Chapter 15: Paid For

"I was across the street the whole night," the guard said, out of breath. "I swear, miss. I went for coffee at five. Ten minutes."

He was already on his phone.

The glass in the shop door was broken out.

Through the hole I could see a brick on the floor, in a scatter of glass, on my new carpet.

Something was wrapped around it with a rubber band.

I reached through and unlocked the door and picked it up.

It was a photograph.

My father, at his stroke clinic, holding the parallel bars in his gray sweatpants, taken from three feet away.

I folded it and put it in my apron before anybody else could see it.

Then I went back out and read the window again.

BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.

The baker next door came out in her apron with a tray of bread.

She looked at the window. She looked at me.

She went back inside without a word.

I thought that was it.

Then she came back out with a bucket of hot water and a scraper.

"Paint thinner in my basement," she said. "My husband's. He won't miss it, he's dead."

She handed me the scraper and started on the B herself.

By eight the barber was scraping too, and a woman from upstairs with a mop.

At nine-thirty a black car pulled up hard at the curb.

Damiano got out before it stopped moving.

He looked at what was left of the words.

Then he looked at me, with red paint up to my elbows.

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