Page 19 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
Mostly, the reason does.
Her mouth shapes the first syllable and that is when the light changes.
It comes through the boarded front like a tide.
Headlights.
Too high and too steady to be a drunk parking badly.
The beam bleeds at the edges of the old paper taped over glass.
The engine sound slides into the room a half second later, low and patient, the note men who hunt prefer because it feels like nothing until it's too close to stop.
Every muscle I keep for special occasions tightens.
I put the mug down without looking at it.
Italian falls out of me the way a curse does when a hammer finds a thumb. “Cristo.”
Elisa’s head snaps toward the sound.
Her eyes go sharp.
There is no panic, only a quick recalculation the way a good driver adjusts in rain.
My hand is already on the pistol, the metal returning to my palm like it always belonged there.
I move to the edge of the window, staying to the side where the board gap will not silhouette me.
“Stay back,” I say, voice low, a command I don't like to use with her but will use anyway.
She does not waste time with questions.
She reaches for the light switch, killing the room in one clean move, and we stand in the dark with our hearts counting different things while the headlights wash the bakery front like a tide that has forgotten how to recede.
3
ELISA
Afew days later
Two nights is all it takes for the bakery to learn our footsteps.
The first night, after the headlights washed the boards and then slid away, I told myself it was nothing more than a delivery truck that missed its turn.
By dawn, I knew I was lying.
The unease stays anyway, a small coin under the tongue.
I go to work with it and I come home with it.
It follows me down the alley when I lift the gate just enough to slip under and it stands beside me at the sink while I wash my hands longer than any soap requires.
I keep him hidden because there is no other word for what I'm doing.
Hidden sounds wrong until the wrong thing is the only thing that keeps a man breathing.
I stash him in the back room when the sun rises and in the supply closet when the street gets busy enough to make my heart tick.
