Sit on the fire escape, with a cup of coffee, and watch her paint, through the open window. Brown black, blue black, green black. She’s lost in it. Listening to a voice only she can hear. Every once in a while holding the brush in her teeth, moving the paint with her hands, as though the brush isn’t enough to express the darkness, the stillness, inside her. She never paints daylight scenes. Says there’s no depth to it. Says that in darkness we expose ourselves.
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He kisses me, maybe to stop me from saying anything. What could either of us say anyways? There are things that just are because they are. Fate. They can’t be explained, and maybe shouldn’t be. So he kisses me. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet. It’s not complicated.
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She’s safe. I’d say Matty and I were even. If I was keeping score. I always knew that Matty felt he owed me, after I took that shot for him in Montana. Never realized how far he would be willing to go to make it right. How hard he was willing to push back, just to go clean. Maybe he can’t help it that he takes advantage, it’s not like I’ve ever called him on it.
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They’d been coming in, in one’s and two’s, for the back half of the night. It had been let slip that all of us would be here, alone. That I would be here. Seems that I was the clincher, it being the second time I had pulled a shotgun in the bar, against these guys.
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Matty and Sal are playing a fucking dangerous game with these two. The Novo brothers, Tony and Nick. A team of assassins. Not really tied to any particular family. Will work for whoever will pay them. It’s too late to get Christine out now. Too late by far. Any attempt to run will just draw their attention all the more. The last thing you want is these two to notice you, to know that you’re afraid of them. All that’s left is to see this through.
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Can’t help but be happy with myself, her legs shaking just a little, as I watch her hips sway, making her way to the bathroom. I’ll join her in a minute. I’m a little shaky myself. At this pace we’ll both be dead in a week. Not a bad way to go.
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His lips trace a line down my neck, making all the tiny hairs stand on end. Sending a tingle down my spine into the pit of my belly. Wet.
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They nabbed us coming out of the bank. Fucking dirty cops. We had gone with Sal, no walking anywhere for a while. Fortunately I left the gun in the car. Sal left, the second he saw the cops. Good. I’m used to this. Christine isn’t. All I can do is look at her, and hope she does all right. Cuffed, in the back of the car.
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The cook shows up. He’s nervous. There’s been pressure to leave. He wants to stay here. Seems everyone is feeling the crunch. Waitresses are still too low level to worry about intimidating, and are a dime a dozen anyways. I suggested getting rid of two. Cocaine in the back room. Sure, it doesn’t seem like much, but the bikers are the ones that deal in it here. Some sort of weird alliance forming out there between the bikers and the cops. Don’t need a raid, it would finish us for sure.
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Tension pours back into him, as we near the back of the bar. A dark town car squats low, lurking, behind the dumpster. Two heads within. His hand on my hip. I’m no longer a thing held but a thing owned, his easy stride grown cautious and purposeful. An air of violence that eases, only slightly, when Matty opens the passenger side door, holding it open. He has put himself between me and the car, something I’m not sure even he realizes he’s done.
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