Chapter 26 Elias
TWENTY-SIX
Elias
We sleep a lot of the day. Some in the bed, some on the couch when we start watching a documentary on the evolution and global spread of cats.
Normally, I would be glued to the screen for something like that, but I find that I’m really tired.
So is Andre, and it feels really fucking good to rest with him.
I wake up leaning against him on the couch with the menu back on the TV screen. He’s texting someone one handed because his other arm is around me. He’s scowling at the screen. I settle my hand on his thigh, but his expression doesn’t soften.
“Is everything okay?” I ask when he puts his phone down.
“Someone’s coming. It’s, uh, the guy who came to help me last night.”
“The older guy?”
“Yeah. Noah. He wants to talk to you.”
My skips. “Oh.”
Andre pets my hair. “It’s okay. Noah’s … good. He just needs some information from you. But he understands that you’ll only say what you want to say.”
“Is he …” I almost say mafia, but he didn’t strike me that way, and I might say cop if it weren’t for the fact that he came to collect bodies. “What is he?”
“He’s, um, FBI. Former FBI.”
“A former FBI agent who disposes of bodies?”
“It’s … complicated.”
I want to push, but I can tell I need to stop, so I say, “Okay.”
And Andre notices that I’ve yielded. He relaxes. He presses his face against the side of my head, and I just fucking melt.
There’s a knock on the door. Andre grumbles and pulls away from me, getting up. He walks to the door, checking the peephole before he opens it.
“You were already in the building,” Andre says as the man I remember from last night walks in.
He looks around fifty. He’s wearing worn-out jeans and a flannel shirt. He’s handsome and fit, but there’s something haggard about him, and it’s not just the graying hair and beard.
“I would’ve left if you’d said no,” the man—Noah—says.
“Yeah,” Andre acknowledges.
Noah digs something from his pocket and hands it to Andre. Keys. “I replaced your door,” he says. “At the warehouse.”
“Oh. Fuck. Thank you.”
“If you want something else, I can put it in, or you can have someone else do it. I just didn’t want it open.”
“Yeah, I … fuck, I’d forgotten about it.”
“It’s fine for now,” Noah says.
“Yeah. Great. Thanks.”
There’s a lot of tension between them. They don’t know how to be around each other.
And yet, this is the man Andre called for help—and he came.
Noah called this morning too, clearly to check on Andre, and he fixed Andre’s broken door.
And here he is now. But this time, it seems, he’s here to talk to me.
His head turns and he looks at me. I cringe slightly as I remember how he last saw me, naked in the loft of Andre’s warehouse apartment. With Andre, things feel natural, but seeing it from the outside makes me uncomfortable.
When Andre starts moving my way, so does Noah.
He keeps a noticeable distance from Andre, never crowding or threatening.
I noticed it last night too, and it’s very interesting because Noah is clearly confident and capable and even, I would say, dominant by nature.
But he’s so careful with Andre. With me, too, I realize, as he sits in a chair at a good distance from me and keeps his eyes soft.
Andre sits beside me and says to me, “It would be helpful if you could answer some of Noah’s questions.”
“I’ll try.”
Noah doesn’t ask anything personal. It’s all about properties and people connected to my father. He brings up images on his phone, which he passes to Andre, who passes it to me, and asks for whatever details I can provide.
Though I have nothing from the last five years, I have more information than I realized. Noah fishes a small notepad from his back pocket when it gets to be too much for him to remember.
Everything relaxes as we get into the flow of question and answer. Andre is alert, but he clearly trusts Noah. He said that Noah was good. Noah’s vigilance eases as Andre shows that he’s not upset.
When I pass back Noah’s phone for the last time, he takes it from Andre and says, “Thank you, Elias, this is really helpful.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about that. This is all I need from you. It’s more than enough. It’s gonna help a lot.”
Noah starts to get up, clearly intending to leave, but Andre says, “Will you … eat with us?”
Noah freezes. At first, he’s just stunned, then the rawest, most intense emotion flashes through his eyes, like this is something he’s never dared hope for and can’t quite believe. But he gets control of it. He drives it down.
He clears his throat and says, “Yeah. I’d … really like that.”
Andre picks up his phone. In the second before he gets up from the couch, I see his hand shaking. He starts pacing as he calls the Uppercut.
He orders for everyone, though he asks Noah about sides and how he wants his steak cooked. Andre already knows what I like.
It’ll take some time for the food to be delivered, so I start the documentary on cats again to fill the silence.
Andre and Noah both seem relieved. They aren’t ready to talk to each other.
Whatever lies between them is too big. But it’s good for them, I think, to be in this room together.
I can feel how hard it is for both of them, but I can also feel how much they need it.
When the food arrives, we eat at the counter instead of the dining table. I set the places, putting myself in the middle. They’re both quite obviously relieved. Under different circumstances, it would almost be funny, but it just makes me sad. There’s so much pain.
But they do okay.
I keep my hand on Andre’s thigh for most of the meal. I almost want to touch Noah too because he seems so fucking alone, but it’s not my place.
I stop being embarrassed, though, about how he saw me. I don’t feel like he’s judging me. I feel like he’s glad that I’m here. With Andre.
Noah doesn’t hang around after. He thanks Andre for dinner and heads to the door. Andre follows him.
“Noah?”
Noah halts but doesn’t turn around. “Yeah, Andre.”
“Thank you.”
This is a different thank you than Andre offered for the repaired door. This is bigger, and Noah clearly hears the difference. His shoulders rise and fall. He turns slowly. I watch him struggle to control his emotions.
Noah says, “I’m really fucking glad you called me.”
Andre winces slightly. “It was a shitty thing to call you for.”
“You can call me for anything. Any time.”
I don’t understand why the tension doesn’t break between them, why that isn’t enough, but it’s not. Andre nods, and Noah leaves.
I want to ask about it, of course, but Andre is done. I can see it in his eyes. He’s starting to check out.
We don’t even watch any more TV. We just clean up and go to bed. Andre is asleep almost at once, and I realize that he probably didn’t sleep last night in the penthouse. He’s exhausted.
I lie in bed with him for a long time, but I eventually get up. I can’t relax. I can’t be at peace.
Noah asked me all those questions, gathered all that information, for a reason, and I don’t think that anything Noah is doing is official or legal.
He’ll do something quiet and independent and dangerous.
And that’s bad enough, but I don’t think he’ll be alone.
He won’t be able to keep Andre out of it even if he wants to.
They’ll go after my father. And they’ll be killed. Like Rose.
I can’t accept that. I can’t allow that.
And there’s really only one way to prevent it.
It won’t be as dangerous for me. I’ll have opportunity that they won’t, a chance to get close. More than that, it’s my responsibility. It’s my family, my father—and I won’t let him hurt anyone again, certainly not Andre.
So I get dressed, checking every few seconds to make sure that Andre is still asleep. Then I hunt down my phone. It takes a while because I haven’t seen it since that night at Lush. But I find it on the entryway table.
Quietly, I slip out of the apartment. I take the private elevator up to Andre’s office, where the broken mirror catches moonlight and scatters it across the floor.
I go to the overturned desk and search through the mess of papers and broken electronics until I find the card that my father left with the number that I could never have dredged up from my memory.
I find, too, the other thing that I need hidden under Andre’s jacket.
I call the number. It rings and rings. I half think he won’t answer. I half hope he won’t. But then—
“Who is this?” my father demands.
It takes me a second to make my voice work, long enough that I hear my father mutter as he pulls the phone away from his ear.
“It’s me,” I reply before he can hang up. “It’s Elio,” I clarify, stomach twisting. “I … I want to come home.”
My father is silent. Shocked. Then: “Where are you?”
“I’ll be at the Spring Street Park by the statue in thirty minutes if you want to meet me. I have to go.”
I hang up before he can ask me anything. I silence my phone so that I won’t have to hear if he tries to call me. Then I pick up the gun and get back in the elevator.