, she started to like the "shadows," because they were friendly, though some of them were quite grim.
Footsteps sounded nearby.
A large man with a double chin and black hair greeted the girl with a smile. He was dressed casually but held the air of a king. Although of average height, he towered over her, so he sat down beside her and chatted, saying the weather was nice. They had pretend tea and she listened to tales of his boyhood in Italy, rarely speaking in return. In a dangerous world, the little girl's silence endeared her to him. Unlike his other kin, he had no fear that she would betray him. She was the only good thing he had, despite a marriage to Janine, whom he rarely saw, and a couple of kids busy with teenage lives. She was his treasure, separate from his brutal existence. And he hoped to keep it that way for as long as possible.
Though Darlene thought Finity merely had invisible friends at her tea parties, because Finity often spoke of an unfamiliar character named Emmanuel or "Manny," and someone called Big Daddy, who came to see heer, no one knew for sure if these individuals were real. As a high-functioning autistic, Finity lived in her own world half the time playing repetitious games. A tiny child, she often looked up to block the sun from her eyes to see the shadowy form of a man who called her Princess, or to see the emotionless string of men who came after Big Daddy left to get information about him, all of whom brought her little cakes and trinkets like offerings to the doomed.
Finity actually preferred the emotionless men in their pressed suits. They seemed so robotic. Animated people stressed her. These serious men calmed her. They seemed less real. They never even smiled.
Maybe due to the lack of a real father, her arms would curl around Manny's neck when he tried to leave and she would cling to him. He was as non-threatening as sunshine. Though affection usually troubled her, she didn't see this bonding as anything different than embracing her lifeless stuffed animals. Besides, Manny was also bothered by friendliness, but he didn't have the heart to push the child away. The dark-featured man crept back to the shade. He just happened to be one of the many specters that visited the edge of her life.
Ed, or Eddie, as Finity knew him, sometimes visited late at night, bringing furs to Darlene or harassing her about "the family," whoever they were. He didn't pay Finity much attention, just stared at her features, as if trying to figure something out. He made her uneasy, especially when he fought with her mother. They had a turbulent love-hate relationship that occasionally left her mother battered and crumpled on the floor crying. Finity covered her ears and rocked back and forth, trying to mentally escape. Sometimes she'd band on the walls when she wanted him to stop.
When Finity mentioned this to Big Daddy one day, Eddie stopped coming around. Darlene was devastated and stayed in bed for days with the heavy quilt drawn up around her. Her reddish hair hung in matted clumps and her beautiful face looked haggard. That's when Finity asked what was wrong. Her Mom said that Ed Giovanni probably went to stay with Bob Chase in his underwater home.
"Don't worry. Maybe one day you will go there too," Finity innocently replied, not knowing what that really meant.
Darlene sobbed.
Since Bob's body was never found, Darlene was still legally married until Bob was declared legally dead, so listed him as Finity's father on her birth certificate. She often talked to Finity about her "Dad," whom the child assumed was Bob Chase, a former garbage collector from New York. He was said to be a kind man with a comical streak. He had dark eyes, a crooked nose, and small lips unlike her. She kept his picture by her lace pillow. Finity wanted a real dad so much, so she clung to his image. Darlene never corrected her, so the truth sank away like discarded bones.
With Eddie gone, Darlene became an alcoholic. She stumbled around the spacious apartment feeling sorry for herself. Big Sal had too many girlfriends, and he rarely saw Darlene after the baby was born, except to see the kid and bring her money. Maybe he thought her stripper body changed too much. Sometimes she would stare in the mirror, wondering where her looks had gone. And the poor child was outside more and more waiting for someone, anyone to care for her, especially the shadowy men. They took more and more to the background the older she got, but she could still feel them watching her. Like ominous shapes they were waiting and wondering, just like her, about what fate had in store for this loose end named Finity, who didn't have much of a beginning and was, perhaps only a harbinger for a violent end.