Page 30 of Drag You Down
“I’ve got a what?” Eve calls back from the kitchen.
“Nothing! Never mind!” I say, quickly ripping up the card.
I head to the kitchen and drop the card into the trash with all the compost. Eve gives me a strange look.
“What are you making?” I ask. I notice the vegetable scraps on the cutting board, so I take those and dump them into the trash on top of the card.
Good. There’s no way Eve will want to rummage around now.
“A vegetable soup. Although I’m apparently out of potatoes. Can you run to the bodega?” Eve asks as she starts chopping up a bell pepper.
Is that a ploy to get me out of the apartment so she can check what I threw away? But that would be deceitful. I can’t imagine Eve doing something like that.
But I know I’ve been acting strange ever since I saw Gabriel, and she’s perceptive. I bite my lip, considering refusing, but she’d think that was even odder.
“Sure,” I say, grabbing my wallet and putting it in my back pocket. It’s all I can do not to glance in the direction of the compost again, but I don’t want to draw attention to it.
She continues chopping, and even though I’m acting suspicious, she isn’t.
I have to hope I’m being paranoid.
I leave, heading out of the apartment complex and toward the bodega down the street. Almost immediately, I have the oddest sensation that someone’s watching me, but a quick glance around shows no one suspicious.
It would be easy to hide in the crowds that are everywhere this time in the afternoon, but I would see Gabriel if he was in it.
I know I would.
I think about those dark eyes anyway, eyes that seem to see right into my soul, and I shiver.
I should’ve spoken to Father Zachariah as soon as I’d gotten back from our meeting, but I hadn’t. I’d been too much of a coward, and now the sin festers beneath my skin.
I enter the bodega, and it’s only a little cooler inside than out in the hot summer air. The city always has an oppressive cloud during the heat, one that presses down on me and reminds me of how depraved it is.
I still feel like I’m being watched.
I shake off the feeling and grab the potatoes, hoping to be in and out quickly. Unfortunately, there are multiple people in line ahead of me, and I hear the person at the counter arguing with the clerk about exact change and the price of something.
I shift from side to side, reminding myself that patience is a virtue.
The newspapers and magazines are in a stand next to where I’m waiting, and I reach for the religious magazine. Maybe I can buy this and discuss it with Eve.
Next to it is the New Bristol Chronicle. The front-page article is about some missing businessman and how his company is now looking for an interim CFO. There’s a note that the missing CFO had been embroiled in a trial last year.
It’s more proof of the city’s sins, but?—
But I recognize the man.
He’s clean in this photo, his face shaved bare, and smiling for the corporate world. The suit is snug on him.
When I’d seen him, his eyes had been wide with pain, and the dirt and blood caked his face and torso.
This is the man I’d seen die in front of me.
My heart starts to beat faster, and I stare at it for so long that the clerk calls out, “Are you buying it or not?”
I nearly drop the paper. Half out of guilt and half out of dreadful curiosity, I nod quickly and grab one of the religious magazines, too. I pay and step out of line.
Eve will wonder why I bought a paper, but hopefully the magazine will distract her from that.
