Chapter 14: The Counter

Rocco put the watch and the photograph in the pastry box and gave it to one of his men without a word.

"He's alive," he said to me in the car. "Silvio wants us to know it, and he wants us to wonder what Thurston is telling him."

"What is he telling him?"

"Everything he knows. Which isn't much."

"He knows I sleep on the left side," I said. "He knows I hate cilantro."

Rocco looked out of the window.

"That will do him no good," he said.

Zia Ines went to her sister's in the city that night, with a bag of leftover soup and a look at me I did not like.

The house was empty by ten.

I lay on top of the quilt in my old room and listened to the water against the rocks.

At midnight I got up and went down in my bare feet.

The kitchen light was off. Rocco stood at the window in his shirtsleeves, with his back to me and the strapped arm held against his ribs.

"You said tonight," I said. "In front of six men and a plate of clams."

He turned his head.

"I did."

"You said it loud enough for the whole street to hear."

"I meant it loud enough for you."

I crossed the floor and stopped an arm's length from him.

The kitchen smelled of lemons and old wood. The moon laid a square of light on the tiles between us.

"It wasn't adrenaline," I said.

"I know."

"I called it adrenaline because I wanted it to be small."

His throat moved. "Tell me what's big."

"You. Six years of you. Everything I thought you didn't feel."

I took the last step.

"Rule one is mine," I said. "I'm saying so."

He didn't move for a moment, and I thought he might still refuse.

Then his good hand slid into my hair, and he kissed me.

It was not the careful kiss from the kitchen table. It was hungry and slow, and it went on until I forgot I was standing.

I got both hands in his shirt and pulled, and buttons rattled across the floor.

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