Page 16 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
He lowers his voice so it does not carry. He steps us both out of the line of sight of the two men at the corner who smoke with their backs to us in a way that says they are watching anyway.
“He moved money for them,” he says. “Through your kitchen. Through your hands. He endangered you.”
“I make bread,” I say, like an idiot, and he flinches like I hit him with the flat of my knife.
“Yes,” he says, and it lands like a vow, and then, “Let me explain. Not here.”
“Do you have a room where the echoes are softer?” I say, and I laugh, a terrible, bright sound that does not belong to me. “Do you have a script where the part where you pull the trigger does not happen between the part where you finish your coffee and the part where you ask me how my day was?”
He swallows once, and for the first time since I have known him, he looks like a man who is not certain his hands know the way. He releases my wrist slowly and slides his hand to my elbow, gentler still, as if I am a pan just off the flame and he would rather burn himself than drop me.
“Let me get you out of here,” he says. “People are looking. There is a line I will not cross in public.”
“Let me go,” I say again, quieter, the words cutting their own path. “Please, Declan.”
He glances at the men at the corner, at the truck that just turned down the pier road, at the sky that is leaning forward with snow that is not ready to fall. His hand opens. He steps back once, making space like a gentleman in a century that does not deserve the word.
“I will not follow,” he says, which is not true in the way that is kindness. “Text me when you are home. Lock your door. Do not open it unless I am the one on the other side.”
“I will set the house on fire if you come,” I say, because my mouth has never learned restraint, and he does something with his face that is not a smile and not pain.
“Aoife,” he says softly, a benediction and a resignation at once, and then he raises his hands the way a man does when he knows he cannot win the next ten seconds, and I run.
I run with the taste of metal and smoke and winter in my throat, past the stacked lobster pots and the puddle that lied, past a boy in a knit cap kicking at ice like it insulted his mother, past a woman with a stroller who hums to a baby wearing a hat with ears, past the city that keeps its secrets even when they shout. I run until my lungs are sandpaper and my calves are lit wires, until the bus stop appears like a benediction, until a bus arrives that does not care who I am as long as I have two dollars and the will to stand upright.
I slide into a plastic seat that has felt every sadness this city makes, press my forehead to the cool window, and watch the water slip away behind me like a story I will never be able to tell in a way that makes anyone understand the taste it left in my mouth. My phone buzzes with texts I do not read. My hands rest on my knife roll because it is the only thing I trust not to lie.
When I finally climb the stairs to my apartment, my hands shake hard enough that the keys sound like bells. The fairy lights are exactly as I left them, stubborn and low. I lock the door, then the chain, then the deadbolt, then the half-broken latch I told the landlord about twice. I set the knife roll on the table with the care you use when you put down the sleeping cat of a friend. I stand in the middle of the room and listen to my own heart try to climb out of my chest.
I go to the sink and scrub my hands until the lines in my palms wake up, then I put a pan on the stove and melt butter. I tip in flour and whisk until it goes the color of toast, and I add milk in a slow thread and turn the heat down and keepstirring because this is what saves me every single time the city tries to tear a seam—heat applied with care, patience, and salt. I throw in a handful of cheddar and the sauce sighs. I pour it over noodles and send it into the oven and stand in front of the glass like a person waiting for absolution.
The oven ticks. The lights glow. Somewhere across the city a man I let into my life wipes powder from his hands and tells his men to stand down, and somewhere a shape of me is still running. The timer rings and I jump and laugh at myself, a small bright bark in a quiet room, and I eat standing up because a chair feels too civilized and because I cannot sit with what I know and not know and have seen. The mac and cheese is exactly what I need, honest and hot, and when I burn my tongue a little I feel almost human.
My phone lights once on the table, a rectangle of cold light in a warm room, and I turn it face down and lift my fork again.
7
DECLAN
Istare at the space where she stood. Corner of Bay Three. A hairline crack in the cinderblock. The cold blows through the gap above the partition and smells like tide and oil. I can still feel the heat of the shot in my hands, and I can still see her eyes. Not fear alone. Not only disgust. It was trust breaking. It was a pane of glass going from whole to webbed in one breath.
“Boss.” Kieran keeps his voice soft. He knows better. He stands just outside the ring of light. Boots wet. Collar up. He does not look at Wallace. He looks at me. Always me first. “Crew is staged.”
“Do it clean,” I say. “No noise. No visitors.”
He nods and moves his men. Gloves. Tarps. A gray van that will be on three different cameras for three different reasons, none of them true. Someone kills the overhead lamps in the next bay. The warehouse returns to its usual dark. My hand still holds the gun like it is a prayer book. I breathe, and the metal cools in my grip.
I kneel. One casing. It rolled toward the pallet wrap. I pick it up with a piece of cloth. It goes into my coat’s inner pocket.I glance once at Wallace. I do not speak to him. The last words matter, and I chose mine already.
“She saw,” Kieran says when he returns. He does not ask who. He knows.
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you want?—”
“No.” I hand him the pistol, already wiped. “This is done. Get rid.”
Kieran takes it without comment. His face is weathered from nights like this. He will not ask if I am all right. He knows the answer. He knows the kind of man I am when I do the job myself. He also knows I do not ask others to carry what belongs to me.
