Page 31 of A Love Most Fatal
I shrug because really it is anybody’s guess, but if I did have to guess (which I have, many times, in my journal), there was a boat or a meat grinder involved. I can hardly think about it without getting pukey.
“Could she be a spy?”
“She all but admitted to being a criminal,” I say. “All the guys called her ‘boss’ and she runs that big company, and she told me not to call the police and, Jenna, I think I’m going to be a target of the mafia for the rest of my short life.”
“Okay, now hold on,” Jenna says. “You’re being dramatic again.”
“Jenna, I watched two men be murdered. I think you could afford to be more dramatic right now.” I’m whisper-shouting again, though it would be difficult for any of my neighbors to hear me with the music so loud upstairs.
“Did you see the guy in the red Corolla outside?” I ask, whispering like he also might hear us from the curb.
Jenna’s eyebrows furrow and she gets up to peek out of my window, the metal blinds clinking as she moves a slat. I swear Ranger’s tail thumps at the slash of sunlight on the floor; the blinds have been drawn round the clock, all of my plants are in crisis.
“Who is he?”
“Tony,” I say. “He was the one who got the blood out of my shirt. He sits out there and makes sure nobody comes back.”
“Is he nice?”
I loath to admit that Tony is exceptionally nice. He nods at me when I leave my house, has knocked on my door and offered to walk Ranger multiple times, and even brought me a burrito once. Tony has the kind of face that could either be thirty-five or nineteen depending on the light, and he acts like I’m part of his family. Really, he called me ‘Cousin’ yesterday.
“You think she’s his boss? Or like,theboss?”
“I guess, maybe,” I say, though yes, I do think that. “Both.”
“Holy shit,” Jenna breathes, absently scratching behind Ranger’s ears. “Did you throw up? When you saw the dead guys.”
“After she left.” I am known to have somewhat of a light stomach.
“But crime is like. . . a man’s world, no?Godfathershit?”
“I will not pretend to know the intricacies and workings of the mafia, Jenna. Maybe they’ve entered the 21st century.”
She takes a moment to process all of this, bending one of the metal blinds again to get another look at Tony and chewing on her bottom lip. She’s still in her gym clothes and the baby hairs on her forehead have dried against her skin. Ranger licks at her leg until she picks him up and gives him a kiss on the head.
“Well, if she’s got a guy posted out of your house, you’re under her protection, right?”
“Sure, but for how long? When Tony goes away, then what?”
“You know how to fight, what about the self-defense classes?”
“Did you not hear the part where I floundered on the ground while Vanessa literally killed them?”
“You could get a gun?” she says and scrunches her nose up at the thought. “Could become a real gun nut.”
I had thought about that too, but the thought made my skin itchy.
Jenna quickly pulls away from the window, but then returns and waves stiffly, presumably to Tony.
Jenna deposits Ranger back on the ground before punching my shoulder, not lightly. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she demands.
I hold my now injured arm and stare blankly, letting myself blink three times before responding.
“Did you not hear the mafia part of all of this?”
She throws the foam football from my shelf at me, and I dodge it before it can hit my face. Next is a pillow, which I don’t dodge in time. “You have to tell me things!”
“I tell you everything!” I defend. “I didn’t want you to be in danger too.”