Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-four
Dusk fell on Williamsburg as Iris walked to the Giglio festival surrounded by a phalanx of Gabe’s family and friends.
Gabe was holding her hand, he and his cousin Matthew wearing their lifters’ uniform of purple tanks and bandanas; with them were Angie and Aunt Donna, and two friends from the hot shop, Pax, a nonbinary glassblower Iris had met once before, and Scotty, their skinny roommate.
North Eighth Street was crammed with old-school carnival rides, game booths, and food stands.
The streetlights were decorated with giant tinsel daisies, their sparkly heads bent toward the street.
They passed a Tilt-A-Whirl, Cuzzin Vinny’s Sausage Stand, and a water gun game called Machine Gun Fun—something she didn’t particularly want to think about at a packed public event.
Iris wanted to enjoy the sights and sounds, but she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder.
Being out in a crowd made her feel exposed and vulnerable.
She kept flashing back to her ransacked apartment and Wolff’s threats over dinner.
Who had he sent to break into her place?
Were they following her still? She didn’t know who she was looking out for—would it be Esdras with his cauliflower ear, or some hired thug she wouldn’t recognize?
All she knew was she needed to remain vigilant.
They turned onto the main drag of Havemeyer Street, and Iris saw the Giglio. Looming above the throngs packing the street spiked an enormous steel tower, even taller than the buildings beside it.
Iris looked at Gabe in disbelief. “ That’s what you’re lifting?”
“Yup, that’s the Giglio!”
Matthew jumped up and down. “Eighty feet tall and four tons, lifted by a hundred men!”
“Gabe, this is insane.”
“They’ve done it every year since 1887, and nobody’s died yet—I don’t think.” Gabe laughed. “The community coming together to do the impossible is the whole thing. It’s a tradition that gets passed down, families participate in it for generations.”
“Most everybody from the neighborhood has moved out, upstate, Jersey, lots in Florida, but they all come home every year for the Giglio. I see classmates from elementary school.” Then Angie’s expression turned wistful. “I guess I’ll travel in for it next year, if I sell the apartment.”
“We’ll always do it, Ma, wherever we are,” Gabe said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “All right, me and Matthew better get over there. We’ll catch up with you guys after the fireworks.” He leaned his head close to Iris. “You still feeling good?”
“Of course. Go. Be safe!” Iris didn’t want to let on to the others that she was out of sorts.
Donna squeezed her son. “Have fun, and stay next to Gabe!”
Gabe bent and kissed Iris, and he and Matthew said their goodbyes to the group before disappearing into the crowd.
Iris felt more anxious already.
Donna grabbed her arm. “You like sausage and peppers?”
—
It was hard to spot who seemed out of place in a sea of people this diverse.
Many were Italian Americans: the old-timers in bowling shirts that draped over round bellies, their spotted heads topped with fedoras, Panama hats, and trecolore berrettos with pom-poms on the top; elderly ladies shuffling in sandals or pushed in wheelchairs by dutiful sons, wearing sleeveless housedresses that exposed their arms, soft as ricotta, and crepey, sun-freckled bosoms; and the younger generation with tan skin, French manicures, curb chains and crucifixes, and Giglio tanks and tees from past years.
But they were mixed with Brooklyn hipsters, rich kids of Williamsburg, and probably the largest group: families, of every race and ethnicity—Iris heard Spanish, Italian, and Russian spoken to many a wailing or giggling child.
Iris made eye contact with a little boy about two years old sitting on his father’s shoulders, playing the bongos on his dad’s head.
The boy had dark hair in a bowl cut, cherubic cheeks rosy as a summer peach, and enormous brown eyes that tilted down like a puppy’s.
She wondered if she and Gabe had a child, would he look like that?
Someone pushed her, and Iris snapped her head to see a man in a Mets cap, but she didn’t catch his face. He was already moving away, but the contact gave her a bad feeling.
—
They made their way to the front of the crowd nearer to the Giglio.
Iris could see the tower was a crude metal structure decorated with religious figures and scenes of the myth behind the festival, including, Donna pointed out, the gigli, Italian for lilies, that gave the tower its name.
The lifters had gathered to form lines underneath the wide, flat base undergirded by foam-wrapped I beams; Iris got on her tiptoes to see if she could spot Gabe among them, but there were too many.
The lifters were men of all ages, from eighteen to over seventy, all body types and ethnicities.
The only uniform traits were their purple Giglio T-shirts and purple bandannas catching their sweat.
Soon, men with brass instruments, drums, and a microphone mounted the Giglio’s base and began to set up music stands.
Pax snorted. “No way! The whole band stands on the tower?”
“And the Monsignor,” Angie added, waving to someone she knew.
The Monsignor mounted the Giglio stage with a microphone and, in a thick Brooklyn accent, welcomed the crowd.
His reedy voice amplified through funnel-shaped loudspeakers on either side of the Giglio at an uncomfortable volume.
He ended his address by gleefully shouting into the microphone, “Maestro, musica!”
The brass band broke out into the tarantella and suddenly the Giglio lurched off the ground with the grace of Frankenstein’s monster and began to “dance” as the men beneath it bounced it up and down.
Eight stories over their heads, the robes of San Paolino shook with the music.
Iris could see how the lifters carried the structure literally on their backs, with their right shoulder beneath the metal beam undergirding the tower and their left arm resting on the left shoulder of the man in front of them, so that all the lifters formed one cooperative human organism, exactly as Gabe said, banding together to do the impossible.
Then a capo, a designated old-timer on the street, shouted directions at the lifters to coordinate their moves, and the entire structure began to creep down the street and tilt toward the people watching.
Iris was surprised as those around her cheered and gleefully walked backward out of the way, giving the looming four-ton structure a minimal berth to advance.
But tonight, what others found thrilling, Iris found frightening.
The dense crowd of adults and children, distracted by food and friends, jostling her, crisscrossing the street, making her feel claustrophobic as she retreated.
The capo yelling, the horn players blaring, the lifters grimacing with exertion as they struggled to keep their footing, and most of all the vertiginous tower tilting perilously over the onlookers.
And everywhere, Iris looked for the guy in the Mets cap.
By the time the Giglio had completed its journey up and down Havemeyer Street, night had fallen.
The Giglio, now lit in Technicolor tones, pierced the Prussian blue sky.
The lilies were cast in citron yellow and lime green, the Virgin Mother and Christ in warm tangerine, and the face of San Paolino at the very top glowed an eerie icy blue.
The capo on the ground shouted his final instructions to the lifters in a voice so hoarse he was unintelligible, and they lowered the massive structure with arduous synchronicity. At last the Giglio had come to rest.
There was a great round of cheers and applause, and the Monsignor announced it was time for the fireworks and began a countdown as everyone in the crowd joined in.
“Will Gabe come find us?” Iris shouted to Angie.
“After the fireworks.”
“Eight…seven…”
Every face and smartphone turned toward the sky above the church, a starless black velvet behind a Lite-Brite yellow cross strung from the phone lines.
“Four…three…two…”
Iris’s heart lurched when the first fireworks exploded off the church roof, which at only three stories tall made them as loud and close as Iris had ever seen.
The singer and band played “God Bless America” as the fireworks started out slow, sparklers loping into the sky and sailing back down, making arches of red, green, and white, then shooting with quickening tempo, until it sounded like a cascading firing squad, an aggressive rat-a-tat-tat, searing the smoke-streaked sky.
Only Iris wasn’t looking at the fireworks display.
She instead scanned the crowd, reading each shiny face lit like a camera flash.
Her growing sense of unease had peaked, and Iris felt viscerally certain she was being watched.
She scanned for a Mets cap, but there were all kinds of caps in the crowd, mostly New York teams, and all looked equally innocent and guilty.
Ultimately, Iris looked for anyone who was looking at her, but it was hard from ground level.
The church steps would give her better sight lines, but she would feel too visible and exposed herself.
She needed cover, she needed protection, she needed a sanctuary.
Iris signaled to Angie that she would be back, mounted the church steps, and entered the vestibule.
She passed the painted plaster statue of La Pietà, Mary’s mournful gaze while cradling her grown son in His final moments of suffering—a tender moment cast in a lurid hue, lit from beneath by candy-apple-red electronic votives.
Iris quickly scaled the small winding staircase to the second-floor landing.
The fireworks thundered even louder, as they were being shot off the roof just overhead, and she could feel the sound in her chest. Every explosion shook the walls, and a speaker blaring the bandleader’s singing was mounted outside one of the windows, his voice distorted by the proximity: “My home sweet home…”
The landing was a mezzanine hallway between two locked doors, but the small stained-glass windows, cracked open for ventilation, provided just the vantage point she needed.
She searched the crowd methodically, beginning in the upper left quadrant of the far sidewalk in front of the Knights of Columbus and moving right to the zeppole stand, left and right, row by row.
She paid special attention to every man in a ball cap, locating every Mets cap, but none of the wearers were Esdras or anyone doing anything other than eating, drinking a beer, or watching the fireworks with everyone else.
She spotted Gabe and Matthew side by side in front of the Giglio.
Their faces were angled to the fireworks, with Matthew’s head resting on Gabe’s shoulder.
Then Iris saw him—a man wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket.
It was already dark and still well above eighty degrees, why was he dressed like that?
He cut across the crowd with purpose, paying no attention to the fireworks.
She swiveled her head to locate Angie and Donna.
It looked like the man in sunglasses was headed straight for them.
Iris’s heart began to beat faster. Wolff wouldn’t do anything to them, would he? Could he even know of their connection? But then, he had met Gabe, and Wolff had showed no hesitation using family against his enemies or even friends.
She retrieved her phone from her pocket and frantically scrolled through her texts with Gabe, trying to find Angie’s number, cursing herself for not making her a contact. The man in sunglasses was getting closer, his right hand shoved in his jacket pocket.
Iris called the number and listened to it ring, but Angie had no reaction down on the street. “C’mon, pick up, pick up. ” The fireworks boomed overhead, the music, the chatter, the oohs and ahhs , Angie couldn’t hear it ring. The call went to voicemail.
Someone clasped her shoulder, and Iris spun around, dropping her phone.