Page 154 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
“And you?”
“I told them I’m done after I clean up,” I say. “Two months. Maybe less.”
She looks at me like she’s waiting to see if I’m joking.
I’m not.
“You did that in there?” she says. “In that room?”
“Yes,” I say. “I didn’t ask for applause.”
“Good,” she says. “You wouldn’t have gotten any.”
I laugh. It feels like water hitting a pan.
“Don Vincent nodded,” I tell her. “Hard to say if I just made a smart move or offended somebody’s ghosts.”
“You always offend ghosts,” she says. “They expect it.”
We walk.
We don’t take the car.
We let the city be a city around us.
A kid runs past with a soccer ball that looks like it survived three wars.
A woman with a stroller stops to fix a blanket.
Somewhere, a radio argues with a window fan.
Ordinary noise is a kind of music.
“You sure you want out?” she asks after a block.
“I want boring,” I say. “I want to learn a pediatrician’s first name and never use it in a panic. I want to put flour on a counter that doesn’t have a map drawn under it. I want to be a man who pays taxes like a chump and complains about them at breakfast.”
“That last part you already do,” she says.
“Practice,” I say.
We cross under the train.
The wind pushes rain into our faces in soft points.
I take her hand because I can.
She squeezes once and then leaves our hands loose.
She likes freedom even while she holds on.
I like that about her.
“Leaving is going to be harder than surviving,” she says.
“It is,” I say. “But for the first time, it feels like a choice.”
“You made it a choice,” she says.
