Chapter 12
Angela
It was the first time I’d been outside in four days.
The world had rearranged itself while I was holed up in the apartment; now the city was bright and sharp, the sidewalks rimed with old salt, the lake nothing but ice and the wind that made you want to stuff yourself back inside your own skin.
I was in a borrowed coat, black wool, not my size but close, with a thick scarf that felt good at my throat.
It smelled faintly of aftershave and something herbal.
Like him. My own boots, the same ones I’d worn through two winters of hiding, suddenly looked like trash next to his.
He’d shown up in the doorway of my room that morning with an armful of options, laid them on the bed like a runway show: pick one.
There was no mention of the contract, no “Daddy says wear the red one,” just the logic of weather and the question—does this make you feel safe?
In the end I chose the coat that was most like armor. It was heavy. I liked the weight.
The new gloves were a different story. Leather, soft, lined in something that felt like fur but probably wasn’t.
They were too expensive for me, too obviously new.
I slipped them on, flexed my fingers, and felt nothing at all.
The old wool ones—the ones Wendell gave me—stayed in my pocket, balled together like a secret I wasn’t ready to give up.
Pietro was waiting in the lobby. He wore a slate overcoat, not as warm as mine, but he walked like he was impervious to weather.
There was something in the way he scanned the street, the way he clocked every parked car and open window, that told you he was still working.
But when he looked at me, the focus was different.
Warmer. The lines around his mouth softened.
He said, “Ready, Baby Girl?”
I nodded, my heart suddenly in my mouth.
“Anywhere you want to go,” he said, “but I have an idea if you don’t mind.”
I shrugged, like it was nothing, but it was not nothing at all. My throat had gone tight. It was the first date I’d had in years.
We walked south along the lake. The edge of the city was all hard light and the blue-white chop of wind.
The path was empty except for a few joggers, all of them hunched into themselves like they regretted every New Year’s resolution that brought them out here.
The lake had frozen at the margins, a skin of dirty ice puckered with sand and plastic bottles, but beyond that it was just open water, dark and endless.
I said, “Where are we going?”
He smiled without showing teeth. “I thought you might like to see the glass house.”
“The what?”
He tilted his head, as if that explained everything. “The Conservatory. It’s not far. Full of palm trees. Somewhere that doesn’t feel like winter.”
I almost laughed, but I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me. “There are no palm trees in Chicago.”
“And that’s what I thought,” he said. “Until Serafina told me about them.”
We walked.He offered me his arm—he actually did, like a man in a black-and-white movie. For a second I froze, then I looped my arm through his. I felt awkward, a child at a wedding. The last person I’d touched in public had been a marshal in a Home Depot parking lot, escorting me to a safe car.
But with Pietro, the touch was nothing like that. He didn’t try to pull me closer. He didn’t guide my steps. It was just a line of warmth, the kind that made the rest of the air seem colder by comparison.
I said, “So you hvaen’t been here long?”
“Only six weeks,” he said. “Before that, Sicily. Before that, Napoli. But I’ve read the guidebooks. I’m a good study.”
“Reading guidebooks is actually cheating. You’re meant to just accidentally discover beautiful things. Everybody knows it.”
He looked down at me. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I grinned. “Maybe. I’ll keep evaluating.”
He grinned." “Evaluate away.”
I glanced down at his boots. “You’re seriously wearing those in the snow?”
He laughed, for real. It was a short, sharp noise, and it landed on his face like he’d forgotten how to do it. “I have not yet been to a shoe shop. I am, as you say, behind the curve.”
I liked the sound of his accent, the way his vowels chewed up the English. “We’ll fix it,” I said. “Or you’ll slip and break your neck.”
He let that ride a few seconds, then said, “If I break my neck, you’ll have to carry me.”
“I don’t remember reading that in the contract.”
“Fine print,” he said. “Extremely small, tiny, fine print.”
“Written in invisible ink?”
“So you did see it!”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll carry you. But only if you buy me a sandwich first.”
He raised an eyebrow, the full mafioso effect. “You drive a hard bargain.”
I realized I was smiling, and not just a little. It felt unnatural on my face, like a muscle spasm, but I let it sit. The feeling was so good I almost didn’t recognize it.
We walked in silence for a while. At a footbridge, he stopped and leaned on the rail. The water below was shallow and slow, ice forming at the edges, making a dull skin that cracked with every gust. He stared at it for a long time. I did too.
I wondered if he was thinking about the risk—about the men in the city who would pay to see me dead, or the contract that might have attached itself to his own head for harboring me. Maybe he was just cold. He didn’t say.
I said, “You go on a lot of dates?”
He laughed, again. “Not exactly. Last I remember, Tonio—who is deeply concerned about the lack of my love life—tried to set me up with a girl who ran a goat farm. She had strong opinions.”
I laughed. “About goats?”
“About everything. But yes, a lot of feelings about goats.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“You didn’t hit it off?”
“I think the smell—”
Another snort from me. Then, something like sadness settled in my heart.
I kicked at a clump of ice. “I don’t remember how to do this.”
“Do what?”
I gestured at the sky, the path, the lake. “Dates. Normal life.”
He smiled. “You’re doing fine. Ten out of ten.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said, but the words came out soft.
He met my eyes. “That’s why we’re on a date. So that I can learn. It can’t be spanking all the time.”
“It doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.
He smiled.
We kept walking. A runner passed us, headphones in, face red with the effort of being alive. There was something comforting about being ignored, about not being a target, not even a point of interest.
When we rounded the next bend, a man was standing under the bare branches of a tree, watching the birds. He wore a blue parka and a ratty knit hat. At first I didn’t recognize him. Then he looked up, and I felt it, a jolt in my ribs.
It was Wendell. He was alive, and—by all appearances—still sober.
He grinned when he saw me. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s good to see you!”
“You too!”
He nodded at a patch of snow where three gulls were fighting over what looked like a half-eaten bagel. “Left one’s the meanest,” he said. “But the little one? She’ll outlast them all.”
I smiled. Pietro watched the exchange, his eyes moving from Wendell to me and back, clocking every gesture.
Wendell said, “You look good. New coat?”
“Borrowed,” I said.
He nodded. “Looks better than the old one. And I see you have new gloves.” He winked, then looked at Pietro. “This your man?”
Pietro held out a hand. “Pietro.”
Wendell shook it. “Wendell,” he said. “I work the city. She’s one of the good ones.”
I felt my face flush, and not from the wind. Pietro smiled, that secret small smile he saved for moments he wanted to keep to himself.
“Thank you,” he said.
Wendell looked at our hands, then at the lake. “If you’re going to the glass house, take the south path. The north’s all torn up, construction or something.”
“Thank you,” Pietro said again.
Wendell shrugged, like he didn’t need thanks, then said to me, “You take care, okay? The city’s full of assholes, but not all of them.”
I nodded. “See you, Wendell.”
He gave me a salute with two fingers and limped away, melting into the thin crowd near the next street.
We walked in silence for a bit.
After a minute, Pietro said, “You like him.”
I shrugged. “He’s a good person. He just didn’t get the right luck.”
Pietro thought about it, then stripped off his gloves—the nice ones, black and new. “Wait for me.”
He ran back, and I watched as he handed Wendell the gloves. Gratitude was written on the old man’s face as clear as day.
When he returned, I said, “Thank you,” and meant it.
We walked south, the wind at our backs now, which made everything easier.
The path curved into a park, nothing green about it, just frozen grass and the spindly ghosts of trees.
Ahead, the Conservatory rose out of the flat earth, its glass dome almost glowing against the winter sky.
It looked like a piece of a different century, something Victorian and optimistic, dropped here by mistake.
Inside the glass house, the first thing that hit me was the heat.
It punched through the layers, through the wool coat, through the shock of leaving the winter behind.
I had to blink twice to clear the sting from my eyes.
Every surface fogged over—my glasses, the inside of the glass doors, the pale cement tiles slick with water.
We stood in the entry for a second. I tugged off the gloves, then the scarf, then started on the coat.
My hair, which had just started to unfreeze, went immediately damp at the roots.
The air was rich and green and alive, like being dropped into the middle of a rainforest. You could hear the drip of condensation from the steel ribs of the dome, the dull echo of kids’ voices from another room.
The coat, suddenly, felt like a mistake.
I shucked it off and held it in my arms. Pietro had already shrugged out of his own, folding it over one arm. He wore a navy crewneck and jeans, nothing dramatic, but he looked more at home in here than I did.