Your skin can break apart in an assisted living facility, it can break apart like tissue paper and fill with this stuff called slough. It's this moist, stringy tissue that forms in the deep craters of broken skin when the cunts in pink scrubs leave you sitting too long in a heap of your own shit in some wheelchair somewhere.

They're called pressure ulcers and besides the rashes and infections you can get from being left for hours in a pile of your own mess, they are the most dangerous thing that can be done to you in one of those places. Cuz when the skin at the base of your spine or on your hip or in your armpit tears apart, you can get these blood-filled blisters that fill with pus and if they ain't drained right, you get this thing called eschar, which is this black dead tissue that feels like shoe leather.

And lemme tell ya, when eschar ain't treated, you're as good as fucked. Take it from someone who knows. Necrotic tissue ain't no joke. I know cuz I seen it happen to Angelo Spadavecchia, the Big Sword. Not so big anymore ya ask me, but don't let him hear you say that, capeesh?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, ya might say. Cuz the thing is, no man could take Angelo down, but biology's a funny thing, you know? Like how parasitic infections can cause even the biggest, strongest, meanest bravaccio to lose control of his bowels, say, or double over in abdominal pain. Even some seven-foot-tall giamoke can get himself got by acute enteric infections like Shigellosis.

That's why I wouldn't tell my worst enemy to eat shit. Cuz I know what it does.

But nobody was telling Angelo nothing. Cuz Angelo was the scariest wop to ever stomp around Brooklyn, with blood pouring from his gums and oil leaking off his head, you follow me?

Angelo terrorized Bensonhurst like nobody I ain't ever seen or heard of before. But as skeeved and scantari as everyone was when Angelo was in the picture, not a soul would've wished for him to go away. Because Angelo was blood loyal, nothing meant more to him than his family, his ma and his pops... and his sister.

Angelo Spadavecchia had a sister, by God, and we all kissed the sidewalk that she stepped on. Angelo had a sister like you wouldn't believe. Fiammetta Francesca Spadavecchia was a name that left every gavone from here to Hamilton Beach flushed and arrapato.

She had wavy black hair, thick and lustrous, and she had an hourglass figure that kept the guys from the neighborhood walking on a slouch and a swivel. Her almond eyes scorched you with so much as a glance. And if she smiled at you it was like the angels had come down from Heaven with their faces full of eyes and personally bathed you in blessed light. I'm talkin' a knockout, you understand what I'm sayin' to you?

Fiammetta Spadavecchia was a paragon among schifosa zoccola, nahwadimean? One look at her coolie was enough to make every other hop-haired sgualdrina look like straight treesh.

And that was the thing, ya see. Not a single guy in Bensonhurst, not even Paul the Fag or Billy the Retard, could look you dead in your eye and tell you with a straight face that they weren't obsessed with Fiammetta. We all had the voglia for that girl. And unfortunate for us, we wasn't the only ones.

Angelo Spadavecchia, the big sword, he loved his sister. And he let you know it the minute he sized you up. If he saw you so much as sniff the air near his sister breathed, he would rip you a new asshole, just so he'd have something to kick when he was done breaking you in two and stomping on whatever brains leaked out your fucking ears.

One time this simple prick from Canarsie came out to visit some of his friends from the 4-H Club and they're playin' wiffle ball or some shit in the park, and Fiammetta comes walkin' past and this bein' the hottest summer since Davey Berkowitz slaughtered all those Veronicas, this simple prick wipes his sweaty grill on the front of his T-shirt and asks Fiammetta if he can take a pull off her water bottle. And nobody knows where Angelo came from cuz he wasn't there when the kids was playin' ball, but it was like he materialized out of thin air. Like he appeared like this kid's shadow at the mere sound of someone talking to sister. And that was it.

This skinny nothing of a kid, he didn't even have a chance to say anything in his defense, didn't even know what was happening to him cuz Angelo had him up in the air before he even knew he was in trouble, and Angelo hoists him up like it's nothing and brings him down on his knee, and I swear to you on my sister's pasticceria, you could hear the crunch of this kid's ribs from three blocks away. But Angelo wasn't done. This kid is Gumby now, but Angelo takes him in one hand and drives his face through a bicycle rack and bends his arms and legs in two different directions until this kid looked like some twisted fried thing you'd buy on the Coney Island boardwalk. All cuz he wanted a lil sip.

Now, I think you can well imagine we all wanted a sip off Fiammetta, but not one of us would have the cajones to admit it to Angelo Spadavecchia. And those that did... well, let's just say there's worse things you can do to a man than give him the mannagia la mort. Angelo didn't have to clip some gavone for coming on to Fiammetta cuz let's just say he knew you could hurt 'em more if you took things from 'em and left them wishin' they was dead.

Trust me when I say, most of the time, Angelo didn't have to lift a finger. Cuz the second the boys saw him enter the room, they was on their best behavior. I know cuz I was the closest thing the bravaccio had to a goombah. I was his friend if you can call it that, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't hate Angelo just as much as the rest of the cats from Little Sicily.

If I'm bein' honest, Angelo really rubbed me the wrong way. Especially the way no one could ever feel safe with him around. Like last year when he got back from “college” after doing a bid for tearing stereos out of cars over in Dyker Heights.

Everything was good and peaceful on the street. The Donnas was out in their hot pants and their crop tops, lathering themselves in tanning oil and soaking up the sun, and the boys was playin' skelly and little kids was makin' art with chalk on the sidewalk. Everyone was having a blast, telling dirty jokes and waxin' philosophical about pussy.

But then Angelo comes storming down the street screaming, “Fiammetta,” and everyone started scattering and the boys went silent and everyone's giving Angelo the fish-eye, and you wanna know the rub? No one even seemed to notice I was right by his side cuz I was the one that had picked up the paisan from Brooklyn Metro Detention.

All the pussy-ass fanooks who'd been talking about getting in Fiammetta's panties while Angelo was away, they're all Audi, and the Donnas are all slipping over themselves to ask Angelo about his new tattoo, the one of the black reaper with a scythe on the back of Angelo's neck, and not one of them notices me standing right next to the big mound of stupid. All anyone cared about was basking in Angelo's brute strength.

Then this one kid, Danny Casaro, brave little son of a bitch, he sidles up beside Angelo and slaps him on the back.

“Angelo, what it is, baby? Haven't seen you in a minute. Thought you was gone for good, compare. Deadass. Beginning to think I was gonna have to keep Fefe warm for ya. Har har!”

Fefe, that's what the guys called Fiammetta when Angelo wasn't usually within earshot. Lil Fefe with the thick 'n' beefy. Everyone lusted after Fefe's ass, whether they copped to it or not.

Angelo didn't say nothing. Only balled his hands into fists so tight his bones crackled. And then his hand shot out and grabbed Danny Casaro by the bawls and whispered in his face, calm as hell, “You couldn't warm a dead body with that puny flap of shit. I see you try it on my side of the block, I'll snap it off and feed it to ya mutha.”

And then he released the kid's nuts and watched calmly as the kid began to sob and snot all over himself. Angelo laughed in his face. Danny didn't know what to do, so he stopped his crying. That made Angelo nervous, so he stopped laughing and stared him down, stone-faced. Then he raised the back of his hand in the air like he was about to dab and said, “Git the fuck outta my airspace!”

Danny bolted so quick he caught a Stop sign in the face and ended up in a coma and while he was bleeding out of his forehead flap on the pavement, Angelo cracked a smile and headed up the street to find his sister.

That was an average day in Little Sicily when Angelo was still standing. And that's what life was like for the rest of us with the Spadavecchias reunited with their “little prince.”

Angelo had returned to Bensonhurst for two reasons—to take his place in the local social club and to love on his sister. And the social club didn't open for another two hours. That gave him just the window he needed to lavish his gifts upon Fiammetta.

Believe me when I tell you, Fiammetta Spadavecchia wasn't just some piece of ass. She was the whole damn pizzaiola. She had cherry toes that would tempt a monk, legs that stretched on for miles, and a coolie that defied weights and measures. I'm talkin' a world-class ass that the Guiness Book couldn't contain.

On that sweltering day when Angelo came home, Fiammetta was wearing a black-on-yellow sundress that hugged the life outta that poodle, and she was bringing a Slim to her deep berry lips. She held the cigarette between two fingers and every guy within spitting distance was envious of it.