7. Chapter Seven Carmelo
Chapter Seven: Carmelo
Javi isn't here tonight.
I notice the second I walk through the door because the bar is being run by someone I haven't seen before.
A woman in her forties with short hair and quick hands who handles the bottles with competence but none of the ease Javi has.
Grace is working the floor alone. The restaurant is half-full, a Wednesday night, quieter than the weekends. I sit at four.
She brings coffee without asking. She sets it down and her fingers are right there, and I want to close the gap so badly my left hand grips my thigh under the table.
"Pork shoulder?"
"Yes."
She nods and walks away, bringing my plate back half an hour later. I eat and she works under my watchful eye. The evening passes by, my plate is cleared, my coffee half empty, but instead of leaving, I stay. It's just me and her and twenty strangers who are going to leave.
By nine thirty, the restaurant is emptying. By ten, there are three tables left. By ten fifteen, two. I'm the last customer in the room at ten twenty-eight.
Grace is clearing the table by the window. She stacks plates and wipes the surface and glances at me and then away.
"We're closing soon," she says from across the room.
I pick up my coffee. It's cold, but I drink it anyway.
She finishes the window table and moves to the two-top by the bar to clear it. The woman running the bar starts closing out the register. The kitchen is quiet — Marco left an hour ago, and the clatter of Devon cleaning the line has stopped. The dishwasher hums behind the wall.
Grace comes to my table with the coffee pot.
"Refill? Last one."
"Yes."
She pours. The pot is almost empty, and she tilts it to get the last of it and her body leans toward me, her hip against the edge of the table, her arm extended, and she's close. So close I can smell the mix of sweat and deodorant coming off her skin.
"You're not usually here this late," she says. She puts the pot down on the table and doesn't step back.
"Yes."
"Why?"
She's standing with one hand on the coffee pot, the other hand at her side and her index finger is tapping her thigh, fast. Her shoulders are loose. Her breathing is even. The tapping isn’t anxiety this time.
"I wanted to," I say.
She almost smiles. The corner of her mouth moves a fraction and holds there. "Right… but you usually leave before closing."
"I like the quiet."
"It's not quiet during service."
"It's quiet after."
She smiles, and in the dim light Grace's face is shadowed, but her eyes are gray-blue and I’m getting lost in the patterns.
"I'm Grace," she says.
She already told me this, weeks ago, in the transactional way servers introduce themselves. But this is different. She's telling me her name the way you tell someone your name when you want them to know it.
"Carmelo," I say.
"Carmelo." She says it back and the sound of my name in her mouth makes my heart pick up a few beats.
"Is that Italian?" she asks.
"Yes."
Something crosses her face, it’s brief. A flicker in her expression that I've learned to watch for; the micro-flinch she gets when Italian surfaces in her environment. But this time it's different. She didn't flinch. She leaned in. She asked.
"You're Italian," she says.
"Yes."
"You don't have an accent."
"Born here. My family is from Calabria."
"Where's that?"
"Southern Italy. The toe of the boot."
She nods. Her finger is still tapping her thigh. "I don't know anything about Italy."
That’s not true, but I don’t say shit because I know what she doesn't know. She doesn't know anything about Italy because she was taken from an Italian family at eight and drugged into forgetting everything about who she was, including the country her blood comes from.
"You're not missing much," I say. "Loud people. Good food. Bad drivers."
She laughs, short, surprised, a sound that breaks out of her with ease. Her whole face changes when she laughs. Her eyes go narrow and her mouth opens wide and she looks carefree. I want her to laugh again.
"I need to finish closing," she says, but she doesn't move.
"Okay."
"You can stay. If you want. While I close. It's just mopping and wiping down and the register."
"Okay."
She picks up the coffee pot, walks to the bar, starts closing procedures while I sit at table four and watch her.
She wipes down the bar top. She counts the register.
She checks the door locks on the kitchen.
She mops the floor around the tables, working her way across the room, and when she gets to my table she mops around my chair and I lift my feet.
She goes under the table and comes back up on the other side two feet away from me, the mop handle in both hands, her face flushed from the work.
The mop handle is between us. She's gripping it with both hands, knuckles red from the hot water, sleeves pushed up past her elbows.
The tendons in her forearms flex when she shifts her weight.
The freckle below her ear catches the low light.
Her chest is still heaving from the work, her lips parted, and the heat coming off her body crosses the two feet of space between us and lands on my skin.
Neither of us has moved. Neither of us has spoken.
Thirty seconds. The mop drips onto the tile and the sound is the loudest thing in the room.
"I should finish up," she clears her throat, trying to avoid looking at me.
"Yeah."
She doesn't move for another second. Then she pulls the mop back and steps away. The heat goes with her. Three feet, then five, then she's across the room emptying the mop bucket in the utility sink. I sit at the table and press my hands flat on the surface, fingers spread, and breathe.
She finishes the closing tasks. Checks the walk-in.
Resets the alarm panel by the kitchen door.
Turns off the last of the lights one switch at a time.
The restaurant goes dark in sections. The bar first, the dining room overheads, then the kitchen behind the pass until the only light left is the neon clock, the exit sign above the door, and the glow from the street coming through the cracked front window.
She gets her jacket and her bag and walks to the front door. I'm already standing, I got up when she went for the lights. The exit sign puts red light on half her face.
"You don't have to walk me home," she says.
I don't answer. I just wait for her to lock the door.
She locks it. We step onto the sidewalk and the cold hits. She hunches into her jacket, chin down, shoulders up. The cold has never bothered me, and for a moment, I wonder if I should offer her my coat.
Three blocks. The street is empty. The bodega sign glows on the corner. Our footsteps are the only sound except for a car passing on Ninth and the distant bass of someone's stereo from an apartment above the dry cleaner.
She walks on my right side. The swing of our stride brings our sleeves within contact distance.
The first time, her sleeve brushes my coat.
She doesn't pull away. The second time, she adjusts, half an inch closer.
The third time, her knuckle bumps the back of my hand, and then the swing carries her arm away.
The fourth time, I adjust. Half an inch.
Her breathing changes. Her finger taps the strap of her bag, fast, rapid, but she doesn't slow down or speed up. She just walks beside me.
At her door, she gets her key out and turns to me.
"Carmelo," she says. Just the name. Not a question, not a goodbye. She's saying it to hear it, to feel the shape of it, and I watch her mouth form the syllables and think about what it would be like to put my mouth on hers. If I kiss her right now I don’t know that I’ll finish what I set out to do, so I don’t.
Not before I've done what I came here to do.
"Grace," I say.
"Right. Yes. Um… goodnight, then," she says.
"Goodnight."
She opens the door, steps inside, looks at me one more time through the gap. The door closes. I'm standing on the sidewalk in the cold, and I can still feel the place where her knuckle bumped the back of my hand. Third block, right side, four steps past the parking meter with the dented head.
Ten seconds. Then I turn around and walk back to my apartment.
The placement network is running a secondary check.
Danila texts at six AM: "Handler pulled records on three Philly placements in the last 48 hrs. Yours might be one of them. Stay alert."
I read the text standing at the window in the dark. Grace's apartment lights are off. She won't be up for another three hours. The street below is empty except for a delivery truck idling outside the bodega.
Three Philly placements. The network has multiple assets in this city. I knew this from Danila's briefing, but I didn't think the handlers would actively reviewing them. The Harrisons' restructuring of the Silent is creating pressure all the way down the chain.
If Grace's handler pulls her file and sees the Marinos' next check-in is twenty-four days out, that's within normal parameters.
No flag. But if the handler decides to do an independent verification, send someone to the restaurant or the apartment or the Marinos' house, the operation gets complicated fast.
I need to move the timeline up.
I text Danila back: "Can you get the handler's name?"
Twenty minutes. Then: "Working on it. Two days."
Two days. The Marinos' check-in is in four days.
If I move on them the day after the call, I have the standard window.
If the handler pulls an early review before the call, the Marinos report Grace as stable and the handler stands down and I move on schedule.
If the handler pulls an early review after I've killed the Marinos, the handler finds dead bodies instead of a status report and the entire network activates.
The timing has to be perfect. I need to know when the handler is looking and when the handler looks away. I need Danila's intel, and I need it before the check-in call.
I pull the knife and clean my thumbnail and think about logistics for an hour then I call Leone.
First ring. "Carmelo."
Fifteen seconds of nothing. I stand at the window, hold the phone, hold the knife.
"Tell me," Leone says.
"I need to move on the family. But the timeline changed. Danila says the placement network is tightening protocols. Handlers are reviewing assets. They could relocate her."
Leone is quiet. Processing. "How soon?"
"The check-in is in four days. I move the day after. But if the handler reviews her file before that, the window closes."
"What do you need?"
"Danila's getting the handler's name. If I can track the handler's review schedule, I can time the hit between the check-in and the next review cycle."
"What else?"
"If they try to relocate her before I move, I need to be able to stop it. That means I need to know who they send and when they send them."
"Claudio," Leone says. "I'll have him set up a monitoring protocol on the Marinos' house. If anyone approaches, you'll know."
"Yes."
"Is this about her?" he asks.
"Yes."
"Then move. Kill them clean. Be there for her when the pills stop, because she's going to need someone. You put yourself in that position, so you damn well better be ready."
"Yes sir."
"Check in when it's done."
The line goes dead. Grace's light turns off. Eleven thirty-nine. Seven minutes later than usual.
I open the knife and work the blade under my thumbnail. The mop handle between us. Her knuckles, red from hot water. My name in her mouth. I'm going to kill two people this week and then everything in her life comes apart, and I'm standing in the wreckage whether I'm ready or not.
I'm not.
I'm going to do it anyway.