by Jessica King
“This the kid?” he asked. Cameron thought he looked older than Broadway, but on closer look, Broadway had to be halfway through his twenties, short and skinny. “Where you get that?”
“Selling the rest, don’t worry,” Robbie said, waving him off. He took back the now-whittled piece of paper, pulling it to his lips. Cameron shifted uncomfortably. Had he missed the chance to introduce himself? Was a handshake entirely appropriate for gang members? Should he get up for a bro-hung?
Broadway pulled up a half-rotted lawn chair and dropped into it. When he did, Cameron could see the outline of a gun in his pocket.
“You got a piece?” he asked, hoping that was enough of an introduction. He’d forgotten the awareness of weapons he’d had back when they lived in this neighborhood. He felt a tingle of fear with guns around. But it was always better to ask, he’d found. If someone showed you their gun, they likely trusted you enough not to pull it out if things got heated. He’d seen his father pull the same move a hundred times around the dads of his friends when he was still little, and they hadn’t started complaining about their backs yet.
His dad had been the only one without tattoos, though. The only one who had avoided jail time.
Broadway’s arms were covered in tattoos, his tank top showing the designs that reached to his shoulders, but not his collarbones, which Cameron thought was strange.
Broadway pulled out a small handgun. “Nothin’ big,” he said. “She’s got a punch, though.” He looked at Cameron. “You a good shooter?”
Cameron shrugged. His parents had taught him how to use a gun when he was small, but he hadn’t seen a gun in the new house. He’d only been to a shooting range a few times since with friends, where he’d wowed them with his previous knowledge on how to shoot the things safely, though he didn’t know about them—their names and their damage—the way Robbie did.
“I’m all right,” he said. “Nothin’ special, though.” He felt his words falling into the dragging pronunciations of his old school, his old home. He’d had to “sharpen up” his speech when he’d come to his new school. Uniforms apparently made people want to pronounce their words fully.
Broadway’s phone rang, and he stood, waving at Cameron and Robbie to stand. Cameron crunched his cigarette out under his sneaker, and Robbie stopped the burn of the blunt and pocketed the rest.
“One of our guys ran into an Angel at Lucille’s corner shop,” he said, seeming oblivious to the untied laces of his shoes as they took off down the street.
Broadway taking the lead, Cameron spat the taste of cigarette smoke onto the cracked pavement. “Thought you guys were part of the Angels?” he asked Robbie.
“Naw, things change,” Robbie said, his arms pumping as they neared Lucille’s. They could hear the yelling before they saw the scuffle. Rounding the corner, Broadway barreled into the fight, the head of an angel narrowly missing the edge of one of the two gas pumps. “C’mon, Cammie,” Robbie said. His eyes were dark and frantic. “You can’t run right now if it gets scared, okay?” he said. “No one’s gonna want you if you take off.”
Cameron nodded, and they ran toward the two main fighters. A guy, maybe a year older than Cameron, in a black T-shirt with smoke patterns on it was going against a man who was shirtless, though his back was covered in the tattoo of angel’s wings. “Grab his back!” Robbie said.
Cameron ran around the back of the man, pulling him by the shoulders.
The kid in the black shirt spiraled away, and Robbie delivered a punch to the Angel’s bare abdomen. A series of young men flew around the back of the shop. They ran toward Broadway and the kid he was beating on the ground. Cameron saw Lucille, the owner of the shop, screaming from the stoop of her corner store. She was yelling to get away from her store. That she’d call the cops. Cameron saw Broadway reaching for his pocket, and he took off for Lucille.
A man in a tank top with wings inked onto his forearms bolted around the corner of the store, his sneer directed at Cameron. Cameron leaped and twisted, locking his arms around the Angel. They landed, and Cameron flipped the two of them sideways before he pushed the Angel onto his back, pinning and punching him at the same time. The man’s lip burst open, red spilling onto Cameron’s knuckles. He shook his hand, trying to get it off of him. His hand ached.
He popped up and ran to Lucille. “Miss Lucille, you gotta get inside.” He heard the first pop of Broadway’s gun, and the running started. “Miss Lucille, get behind your register,” he said, more urgently this time. Lucille’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Oh Cammie,” she said. “Oh no.” Her white eyebrows knit together, her eyes turning sad.
“It’s me,” he said, trying to forget the disappointment on her face. “Get down, okay?”
She turned away, moving to her register. Cameron hopped out of the store. Broadway was still shooting; he hadn’t hit anyone too bad, though he did see an Angel limping, yelling down the street as he went. Robbie had already taken off, and Cameron figured that was his cue to leave before an Angel with a gun showed up. He took off around the back of the store.
He sprinted back to Robbie’s house. Robbie had a split lip, but he didn’t seem to mind it, casually holding a paper towel to it, running his tongue over it every few seconds. He smiled around it, one side lifting higher than the other.
“I saw you take down that Angel,” Robbie said. “That was all right.”
“Thanks,” Cameron said. “It happened pretty fast.”
“You disappeared into the store,” Robbie said. “You didn’t hear Broadway yellin’ at ya?” He put the paper towel down and leaned back against his palms. Nail marks streaked down his arms, but they hadn’t broken the skin.
“No,” Cameron said. “I was trying to help Miss Lucille.”
Robbie nodded. “Gotcha,” he said. “Well, you gotta listen during a fight, you know? Broadway had him and whatever, but he could have used the backup and you took off. Kinda lucky that Angel came around the corner. So, you could prove yourself before that.”
“Should I tell him what I was doing?”
Robbie shook his head. “I’ll tell ‘im. He likes Miss Lucille, so he’ll get over it, but he was mad at’cha at first. Go home. I’ll make sure he settles down first, knows what you were doing. We won that, though, so he’ll be easy to talk with.”
Cameron nodded. “All right,” he said. “Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Robbie said, lighting up the blunt again. His hands were still shaking from the fight. “Hop back, kiddie,” he said. “Don’t want Ma and Pop smellin’ this on ya, yeah?”
Cameron took a step back. If his parents smelled weed on him when he got home, he’d never hear the end of it. He started up his car and drove home, the windows down the entire time, even though the sour smell of it stuck in his nose for most of the drive. He started chewing on mints ten minutes out from home, hoping the smell of cigarettes would be gone from his breath in case his mom got too close before he could brush his teeth.
She didn’t. She gave him a weird look from the kitchen and told him to get ready for dinner.
“Gotta shower,” he said, running his hand up the banister as he climbed the stairs. He kept the shower cold, hoping the shock of it would drain the adrenaline out of his system.
He reached for his soap, knocking down one of Trinity’s many brightly colored bottles. It had become routine for him to end up knocking over and picking up her too-sweet soaps and bubble bath. He opened the bottle this time, his nostrils flaring against the smell of Trinity’s shampoo. He put it back onto the shelf, where crusted pink goop was still sticky from the last bottle of the stuff, the ring of it highlighting where her things belonged in the space that was now only his. He used her body wash, not caring if he smelled like flowers after.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tuesday, March 28, 2017, 6:05 a.m.
Cabin fever: (n.) a claustrophobic reaction caused by irritability and restlessness from prolonged isolation or exposure to confined
quarters for an extended period of time.
Ivy tilted her head back. She’d decided to try to fall asleep as soon as humanly possible. As a night owl, she was more likely to get a substantial amount of sleep during the first leg of their journey to Italy than she would be during the second half. She’d brought a sleep mask, headphones, and a neck pillow. She’d asked for a blanket as soon as they’d sat down and promptly pushed the sleep mask down after the safety demonstration. The various beeps and purr of the engine played the part of white noise, a yawn pushing its way through her.
She’d done plenty of research on breathing techniques to help calm the body and get her to sleep and was midway through the third cycle of one such technique when something poked her arm.
She didn’t remove the mask. “Vince,” she said through her teeth. She’d told him of her sleep plans at least five times in an attempt to avoid this very moment.
“Yeah, me,” Vince said. He hadn’t understood his scolding. “Look at this.” She heard a crinkling noise.
“No,” Ivy said, settling her neck farther into her pillow. A piece of her hair landed across her face, and she scrunched her nose against it, trying to move it without disturbing her blanket.
“Yes,” Vince said. Before she could fight it off, she felt his fingers lifting one half of her mask so that one of her eyes was exposed to the plane. She used said eye to glare at him. He held up the bag of pretzels he’d received. “There are three pretzels in there,” he said. “Three.”
Ivy growled and reached from under her blanket to push her eye mask back down onto her face. “Ask for another,” she said, wriggling into a comfortable position.
“Look at that baby,” Vince said. She heard him whisper, “Hi, Ivy.”
Ivy pretended not to hear him, though she felt rude not looking. She could hear Vince’s cooing next to her, and she finally pulled up the mask. A baby was, in fact, peeking through the gap between the two chairs in front of them, and he was indeed adorable. Ivy smiled at the baby, who made a high-pitched sound of delight that, had it been any louder, might have given the entire cabin an instant headache.
Vince wiggled his fingers in front of the baby, and it reached a chubby hand through the seats and reached for Vince’s fingers.
Vince ate one of his three pretzels, and the baby reached for the bag. Vince pointed to the bag, his eyebrows raised, and reached in.
Ivy shoved a hand out. “Can’t feed a baby you don’t know,” she said. Plucking the pretzel and popping it into her own mouth. The baby appeared amused, not angry. Thank goodness, Ivy thought. “He could have an allergy.”
The baby was distracted by someone in the seat, the blue eyes disappearing.
“You ate my pretzel,” Vince said.
Ivy pulled her mask back down in front of her face. “So observant,” she said.
Vince harrumphed next to her and crunched on his last pretzel. She laughed and felt Vince’s elbow in her side. “Practicing my detective skills, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Ivy said. “Did you also happen to observe that we’re in the air, or was that one elusive?”
“I don’t appreciate your sass.”
Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 10:02 a.m. | Central European Standard Time
“That was awful,” Vince said, stretching as he and Ivy walked to the baggage claim. He looked up as he walked, the ceiling seemingly cracked open in the middle to reveal a river of skylight weaving across the top of the airport. Ivy, however, kept her eyes straight ahead.
It had been awful. Neither of them had managed to get any sleep on the second flight—a nearly nine-hour flight. There hadn’t been an adorable baby who wanted to share pretzels, either. Rather, there had been a set of screaming twins with a set of parents who somehow managed to sleep through the racket. Ivy’s head pounded as she sipped the rest of her water.
“I’ve never heard a human make that much noise for such an extended amount of time,” Vince said. He pointed to a screen with their flight number, and Ivy felt as though she were being hypnotized into sleepiness by the slow-moving belt.
“We are going to have to find coffee,” Ivy said. Her muscles felt lethargic after such an extended period, and they wobbled with threats to give up without caffeine.
“Don’t we have an officer coming to pick us up?”
Ivy nodded. “He’ll be in a normal car, though, off-duty, I think. I bet we could bribe him to take us to a café or something,” she said. They found their bags and found a police car—bright blue with a shining polizia across the sides—waiting for them. “Or, I guess on-duty.”
“Do you think we can still—” Vince began.
“Detectives!” An officer had already run around the back of the car and was taking their bags before Ivy could even smile at him. “Welcome to Rome; I wish it were under, eh, different circumstances.” His accent would have made Ivy giggle had she not had such a headache.
“Thank you, ah…?”
“Chief Vitali,” he said. “Please.” He gestured to the car. Ivy slid into the passenger seat, and Vince took the back. Hot coffees were waiting in the cupholders, and Ivy never thought she’d feel emotional at the smell of it, but she did. “Coffee?” he said.
“Thank you,” Ivy said, scooping her cup out of the cupholder. She took a sip. It was plain black coffee, but it didn’t bother her, the feel of it going straight to her brain. She peeked into the rearview to see Vince, who was trying not to grimace in the backseat. He took coffee with his sugar, as opposed to the other way around, but he was gulping the bitter liquid, nonetheless.
Mental note to get us off our caffeine addiction, Ivy thought, knowing it was likely something they’d never get past.
“Confession goes until 12:30 at St. Peters, so we get you to your hotel then to the church, ah?” Chief Vitali said.
“Sounds great,” Ivy said. She looked at her phone. A text from Vince. She looked into the rearview again, and he gave her a pointed look. He looked cramped against the cage seat of the back, but he looked at her phone so she would too. She checked the message.
I’m STARVING.
She was, too. She tapped out a message, nodding and smiling as Chief Vitali pointed out different landmarks along their path, though none of them appeared to be food-related.
Something near the hotel?
The dots along her phone bobbed until a new message appeared.
I freaking hope so.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 12:22 p.m. | Central European Standard Time
“Are you sure you don’t mind us eating in your car?” Ivy asked, though she was mostly done with her sandwich. There had indeed been a food place next to their hotel, and neither of them could bear to leave part of their meal behind when Chief Vitali had returned.
Vince had been eating loudly in the back seat for the past five minutes, and Ivy shot him another glance. He hadn’t seen any of them. “This is so good,” he said, tilting his head back as melted cheese from his calzone stretched between Vince and his lunch.
Chief Vitali laughed. “I eat in the car all the time,” he said, waving them off. His accent added little dips at the ends of his words, and Ivy’s mind wrote his accent out in her mind: I eat-ah in the car all-uh the time-uh. She tried to keep her mind away from popular Dracula impersonations and general vampiric media. “You look tense, signorina,” he said.
Ivy let out a breathy laugh. “I thought we had bad traffic in L.A.,” she said. She tried to relax her shoulders, though her hands refused to release the side of her seat’s cushion.
They were stopped in an intersection, though apparently being in an intersection meant being in the intersection. It was a nightmare for her traffic-directing brain. She wouldn’t even know where to begin with this crowd.
The car in front of them rolled a few inches, and before Chief Vitali could move forward, a moped had wedged himself between the cars. A helmeted head swiveled back toward them, and he rolled forward a few more inches, taking the fact that
Chief Vitali hadn’t honked as an invitation.
Hopping out of the car and arriving at the crowded space in front of St. Peter’s felt like a relief after the traffic.
Chief Vitali led them forward. “The architecture here, the curves on each side, are meant to, eh, look like arms,” the Chief said. “Like walking into the arms of God.” Chief Vitali held out his arms, embracing the air in a bear hug to illustrate his point.
Ivy could see how the architecture was set up to look inviting, though she thought there were far more people gathered in the “arms” than the architect seemed to have planned for. There were still news vans in front of the basilica, reporters gesturing to the massive church behind them, speaking quickly in Italian. At the front steps of the church, a picture of Tatiana Rossi had been set up, teddy bears and flowers and candles collecting around it in waves of pink and red and white. Some people were crying near the tribute, and still, others were clearly tourists taking pictures of a novelty memorial at the church.
“Are we going to meet the Pope?” Vince whispered as they ascended the steps.
“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “I don’t think he’d be here with the crowd like this.”
“Doesn’t he live here?”
“I don’t think he lives, like, here, here.” Ivy cast him a sidelong look. “Where in the basilica do you think he lives?”
Vince didn’t respond. His shoulders sagged a big, and Ivy bit back a laugh. She remembered one of their first days on the job as partners when Vince had told her his family was from Italy and that his mother had hung a photo of the pope she’d taken as a girl in their living room like he was a member of their family.
“Just in here,” Chief Vitali said, leading them through the front doors. Ivy took quick looks around her. The place was huge and gorgeous and filled with light and intricate architecture. But they weren’t there to gaze around the church for hours as she wanted to.
