Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
C hainsaw…
I couldn’t get Gen off my mind. I felt like I’d dodged a bullet after Marchesi’s, but what I’d told her was the truth. I had taken down a tree at Joe Marchesi’s Nonna’s place, and I had cut them a good damn deal on it. That tree had easily been a job in excess of the amount I’d charged him.
I still felt guilty as hell when I’d opened the envelope and found a note asking for the club’s help on a completely different matter that wasn’t exactly legal, with a payment in excess of ten grand, and the promise of more after the job had been completed.
Now I was at the table with my brothers to discuss said matter and see if we wanted to take the job.
“Well, shit – not like this could have come at a worse time.” Hex sucked his teeth.
“Since when do these opportunities ever come at the right one?” LaCroix intoned.
“The Marchesi family’s always been good to us,” Cypress said.
“That was in the bad ol’ days. They been pretty quiet since the schism.” Axeman looked like he was doing the math and that it wasn’t mathin’ right. When he had his hackles up, I paid attention.
“It’s not like we need the money,” Bennie declared.
“It ain’t about the money.” LaCroix leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh.
“There’s more currency than cash out there. This is about reputation. This is a test,” Hex said.
“What, you thinkin’ Marchesi’s checkin’ up on us? Seein’ if we’re still friends?” Saint asked.
“Either that, or they’re helpin’ an old friend of theirs out with this,” I said, catching Axe’s look across the table.
“Well, shit – how do we know, how do we find out, and how do we fuckin’ play this without anybody getting their toes stepped on or their feelings hurt?” Collier demanded.
“Marchesi never took sides in the rift. They didn’t help one side over the other.
If anything, they stayed fuckin’ Switzerland and did the smart thing – waited for the dust to settle and see who came out on top.
Congratulated the victor, and kept on with us.
” LaCroix looked to Hex, who nodded slowly in agreement with everything the pres was saying.
“We either help or we don’t. It’s really as simple as that. Yea, we do, nay, we don’t.”
We sounded off. Bennie said yea, Saint, Yea, Axe, nay.
I followed Axe’s lead with a nay and Cy sided with the other boys with a yea.
Collier was feeling the pressure and finally fell on the side of yea.
Hex thought about it, and thought about it, and finally went yea.
LaCroix abstained and just banged his gavel.
“It passes. Now we gotta figure out how to go about it.”
They wanted six or seven men, and there were only eight of us.
We drew straws on who got left behind and decided it was probably safest to gather our women here at the club and leave them in the care of the odd man out.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want that short straw.
I wanted it more than anything in my life – but no.
It was Cy who got to stay with the girls, which, honestly, he was by far the best man for the job.
One of the strongest and fiercest of us all.
Axe and I traded looks, and his clearly said, I don’t like this. I agreed with him on the uneasy feeling, but what the hell else were we going to do?
The Marchesi family may have stayed neutral through our internal conflict, but they had stayed above board with us after the fact. Had treated us, supplied us things when we’d needed them, given us information and been on the level.
I heaved a sigh, and we finished up the rest of our business.
I checked the time on the analog clock up on the wall and grimaced.
Genesis was at the hospital, and her shift was almost up.
She’d had a hell of a few days, and I wanted to get on back to her place – work on the patio some before she got home, but I didn’t think I’d make it unless she got held up and held over.
“Alright then, it’s gonna be a wild Friday night – y’all be ready,” Hex said as I got out of my head and back to the shit at hand. “As my lady used to say, class dismissed.”
There were groans and eye rolls from all of us as we got up. Cy asked me, “Y’ stayin’ for a beer?”
“Nah, man, I gotta head back into the city. There’s something I wanna do for my lady.” He smiled at me and gave me a nod.
“It’s good t’ see you happy,” he said, and I reached out a hand. He clasped mine, and we brought each other in, slamming shoulders and clapping each other on the back hard enough to make our bones rattle.
“I’ll catch you later, brother.”
“Later,” he said. I waved bye to the rest of the guys and headed for the garage where we’d brought the bikes in.
I rode back to the Garden District and made it back to Gen’s place to a load of packages behind the house, where I’d directed the almighty internet retailer I’d ordered everything from to drop them.
I got to work and didn’t even bother to go into the house. I wanted to see how much I could get through before my lady got home.
There was a spiral staircase leading up to the patio and the level of the house on one corner, with French Doors leading out to it, just off the kitchen, between it and her little office-library hybrid.
The doors leading inside were locked from out here, but her house key opened all the exterior doors of her place.
A fact she’d told me, when she’d handed me one several days back, before I headed off to work one morning.
She’d wanted me to have one, in case I got here before her. It’d been sweet, and today was actually the first day that it’d happened.
I took my knife off my belt, flicking it open to begin carving through tape and cardboard. The guts I started either tossing up over the railing of the patio, or for some pieces, I tied paracord around ‘em and hauled ‘em up from below.
The spiral stairs were way too damn narrow for some things, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to traipse through the house in dirty work boots or go through the trouble of getting them off only to have to put them back on again to get out here and do all this shit.
I erected the frames for the hammocks first, and checked the time from time to time to see if I could at least start getting the lights up before she got home.
We hadn’t started on anything else. No pots, no plants…
but the hammocks would be up, and I could string the Edison bulbs on strings around the perimeter with what I’d gotten online.
The poles would attach cleanly to the iron railing with some ingenuity, and I’d weld them in place later.
Right now, some sturdy zip ties would do the trick to keep things up and in place until she could decide if she liked the plan or wanted to change things.
She pulled into the garage down below me just as I was securing the last pole.
“Well, hello!” she called out, shading her eyes, which were obscured by sunglasses, as she came up the spiral steps.
Like magic, her cat appeared out of nowhere to beg for his dinner.
“Well, hi,” I said and kept working, asking her, “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve been busy! Want some help?”
“Naw, I got it,” I said and straightened up and leaned over to kiss her. “Just got the lights left. Once those are strung, it’s game on.”
“Let me go give this one dinner and fix us some dinner, and when you’re done, maybe we can come out here and try a cold beer on the patio.
“Sounds like a plan, I’ll have these up in a jiff,” I told her. One more kiss, and she let herself and Charlie into the house through the French Doors up here on the patio. She laughed over her shoulder and said, “Feels weird coming into the house from here.”
“Yeah?”
“I never come in this way.”
“That’s valid. I like the way they’re solid, though – windows would make it too insecure.”
“Oh, I know, it was actually mentioned as one of the selling points,” she said and disappeared into the house.
I brought the string of lights out of its box and plugged it into the outlet located to the left of the door.
I’d measured everything twice, and this string should make it from the outlet, up, and all the way around the perimeter of the porch.
I reached up and yeah – nah, I needed something to stand on.
A step ladder or even a chair would do it.
I swore and went into the house.
“Need an assist – I’m just this short.” I held my hands apart for reference, and she laughed.
“Got a folding two-step ladder thing in the laundry room.”
“Perfect,” I declared. “Mind grabbing it for me so I don’t traipse across the carpet in dirty work boots?”
“You really are the perfect man,” she said, and left what she was doing in the kitchen to grab the stepladder for me.
She handed it over, and I smacked her ass when she turned to go back to fixing whatever it was she was cooking up for dinner.
She yelped and gave me a look over her shoulder that was something between do it again , and never do it again – I couldn’t quite tell.
“I can’t tell what that look means,” I told her.
“It means I’m keeping my eye on you,” she shot back, and I laughed.
By the time I finished hanging the lights and had them plugged in and working, the sun had set enough behind the buildings that it was making an impact out here.
I went and straightened out the twin hammocks and the little table I’d temporarily gotten for between them until we found something that suited her better.
The nice part about this whole setup was that it was eminently movable. All of it could be broken down in about twenty minutes, loaded into a car or truck, and taken on to the next place we wanted to take it. It wasn’t that serious.
Likewise, if a storm big enough was coming, we could break down the hammocks and bring ‘em inside to keep them from crashing into the railings, or worse, going up and over.
It was a good setup. I looked forward to spending some lazy evenings out here with her.