Seven Days to Disappear from My Mafia Stepbrother novel · Chapter 3 of 32
Chapter 3: The Ladder
Lucio holds Roxie's ladder all day and nearly kisses her in the back room, and that night she tells the Ferryman she saw Lucio's name on the chart as the match.
I took the toothbrush out of my mouth.
"I've got a job today. Up a ladder. All day."
"Then I'll hold the ladder."
"In that suit?"
"It's the only kind I own."
The job was the old movie theater on Atwells, four blocks up.
Its vertical sign spelled the theater's name down the front in red tubes, and three letters had been dark since Easter.
The owner came out onto the sidewalk to meet me.
He saw who was carrying my toolbox and went the color of skim milk.
"Mr. Ventresca. About this month's envelope."
"Not today," Lucio said.
The owner backed inside and didn't come out again until lunch.
Across the street a black car idled with two men in it.
They didn't get out.
They didn't need to.
I set the extension ladder against the brick and climbed to the top rung.
Lucio planted one polished shoe on the bottom rail and wrapped both hands around the sides.
"Do you know how to hold a ladder?" I called down.
"I know how to hold things that want to fall."
"That's the worst thing anyone's ever said to me."
"Give it time."
I unscrewed the first dead tube and dropped the screws one at a time.
They pinged off his shoulders.
He didn't move his hands.
"If I fall," I said, "you lose your kidney."
"Leni's kidney."
"Your investment, then."
"Then come down slower."
He held that ladder for seven hours.
His jacket went over the hood of his car by ten.
His sleeves went up by noon.
By three he had neon dust on his white shirt and a smear of grease along his jaw.
The whole block had found a reason to walk past.
Two old women from the bakery stopped and made the sign of the cross.
Nobody on the Hill had ever seen a Don hold anything for anybody.
At five I came down and he caught my elbow on the last rung.
He didn't let go right away.
Back at the shop I had one more tube to fill before the theater could switch on.
I bombarded the glass on the manifold until it glowed.
Lucio leaned in the doorway of the back room with his arms crossed, watching.
I reached past the torch for the clamp.
The hot glass kissed the inside of my wrist.
I swore.
He was across the room before I'd dropped the clamp.
He turned on the cold tap and held my arm under it.
His thumb rested on my pulse.
"You do this every day?"
"Most days."
"You've got burns all the way up."
"Occupational."
The water ran.
He didn't let go.
The burn was a bright pink coin just below my palm.
He lifted my wrist out of the water, looked at it, and put his mouth on it.
His lips were cool from the tap.
Then they weren't.
I stopped breathing.
He kissed the burn once, very slowly, with his eyes on mine.
Then he kissed the inside of my arm two inches higher.
Then the soft skin at my elbow.
My back found the workbench.
His hand found my hip, then slid up under the hem of my tank top, flat and warm against my ribs.
I had both my fists in his shirt.
I didn't remember putting them there.
He smelled like torch gas and starch and the coffee he'd brought me.
His mouth moved up my throat to the hinge of my jaw.
"Rox," he said against it.
Just that.
My whole body went toward the sound.
His thumb brushed the underside of my breast through the cotton.
I arched into it.
His mouth was an inch from mine.
I could feel his breath.
I could feel exactly how much he wanted this, pressed hard against my hip.
Then I thought of the consent form on his desk with my name typed at the top.
I flattened my hand on his chest and pushed.
He went back one step.
"You want me on a table on Saturday," I said.
My voice shook and I hated it.
"You don't get me on this one too."
He stood very still with his shirt half out of his belt.
His eyes went black and then careful.
"Fair," he said.
He tucked his shirt in.
He picked his jacket off the hook.
He left without another word.
When I went up to bed, his car was parked across the street with the lights off.
It was still there at midnight.
I lay in the dark with my wrist on my chest, still feeling his mouth on it.
Then I took out the burner.
He held my ladder all day like he cares if I break, I typed.
The answer took a while.
Does he.
He cares if the part breaks, I wrote. I'm a part.
A long gap.
The three dots came and went twice.
Then one line.
Who else was tested for the sister.
I looked at the ceiling.
I looked at the pink coin on my wrist.
I hadn't told a soul what I saw on that clipboard, because I hadn't seen it yet in this life.
I typed it anyway.
Lucio was. I saw his name on the chart.
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